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TRANSLATION
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168 Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182
(1) a physical expression, by means of, e.g., spoken words; (2) an intentional psychic
act of consideration directed at (3) an object; and (4) taking into consideration its
determinate composition (Sachverhalt), the thought of which constitutes the
meaning or sense of the judgment.
The following two types of judgment differ sharply from one another. The act of
judgment can only be a meaning act (Meinen, Vermeinen). “In that case, judgment, i.e.,
what constitutes judgment, is the object and its composition, only presumed, or that at
which we aim (chose visée).” Judgments in which evidence is achieved are of a
different nature. “In the evidence, the object or its composition is not only remotely
and inadequately aimed at; it is itself present to us, so that the judging subject has it in
its immanent consciousness. A judgment that is limited to a presumption, if it passes in
consciousness to its corresponding evidence, conforms to the objects themselves and
to their composition. This passage has a special character. Through it mere empty
intention (Meinung) ‘is filled’ and ‘is completed’ (Erfüllung); it is a synthesis through
the exact correspondence of intention and its correlative evidence, evident intuition
that this intention, which was ‘distanced from the object’ (= inadequate, sachfern), is
exact.”1
Husserl also calls these intentions signitive. In Logische Untersuchungen, he says
that they are “empty” in themselves and “need fulfillment.” “In the transition from a
signitive intention to the corresponding visual presentation (Anschauung), we
experience not only mere intensification, as in the transition from a colorless image
or a mere \38[ sketch to a vivid picture. Rather, a signitive presentation does not
have any fullness; the intuitive intention for the first time brings fullness to it and,
through identification, into it” (1st ed., vol. 2, VI, §21, p. 548). Where “final
‘fulfillment’ is achieved by means of ideally accomplished perception, genuine
adaequatio rei et intellectus is established: objective, truly existent or given exactly
as it was intended” (VI, §37, p. 590). Where there is such givenness of an object in
consciousness, evidence is achieved and truth is established. “If someone
experiences evidence A, then it is evident that no one else can experience the
absurdity of the same A; indeed, the evidence of A implies that: A is not merely
supposed, but is authentically given precisely as it is intended; it is in the strictest
sense of the word present by itself” (§39, p. 599). In his later work, Ideen zu einer
reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (1913), Husserl uses
the same expression that I have recourse to in my epistemology,2 namely he says
that the object itself, “in the original,” is present in intuition.3
1
Husserl, Méditations cartésiennes, 1931, p. 9.
2
[Translators’ Note] The word here translated as “epistemology” is гносеология, the literal translation
of which is “gnoseology” (from the Greek gnosis and logos, which literally means “theory of cognition”).
The English word “epistemology” was coined in the nineteenth century as a means of referring to what
the Germans called Wissenschaftslehre. The Russian language already had the word “gnoseology” for that
purpose, so they had no need of coining a new word. However, since the word “gnoseology” is not much
in use in English philosophical parlance, we opted for “epistemology.” The same comment applies to the
words translated as “epistemological.”
3
[Translators’ Note] For a discussion of what Lossky means by “in the original,” see: Виктор
Молчанов, “Позиции и предпосылки Теория знания Н. О. Лосского и феноменологияp,”
Логос, vol. 5, n. 78, 2010, pp. 22–42.
123
Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182 169
4
[Translators’ Note] The word мнится, which we translate here by “imagined,” has also the sense of
“thought” (as opposed to “perceived”).
5
H. Folwart, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, p. 66.
6
[Translators’ Note] We use the apostrophe followed with an “s” to indicate the plural form of “I.”
7
Husserl, “Nachwort zu meinen Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen
Philosophie,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, XI, B., 1930, p. 555.
123
170 Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182
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Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182 171
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172 Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182
as being “there,” while the other I apprehends it as being “here.” In the same way,
all the other objects of external experience, all the nature \43[ that another I
perceives and acts upon through his body, is the very same nature that is given in my
experience: it represents the realm of intersubjectivity, the community (commu-
nauté) for the multitude of monads (pp. 102–109).
Husserl sets great value on the notion of intersubjectivity. He claims that his
system is a transcendental idealism, as opposed to a psychological idealism,
precisely owing to the theory of transcendental intersubjectivity, “i.e., a fundamen-
tal interrelationship of the objective world meaningful to me with the other I’s
meaningful to me” (N., p. 559). Indeed, Husserl’s theory of intersubjectivity allows
him to affirm that the givens of external experience are not psychic states of
individual I’s. However, since these givens are also constituted by the transcen-
dental I, the whole cognizable world becomes for him the subject matter of
psychology, though not individual, but of transcendental psychology.
The transcendental-phenomenological theory of knowledge, by giving the answer
to the question of the meaning and the origin of such concepts as “world, nature,
space, time, animal, human, soul, organism,” etc., is “thus the truly universal
ontology” (M. c., p. 132). According to Husserl, thanks to the reduction, he develops
it in absolute presuppositionlessness (N., p. 569).
Husserl is convinced that by applying the methodological doubt in a more radical
way than Descartes, namely by abstaining from judgments about the existence not
only of the external world but also of one’s own I as a psychophysical entity, he
discovered the following apodictically certain, evident truths: (1) the existence of
the transcendental I; (2) the constitution in the transcendental I of all objects of the
cognizable world as objects of consciousness, i.e., the dependence of all the
cognizable world upon consciousness; (3) transcendental subjectivity as absolute
being, i.e., as not dependent upon anything. According to his own epistemological
claims, Husserl can only defend this theory if, observing consciousness, we have in
evident perception both the constitutive elements of consciousness and the relations
of dependence between them.
Let us analyze some cases of consciousness and of knowledge in order to verify
whether there happens to be, besides the individual I, a transcendental I and the
constituting of objects (trees, rivers, seas, etc.) by this I. Having carried out this
critical verification, I adopt the same standpoint as Husserl \44[ , in particular I
affirm that truth is reached only where there is evidence, i.e., when the considered
object is present in consciousness in the original and the objective content of
judgment is the self-evidence of the object about itself. Let us examine the two
following examples of cognizing consciousness: (1) Having made a good move at a
chess game, I rejoice with a tinge of triumphant exultation and I am aware of it. (2) I
perceive the fall of a boulder from a mountain crashing a wooden fence along the
way. What is intended in these examples? First, there are subjective intentional acts
of awareness, attention, discrimination, connection, recollection, etc. Second, there
are the objective side of consciousness and knowledge, i.e., the objects at which
intentional acts are directed, objects with their properties and relations: the
cognizing I, the rejoicing with a tinge of exultation; the I perceiving the fall of the
boulder and the crashing of the fence. These objects are present in consciousness in
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Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182 173
the original along with their constitution, they are themselves conspicuously self-
evident. In these cognitions observed by me there are, first, theoretical intentional
acts and, second, the objects at which they are directed, — the joy and the fall of the
boulder. These objects have their own evident structure: the joy belongs to my I and
depends on it as its emotional manifestation; the crashing of the fence depends on
the pressure of the falling boulder. Let us see now what is the relation between
intentional acts that belong to my individual I with the objects toward which they
are directed. My awareness, attention, acts of discrimination, etc., directed at the
joy, at the falling of the boulder, obviously do not “constitute” these objects; these
acts’ very character of “directedness” at objects indicates that the objects must
already be there in front of my I so that I can direct my acts of awareness, attention,
discrimination, etc., at them. Even such objects as my joy, when I discriminate that
it has a tinge of exultation, are present, as something already-there, for my
intentional acts of awareness, attention, discrimination, to be directed at them.
Hence it is clear that such events can occur in me without my being conscious of
them or knowing anything about them; I may fail to notice that the joy I experienced
has a tinge of exultation; and what is more, preoccupied with my expectation of my
opponent’s chess move, I may not at all become aware of my joy and experience it
only subconsciously. So, my joy does not depend on intentional \45[ acts
directed at it for its awareness and recognition, but it is abundantly clear that it
depends on my I as an emotional manifestation of it. The constitution of
consciousness has a somewhat different structure in the example where the observed
object is a boulder: all the observable meaning of this object not only does not
depend on my intentional acts, but I cannot observe any dependence of it on my I at
all: the boulder and its mighty fall are present in my consciousness as something
“given to me,” alien to my I, “not mine.”
Theoretical intentionality is exactly the totality of such acts as awareness,
attention, discrimination, etc., that do not constitute objects, but that are only
directed at an already present object and are only a means whereby the object may
be perceived and even recognized as existing independently of these acts. The
English realist G. E. Moore rightly characterized intentional acts as “transparent”:
through them, as through a transparent medium, the object is seen without any
distortion.8 The words “intentionality” and “intentional act” have quite a different
meaning for Husserl. Husserl’s student L. Landgrebe reports Husserl as saying that
he “actually borrowed from Brentano’s intentionality only the word, when in fact he
had in mind something entirely different from the outset.”9
Husserl understands intentionality as an “intending going from an incomplete to a
complete presentation, i.e., as a striving directed at some accomplishment
(Leistung), namely the production (Herstellung) of the complete presentation” (p.
285). Intentional acts are, for Husserl, syntheses produced by consciousness. To
8
[Translators’ Note] Moore defends this view in “The Refutation of Idealism,” Mind, 1903.
9
L. Landgrebe, “Husserls Phänomenologie und die Motive zu ihrer Umbildung,” Revue Internationale
de Philosophie, vol. 1, n. 2, 1939, p. 284. [Note from the translators: Lossky refers to page 284, but the
quote is in fact from page 280.]
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174 Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182
every “objective structure correspond psychic acts, in and through which the object
is constituted with a certain structure, and comes to be self-given” (p. 292).
Landgrebe says that many successors of Husserl’s Göttingen school saw in this
theory of intentionality the loss of the realist “return to the object” and found in it
Husserl’s return to Neo-Kantian idealism (p. 301). The analysis of the cognizing
consciousness that I carried out was aimed at demonstrating that, in cognizing
consciousness, along with evidence, intentional acts are present as \46[ direct-
ednesses to given objects, and intentional acts as synthetic activity, producing the
object for the first time cannot be found at all. When I and the person sitting in front
of me are observing a box that I rotate and see all the different sides of it as
belonging to the same object, this structure of the box, besides being observed by
me and my neighbor in different sequences, obviously “gives itself” to us from the
object, and is not produced by my and his consciousness.
Husserl could argue that my analysis and my observations do not quite refute his:
he also acknowledges that the givens of external experience are something alien to
the individual I, which is only their observer; but he maintains that these objects are
constituted by the transcendental I, they are phenomena dependent on transcen-
dental subjectivity. Therefore, let us examine how Husserl established that there is a
transcendental I and how he imagines the relation between the transcendental I and
the multitude of monads, i.e., the many individual I’s.
The way in which Husserl tries to arrive at the idea of the transcendental I is very
simple: he abstracts from the human I all of its properties and processes that give it a
particular place in the spatial world — name, place of birth, body, particular
feelings, etc. The I stripped from all these particularities is the transcendental I
(Nachwort, p. 555).
Husserl imagines the relation between the transcendental I and the multitude of
individual I’s in the following way. A well-developed phenomenology gives, in his
opinion, knowledge of the transcendental I, not as an empty meaningless pole of
experiences, but as the bearer of all the eidetic types of structures constituted by it.
In that way, Husserl says, phenomenological analyses “reveal the structure of the
universal eidos of the transcendental I, which will embrace all the possible
variations of my empirical I and, therefore, this I itself as pure possibility” (M. c.,
p. 60). Hence, it is clear that Husserl conceives the relation between the
transcendental I and the individual I as analogous with the relation between a
general concept of spatiotemporal process (e.g., motion) or a type of being (e.g.,
horseness) and its corresponding individual instance. This general concept is what
may be called an abstract-ideal being. \47[ Reaching the representation of an
individual instance from this point is possible by adding a series of determinations,
each one of which is an abstract ideal being, too, but the totality of which expresses
the meaning of an individual instance. For example, motion — oscillatory motion
— the oscillatory motion of such-and-such pendulum during such-and-such second;
or horseness — the horseness of a bityug10 — the horseness of the bityug born from
such-and-such mare on such-and-such a day. It goes without saying that even in
10
[Translators’ Note] Bityug is a Russian breed of cart-horse that was bred on the order of the tsar Peter
the Great.
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Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182 175
such a simple fact as the oscillation of a pendulum during such-and-such second, the
content of this process is infinitely complex and the human mind could not
completely exhaust it. But, in principle, it can be expressed in abstract concepts.
Therefore, the representation of every such individual instance can be included in a
system of abstract concepts subordinate to one another. The philosopher who admits
the existence of abstract-ideal being in a metaphysical sense can say that all the
individual instances of motion are variations of the idea of motion realized in space
and time, in conformity with this idea.
We enter into another realm, having a different structure, when we talk about
concrete individual substances. I use these words to name any object that is a source
and bearer of action: this human, e.g., Socrates, this horse, e.g., Zarif (a horse that
was used for psychological experiments),11 this electron. Where there is action, there
is an agent.12 The agent and its actions have fundamentally different structures. Any
action, e.g., Zarif’s kick, has a temporal or a spatiotemporal form, and is thus
composed of an infinite number of intervals discrete from each other in time and
space. Therefore, in order for there to be an individual action, in which all parts are
correlated, the agent producing it has to be a supertemporal and superspatial being,
acting consistently with the principles of time and space, but being itself beyond
these forms. Further, all the actions, i.e., the temporal and spatiotemporal processes,
have the character of qualitative and quantitative determination, i.e., are subject to
the ontological and logical laws of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle.13
Therefore, everything that is determined is either of a logical, \48[ rational nature,
or, being subrational (e.g., sensible qualities), is nevertheless subject to the rational
forms of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle. Any determination (a sound, a
color, etc.) is confined to itself and passive, i.e., it is unable to produce anything new:
it is the product of activity, itself unable to act. True, determinations may succeed
one another at a dizzying speed, e.g., in the light of a fire the color of objects is
constantly changing, the gallop of Zarif is composed of continuous changes of
position in space, but colors do not produce other colors, positions in space do not
create new positions: the source of these changes is not in the actions themselves, but
in the agents producing them — the swarm of electrons of the fire, Zarif.
If any action is a determination and if any determination is passive, this implies
that the agent, the producer of actions, is a being that transcends determinations, i.e.,
a being that is not subject to the laws of identity, contradiction, and excluded
11
[Translators’ Note] Lossky is here referring to Karl Krall’s psychological experiments with horses, one
of which was named Zarif. Krall was a German pioneer in Tierpsychologie (animal-psychology). On
Krall’s account, horses are able to count and read. This hypothesis was verified using cards with numbers
and letters on them that horses would move with their mouth to express quantities and spell words. Zarif
was apparently particularly talented at spelling words. Krall’s experiment reports were published in: Karl
Krall, Denkende Tiere: Beiträge zur Tierseelenkunde auf Grund eigener Versuche. Der kluge Hans und
meine Pferde Muhamed und Zarif, Leipzig: Engelmann, 1912.
12
[Translators’ Note] The word дѣятель should literally be translated as “actor,” in the sense of the
source of the “action” — the thing or the person that “acts.” But Lossky adjoins this word to the adjective
субстанцiальными to form the expression субстанцiальные дѣятели, which is consistently translated as
“substantival agent” in Lossky’s translated works. So, to respect the standard translation, we opt here for
the less literal translation of дѣятель by “agent.”
13
For more on these laws, see my Logic (Логику), §§ 27–36.
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176 Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182
middle: the agent as the bearer of creative force has to be superqualitative, i.e.,
metalogical, transrational.
The agent has a metalogical character as the source of creative activity, but it is
inseparably linked with the set of rational determinations, first, as the bearer of its
spatiotemporal manifestations, second, as the bearer of the empirical character that
it produces, i.e., its actively acquired types of action (humanness, horseness, lily-of-
the-valley-ness, oxygenness, electronness, etc.), and third, as having certain
primitive properties, e.g., supertemporality, superspatiality. In order to highlight
these particular features of agents, I call them substantival agents14 (Leibniz calls
them monads).
The world process is the result of the activity not of one, but of a multitude of
substantival agents. This has already become clear from the fact that many
manifestations of different substances are completely or partially directed against
each other, mutually constraining and quite often hostilely opposing each other.
Since the agents, being metalogical, are not subject to the law of identity, it is
impossible to compare them with each other and isolate the identical aspect that
would render possible a generalization in terms of the relation of subordination, i.e.,
ascending toward a general concept that would be the concept of \49[ Agent in
general, in a way that all the individual agents would be its variations, obtained by
adding particular determinations. Such subordinating generalizations are only
possible in the realm of determinations, e.g., in the above-mentioned example of
individual instances of motion as variations of the idea of Motion in general. In
contrast, when talking about agents as metalogical beings, we are dealing in each
case with an individual, i.e., with something such that it cannot be an instance of a
genus or species. Each agent is an individual in the sense that it is something
original, unique in the world. Each agent is also an individual in the sense that it is
absolutely indivisible and, being supertemporal, eternal.15
Transcending time and space, every agent is an ideal being, but fundamentally
different from the above-mentioned abstract-ideal being. In fact, abstract-ideal
beings, e.g., mathematical ideas or types of being such as horseness or humanness,
are not independent and are not active in themselves: they are not animate beings, but
only forms or contents of animate beings. Individual agents, on the contrary, are
relatively independent and, besides, are active beings: they are concrete-ideal beings.
Substantival agents, having superqualitative, i.e., metalogical creative force,
produce their particular manifestations and corresponding types of action that can be
expressed in the form of abstract ideas. Every agent stands beyond the types of
14
[Translators’ Note] The Russian expression that we translate as “substantival agents” is
субстанціальными дѣятелями. The adjective субстанцiальные could more straightforwardly be
translated as “substantial.” In French субстанцiальные is translated as “substantiel” and in German as
“substanziell.” But it is consistently translated as “substantival” in the English translations of Lossky’s
works. So, we defer here to what seems to have been Lossky’s preferred English translation and we
translate it by “substantival.”
15
[Translators’ Note] Lossky’s theory of substantival agents is best understood in light of his Neo-
Leibnizianism. The idea that substantival agents are supertemporal and eternal derives from the
Leibnizian idea that monads are like small divinities (thus eternal) and that they are like mirrors that
reflect the universe in all its temporal directions and, being thus, have epistemic access to the past,
present, and future (Leibniz, Monadologie, §. 83).
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Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182 177
action produced by him or acquired by him by imitation: he can undo them and
produce or acquire other types of action. For instance, an individual X may work,
during a period of time, mainly as a researcher in astronomy, then as a dramatic
actor, and finally as an ascetic monk. The agent-individual is exhausted neither by
his scientificity, nor dramatic artisticality, nor monastic asceticism — all these
abstract general ideas are subordinate to him, and he stands beyond them, since he
can create his own life according to these ideas, but he can also reject them, creating
alternate types of life instead of them. In keeping with the Platonic theory of ideas
as metaphysical essences, we argue at the same time that general ideas are always
abstract-ideal beings: they are not substances, but only dependent aspects of
individual substances, of living agents, which are concrete-ideal. In other words, in
the world there is no ideal being Dramatic artist \50[ or Monk ascetic, but there
is only the idea of dramatic artisticality, monastic asceticism, etc. The same must be
said about the general concept of human: in the world there is no ideal being Human
that would be the same principle for all the people, so that every individual human
would be only one of the instantiations subordinate to the universal Human. There is
only an abstract idea of humaneness; the relation between a concrete individual
substance and this abstract idea is that the individual subordinates this idea to itself
since he can acquire it but can also replace it by a higher idea, e.g., the idea of divine
humanity. Then, individual X, supertemporal, thus acting in the world as long as the
world exists, may have previously acted according to the idea of horseness or, e.g.,
according to the idea of the speech control center of any human (as the “soul” of the
cells of the speech center), then acquired the type humaneness and lives as a human,
and after death will live as a creature more perfect than the earthly human.16
The distinction between concrete and abstract concepts has long been outlined in
logic, e.g., the concepts of human, horse, etc., as well as the concepts of horseness,
motion, color, etc. The theory set forth points to a fundamental difference between
them. In abstract general concepts, the object of thought is the only idea remaining
identical and the individual instances of its realization are subordinate to it not only
logically, but also ontologically, as its variations. As for a concrete general concept,
its object of thought is a set of individuals (class, expressed by the concepts of
species, genus, etc.) that contain in themselves an identical aspect, an abstract idea
(humaneness, horseness, etc.) as something subordinate to each one of these
individuals; such a set or class is not a living being; the individual concept of an
individual realizing such an idea is in logical subordination to the general concept of
class of such individuals, but these individuals are not ontologically subordinate to
the class. They are ontologically united, but not from above, through subordination,
but, so to speak, laterally — through coordination.
It is now clear how one should think about Husserl’s idea of the transcendental I.
With the word “I” every human designates itself as an individual, i.e., as a
16
[Translators’ Note] The expression translated as “more perfect,” более совершенное, also has the
sense of “more advanced.” Lossky adheres to a form of “evolutionary monadology,” which is a
teleological conception of evolution, according to which substantival agents (monads) evolve from a less
perfect state to a more perfect one. For a developed evolutionary monadology, see: Николай Васильевич
Бугаев, “Основныя начала эволюцiонной монадологiи,” Вопросы философiи и психологiи, vol. 4, n.
2, Книга 17, 1893, pp. 26–44.
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178 Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182
being \51[ not comparable with any other being, unique, inexhaustible by any of
its narrow determinations; that moment of determination, whereby the word “I” is
not a proper noun and can equally be applied by many beings to themselves, is an
abstract-ideal form of I-hood (Ichheit) that consists in the fact that an individual
embodies all his feelings, wishes, thoughts and actions as emanating from one
center and borne by it. The abstract form of I-hood is identical for all the other
individuals of the whole world (for all the monads), yet since it does not create
experiences and the individual creates them according to this form, every
experience is the property of only one individual. On the other hand, insofar as
all individuals are bearers of this identical form, they are partly intertwined with
each other, to a certain extent consubstantial to each other, and therefore every
lived-experience17 exists not only for its author, but also for all the other
individuals; it is linked to its author by the relation of inherence, and to others — by
the relation of coordination. All entities are united with each other in such a way
that all is immanent in all. However, the difference between the relation of
inherence and the relation of coordination shows itself in the fact that a being that
has reached the ability of cognition finds its manifestations in its consciousness as
its experiences, and other manifestations — only as objects of observation.
It goes without saying that an abstract-ideal form of I-hood is profoundly
different from such abstract ideas as, e.g., horseness. The type of being termed
horseness is produced by some agents at a particular stage of the world’s
development, is picked up by imitation by some other agents and is temporally used
by them during a period of their existence, and then they replace it by some other
type of being. The form of I-hood is a different matter. Similarly to such forms as
principles of time and space, it is a primitive form, inherent to all individuals created
by God, from everlasting to everlasting.
The theory of the general and the individual that I presented is the combination of
the positive aspects of so-called realism in the theory of concepts (Begriffsrealis-
mus) with the positive aspects of nominalism. It is obtained by ascertaining two
species of ideal being — abstract-ideal, which can be general, and concrete-ideal, to
which belong individual, substantival agents. This theory, while recognizing the
metaphysical existence of universals \52[ , makes possible at the same time to
affirm that the universal is subordinate to individuals, and that they are not
subordinate to it.18 It is possible that the victory of nominalism in the Middle Ages
was due, among other things, to the difficulties that arise when the acknowledge-
ment of ideal being leads to the conclusion that an individual is only an aspect or a
variation of a universal being.
Now, let us go back to Husserl. Having abstracted from the individual I (я) under
observation all its particular determinations, Husserl imagined that he had
discovered the big I (Я) to which all the monads or small I’s (я) are subordinated;
in truth, however, he discovered not the I (Я), but only I-hood (яйнocть), the
17
[Translators’ Note] The word here translated as “lived-experience” is переживанiе. Formed from
пере (conversion) and жизнь (life), it is the equivalent of the German Erlebnis (as opposed to Erfahrung,
which corresponds to the Russian опыт and which is commonly translated as “experience” tout court).
18
For more details see my book Sensual, Intellectual and Mystical Intuition (Чувственная,
интеллектуальная и мистическая интуицiя).
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Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182 179
19
[Translators’ Note] The word epoche appears as is here in the original. It is unclear what purpose it is
supposed to be serving. It was most likely inserted here by mistake.
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180 Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182
about existence; he did not include it in his “abstention” and, consequently, was
caught in its net.
I applied a much more radical “abstention” at the beginning of the epistemo-
logical investigation that led me to intuitivism. Beginning with an analysis of the
structure of consciousness and knowledge, I leave open the question whether the
oak tree immanent to consciousness perceived by me is a subjective phenomenon or
a real oak tree, a part of the external world that entered into the horizon of my
consciousness in the original. By analyzing and observing the constitution of
consciousness during the process of cognition, I find not only the different
constitutive parts of this process, but also their correlations and their function in
knowledge. Thus, with absolute evidence, I note that my intentional acts directed at
the perceived oak — attention, discrimination, etc. —, do not constitute the object,
but serve only for observing, discovering, and keeping track \54[ of that which
exists independently of them. Just as the categorial forms of the oak, e.g., its
inherent color, solidity, etc., the plurality of its leaves, etc., are “given” to my I,
coming from the object as self-evidence of itself, and not at all as appearances
constituted by the knowing I.
For the first time, based on observations of the structure of consciousness, I can
validly infer that in the constitution of my consciousness is formed the realm of
my I and its manifestations, and I can legitimately claim that the oak tree that I
am observing is a part of the external world itself, a real being, standing in front
of me, in front of my consciousness, in such a way that I am myself only an
observer of its existence, and this existence itself and its properties, its
manifestations are not dependent on me in any way. This affirmation of the
existence of the oak transcendent to my I is not a matter of faith, but self-evident
knowledge.
It is essential to distinguish between two ideas — immanence to consciousness
and immanence to the subject of consciousness, i.e., the individual I: an object may
become immanent to my consciousness yet remain transcendent to me, the subject
of consciousness. This means that consciousness is an activity that can take the I
beyond its psychophysical individuality. Consciousness, in the case of my
observation of the external world, is a superindividual whole: the knowing subject
and the cognizable portion of the external world, united with him by the relation of
coordination, form a unity. Of course, when I am observing my own manifestation,
e.g., joy, this feeling is immanent both to my consciousness and my I, the subject of
consciousness. The theory that I defend is the rehabilitation of naive realism by
means of its liberation from naivety and its formulation in the form of a theory of
intuitivism with precisely defined concepts.
Why should the loss of naivety and the attempts to develop a theory of
knowledge go together with the rejection of the realistic understanding of perception
and the emergence of theories subjectivizing and psychologizing the whole structure
of perception? This can be explained by the erroneous understanding of the role of
the subject’s causal effect on the sense organs, as well as the erroneous notion of
substance as an absolutely self-contained being (a monad “without windows and
doors”), and, finally, the inability to distinguish between the subjective and the
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Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182 181
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182 Husserl Stud (2016) 32:167–182
22
“Über den Grund zur Annahme der Existenz des fremden Ich,” supplement/appendix of his book Zur
Phänomenologie und Theorie der Sympathiegefühle, 1913.
23
[Translators’ Note] The saying in Russian is “на всякаго мудреца довольно простоты.” We have
translated the saying literally, but its English equivalent would be “Every man has a fool in his sleeve.”
24
[Translators’ Note] Husserl, “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft,” Logos, 1911, p. 339.
25
[Translators’ Note] Thanks are due to Olga Vishnyakova and Burt Hopkins for helpful comments on
the translation.
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