PHAINOMENON, 33 (2022): 3-24

Ontology and Epistemology in Husserl’s Ideen-I

Pedro M. S. Alves
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa
Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa
psalves2@gmail.com

Reception date: 06-2015

Acceptance date: 09-2017

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the reappraisal of Husserl’s ontology and epistemology,
sketched in book one of Ideen. The main issue is Husserl’s theory of essence and essential insight.
I present the fundamental distinction between facts and essences, and, over and above it, Husserl’s
defense of an a priori knowledge based on essential insight as well as his partition of the whole
realm of a priori knowledge into a formal set of material, regional ontologies. I will show how
the theory of essential insight presented in Ideen gives rise to several criticisms, namely those
made by Neo-Kantians, like Rickert and Natorp. In the last part, I will show how the mathematical
concept of an invariant under a group of variations was the leading case for Husserl's mature
notion of eidetic insight.

Keywords: Husserl, Phenomenology, Ideas I, Ontology, Eidetic insight.

1. Looking at the very beginnings of a groundbreaking work

The first volume of Ideen was originally published by Edmund Husserl in 1913
and then republished without any alterations in 1922 and 1928. Unlike Logische Unter-
suchungen, especially the sixth, Husserl did not submit Ideen to a profound rewriting
throughout his long life. Furthermore, the two volumes, which according to Husserl’s
original plan, would follow the first book remained unpublished till his death in 1938.
The third volume remained forever in a sketchy form, which had little to do with the
posthumous edition of Ideen-III.1 Hence, the projected Ideen-series never went beyond
its first steps: that of a general introduction to phenomenology. Was it a failed effort then?

1
An edition of the Urfassung von Ideen II und Ideen III is now being prepared by Dirk Fonfarra at the
Cologne Husserl’s Archives.

ISSN: 0874-9493 (print) / ISSN-e: 2183-0142 (online)

DOI: 10.2478/phainomenon-2022-0002
4 Pedro M. S. Alves

Everyone knows this is not the case. The first volume of Ideen has had, by itself, an
astonishing influence.
Firstly, it was an improvement of the theory of intentionality that the fifth logical
investigation had put forward. Concepts such as Sinn (enlarging the former focus on lin-
guistic meaning), noetic and noematic sides of intentionality (introducing the object as
intended along with the act) as well as the final chapter about the phenomenology of
reason (bringing phenomenology from the analysis of sheer intentional acts to the consti-
tution of reality) were, all of them, dramatic departures from the too narrow first stages
of Husserl’s work.
Secondly, the first volume of Ideen also served to clarify the place phenomenol-
ogy should occupy in the universe of knowledge. To begin with, phenomenology was not
a kind of descriptive psychology, that is, an empirical science relying on internal experi-
ence. In addition, phenomenology, rightly understood, should be the foundational science
for every other knowledge, holding sway over all other sciences belonging to natural at-
titude. Finally, phenomenology was itself a science of a realm of being, the realm of con-
sciousness and its transcendentally purified lived experiences. Each one of these claims
put Husserl at odds with someone.
Thirdly, there was in this volume a great number of bewildering novelties. A dis-
covery: what Husserl called the “natural attitude” and its general thesis. A new method:
the epoche or parenthesizing of the natural attitude thesis. A new being, never fully un-
covered: pure consciousness as a non-natural, non-worldly domain of positive being
which, as Husserl stressed, was, like every authentic being, an individual being. And,
eventually, a firm position in the philosophical debates: phenomenology was a new ver-
sion, or better, the accurate version of idealism, showing the absolute being of pure con-
sciousness as existing before the contingent being of the world by means of an amazing
thought-experiment about the conceivability of a “world-annihilation”. As everyone
knows, these innovations would have the virtue of scandalizing nearly all of Husserl’s
students, not only inside the Göttingen-circle, but far beyond it, later giving rise to sharp
criticisms from Heidegger, Schütz, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and so many others.
However, I intend to look at something one usually passes over when reading
Ideen I. I am referring to the very first chapter, entitled “Matter of Fact and Essence”, and
to the subsequent paragraphs of the second chapter of Part One, where Husserl tries to
confute positivism and empiricism. Paul Ricœur wrote that the first chapter was “a chap-
ter of logic”, borrowing the designation from the title of section 17, which reads “Schluss
Ontology and Epistemology in Hussersl’s Ideen-I 5

der logischen Betrachtungen”. He adds that the whole chapter could be skipped (or at
least simply glanced at) in one’s initial approach to the work as if it were a kind of ines-
sential preamble. In his comment, he wonders “in what sense is a logical core presup-
posed” here “if phenomenology should be without presuppositions” (Ricœur, 1996: 37).
However, Part One, covering the first two chapters, is entitled “Wesen und We-
senserkenntnis”. It has nothing to do with “logic” in a narrow, impoverished sense, i.e.,
in the sense of simple formal logic. Husserl himself explains the denomination he uses.
The considerations are “logical” because they develop in a domain of complete generality
(Husserl, 1977: 39), holding on to things as they are truly given by intuition (Husserl,
1977: 40), in a realm which is independent of any theory or philosophical doctrine. Con-
firmations obtained in such a field, where respect for the self-givenness of things reigns
unchallenged, are – Husserl stresses – principles and authentic theoretical beginnings
(Husserl, 1977: 40). So, if Part One on essence and knowledge of essences, or specifically
the chapter about fact and essence, is about logic, certainly it is also about the internal
logos of being in the light of the kind of intuitive knowledge we have. Briefly, the two
chapters of Part One are concerned with:
1. An ontology: the in-principle partition of ‘what is’ into facts and essences.
2. An ultimate ground for knowledge: intuition, or the self-givenness of things
themselves.
3. An epistemological project covering all sciences of the “dogmatic” attitude:
over and above the empirical sciences, the building of a systematic set of sci-
ences related to a formal-analytical and a synthetic-material a priori knowledge.

2. At the gates of the phenomenological dimension

Are the issues listed above dependent on a previous phenomenological founda-

tion, as Ricœur suggests? Are they simply provisional, in need of an ultimate justification,
or of a new rendering after the transcendental level has been attained? It seems yes, given
that only the transcendental dimension can ultimately ground natural sciences, the empir-
ical as well as the a priori; in addition, only the transcendental dimension can show that,
by themselves, things are as they appear, so that beyond what is given by original intui-
tion, nothing remains hidden as a residuum of concealed reality. Finally, only the tran-
scendental dimension can secure the preeminence of description over construction, which
6 Pedro M. S. Alves

guides Husserl’s arguments against empiricism’s and positivism’s supposed “blindness

to ideas” in the second chapter of Part One (see III-1 49).1
Notwithstanding, is it the case that Husserl’s epistemology and ontology, sketched
in Part One, are meaningful only inside the transcendental dimension, i.e., after the
epoche has been accomplished? I think it is quite the opposite and will discuss my point
with two simple claims.
The first is directly borrowed from Husserl. As he puts it (Husserl, 1977: 40), the
initial distinctions between fact and essence, sensible intuition and intuition of essences,
knowledge by experience and knowledge by ideation, contingency and necessity (or bet-
ter: universality), along with the distinction between formal categories and material re-
gions, are all necessary in order to properly define transcendental phenomenology as a
particular eidetics of the non-natural region “consciousness”, and (I suggest) to charac-
terize the very eidos consciousness as a “morphological” (non-exact) essence. It is not
transcendental reduction that brings about such differentiations. On the contrary, it profits
from them. In addition, the method of ideation is an indispensable tool for systematic
research into the structures of transcendental consciousness. Without it, phenomenologi-
cal descriptions would be plunged into contingency and particularity, never reaching the
desired status of essential universal laws. In a sense, transcendental phenomenology is
rather dependent on a more general method and eventually it will also suffer from its
possible limitations or shortcomings.
My second claim is a consequence of the former. To a certain extent, Husserl’s
ontology and epistemology can stand on their own feet, without being wholly engulfed
by the transcendental phenomenological dimension. Contrary to the views according to
which transcendental phenomenology, opened up by the epoche, is the single concern of
Husserl’s writings, I am with David Woodruff Smith in what he calls “Husserl’s Philo-
sophical System”, Indeed, he stresses that there are side-relations and interferences be-
tween philosophy of logic and mathematics, ontology, epistemology, and phenomenol-
ogy sensu stricto (i.e., the study of pure consciousness), instead of a simple one-side re-
lationship of foundation of all of them by transcendental phenomenology (Smith, 2007,
44ss). This is a general remark, though. To be more precise and detailed, I sustain that:

1
Husserl’s motto is: if essences are concepts, then concepts are not constructions; if concepts are construc-
tions, then essences are not concepts.
Ontology and Epistemology in Hussersl’s Ideen-I 7

1. Husserl’s ontology of essences is not a derivative of transcendental phenomenology,

but, the other way around, transcendental phenomenology, as a science of conscious-
ness, depends on its independent justification.
2. Husserl’s epistemological thesis about an a priori knowledge prescribing laws for each
empirical science hangs entirely on his ontological thesis about essences.
3. Husserl’s theory of ideation was his own amendment to the Kantian justification of the
possibility of a priori knowledge, amplifying it to include the material content as well,
putting him in conflict both with neo-Kantianism and with the emerging Moritz
Schlick’s logical-positivism, which in its very beginnings embarked on a ferocious bat-
tle against the “synthetic a priori” (in the Kantian version) and against the cognitive
weight of intuition as such (the key issue at stake was Husserl’s and Scheler’s theory
of eidetic insight (Wesenserchauung).

3. Taking another path

I will neither delve into the analysis of consciousness nor will I discuss Husserl’s
account of transcendental subjectivity as the ultimate core of philosophy. Rather, I will
focus on the issues concerning eidetic vision, on the supposed universality of eidetic laws,
and on the ontological status of essences as such.
Husserl’s conceptions about essence and eidetic insight were an object of ongoing
research till the middle nineteen-thirties, as we can confirm by a simple inspection of the
volume of Husserliana, Zur Lehre vom Wesen und zur Methode der eidetischen Varia-
tion. With the exception of some important sections of Phänomenologische Psychologie,
the best, fully developed discussion of the whole subject was presented in Erfahrung und
Urteil, i.e., in a work developed with Ludwig Landgrebe, which appeared at the very end
of Husserl’s intellectual career and life.
In the first chapter of Ideen on the distinction between fact and essence, Husserl
erects a formidable construction of the whole field of knowledge. To sum up the main
structure, Husserl’s view of knowledge entails:
1. Within natural attitude, a distinction between sciences related to contingent states of
affairs and sciences related to universal states of affairs.
2. The adscription of different objects to each one: the facts to the former, and the es-
sences to the latter.
8 Pedro M. S. Alves

3. The unity of both branches, inasmuch as the sciences of facts are dependent on the
sciences of essences in order to attain full rationality in the knowledge of their domain.
4. The independence of sciences of essences regarding sciences of facts, in the sense that
for knowing something about states of essences one does not need to know any existing
matter of fact.
5. The division of universal knowledge into a set of regional material ontologies, related
to the several domains of being, like nature, psyche, culture, society, etc., and into an
empty formal region, related to the form “object as such”.
6. The claim that there is a priori material knowledge, which is synthetic, related to the
system of regional ontologies as well as purely formal knowledge, which is, in turn,
analytical, encompassing logic, formal mathematics, set and multiplicity theories in the
all-embracing concept of a mathesis universalis.

These claims are in part comprehensible and uncontroversial. For instance, sci-
ences like physics include, on the one hand, acquaintance with empirical facts and, on the
other hand, nomological material sciences, such as Euclidian geometry or pure kinemat-
ics, and, at a higher level, they make use of pure formal knowledge, like analysis, algebra,
formalized geometries, and so on. As Husserl states, all contingent facticity is referred to
necessity (Husserl, 1977: 12). Neo-Kantianism was familiar with such a mathematization
of natural science, and logical-positivism would very soon produce an alternative account
for this situation, mainly through Reichenbach and later by Carnap.
The controversial issue is that Husserl:
a) Not only wants to secure a mathematical science of nature by means of a set of sciences
related to what he calls “exact essences”, such as the pure theory of motion, the pure
theory of space, of time, along with formal mathematics.
b) But also intends to extend this piece of a priori knowledge to what he calls “morpho-
logical essences”, so that it is not simply the case that non-exact individuals and states
of affairs in experience are mathematizable (by idealization), but rather that there is an
a priori universal knowledge about its supposed corresponding essences; thus, there is
an a priori knowledge that goes far beyond the realm of formal mathematics and other
mathematical material disciplines, such as Euclidian geometry, the pure theory of mo-
tion, and so on.
c) Ascribes, in Ideen, two different methods for each branch of a priori knowledge: for-
malization, to the former, and generalization, to the latter, sustaining that they are in-
dependent inasmuch as synthetic material laws cannot be accounted for as particulari-
zations of analytic formal laws.
Ontology and Epistemology in Hussersl’s Ideen-I 9

d) And makes the whole issue of a priori knowledge, be it a formal or a material ontology,
dependent on the epistemological thesis that we “see” essences as well as individuals
through experience, so that, as there are individuals and a direct understanding of them
in an originally given experience called “perception”, there are also essences and a
direct grasping of them in the corresponding originally given intuition, called “idea-
tion”.

Husserl makes this parallelism-thesis explicit in Ideen. For instance, he writes:

At first, “essence” designated what is to be found in the very own being of an individuum
as the What of an individuum. Any such What can, however, be “put in idea”. Experi-
encing, or intuition of something individual, can become transmuted into eidetic seeing
(ideation) … What is seen when that occurs is the corresponding pure essence or eidos.
(Husserl, 1977: 13)1

A few lines ahead, he continues:

The essence (eidos) is a new sort of object. Just as the datum of individual or experiencing
intuition is an individual object, so the datum of eidetic intuition is a pure essence. Not a
merely external analogy but a radical community is present here. Seeing an essence is
also precisely intuition, just as an eidetic object is precisely an object. The universaliza-
tion of the correlatively interrelated concepts “intuition” and “object” is not an arbitrary
conceit but compellingly demanded by the nature of the matters in question. … Seeing
an essence is, therefore, intuition; and if it is seeing in the pregnant sense … the seeing is
an originally presentive intuition, seizing upon the essence in its “personal” selfhood.
(Husserl, 1977: 14)

And the well-known section 24 brings all this to a culminating point:

Every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition, … everything

originarily… offered to us in “intuition” is to be accepted simply as what it is presented
as being, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there. … This holds es-
pecially for this kind of generical cognitions of essences to which the word “principle” is
commonly limited. (Husserl, 1977: 52)

1
I am quoting from Kersten’s translation.
10 Pedro M. S. Alves

4. Some unavoidable criticisms

It is then a matter of seeing, of what is to see, to see an essence, and how such an
object shows itself. “Seeing” conveys a static metaphor – a bare presence before our gaze,
as if there was a spectator and a spectacle. Yet is phenomenological seeing such an im-
mobile stare? We know that it is not. On the contrary, objects display themselves in an
activity from us, and they continuously defer the final moment of a complete donation.
Indeed, this is inadequate intuition, prevailing in all givenness of transcendences. Inade-
quate intuition gives rise to the formation of empirical-type concepts, and judgments
about them rely on inductive reasoning, always open to revision. Husserl acknowledges
that the same ongoing, never-ending intuition can also occur in eidetic insight (Husserl,
1977: 13-14). Then, how can we build universal laws upon it, given that they are not
susceptible to revision and preclude any exception? (I will return to this in the last section)
Furthermore, in the end, there is the issue of whether knowledge of principles can
be accounted for as contact with objects, i.e., as an intuition, be it adequate or inadequate.
As Husserl puts it in Ideen, when, for instance, we hear a sound, we intuit the sensible,
acoustic object and, at the same time, we (un-thematically) co-intuit the essence “sound
as such”. This direct seeing of the essence occurs before any predicative thinking (Hus-
serl, 1977: 15). Husserl gives a minimal characterization of essences: they are objects in
a logical sense, i.e., the subjects of true or false judgments, and, as such, they are pre-
given in advance for judgments as their “objects-about-which”. At the end of the first
chapter, he determines genera and species as “abstracts”, non-real, and non-independent
entities, although there are abstracts about concrete objects (e.g., “physical body”), and
about abstract objects (e.g., “sensible quality”). This is the core-phenomenon: Seeing x
(and y) as red, then seeing x (and y) as a case of red(ness), and finally “seeing” red as
such.1 This triggered all of Husserl’s subsequent elaborations on direct eidetic seeing and
a priori knowledge.

1
Erfahrung und Urteil will meticulously show that they are neither the same thing, nor contained in each
other, and how and why one can pass from the first to the second and the third. See Husserl, 1985: 388-
390.
Ontology and Epistemology in Hussersl’s Ideen-I 11

However, do we have an accurate account here? Neo-Kantians like Paul Natorp

and Heinrich Rickert argued against it. Rickert draws an obvious distinction between be-
ing acquainted with something (kennen) and scientific knowledge of something (Erkennt-
nis). In his opinion, the very idea of a pre-predicative, non-discursive knowledge, com-
pressed in a simple intuition, is self-contradictory, because knowledge always entails a
re-formulation of what is given by means of concepts and judgments, dissecting, articu-
lating, and connecting what is intuitively present all at once, “mit einem Schlage”, in order
to capture what is essential (Rickert, 1934: 149). Rickert acknowledges that there are
elements of generality in intuition. But only an active thinking can grasp the essential
structure of the given. So, Rickert concludes, “through our act of knowledge we neces-
sarily reformulate the … material given in intuition… [and this] is unavoidable for every
knowledge which endeavors to delve in the general essence of something” (Rickert, 1934:
150). As far as eidetic insight is concerned, Husserl is, for Rickert, a clear case of a phil-
osophical trend he disavows under the general title of “intuitionism”. Natorp’s criticisms
are in the same line: To talk about “intuition of essences” can be accepted only as a way
to emphasize that, in a priori knowledge, we do not create arbitrarily intellectual struc-
tures, but rather we follow a path that is imposed upon us by the very things we consider.
Moreover, as an interpreter of Plato, he stresses that Husserl’s “Platonism” falls short,
remaining at the first level of rigid eide, never reaching the supreme point of Plato’s doc-
trine: putting eide into motion and “liquefying them into the ultimate continuity of the
process of thought” (Natorp, 1973: 44).
As Andrea Staiti put it, the neo-Kantian criticisms of Husserl’s Wesenschau boil
down to underscoring that, firstly, eidetic knowledge cannot be intuitive at all, and, sec-
ondly, that eidetic knowledge must be processual (Staiti, 2013: 78).

5. Husserl’s last move beyond Ideen

Neo-Kantian criticisms hit the target. In Ideen, Husserl

1. Described a somewhat Aristotelian, static organization between eide, going from the
supreme genera in each region to the lowest eidetic singularities by a process of “spe-
cialization” (top-down case) or, inversely, from the lowest eide to the supreme genera
by a process of “generalization” (the bottom-up case); accordingly, inside a supreme
12 Pedro M. S. Alves

genus of eide he established relations of subordination and inclusion, forming a fixed

hierarchy.
2. Then, he ascribed to the supreme genera within each region and its respective eidetic
extensions (which are other eide) relations of unilateral or bilateral dependence, of dis-
junction or conjunction.
3. For attributing to the whole set of material regions relations of foundation or indepen-
dence: for instance, the “psyche” region is founded on the “somatic-body” region, and
the latter again in the “physical nature” region.

This is tantamount to recognizing that essences constitute a stable, immobile struc-

ture. However, he never clarifies these two great issues:
a) In order to clearly determine the content of an essence, does a unique individual’s in-
tuition (be it in experience or in fantasy) and ideation suffice, or must we compare it to
other individuals to understand the similarities, expanding or shortening the former’s
content? In such a case, how can we know for sure that the entire gamut of possibilities
has been run through? This is the stop-problem. It has a close relationship with Rick-
ert’s claim that, in order to grasp an essence, an amount of methodic discursive activity
is always required.
b) Can eidetic thinking reach a stage of absolute independence from the actual intuition
of individuals, or does it remain forever dependent on it? In other words: in order to
grasp a new essence, must we always begin with an individual experience (or quasi-
experience in fantasy) or, the other way around, can we also reach new possibilities of
individuals never experienced before by means of the freedom and autonomy of eidetic
thought, which, in such a case, could lead us from an eidos already known to the dis-
covery of new eide? This recalls Natorp’s objection.

The way out of these shortcomings was found by Husserl in the middle twenties.
By 1924, in the second article for Kaizo, and by 1925, in his lessons about phenomeno-
logical psychology the long process begun in the theory of “general intuition” or “ideative
abstraction” in the Logische Untersuchungen, and continued in the theory of “eidetic in-
sight” presented in Ideen, was coming to a final point of development. The relevant sec-
tions of Erfahrung und Urteil were, then, about thirteen years after Logische Unter-
suchung, a systematic presentation of a piece of method that took almost thirty years to
reach its mature stage.
The decisive point was the introduction of the concept of variation and its com-
plementary concept, invariance. Dirk Fonfarra suggests that the former can be traced back
Ontology and Epistemology in Hussersl’s Ideen-I 13

to Ideen-III’s section 8 (Husserl, 2012: XXVIII), since it is there that Husserl develops
some considerations showing he was close to the conception of an eidetic variation. Ad-
ditionally, Husserl talked expressly about an “eidetic variation” concerning the relation-
ship between phenomenology and descriptive and explicative psychologies in a manu-
script dated August 1912 (Husserl, 2021: 57). However, he did not elaborate on it. Dieter
Lohmar understands Husserl’s introduction of the theory of eidetic variation in the middle
twenties as means to make the former expositions more precise (Lohmar, 2005). Cer-
tainly, it is undeniable that there are continuity elements and, then, a final clarification.
Nevertheless, the newly elaborated theory of free variation in fantasy in order to grasp
the invariant as eidos was, in my view, a genuine breakthrough when compared to Ideen.

6. Searching for the invariant – the roots of a crucial concept

In the second article for Kaizo, Husserl presents a solid outline of a complete sys-
tem of a priori knowledge based on the concept of eidetic insight (Wesenschau), which,
as he was writing at the same time in Phänomenologische Psychologie, is “the genuine
method for grasping the a priori” (Husserl, 1968: 72). The article for Kaizo emphasizes
the thereafter canonic procedures for “seeing” and “predicatively knowing” an essence.
What strikes me the most is that mathematics is the guiding-example there, and the para-
digmatic case in all of Husserl’s discussions. My surmise is that albeit not presented in
the Kaizo article, wherein only the concept of free variation appears, the concept of an
invariant under a system of free variations, introduced in the lessons on psychology, has
its roots in the scientific theory of the time, namely in mathematics and physics, where
the search for invariants under a group of transformations was an important tool.
As a matter of fact, invariance was a concept related to group theory, which for at
least one important piece was developed in the context of non-Euclidian geometries by
Felix Klein. Sophus Lie also made important contributions. The invariant theory was de-
veloped in the context of abstract algebra too. Husserl’s colleague at Göttingen, David
Hilbert, whose Grundlagen der Geometrie was Husserl’s model for a formal, axiomatic
science, made a huge contribution to it. Then, also at Göttingen, at a time when Hilbert
was dealing with the mathematical basis of general relativity, Emmy Noether published
an all-important theorem based on the search for correspondences between some invari-
ants and conservation laws in physics. Needless to say that the concept of an invariant
14 Pedro M. S. Alves

was becoming a central tool in physics, where, for instance, the laws of nature were for-
mulated as invariant structures under any possible transformation, such as the change of
reference frames. The speed of light was formulated precisely as an invariant for every
reference frame. Based on Lorentz’s transformations, Einstein also showed that space-
time intervals were invariants, as opposed to distances between events in space and in
time. By the year 1918, Herman Weyl, who was at the time adamant in seeing transcen-
dental phenomenology as the unique foundation for the mathematical science of nature,
constructed the first unification of electromagnetism and gravity based on general rela-
tivity and precisely around the concept of Eichinvarianz, i.e., scale-invariance, later
called gauge-theory. No need to say how close Weyl and Husserl were in the first years
of the twenties. Oskar Becker, Husserl’s great hope for the phenomenological epistemol-
ogy of natural and formal sciences, worked directly with Weyl. All these intellectual
achievements, most of them at Göttingen, belonged thus to Husserl’s intellectual milieu.
All in all, disregarding mathematical technicalities, we can define an intuitive con-
cept of invariance as an element that remains unchanged under a system of free variations.
To determine an invariant, we must (i) take an initial case, (ii) define a rule to produce
variations freely, and finally (iii) have a criterion for determining, over and above the
series of variations, the invariant and know that it will remain, so that the production of
every new variation can come to a halt. Two simple examples. Firstly, take three consec-
utive positive whole numbers, multiply each by a positive number a, then you will see
that the transformation of x, y, z in ax, ay, az preserves the order relations between them:
if x < y < z, then ax < ay < az, and the difference between the later numbers will be
precisely the number a; now produce another transformation with a+1, and you will see
that the same occurs, so that, by mathematical induction, you will be able to stop the
series of new examples, because the same result will persist for the entire set of natural
numbers. Secondly, to take a simpler geometrical example, let us imagine a triangle in a
Euclidean plane, taking two sides AB and AC, determining the proportion k =AB/AC be-
tween them, and adding quantities x and y to AB and AC so that the same proportion k
remains; now close the new triangle drawing the third side and you will see the area is
not invariant under such a transformation, but the angles are; do the same increasing AB’s
length by x+1cm, calculate the value for y that preserves k, and you will see that the angles
not only remain invariant but also that this will continue for any arbitrary growth of x, so
that you can stop producing more examples and formulate a general law about similar
triangles.
Ontology and Epistemology in Hussersl’s Ideen-I 15

Returning now to Kaizo’s second article, Husserl aligns several important theses,
namely:
1. The method of essential insight and predicative knowledge of essences was discovered
by the ancient Socratic-Platonic school.
2. He wants to free the latter from all metaphysical misinterpretations, be they Platonic
or Empiricist.
3. Everyone knows the method of eidetic seeing through his acquaintance with mathe-
matics.
4. Thus, looking at concept formation in mathematics, and the way it develops as a de-
ductive system, one can see:
a) That mathematical thinking moves in a realm of pure possibilities, free from the
positing of any actuality.
b) That the freedom of mathematical thinking is the freedom of fantasy.
c) That fantasy is not kaleidoscopic, but a systematic production of variations within
concepts according to a rule.
d) That, in such a variation, the only limitation is that the varying cases one gets do
remain under the identity of the starting concept.
e) That, finally, mathematical assertions concern what remains invariant along the
variations, i.e., the essence, be they assertions about the eidos itself (for instance:
“the triangle is…”), or assertions about all eidetic singularities that fall under it (for
instance: “in general, all triangles are…”).
5. And, principally, that there is no reason to limit to mathematics such a method of eide-
tic insight,
6. So that a full system of eidetic sciences must be developed, covering all possible be-
ings, including non-exact essences like “Humanity”, “Culture, “Society”, etc., even
though in such eidetic ontologies of non-exact essences “the specific method and the
entire type of aprioristic theories can and must, finally, be very different” (Hua XXVII,
18).

In the same vein, in his Phänomenologische Psychologie lectures, Husserl empha-

sizes the importance of mathematics regarding the method of eidetic intuition. At the
same time, he regrets the fatal prejudice of limiting a priori knowledge to mathematical
knowledge sensu stricto. At the end of section 9, he writes:

By the same token, the apprehension of the a priori, the inner action of ideation, is not
strange to all of us considering that we learned at least a little of mathematics and we
16 Pedro M. S. Alves

acquired, with it, by our own action, mathematical insight. However, nobody taught us to
look at the intimacy of mathematical acting and to see how, by its means, universalities
originated from necessities. … [Because the method of ideation] grew up from magni-
tudes and numbers and, for millennia was only exercised in this domain, it gave rise to
the entrenched prejudice that such aprioristic method could be exercised in the mathe-
matical realm only (and in the strictly connected realm of the formal logic). (Husserl,
1968: 87-88)

So, as I said above, Husserl took an important intellectual tool that was looming
among mathematicians and physicists and generalized it for working with a priori
knowledge in every domain, enthroning it as the method for all regional ontologies. In so
doing – and this is the decisive breakthrough in relation to Ideen – he showed the follow-
ing two important things. Firstly, that eidetic insight was a genuine method of discovery,
able to get new eide from a previous eidos, and to dynamically pass from one to another,
displaying them in the continuity of thought. This halts Natorp’s criticisms. Secondly, he
also showed that there is a great number of methodological procedures needed in order to
reach an eidos on the basis of an initial, not fully determined concept so that eidetic intu-
ition is the result and not the starting point of a cognitive process. This amounts to a
response to Rickert’s objections.

7. Final remarks on eidetic insight

Let me finish with a few remarks concerning Husserl’s rendering of the search for
invariants. Actually, it is worth noting the extensive philosophical rebuilding Husserl
does. It is not, thus, a matter of simply applying an already fixed method, but of a refor-
mulation that opens it up to a new dimension, crossing the boundaries of mathematics
and reaching all regional ontologies. This was a mutual internalization of mathematics,
general epistemology, and philosophy.
Husserl’s method of eidetic insight goes along the following stages:
1. Taking an example as a model (Urbild) in neutralized, non-positional thinking (which
can be an individual given in actual experience, but then converted into pure possibil-
ity).
2. Varying it at will (beliebig), according to a rule, producing a series of rethoughts (um-
gedachte) or feigned (umfingiert) after-copies (Nachbilden).
Ontology and Epistemology in Hussersl’s Ideen-I 17

3. Considering the overlapping-coincidence (überschibende Deckung) that is established

between members during the variation.
4. Stopping the production of new variations as soon as the awareness occurs that the
coincidental deposit will remain, an awareness that takes the form of the “and so on”
(und so weiter).
5. Thematically grasping the invariant as eidos, or universal essence, occurring through
all the series and detaching from the series as an ideal identity.

My remarks to this mature Husserlian piece of method are the following:

Ad 1. Variation moves into the realm of pure possibilities, canceling any position
of reality. This is already a kind of neutralized thinking independent of the transcendental
epoche. It is specific to eidetic reduction. When the transcendental epoche is performed,
even the pure possibilities that the eidetic reduction considers are parenthesized. Notwith-
standing, one does not need to wait for transcendental reduction in order to embark on a
reasoning that is free from any bound to actual reality.
Ad 2. Variation is based on counterfactual reasoning. It amounts to imagining that
an A which is a and b, could instead be c and d, while continuing to be A. This expands
Husserl’s prefatory reflections in section 2 of Ideen, where he states that an individual,
that in fact is a, could be, “by its own essence”, b or c (Husserl, 1977: 12). The verbs
which mature texts use are precisely umfingieren and umdenken. The starting case which
is counterfactually varied is certainly a pure possibility as a model, and not an experienced
reality (or better, it can be a reality, but converted into pure possibility as variation be-
gins). Now, this is tantamount to saying that variation produces a series of mutually in-
compatible individuals in fantasy. Erfahrung und Urteil will call this a “hybrid-unity”
(Husserl, 1985, 417). They do not belong to the same possible world. As other individuals
co-vary with the variations of the former, variation itself produces a system of possible
experience where, starting with the variation of an individual, one can conceive the cor-
responding co-variations of other individuals correlated with the former in the unity of a
possible experience. This is the very origin of the phenomenological concept of a multi-
plicity of possible worlds. It has to do with pure possibilities obtained by variation in
fantasy, and with the idea of a system of co-variations in the unity of a concordant expe-
rience.
Furthermore, variation is “at will”, and not arbitrary. The distinction is crucial. In
order to vary, we need to know what we are looking for. For instance, the musical notes
18 Pedro M. S. Alves

do and re are not a variation of red if we are searching for the eidos color; however, they
can be a possible variation of red if we are searching for the eidos sensible quality. When
we enter nontrivial matters, this problem about the rule for variation, dependent on the
research subject, turns out to be a very important one.
Ad 3 and 4. When dealing with exact essences, we have reliable procedures to
know when the invariant is obtained, and the production of new examples can come to a
halt. However, in morphological, non-exact essences the stop-moment can be an elusive
one. We have no clear criterion here, and the whole process depends on the skills of the
researcher to bring about a rich set of imaginative examples. For instance, when varying
in fantasy for searching the eidos living organism, what are the limits of variation, and
how can we know for sure that an invariant for the entire set of infinite possibilities has
been attained? If, as Husserl sustains, this process of concept-formation is necessary to
build the a priori conceptual foundations of every empirical science, there is an episte-
mological weakness at the heart of this method.
Ad 5. Any eidos is valid across possible worlds. This is its universality, different
from empirical generality, which is bound to an actual world or to a subset of possible
worlds. Even if, in a possible world, there is no individual that instantiates a certain eidos,
this does not invalidate it. Rather, it subsists in the realm of ideal objects and there are
true propositions about it that still hold in this possible world, even though no one could
be in a condition to express them. However, the other way around, there is no phenome-
nological criterion for trans-world identity between individuals. But this is a controversial
issue we must postpone to another occasion.
Another final issue is here worth discussing. Indeed, regarding this Husserl’s the-
ory of eidetic, a priori knowledge, many scholars manifested doubts. Let us briefly con-
sider Schütz, seconded by Levin, and Mohanty.1
Schütz’s main point amounts to this (1959-60: 147-165): The genetic point of
view shows that the eidos is inextricably bound to empirical types and that it can never
fully break this link, so that, contrary to Husserl’s tenets, induction and variation are not
as discontinuous as one may think at first. This point was expanded by Levin (1968: 1-

1
Another venerable voice is Carl Stumpf, who, in his Erkenntnislehre, develops a full criticism of the whole
method of Wesensschau (Stumpf, 1939: 188-200). Nevertheless, this is an overly hostile account, aiming
at concluding that there is no synthetic a priori principles (in Kant’s idiolect). The whole argument is worth
considering, but it comes from a point of view that is much too foreign to phenomenology to be considered
as an internal criticism. For that reason, I will not consider it here. I thank Professor Fisette for pointing it
to me during a private conversation.
Ontology and Epistemology in Hussersl’s Ideen-I 19

15). He thinks that a natural upshot of Schütz’s analysis is the conclusion that Husserl’s
“apodictic principle” is in serious jeopardy, considering that, on the one hand, there is no
clear line separating facticity from essence, and, on the other hand, that essences are trans-
cendent objects which cannot be given in adequate evidence and apodictic certainty.
Based on the critique of adequate evidence for essences, he asks whether one can achieve
a satisfactory eidetic congruence –and, thus, an accurate characterization of an essence–
when, as Husserl’s sustains, variation will always be terminated before the whole “gamut
of possibles has been run through” (Levin, 1968: 8). In his turn, Mohanty claims that
variation is not an authentic method for discovering essences, but rather a method for the
clarification of meanings (Mohanty, 1991: 261-272). He addresses the traditional circu-
larity objection to the variational process understood as a method of discovery and finds
it irrefutable. In his own account, to say that something is “no longer a φ” requires “an
acquaintance with what something must look in order to be ruled out from being a φ”.
Thus, the whole method of variation “presupposes a familiarity with that essence”, and it
is not truly a discovery method, but simply a method for the “clarification of what we
already are familiar with” (Mohanty, 1998: 267-268).
If what is at stake regards the cutting line between variation and induction, we
must do Husserl justice. There is a clear-cutting line, indeed. Firstly, regarding the exten-
sion of empirically-generical and universal concepts. The firsts refer to an open set of
realities inside the factual world while the latter concern possibilities along a set of pos-
sible worlds, including the open set of realities of the factual world, now converted into
possibilities as well. Secondly, there is a difference in the way similarities are displayed.
For empirically-general concepts, similarities between real individuals are discovered by
comparison, while, for universal, pure concepts, similarities between possible individuals
are produced according to a generating-rule. This is tantamount to saying that, if we take
a prototype and vary it, we will produce a multiplicity of possible cases within a relation-
ship of similarity with the starting object, so that there will be no chance of “finding” a
case that contradicts it. This is why Husserl emphasizes that variation can be stopped at
an arbitrary point. In fact, from the moment one realizes what the invariant is (i.e., the
congruence between the generated family of varying examples), one also reaches the cer-
tainty that the remaining cases will be in accordance with the previous ones, simply be-
cause the rule for producing them is the same.
Mohanty’s doubt pertains to the description of free variation as a method of dis-
covery. As I stressed, an outline of the method could be the following: (i) take an object
20 Pedro M. S. Alves

as a prototype (Vorbild, Urbild), (ii) vary it at will (beliebig), and construct an ever new
object (Nachbild), (iii) see the overlapping coincidence (überschiebende Deckung) be-
tween the produced multiplicity, (iv) actively isolate the congruence (Kongruenz) be-
tween the objects as an invariant of the variation, and you will have the eidos. Mohanty
wonders if, in order to accomplish step (ii), one must not already have a “pre-reflective
understanding” of the content of step (iv), so that this hidden knowledge determines what
we will find in (iii), and, for that reason, the method must be accounted for as a method
for the clarification or explication of a meaning.
I will retort to this by stressing that step (ii) is not as arbitrary a variation as one
may think, so that, say, we could start with a man and arbitrarily pass to a rock, an elf, a
fly, and a woman, stopping to gaze at the multiplicity, exclude the differences and pick
the similarities up. This would really involve circularity: how could we, for instance, ex-
clude the elf, the rock, and the fly, if we were not looking for the sense of “human being”,
and if we did not know in advance what it must be? Variation, however, is not arbitrary,
i.e., without rules. Rather, it is “at-will” according to a generating-rule, so that, as Richard
Tieszen points out, the invariant is a function of the family of variations we choose to
make.1 As a matter of fact, starting with an object x, variation unfolds when one rethinks
it with other properties different from those it factually has; however, in order to know
what properties of x are relevant, one must define a subject of eidetic inquiry, and this
definition determines the scope and limits of free variation. Imagine that x is a tree. We
can, say, vary from tree to rock, and from rock to house if we are searching for what a
physical body is. Yet, this variation would be pointless if we were searching for the eidos
living organism or vegetal life.
To sum up, one need not have a “pre-reflective understanding” of the content of
step (iv) in order to accomplish step (ii). One takes a prototype and selects a generating-
rule to produce a family of variations; after that, one really discovers what the invariants
are under this variation, i.e., one discovers, in Husserl’s idiolect, a “universal essence” or
eidos. The eidos is not the generating rule for the variations; it is rather a function of it.
Can we do this for “morphological” essences? Husserl’s bet is that we can. We can take
“justice”, “living-organism”, “physical body”, or, entering the phenomenological dimen-
sion, “perception”, “time-consciousness”, and so on, choose variational generating-rules
according to what we want to know and find out the invariants.

1
In an interesting essay, Richard Tieszen applies the method of free variation to geometric essences, rea-
ching an illuminating characterization of the concept of invariance. See Tieszen, 2005.
Ontology and Epistemology in Hussersl’s Ideen-I 21

As a final remark, I would say that Husserl’s method for eidetic seeing is worth
noting when dealing with fundamental concepts in formal and empirical sciences. It is,
thus, a regrettable situation that it was not been seriously considered till now by research-
ers when dealing with epistemological issues in contemporary philosophy of science.
22 Pedro M. S. Alves

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