(Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy 4) David Carr, Edward S. Casey (Auth.), David Carr, Edward S. Casey (Eds.) - Explorations in Phenomenology_ Papers of the Society for Phen

Explorations in Phenomenology
SELECTED STUDIES IN PHENOMENOLOGY

AND EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY
GENERAL EDITOR
RICHARD M. ZANER (Southern Methodist University)
BOARD OF EDITORS:
DAVID CARR (Yale University)

EDWARD S. CASEY (Yale University)
HUBERT DREYFUS (University of California at Berkeley)
JAMES EDIE (Northwestern University)
ARON GURWITSCH t (The New School for Social Research)
DON IHDE (State University of N ew York at Stony Brook)
MAURICE NATANSON (University of California at Santa Cruz)
Explorations in Phenomenology
PAPERS OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY
AND EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY
EDITED BY
DAVID CARR AND EDWARD S. CASEY
•
MARTINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE / 1973
© I973 by Martinus Nijhojf, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in a'!1 form
ISBN-13: 978-90-247-1561-9 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1999-6

DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-1999-6
CONTENTS
Introduction I
PART ONE
INTERPRETING MAN
PAUL RICOEUR, Human Sciences and Hermeneutical

Method: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text 13
CHARLES TAYLOR, Interpretation and the Sciences of Man 47
HANS JONAS, Change and Permanence: On the Possibility
of Understanding History 102
FRED R. DALLMAYR, Phenomenology and Social Science:
An Overview and Appraisal 133
PART TWO
EVIDENCE AND THE. EGO
DAVID MICHAEL LEVIN, Husserlian Essences Reconsidered 169

RICHARD M. ZANER, Reflections on Evidence and Criti-
cism in the Theory of Consciousness 184
JITENDRA NATH MOHANTY, Towards a Phenomenology of
Self-Evidence 208
JON WHEATLEY, Phenomenology: English and Continental 230
LESTER E. EMBREE, Reflection on the Ego 243
ROBERT V. STONE, The Self-Consciousness in Self-Acti-
vity 253
PART THREE
SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND LOGIC
THEODORE KISIEL, Scientific Discovery: Logical, Psycho-

logical, or Hermeneutical? 263
ROBERT TRAGESSER, On the Phenomenological Founda-
tions of Mathematics 285
GIAN-CARLO ROTA, Edmund HusserI and the Reform of
~~ 2~
ROBERT SOKOLOWSKI, Logic and Mathematics in HusserI's
Formal and Transcendental Logic 306
PART FOUR
EMOTIONS, ART, AND EXISTENCE
GEORGE SCHRADER, Anger and Interpersonal Communi-

cation 331
ALBERT ROTHENBERG, The Anatomy of Anger 351
EUGENE T. GENDLIN, A Phenomenology of Emotions:
Anger 367
ALEXANDER SESONSKE, Cinema Space 399
WILLIAM EARLE, Variations on the Real WorId 410
WILLIAM COBB, Being-in-the-WorId and Ethical Language 423
CHARLES E. SCOTT, Existence and Consciousness 434
INTRODUCTION
Contrary to popular belief, professional philosophers want and

need to be heard. Lacking a large and general public in this
country, they turn to audiences of peers and rivals. But these
audiences are found either in giant, unfocused professional
bodies, or in restrictive groups of specialists. In this respect, the
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy can
claim a unique role among academic organizations in this country.
Now in its tenth year, it has become one of the most important
forums in America for the open exchange of ideas. The Society
has grown considerably since its founding, and its annual
meetings attract scholars in philosophy and other disciplines
from across the country and abroad. But these meetings differ
markedly from others: too large to be dominated by any single
clique or doctrine, they are at the same time small enough to
encourage lively discussion within its organized sessions and not
just in the corridors outside. The Society derives its focus from
the two closely allied philosophical "directions" indicated in its
title. Yet from the beginning it has included in its meetings a
sizeable number of contributors who are not identified with or
even sympathetic to these directions, but are at least willing to
engage in a dialogue with those who are. Furthermore, the
Society has accomplished to a limited degree something rare
indeed in American intellectual life: an interdisciplinary ex-
2 INTRODUCTION
change. Though composed chiefly of academic philosophers, it

counts among its members and contributors representatives of
such different fields as psychology, history, the social sciences,
and even mathematics. The papers collected here reflect this
diversity of interest, talent, and background.
The present volume is the fourth in a series consisting prima-
rily of papers read at meetings of the Society for Phenomenology
and Existential Philosophy. In this case, the papers derive from
the eight and ninth annual meetings of the Society, held re-
spectively at Northwestern University and at the New School
for Social Research.! As in past volumes, not all of the papers
read at these meetings have been included, nor have the remarks
of commentators and contributors to the discussion been recorded.
Moreover, the papers are not presented in the order followed at
the meetings, and many of them have been extensively revised
by their authors. Thus the present volume represents not, strictly
speaking, the "proceedings" of the Society, but a selection of
essays which the editors have chosen for their excellence and
arranged in terms of the subject matter into four general groups.
***
In Part One, two philosophers and two political scientists reflect
on the methodology of the study of man and his institutions.
Paul Ricoeur, who for many years has been working on various
aspects of hermeneutics, the discipline of interpretation, argues
that a hermeneutical method is appropriate in the human
I. These meetings were held on October 23-25, 1969, and on October 30-
November I, 1970. The paper by Robert Sokolowski is the only one not presented
at either meeting; it is an independent contribution which replaces a paper on
Husserl's notion of truth which was read at the Northwestern meeting and which
will appear elsewhere. The first three volumes in the present series are entitled: An
Invitation to Phenomenology (Quadrangle, 1965); Phenomenology in America (Quadrangle,
1967); and New Essays in Phenomenology (Quadrangle, 1969). They were edited by
Professor James M. Edie of Northwestern University, who was Secretary of the
Society for six years and whose tireless efforts are largely responsible for the Society's
growth and success.
INTRODUCTION 3
sciences since men's actions can be seen as constituting a "text"
to be interpreted. The essay marks a significant stage in the
career of one of the most prolific and wide-ranging philosophers
of post-war France: Ricoeur not only offers a novel suggestion
for the methodology of the human sciences, but reveals important
new developments in his own view of hermeneutics, occasioned
by his intensive study of linguistics and analytic philosophy.
Charles Taylor, who is accomplished in phenomenology, analytic
philosophy, and political science, also maintains that interpreta-
tion should be made essential to the sciences of man. U sing examples
from politics, Taylor's paper, originally presented together with
Ricoeur's at a Society symposium, shows the inadequacy of the
empiricist approach in social science and argues for the necessity
of a hermeneutical method. Hans Jonas, likewise concerned
with the nature of interpretation, turns his attention specifically
to history, outlining some of the paradoxes inherent in the search
for knowledge of the past and suggesting some solutions to
traditional epistemological puzzles raised by the historian's work.
Fred R. Dallmayr makes a case for the relevance of phenome-
nological method in the social sciences generally, offering a
comprehensive survey of the influences which phenomenology
has had, primarily in Europe, on sociology and the study of
politics. Dallmayr urges a more extensive use of phenomenology
by social scientists in the United States.
Part Two contains essays on two related topics closely as-
sociated with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl. Most American
philosophers' attitudes toward Husserl have followed a pattern
already established in Europe: his role as "founder" of the
phenomenological movement was acknowledged, but he was for
a long time accorded the status of one who has been superseded,
his philosophy being accepted under the interpretation given it
by illustrious successors such as Heidegger or Sartre. Now the
tendency is to return to the study of Husserl in his own right so
as to form an independent judgment of the value of his insights.
This should not give the false impression that present phenome-
4 INTRODUCTION
nological studies involve an uncritical acceptance of Hussed's

program:. David Levin's essay in this section is in fact sharply
critical of Hussed's notion of the "intuition of essences," while
Richard M. Zaner andJ. N. Mohanty develop Hussed's ideas on
this topic and try to build upon them. Jon Wheatley, with
Hussed's search for essences in mind, traces parallels between the
European movement and the "linguistic phenomenology" of
Austin and Wittgenstein. On the subject ofthe ego, Lester Embree
devotes careful attention to Hussed's texts in order to discover
just what Hussed meant by this perplexing term. Robert Stone
argues for a conception of the ego which goes beyond the views
of Hussed and Sartre and which attempts to account for its
intrinsic "mineness." Taken together, the papers in this section
illustrate a tendency among contemporary phenomenologists to
return to eady sources and at the same time to work toward new
positions. The dialectical combination of textual exegesis and
free-ranging interpretation animates much of recent phenome-
nology in this country and elsewhere in the world.
Part Three brings together a group of papers on the philosophy
of science, mathematics, and logic. It is a striking paradox that
these fields have been relatively unexplored by phenomenologists.
Hussed, who was first trained in mathematics, endeavoured
throughout his life to provide a phenomenological foundation
for the sciences; and indeed we can say more generally that all
non-empirical sciences are the natural allies of phenomenology
because of a common concern for attaining the level of the
eidetic, i.e., formal, invariant structures. Hussed's own version of
formal logic, in the dual guise of a formal ontology and a formal
apophantics, is shown in great detail in Robert Sokolowski's essay
in this section. Drawing on Hussed's Formal and Transcendental
Logic, Sokolowski considers such crucial issues as the nature of
evidence and truth and the ultimate differences between logic
and mathematics.
Hussed's ambitious attempt to furnish a final a priori basis for
the sciences was neither completed by Hussed himself nor follow-
INTRODUCTION 5
ed out systematically by his leading disciples. 2 The most frequent

and successful use of the phenomenological method came from
its application in areas only peripherally related to natural
science, logic, or mathematics. Thus the affinity between phe-
nomenology and these disciplines was typically neglected or even
denied. Phenomenology and especially its existential outgrowths
often became associated with radically anti-scientific-or more
accurately, anti-scientistic-currents of modern thought. This de-
velopment is to be regretted to the extent that it leads one to pass
over insights not onlyin Husserl but also in Heidegger and Merleau -
Ponty which bear on the structure of science. The remaining
essays in this part can be seen as efforts to correct this situation.
Thus Robert Tragesser, starting with basic Husserlian concepts,
discusses the foundations of mathematics in terms of the "evi-
dence of intention" and the "modes of receptivity" by which
mathematical reasoning proceeds. Gian-Carlo Rota, a mathe-
matician, indicates that the solution to the crisis in the founda-
tions of mathematics and logic is to be found in genetic phenome-
nology, which is capable of circumscribing autonomous eidetic
domains and then of criticizing their very autonomy. The stamp
of Heidegger is prominent in the contribution of Theodore
Kisiel, who argues that the nature of scientific discovery is
properly described in hermeneutical rather than in logical or
psychological terms. Like Ricoeur in relation to the human
sciences, Kisiel rejects the putative "viciousness" of the her-
meneutical circle as it is found in the natural sciences: the true
basis of discovery is man's foothold in both history and nature,
both presuppositions and perceptual experience.
If phenomenology as practised in America has recently ex-
panded its focus within the areas just mentioned, it has at the
2. An exception to this is found in the early work of Oskar Becker, who attempted
to perform eidetic analyses of mathematics and physics. See his "Contributions
toward a Phenomenological Foundation of Geometry and of its Applications to
Physics" and "Mathematical Existence" (in the Jahrbuchfiir Philosophie und phanome-
nologischeForschung [Halle: Niemeyer] for 1923 and 1927 respectively).
6 INTRODUCTION
same time refined its scrutiny of other domains. These latter are
fields in which general preparatory work has already been done
by European predecessors, thus allowing for a subsequent con-
traction of the phenomenological gaze. By way of contrast, one
notes an apparently inverse course of development in the school
of contemporary philosophy loosely termed "linguistic analysis" :
from an initially restricted range of topics to a full panoply of
treatment. Perhaps this is due to the historical origins of such
analysis in logical positivism, which practised a type and style
of reductionism antithetical to the phenomenological method.
Where the Vienna Circle sought to reduce values and ideal
meanings to the empirical and naturalistic, HusserI deliberately
"bracketed" the naturalistic prejudice, thereby freeing phenome-
nology for a much more generous embrace of the non-natural.
Thus the way was cleared for the unencumbered and even
speculative efforts of the more venturesome phenomenologists:
e.g., Heidegger's ontology of Being or Sartre's ontology of
Nothingness. Max Scheler represents another case in which
phenomenology, liberated from the bonds of naturalism,
surpassed even the limits tacitly laid down by HusserI to become
a much more imaginative enterprise.
Whereas Scheler, Heidegger, and Sartre set forth a general
theory of emotion,3 the first three contributors to Part Four of the
present book take as their task the description of a particular
emotion: anger. Only Eugene T. Gendlin, a psychologist and
practising psychotherapist, hints at a more comprehensive
theory; yet he keeps anger as the main focus in a series of
insightful observations on the role of "felt meaning" in inter-
personal situations. George Schrader and Albert Rothenberg
argue from the very different perspectives of philosopher and
3. On this score, see Max Scheler, The Nature qf Sympathy, trans. Peter Heath
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954); Martin Heidegger, Being and Time,
trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper, 1962), sects. 28-30;
J.-P. Sartre, The Emotions: Outline of a Theory, trans. B. Frechtman (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1948); and S. Strasser, Das Gemut (Freiburg: Herder, 1956).
INTRODUCTION 7
psychiatrist that (a) anger is not merely an expression of underlying
aggressiveness, as Freud and Lorenz imply; and that (b) anger
is, as distinguished from hostility or hatred, a constructive
emotion which may represent an authentic attempt at communi-
cation. These two papers, which were originally presented along
with Gendlin's in a single symposium, also explore the differences
between anger, anxiety, and violence. The common viewpoint
from which all three authors speak is that of being-in-the-world.
This basic Heideggerian notion is made the explicit premiss of
the essays by William Cobb and Charles Scott. But again the
focus has narrowed from Heidegger's synoptic scheme: Cobb
delineates the concrete effects of being-in-the-world on ethical
choice and belief, whose typically dichotomous descriptions
reflect the exigencies of having to act in a practical world of
mutually exclusive alternatives. For Scott, the fact of man's
being-in-the-world has critical implications for an adequate
theory of human consciousness, which can no longer be viewed
as pure or isolated from the world. In this light, Heidegger's own
"existentials" needs to be re-interpreted as specific modes
of consciousness which form our primary avenues of ac-
cess to the lived world of embodied existence. The result is
that while Husserl's view of consciousness as transcendental has
to be brought down to earth, the existential structures through
which Heidegger describes man's dwelling on earth must be
seen in turn as forms of conscious awareness. We encounter here
a notable example ofthe merging ofthe two directions represented
by phenomenology and existentialism into a single stream of
thought.
Finally, the two papers on film concentrate on quite specific
aspects of a single art, without making broad claims as to the
nature of art in general. Alexander Sesonske describes in a non-
jargonistic manner the character of "cinema space" in its two
modalities of "screen space" and "action space." William Earle
goes on to consider the sense in which film-and especially
surrealist films-represent imaginative and imaginary variations
8 INTRODUCTION
on the real world, illustrating in a dramatic visual presentation

the phenomenological method of eidetic variation. Film in fact
can be said to approximate spontaneously phenomenological
analysis, since the very conditions of its apprehension (e.g., the
closed world of the movie theater) resemble the epoche demanded
by Husserl as the basis of insight into essences. Thus film epito-
mizes the "absolute show" of which Earle speaks and which forms
a model for the direct giving of the Sachen selbst that phenome-
nologists ultimately seek.
***
Most of the papers assembled here cannot be regarded as
systematically related to one another, since they were written out
of special and even divergent interests and demands. Nor should
they be taken as representing all the manifold trends in contempo-
rary phenomenology. But they do reveal certain significant
interrelations-some of which have been singled out in these
introductory remarks-and, more importantly, they exhibit
some of the most fecund and promising orientations in present-
day phenomenological inquiry. Together, they open up a horizon
for this inquiry, indicating the space within which much of
current phenomenology carries out its tasks. It is from within
such a space that new insights in philosophy are apt to emerge.
But the space in question is an open one: the phenomenological
horizon discloses, rather than encloses, possibilities of description.
Hence the essays in this volume reflect a spirit of open, de-
scriptive exploration that is not rigidly restricted to an orthodox
methodology or metaphysics. Present in these pages are not only
departures from Husserl's original method into other types of
phenomenological analysis, but also approaches of a wholly differ-
ent sort such as linguistic and logical analysis. The remarkable
fact is that these different approaches are so eminently co-operative:
whether as actually combined (as in Ricoeur's and Taylor's
articles) or as potentially combinable (as suggested by Wheatley).
INTRODUCTION 9
All can be seen as explorations within the phenomenological horizon

interpreted in the broadest sense. The result is not an indifferent
and confused brew of questionable origins, but an exhilarating
mixture of the bold and the cautious, the expansive and the
exacting. These essays show phenomenology, both in letter and in
spirit, at work and alive in the contemporary philosophical
world.
In conclusion, we wish to thank Northwestern University
Press for allowing us to reprint Richard M. Zaner's essay "Re-
flections on Evidence and Criticism in the Theory of Con-
ciousness," which has appeared inLift-world and Consciousness : Essays
for Aron Gurwitch. Weare also grateful to the editors of Social
Research for permission to reprint "Change and Permanence:
On the Possibility of Understanding History" by Hans Jonas,
and to the editor of the Review of Metaphysics for Charles Taylor's
"Interpretation and the Sciences of Man." All the other essays
in this volume appear here for the first time in their present form.
EDWARD S. CASEY
DAVID CARR
Yale University
October, 1972
PART ONE
INTERPRETING MAN
Paul Ricoeur
HUMAN SCIENCES AND HERMENEUTICAL

METHOD: MEANINGFUL ACTION
CONSIDERED AS A TEXT
My aim in this paper is to test a hypothesis which I shall begin

by expounding briefly.
I assume that the primary sense of the word "hermeneutics"
concerns the rules required for the interpretation of the written
documents of our culture. In assuming this starting point I am
remaining faithful to the concept of Auslegung as it was stated by
Wilhelm Dilthey: whereas Verstehen (understanding, compre-
hension) relies on the recognition of what another subject means
or intends on the basis of all kinds of signs in which his psychic
life expresses itself (Lebensiiusserungen), Auslegung (interpretation,
exegesis) implies something more specific-it covers only a limited
category of signs, those which are fixed by writing, including all
types of documents and monuments which entail a fixation
similar to writing. •
Now my hypothesis is this: if there are specific problems
which are raised by the interpretation of texts because they are
texts and not spoken language, and if these problems are the ones
which constitute hermeneutics as such, then the human sciences
may be said to be hermeneutical (I) inasmuch as their object
displays some of the features constitutive of a text as text, and
(2) inasmuch as their methodology develops the same kind of
procedures as those of Auslegung or text-interpretation.
Hence the two questions to which my paper will be devoted
Paul Ricoeur
are: (I) To what extent may we consider the notion of text a

good paradigm for the so-called object of the social sciences?
(2) To what extent may we use the methodology oftext-interpre-
tation as a paradigm for interpretation in general in the field
of the human sciences?
I. THE PARADIGM OF THE TEXT
In order to justify the distinction between spoken and written

language I want to introduce a preliminary concept, that of
discourse. It is as discourse that language is either spoken or
written.
Now what is discourse?
We shall not seek the answer from the logicians, not even from
the exponents of linguistic analysis, but from the linguists them-
selves. Discourse is the counterpart of what linguists call language-
systems or linguistic codes. Discourse is language-event or
linguistic usage. This pair of correlative terms-system/event
code/message-has played a basic role in linguistics since it was
introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure and Louis Hjelmslev. The
first spoke of language-speech (langue-parole), the second of
schema-usage. We can also add competence-performance in
Chomsky's language. It is necessary to draw all the epistemologi-
cal consequences of such a duality, namely, that the linguistics
of discourse has different rules than does the linguistics of
language. The French linguist Emile Benveniste has gone the
furthest in distinguishing these two linguistics. For him, the two
linguistics are not constructed upon the same units. If the sign
(phonological or lexical) is the basic unit oflanguage, the sentence
is the basic unit of discourse. Therefore it is the linguistics of the
sentence which supports the theory of speech as an event. I will
retain four traits from this linguistics of the sentence which will
later help me to elaborate the hermeneutics of the event and of
discourse.
First trait: Discourse is always realized temporally and in a
HUMAN SCIENCES AND HERMENEUTICAL METHOD
present, whereas the language system is virtual and outside of

time. Emile Benveniste calls this the "instance of discourse."
Second trait: Whereas language lacks a subject-in the sense
that the question "who is speaking?" does not apply-discourse
refers back to its speaker by means of a complex set of indicators
such as the personal pronouns. We will say that the "instance of
discourse" is self-referential.
Third trait: Whereas the signs in language only refer to other
signs within the same system, and whereas language therefore
lacks a world just as it lacks temporality and subjectivity,
discourse is always about something. It refers to a world which
it claims to describe, to express, or to represent. It is in discourse
that the symbolic function of language is actualized.
Fourth trait: Whereas language is only the condition for
communication for which it provides the codes, it is in discourse
that all messages are exchanged. In this sense, discourse alone has
not only a world, but an other, another person, an interlocutor
to whom it is addressed.
These four traits taken together constitute speech as an event.
It is remarkable that these four traits appear only in the
movement of effectuation from language to discourse. Every
apology for speech as an event therefore is significant if, and
only if, it makes visible the relation of effectuation thanks to
which our linguistic competence actualizes itself in performance.
But the same apology becomes abusive as soon as this event
character is extended from the problematic of effectuation, where
it is valid, to another problematic, that of understanding.
In effect, what is it to understand a discourse?
Let us see how differently these four traits are actualized in
spoken and written language:
I. Discourse, as we said, only exists as a temporal and present
instance of discourse. This first trait is realized differently in
living speech and in writing. In living speech, the instance of
discourse has the character of a fleeting event. The event appears
and disappears. This is why there is a problem of fixation, of
16 Paul Ricoeur
inscription. What we want to fix is what disappears. If, by

extension, we can say that one fixes language-inscription of the
alphabet, lexical inscription, syntactical inscription-it is only
for the sake of that which has to be fixed, discourse. Discourse
alone has to be fixed, because discourse is what disappears. The
atemporal system neither appears nor disappears, it does not
happen. Here is the place to recall the myth in Plato's Phaedo.
Writing was given to men to "come to the rescue" of the "weak-
ness of discourse," a weakness which was that of the event. The
gift of the grammata---()f that "external" thing, of those "external
marks," of that materializing alienation-was just that of a
"remedy" brought to our memory. The Egyptian king of Thebes
could well respond to the god Theuth that writing was a false
remedy in that it replaced true reminiscence by material con-
servation and real wisdom by the semblance of knowing. This
inscription, in spite of its perils, is discourse's destination. What,
in effect, does writing fix? Not the event of speaking, but the
"said" of speaking, which we understand as that intentional
exteriorization constitutive of the aim of discourse thanks to
which the sagen-the saying-wants to become Aus-sage-the
enunciation, the enunciated. In short, what we write, what we
inscribe, is the noema of the speaking. It is the meaning of the
speech event, not the event as event.
What, in effect, does writing fix? If it is not speech event, it is
speech itself insofar as it is said. But what is said?
Here I would like to propose that hermeneutics has to appeal
not only to linguistics (linguistics of discourse vs. linguistics of
language) as it does above, but also to the theory of the speech
act such as we find it in Austin and Searle. The act of speaking,
according to these authors, is constituted by a hierarchy of
subordinate acts which are distributed on three levels: (I) the
level of the locutionary or propositional act, the act of saying;
(2) the level of the illocutionary act or force, that which we do in
saying; and (3) the level of the perlocutionary act, that which
we do by saying. For example, when I tell you to close the door,
"Close the door!" is the act of speaking. But when I tell you this
with the force of an order and not of a request, this is the illo-
cutionary act. Finally, I can cause certain effects, such as fear, by
giving you an order. These effects make my discourse act as a
stimulus, producing certain results. This is the perlocutionary
act.
What is the implication of these distinctions for our problem
of the intentional exteriorization by which the event surpasses
itself in the meaning and lends itself to material fixation? The
locutionary act exteriorizes itself in the sentence. The sentence
can in effect be identified and reidentified as being the same
sentence. A sentence becomes an e-nunciation (A us-sage) and
thus is transferred to others as being a particular sentence with
a particular meaning. But the illocutionary act can also be
exteriorized as a result of grammatical paradigms (indicative,
imperative, and subjunctives modes, and other procedures ex-
pressive of the illocutionary force) which permit its identification
and reidentification. Certainly, in spoken discourse, the illo-
cutionary force leans upon mimicry and gestural elements and
upon the nonarticulated aspects of discourse-what we call
prosody. In this sense, the illocutionary force is less completely
inscribed in grammar than is the propositional meaning. In
every case, its inscription in a syntactic articulation is itself
gathered up in specific paradigms which in principle make
possible fixation by writing. Without a doubt we must concede
that the perlocutionary act is the least inscribable aspect of
discourse and that by preference it characterizes spoken language.
But the perlocutionary action is precisely what is the least
discursive in discourse. It is the discourse as stimulus. It acts, not
by my interlocutor's recognition of my intention, but energetical-
ly, as it were, by direct influence upon the emotions and the
affective dispositions. Thus the propositional act, the illocutionary
force, and the perlocutionary action are capable, in decreasing
order, of the intentional exteriorization which makes inscription
in writing possible.
18 Paul Ricoeur
Therefore it is necessary to understand by the meaning of the

speech.act, or by the noema of the saying, not only the sentence,
in the narrow sense of the propositional act, but also the illo·
cutionary force and even the perlocutionary action to the degree
that these three aspects of the speech-act are codified, gathered
into paradigms, and, consequently, can be identified and re-
identified as having the same meaning. Therefore I am here
giving the word "meaning" a very large acceptation which covers
all the aspects and levels of the intentional exteriorization which
makes the inscription of discourse possible.
The destiny of the three other traits of discourse in passing
from discourse to writing will permit us to make more precise the
meaning of this elevation of saying to what is said.
2. In discourse, we said-and this was the second differential
trait of discourse in relation to language-the sentence designates
its speaker by diverse indicators of subjectivity and personality.
In spoken discourse, this reference by discourse to the speaking
subject presents a character of immediacy that we can explain
in the following way. The subjective intention of the speaking
subject and the meaning of the discourse overlap each other in
such a way that it is the same thing to understand what the
speaker means and what his discourse means. The ambiguity of
the French expression vouloir-dire, the German meinen, and the
English to mean attests to this overlapping. It is almost the same
thing to ask "What do you mean?" and "What does that mean?"
With written discourse, the author's intention and the meaning
of the text cease to coincide. This dissociation of the verbal
meaning of the text and the mental intention is what is really at
stake in the inscription of discourse. Not that we can conceive of
a text without an author: the tie between the speaker and the
discourse is not abolished, but distended and complicated. The
dissociation of the meaning and the intention is still an adventure
of the reference of discourse to the speaking subject. But the
text's career escapes the finite horizon lived by its author. What
the text says now matters more than what the author meant to
say, and every exegesis unfolds its procedures within the cir-
cumference of a meaning that has broken its ties with the
psychology of its author. Using Plato's expression again, written
discourse cannot be "rescued" by all the processes which spoken
discourse uses in order to be understood-intonation, delivery,
mimicry, gestures. In this sense, the inscription in "external
marks" which first appeared to alienate discourse marks the
actual spirituality of discourse. Henceforth, only the meaning
"rescues" the meaning, without the contribution of the physical
and psychological presence of the author. But to say that the
meaning rescues the meaning is to say that interpretation is the
only "remedy" for the weakness of discourse which its author
can no longer "save."
3. The event is surpassed by the meaning a third time.
Discourse, we said, is what refers to the world, to a world. In
spoken discourse this means that what the dialogue ultimately
refers to is the situation common to the interlocutors. This
situation in a way surrounds the dialogue, and its landmarks can
all be shown by a gesture, or by pointing a finger, or they can be
designated in an ostensive manner by the discourse itself through
the oblique reference of other indicators-the demonstratives,
the adverbs of time and place, and the tense of the verb. In oral
discourse, we are saying, reference is ostensive. What happens to
it in written discourse? Are we saying that the text no longer has
a reference? This would be to confound reference and monstra-
tion, world and situation. Discourse cannot fail to be about
something. In saying this, I am separating myself from any
ideology of an absolute text. Only a few sophisticated texts
satisfy this ideal of a text without reference. They are texts where
the play of the signifier breaks away from the signified. But this
new form is only valuable as an exception and cannot give the
key to all other texts which in one manner or another speak about
the world. But what then is the subject of texts when nothing can
be shown? Far from saying that the text is then without a world,
I will now say without paradox that only man has a world and not
20 Paul Ricoeur
just a situation. In the same manner that the text frees its
meaning from the tutelage of the mental intention, it frees its
reference from the limits of ostensive reference. For us, the world
is the ensemble of references opened up by the texts. Thus we
speak about the "world" of Greece, no longer to designate what
were the situations for those who lived them, but to designate the
nonsituational references which outlive the effacement of these
situations and which henceforth are offered as possible modes of
being, as symbolic dimensions of our being-in-the-world. For me,
this is the referent of all literature: no longer the Umwelt of the
ostensive references of dialogue, but the Welt projected by the
nonostensive references of every text that we have read, under-
stood, and loved. To understand a text is at the same time to
light up our own situation, or, if you will, to interpolate among
the predicates of our situation all the significations which make
a Welt of our Umwelt. It is this enlarging of the Umwelt into the
World which permits us to speak of the references opened up by the
text-it would be better to say that the references open up the
world. Here again the spirituality of discourse manifests itself
through writing, which frees us from the visibility and limitation
of situations by opening up a world for us, that is, giving us new
dimensions of our being-in-the-world.
In this sense, Heidegger rightly says-in his analysis of Verstehen
in Being and Time-that what we understand first in a discourse
is not another person, but a project, that is, the outline of a new
being-in-the-world. Only writing, in freeing itself, not only from
its author, but from the narrowness of the dialogical situation,
reveals this destination of discourse as projecting a world.
In thus tying reference to the projection of a world, it is not
only Heidegger whom we rediscover, but Wilhelm von Humbolt,
for whom the great justification of language is to establish the
relation of man to the world. If this referential function is sup-
pressed, only an absurd game of errant signifiers remains.
4. But it is perhaps with the fourth trait that the accomplish-
ment of discourse in writing is most exemplary. Only discourse,
HUMAN SCIENCES AND HERMENEUTICAL METHOD 21
not language, is addressed to someone. This is the foundation of

communication. But it is one thing for discourse to be addressed
to an interlocutor equally present to the discourse situation, and
another to be addressed, as is the case in virtually every piece of
writing, to whoever knows how to read. The narrowness of the
dialogical relation explodes. Instead of being addressed just to
you, the second person, what is written is addressed to the audience
that it creates itself. This, again, marks the spirituality of writing,
the counterpart of its materiality and of the alienation which it
imposes upon discourse. The vis-a-vis of the written is just
whoever knows how to read. The co-presence of dialoguing
subjects ceases to be the model for every "understanding." The
relation writing-reading ceases to be a particular case of the
relation speaking-hearing. But at the same time, discourse is
revealed as discourse in the universality of its address. In
escaping the momentary character of the event, the bounds
lived by the author, and the narrowness of ostensive reference,
discourse escapes the limits of being face to face. It no longer has
a visible auditor. An unknown, invisible reader has become the
unprivileged addressee of the discourse.
To what extent may we say that the object of the human
sciences conforms to the paradigm of the text? Max Weber
defines this object as sinnhaft orientiertes Verhalten, as meaningfully
oriented behavior. To what extent may we replace the predicate
"meaningfully oriented" by what I would like to call readability-
characters derived from the preceding theory of the text?
Let us try to apply our four criteria of what a text is to the
concept of meaningful action.
I. The Fixation of Action

Meaningful action is an object for science only under the con-
dition of a kind of objectification which is equivalent to the
fixation of a discourse by writing. This trait presupposes a simple
way to help us at this stage of our analysis. In the same way that
22 Paul Ricoeur
interlocution is overcome in writing, interaction is overcome in

numerous situations in which we treat action as a fixed text.
These situations are overlooked in a theory of action for which
the discourse of action is itself a part of the situation of trans-
action which flows from one agent to another, exactly as spoken
language is caught in the process of interlocution, or, if we may
use the term, of translocution. This is why the understanding of
action at the prescientific level is only "knowledge without
observation," or as G. E. M. Anscombe says, "practical know-
ledge" in the sense of "knowing how" as opposed to "knowing
that." 1 But this understanding is not yet an interpretation in the
strong sense which deserves to be called scientific interpretation.
My claim is that action itself, action as meaningful, may
become an object of science, without losing its character of
meaningfulness, thanks to a kind of objectification similar to the
fixation which occurs in writing. By this objectification, action
is no longer a transaction to which the discourse of action would
still belong. It constitutes a delineated pattern which has to be
interpreted according to its inner connections.
This objectification is made possible by some inner traits of the
action which are similar to the structure of the speech-act and
which make doing a kind of utterance. In the same way as the
fixation by writing is made possible by a dialectic of intentional
exteriorization immanent to the speech-act itself, a similar
dialectic within the process of transaction makes possible the
detachment of the meaning of the action from the event of the
action.
First an action has the structure of a locutionary act. It has a
propositional content which can be identified and reidentified as
the same. This "propositional" structure of the action has been
clearly and demonstratively expounded by Anthony Kenny in
his book, Action, Emotion, and Will. 2 The verbs of action consti-
tute a specific class of predicates which are similar to relations
I. G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention, Oxford, 1957, pp. 56 fT.
2. Anthony Kenny, Action, Emotion, and Will, London, 1963.
in that they are irreducible to the kinds of predicates which may

follow the copula "is." The class of action predicates in its turn
is irreducible to the relations and constitutes a specific set of predi-
cates. Among other traits, the verbs of action allow a plurality
of "arguments" capable of complementing the verb, ranging
from no argument (Plato taught) to an indeterminate number
of arguments (Brutus killed Caesar, in the Curia, on the Ides
of March, with a ... , with the help of. ... ). This variable
polydicity of the predicative structure of the action-sentences is
typical of the propositional structure of action. Another trait
which is important for the transposition of the concept of fixation
from the sphere of discourse to the sphere of action concerns the
ontological status of the "complements" of the verbs of action.
Whereas relations hold between terms equally existing (or non-
existing), certain verbs of action have a topical subject which is
identified as existing and to which the sentence refers, and
complements which do not exist. Such is the case with the
"mental acts" (to believe, to think, to will, to imagine, and so
forth).
Anthony Kenny describes some other traits of the propositional
structure of actions derived from the description of the function-
ing of the verb of action. For example, the distinction between
states, activities, and performances can be stated according to the
behavior of the tenses of the verbs of action which fix some
specific temporal traits of the action itself. The distinction
between the formal and the material object of an action (such as
the difference between the notion of all inflammable things and
this letter which I am now burning) belongs to the logic of
action as mirrored in the grammar of the verbs of action. Such,
roughly described, is the propositional content of action which
gives a basis to a dialectic of event and meaning similar to that of
the speech-act.
At this point I should like to discuss the noematic structure of
action. It is this noematic structure which may be fixed and
detached from the process of interaction and become an object
24 Paul Ricoeur
to interpret. Moreover, this noema has not only a propositional

content, but also presents "illocutionary" traits very similar to
those of the complete speech-act. The different classes of per-
formative acts of discourse described by Austin at the end of How
To Do Things With Words may be taken as paradigms not only for
the speech-acts themselves, but for the actions which fulfill the
corresponding speech-acts. 3 A typology of action, following the
model of illocutionary acts, is therefore possible. Not only a
typology, but a criteriology, inasmuch as each type implies rules,
more precisely "constitutive rules" which, according to John R.
Searle, allow the construction of "ideal models" similar to the
ideal types of Max Weber.4 For example, to understand what a
promise is, we have to understand what the "essential condition"
is according to which a given action "counts as" a promise. This
"essential condition" of Searle is not far from what Husserl
called Sinngehalt, which covers both the "matter" (propositional
content) and the "quality" (the illocutionary force).
We may now say that an action, like a speech-act, may be
identified not only according to its propositional content, but
also according to its illocutionary force. Both constitute its "sense-
content." Like the speech-act, the action-event (if we may coin
this analogical expression) develops a similar dialectic between
its temporal status as an appearing and disappearing event and
its logical status as having such and such identifiable meaning
or "sense-content". But if the "sense-content" is what makes
possible the "inscription" of the action-event, what makes it real?
In other words, what corresponds to writing in the field of action?
Let us return to the paradigm of the speech-act. What is fixed
by writing, we said, is the noema of the speaking, the saying as
said. To what extent may we say that what is done is inscribed?
Certain metaphors may be helpful at this point. We say that
such and such event left its mark on its time. We speak of marking
events. Are there not "marks" on a time, the kind of thing which
3. J.L.Austin,How ToDo Things With Words, Cambridge, Mass., 1962, Lecture XII.
4. John R. Searle, Speech Acts, Cambridge, England, 1969, p. 56.
calls for a reading, rather than for a hearing? But what is meant
by this metaphor of the "mark"?
The three other criteria of the text will help us to make the
nature of this fixation more precise.
2. The Autonomization of Action

In the same way that a text is detached from its author, an action
is detached from its agent and develops consequences of its own.
This autonomization of human action constitutes the social
dimension of action. An action is a social phenomenon not only
because it is done by several agents in such a way that the role
of each of them cannot be distinguished from the role of the
others, but also because our deeds escape us and have effects
which we did not intend. One of the meanings of the notion of
"inscription" appears here. The kind of distance which we found
between the intention of the speaker and the verbal meaning of
a text also occurs between the agent and his action. It is this
distance which makes the ascription of responsibility a specific
problem. We do not ask, Who smiled? Who raised his hand? The
doer is present to his doing in the same way that the speaker is
present to his speech. With simple actions such as those which
require no previous action, the meaning (noema) and the in-
tention (noesis) coincide or overlap. With complex actions some
segments are so remote from the initial simple segments, which
can be said to express the intention of the doer, that the as-
cription of these actions or action-segments constitutes a problem
as difficult to solve as that of authorship in some cases of literary
criticism. The assignation of an author becomes a mediate in-
ference well known to the historian who tries to isolate the role
of a historical character in the course of events.
We just used the expression: the course of events. Could we
not say that what we call the course of events plays the role of
the material thing which "rescues" the vanishing discourse when
it is written? As we said in a metaphorical way, some actions are
Paul Ricoeur
events which imprint their mark on their time. But on what did
they imprint their mark? Is it not in something spatial that
discourse is inscribed? How could an event be imprinted on
something temporal? Social time, however, is not only something
fleeting. It is also the place of durable effects, of persisting patterns.
An action leaves a "trace," it makes its "mark" when it contri-
butes to the emergence of patterns which become the documents
of human action.
Another metaphor may help us to delineate this phenomenon
of the social "imprint": the metaphor of the "record" or of the
"registration." Joel Feinberg introduces this metaphor in another
context, that of responsibility, in order to show how an action
may be submitted to blame. He claims that only actions which
can be "registered" for further notice, placed as an entry on
somebody's "record," can be blamed. 5 And when there are no
formal "records" (such as those kept by employment offices,
schools, banks, and the police), there is still an informal analogue
of these formal records which we call reputation and which
constitutes a basis for blaming. I would like to apply this inter-
esting metaphor of a record and reputation to something other
than the quasi-juridical situations of blaming, charging, credit-
ing, or punishing. Could we not say that history is itself the record
of human action? History is this quasi "thing" on which human
action leaves a "trace," puts its mark. Hence the possibility of
"archives." Before the archives are intentionally written down
by the memorialists, there is a continuous process of "recording"
human action which is history itself as the sum of" marks," the
fate of which escapes the control of individual actors. Henceforth
history may appear as an autonomous entity, as a play with
players who do not know the plot. This hypostasis of history may
be denounced as a fallacy, but the fallacy is well entrenched in the
process by which human action becomes social action when
written down in the archives of history. Because of this sedi-
5. Joel Feinberg, "Action and Responsibility" in The Philosophy rif Action, ed.
A. R. White, Oxford, 1968.
mentation in social time, human deeds become "institutions,"
in the sense that their meaning no longer coincides with the
logical intentions of the actors. The meaning may be "de-
psychologized" to the point where the meaningfulness resides in
the work itself. To use the phrase of Peter Winch, the object of
the social sciences is a "rule-governed behavior." 6 But this rule
is not superimposed; it is the meaning as articulated from within
these sedimented or instituted works.
Such is the kind of "objectivity" which proceeds from the
"social fixation" of meaningful behavior.
3. Relevance and Importance

According to our third criterion of what a text is, we could say
that a meaningful action is an action whose importance goes
"beyond" its relevance to its initial situation. This new trait is
very similar to the way in which a text breaks the ties of discourse
to all the ostensive references. Because of this emancipation from
the situational context, discourse can develop nonostensive
references which we call a "world," in the sense in which we
speak of the Greek "world" -not in the cosmological sense of the
word, but as an ontological dimension.
\¥hat would correspond in the field of action to the non-
ostensive references of a text?
In introducing the present analysis, we opposed the importance
of an action to its relevance in the situation to which it wanted to
respond. An important action, we could say, develops meanings
which can be actualized or fulfilled in situations other than the
one in which the action occurred. To say the same thing in different
words, the meaning of an important event exceeds, overcomes,
transcends the social conditions of its production and may be
reenacted in new social contexts. Its importance is its durable
relevance and, in some cases, its omnitemporal relevance.
6. Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, London,
1958.
Paul Ricoeur
This third trait has important implications for the relation

between cultural phenomena and their social conditions. Is it
not a fundamental trait of the great works of culture to overcome
the conditions of their social production, in the same way that
a text develops new references and constitutes new "worlds"?
It is in this sense that Hegel spoke in the Philosophy of Right of the
institutions (in the largest sense of the word) which "actualize"
freedom as a second nature in accordance with freedom. This
"realm of actual freedom" is constituted by the deeds and works
capable of receiving relevance in new historical situations. If
this is true, this way of overcoming one's own conditions of pro-
duction is the key to the puzzling problem raised by Marxism
concerning the status of the "superstructures." The autonomy
of superstructures in their relation to their own infrastructures
has its paradigm in the nonostensive references of a text. A work
not only mirrors its time, it opens up a world which it bears
within itself.
4. Human Action as an "Open Work"

Finally, according to our fourth criterion of the text as text, the
meaning of human action is also something which is addressed to
an indefinite range of possible "readers." The judges are not the
contemporaries, but, as Hegel said, history itself. Weltgeschichte
ist Weltgericht. This means that, like a text, human action is an
open work, the meaning of which is "in suspense." It is because
it "opens up" new references and receives fresh relevance from
them, that human deeds are also waiting for fresh interpretations
which decide their meaning. All significant events and deeds
are, in this way, opened to this kind of practical interpretation
through present praxis. Human action, too, is opened to anybody
who can read. In the same way that the meaning of an event is the
sense of its forthcoming interpretations, the interpretation by the
contemporaries has no particular privilege in this process.
This dialectic between the work and its interpretations is the
topic of the methodology of interpretation that we shall now

consider.
II. METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE TEXT-PARADIGM
I want now to show the fruitfulness of this analogy of the text at

the level of methodology.
The main implication of our paradigm for the methods of the
social sciences is that it offers a fresh approach to the question of
the relation between erkliiren (explanation) and verstehen (under-
standing, comprehension) in the human sciences. As is well
known, Dilthey gave this relation the meaning of a dichotomy.
For him, any model of explanation is borrowed from a different
region of knowledge, that of the natural sciences with their in-
ductive logic. Henceforth the autonomy of the so-called Geistes-
wissenschaften is preserved only by the recognition of the irreduci-
ble factor of understanding another's psychic life on the basis of
the signs in which this life is immediately exteriorized. But, if
verstehen is separated from erkliiren by this logical gap, how can the
human sciences be scientific at all? Dilthey kept wrestling with
this paradox. He discovered more and more clearly, especially
after reading Husserl's Logical Investigations, that the Geisteswissen-
schaften are sciences inasmuch as the expressions of life undergo a
kind of objectification which makes possible a scientific approach
somewhat similar to that of the natural sciences, in spite of the
logical gap between Natur (factual knowledge) and Geist (know-
ledge by signs). In this way the mediation offered by these
objectifications appeared to be more important, for a scientific
purpose, than the immediate meaningfulness of the expressions
of life for everyday transactions.
My own interrogation starts from this last perplexity in
Dilthey's thought. And my hypothesis is that the kind of ob-
jectification implied in the status of discourse as text provides a
better answer to the problem raised by Dilthey. This answer
relies on the dialectical character of the relation between
erkliiren and verstehen as it is displayed in reading.
Paul Ricoeur
Our task therefore will be to show to what extent the paradigm

of reading, which is the counterpart of the paradigm of writing,
provides a solution for the methodological paradox of the human
sciences.
The dialectic involved in reading expresses the originality of
the relation between writing and reading and its irreducibility
to the dialogical situation based on the immediate reciprocity
between speaking and hearing. There is a dialectic between ex-
plaining and comprehending because the writing/reading situ-
ation develops a problematic of its own which is not merely an
extension of the speaking/hearing situation constitutive of
dialogue.
It is here therefore that our hermeneutic is most critical of
the Romantic tradition in hermeneutics, which took the
dialogical situation as the standard for the hermeneutical
operation applied to the text. My contention is that it is this
operation, on the contrary, which reveals the meaning of what is
already hermeneutical in dialogical understanding. Then, if the
dialogical relation does not provide us with the paradigm of
reading, we have to build it as an original paradigm, as a
paradigm of its own.
This paradigm draws its main features from the status of the
text itself as characterized by (I) the fixation of the meaning, (2)
its dissociation from the mental intention of the author, (3) the
display of non-ostensive references, and (4) the universal range
of its addressees. These four traits taken together constitute the
"objectivity" of the text. From this "objectivity" derives a
possibility of explaining which is not derived in any way from the
field of natural events, but which is congenital to this kind of
objectivity. Therefore there is no transfer from one region of
reality to another-let us say, from the sphere of facts to the
sphere of signs. It is within this sphere of signs that the process
of objectification occurs, giving rise to explanatory procedures.
And it is within the same sphere of signs that explanation and
comprehension are confronted.
I propose that we consider this dialectic in two different ways:

( I) as proceeding from comprehension to explanation, and (2)
as proceeding from explanation to comprehension. The exchange
and the reciprocity between both procedures will provide us with a
good approximation of the dialectical character of the relation.
At the end of each half of this demonstration I shall try to
indicate briefly the possible extension of the paradigm of reading
to the whole sphere of the human sciences.
I. From Understanding to Explanation

This first dialectic-or rather this first figure of a unique dialectic
-may be conveniently introduced by our contention that to
understand a text is not to rejoin the author. The disjunction of
the meaning and the intention creates an absolutely original
situation which engenders the dialectic of erkliiren and verstehen.
If the objective meaning is something other than the subjective
intention of the author, it may be construed in various ways. The
problem of the right understanding can no longer be solved by a
simple return to the alleged intention of the author.
This construction necessarily takes the form of a process. As
E. D. Hirsch maintains in Validity in Interpretation, there are no
rules for making good guesses. But there are methods for vali-
dating guesses. 7 This dialectic between guessing and validating
constitutes one figure of our dialectic between comprehension and
explanation.
In this dialectic both terms are decisive. Guessing corresponds
to what Schleiermacher called the "divinatory," validation to
what he called the "grammatical." My contribution to the
theory of this dialectic will be to link it more tightly to the
theory of the text and text-reading.
7. "The act of understanding is at first a genial (or a mistaken) guess and there
are no methods for making guesses, no rules for generating insights; the methodologi-
cal activity of interpretation commences when we begin to test and criticize our
guesses." And further: "A mute symbolism may be construed in several ways."
E. P. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, New Haven, I967, p. 203.
32 Paul Ricoeur
Why do we need an art of guessing? Why do we have to

"construe" the meaning?
Not only-as I tried to say a few years ago-because language
is metaphorical and because the double meaning of meta-
phoricallanguage requires an art of deciphering which tends to
unfold the several layers of meaning. 8 The case of metaphor is
only a particular instance in a general theory of hermeneutics.
In more general terms, a text has to be constructed because it is
not a mere sequence of sentences, all on an equal footing and
separately understandable. A text is a whole, a totality. The
relation between whole and parts-as in a work of art or in an
animal-requires a specific kind of "judgment" for which Kant
gave the theory in his Critique of Judgment. Concretely, the whole
appears as a hierarchy of topics, or primary and subordinate
not so much because of the incommunicability of the psychic
experience of the author, but because of the very nature of the
verbal intention of the text. This intention is something other
than the sum of the individual meanings of the individual
sentences. A text is more than a linear succession of sentences.
It is a cumulative, holistic process. This specific structure of the
text cannot be derived from that of the sentence. Therefore the
kind of plurivocity which belongs to texts as texts is something
other than the polysemy of individual words in ordinary language
and the ambiguity of individual sentences. This plurivocity is
typical of the text considered as a whole, open to several readings
and to several constructions.
Concerning the procedures of validation by which we test our
guesses, I agree with Hirsch that they are closer to a logic of
probability than to a logic of empirical verification. To show
that an interpretation is more probable in the light of what is
known is something other than showing that a conclusion is true.
In this sense, validation is not verification. Validation is an
argumentative discipline comparable to the juridical procedures
8. Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, trans. D. Savage, New Haven, 1970,
Book I.-EDS.
of legal interpretation. It is a logic of uncertainty and of quali-
tative probability. In this sense we may give an acceptable sense
to the opposition between Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissen-
schaften without conceding anything to the dogma of the in-
effability of the individual. The method of conveyance of indices,
typical of the logic of subjective probability, gives a firm basis for
a science of the individual topics. The reconstruction of the text
as a whole necessarily has a circular character, in the sense that
the presupposition of a certain kind of whole is implied in the
recognition of the parts. And reciprocally, it is in construing the
details that we construe the whole. There is no necessity and no
evidence concerning what is important and what is unimportant,
what is essential and what is unessential. The judgment of
importance is a guess.
To put the difficulty in other terms, if a text is a whole, it is
once more an individual like an animal or a work of art. As an
individual it can only be reached by a process of narrowing the
scope of generic concepts concerning the literary genre, the class
of text to which this text belongs, the structures of different kinds
which intersect in this text. The localization and the individual-
ization of this unique text are still guesses.
Still another way of expressing the same enigma is that the
text, as an individual, may be reached from different sides. Like
a cube, or a volume in space, the text presents a "relief." Its
different topics are not all at the same altitude. Therefore the
reconstruction of the whole has a perspectivist aspect similar to
that of perception. It is always possible to relate the same
sentence in different ways to this or that sentence considered as
the cornerstone of the text. A specific kind of one-sidedness is
implied in the act of reading. This one-sidedness confirms the
guess character of interpretation.
Thus there is a problem of interpretation which deserves to be
called a science. A text is a quasi individual, and the validation
of an interpretation applied to it may be said, with complete
legitimacy, to give a scientific knowledge of the text.
34 Paul Ricoeur
Such is the balance between the genius of guessing and the

scientific character of validation which constitutes the modern
complement of the dialectic between verstehen and erkliiren.
At the same time, we are prepared to give an acceptable
meaning to the famous concept of a hermeneutical circle. Guess and
validation are in a sense circularly related as subjective and ob-
jective approaches to the text. But this circle is not a vicious
circularity. It would be vicious only if we were unable to escape
the kind of "self-confirmability" which, according to Hirsch,
threatens this relation between guess and validation. 9 To the
procedures of validation also belong procedures of invalidation
similar to the criteria of falsifibility emphasized by Karl Popper
in his Logic of Scientific Discovery. 10 The role of falsification is
played here by the conflict between competing interpretations.
An interpretation must be not only probable, but more probable
than another. There are criteria of relative superiority which
may easily be derived from the logic of subjective probability.
In conclusion, if it is true that there is always more than one
way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are
equal and may be assimilated to so-called "rules of thumb." 11
The text is a limited field of possible constructions. The logic
of validation allows us to move between the two limits of dogma-
tism and skepticism. It is always possible to argue for or against
an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate be-
tween them, and to seek an agreement-even if this agreement
remains beyond our reach.
To what extent is this dialectic between guessing and vali-
dating paradigmatic for the whole field of the human sciences?
That the meaning of human actions, of historical events, and
of social phenomena may be construed in several different ways
is well known by all experts in the human sciences. What is less
known and understood is that this methodological perplexity is
9. Hirsch, op. cit., p. 164 n.
10. Karl Popper, The Logic qf Scientific Discovery, New York, 1961.
II. Cf, Hirsch, op. cit., p. 203.
founded in the nature of the object itself and, moreover, that it
does not condemn the scientist to oscillate between dogmatism
and skepticism. As the logic of text-interpretation suggests, there
is a specific plurivocity belonging to the meaning of human action.
Human action, too, is a limited field of possible constructions.
A trait of human action which has not been emphasized in the
preceding analysis may provide an interesting link between the
specific plurivocity of the text and the analogical plurivocity of
human action. This trait concerns the relation between the
purposive and the motivational dimensions of action. As many
philosophers in the new field of "Action Theory" have shown,
the purposive character of an action is fully recognized when the
answer to the question what? is explained in terms of an answer
to the question why?! understand what you intended to do, if you are
able to explain to me why you did such and such an action. Now
what kinds of answer to the question "why?" make sense? Only
those answers which afford a motive understood as a reason for
. .. and not as a cause. And what is a reason for ... which
is not a cause? It is, in the language of Anscombe or A. I.
Melden, an expression or a phrase which allows us to con-
sider the action as this or that. 12 If you tell me that you did
this or that because of jealousy or in a spirit of revenge, you are
asking me to put your action in the light of this category of
feelings or dispositions. By the same token, you claim to make
sense with your action. You claim to make it understandable for
others and for yourself. This attempt is particularly helpful when
applied to what Anscombe calls the desirability-character of wanting.
Wants and beliefs have the character not only of being forces
which make people act in particular ways, but of making sense
because of the apparent good which is the correlate of their
desirability-character. I may have to answer the question, as
what do you want this? On the basis of these desirability-
characters and of the apparent goods which correspond to them,
I2. Cf. G. E. M. Anscombe, op. cit., and A. I. Melden, Free Action, London, I96I.
36 Paul Ricoeur
it is possible to argue about the meaning of an action, to argue for

or against this or that interpretation. In this way the account of
motives already foreshadows a logic of argumentation procedures.
Could we not say that what can be (and must be) construed in
human action is the motivational basis of this action, i.e., the set
of desirability-characters which may explain it? And could we
not say that the process of arguing linked to the explanation of
action by its motives unfolds a kind of plurivocity which makes
action similar to a text?
What seems to legitimate this extension from guessing the
meaning of a text to guessing the meaning of an action is that
in arguing about the meaning of an action I put my wants and
my beliefs at a distance and submit them to a concrete dialectic
of confrontation with opposite points of view. This way of
putting my action at a distance in order to make sense of my own
motives paves the way for the kind of distancing which occurs
with what we called the social inscription of human action and
to which we applied the metaphor of the "record." The same
actions which may be put into "records" and henceforth "re-
corded" may also be explained in different ways according to the
multivocity of the arguments applied to their motivational
background ..
If we are correct in extending to action the concept of "guess"
which we took as a synonym for verstehen, we may also extend to
the field of action the concept of "validation" in which we saw
an equivalent of erkliiren.
Here too, the modern theory of action provides us with an
intermediary link between the procedures of literary criticism
and those of the social sciences. Some thinkers have tried to
elucidate the way in which we impute actions to agents in the
light of the juridical procedures by which a judge or a tribunal
validates a decision concerning a contract or a crime. In a famous
article, "The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights," H. L. A.
Hart shows in a very convincing way that juridical reasoning
consists not at all in applying general laws to particular cases,
but always in construing uniquely referring decisions. 13 These
decisions terminate a careful refutation of the excuses and
defenses which could "defeat" the claim or the accusation. In
saying that human actions are fundamentally "defeasible" and
that juridical reasoning is an argumentative process which comes
to grips with the different ways of "defeating" a claim or an
accusation, Hart has paved the way for a general theory of
validation in which juridical reasoning would be the funda-
mental link between validation in literary criticism and vali-
dation in the social sciences. The intermediary function of ju-
ridical reasoning clearly shows that the procedures of validation
have a polemical character. Before the court, the plurivocity
common to texts and to actions is exhibited in the form of a
conflict of interpretations and the final interpretation appears
as a verdict to which it is possible to make appeal. Like legal
utterances, all interpretations in the field ofliterary criticism and
in the social sciences may be challenged, and the question "What
can defeat a claim?" is common to all argumentative situations.
But in the tribunal there is a moment when the procedures of
appeal are exhausted. This is because the decision of the judge is
implemented by the force of public power. Neither in literary
criticism, nor in the social sciences, is there such a last word. Or,
if there is any, we call it violence.
2. From Explanation to Understanding

The same dialectic between comprehension and understanding
may receive a new meaning if taken in the reverse way, from
explanation to understanding. This new Gestalt of the dialectic
proceeds from the nature of the referential function of the text.
This referential function, as we said, exceeds the mere ostensive
designation of the situation common to both speaker and hearer
in the dialogical situation. This abstraction from the surrounding
13. H. L. A. Hart, "The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights" Proceedings of
the Aristorelian Society, XXXIX (1948-49), 171-194.
38 Paul Ricoeur
world gives rise to two opposite attitudes. As readers, we may

either remain in a state of suspense about any kind of referred-to
world, or we may actualize the potential nonostensive references
of the text in a new situation, that of the reader. In the first case,
we treat the text as a worldless entity; in the second, we create a
new ostensive reference as a result of the kind of "execution"
which the art of reading implies. These two possibilities are
equally entailed by the act of reading, conceived as their dia-
lectical interplay.
The first way of reading is exemplified today by the different
structural schools of literary criticism. Their approach is not only
possible, but legitimate. It proceeds from the suspension, the
epocM, of the ostensive reference. To read in this way means to
prolong this suspension of the ostensive reference to the world,
and to transfer oneself into the "place" where the text stands
within the "enclosure" of this worldless place. According to this
choice, the text no longer has an outside, it has only an inside.
Once more, the very constitution of the text as text and of the
system of texts as literature justifies this conversion of the
literary thing into a closed system of signs, analogous to the kind
of closed system which phonology discovered at the root of all
discourse and which de Saussure called "la langue." Literature,
according to this working hypothesis, becomes an analogon of "la
langue."
On the basis of this abstraction, a new kind of explanatory
attitude may be extended to the literary object which, contrary
to the expectation of Dilthey, is no longer borrowed from the
natural sciences, i.e., from an area of knowledge alien to language
itself. The opposition between Natur and Geist is no longer
operative here. If some model is borrowed, it comes from the
same field, from the semiological field. It is henceforth possible
to treat texts according to the elementary rules which linguistics
successfully applied to the elementary systems of signs which
underlie the use of language. We have learned from the Geneva
school, the Prague school, and the Danish school that it is always
possible to abstract systems from processes and to relate these
systems-whether phonological, lexical, or syntactical-to units
which are defined solely by the opposition with other units of the
same system. This interplay of distinctive entities within finite
sets of such units defines the notion of structure in linguistics.
It is this structural model which is now applied to texts, i.e., to
sequences of signs longer than the sentence, which is the last kind
of unit that linguistics takes into account.
In his Structural Anthropology, Claude Levi-Strauss formulates
this working hypothesis for one category of texts, that of myths:
"Like every linguistic entity, the myth is made up of consti-
tutive units. These constitutive units imply the presence of those
which generally occur in the structures of language, namely
phonemes, morphemes, and semantemes. Each form differs from
the one which precedes it by a higher degree of complexity. For
this reason we will call the elements which properly belong to the
myth (and which are the most complex of all) : large constitutive
units." 14 By means of this working hypothesis the large units,
which are at least the same size as the sentence and which, put
together, form the narrative proper to the myth, can be treated
according to the same rules as the smallest units known to
linguistics. It is in order to insist on this likeness that Claude
Levi-Strauss speaks of my themes, just as we speak of phonemes,
morphemes, and semantemes. But in order to remain within the
limits of the analogy between mythemes and the lower level units,
the analysis of texts will have to perform the same sort of ab-
straction as that practiced by the phonologist. For the phonolo-
logist, the phoneme is not a concrete sound, in an absolute sense,
with its acoustic quality. It is not, in the words of de Saussure, a
"substance" but a "form"-an interplay of relations. Similarly,
a my theme is not one of the sentences of a myth, but an oppo-
sitional value attached to several individual sentences forming,
14. Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. C. Jacobson and B. G.
Schoepf, New York, 1963, pp. 210-211. [The translation of passages from Levi-
Strauss is that of Paul Ricoeur.-EDs.]
Paul Ricoeur
in Levi-Strauss's terms, a "bundle of relations" : "It is only in the

form of a combination of such bundles that the constitutive
units acquire a meaning-function." 15 What is here called a
meaning-function is not at all what the myth means, its philoso-
phical or existential content or intuition, but the arrangement,
the disposition of my themes-in short-the structure of the myth.
We can indeed say that we have explained a myth, but not
that we have interpreted it. We can, by means of structural
analysis, bring out the logic of it, the operations which relate the
bundles of relations among themselves. This logic constitutes "the
structural law of the myth under consideration."16 This law is
preeminently an object of reading and not at all an object of
speaking, in the sense of a reciting where the power of the myth
would be reenacted in a particular situation. Here the text is only
a text, because of the suspension of its meaning for us and the
postponement of all actualization by present speech.
I want now to show in what way "explanation" (erkliiren) re-
quires "understanding" (verstehen) and brings forth in a new way
the inner dialectic which constitutes "interpretation" as a whole.
As a matter of fact, nobody stops with a conception of myths
and narratives as formal as this algebra of constitutive units.
This can be shown in different ways. First, even in the most
formalized presentation of myths by Levi-Strauss, the units which
he calls "mythemes" are still expressed as sentences which bear
meaning and reference. Can anyone say that their meaning as
such is neutralized when they enter into the "bundle of relations"
which alone is taken into account by the "logic" of the myth?
Even this bundle of relations, in its turn, must be written in the
form of a sentence. Finally, the kind oflanguage game which the
whole system of oppositions and combinations embodies would
lack any kind of significance if the oppositions themselves-which,
according to Levi-Strauss, the myth tends to mediate-were not
meaningful oppositions concerning birth and death, blindness and
15. Ibid., p. 2 I I.
16. Ibid., p. 217.
lucidity, sexuality and truth. Without these existential conflicts

there would be no contradictions to overcome, no logical function
of the myth as an attempt to solve these contradictions. Structural
analysis does not exclude, but presupposes, the opposite hypo-
thesis concerning the myth, i.e., that it has a meaning as a
narrative of the origins. Structural analysis represses this function.
But it cannot suppress it altogether. The myth would not even
function as a logical operator if the propositions which it combines
did not point toward boundary situations. Structural analysis,
far from getting rid of this radical questioning, restores it at a level
of higher radicality.
If this is true, could we not say that the function of structural
analysis is to lead from a surface-semantics, that of the narrated
myth, to a depth-semantics, that of the boundary situations which
constitute the ultimate "referent" of the myth?
I really believe that if such were not the function of structural
analysis, it would be reduced to a sterile game, a divisive algebra,
and even the myth would be deprived of the function which
Levi-Strauss himself assigns to it, that of making men aware of
certain oppositions and of tending toward their progressive
mediation. To eliminate this reference to the aporias of existence
around which mythic thought gravitates would be to reduce the
theory of myth to the necrology of the meaningless discourses of
mankind. If, on the contrary, we consider structural analysis as a
stage-and a necessary one-between a naive interpretation and
a critical interpretation, between a surface-interpretation and a
depth-interpretation, then it would be possible to locate ex-
planation and understanding at two different stages of a unique
hermeneutical arc. It is this depth-semantics which constitutes the
genuine object of understanding and which requires a specific
affinity between the reader and the kind of things the text is
about.
But we must not be misled by this notion of personal affinity.
The depth-semantics of the text is not what the author intended
to say, but what the text is about, i.e., the nonostensive reference
Paul Ricoeur
of the text. And the nonostensive reference of the text is the kind
of world opened up by the depth-semantics of the text.
Therefore what we want to understand is not something
hidden behind the text, but something disclosed infront of it. What
has to be understood is not the initial situation of discourse, but
what points toward a possible world. Understanding has less than
ever to do with the author and his situation. It wants to grasp
the world-propositions opened up by the reference of the text.
To understand a text is to follow its movement from sense to
reference, from what it says to what it talks about. In this
process the mediating role played by structural analysis consti-
tutes both the justification of the objective approach and the
rectification of the subjective approach. We are definitely pre-
vented from identifying understanding with some kind of
intuitive grasping of the intention underlying the text. What we
have said about the depth-semantics which structural analysis
yields invites us rather to think of the sense of the text as an
injunction starting from the text, as a new way of looking at
things, as an injunction to think in a certain manner.
Such is the reference born by the depth-semantics. The text
speaks of a possible world and of a possible way of orientating
oneself within it. The dimensions ofthis world are properly opened
up by, disclosed by, the text. Disclosure is the equivalent for written
language of ostensive reference for spoken language.
Therefore, if we preserve the language of Romantic herme-
neutics, when it speaks of overcoming the distance, of making
"one's own," of appropriating, what was distant, other, foreign,
it will be at the price of an important corrective. That which we
make our own (Aneignung), that which we appropriate, is not a
foreign experience, but the power of disclosing a world which
constitutes the reference of the text.
This link between disclosure and appropriation is, to my mind,
the cornerstone of a hermeneutics which would claim both to
overcome the shortcomings of historicism and to remain faithful
to the original intention of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics. To
understand an author better than he could understand himself
is to display the power of disclosure implied in his discourse
beyond the limited horizon of his own existential situation. The
process of distancing, of atemporalization, to which we connected
the phase of Erkliirung, is the fundamental presupposition for this
enlarging of the horizon of the text.
This second figure, or Gestalt, of the dialectic between ex-
planation and comprehension has a strong paradigmatic character
which holds for the whole field of the human sciences. I want to
emphasize three points in this connection.
First, the structural model, taken as a paradigm for explana-
tion, may be extended beyond textual entities to all social
phenomena because it is not limited in its application to linguistic
signs, but applies to all kinds of signs which are analogous to
linguistic signs. The intermediary link between the model of the
text and social phenomena is constituted by the notion of semi-
ological systems. A linguistic system, from the point of view of
semiology, is only a species within the semiotic genre, although
this species has the privilege of being a paradigm for the other
species of the genre. We can say therefore that a structural model
of explanation can be generalized to all social phenomena which
may be said to have a semiological character, i.e., to the extent
that it is possible to define the typical relations of a semiological
system at their level. These relations include the general relation
between code and message, relations among the specific units of
the code, the relation between signifier and signified, the typical
relation within and among social messages, the structure of
communication as an exchange of messages, and so forth.
Inasmuch as the semiological model holds, the semiotic or
symbolic function, i.e., the function of substituting signs for
things and of representing things by the means of signs, appears
to be more than a mere effect in social life. It is its very founda-
tion. In terms of this generalized function of the semiotic, we
should have to say not only that the symbolic function is social,
but that social reality is fundamentally symbolic.
44 Paul Ricoeur
If we follow this suggestion, then the kind of explanation

which is implied by the structural model appears to be quite
different from the classical causal model, especially if causation
is interpreted in Humean terms as a regular sequence of ante-
cedents and consequents with no inner logical connection be-
tween them. Structural systems imply relations of a quite
different kind, correlative rather than sequential or consecutive.
If this is true, the classical debate about motives and causes
which has plagued the theory of action these last decades loses
its importance. If the search for correlations within semiotic
systems is the main task of explanation, then we have to re-
formulate the problem of motivation in social groups in new
terms. But it is not the aim of this paper to develop this impli-
cation.
Secondly, the second paradigmatic factor in our previous
concept of text-interpretation proceeds from the role which we
assigned to depth-semantics between structural analysis and
appropriation. This mediating function of depth-semantics must
not be overlooked, since it underlies the appropriation's loss of a
phychological and subjective character and its reception of a
genuine epistemological function.
Is there something similar to the depth-semantics of a text in
social phenomena?
I should tend to say that the search for correlations within and
between social phenomena treated as semiotic entities would
lose importance and interest if it would not yield something like
a depth-semantics. In the same way that linguistic games are
forms of life, according to the famous aphorism of Wittgenstein,
social structures are also attempts to cope with existential perple-
xities, human predicaments, and deep-rooted conflicts. In this
sense, these structures, too, have a referential dimension. They
point toward the aporias of social existence, the same aporias
around which mythical thought gravitates. And this analogical
function of reference develops traits very similar to what we have
called the nonostensive reference of a text, i.e., the display of a
Welt which is no longer an Umwelt, the projection of a world
which is more than a situation. May we not say that in social
science we also proceed from naive interpretations to critical
interpretations, from surface-interpretations to depth-inter-
pretations, through structural analysis? But it is depth-interpre-
tation which gives meaning to the whole process.
This last remark leads us to our third and final point.
If we follow the paradigm of the dialectic between explanation
and understanding to its end, we must say that the meaningful
patterns which a depth-interpretation wants to grasp cannot be
understood without a kind of personal commitment similar to
that of the reader who grasps the depth-semantics of the text
and makes it his "own." Everybody knows the objections to
which an extension of the concept of appropriation to the social
sciences is exposed. Does it not legitimate the intrusion of
personal prejudices, of subjective bias, into the field of scientific
inquiry? Does it not introduce all the paradoxes of the herme-
neutical circle into the human sciences? In other words, does not
the paradigm of disclosure plus appropriation destroy the very
concept of a human science? The way in which we introduced this
pair of terms within the framework of text-interpretation provides
us not only with a paradigmatic problem, but with a paradig-
matic solution.
This solution is not to deny the role of personal commitment
in understanding human phenomena, but to qualify it.
As the model of text-interpretation shows, understanding has
nothing to do with an immediate grasping of another's psychic
life or with an emotional identification with a mental intention.
Understanding is entirely mediated by the whole of explanatory
procedures which precede it and accompany it. The counterpart
of this personal appropriation is not something which can be
felt, it is the dynamic meaning released by the explanation which
we identified earlier with the reference of the text, i.e., its power
of disclosing a world.
The paradigmatic character of text-interpretation must be
Paul Ricoeur
followed to this ultimate implication. This means that the con-

ditions of an authentic appropriation, as they are displayed in
relation to texts, are themselves paradigmatic. Therefore we are
not allowed to exclude the final act of personal commitment
from the whole of objective and explanatory procedures which
mediate it.
This qualification of the notion of personal commitment does
not eliminate the "hermeneutical circle." This circle remains an
insuperable structure of knowledge when it is applied to human
things, but such a qualification prevents it from becoming a
vicious circle.
Ultimately, the correlation between explanation and under-
standing, between understanding and explanation, is the
hermeneutical circle.
Charles Taylor
INTERPRETATION AND THE

SCIENCES OF MAN*
Is there a sense in which interpretation is essential to explanation

in the sciences of man? The view that it is, that there is an
unavoidably "hermeneutical" component in the sciences of man,
goes back to Dilthey. But recently the question has come again
to the fore, for instance, in the work of Gadamer, 1 in Ricoeur's
interpretation of Freud,2 and in the writings of Habermas. 3
Interpretation, in the sense relevant to hermeneutics, is an
attempt to make clear, to make sense of an object of study. This
object must, therefore, be a text, or a text-analogue, which in
some way is confused, incomplete, cloudy, seemingly contra-
dictory-in one way or another, unclear. The interpretation aims
to bring to light an underlying coherence or sense.
This means that any science which can be called "hermeneu-
tical," even in an extended sense, must be dealing with one or
another of the confusingly interrelated forms of meaning. Let us
try to see a little more clearly what this involves.
I) We need, first an object or field of objects, about which we
* I have greatly benefited in preparing this paper from discussions held under the
auspices of the Study Group for the Unity of Knowledge, whose meetings were
supported by the Ford Foundation.
I. Cf. e.g., H. G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Tiibingen, 1960.
2. Cf. Paul Ricoeur, De ['interpretation, Paris. 1965.
3. Cf. e.g., J. Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse, Frankfurt, 1968.
Charles Taylor
can speak in terms of coherence or its absence, of making sense

or nonsense.
2) Second, we need to be able to make a distinction, even if
only a relative one, between the sense or coherence made, and its
embodiment in a particular field of carriers or signifiers. For
otherwise, the task of making clear what is fragmentary or con-
fused would be radically impossible. No sense could be given to
this idea. We have to be able to make for our interpretations
claims of the order: the meaning confusedly present in this text or
text-analogue is clearly expressed here. The meaning, in other
words, is one which admits of more than one expression, and, in
this sense, a distinction must be possible between meaning and
expression.
The point of the above qualification, that this distinction may
be only relative, is that there are cases where no clear, unambigu-
ous, nonarbitrary line can be drawn between what is said and its
expression. It can be plausibly argued (I think convincingly
although there isn't space to go into it here) that this is the normal
and fundamental condition of meaningful expression, that exact
synonymy, or equivalence of meaning, is a rare and localized
achievement of specialized languages or uses of civilization. But
this, if true (and I think it is), doesn't do away with the distinc-
tion between meaning and expression. Even if there is an im-
portant sense in which a meaning re-expressed in a new medium
can not be declared identical, this by no means entails that we
can give no sense to the project of expressing a meaning in a new
way. It does of course raise an interesting and difficult question
about what can be meant by expressing it in a clearer way: what
is the "it" which is clarified if equivalence is denied? I hope to
return to this in examining interpretation in the sciences of man.
Hence the object of a science of interpretation must be de-
scribable in terms of sense and nonsense, coherence and its
absence; and must admit of a distinction between meaning and
its expression.
3) There is also a third condition it must meet. We can speak
INTERPRETATION AND THE SCIENCES OF MAN 49
of sense or coherence, and of their different embodiments, in
connection with such phenomena as gestalts, or patterns in rock
formations, or snow crystals, where the notion of expression has
no real warrant. What is lacking here is the notion of a subject
for whom these meanings are. Without such a subject, the choice
of criteria of sameness and difference, the choice among the
different forms of coherence which can be identified in a given
pattern, among the different conceptual fields in which it can
be seen, is arbitrary.
In a text or text-analogue, on the other hand, we are trying to
make explicit the meaning expressed, and this means expressed
by or for a subject or subjects. The notion of expression refers us
to that of a subject. The identification of the subject is by no
means necessarily unproblematical, as we shall see further on; it
may be one of the most difficult problems, an area in which
prevailing epistemological prejudice may blind us to the nature
of our object of study. I think this has been the case, as I will
show below. And moreover, the identification of a subject does
not assure us of a clear and absolute distinction between meaning
and expression as we saw above. But any such distinction, even
a relative one, is without any anchor at all, is totally arbitrary,
without appeal to a subject.
The object ofa science of interpretation must thus have: sense,
distinguishable from its expression, which is for or by a subject.
11
Before going on to see in what way, if any, these conditions are

realized in the sciences of man, I think it would be useful to set
out more clearly what rides on this question, why it matters
whether or not we think of the sciences of man as hermeneutical,
what the issue is at stake here.
The issue here is at root an epistemological one. But it is
inextricable from an ontological one, and, hence, cannot but be
relevant to our notions of science and of the proper conduct of
Charles Taylor
inquiry. We might say that it is an ontological issue which has

been argued ever since the seventeenth century in terms of
epistemological considerations which have appeared to some to
be unanswerable.
The case could be put in these terms: what are the criteria of
judgment in a hermeneutical science? A successful interpretation
is one which makes clear the meaning originally present in a con-
fused, fragmentary, cloudy form. But how does one know that
this interpretation is correct? Presumably because it makes sense
of the original text: what is strange, mystifying, puzzling, contra-
dictory is no longer so, is accounted for. The interpretation appeals
throughout to our understanding of the "language" of ex-
pression, which understanding allows us to see that this expression
is puzzling, that it is in contradiction to that other, etc., and
that these difficulties are cleared up when the meaning is ex-
pressed in a new way.
But this appeal to our understanding seems to be crucially
inadequate. What if someone does not "see" the adequacy of our
interpretation, does not accept our reading? We try to show him
how it makes sense of the original non- or partial sense. But for
him to follow us he must read the original language as we do, he
must recognize these expressions as puzzling in a certain way, and
hence be looking for a solution to our problem. If he does not,
what can we do? The answer, it would seem, can only be more of
the same. We have to show him through the reading of other
expressions why this expression must be read in the way we pro-
pose. But success here requires that he follow us in these other
readings, and so on, it would seem, potentially forever. We cannot
escape an ultimate appeal to a common understanding of the
expressions, of the "language" involved. This is one way of trying
to express what has been called the "hermeneutical circle." What
we are trying to establish is a certain reading of text or expressions,
and what we appeal to as our grounds for this reading can only be
other readings. The circle can also be put in terms of part-whole
relations: we are trying to establish a reading for the whole text,
and for this we appeal to readings of its partial expressions; and

yet because we are dealing with meaning, with making sense,
where expressions only make sense or not in relation to others, the
readings of partial expressions depend on those of others, and
ultimately of the whole.
Put in forensic terms, as we started to do above, we can only
convince an interlocutor if at some point he shares our under-
standing of the language concerned. If he does not, there is no
further step to take in rational argument; we can try to awaken
these intuitions in him, or we can simply give up; argument will
advance us no further. But of course the forensic predicament can
be transferred into my own judging: if I am this ill-equipped to
convince a stubborn interlocutor, how can I convince myself? how
can I be sure? Maybe my intuitions are wrong or distorted,
maybe I am locked into a circle of illusion.
Now one, and perhaps the only sane response to this would
be to say that such uncertainty is an ineradicable part of our
epistemological predicament. That even to characterize it as
"uncertainty" is to adopt an absurdly severe criterion of
"certainty," which deprives the concept of any sensible use. But
this has not been the only or even the main response of our
philosophical tradition. And it is another response which has had
an important and far-reaching effect on the sciences of man. The
demand has been for a level of certainty which can only be
attained by breaking beyond the circle.
There are two ways in which this break-out has been envisaged.
The first might be called the "rationalist" one and could be
thought to reach a culmination in Hegel. It does not involve a
negation of intuition, or of our understanding of meaning, but
rather aspires to attainment of an understanding of such clarity
that it would carry with it the certainty of the undeniable. In
Hegel's case, for instance, our full understanding of the whole in
"thought" carries with it a grasp of its inner necessity, such that
we see how it could not be otherwise. No higher grade of certainty
is conceivable. For this aspiration the word "break-out" is badly
52 Charles Taylor
chosen; the aim is rather to bring understanding to an inner

clarity which is absolute.
The other way, which we can call "empiricist," is a genuine
attempt to go beyond the circle of our own interpretations, to get
beyond subjectivity. The attempt is to reconstruct knowledge in
such a way that there is no need to make final appeal to readings
or judgments which can not be checked further. That is why the
basic building block of knowledge on this view is the impression,
or sense-datum, a unit of information which is not the deliverance
of a judgment, which has by definition no element in it of reading
or interpretation, which is a brute datum. The highest ambition
would be to build our knowledge from such building blocks by
judgments which could be anchored in a certainty beyond sub-
jective intuition. This is what underlies the attraction of the
notion of the association of ideas, or if the same procedure is
viewed as a method, induction. If the original acquisition of the
units of information is not the fruit ofjudgment or interpretation,
then the constatation that two such elements occur together need
not either be the fruit of interpretation, of a reading or intuition
which cannot be checked. For if the occurrence of a single ele-
ment is a brute datum, then so is the co-occurrence of two such
elements. The path to true knowledge would then repose crucially
on the correct recording of such co-occurrences.
This is what lies behind an ideal of verification which is central
to an important tradition in the philosophy of science, whose
main contemporary protagonists are the logical empiricists.
Verification must be grounded ultimately in the acquisition of
brute data. By "brute data," I mean here and throughout data
whose validity cannot be questioned by offering another interpre-
tation or reading, data whose credibility cannot be founded or
undetermined by further reasoning. 4 If such a difference of in-
4. The notion of brute data here has some relation to, but is not at all the same
as the "brute facts" discussed by Elizabeth Anscombe, "On Brute Facts," Anarysis,
v. 18, 1957-1958, pp. 69-72, and John Searle, Speech Acts, Cambridge, 1969, pp.
50-53. For Anscombe and Searle, brute facts are contrasted to what may be called
"institutional facts", to use Searle's term, i.e., facts which presuppose the existence
terpretation can arise over given data, then it must be possible
to structure the argument so as to distinguish the basic, brute
data from the inferences made on the basis of them.
The inferences themselves, of course, to be valid, must similarly,
be beyond the challenge of a rival interpretation. Here the logical
empiricists added to the armory of traditional empiricism, which
set great store by the method of induction, the whole domain of
logical and mathematical inference which had been central to the
rationalist position (with Leibniz at least, although not with
Hegel), and which offered another brand of unquestionable
certainty.
Of course, mathematical inference and empirical verification
were combined in such a way that two theories or more could be
verified of the same domain of facts. But this was a consequence
to which logical empiricism was willing to accommodate itself.
As for the surplus meaning in a theory which could not be rigor-
ously co-ordinated with brute data, it was considered to be quite
outside the logic of verification.
As a theory of perception, this epistemology gave rise to all
sorts of problems, not least of which was the perpetual threat of
skepticism and solipsism inseparable from a conception of the
basic data of knowledge as brute data, beyond investigation. As a
theory of perception, however, it seems largely a thing ofthe past,
in spite of a surprising recrudescence in the Anglo-Saxon world
in the 'thirties and 'forties. But there is no doubt that it goes
marching on, among other places, as a theory of how the human
mind and human knowledge actually function.
In a sense, the contemporary period has seen a better, more
rigorous statement of what this epistemology is about in the form
of computer-influenced theories of intelligence. These try to
model intelligence as consisting of operations on machine-recog-
of certain institutions. Voting would be an example. But, as we shall see below in
part II, some institutional facts, such as X's having voted Liberal, can be verified
as brute data in the sense used here, and thus find a place in the category of political
behavior. What cannot as easily be described in terms of brute data are the institu-
tions themselves. Cf. the discussion below in part II.
54 Charles Taylor
nizable input which could themselves be matched by programs

which could be run on machines. The machine criterion provides
us with our assurance against an appeal to intuition or interpre-
tations which cannot be understood by fully explicit procedures
operating on brute data-the input. 5
The progress of natural science has lent great credibility to this
epistemology, since it can be plausibly reconstructed on this
model, as for instance has been done by the logical empiricists.
And, of course, the temptation has been overwhelming to recon-
struct the sciences of man on the same model; or rather to launch
them in lines of inquiry that fit this paradigm, since they are
constantly said to be in their "infancy." Psychology, where an
earlier vogue of behaviorism is being replaced by a boom of
computer-based models, is far from the only case.
The form this epistemological bias-one might say obsession-
takes is different for different sciences. Later I would like to look
at a particular case, the study of politics, where the issue can
be followed out. But in general, the empiricist orientation must
be hostile to a conduct of inquiry which is based on interpre-
tation, and which encounters the hermeneutical circle as this
was characterized above. This cannot meet the requirements of
intersubjective, non-arbitrary verification which it considers es-
sential to science. And along with the epistemological stance goes
the ontological belief that reality must be susceptible to under-
standing and explanation by science so understood. From this
follows a certain set of notions of what the sciences of man
must be.
On the other hand, many, including myself, would like to
argue that these notions about the sciences of man are sterile, that
we cannot come to understand important dimensions of human
life within the bounds set by this epistemological orientation. This
dispute is of course familiar to all in at least some of its ramifi-
5. cr. discussion in M. Minsky, Computation, Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1967, pp.
104-107, where Minsky explicitly argues that an effective procedure, which no
longer requires intuition or interpretation, is one which can be realized by a machine.
cations. What I want to claim is that the issue can be fruitfully posed
in terms of the notion of interpretation as I began to outline it
above.
I think this way of putting the question is useful because it
allows us at once to bring to the surface the powerful epistemo-
logical beliefs which underlie the orthodox view of the sciences of
man in our academy, and to make explicit the notion of our
epistemological predicament implicit in the opposing thesis. This
is in fact rather more way-out and shocking to the tradition of
scientific thought than is often admitted or realized by the op-
ponents of narrow scientism. It may not strengthen the case of the
opposition to bring out fully what is involved in a hermeneutical
science as far as convincing waverers is concerned, but a gain in
clarity is surely worth a thinning of the ranks-at least in philoso-
phy.
111
Before going on to look at the case of political science, it might
be worth asking another question: why should we even pose the
question whether the sciences of man are hermeneutical? What
gives us the idea in the first place that men and their actions con-
stitute an object or a series of objects which meet the conditions
outlined above?
The answer is that on the phenomenological level or that of
ordinary speech (and the two converge for the purposes of this
argument) a certain notion of meaning has an essential place in
the characterization of human behavior. This is the sense in
which we speak of a situation, an action, a demand, a prospect
having a certain meaning for a person.
Now it is frequently thought that "meaning" is used here in
a sense which is a kind of illegitimate extension from the motion
oflinguistic meaning. Whether it can be considered an extension
or not is another matter; it certainly differs from linguistic
meaning. But it would be very hard to argue that it is an ille-
gitimate use of the term.
Charles Taylor
When we speak of the "meaning" of a given predicament, we

are using a concept which has the following articulation. a)
Meaning is for a subject: it is not the meaning of the situation in
vacuo, but its meaning for a subject, a specific subject, a group of
subjects, or perhaps what its meaning is for the human subject as
such (even though particular humans might be reproached with
not admitting or realizing this). b) Meaning is of something;
that is, we can distinguish between a given element-situation,
action, or whatever-and its meaning. But this is not to say that
they are physically separable. Rather we are dealing with two
descriptions of the element, in one of which it is characterized in
terms of its meaning for the subject. But the relations between
the two descriptions are not symmetrical. For, on the one hand,
the description in terms of meaning cannot be unless descriptions
of the other kind apply as well; or put differently, there can be
no meaning without a substrate. But on the other hand, it may
be that the same meaning may be borne by another substrate-
e.g., a situation with the same meaning may be realized in
different physical conditions. There is a necessary role for a
potentially substitutable substrate; or all meanings are of
something.
And thirdly, c) things only have meaning in a field, that is, in
relation to the meanings of other things. This means that there
is no such thing as a single, unrelated meaningful element; and
it means that changes in the other meanings in the field ca n
involve changes in the given element. Meanings can't be identified
except in relation to others, and in this way resemble words. The
meaning of a word depends, for instance, on those words with
which it contrasts, on those which define its place in the language
(e.g., those defining "determinable" dimensions, like color,
shape), on those which define the activity or "language game"
it figures in (describing, invoking, establishing communion), and
so on. The relations between meanings in this sense are like those
between concepts in a semantic field.
Just as our color concepts are given their meaning by the field
of contrast they set up together, so that the introduction of new
concepts will alter the boundaries of others, so the various
meanings that a subordinate's demeanor can have for US, as
deferential, respectful, cringing, mildly mocking, ironical, in-
solent, provoking, downright rude, are established by a field of
contrast; and as with finer discrimination on our part, or a more
sophisticated culture, new possibilities are born, so other terms
of this range are altered. And as the meaning of our terms "red,"
"blue," "green" is fixed by the definition of a field of contrast
through the determinable term "color," so all these alternative
demeanors are only available in a society which has, among other
types, hierarchical relations of power and command. And corre-
sponding to the underlying language game of designating colored
objects is the set of social practices which sustain these hier-
archical structures and are fulfilled in them.
Meaning in this sense-let us call it experiential meaning-
thus is for a subject, of something, in a field. This distinguishes
it from linguistic meaning which has a four and not three-
dimensional structure. Linguistic meaning is for subjects and in
a field, but it is the meaning of signifiers and it is about a world of
referents. Once we are clear about the likenesses and differences,
there should be little doubt that the term "meaning" is not a
misnomer, the product of an illegitimate extension into this
context of experience and behavior.
There is thus a quite legitimate notion of meaning which we
use when we speak of the meaning of a situation for an agent. And
that this concept has a place is integral to our ordinary conscious-
ness and hence speech about our actions. Our actions are ordina-
rily characterized by the purpose sought and explained by
desires, feelings, emotions. But the language by which we desrcibe
our goals, feelings, desires is also a definition of the meaning
things have for us. The vocabulary defining meaning-words
like "terrifying," "attractive"-is linked with that describing
feeling-"fear," "desire"-and that describing goals-"safety,"
"possession.' '
58 Charles Taylor
Moreover, our understanding of these terms moves inescapably

in a hermeneutical circle. An emotion term like "shame," for
instance, essentially refers us to a certain kind of situation, the
"shameful," or "humiliating," and a certain mode of response,
that of hiding oneself, of covering up, or else "wiping out" the
blot. That is, it is essential to this feeling's being identified as
shame that it be related to this situation and give rise to this type
of disposition. But this situation in its turn can only be identified
in relation to the feelings which it provokes; and the disposition
is to a goal which can similarly not be understood without
reference to the feelings experienced: the "hiding" in question
is one which will cover up my shame; it is not the same as hiding
from an armed pursuer; we can only understand what is meant
by "hiding" here if we understand what kind of feeling and
situation is being talked about. We have to be within the circle.
An emotion term like "shame" can only be explained by
reference to other concepts which in turn cannot be understood
without reference to shame. To understand these concepts we
have to be in on a certain experience, we have to understand a
certain language, not just of words, but also a certain language
of mutual action and communication, by which we blame, exhort,
admire, esteem each other. In the end we are in on this because
we grow up in the ambit of certain common meanings. But we
can often experience what it is like to be on the outside when we
encounter the feeling, action, and experiential meaning language
of another civilization. Here there is no translation, no way of
explaining in other, more accessible concepts. We can only catch
on by getting somehow into their way of life, if only in imagi-
nation. Thus if we look at human behavior as action done out of
a background of desire, feeling, emotion, then we are looking at a
reality which must be characterized in terms of meaning. But
does this mean that it can be the object of a hermeneutical science
as this was outlined above?
There are, to remind ourselves, three characteristics that the
object of a science of interpretation has: it must have sense or
coherence; this must be distinguishable from its expression, and
this sense must be for a subject.
Now insofar as we are talking about behavior as action, hence
in terms of meaning, the category of sense or coherence must
apply to it. This is not to say that all behavior must "make sense,"
if we mean by this be rational, avoid contradiction, confusion of
purpose, and the like. Plainly a great c;l.eal of our action falls short
of this goal. But in another sense, even contradictory, irrational
action is "made sense of," when we understand why it was
engaged in. We make sense of action when there is a coherence
between the actions of the agent and the meaning of his situation
for him. We find his action puzzling until we find such a co-
herence. It may not be bad to repeat that this coherence in no
way implies that the action is rational: the meaning of a situation
for an agent may be full of confusion and contradiction; but the
adequate depiction of this contradiction makes sense of it.
Making sense in this way through coherence of meaning and
action, the meanings of action and situation, cannot but move in
a hermeneutical circle. Our conviction that the account makes
sense is contingent on our reading of action and situation. But
these readings cannot be explained or justified except by refer-
ence to other such readings, and their relation to the whole. If
an interlocutor does not understand this kind of reading, or will
not accept it as valid, there is nowhere else the argument can go.
Ultimately, a good explanation is one which makes sense of the
behavior; but then to appreciate a good explanation, one has to
agree on what makes good sense; what makes good sense is a
function of one's readings; and these in turn are based on the
kind of sense one understands.
But how about the second characteristic, that sense should be
distinguishable from its embodiment? This is necessary for a
science of interpretation because interpretation lays a claim to
make a confused meaning clearer; hence there must be some
sense in which the "same" meaning is expressed, but differently.
This immediately raises a difficulty. In talking of experiential
60 Charles Taylor
meaning above, I mentioned that we can distinguish between

a given element and its meaning, between meaning and substrate.
This carried the claim that a given meaning may be realized in
another substrate. But does this mean that we can always embody
the same meaning in another situation? Perhaps there are some
situations, standing before death, for instance, which have a
meaning which can't be embodied otherwise.
But fortunately this difficult question is irrelevant for our
purposes. For here we have a case in which the analogy between
text and behavior implicit in the notion of a hermeneutical
science of man only applies with important modifications. The
text is replaced in the interpretation by another text, one which
is clearer. The text-analogue of behavior is not replaced by
another such text-analogue. When this happens we have revo-
lutionary theatre, or terroristic acts designed to make propaganda
of the deed, in which the hidden relations of a society are suppo-
sedly shown up in a dramatic confrontation. But this is not
scientific understanding, even though it may perhaps be based
on such understanding, or claim to be.
But in science the text-analogue is replaced by a text, an
account. Which might prompt the question, how we can even
begin to talk of interpretation here, of expressing the same
meaning more clearly, when we have two such utterly different
terms of comparison, a text and a tract of behavior? Is the whole
thing not just a bad pun?
This question leads us to open up another aspect of experiential
meaning which we abstracted from earlier. Experiential meanings
are defined in fields of contrast, as words are in semantic fields.
But what was not mentioned above is that these two kinds of
definition aren't independent of each other. The range of human
desires, feelings, emotions, and hence meanings is bound up with
the level and type of culture, which in turn is inseparable from
the distinctions and categories marked by the language people
speak. The field of meanings in which a given situation can find
its place is bound up with the semantic field of the terms charac-
terizing these meanings and the related feelings, desires, pre-

dicaments.
But the relationship involved here is not a simple one. There
are two simple types of models of relation which could be offered
here, but both are inadequate. We could think of the feeling
vocabulary as simply describing pre-existing feelings, as marking
distinctions which would be there without them. But this is not
adequate because we often experience in ourselves or others how
achieving, say, a more sophisticated vocabulary of the emotions
makes our emotional life more sophisticated and not just our
descriptions of it. Reading a good, powerful novel may give me the
picture of an emotion which I had not previously been aware of.
But we can't draw a neat line between an increased ability to
identify and an altered ability to feel emotions which this enables.
The other simple inadequate model of the relationship is to
jump from the above to the conclusion that thinking makes it so.
But this clearly won't do either, since not just any new definition
can be forced on us, nor can we force it on ourselves; and some
which we do gladly take up can be judged inauthentic, or in bad
faith, or just wrong-headed by others. These judgments may be
wrong, but they are not in principle illicit. Rather we make an
effort to be lucid about ourselves and our feelings, and admire
a man who achieves this.
Thus, neither the simple correspondence view is correct, nor
the view that thinking makes it so. But both have prima facie
warrant. There is such a thing as self-lucidity, which points us
to a correspondence view; but the achievement of such lucidity
means moral change, that is, it changes the object known. At
the same time, error about oneself is not just an absence of corre-
spondence; it is also in some form inauthenticity, bad faith, self-
delusion, repression of one's human feelings, or something of the
kind; it is a matter of the quality of what is felt just as much as
what is known about this, just as self-knowledge is.
H this is so, then we have to think of man as a self-interpreting
animal. He is necessarily so, for there is no such thing as the
Charles Taylor
structure of meanings for him independently of his interpretation

of them; for one is woven into the other. But then the text of our
interpretation is not that heterogeneous from what is interpreted;
for what is interpreted is itself an interpretation; a self-interpreta-
tion which is embedded in a stream of action. It is an interpre-
tation of experiential meaning which contributes to the con-
stitution of this meaning. Or to put it in another way: that of
which we are trying to find the coherence is itself partly con-
stituted by self-interpretation.
Our aim is to replace this confused, incomplete, partly erro-
neous self-interpretation by a correct one. And in doing this we
look not only to the self-interpretation but to the stream of
behavior in which it is set; just as in interpreting a historical
document we have to place it in the stream of events which it
relates to. But of course the analogy is not exact, for here we are
interpreting the interpretation and the stream of behavior in
which it is set together, and not just one or the other.
There is thus no utter heterogeneity of interpretation to what
it is about; rather there is a slide in the notion of interpretation.
Already to be a living agent is to experience one's situation in
terms of certain meanings; and this in a sense can be thought of
as a sort ofproto-"interpretation." This is in turn interpreted and
shaped by the language in which the agent lives these meanings.
This whole is then at a third level interpreted by the explanation
we proffer of his actions.
In this way the second condition of a hermeneutical science
is met. But this account poses in a new light the question mention-
ed at the beginning: whether the interpretation can ever express
the same meaning as the interpreted. And in this case, there is
clearly a way in which the two will not be congruent. For if the
explanation is really clearer than the lived interpretation then it
will be such that it would alter in some way the behavior if it
came to be internalized by the agent as his self-interpretation.
In this way a hermeneutical science which achieves its goal, that
is, attains greater clarity than the immediate understanding of
INTERPRETATION AND THE SCIENCES OF MAN
agent or observer, must offer us an interpretation which is in

this way crucially out of phase with the explicandum.
Thus, human behavior seen as action of agents who desire and
are moved, who have goals and aspirations, necessarily offers a
purchase for descriptions in terms of meaning-what I have
called "experiential meaning." The norm of explanation which it
posits is one which "makes sense" of the behavior, which shows
a coherence of meaning. This "making sense of" is the proferring
of an interpretation; and we have seen that what is interpreted
meets the conditions of a science of interpretation: first, that we
can speak of its sense or coherence; and second, that this sense
can be expressed in another form, so that we can speak of the
interpretation as giving clearer expression to what is only implicit
in the explicandum. The third condition, that this sense be for a
subject, is obviously met in this case, although who this subject
is is by no means an unproblematical question as we shall see
later on.
This should be enough to show that there is a good prima
facie case to the effect that men and their actions are amenable
to explanation of a hermeneutical kind. There is, therefore, some
reason to raise the issue and challenge the epistemological
orientation which would rule interpretation out of the sciences of
man. A great deal more must be said to bring out what is involved
in the hermeneutical sciences of man. But before getting on to
this, it might help to clarify the issue with a couple of examples
drawn from a specific field, that of politics.
II
In politics, too, the goal of a verifiable science has led to the

concentration on features which can supposedly be identified in
abstraction from our understanding or not understanding ex-
periential meaning. These-let us call them brute data identi-
Charles Taylor
fications-are what supposedly enable us to break out from the

hermeneutical circle and found our science four square on a
verification procedure which meets the requirements of the
empiricist tradition.
But in politics the search for such brute data has not gone to
the lengths which it has in psychology, where the object of
science has been thought of by many as behavior qua "colorless
movement," or as machine-recognizable properties. The tenden-
cy in politics has been to stop with something less basic, but-so
it is thought-the identification of which cannot be challenged
by the offering of another interpretation or reading of the data
concerned. This is what is referred to as "behavior" in the
rhetoric of political scientists, but it has not the rock bottom
quality of its psychological homonym. .
Political behavior includes what we would ordinarily call
actions, but ones that are supposedly brute data identifiable.
How can this be so? Well, actions are usually described by the
purpose or end-state realized. But the purposes of some actions
can be specified in what might be thought to be brute data
terms; some actions, for instance, have physical end-states, like
getting the car in the garage or climbing the mountain. Others
have end-states which are closely tied by institutional rules to
some unmistakable physical movement; thus, when I raise my
hand in the meeting at the appropriate time, I am voting for the
motion. The only questions we can raise about the corresponding
actions, given such movements or the realization of such end-
states, are whether the agent was aware of what he was doing,
was acting as against simply emitting reflex behavior, knew the
institutional significance of his movement, etc. Any worries on
this score generally turn out to be pretty artificial in the contexts
political scientists are concerned with; and where they do arise
they can be checked by relatively simple devices, e.g., asking the
subject: did you mean to vote for the motion?
Hence, it would appear that there are actions which can be
identified beyond fear of interpretative dispute; and this is what
gives the foundation for the category of "political behavior."

Thus, there are some acts of obvious political relevance which can
be specified thus in physical terms, such as killing, sending tanks
into the streets, seizing people and confining them to cells; and
there is an immense range of others which can be specified from
physical acts by institutional rules, such as voting for instance.
These can be the object of a science of politics which can hope to
meet the stringent requirements of verification. The latter class
particularly has provided matter for study in recent decades-
most notably in the case of voting studies.
But of course a science of politics confined to such acts would
be much too narrow. For on another level these actions also have
meaning for the agents which is not exhausted in the brute data
descriptions, and which is often crucial to understanding why
they were done. Thus, in voting for the motion I am also saving
the honor of my party, or defending the value of free speech, or
vindicating public morality, or saving civilization from break-
down. It is in such terms that the agents talk about the motivation
of much of their political action, and it is difficult to conceive a
science of politics which doesn't come to grips with it.
Behavioral political science comes to grips with it by taking
the meanings involved in action as facts about the agent, his
beliefs, his affective reactions, his "values," as the term is fre-
quently used. For it can be thought verifiable in the brute data
sense that men will agree to subscribe or not to a certain form of
words (expressing a belief, say) ; or express a positive or negative
reaction to certain events, or symbols; or agree or not with the
proposition that some act is right or wrong. We can thus get at
meanings as just another form of brute data by the techniques
of the opinion survey and content analysis.
An immediate objection springs to mind. If we are trying to
deal with the meanings which inform political action, then surely
interpretive acumen is unavoidable. Let us say we are trying to
understand the goals and values of a certain group, or grasp their
vision of the polity; we might try to probe this by a questionnaire
66 Charles Taylor
asking them whether they assent or not to a number of propo-

sitions, which are meant to express different goals, evaluations,
beliefs. But how did we design the questionnaire? How did we
pick these propositions? Here we relied on our understanding of
the goals, values, vision. involved. But then this understanding
can be challenged, and hence the significance of our results
questioned. Perhaps the finding of our study, the compiling of
proportions of assent and dissent to these propositions is irrele-
vant, is without significance for understanding the agents or the
polity concerned. This kind of attack is frequently made by critics
of mainstream political science, or for that matter social science
in general.
To this the proponents of this mainstream reply with a standard
move of logical empiricism: distinguishing the process of dis-
covery from the logic of verification. Of course, it is our under-
standing of these meanings which enables us to draw up the
questionnaire which will test people's attitudes in respect to them.
And, of course, interpretive dispute about these meanings is po-
tentially endless; there are no brute data at this level, every affirm-
ation can be challenged by a rival interpretation. But this has
nothing to do with verifiable science. What is firmly verified is the
set of correlations between, say, the assent to certain propositions
and certain behavior. We discover, for instance, that people who
are active politically (defined by participation in a certain set of
institutions) are more likely to consent to certain sets of propo-
sitions supposedly expressing the values underlying the system. 6
This finding is a firmly verified correlation no matter what one
thinks of the reasoning, or simple hunches, that went into de-
signing the research which established it. Political science as a
body of knowledge is made up of such correlations; it does not
give a truth value to the background reasoning or hunch. A good
interpretive nose may be useful in hitting on the right correlations
6. Cf. H. McClosky, "Consensus and Ideology in American Politics," American

Political Science Review, v. 58, 1964, pp. 361-382.
to test, but science is never called on to arbitrate the disputes

between interpretations.
Thus, in addition to those overt acts which can be defined
physically or institutionally, the category of political behavior can
include assert or dissent to verbal formulae, or the occurrence or
not of verbal formulae in speech, or expressions of approval or
rejection of certain events or measures as observed in institution-
ally-defined behavior (for instance, turning out for a demon-
stration).
Now there are a number of objections which can be made to
this notion of political behavior; one might question in all sorts of
ways how interpretation-free it is in fact. But I would like to
question it from another angle. One of the basic characteristics
of this kind of social science is that it reconstructs reality in line
with certain categorial principles. These allow for an inter-
subjective social reality which is made up of brute data, identifi-
able acts and structures, certain institutions, procedures, actions.
It allows for beliefs, affective reactions, evaluations as the psycho-
logical properties of individuals. And it allows for correlations
between these two orders or reality: e.g., that certain beliefs go
along with certain acts, certain values with certain institutions,
etc.
To put it another way, what is objectively (intersubjectively)
real is brute data identifiable. This is what social reality is.
Social reality described in terms of its meaning for the actors,
such that disputes could arise about interpretation which couldn't
be settled by brute data (e.g., are people rioting to get a hearing,
or are they rioting to redress humiliation, out of blind anger,
because they recover a sense of dignity in insurrection?), this is
given subjective reality, that is, there are certain beliefs, affective
reactions, evaluations which individuals make or have about or in
relation to social reality. These beliefs or reactions can have an
effect on this reality; and the fact that such a belief is held is a
fact of objective social reality. But the social reality which is the
object of these attitudes, beliefs, reactions can only be made up
68 Charles Taylor
of brute data. Thus any description of reality in terms of meanings

which is open to interpretive question is only allowed into this
scientific discourse if it is placed, as it were, in quotes and
attributed to individuals as their opinion, belief, attitude. That
this opinion, belief, etc. is held is thought of as a brute datum,
since it is redefined as the respondent's giving a certain answer
to the questionnaire.
This aspect of social reality which concerns its meanings for
the agents has been taken up in a number of ways, but recently it
has been spoken of in terms of political culture. Now the way this
is defined and studied illustrates clearly the categorial principles
above. For instance, political culture is referred to by Almond
and Powell 7 as the "psychological dimension of the political
system" (23). Further on they state: "Political culture is the
pattern of individual attitudes and orientations towards politics
among the members of a political system. It is the subjective
realm which underlies and gives meaning to political actions"
(50). The authors then go on to distinguish three different kinds
of orientations, cognitive (knowledge and beliefs), affective
(feelings), and evaluative (judgments and opinions).
From the point of view of empiricist epistemology, this set of
categorial principles leaves nothing out. Both reality and the
meanings it has for actors are coped with. But what it in fact
cannot allow for are intersubjective meanings, that is, it cannot
allow for the validity of descriptions of social reality in terms of
meanings, hence not as brute data, which are not in quotation
marks and attributed as opinion, attitude, etc. to individual(s).
Now it is this exclusion that I would like to challenge in the
name of another set of categorial principles, inspired by a quite
other epistemology.
7. Gabriel A. Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Comparative Politics: a Developmental

Approach, Boston and Toronto, I966. Page references in my text here and below are
to this work.
11
We spoke earlier about the brute data identification of acts by

means of institutional rules. Thus, putting a cross beside some-
one's name on a slip of paper and putting this in a box counts in
the right context as voting for that person; leaving the room,
saying or writing a certain form of words, counts as breaking off
the negotiations; writing one's name on a piece of paper counts as
signing the petition, etc. But what is worth looking at is what
underlies this set of identifications. These identifications are the
application of a language of social life, a language which marks
distinctions among different possible social acts, relations, struc-
tures. But what underlies this language?
Let us take the example of breaking off negotiations above.
The language of our society recognizes states or actions like the
following: entering into negotiation, breaking off negotiations,
offering to negotiate, negotiating in good (bad) faith, concluding
negotiations, making a new offer, etc. In other more jargon-
infested language, the semantic "space" of this range of social
activity is carved up in a certain way, by a certain set of dis-
tinctions which our vocabulary marks; and the shape and
nature of these distinctions is the nature of our language in this
area. These distinctions are applied in our society with more or
less formalism in different contexts.
But of course this is not true of every society. Our whole notion
of negotiation is bound up for instance with the distinct identity
and autonomy of the parties, with the willed nature of their
relations; it is a very contractual notion. But other societies
have no such conception. It is reported about the traditional
Japanese village that the foundation of its social life was a
powerful form of consensus, which put a high premium on unani-
mous decision. 8 Such a consensus would be considered shattered
8. Cf. Thomas C. Smith, The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan. Stanford, 1959,
ch. 5. This type of consensus is also found in other traditional societies. Cf. for
instance, the desa system of the Indonesian village.
Charles Taylor
if two clearly articulated parties were to separate out, pursuing

opposed aims and attempting either to vote down the opposition
or push it into a settlement on the most favorable possible terms
for themselves. Discussion there must be, and some kind of
adjustment of differences. But our idea of bargaining, with the
assumption of distinct autonomous parties in willed relationship,
has no place there; nor does a series of distinctions, like entering
into and leaving negotiation, or bargaining in good faith (sc.
with the genuine intention of seeking agreement).
Now difference between our society and one of the kind just
described could not be well expressed if we said we have a
vocabulary to describe negotiation which they lack. We might
say, for instance, that we have a vocabulary to describe the
heavens that they lack, viz., that of Newtonian mechanics; for
here we assume that they live under the same heavens as we do,
only understand it differently. But it is not true that they have
the same kind of bargaining as we do. The word, or whatever
word of their language we translate as "bargaining," must have
an entirely different gloss, which is marked by the distinctions
their vocabulary allows in contrast to those marked by ours. But
this different gloss is not just a difference of vocabulary, but also
one of social reality.
But this still may be misleading as a way of putting the differ-
ence. For it might imply that there is a social reality which can
be discovered in each society and which might exist quite in-
dependently of the vocabulary of that society, or indeed of any
vocabulary, as the heavens would exist whether men theorized
about them or not. And this is not the case; the realities here are
practices; and these cannot be identified in abstraction from the
language we use to describe them, or invoke them, or carry them
out. That the practice of negotiation allows us to distinguish
bargaining in good or bad faith, or entering into or breaking off
negotiations, presupposes that our acts and situation have a
certain description for us, e.g., that we are distinct parties entering
into willed relations. But they cannot have these descriptions for
US unless this is somehow expressed in our vocabulary of this

practice; if not in our descriptions of the practices (for we may
as yet be unconscious of some of the important distinctions), in
the appropriate language for carrying them on. (Thus, the
language marking a distinction between public and private acts
or contexts may exist even where these terms or their equivalents
are not part of this language; for the distinction will be marked
by the different language which is appropriate in one context and
the other, be it perhaps a difference of style, or dialect, even
though the distinction is not designated by specific descriptive
expressions. )
The situation we have here is one in which the vocabulary of
a given social dimension is grounded in the shape of social practice
in this dimension; that is, the vocabulary wouldn't make sense,
couldn't be applied sensibly, where this range of practices didn't
prevail. And yet this range of practices couldn't exist without the
prevalence of this or some related vocabulary. There is no simple
one-way dependence here. We can speak of mutual dependence
if we like, but really what this points up is the artificiality of the
distinction between social reality and the language of description
of that social reality. The language is constitutive of the reality,
is essential to its being the kind of reality it is. To separate the
two and distinguish them as we quite rightly distinguish the
heavens from our theories about them is forever to miss the point.
This type of relation has been recently explored, e.g., by John
Searle, with his concept of a constitutive rule. As Searle points
out,9 we are normally induced to think of rules as applying to
behavior which could be available to us whether or not the rule
existed. Some rules are like this, they are regulative like com-
mandments: don't take the goods of another. But there are other
rules, e.g., that governing the Queen's move in chess, which are
not so separable. If one suspends these rules, or imagines a state
in which they have not yet been introduced, then the whole
9. J. Searle, SPeech Acts: an Essay in the Philosophy if Language, Cambridge, 1969, pp.
33-42 •
Charles Taylor
range of behavior in question, in this case, chess playing, would

not be. There would still, of course, be the activity of pushing a
wood piece around on a board made of squares 8 by 8; but this
is not chess any longer. Rules of this kind are constitutive rules.
By contrast again, there are other rules of chess, such as that one
say "j'adoube" when one touches a piece without intending to
play it, which are clearly regulative.1 0
I am suggesting that this notion of the constitutive be extended
beyond the domain of rule-governed behavior. That is why I
suggest the vaguer word 'practice'. Even in an area where there
are no clearly defined rules, there are distinctions between
different sorts of behavior such that one sort is considered the
appropriate form for one action or context, the other for another
action or context; e.g., doing or saying certain things amounts to
breaking off negotiations, doing or saying other things amounts
to making a new offer. But just as there are constitutive rules i.e.,
rules such that the behavior they govern could not exist without
them, and which are in this sense inseparable from that behavior,
so I am suggesting that there are constitutive distinctions, consti-
tutive ranges oflanguage which are similarly inseparable, in that
certain practices are not without them.
We can reverse this relationship and say that all the institutions
and practices by which we live are constituted by certain
distinctions and hence a certain language which is thus essential
to them. We can take voting, a practice which is central to large
numbers of institutions in a democratic society. What is essential
to the practice of voting is that some decision or verdict be
delivered (a man elected, a measure passed), through some
criterion of preponderance (simple majority, two-thirds majority,
or whatever) out ofa set of micro-choices (the votes of the citizens,
MPs, delegates). If there is not some such significance attached
to our behavior, no amount of marking and counting pieces of
10. Cf. the discussion in Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? New York,
1969, pp. 21-3 1.
paper, raising hands, walking out into lobbies amounts to voting.
From this it follows that the institution of voting must be such
that certain distinctions have application: e.g., that between
someone being elected, or a measure passed, and their failing of
election, or passage; that between a valid vote and an invalid one
which in turn requires a distinction between a real choice and
one which is forced or counterfeited. For no matter how far we
move from the Rousseauian notion that each man decide in full
autonomy, the very institution of the vote requires that in some
sense the enfranchised choose. For there to be voting in a sense
recognizably like ours, there must be a distinction in men's self-
interpretations between autonomy and forced choice.
This is to say that an activity of marking and counting papers
has to bear intentional descriptions which fall within a certain
range before we can agree to call it voting, just as the intercourse
of two men or teams has to bear descriptions of a certain range
before we will call it negotiation. Or in other words, that some
practice is voting or negotiation has to do in part with the vo-
cabulary established in a society as appropriate for engaging in
it or describing it.
Hence implicit in these practices is a certain vision of the agent
and his relation to others and to society. We saw in connection
with negotiation in our society that it requires a picture of the
parties as in some sense autonomous, and as entering into willed
relations. And this picture carries with it certain implicit norms,
such as that of good faith mentioned above, or a norm of ration-
ality, that agreement correspond to one's goals as far as attainable,
or the norm of continued freedom of action as far as attainable.
These practices require that one's actions and relations be seen
in the light of this picture and the accompanying norms, good
faith, autonomy, and rationality. But men do not see themselves
in this way in all societies, nor do they understand these norms
in all societies. The experience of autonomy as we know it, the
sense of rational action and the satisfactions thereof, are una-
vailable to them. The meaning of these terms is opaque to them
74 Charles Taylor
because they have a different structure of experiential meaning

open to them.
We can think of the difference between our society and the
simplified version of the traditional] apanese village as consisting
in this, that the range of meaning open to the members of the
two societies is very different. But what we are dealing with here
is not subjective meaning which can fit into the categorial grid
of behavioral political science, but rather intersubjective mean-
ings. It is not just that the people in our society all or mostly have
a given set of ideas in their heads and subscribe to a given set of
goals. The meanings and norms implicit in these practices are
not just in the minds of the actors but are out there in the
practices themselves, practices which cannot be conceived as a
set of individual actions, but which are essentially modes of social
relation, of mutual action.
The actors may have all sorts of beliefs and attitudes which may
be rightly thought of as their individual beliefs and attitudes,
even if others share them; they may subscribe to certain policy
goals or certain forms of theory about the polity, or feel re-
sentment at certain things, and so on. They bring these with
them into their negotiations, and strive to satisfy them. But what
they do not bring into the negotiations is the set of ideas and
norms constitutive of negotiation themselves. These must be the
common property of the society before there can be any question
of anyone entering into negotiation or not. Hence they are no
subjective meanings, the property of one or some individuals,
but rather intersubjective meanings, which are constitutive of the
social matrix in which individuals find themselves and act.
The intersubjective meanings which are the background to
social action are often treated by political scientists under the
heading "consensus." By this is meant convergence of beliefs on
certain basic matters, or of attitude. But the two are not the same.
Whether there is consensus or not, the condition of there being
either one or the other is a certain set of common terms of
reference. A society in which this was lacking would not be a
society in the normal sense of the term, but several. Perhaps
some multi-racial or multi-tribal states approach this limit.
Some multi-national states are bedevilled by consistent cross-
purposes, e.g., my own country. But consensus as a convergence of
beliefs or values is not the opposite of this kind of fundamental
diversity. Rather the opposite of diversity is a high degree of
intersubjective meanings. And this can go along with profound
cleavage. Indeed, intersubjective meanings are a condition of a
certain kind of very profound cleavage, such as was visible in the
Reformation, or the American Civil War, or splits in left wing
parties, where the dispute is at fever pitch just because both sides
can fully understand the other.
In other words, convergence of belief or attitude or its absence
presupposes a common language in which these beliefs can be
formulated, and in which these formulations can be opposed.
Much of this common language in any society is rooted in its
institutions and practices; it is constitutive of these institutions
and practices. It is part of the intersubjective meanings. To put
the point another way, apart from the question of how much
people's beliefs converge is the question of how much they
have a common language of social and political reality in which
these beliefs are expressed. This second question cannot be
reduced to the first; intersubjective meaning is not a matter of
converging beliefs or values. When we speak of consensus we
speak of beliefs and values which could be the property ofa single
person, or many, or all; but intersubjective meanings could not
be the property of a single person because they are rooted in
social practice.
We can perhaps see this if we envisage the situation in which
the ideas and norms underlying a practice are the property of
single individuals. This is what happens when single individuals
from one society interiorize the notions and values ofanother, e.g.,
children in missionary schools. Here we have a totally different
situation. We are really talking now about subjective beliefs and
attitudes. The ideas are abstract, they are mere social "ideals."
Charles Taylor
Whereas in the original society, these ideas and norms are rooted
in their social relations, and are that on the basis of which they
can formulate opinions and ideals.
We can see this in connection with the example we have been
using all along, that of negotiations. The vision of a society based
on negotiation is coming in for heavy attack by a growing segment
of modern youth, as are the attendant norms of rationality and
the definition of autonomy. This is a dramatic failure of "con-
sensus." But this cleavage takes place in the ambit of this inter-
subjective meaning, the social practice of negotiation as it is lived
in our society. The rejection wouldn't have the bitter quality it
has if what is rejected were not understood in common, because
it is part of a social practice which we find it hard to avoid, so
pervasive is it in our society. At the same time there is a reaching
out for other forms which have still the "abstract" quality of
ideals which are subjective in this sense, that is, not rooted in
practice; which is what makes the rebellion look so "unreal"
to outsiders, and so irrational.
111
Intersubjective meanings, ways of experiencing action in society

which are expressed in the language and descriptions consti-
tutive of institutions and practices, do not fit into the categorial
grid of mainstream political science. This allows only for an
intersubjective reality which is brute data identifiable. But social
practices and institutions which are partly constituted by certain
ways of talking about them are not so identifiable. We have to
understand the language, the underlying meanings, which
constitute them.
We can allow, once we accept a certain set of institutions or
practices as our starting point and not as objects of further
questioning, that we can easily take as brute data that certain
acts are judged to take place or certain states judged to hold
within the semantic field of these practices. For instance, that
someone has voted Liberal, or signed the petition. We can then
go on to correlate certain subjective meanings-beliefs, attitudes,
etc.-with this behavior or its lack. But this means that we give up
trying to define further just what these practices and institutions
are, what the meanings are which they require and hence sustain.
For these meanings do not fit into the grid; they are not subjective
beliefs or values, but are constitutive of social reality. In order
to get at them we have to drop the basic premiss that social
reality is made up of brute data alone. For any characterization
of the meanings underlying these practices is open to question
by someone offering an alternative interpretation. The negation
of this is what was meant as brute data. We have to admit that
intersubjective social reality has to be partly defined in terms of
meanings; that meanings as subjective are not just in causal
interaction with a social reality made up of brute data, but that
as intersubjective they are constituitive of this reality.
We have been talking here of intersubjective meaning. And
earlier I was contrasting the question of intersubjective meaning
with that of consensus as convergence of opinions. But there is
another kind of nonsubjective meaning which is also often in-
adequately discussed under the head of "consensus." In a society
with a strong web of intersubjective meanings, there can be a
more or less powerful set of common meanings. By these I mean
notions of what is significant which are not just shared in the
sense that everyone has them, but are also common in the sense
of being in the common reference world. Thus, almost everyone
in our society may share a susceptibility to a certain kind of
feminine beauty, but this may not be a common meaning. It
may be known to no one, except perhaps market researchers, who
play on it in their advertisements. But the survival of a national
identity as francophones is a common meaning of Quebecois; for it
is not just shared, and not just known to be shared, but its being
a common aspiration is one of the common reference points of
all debate, communication, and all public life in the society.
We can speak of a shared belief, aspiration, etc. when there is
Charles Taylor
convergence between the subjective beliefs, aspirations, of many

individuals. But it is part of the meaning of a common aspiration,
belief, celebration, etc. that it be not just shared but part of the
common reference world. Or to put it another way, its being
shared is a collective act, it is a consciousness which is commu-
nally sustained, whereas sharing is something we do each on his
own, as it were, even if each of us is influenced by the others.
Common meanings are the basis of community. Intersub-
jective meaning gives a people a common language to talk about
social reality and a common understanding of certain norms, but
only with common meanings does this common reference world
contain significant common actions, celebrations, and feelings.
These are objects in the world that everybody shares. This is
what makes community.
Once again, we cannot really understand this phenomenon
through the usual definition of consensus as convergence of
opinion and value. For what is meant here is something more
than convergence. Convergence is what happens when our values
are shared. But what is required for common meanings is that
this shared value be part of the common world, that this sharing
be shared. But we could also say that common meanings are
quite other than consensus, for they can subsist with a high
degree of cleavage; this is what happens when a common meaning
comes to be lived and understood differently by different groups
in a society. It remains a common meaning, because there is the
reference point which is the common purpose, aspiration, celebra-
tion. Such is for example the American Way, or freedom as
understood in the USA. But this common meaning is differently
articulated by different groups. This is the basis of the bitterest
fights in a society, and this we are also seeing in the U.S. today.
Perhaps one might say that a common meaning is very often the
cause of the most bitter lack of consensus. It thus must not be
confused with convergence of opinion, value, attitude.
Of course, common meanings and intersubjective meanings
are closely interwoven. There must be a powerful net of inter-
subjective meanings for there to be common meanings; and the
result of powerful common meanings is the development of a
greater web of intersubjective meanings as people live in com-
munity.
On the other hand, when common meanings wither, which
they can do through the kind of deep dissensus we described
earlier, the groups tend to grow apart and develop different
languages of social reality, hence to share less intersubjective
meanings.
Hence, to take our above example again, there has been a
powerful common meaning in our civilization around a certain
vision of the free society in which bargaining has a central place.
This has helped to entrench the social practice of negotiation
which makes us participate in this intersubjective meaning. But
there is a severe challenge to this common meaning today, as we
have seen. Should those who object to it really succeed in building
up an alternative society, there would develop a gap between
those who remain in the present type of society and those who
had founded the new one.
Common meanings, as well as intersubjective ones, fall through
the net of mainstream social science. They can find no place in
its categories. For they are not simply a converging set of
subjective reactions, but part of the common world. What the
ontology of mainstream social science lacks is the notion of
meaning as not simply for an individual subject; of a subject who
can be a "we" as well as an "I." The exclusion of this possibility,
of the communal, comes once again from the baleful influence of
the epistemological tradition for which all knowledge has to be
reconstructed from the impressions imprinted on the individual
subject. But if we free ourselves from the hold of these prejudices,
this seems a wildly implausible view about the development of
human consciousness; we are aware of the world through a "we"
before we are through an "I." Hence we need the distinction
between what is just shared in the sense that each of us has it in
our individual worlds, and that which is in the common world.
80 Charles Taylor
But the very idea of something which is in the common world in

contradistinction to what is in all the individual worlds is totally
opaque to empiricist epistemology. Hence it finds no place in
mainstream social science. What this results in must now be seen.
III
Thus, to sum up the last pages: a social science which wishes to

fulfill the requirements of the empiricist tradition naturally tries
to reconstruct social reality as consisting of brute data alone.
These data are the acts of people (behavior) as identified sup-
posedly beyond interpretation either by physical descriptions or
by descriptions clearly defined by institutions and practices; and
secondly, they include the subjective reality of individuals'
beliefs, attitudes, values, as attested by their responses to certain
forms of words, or in some cases their overt non-verbal behavior.
What this excludes is a consideration of social reality as
characterized by intersubjective and common meanings. It ex-
cludes, for instance, an attempt to understand our civilization,
in which negotiation plays such a central part both in fact and in
justificatory theory, by probing the self-definitions of agent, other
and social relatedness which it embodies. Such definitions which
deal with the meaning for agents of their own and others' action,
and of the social relations in which they stand, do not in any sense
record brute data, in the sense that this term is being used in this
argument; that is, they are in no sense beyond challenge by those
who would quarrel with our interpretations of these meanings.
Thus, I tried to adumbrate above the vision implicit in the
practice of negotiation by reference to certain notions of autonomy
and rationality. But this reading will undoubtedly be challenged
by those who have different fundamental conceptions of man,
human motivation, the human condition; or even by those who
judge other features of our present predicament to have greater
importance. If we wish to avoid these disputes, and have a science

grounded in verification as this is understood by the logical em-
piricists, then we have to avoid this level of study altogether and
hope to make do with a correlation of behavior which is brute
data identifiable.
A similar point goes for the distinction between common
meanings and shared subjective meanings. We can hope to
identify the subjective meanings of individuals if we take these in
the sense in which there are adequate criteria for them in people's
dissent or assent to verbal formulae or their brute data indentifiable
behavior. But once we allow the distinction between such sub-
jective meanings which are widely shared and genuine common
meanings, then we can no longer make do with brute data
identification. We are in a domain where our definitions can be
challenged by those with another reading.
The profound option of mainstream social scientists for the
empiricist conception of knowledge and science makes it inevi-
table that they should accept the verification model of political
science and the categorial principles that this entails. This means
in turn that a study of our civilization in terms of its intersubjec-
tive and common meanings is ruled out. Rather this whole level
of study is made invisible.
On the mainstream view, therefore, the different practices and
institutions of different societies are not seen as related to different
clusters of intersubjective or common meanings; rather, we should
be able to differentiate them by different clusters of "behavjor"
and/or subjective meaning. The comparison between societies
requires on this view that we elaborate a universal vocabulary of
behavior which will allow us to present the different forms and
practices of different societies in the same conceptual web.
Now present day political science is contemptuous of the older
attempt at comparative politics via a comparison of institutions.
An influential school of our day has therefore shifted comparison
to certain practices, or very general classes of practices, and
proposes to compare societies according to the different ways in
Charles Taylor
which these practices are carried on. Such are the "functions"
of the influential "developmental approach." 11 But it is episte-
mologically crucial that such functions be identified independently
of those intersubjective meanings which are different in different
societies; for otherwise, they will not be genuinely universal; or
will be universal only in the loose and unilluminating sense that
the function-name can be given application in every society but
with varying, and often widely varying meaning-the same being
"glossed" very differently by different sets of practices and inter-
subjective meanings. The danger that such universality might
not hold is not even suspected by mainstream political scientist
since they are unaware that there is such a level of description
as that which defines intersubjective meanings and are convinced
that functions and the various structures which perform them
can be identified in terms of brute data behavior.
But the result of ignoring the difference in intersubjective
meanings can be disastrous to a science of comparative politics,
viz., that we interpret all other societies in the categories of our
own. Ironically, this is what seems to have happened to American
political science. Having strongly criticized the old institution-
focussed comparative politics for its ethnocentricity (or Western
bias), it proposes to understand the politics of all society in terms
of such functions, for instance, as "interest articulation" and "in-
terest aggregation" whose definition is strongly influenced by the
bargaining culture of our civilization, but which is far from being
guaranteed appropriateness elsewhere. The not surprising result
is a theory of political development which places the Atlantic-type
polity at the summit of human political achievement.
Much can be said in this area of comparative politics (in-
terestingly explored by Alasdair MacIntyre in a recently publish-
ed paper).11a But I would like to illustrate the significance of
these two rival approaches in connection with another common
I I. Cf Almond and Powell, op. cit.
Ila. "How is a Comparative Science of Politics Possible?," in Alasdair l\1cIntyre,
Against the Self-Images of the Age, London, 1971.
problem area of politics. This is the question of what is called

"legitimacy." 12
11
It is an obvious fact, with which politics has been concerned

since at least Plato, that some societies enjoy an easier, more
spontaneous cohesion which relies less on the use of force than
others. It has been an important question of political theory to
understand what underlies this difference. Among others, Aris-
totle, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, de Tocqueville have dealt with
it.
Contemporary mainstream political scientists approach this
question with the concept "legitimacy." The use of the word here
can be easily understood. Those societies which are more spon-
taneously cohesive can be thought to enjoy a greater sense of
legitimacy among their members. But the application of the term
has been shifted. "Legitimacy" is a term in which we discuss the
authority of the state or polity, its right to our allegiance. How-
ever we conceive of this legitimacy, it can only be attributed to
a polity in the light of a number ofsurrounding conceptions-e.g.,
that it provides men freedom, that it emanates from their will,
that it secures them order, the rule oflaw, or that it is founded on
tradition, or commands obedience by its superior qualities. These
conceptions are all such that they rely on definitions of what is
significant for men in general or in some particular society or
circumstances, definitions of paradigmatic meaning which cannot
be identifiable as brute data. Even where some of these terms
might be given an "operational definition" in terms of brute
data-a term like "freedom" for instance, can be defined in terms
of the absence of legal restriction, a la Hobbes-this definition
would not carry the full force of the term, and in particular that
whereby it could be considered significant for men.
12. Macintyre's article also contains an interesting discussion of "legitimacy"
from a different, although I think related, angle.
Charles Taylor
According to the empIrICIst paradigm, this latter aspect of

the meaning ofsuch a term is labelled "evaluative" and is thought
to be utterly heterogeneous from the "descriptive" aspect. But
this analysis is far from firmly established; no more so in fact than
the empiricist paradigm of knowledge itself with which it is closely
bound up. A challenge to this paradigm in the name of a her-
meneutical science is also a challenge to the distinction between
"descriptive" and "evaluative" and the entire conception of
"Wertfreiheit" which goes with it.
In any case, whether because it is "evaluative" or can only be
applied in connection with definitions of meaning, "legitimate"
is not a word which can be used in the description of social reality
according to the conceptions of mainstream social science. It can
only be used as a description of subjective meaning. What enters
into scientific consideration is thus not the legitimacy of a polity
but the opinions or feelings of its member individuals concerning
. its legitimacy. The differences between different societies in their
manner of spontaneous cohesion and sense of community are to
be understood by correlations between the beliefs and feelings of
their members towards them on one hand and the prevalence of
certain brute data identifiable indices of stability in them on the
other.
Thus Robert Dahl in Modern Political Ana(ysis l3 (31-2) speaks
of the different ways in which leaders gain "compliance" for their
policies. The more citizens comply because of "internal rewards
and deprivations," the less leaders need to use "external rewards
and deprivations." But if citizens believe a government is legiti-
mate, then their conscience will bind them to obey it; they will
be internally punished if they disobey; hence government will
have to use less external resources, including force.
Less crude is the discussion of Seymour Lipset in Political Man 14
(chap. 3). But it is founded on the same basic ideas, viz. that
legitimacy defined as subjective meaning is correlated with
13. Englewood Cliffs, 1963, Foundation of Modern Political Science Series.
14. New York, 1963. Page references are to this edition.
stability. "Legitimacy involves the capacity of the system to

engender and maintain the belief that the existing political in-
stitutions are the most appropriate ones for the society" (64).
Lipset is engaged in a discussion of the determinants of stability
in modern polities. He singles out two important ones in this
chapter, effectiveness and legitimacy. "Effectiveness means
actual performance, the extent to which the system satisfies the
basic functions of government as most of the population and such
powerful groups within it as big business or the armed forces see
them" (loc. cit.). Thus we have one factor which has to do with
objective reality, what the government has actually done; and
the other which has to do with subjective beliefs and "values."
"While effectiveness is primarily instrumental, legitimacy is
evaluative" (loc. cit.). Hence from the beginning the stage is set
by a distinction between social reality and what men think and
feel about it.
Lipset sees two types of crisis oflegitimacy that modern societies
have affronted more or less well. One concerns the status of
major conservative institutions which may be under threat from
the development of modern industrial democracies. The second
concerns the degree to which all political groups have access to
the political process. Thus, under the first head, some traditional
groups, such as landed aristocracy or clericals, have been roughly
handled in a society like France, and have remained alienated
from the democratic system for decades afterwards; whereas in
England the traditional classes were more gently handled,
themselves were willing to compromise and have been slowly
integrated and transformed into the new order. Under the second
head, some societies managed to integrate the working class or
bourgeoisie into the political process at an early stage, whereas in
others they have been kept out till quite recently, and conse-
quently, have developed a deep sense of alienation from the
system, have tended to adopt extremist ideologies, and have
generally contributed to instability. One of the determinants of
a society's performance on these two heads is whether or not it
86 Charles Taylor
is forced to affront the different conflicts of democratic develop-

ment all at once or one at a time. Another important determinant
of legitimacy is effectiveness.
This approach which sees stability as partly the result of
legitimacy beliefs, and these in turn as resulting partly from the
way the status, welfare, access to political life of different groups
fare, seems at first blush eminently sensible and well designed to
help us understand the history ofthe last century or two. But this
approach has no place for a study of the intersubjective and
common meanings which are constitutive of modern civilization.
And we may doubt whether we can understand the cohesion of
modern societies or their present crisis if we leave these out of
account.
Let us take the winning of the allegiance of the working class
to the new industrial regimes in the nineteenth and early twen-
tieth century. This is far from being a matter simply or even
perhaps most significantly of the speed with which this class was
integrated into the political process and the effectiveness of the
regime. Rather the consideration of the granting of access to the
political process as an independent variable may be misleading.
It is not just that we often find ourselves invited by historians
to account for class cohesion in particular countries in terms of
other factors, such as the impact of Methodism in early nineteenth
century England (Elie Halevy) 15 or the draw of Germany's
newly successful nationalism. These factors could be assimilated
to the social scientist's grid by being classed as "ideologies" or
widely held "value-systems" or some other such concatenations
of subjective meaning.
But perhaps the most important such "ideology" in accounting
for the cohesion of industrial democratic societies has been that
of the society of work, the vision of society as a large-scale enter-
prise of production in which widely different functions are
integrated into interdependence; a vision of society in which
15. Histoire du Peuple anglais au XIXe siecie, Paris, 1913.

economic relations are considered as primary, as it is not only

in Marxism (and in a sense not really with Marxism) but above
all with the tradition of Classical Utilitarianism. In line with this
vision there is a fundamental solidarity between all members of
society that labor (to use Arendt's language),16 for they are all
engaged in producing what is indispensable to life and happiness
in far-reaching interdependence.
This is the "ideology" which has frequently presided over the
integration of the working class into industrial democracies, at
first directed polemically against the "unproductive" classes, e.g.,
in England with the anti-Corn Law League, and later with the
campaigns of Joseph Chamberlain ("when Adam delved and
Eve span/who was then the gentleman"), but later as a support
for social cohesion and solidarity.
But, of course, the reason for putting "ideology" in quotes
above is that this definition of things, which has been well inte-
grated with the conception of social life as based on negotiation,
cannot be understood in the terms of mainstream social science,
as beliefs and "values" held by a large number of individuals.
For the great interdependent matrix of labor is not just a set of
ideas in people's heads but is an important aspect of the reality
which we live in modern society. And at the same time, these
ideas are embedded in this matrix in that they are constitutive
of it; that is, we wouldn't be able to live in this type of society
unless we were imbued with these ideas or some others which
could call forth the discipline and voluntary co-ordination needed
to operate this kind of economy. All industrial civilizations have
required a huge wrench from the traditional peasant populations
on which they have been imposed; for they require an entirely
unprecedented level of disciplined sustained, monotonous effort,
long hours unpunctuated by any meaningful rhythm, such as
that of seasons or festivals. In the end this way oflife can only be
accepted when the idea of making a living is endowed with more
16. The Human Condition, New York, 1959.

88 Charles Taylor
significance than that of just avoiding starvation; and this it is

in the civilization of labor.
Now this civilization of work is only one aspect of modern
societies, along with the society based on negotiation and willed
relations (in Anglo-Saxon countries), and other common and
intersubjective meanings which have different importance in
different countries. My point is that it is certainly not implausible
to say that it has some importance in explaining the integration
of the working class in modern industrial democratic society. But
it can only be called a cluster of intersubjective meaning. As
such it cannot come into the purview of mainstream political
science; and an author like Lipset cannot take it into consider-
ation when discussing this very problem.
But, of course, such a massive fact doesn't escape notice.
What happens rather is that it is re-interpreted. And what has
generally happened is that the interdependent productive and
negotiating society has been recognized by political science, but
not as one structure of intersubjective meaning among others,
rather as the inescapable background of social action as such. In
this guise it no longer need be an object of study. Rather it
retreats to the middle distance, where its general outline takes the
role of universal framework, within which (it is hoped) actions
and structures will be brute data identifiable, and this for any
society at any time. The view is then that the political actions of
men in all societies can be understood as variants of the processing
of "demands" which is an important part of our political life.
The inability to recognize the specificity of our intersubjective
meanings is thus inseparably linked with the belief in the uni-
versality of North Atlantic behavior types or "functions" which
vitiates so much of contemporary comparative politics.
The notion is that what politics is about perennially is the
adjustment of differences, or the production of symbolic and
effective "outputs" on the basis of demand and support "inputs."
The rise of the intersubjective meaning of the civilization of work
is seen as the increase of correct perception of the political process
at the expense of "ideology." Thus Almond and Powell introduce
the concept of "political secularization" to describe "the emer-
gence of a pragmatic, empirical orientation" to politics (58).17 A
secular political culture is opposed not only to a traditional one,
but also to an "ideological" culture, which is characterized by
"an inflexible image of political life, closed to conflicting in-
formation" and "fails to develop the open, bargaining attitudes
associated with full secularization" (6 I ). The clear understanding
here is that a secularized culture is one which essentially depends
less on illusion, which sees things as they are, which is not infected
with the "false consciousness" of traditional or ideological culture
(to use a term which is not in the mainstream vocabulary).
111
This way of looking at the civilization of work, as resulting from

the retreat of illusion before the correct perception of what
politics perennially and really is, is thus closely bound up with
the epistemological premisses of mainstream political science and
its resultant inability to recognize the historical specificity of this
civilization's intersubjective meanings. But the weakness of this
approach, already visible in the attempts to explain the rise of
this civilization and its relation to others, becomes even more
painful when we try to account for its present malaise, even crisis.
The strains in contemporary society, the breakdown of civility,
the rise of deep alienation, which is translated into even more
destructive action, tend to shake the basic categories of our social
science. It is not just that such a development was quite un-
predicted by this science, which saw in the rise of affluence the
cause rather of a further entrenching of the bargaining culture,
a reduction of irrational cleavage, an increase of tolerance, in
short "the end of ideology." For prediction, as we shall see below,
cannot be a goal of social science as it is of natural science. It is
rather that this mainstream science hasn't the categories to
17. Op. cit.
go Charles Taylor
explain this breakdown. It is forced to look on extremism either

as a bargaining gambit of the desperate, deliberately raising the
ante in order to force a hearing. Or, alternatively, it can recognize
the novelty of the rebellion by accepting the hypothesis that
heightened demands are being made on the system owing to a
revolution of "expectations," or else to the eruption of new desires
or aspirations which hitherto had no place in the bargaining
process. But these new desires or aspirations must be in the
domain of individual psychology, that is, they must be such that
their arousal and satisfaction is to be understood in terms of states
of individuals rather than in terms of the intersubjective meanings
in which they live. For these latter have no place in the categories
of the mainstream, which thus cannot accommodate a gen-
uine historical psychology.
But some of the more extreme protests and acts of rebellion in
our society cannot be interpreted as bargaining gambits in the
name of any demands, old or new. These can only be interpreted
within the accepted framework of our social science as a return
to ideology, and hence as irrational. Now in the case of some of
the more bizarre and bloody forms of protest, there will be little
disagreement; they will be judged irrational by all but their pro-
tagonists. But within the accepted categories this irrationality can
only be understood in terms of individual psychology; it is the
public eruption of private pathology; it cannot be understood as
a malady of society itself, a malaise which afflicts its constitutive
meanings. IS
18. Thus Lewis Feuer in The Conflict of Generations, New York, 1969, attempts to
account for the "misperception of social reality" in the Berkeley student uprising in
terms ofa generational conflict (pp. 466-470), which in turn is rooted in the psycholo-
gy of adolescence and attaining adulthood. Yet Feuer himself in his first chapter
notes the comparative recency of self-defining political generations, a phenomenon
which dates from the post-Napoleonic era (p. 33). But an adequate attempt to
explain this historical shift, which after all underlies the Berkeley rising and many
others, would I believe have to take us beyond the ambit of individual psychology
to psycho-history, to a study of the intrication of psychological conflict and inter-
subjective meanings. A variant of this form of study has been adumbrated in the
work of Erik Erikson.
INTERPRETATION AND THE SCIENCES OF MAN 9I
No one can claim to begin to have an adequate explanation for

these major changes which our civilization is undergoing. But in
contrast to the incapacity of a science which remains within the
accepted categories, a hermeneutical science of man which has a
place for a study of intersubjective meaning can at least begin to
explore fruitful avenues. Plainly the discipline which was integral
to the civilization of work and bargaining is beginning to fail.
The structures of this civilization, interdependent work, bargain-
ing, mutual adjustment of individual ends, are beginning to
change their meaning for many, and are beginning to be felt not
as normal and best suited to man, but as hateful or empty. And
yet we are all caught in these intersubjective meanings insofar
as we live in this society, and in a sense more and more all-
pervasively as it progresses. Hence the virulence and tension of
the critique of our society which is always in some real sense a
self-rejection (in a way that the old socialist opposition never was).
Why has this set of meanings gone sour? Plainly, we have
to accept that they are not to be understood at their face value.
The free, productive, bargaining culture claimed to be sufficient
for man. If it was not, then we have to assume that while it did
hold our allegiance, it also had other meanings for us which
commanded this allegiance and which have now gone.
This is the starting point of a set of hypotheses which attempt
to redefine our past in order to make our present and future
intelligible. We might think that the productive, bargaining
culture offered in the past common meanings (even though there
was no place for them in its philosophy), and hence a basis for
community, which were essentially linked with its being in the
process of building. It linked men who could see themselves as
breaking with the past to build a new happiness in America, for
instance. But in all essentials that future is built; the notion of a
horizon to be attained by future greater production (as against
social transformation) verges on the absurd in contemporary
America. Suddenly the horizon which was essential to the sense
of meaningful purpose has collapsed, which would show that like
92 Charles Taylor
so many other Enlightenment-based dreams the free, productive,

bargaining society can only sustain man as a goal, not as a reality.
Or we can look at this development in terms of identity. A
sense of building their future through the civilization of work can
sustain men as long as they see themselves as having broken with
a millenial past of injustice and hardship in order to create
qualitatively different conditions for their children. All the
requirements of a humanly acceptable identity can be met by
this predicament, a relation to the past (one soars above it but
preserves it in folkloric memory), to the social world (the inter-
dependent world offree, productive men), to the earth (the raw
material which awaits shaping), to the future and one's own death
(the everlasting monument in the lives of prosperous children),
to the absolute (the absolute values offreedom, integrity, dignity).
But at some point the children will be unable to sustain this
forward thrust into the future. This effort has placed them in a
private haven of security, within which they are unable to reach
and recover touch with the great realities: their parents have
only a negated past, lives which have been oriented wholly to
the future; the social world is distant and without shape; rather
one can only insert oneself into it by taking one's place in the
future-oriented productive juggernaut. But this now seems
without any sense; the relation to the earth as raw material is
therefore experienced as empty and alienating, but the recovery
of a valid relation to the earth is the hardest thing once lost; and
there is no relation to the absolute where we are caught in the
web of meanings which have gone dead for us. Hence past,
future, earth, world, and absolute are in some way or another
occluded; and what must arise is an identity crisis of frightening
proportions.
These two hypotheses are mainly focussed on the crisis in U.S.
civilization, and they would perhaps help account for the fact
that the U.S. is in some sense going first through this crisis of all
Atlantic nations; not, that is, only because it is the most affluent,
but more because it has been more fully based on the civilization
of work than European countries who retained something of more
traditional common meanings.
But they might also help us to understand why alienation is
most severe among groups which have been but marginal in
affluent bargaining societies. These have had the greatest strain
in living in this civilization while their identity was in some ways
antithetical to it. Such are blacks in the U.S., and the community
of French-speaking Canadians, each in different ways. For many
immigrant groups the strain was also great, but they forced
themselves to surmount the obstacles, and the new identity is
sealed in the blood of the old, as it were.
But for those who would not or could not succeed in thus
transforming themselves, but always lived a life of strain on the
defensive, the breakdown of the central, powerful identity is the
trigger to a deep turn-over. It can be thought of as a liberation
but at the same time it is deeply unsettling, because the basic
parameters of former life are being changed and there are not yet
the new images and definitions to live a new fully acceptable
identity. In a sense we are in a condition where a new social
compact (rather the first social compact) has to be made between
these groups and those they live with, and no one knows where to
start.
In the last pages, I have presented some hypotheses which may
appear very speculative; and they may indeed turn out to be
without foundation, even without much interest. But their aim
was mainly illustrative. My principal claim is that we can only
come to grips with this phenomenon of breakdown by trying to
understand more clearly and profoundly the common and inter-
subjective meanings of the society in which we have been living.
For it is these which no longer hold us, and to understand this
change we have to have an adequate grasp of these meanings.
But this we cannot do as long as we remain within the ambit of
mainstream social science, for it will not recognize intersubjective
meaning, and is forced to look at the central ones of our society
as though they were the inescapable background of all political
94 Charles Taylor
action. Breakdown is thus inexplicable in political terms; it is an

outbreak of irrationality which must ultimately be explained by
some form of psychological illness.
Mainstream science may thus venture into the area explored
by the above hypotheses, but after its own fashion, by forcing the
psycho-historical facts of identity into the grid of an individual
psychology, in short, by re-interpreting all meanings as subjective.
The result might be a psychological theory of emotional malad-
justment, perhaps traced to certain features offamily background,
analogous to the theories of the authoritarian personality and
the California F -scale. But this would no longer be a political or
social theory. We would be giving up the attempt to understand
the change in social reality at the level of its constitutive inter-
subjective meanings.
IV
It can be argued then, that mainstream social science is kept

within certain limits by its categorial principles which are rooted
in the traditional epistemology of empiricism; and secondly, that
these restrictions are a severe handicap and prevent us from
coming to grips with important problems of our day which should
be the object of political science. We need to go beyond the
bounds of a science based on verification to one which would
study the inter-subjective and common meanings embedded in
social reality.
But this science would be hermeneutical in the sense that has
been developed in this paper. It would not be founded on brute
data; its most primitive data would be readings of meanings, and
its object would have the three properties mentioned above: the
meanings are for a subject in a field or fields; they are moreover
meanings which are partially constituted by self-definitions,
which are in this sense already interpretations, and which can
thus be re-expressed or made explicit by a science of politics. In
our case, the subject may be a society or community; but the
intersubjective meanings, as we saw, embody a certain self-

definition, a vision of the agent and his society, which is that of
the society or community.
But then the difficulties which the proponents of the verifica-
tion model foresee will arise. If we have a science which has no
brute data, which relies on readings, then it cannot but move in a
hermeneutical circle. A given reading of the intersubjective
meanings of a society, or of given institutions or practices, may
seem well founded, because it makes sense of these practices or the
development of that society. But the conviction that it does make
sense of this history itself is founded on futher related readings.
Thus, what I said above on the identity-crisis which is generated
by our society makes sense and holds together only if one accepts
this reading of the intersubjective meanings of our society, and
if one accepts this reading of the rebellion against our society
by many young people (sc. the reading in terms of identity-crisis).
These two readings make sense together, so that in a sense the
explanation as a whole reposes on the readings, and the readings
in their turn are strengthened by the explanation as a whole.
But if these readings seem implausible, or even more, if they
are not understood by our interlocutor, there is no verification
procedure which we can fall back on. We can only continue to
offer interpretations; we are in an interpretative circle.
But the ideal of a science of verification is to find an appeal
beyond differences of interpretation. Insight will always be
useful in discovery, but should not have to play any part in
establishing the truth of its findings. This ideal can be said to have
been met by our natural sciences. But a hermeneutic science
cannot but rely on insight. It requires that one have the sensibility
and understanding necessary to be able to make and comprehend
the r,eadings by which we can explain the reality concerned. In
physics we might argue that if someone does not accept a true
theory, then either he has not been shown enough (brute data)
evidence (perhaps not enough is yet available), or he cannot
understand and apply some formalized language. But in the
96 Charles Taylor
sciences of man conceived as hermeneutical, the nonacceptance

of a true or illuminating theory may come from neither of these,
indeed is unlikely to be due to either of these, but rather from a
failure to grasp the meaning field in question, an inability to
make and understand readings of this field.
In other words, in a hermeneutical science, a certain measure
of insight is indispensable, and this insight cannot be communi-
cated by the gathering of brute data, or initiation in modes of
formal reasoning or some combination of these. It is unformal-
izable. But this is a scandalous result according to the authoritative
conception of science in our tradition, which is shared even by
many of those who are highly critical of the approach of main-
stream psychology, or sociology, or political science. For it means
that this is not a study in which anyone can engage, regardless
of their level of insight; that some claims of the form: "if you
don't understand, then your intuitions are at fault, are blind or
inadequate," some claims of this form will be justified; that some
differences will be nonarbitrable by further evidence, but that
each side can only make appeal to deeper insight on the part of
the other. The superiority of one position over another will thus
consist in this, that from the more adequate position one can
understand one's own stand and that of one's opponent, but not
the other way around. It goes without saying that this argument
can only have weight for those in the superior position.
Thus, a hermeneutical science encounters a gap in intuitions,
which is the other side, as it were, of the hermeneutical circle.
But the situation is graver than this; for this gap is bound up
with our divergent options in politics and life.
We speak of a gap when some cannot understand the kind of
self-definition which others are proposing as underlying a certain
society or set of institutions. Thus some positivistically-minded
thinkers will find the language of identity-theory quite opaque;
and some thinkers will not recognize any theory which does not
fit with the categorial presuppositions of empiricism. But self-
definitions are not only important to us as scientists who are
trying to understand some, perhaps distant, social reality. As men
we are self-defining beings, and we are partly what we are in
virtue of the self-definitions which we have accepted, however
we have come by them. What self-definitions we understand and
what ones we don't understand, is closely linked with the self-
definitions which help to constitute what we are. Ifit is too simple
to say that one only understands an "ideology" which one
subscribes to, it is nevertheless hard to deny that we have great
difficulty grasping definitions whose terms structure the world in
ways which are utterly different from, incompatible with our own.
Hence the gap in intuitions doesn't just divide different
theoretical positions, it also tends to divide different fundamental
options in life. The practical and the theoretical are inextricably
joined here. It may not just be that to understand a certain ex-
planation one has to sharpen one's intuitions, it may be that one
has to change one's orientation-if not in adopting another
orientation, at least in living one's own in a way which allows for
greater comprehension of others. Thus, in the sciences of man
insofar as they are hermeneutical there can be a valid response
to "I don't understand" which takes the form, not only "develop
your intuitions," but more radically "change yourself." This
puts an end to any aspiration to a value-free or "ideology-free"
science of man. A study of the science of man is inseparable from
an examination of the options between which men must choose.
This means that we can speak here not only of error, but of
illusion. We speak of "illusion" when we are dealing with some-
thing of greater substance than error, error which in a sense
builds a counterfeit reality of its own. But errors of interpretation
of meaning, which are also self-definitions of those who interpret
and hence inform their lives, are more than errors in this sense:
they are sustained by certain practices of which they are con-
stitutive. It is not implausible to single out as examples two
rampant illusions in our present society. One is that of the pro-
ponents of the bargaining society who can recognize nothing
but either bargaining gambits or madness in those who rebel
98 Charles Taylor
against this society. Here the error is sustained by the practices

of the bargaining culture, and given a semblance of reality by
the refusal to treat any protests on other terms; it hence acquires
the more substantive reality of illusion. The second example is
provided by much "revolutionary" activity in our society which
in desperate search for an alternative mode of life purports to
see its situation in that of an Andean guerilla or Chinese peasants.
Lived out, this passes from the stage of laughable error to tragic
illusion. One illusion cannot recognize the possibility of human
variation, the other cannot see any limits to man's ability to
transform itself. Both make a valid science of man impossible.
In face of all this, we might be so scandalized by the prospect
of such a hermeneutical science, that we will want to go back to
the verification model. Why can we not take our understanding
of meaning as part of the logic of discovery, as the logical
empiricists suggest for our unformalizable insights, and still found
our science on the exactness of our predictions? Our insightful
understanding of the intersubjective meanings of our society will
then serve to elaborate fruitful hypotheses, but the proof of these
puddings will remain in the degree they enable us to predict.
The answer is that if the epistemological views underlying the
science of interpretation are right, such exact prediction is
radically impossible. This, for three reasons of ascending order of
fundamentalness.
The first is the well-known "open system" predicament, one
shared by human life and meteorology, that we cannot shield a
certain domain of human events, the psychological, economic,
political, from external interference; it is impossible to delineate
a closed system.
The second, more fundamental, is that if we are to understand
men by a science of interpretation, we cannot achieve the degree
of fine exactitude of a science based on brute data. The data of
natural science admit of measurement to virtually any degree of
exactitude. But different interpretations cannot be judged in this
way. At the same time different nuances of interpretation may
lead to different predictions in some circumstances, and these
different outcomes may eventually create widely varying futures.
Hence it is more than easy to be wide of the mark.
But the third and most fundamental reason for the impossibility
of hard prediction is that man is a self-defining animal. With
changes in his self-definition go changes in what man is, such that
he has to be understood in different terms. But the conceptual
mutations in human history can and frequently do produce con-
ceptual webs which are incommensurable, that is, where the
terms can't be defined in relation to a common stratum of ex-
pressions. The entirely different notions of bargaining in our
society and in some primitive ones provide an example. Each
will be glossed in terms of practices, institutions, ideas in each
society which have nothing corresponding to them in the other.
The success of prediction in the natural sciences is bound up
with the fact that all states of the system, past and future, can be
described in the same range of concepts, as values, say, of the
same variables. Hence all future states of the solar system can be
characterized, as past ones are, in the language of Newtonian
mechanics. This is far from being a sufficient condition of exact
prediction, but it is a necessary one in this sense, that only if past
and future are brought under the same conceptual net can one
understand the states of the latter as some function of the states
of the former, and hence predict.
This conceptual unity is vitiated in the sciences of man by the
fact of conceptual innovation which in turn alters human reality.
The very terms in which the future will have to be characterized
if we are to understand it properly are not all available to us at
present. Hence we have such radically unpredictable events as the
culture of youth today, the Puritan rebellion of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, the development of Soviet society, etc.
And thus, it is much easier to understand after the fact than it
is to predict. Human science is largely ex post understanding. Or
often one has the sense of impending change, of some big re-
organization, but is powerless to make clear what it will consist
100 Charles Taylor
in: one lacks the vocabulary. But there is a clear assymetry here,
which there is not (or not supposed to be) in natural science,
where events are said to be predicted from the theory with
exactly the same ease with which one explains past events
and by exactly the same process. In human science this will never
be the case.
Of course, we strive ex post to understand the changes, and
to do this we try to develop a language in which we can situate
the incommensurable webs of concepts. We see the rise of Puri-
tanism, for instance, as a shift in man's stance to the sacred; and
thus, we have a language in which we can express both stances-
the earlier mediaeval Catholic one and the Puritan rebellion-as
"glosses" on this fundamental term. We thus have a language in
which to talk of the transition. But think how we acquired it. This
general category of the sacred is acquired not only from our
experience of the shift which came in the Reformation, but from
the study of human religion in general, including primitive
religion, and with the detachment which came with secular-
ization. It would be conceivable, but unthinkable, that a
mediaeval Catholic could have this conception-or for that
matter a Puritan. These two protagonists only had a language of
condemnation for each other: "heretic," "idolator." The place
for such a concept was pre-empted by a certain way of living the
sacred. Mter a big change has happened, and the trauma has
been resorbed, it is possible to try to understand it, because one
now has available the new language, the transformed meaning
world. But hard prediction before just makes one a laughing
stock. Really to be able to predict the future would be to have
explicited so clearly the human condition that one would
already have pre-empted all cultural innovation and transfor-
mation. This is hardly in the bounds of the possible.
Sometimes men show amazing prescience: the myth of Faust,
for instance, which is treated several times at the beginning of the
modern era. There is a kind of prophesy here, a premonition.
But what characterizes these bursts of foresight is that they see
through a glass darkly, for they see in terms of the old language:
Faust sells his soul to the devil. They are in no sense hard pre-
dictions. Human science looks backward. It is inescapably
historical.
There are thus good grounds both in epistemological argu-
ments and in their greater fruitfulness for opting for hermeneutical
sciences of man. But we cannot hide from ourselves how greatly
this opinion breaks with certain commonly held notions about
our scientific tradition. We can not measure such sciences against
the requirements of a science of verification: we cannot judge
them by their predictive capacity. We have to accept that they
are founded on intuitions which all do not share, and what is
worse that these intuitions are closely bound up with our
fundamental options. These sciences cannot be "werifrei"; they
are moral sciences in a more radical sense than the eighteenth
century understood. Finally, their successful prosecution requires
a high degree of self-knowledge, a freedom from illusion, in the
sense of error which is rooted and expressed in one's way of life;
for our incapacity to understand is rooted in our own self-
definitions, hence in what we are. To say this is not to say
anything new: Aristotle makes a similar point in Book I of the
Ethics. But it is still radically shocking and unassimilable to the
mainstream of modern science.
Hans Jonas
CHANGE AND PERMANENCE: ON THE

POSSIBILITY OF UNDERSTANDING
HISTORY*
Achilles sulks in his tent, mourns for Patroclus, drags Hector's

corpse around the funeral pyre, weeps at Priam's words. Do we
understand this? Surely, we do, without being Achilles ourselves,
ever having loved a Patroclus and dragged a Hector through the
dust. Socrates passes a life in discourse, examines opinions, asks
what virtue and knowledge are, makes himself the gadfly of
Athens in obedience to the god's command, and dies for it. Do
we understand this? Yes, we do, without ourselves being capable
of such a life and such a death. A wandering preacher calls to
two fishermen: Follow me, I shall make you fishers of men; and
they leave their nets, never to return to them. Even this we
understand, although the like of it has happened to none of us,
and none of us is likely to follow such a call. Thus do we under-
stand the never-experienced from the words of ancient writings.
But do we understand it correctly? Do we understand it as meant
by Homer himself and as understood by the listeners of his time?
As Plato and the readers for whom he wrote understood the
* This essay was originally in German with the title "Wandel und Bestand. Vom
Grunde der Verstehbarkeit des Geschichtlichen," and in abridged form served as
the opening address of the Fifth International Congress of Classical Studies on
September I, 1969, in Bonn, The complete German text was published in Durch-
hlicke. Martin Heidegger zum 80. Gehurtstag, and separately as Wandel und Bestand
(Wissenschaft und Gegenwart, Geisteswissenschqftliche Reihe Hift 46), both by Vittorio
Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M., 1970. The present English version is the author's own.
CHANGE AND PERMANENCE
words of Socrates? As the Palestinian Jew of the first century

understood the nearness of the kingdom of God and the call to it?
Here we hesitate with our answer. Even he who affirms the
possibility (and more than the possibility of adequate under-
standing no reasonable man will affirm) must add that we can
never be sure whether the possibility is realized in a given case.
Only the nay-sayer can afford to be categorical when he asserts
that we never understand "correctly," as this is deemed im-
possible by the very nature and uniqueness of things historical.
But let us bear in mind that the same span of answers already
bestrides the question of understanding the present, even of
understanding the next fellowman, and applies by no means only
to the historically distant. Of this we will treat later. As regards
historical understanding, those most engaged in it and most
familiar with its toils will be the readiest to answer "yes and no"
to the question whether it can be attained. Such an answer is
neither an evasion nor a concession of defeat. It signals the
presence of a problem that needs pursuing. This we shall
attempt to do.
Several logical alternatives confront one another in this field. The

"yes" to our question can secure its position best by making appeal
to a permanent, invariant nature, an "essence" of man. Man
qua man, so the argument would go, is the same at all times: his
hunger and thirst, his love and hate, his hope and despair, his
seeking and finding, his speaking and fabling, his deceiving and
truth telling-they are all familiar to use since by either ex-
perience or disposition we have them in ourselves. Everyone,
according to this view, contains "humankind" in hjmself, and
thus nothing human is alien to him. Drawing on this fund of
identical humanity he can imaginatively reproduce in himself the
experience of the past, not excluding its enormities, or let the
attuned chords of his nature resonate to it. The intelligibility
Hans Jonas
of history would thus be grounded in the once-for-all given nature

of man. To this theory of the "ground" of understanding there
would correspond a theory of understanding itself, namely, that
it is a knowing of like by like: that we know love by love, and
mortal strife by strife. A hermeneutical theory is thus found to
rely on an ontological one, i.e., on a general theory of human
nature: in this case on the theory which first of all asserts than
man has "a nature."
We know, however, that this older, humanistic-ontological
position is countered in our day by an opposite one, which denies
that there is such a thing as a definite and definable essence of
man; which rather holds that what "man" is at any time is the
product of his own, de facto existing and of the choices made
therein; and, further, that the scope of such existing, even the
kind and content of the choices open to it are, in their turn,
predetermined by the facticity of spatiotemporal place, by the
circumstance and accident of the historical situation; and,
finally, that each such situation is unique. In brief, the specifi-
cally modern-and like everything modern, highly suggestive-
contention is that "man," far from being always the same, is
each time different. Understanding, therefore, if on this stand-
point considered possible at all, would consist in knowing
precisely not like by like, but other by other. The very meaning
of understanding would be to get beyond oneself and to the
other, and not at all to recognize oneself and one's familiar
possessions in every other instance of man. How such a disclosure
of the "other" is possible is a question by itself. The contention
is that only to the extent that it is possible-a possibility, inferred
from its experienced if as yet unexplained fact-can there be
historical understanding, and even understanding of anything
human at all.
However, the proposition of the irreducible uniqueness of all
experience and the ever-otherness of man in history can also lead
to the radically skeptical conclusion that "true" historical under-
standing is a priori impossible; and that what we take for it is
always a translating of the foreign signs into our own language-

a necessarily falsifying translating, which creates the deceptive
appearance of familiarity where in fact we only explicate our-
selves and recognize ourselves in the past because we have first
projected ourselves into it. Surprisingly, therefore, we see the
most skeptical and the most confident views meet from opposite
ends in agreeing that all understanding is a "knowing ofthe like" :
with the difference that in the one case this means the possible
truth, and in the other, the necessary error of historical under-
standing.
We thus have two opposite ontological doctrines about man
and, corresponding to them, two alternative views of understand-
ing-as being knowledge oflike by like, or of other by other; and
in addition, as a corrollary of the ontological homo mutabilis thesis,
a third hermeneutical view according to which there is nothing
but would-be understanding, since understanding of the other
qua other is impossible per se. Obviously, only the first of the two
ontological alternatives adduces a ground for the intelligibility of
the historical past: an abiding identity of the historical subject
directly constitutes such a ground and makes understanding
itself understandable enough. To be sure, even with that ground
there would be no dearth of problems for historical understand-
ing: obscurity and ambiguity of language in the original docu-
mentation, doubtfulness and scarcity of the extant tradition, and
so on. But whatever the technical difficulties, on principle there
is for this standpoint no riddle in historical understanding as such.
The other standpoint, by contrast, denies this ground, even if
not denying understanding itself. It may then either hold that
understanding lacks a natural ground outside itself, i.e., that
it is an underivable, primary phenomenon, or that it bids to seek
for a ground other than identity of essence.
When we look at these various possibilities, we may well feel
that both ontological alternatives-as is so often the case with
formulated theories-are too one-sided and, in their exclusiveness,
wrong; but also, that there is something in each that must not be
106 Hans Jonas
overlooked and can correct the other. It surely betrays little

thoughtfulness to abandon lightly (or even triumphantly), under
the pressure of recent existentialist counterassertions, the most
venerable and oldest idea of an essence and norm of "man"-be
it in the classical form of the animal rationale or in the biblical
form of the imago Dei. It may also betray a wanting nearness to
what is being abandoned here, and its significance is in many
respects subjective rather than objective. That all who bear the
form of man have something fundamental in common, without
which we could not even speak of "man," nor of human history
either-let alone of man's "historicity" and, perhaps, even of
"his" radical mutability in history-this much should be evident.
Even the negators of the "essence" draw on this community,
for they predicate their negation, after all, not on an empty,
arbitrary x, but on Man, as something attributable to him alone
and in distinction from the animal, which is captive in each
instance to its specific essence. Thus, this very negativity is
claimed for man as an "essential" property. "Essentialism,"
indeed, is far less easily disposed of than a vulgar "existentialism"
wishes us to believe. It would be rash, at least, to pronounce
Plato dead in compliance with Nietzsche's decree.
Nevertheless, unlike Plato, we know too much of the depth of
historical change in man to still believe in one determinate,
univocally binding definition of man. Too powerful was Nietz-
sche's message of the "nonfixed animal" and the openness of
becoming. Too great is our resistance to regarding what seems
new in history as not really new, or as a mere byplay that leaves
the core untouched. Moreover, there is no denying the poverty
and even boredom of an understanding which forever finds in all
its objects nothing more than what it already knows, for which
all the wealth of history reduces itself to the endlessly repeating
da capo of a fixed repertoire-not to speak of the injustice which
lies in the measuring of everything different by the standard of
the one, acknowledged essence, assigning each its grade according
as it conforms to it. We who first in all history have drunk from
the intoxicating cup of its knowledge no longer enjoy the in-

nocence of the faith in time-exempt essence.
But as insufficient as the concept of knowing like by like is for
a theory of understanding, as untenable, even absurd, would be
its formula as a knowledge of the absolutely Other. Between
absolute "others" there can be no understanding. To be under-
standable, the other must partake in the generic premises of my
own possibilities, which include those of my imagination and
sympathy, without coinciding with their contingent reality. The
other-it is a truism to say it-must be a human other, an other
within the domain of man. Of this alone do we expect, even
demand, that it be understandable. Even in consternation at the
utterly strange, in our very perplexity before the starkly in-
comprehensible, we still hold to the postulate that this, being
human, must be understandable. For a theory of interhuman
understanding the choice is not between "congruence of like
with like" and "leap to a totally other": simply to substitute the
latter for the-admittedly unsatisfactory-former would be an
indefensible exaggeration and a play with the absolute paradox.
Absolute paradoxes, however, are suspect per se. We already
guess that in the question of understanding, as elsewhere, the
truth may be "the same and the other" (,,' oclhd xoct -IM:t'e:pov); and
in history, repetition and innovation.
What about the third possibility, the skeptical variant of the
ontology of man's radical mutability, according to which all so-
called historical understanding is merely putative and of necessity
can never be true? As are all such negative theses, this too is
safe from refutation, since by the nature of the matter there cannot
be proof for a single case of adequate understanding. But, again
like all of its kind, the thesis is faulted by the absurdity of its
consequences, which follow when it is taken in its extreme sense,
that is, beyond being a warning against the ever-present danger
of self-deception, or a reminder that no historical understanding
is ever complete: these are salutary truths. But radical historical
skepticism is self-defeating. For it is easy to show (but need not
108 Hans Jonas
be shown in detail here) that the alleged nonintelligibility of the

historical past can be advocated only in conjunction with the
nonintelligibility of the present, and that of whole cultures only
with that of every individual-since the arguments from other-
ness and uniqueness urged for the first are equally valid for the
second, that is, for all human existence in general. The thesis,
therefore, amounts to saying that there is no understanding of
the human other of any sort-historical or contemporary,
collective or individual. That is to say, it leads straight into
solipsism and its absurdity. Its spokesmen cannot even utter it
meaningfully, except in soliloquy, since they cannot hope for
its being understood. Strictly speaking, one need not reply to
them.
Apart from this formal objection to which every radical
skepticism is exposed, one could ask the spokesmen of historical
agnosticism why they concern themselves with history at all, why
they so much as take notice of it. The charge of boredom which
cropped up before becomes in their case heightened to that of
complete uselessness. Essentialism-vulnerable to the former
charge only with a rather shallow view of "essence"-allows for
cognitive communication with the past to be not only possible
but also worthwhile: it is consistent with its terms that the past
may have something to teach us about the essence and its
breadth. For even if each has it in him complete, it is reasonable
to suppose that only the least part of it is ever realized (and
thereby made manifest) in anyone's own experience, and most
of it remains hidden as an unknown potential. Thus, even if
historical understanding does no more than showing me "my
own" by means of the "like," something has been gained from
its discovery which could not have been gained otherwise. By
contrast, radical historicist skepticism cannot expect such a gain
from the eternally misunderstood past and cannot justify its
study in any way. Since we always read ourselves into it-while
its own being remains closed to us and merely serves as a pretext
for displaying ourselves-there ought to be a straighter, truer,
CHANGE AND PERMANENCE 109
more direct way to this, and to knowing what we are and have,
than the deluding reflection in the opaque surface of history.
We ought to converse with ourselves alone, whatever such a
pointlike "self" may mean. And so we have the paradox that the
advocates of radical historicism must end up with the standpoint
of complete a-historicism-with the notion of an existence devoid
of a past and shrunk to a now. In short, radical historicism leads
to the negation of history and historicity. Actually, there is no
paradox in this. For history itself, no less than historiography,
is possible only in conjunction with a trans historic element. To
deny the transhistorical is to deny the historical as well.
Let us add that there is of course not the shadow of a proof-
nor can there be-that man has a limitless capacity for inno-
vation. The assertion that he has, however prestigious its source,
is strictly without foundation and ultimately frivolous. It is
"metaphysics" in the bad sense of the word.
So much for the several logical possibilities in the domain of
our question. With all our critique of the three abstract positions
it should not be forgotten that this critique applies in each case
only to the extreme and exclusive form of the criticized
position and rules none of them out completely, except as a pure
alternative. Each has its justified aspect which is indispensable
for the totality of the complex situation-even the third position,
which has been so severely criticized. The doctrine of the one,
permanent human nature contains the truth that an inalienable
kinship links the children of man across the farthest distances of
history and the greatest diversities of culture, that this common
ground supports and holds together and explains all the mani-
foldness which unpredictably comes forth from it, and that its
underlying presence alone makes possible history and under-
standing of history as well. The doctrine of man's fundamental
mutability and actual changing, and of the uniqueness of each
product of change, contains the truth that the particularization
of humanity in different cultures, and again in the progress of
each, and again in the individuals sharing it, produces genuine
110 Hans Jonas
and unpredictable otherness; that consequently the "knowledge

of the like" must transcend itself; and that-taking off from the
basis of the like-an understanding of the widely different is
possible and must be striven for. How it is possible is as yet an
open question. Finally, the doctrine of the necessary failure of all
understanding contains the truth that the interpreter indeed
imports himself into the interpreted, inevitably alienating it
from itself and assimilating it to himself, and also, that every
advance of understanding leaves an indelible remainder of the
nonunderstood which recedes before it into infinity.
II
After the critical discussion, let us now try to take a few steps of
our own toward explaining historical understanding--of which
we assume the fact but wonder how it is possible. Such an attempt
leads necessarily into the theory of understanding in general,
whose mysteries are no less than those of historical understanding
in particular. From the outset we disclaim any ambition to
compete with the subtlety which for more than a century has
been devoted to this subject, i.e., to the problems of hermeneutics,
especially in Germany. We may take comfort from the reflection
that after so much subtlety a restatement of certain elementary
facts may not be wholly useless.
Let us begin with the question known under the title "know-
ledge of other minds" -that is, the question of how we can know
of foreign consciousness, of any inwardness besides our own. In
other words, how we can reach over from the insularity of our
private subject sphere to the equally insular one of another,
assuming that it exists. And here, right at the outset, I wish to
reverse the usual and so deceptively plausible opinion by an-
swering: not by analogical inference, overt or covert, from myself
to others; not by transference and projection, as the post-
Cartesian doctrine of consciousness made it almost de rigueur
to hold; rather, if there be a prius and posterius here, the genetic
CHANGE AND PERMANENCE III
sequence is the reverse. Neither the knowledge of other minds,

nor even the knowledge of mind as such, originates from the
inspection of our own. On the contrary, the knowledge of our
own mind, nay, our having one in the first place, is a function of
acquaintance with other minds. Knowledge of inwardness as
such, whether one's own or that of others, is based on communi-
cation with a whole human environment which determines,
certainly co determines decisively, even what will be found in
eventual introspection. Since we begin life as infants (a fact
philosophers so easily forget), coming into a world already
peopled with adults, the particular "I" to-be is at first far more
the receiver than the giver in this communication. In the course
of it, the rudimentary inwardness that is to be "I" evolves by
gradually beholding from the address, utterance, and conduct
of others what inward possibilities there are, and making them
its own. We learn from others what we ourselves can be, can will,
and can feel. Thus we must be able to understand others before
we understand ourselves, in order that we become such persons
as may eventually come to understand ourselves-i.e., as having
something in us to understand at all. An understanding of the
inwardness of others, beyond and in advance of what "intro-
spection" could have found on one's own inwardness, is a
precondition for the very emergence of such an inwardness.
The proposition that introspection, or self-experience, is our
only or main or primary source for knowledge of inwardness
leads to absurd conclusions. It would make all our knowledge of
other subjects a matter of analogical transference from what is
already present in ourselves. Apart from the impossible setting this
creates for the problem of learning, it would condemn to futility
the best part ofliterature. As I could not possibly have Aeschylus,
Shakespeare, and Goethe in myself beforehand, their labors
would have been in vain; and superfluous if I had.
To approach the question on a much more primitive and
preverbal plane: How do I know that a smile is a smile? that
a face turned toward me means "someone looking at me"? that
112 Hans Jonas
a facial expression is an expression? On the theory of introspection

and analogical inference ("projection"), the three-month-old
infant who seeks the eyes of his mother or responds to her smile
would have had to perform an incredible series of mental oper-
ations in the past in order to do so--operations that would have
to include recognition of his own face in the mirror, discrimination
of its expressions, their correlation with concurrent feelings, and
the later memory use of these observations in interpreting similar
appearances on other faces. The construction need only be
stated to obviate refutation. Against all such tortured theories
stands the simple, if mysterious, truth that a smile is in essence
something coming to me from without, and its genuine locus,
first and always, is another face.
Once we are grown up, it is true, we do make use of self-
knowledge and analogy in understanding and judging others.
To the extent that our adultness entails unwillingness or in-
capacity to learn further, we may, to our own impoverishment,
come to receive the testimony of the inwardness of others solely
through the filter of our ready-made own. It can then tell us only
what we already know, i.e., it fails to be really testimony of other
inwardness, and knowledge is replaced by "projection." No one
is entirely free from this kind of procedure, but we should judge
that one confined to it would make neither a good psychologist
nor a good companion. At least in the process of reaching this
finished state of adulthood, one has had to take other, more
"open-minded" ways of perceiving inwardness in its expressions,
especially the verbal ones, for otherwise we could never have
become adult and possessed the inwardness on which we then
can draw.
If the original understanding is not an inferential one, on what
then is it based? It is part of the intuitive beholding oflife by life
and thus begins with the accomplishments of animal expression.
The recognition of other life is a fundamental feature of the
outside relation integral to the animal organism. Among the
objects of perception, neutrally classed as "things," living things
as living are paramount. Their perception involves emotional

discrimination-as prey, foe, fellow member of the species,
sexual partner; as familiar or unfamiliar, noteworthy or negligible,
harmless, threatening, or undetermined-and is thus anything
but neutral. It includes an instinctive familiarity-sometimes in
the mode of felt unfamiliarity-with the living behavior to which
response is to be made. The basis of this familiarity is the com-
munity of animal nature, in the case of intraspecific relations the
community of the species. A creature recognizes greed or ag-
gression when it meets it in the fellow creature's eyes (or in
posture, sound, and smell), and this recognition goes far beyond
its own kind.
It recognizes because something offers itself for recognition.
The receptive feat of perception is matched, and made possible,
by the spontaneous feat of expression. The latter may well be the
primary phenomenon. Animal life is expressive, even eager for
expression. It displays itself; it has its sign codes, its language; it
communicates itself. Whole rituals of posture and gesture and
expressive movement serve the role of signals before the action
or take its place, making the action itself unnecessary, if warning
is being conveyed. Such spontaneous but strictly fixed symbolism
counts on its being understood; untaught, animals do understand
the mimics of aggression, anger, and sexual courtship.
It would be foolish to except man from all this. The cat looks
up at my eyes, she seeks my glance, she wants something from me.
Nobody has taught her that these are the body parts with which
I notice her, and in which my noticing or not noticing becomes
visible to her. She "knows": she can reach me that way. And I
too do not need information from physiology and neurology in
order to feel a gaze on me and to read the entreaty in it-intuitive
physiognomies is at work. We look at each other, and something
passes between us without which there could be no higher under-
standing, however far it surpasses this elemental stratum. Animals
-namely, those that are able to play-also know how to dis-
tinguish between play and earnest among themselves. This is
114 Hans Jonas
especially true of those animals with brood rearing, and the

sheltered childhood of the mammals, in which the animal is free
from the grim pressure of animal needs but enjoys already the
powers of movement. This is why dolphins play, even when
adult, but sharks do not. And we humans-mammals with the
longest childhood, who carry the paradisiac freedom of play over
into responsible adulthood-we understand the play of animals.
In man, it is true, this whole natural ground level is overlain by
systems upon systems of invented, constructed, and freely mani-
pulated expressions and symbols, culminating in speech and
imagery, which open up entirely new dimensions of understanding
and misunderstanding, openness and concealment, truth and
falsehood. Of this, we will speak later. But the overwhelming role
of these artifacts must not make us forget the role which the
natural community of the species, i.e., the shared organic basis,
plays in the understanding of man by man. In this respect most cer-
tainly, but not in it alone, there is indeed a "recognition of like by
like." Empedocles was right in saying that we behold love by love,
hate by hate. Thatthisis not the whole truth does not make it untrue .
We should not perceive fear in others were we not familiar with
its stirrings in ourselves; we should not understand the statement
"I am hungry" without our own past experience of hunger. Yet,
although in the latter case actual self-experience must, and
assuredly does, precede the understanding of the phenomenon
in others (for what animal organism is spared that feeling?), this
is not a universal condition where human understanding is con-
cerned. There, the recognition of like is not bound to the use of
analogy. To "know love by love" is not to infer, from my own
experience of the feeling of love, what is probably going on in
someone else. I may first be awakened by Romeo and Juliet to the
potentialities oflove, by the tale of Thermo pylae to the beauty of
sacrificial heroism. This is itself an experience showing me un-
dreamed of possibilities of my own soul-or rather, of "the soul"-
possibilities that mayor may not become actualities of my own
experience. This experience of the potential, mediated by symbols, is
CHANGE AND PERMANENCE I 15
precisely what is meant by "understanding." The never-yet-heard

combination of familiar meanings in the words of the communi-
cation begets new meaning in the recipient, and this opens the
door to new inward realms of life. What was thus for the first
time disclosed in the otherness of the paradigm may then be
augmented by what it has set in motion in ourselves.
The knowledge of other minds thus rests indeed on the ground
of the common humanity of men-in such a manner, however,
that this common ground is effective, not by supplying parallels
between what is there in the self and the other, but by allowing
the voice of the other to call on the possibilities that lie latent in
the soul of man or can be elicited from his nature. We understand
through our possibilities, not necessarily through actual prece-
dents in our own experience. In other words, we understand and
answer with our possible being far more than with our actual one.
All the better if sometimes we can also answer with the memory
of self-experienced actuality, although this in turn has its obvious
dangers. The well-known "I know exactly what you mean, for
wasn't I myself once in such and such a situation" may help the
understanding to its truth, but may also indicate the point where
it shuts itself off against the other. Our "possibility," however,
playing on the scale of a few generic constants that are predefined
by our constitution (such as desire, fear, love, hate-but also
reason and belief), is unforseeable and becomes revealed, in
unending novelty, only through the calls made upon it-mostly
in the mutuality of communication which holds the real surprises
concerning what is mind or soul.
On man's nature being "possibility" rather than determinate
fact depends our empathic understanding of even those ex-
periences of other souls-actual or fictitious-which we may never
be able to duplicate in ourselves. This is to say that the very use
of language for the generation of psychological novelty-an
actual enlargement of the soul's estate-depends on this tran-
scending trait of our nature by which we are always indefinably
more than our present being. For it is language which must
1I6 Hans Jonas
conjure up the hitherto unimagined. Without this conjuring

power of words, there would be no poetry, nor history either,
apart from the bare chronicling of events. The problem of "other
minds" is thus closely bound up with the philosophy oflanguage,
which cannot do without a theory of imagination. It is by the
same token closely bound up with the philosophy of art. Socrates'
theory of "recollection," in which the idea of "possibility" is
adumbrated, is with all its mythological pitfalls more adequate
to the facts of the "dialogue" between minds than is the modern
theory of analogical inference and projection.
III
So far we have dealt with understanding in general. What is the

peculiarity of historical understanding? How does it differ from
present understanding in which we are incessantly engaged?
Many answers suggest themselves. There is the distance of the
past as such and the vast gap of difference that separates it from
us: circumstances and people have become other; ideas, customs,
language, and associations of meanings have changed; so have
social structure and institutions; even some feelings and passions
are no longer the same. Then there is the fragmentary, selective
condition of the testimony that has come down to us, prefiltered
first by the selection of the memorable on the part of the historical
subjects themselves, then filtered once more through the accidents
and mishaps of its physical survival. The always deficient
evidence thrusts on the interpreter the risk of tentative recon-
struction which becomes more hazardous as the life that here
expresses and hides itself becomes more alien. Furthermore,
contemporary understanding is continuous and obligatory, while
historical understanding is occasional and optional. We could
prolong the list.
All this is correct, but not decisive. On the contemporary plane,
too, there are chasms of strangeness and difference which stand
in the way of understanding, and much apparent familiarity
CHANGE AND PERMANENCE I 17
which may lead it astray. Already the transition from one social
class to another has its pitfalls, not to speak of the crossing of
national, ethnic, and linguistic borders. And what shall we say
of the generation gap, this most peculiar of all contemporary
relationships, a veritable seedbed of misunderstanding? I am
not sure that I understand my children, but I am convinced that
they don't understand me. Or could I be mistaken there too?
Do they perhaps understand me better than I might like? Later
observers may be able to judge. This would be a case, and not the
only one, where the distance of the past has the advantage over
the all-too-engaged proximity of the present. One advantage,
however, the present always has over the past: it enjoys un-
restricted plenitude of evidence which can be multiplied ad
libitum for any subject (the problem being that of abundance
rather than scarcity), whereas paucity or strictly drawn limits
reign over the evidence of the past. Does perhaps the whole
difference come down to this? To a matter of more or less?
Namely, more remoteness and otherness for the past, more
ambiguity and obscurity of its expression, less material to deal
with? A quantitative difference in all these respects? Is, then,
the problem of historical understanding perhaps merely a magni-
fied form of the problems of understanding in general?
I do not think so. There remains a qualitative difference which
looks inconsiderable but seems decisive to me. It does not consist
in the being past, in the time distance as such, but is given with
it: Present understanding has the aid of speech and counterspeech, historical
understanding has only the one-sided speech of the past. Misunder-
standing of one's contemporary can be corrected by the misunder-
stood himself; I can question him and he can reply, since we both
are members of a larger, inclusive fellowship of communication,
of the general universe of speech that has nurtured us and goes
on feeding us and continuously proffers us the keys for our
reciprocal exchanges. The past, on the contrary, has spoken its
word and has nothing to add to it. It comes to us, and we cannot
return questions to its source. We must make of it what we can.
118 Hans Jona
And "what we can" may be more than is good. As the past

cannot come to the aid of our interpretation, neither can it
defend itself against it. Its defenselessness, however, obligates us
doubly. Precisely because it is delivered into our hands, the
residual speech of the past is entrusted to our most faithful care.
In dealing with the historical subject, therefore, it is doubly
improper to abuse the immunity of our freedom for the indulging
of ingenuity, the thrill of originality, and the vanity of self-
mirroring. The contemporary subject can retaliate for the sins of
our license and rap our misunderstanding painfully over the
knuckles. In the case of the historical subject we have nothing
worse to fear than the contradiction of our academic colleagues-
and with that one can live perfectly well. Sometimes, it is true,
"history" itself can have its revenge on us through the surprise
discovery of a new source that explodes our most beautiful
hypothesis (as it may also surprisingly confirm it). But this does
not change the basic fact that the past has spoken its word for all
time and cannot be approached for any self-explanation.
It is, therefore, the absolutely monological character of the
historical communication which creates the peculiar situation
of historical understanding. In this respect, the understanding
of history is on a par with the understanding of a work of art.
In the work of art too-be it of word, sound, or shape-we stand
opposite a self-enclosed, definitive entity which can tell us nothing
about itself beyond what it already is. With its finished creation
and dismissal into the world, it has assumed that silent infinity
of a passive potential for interpretation and reiterated experience
which it shares with the past. Its pronouncement, like that of the
past, is one-sided, monologic, and exposed to every appropriation.
It could even be said, in a sense, that the work of art instantly
assumes the quality of the past and thereby of an eternal present.
Tolstoi's War and Peace became a historical fact at the moment
of its appearance. Indeed, contrary to what we might think, it
is not the case that Tolstoi, Kafka, or Flaubert, because they are
nearer to us in time, are more easily and surely understood by us
than Shakespeare, Dante, or Aristophanes. This has nothing to

do with the question of whether or not we feel more at home with
the later than the earlier. In principle-i.e., apart from technical
questions, such as availability of the semantic associations-we
are in the same position toward all of them, the living and the
dead. It might be objected that we can, after all, question the
living author and let him explain himself. Heaven keep us from
trying. Nothing, neither experience nor good sense, supports the
view that the author is his own best interpreter. Even if he has a
great deal to say about his intention, in the last resort it matters
little what he had in mind; it matters everything, what he has
said. The "accursed ipsissimosity" of which Nietzsche asked "who
has never once been tired to death of it?" can well be that of the
artist too. At all events, he has soon fallen silent, and only the
monologue of his work remains. Because of the analogy that here
obtains, historical testimony and the work of art (both can
coincide in the same object) are similarly entrusted to us-albeit
with the difference that in regard to the historical testimony our
understanding, qua historical, is committed to a goal of correct-
ness and truth, and therewith to a method of critical verification,
which have no place in the understanding of art.
The strictly monological quality of the past does not, indeed,
change the nature of understanding as such, but it sharpens the
question concerning the ground of its possibility. For the confi-
dence in a shared sameness is more heavily drawn upon where
we cannot check back with the originator of the message and the
time dimension adds the problem of "permanence and change"
to what was merely the atemporal problem of "the like and the
other" for simultaneous understanding. With the expanding
time horizon (as with the similar expansion of the geographic
horizon) the question concerning an "essence" of man, which is
inseparable from the question of interhuman understanding as
such, turns into the slightly different question of what things we
can count on in man at all times and in all places. Only a
philosophical anthropology could answer such a question, and
120 Hans Jonas
this is not the place for it. In order to make any headway at all
within the more limited frame of this paper, let us invert the
question. Instead of interrogating the elusive "essence" about
what, according to it, we should always expect to find, let us
rather ask ourselves what, in actual fact and without giving
ourselves account of it, we always have already understood
implicitly in all our encounters with history and prehistory.
IV
It is well to start with the biological dimension, which we tacitly

presuppose as a matter of course: although subhistoric itself, it
pervades everything historical and cannot be left out of our
account. The reader may therefore forgive the banality of the
following enumeration of what he beforehand and implicitly
always knows. We always know, whatever relics of past humanity
we happen upon, that those who left them behind were organic
beings who had to eat, took pleasure in eating, and suffered from
hunger. When we read in Homer that the Achaeans raised their
hands to the tastily prepared meal, we feel our own mouths water:
angels would have difficulties of empathy here. We know of
human want and mortality. We know of the earliest men that
they, like us, were subject to the alternation of waking and sleep,
that to the weary sleep was necessary and sweet, and that it was
visited by dreams. Only a Cartesian fool would consider this
unimportant. We know about the duality of the sexes-about
the lust and pain of love, the mystery of generation and birth,
the suckling and rearing of the young; and we know that this
leads to the formation of families and kinships, to provident care,
delimitation toward the outside, orders of authority and reverence
within, to bonds ofloyalty and faith, but also to deadly strife. We
know about youth and old age, sickness and death. We know
further that the makers of the extant monuments, down to the
simplest tool, were erect creatures relying on eye and hand. We
share with them the pride, the intimacy, and the shame of the
upright body. When we read in the Bible that in a bloodbath all

were slain "who piss on the wall," we understand immediately
that all the males are meant, and also, why only they are slain.
We understand still more-namely, why a description of this
type has been chosen from among so many possible ones: it is
the language of warriors and we know to this day the speech
habits of the army camp, the soldiers' liking for coarsely sexual
speech. (Well may we regret that golden and silver Latinity
prevented Roman historians from telling us more about the
language of the legionnaires. I for one should like to know how
Marius, who had risen from the ranks, really addressed his men.)
Let us here break off the consideration of biological matters.
Already, their survey has not stayed within the bounds of mere
animal nature. How could it, seeing that it concerned humans?
Moving from the body to the products of man, what knowledge
guides us? How, for instance, do we know that any buried objects
we turn up are the works of man? We know it because, long
before there are the great dwellings of the gods and the lettered
stones, we find these three: tool, image, and tomb. It would
indeed require a full-fledged philosophical anthropology to show
why these-each in itself and all combined-are characteristic
of man.!
We must confine ourselves to a few remarks. The tool (any
utensil, including weapon and vessel) tells us that here a being,
compelled by his needs to deal with matter, serves these needs in
artificially mediated ways originating from invention and open
to improvement by further invention. The image tells us that
here a being, using tools on matter for an immaterial end,
represents to himself the contents of his perception, plays with
their variations and augments them by new shapes-thus
generating another object-world of representation beyond the
physical objects of his want and its direct satisfaction. The tomb
I. For the "image," I have once tried to show it in a special study, "Image-making
and the Freedom of Man," in The Phenomenon of Life, New York, 1966.
122 Hans Jonas
tells us that here a being, subject to mortality, meditates on life

and death, defies appearance and elevates his thought to the
invisible-putting tool and image to the service of such thought.
These are basic forms in which man, in uniquely human fashion,
answers and transcends what is an unconditional given for man
and animal alike: With the tool he surpasses physical necessity
through invention; with the image, passive perception through
representation and imagination; with the tomb, inescapable
death through faith and piety. All three, in their transcending
function, are divergent modes of a freedom shared by us with
the bygone makers of those artifacts and all who came between
them and us. Thus shared, they can serve as universal "coordi-
nates" of understanding valid for the whole course of human
history. We may not always know the purpose of a particular tool,
but we do know that it had one, that it was conceived in terms
of the means-end, cause-effect relation, and was produced
according to that conception: in the continuation of such causal
thought lie technology and physics. We may not always recognize
the meaning of an image, but we do know that it is an image, that
it was meant to represent something, and that in such repre-
sentation it let reality reappear in a heightened and validated
form: in the continuation of such representation lies art. We may
not know the particular ideas of a funeral cult (and might find
them very strange if we knew them), but we do know that ideas
were here at work-the bare fact of the tomb and the ritual tells
us-and that in these ideas the riddle of existence and of what
is beyond appearance was pondered on: in the continuation of
such pondering lies metaphysics. Physics, Art, and Metaphysics,
primevally foreshadowed by tool, image, and tomb, are here
named less for the eventual products known by these names,
which mayor may not emerge in the contingencies of history,
than for their indicating original dimensions of man's relation
to the world, each with its own horizon of possibility. Such
original dimensions of man's being must then also define di-
mensions of understanding him throughout his history-that is,
CHANGE AND PERMANENCE 12 3
they provide categories (or, as we expressed it before, coordinates)

of historical interpretation.
Possibility, of course, does not assure actuality. Accordingly,
our trinity of horizons should not be taken to imply that all of
their primeval signs must be met with in all human groups at all
times. Their presence is conclusive indeed, jointly and even
singly, but their absence is not equally conclusive. Tools, for
obvious reasons, are almost certain to be missing nowhere. But
image and tomb, both more of a luxury in man's struggle with
natural necessity, may for various reasons here and there fail to
appear. The faculty for them must nonetheless be counted as
integral to the fullness of being man, and no "culture" is entirely
without either of them. If it should be true that ours is just in the
process of banishing metaphysics from the household of our mind,
we should be the poorer for the loss of this dimension of our
being. We should not cease to be men; but we should cease to be
able to understand past history-if what has been pronounced
dead (and has surely been stifled) had really died in us. I tend
to believe that this is impossible.
Again we break off here. In our survey of that which always is
"understood in advance" wherever we deal with remnants of the
human past, we mentioned, first, the facts of man's corporeality
as exemplified by nutritive need, sex, upright posture, and the
dominance of hands and eyes. Then, in the works of his hands,
we discerned the artificer, the image maker, and the brooder over
mysteries. Much could be added here, considering, for example,
what we find depicted in the images, especially in the most eminent
of them all-that of man himself in his grace, majesty, or grimace.
However, it is time that we name at last what was left unnamed
in all those traits but was presupposed in each: language. Without
it, none of the other phenomena could be; for each, it was tacitly
assumed. This is true also of the organic-biological sphere. The
human meal (though not the defecation) is social, as is the pro-
curing of it-the hunt, the gathering, and so on. Entirely wordless,
love between the sexes would not be human. Rearing of the young
I24 Hans Jonas
means for man essentially teaching them how to speak-by

speaking to them. Kinship and authority relations are defined
and transmitted in speech. Even our dreams are permeated with
words. How much more do words dominate the life areas
indicated by the tool, the image, and the tomb-in planning,
work, remembrance, and veneration. And how completely
speech-dependent are the worlds of politics and law, and most of
all, the relations with the invisible, which gains form only in
words. Man, then, is first and foremost a creature of speech-
productive of speech and the product of it. This one fact we know
a priori: wherever and in whatever remote antiquity-historic
or prehistoric-men existed, they have talked with one another.
The philosophy of language must stand in the center of every
philosophical anthropology. But even without it we know that
it is of the essence of language to be intelligible across any
distance of time and to be translatable into one's own however
different in form and character-if only what is spoken about is
otherwise within our grasp. This it is in general thanks to our
being fellowmen to the speakers of all ages; and in particular,
thanks to our knowledge of things, which in part we must acquire
through historical investigation itself.
Indeed, through surviving words we know most-and the
most important things-of past humanity. Buildings, implements,
and images lend greater concreteness to this knowledge. But the
words tell more than the stones, though they are sometimes given
the lie by them. The word is also, together with the art styles, the
eminently "historical" above the substructure of the ever-
repeated themes of the species. Through the agency of the word
history produces itself; in its medium, it expresses itself; with its
record, historical understanding has to deal first and last. Its
paradox is that this most "general" and shareable of all the
properties of man, indeed the very repository of generality, is
precisely the medium of the most particular: what is the fun-
dament of sameness for everything human is at the same time the
instrument and vessel of infinite otherness. The fact of language
belongs to the timeless essence of man: what it speaks about and

how becomes the child of time and place and belongs eminently
to history, wherever man enters into history.
v
Only now, so late in our discussion, do we turn to the theme which
is the special concern of philologists-the "lovers of words"-
and the proper object of a theory of hermeneutics: the under-
standing of past verbal utterance, which under the circumstances
means the interpretation of texts. I am not so presumptuous as
now to try to discuss, even merely to list, the many problems that
here rise up and are familiar to the workers in the field. I am
content to return once more to the theme of the unilateral
character of historical information and what it means for the
problem of understanding compared to the reciprocity of con-
temporary communication. This theme comes now into its own.
For it is in speech, of course, that the difference of monologue
and dialogue has its proper place. Images, edifices, and utensils
are "monological" by nature. Not so the word.
First to be noted is the difference of the written from the spoken
word. Speech, notwithstanding the objectivity of its vocabulary
and grammar, is first of all a speaker's personal and physical
utterance which comes to the hearer borne on the modulations
of voice, accompanied by the play of features and gestures, and
with the full background of the concrete situation. Writing is
mediate, denatured speech which denies to the reader all the
sensuous helps of the original expressions and the shared oc-
casion of utterance. Yet of the past, all we have is writings-we
can only read and never hear. Soundfilms and the like may change
this for ourselves as objects offuture retrospection. It is interesting
to speculate on the effect this may have on the accuracy of a future
understanding of our time. In any case, it will leave the mono-
logue situation unchanged: never can posterity enter into the
relation of speech and counterspeech with the past.
Hans Jonas
On the other hand, we must not forget that even contemporary

understanding-certainly an understanding of "the present" in
any broader sense -is overwhelmingly obtained by reading. Book-
people that we are (a fact of history itself), we are incessantly
open to the many-voiced monologue of contemporary literature,
which we can't even always say is so readily open to us. It is true
that for us this monologue is embedded in the matrix of con-
temporary talk, not excluding the chatter, in which we are part-
ners, and whose associations are in varying degrees presupposed
in contemporary writing-while we never were privileged to
converse in ancient Hellas or Rome, in Persepolis, Thebes, or
Jerusalem. However, that aid of participant idiomatic familiarity,
which already deserts us in the presence of true linguistic
creativeness, is in any case short-lived, and the more important
creations of literature prove by their enduring that they can do
without it. The word has the power to conjure up, together with
its direct tale, the total ambience from which it came forth.
Moreover, the literary word, unless it be intentionally committed
to the colloquial, stands far more in a formal tradition with its
own canons of validity than in the everyday speech-world of the
moment. The most recent state of our own literature-something
exceptional, if not unique-makes this easy to forget. But at
least the classical philologist need not be reminded that the
artificiality of scriptural statement engendered from the outset
(as oral transmission in meter had done before) a separate,
formalized language which, at the price of a further remove from
immediacy, freed the communication from close dependence on
the changing speech habits of place and time.
Understanding history, to be sure, is not the same as under-
standing art (although historical documents can be works of
art, and vice versa), but it shares with it the unilateral relation
to the dormant, monological "word." It is up to the reader to
awaken it to new life, and he does so in the act of understanding.
The poet who entrusts the sound to the mute letter counts on the
reader's ability to become a speaker himself and to recreate the
music of the words for his own hearing. This "score-like"

character of any work of writing, which demands active re-
production every time and offers the coded instruction for it (as
a play's script does to the actor), obtains also with regard to the
historical source, the "text." The media of this reproduction are
sympathy, imagination, and-preeminently in dealing with
theoretical texts-reason. If we take the last for granted in its
changeless universality, we are left with empathic imagination as
the mysterious power operating in historical understanding, as
it does in interhuman understanding generally. We have at-
tempted before to explain this power by the existential category
of "possibility," with which we can respond to the appeal of
"other" reality. Reaching beyond my actual experience-though
nourished by it-my possibility extends into that which has never
been a part of my experience but, as human, is in the general
range of man; and what it lets me thus experience indirectly, by
participation in the symbolically revealed reality of the other,
enlarges my capacity for future, direct experience of my own.
One precondition, of course, must here be satisfied: the sophisti-
cation of mind and external circumstances with which the
interpreter is furnished by his own culture must not fall far
short of that represented by the object of his interpretation; just
as in the matter of translation, which plays so important a role
in this context, the translator's language must be nearly the equal
in differentiation to that of the original. However, since we anyway
believe ourselves on the peak of history, we assume for ourselves
that condition as given in relation to every existence, past or
present. We are more expert in playing on the latent rainbow
scale of our being, readier to assimilate alien stimuli, and less
bound to a single formula of feeling than any civilization before
us. It is not wholly unnecessary to add that when we undertake
to interpret the voices of the past, we must do so with our
humanity fully informed and alerted to its highest perceptiveness,
and not with any theory of scientific psychology, however well
accredited. The theory (e.g., psychoanalysis) "knows" everything
Hans Jonas
in advance-the very negation of the category of possibility-and

the terrible boredom of eternal repetition yawns at us from the
sum of transient toil.
It also bears explicit saying that what sympathy and imagination
elicit in us in response to the past is not the original experiences
and feelings themselves-who could endure them all?-but their
vicarious realization in the safe, yet not unfeeling, zone of re-
presentation. It is a "knowing" of the most peculiar kind,
hovering between the abstract and the concrete, between thought
and experience, which resembles nothing else-except the
vicarious coexperience with the work of art, with which the
vicarious experience of history has this in common, that the
induced feeling is not a reprise from the storehouse of our memory,
but a generative responding of the imagination to the summons
from without. The condition of the spectator of a tragedy and
that of the reader of a historical source are not in principle
different. I wish neither to deny nor to belittle the mystery that
still remains here.
Only this we know, that the self-transcending feat of under-
standing takes place on the base and in the bounds of that abiding
common humanity which is somehow always at our call, and
whose features we have attempted to delineate earlier in these
reflections. This bottom ground we still share with the most alien
of other civilizations. But the manifold that rises up from this
ground is not deducible from it and is generally unforeseeable.
The "ground" does not determine, it merely enables things to
arise. The closer the human things stay to this elementary (but
not, for that, barren) level, the simpler is the task of understanding
them-although we sophisticates may well need an effort even
to recapture this simplicity. The extrahistorical element in
history is thus what is most accessible to the historical under-
standing, available as it is in its sameness to all of us at all times;
and it is the premise for everything else. But then, proliferating
around this persistent core, come the mutations of historical man
in their endless, never-recurring diversity, and actually for their
sake, for all the nuances they display-and not to meet old
acquaintances-do we study history (as distinct from anthro-
pology). And here language is the vehicle of historicity par ex-
cellence: above the permanent substratum it creates and sustains
a temporal ground of its own, not common to mankind as is the first, but
particular to each concrescence of it in time. This bottom layer of
language on the one hand, and its upper reaches on the other-
the base and the summit-are of all phenomena the most
genuinely historical and the most difficult of access: on the one
hand, the almost secret, primordial words or coded insights, in
which a particular culture from the outset articulates its posture
toward the world, its basic grasp of reality that preconditions all
the rest-what we may call the animating spirit of a universe of
speech which opens up, and at the same time delimits, its
possible range of truth; and, on the other hand, the peaks of
poetry and speculation, in which this primordial life of the words
comes to its highest (but still deceptive) lucidity of symbolic and
conceptual expression. Everything in between-the narrative and
the descriptive, the political and the legal, wisdom proverb and
morality tale, the coarse and the refined, eulogy and mockery,
entertainment and instruction, and, of course, everything directly
historiographic-is "easily" understood, if philology has done
its job well, and if we do not always think only of ourselves. But
what dike and moira, what arete, logos, ousia really meant and mean
or, for that matter, atman and tao-whether we ever have
understood this completely, we can never know.
But what does "completely" here mean? Did the contempora-
ries understand it completely? Has it ever been fully understood?
Only the shallow is given to complete understanding. The
deepest sayings of the thinkers were probably from the beginning
veiled in a darkness of meaning whose beckoning infinity could
only be gradually disclosed and never exhausted. Between
misunderstanding and complete understanding there stretches
an infinite scale.
Hans Jonas
VI
The mention of atman and tao side by side with ousia prompts a
last consideration. It is often said that it is.one's "own" history,
baring the roots of one's own tradition, which is the genuine
object of historical scholarship, and which also alone promises
real success to the endeavor of understanding. Behind this saying
is the idea of an enlarged autobiography, as it were, which we owe
ourselves for many reasons, ranging from plain curiosity to the
concern for better understanding ourselves. And it is true that
here lies our first interest, our first duty, and also our first reward.
Without Homer, Plato, the Bible, and so on we should not be the
people that we are. Even the unread Homer, Plato, Isaiah can
determine us, for they have entered into the anonymous back-
ground that has formed us and lives on in our speech. Better, of
course, is Plato read than unread to enlighten us on the ante-
cedents and constituents of our being (I am not speaking now
of his philosophical validity); and a picture of Plato faithful to
historical truth is better than a picture distorted by tradition or
retouched by ourselves. Here we experience the joy of recognition,
of a return to the origins, of salvaging what was buried under the
rubble of time, of the renewal and deepening of our being. Only
thus can we pierce through its invisible sedimentation, only thus
can we really make our own what we possess. Of this, Goethe
speaks in his famous line:
Wer nicht von dreitausend Jahren
Sich weiss Rechenschaft zu geben,
Bleib' im Dunkeln unerfahren,
Mag von Tag zu Tage leben. 2
In giving account to ourselves, we are in our own company. Is
this the limit of the interest and the understanding?
The unread Descartes determines us, whether we want it or
2. He who cannot give account to himself of three thousand years-may he stay
in darkness, inexperienced; may he live from day to day.
not. The Upanishads unread can indeed not determine us. But
perhaps they ought to? Then we ought to read them, precisely
so that they can determine us. Alien tradition can be understood
too, even though it takes greater effort. It is sometimes denied
that we ever can properly understand the East Asian mind, or
the East Asian ours. But what is meant by this is probably only
that the East Asian's understanding of things Western is different
from our own, and our understanding of things Eastern different
from his. Some of my experiences with Indian and Chinese
students of European philosophy tend to confirm this. But to
understand differently is not necessarily to understand wrongly.
Also, perhaps, the effort was just not great enough.
But why should the effort be made? First of all, because no
significant voice in the orchestra of man should be missed. And,
second, it could be that our Western inheritance is not entirely
free of the need for some corrective or complement. We should
not rule out that there might be something for us to learn else-
where. Nietzsche, it is true, in "The Use and Abuse of History,"
warned that too much of such alien knowledge would make us
unsure of ourselves. But this is perhaps just what we need. One
unsettling profit we may derive from the encounter with non-
Western minds could be, for example, its calling in question our
very bias for history as such-the Western belief that history is
integral to the nature of man. Let me conclude with a few
remarks on this theme.
Our conviction of the essential historicity of man is itself a
product of history. This makes it self-limiting rather than self-pro-
ving. At the moment when we are about to destroy the last remnants
of a-historical existence left on earth, by forcing its sharers into
history, we do well to remind ourselves that history is not the last
word of human-ness. The proclamation of change as man's
genuine condition expresses a Faustian decision rather than an
ontological truth. 3 To our vision, it has the full force of factual
3. Goethe, Faust, I: "Nur wer sich wandelt, bleibt mit mir verwandt."
Hans Jonas
evidence on its side. Yet it is a prejudice, current only with us,

that not to advance must mean to retrogress, and standstill equals
decline. This is true only where progress reigns-thus true for us.
But it is written nowhere that progress must reign. If it should
happen-as is not inconceivable-that its movement at last
terminates in a new state of nonhistory (or, which comes to the
same, in a rate of change slowed to imperceptibility), and the
convulsions of history that brought us there would survive only
as mythical memories in the minds of men, we should still be men.
Those who rejoice in history may deplore such a prospect, those
who suffer from history may welcome it; both will most likely
regard it as a chimera. But no matter what our preference is-
nothing justifies the dogmatic belief that men must always have
history in order to be man. Certain is it only that he must have
had history if ever he should attain a state where he needs it no
more.
Our insatiable curiosity for history is perhaps nothing more
than a sublime play. Possibly it is not true that we must know
our whole antecedent history and, in addition, that of all the
other parts of mankind in order to understand ourselves. Or,
if this is true, then it is perhaps not true that we must understand
ourselves in this sense in order to be true men. For this, the
knowledge of the timeless may be more important than the
understanding of the temporal, and to see himself in the light
of the one may profit man more than to interpret himself by the
data of the other. Who knows? But we, who have surrendered
ourselves to history, and accordingly are under her whip as men
never were before-we have no choice. As long as we are caught
in this current of perpetual event and becoming, we must, on
pain of drifting blindly in it, endeavor to understand history-
our own and that of all mankind. Otherwise we have no right
to our own-a right problematical enough as it is.
Fred R. Dallmayr
PHENOMENOLOGY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE:

AN OVERVIEW AND APPRAISAL
The relationship between social science and social reality seems

infinitely more complex than that between tool and object of
analysis. In our time, the subterranean linkages of knowledge and
experience have been vividly exposed: the crisis features of social
reality have produced, or at least are accompanied by, an identity
crisis in many academic disciplines-notably in social science.
The manifestations of this malaise are familiar; they range from
scholarly reassessments of specific research procedures to dramatic
confrontations at professional meetings and in the context of
professional organizations. Of late, such agonies have even
surfaced in official pronouncements. In his recent presidential
address to the political science fraternity, David Easton diag-
nosed professional unrest as a "new revolution" following closely
on the heels of the behavioral or scientific renovation. As he
pointed out, the preceding behavioral transformation had
scarcely run its course before it was "overtaken by the increasing
social and political crises of our time." Although not diametrical-
ly opposed to its predecessor, the new insurgency involved a
profound challenge to professional orthodoxy: "The essence of
the post-behavioral revolution is not hard to identifY. It consists
of a deep dissatisfaction with political research and teaching,
especially of the kind that is striving to convert the study of
134 Fred R. Dallmayr
politics into a more rigorously scientific discipline modelled on

the methodology of the natural sciences." 1
Despite its dramatic vocabulary, however, Easton's address did
not contemplate a radical departure from prevailing conventions.
The diagnosis of "revolutionary" unrest was coupled with a plea
for implementation rather than critical reassessment of the be-
havioral paradigm. Apart from counseling greater awareness of
normative bias and apart from urging "boldly speculative
theorizing" -which, of course, would build upon "the findings
of contemporary behavioral science"-Easton's catalogue of
remedies centered primarily on a moderate shift in professional
priorities from pure to applied research. There is reason to
question the cogency of this line of argument. Considering the
insistence of the behavioral model on explanation and prediction,
the conspicuous failure of its adherents to explain and anticipate
contemporary crises- a failure conceded by Easton 2-dampens
confidence in the remedial qualities of applied knowledge.
Moreover, the dearth of "basic" findings seems to militate against
accelerated implementation. Considerations of this sort suggest
at least the possibility of an alternate assessment of "post-
behavioral" ferment: as an invitation to a more direct exploration
of social reality, in place of or alongside the behavioral model.
The legitimacy of such an undertaking is vindicated by the be-
havioral model itself. If it is correct, as most practitioners tend to
agree, that behavioral science aims at general and necessarily
abstract propositions, at the formulation of analytic theories
amenable to objective measurement and validation, then there
would seem to be ample room for an approach concentrating on
the concrete configurations of experience in an effort to render
them meaningful and transparent for purposes of practical,
everyday life. By and large-and neglecting for the moment
I. David Easton, "The New Revolution in Political Science," American Political

Science Review, LXIII (1969), 105I. (The address was delivered at the annual
meeting in September 1969).
2. Ibid., pp. 1053, 1057.
PHENOMENOLOGY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 135
intricacies of definition and detail-this aspiration is at the basis
of phenomenological investigation.
Obviously, the suggestion of an alternative to the behavioral
model runs counter to time-honored professional convictions.
There is a deeply ingrained belief, approaching certitude, that
any departure from the straight and narrow path of scientific
method leads inevitably into the abyss of arbitrary bias, into the
quagmire of undisciplined and idiosyncratic speculation. Ac-
cording to this belief, a belief backed by the sanctions of academic
repute, the scholar venturing beyond the scientific encampment
is condemned to aimless and solitary peregrinations in an in-
hospitable wilderness. It seems fair to point out, however, that-
far from being self-evident-the demarcation between haven and
wilderness, between scientific certitude and arbitrary choice is
itself a result of behavioral convention. The following pages seek
to reduce the dread of solitude by drawing the attention of
professional colleagues to a different convention or paradigm,
constructed in the supposed wilderness. No doubt, the phenome-
nological "movement" lacks the comforts of well-established
routines and domesticated thought patterns; but it is more than
an assemblage of unrelated monologues. While falling short of
the cumulative research enterprise envisaged by Hussed, pheno-
menology can be conceived as an ongoing process of conversation
and mutual interrogation. In this conversation, some themes are
central and recurrent, others more peripheral; also, the involve-
ment of participants is far from uniform. These pages cannot
hope to capture more than the basic contours of the complex
dialogue. Mter briefly tracing main lines of the philosophical
argument, the presentation proceeds to a review of prominent
contributions in the social science domain in order to glance,
finally, at some critical assessments and appraisals of the phenome-
nological enterprise.
I.Philosophical Background: From Pure to Existential Phenomenology

Explorations and forays beyond the encampment of science are
Fred R. Dallmayr
not peculiar to our time; intellectual history is replete with

skirmishes about the provinces and boundaries of knowledge.
For present purposes it must suffice to trace these forays back to
the generation of explorers at the turn of the century, and
principally to the work of Wilhelm Dilthey. Although not himself
a phenomenologist, Dilthey raised a series of important questions
which have remained a challenge to phenomenological inquiry.
Alarmed by the incessant advances of natural science and the
sweeping claims of positivism, Dilthey boldly set out in search of
an area of investigation immune from the scientist's measure-
ments. The territory which he finally staked out was the domain
of internal experience, a domain reserved to interpretive or
"hermeneutical" understanding as cultivated by humanistic or
mental sciences (Geisteswissenschaften). While nature-the subject
matter of the natural sciences-was a realm of external objects
constituted independently of human effort and only indirectly
intelligible through artificial constructs, mental phenomena
offered privileged access to human inspection since "only what
mind has produced, mind can properly understand." 3 Dilthey's
own studies, his careful portrayals of historical epochs and
intellectual currents, were admirable illustrations of the potency
of this type of inquiry. Yet, despite the richness of his insights,
his explorations were fraught with grave perplexities. If, as he
seemed to suggest, human life was deeply enmeshed in a social
and historical matrix, how was it possible to decipher the records
of other societies and epochs? Moreover, what was the nature
of mental phenomena and of the recommended decoding device
of hermeneutical interpretation? Were such phenomena simply
empirical processes, occurrences in "subjective consciousness"
at a given time and place? Ifso, were psychic states not legitimate
targets of scientific psychology, instead of being set aside for
3. Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften, Sth ed., Stuttgart, 1962, VII, 148. Cf.
also Joseph Meurers, Wilhelm Diltheys Gedankenwelt und die Naturwissenschaft, Berlin,
1963, p. 36; Jiirgen Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse, Frankfurt-Main, 1968, pp.
17 8- 2 33.
humanistic treatment?
Dilthey grappled with these issues and was able to meet some
of them in his later writings; but to a considerable extent he
remained vulnerable to empiricist rejoinders. Having borrowed
the concept of mental sciences from the positivist tradition, his
arguments readily lent themselves to psychological misinterpre-
tation. Some efforts to obviate this dilemma were made at the
time by the neo-Kantian school of thought, especially by
Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert. As both philosophers
insisted, the steady progress of experimental psychology involved
a profound challenge to the segregation of internal and external
experience, jeopardizing the corresponding dichotomy of types
of investigation. Trying to guard against the pitfalls of "psycho-
logism," Windelband and Rickert replaced Dilthey's scheme
with the distinction between natural science and history or (to
use Rickert's terminology) between "generalizing" and "indi-
vidualizing" disciplines. To be sure, the exploration of concrete,
individual reality was not identical with the mere collection of
random data. As Rickert in particular tried to show (in this
respect implementing Dilthey's intentions), there are different
means of integrating data in a general framework: instead of
subsuming a particular factor under a general category or
principle, "individualizing" inquiry seeks to grasp the essential
significance of phenomena in a meaningful context, a context
of normative values, symbols, and beliefs. To the extent that
phenomena reflect such values, concrete reality can be designated
as "culture" and historical disciplines as "cultural sciences"
(Kulturwissenschaften) . 4
While settling some issues, the neo-Kantian argument stirred
up a flurry of new quandaries. What was the relationship of
consciousness to the data ofconcrete experience? More specifically,
4. Heinrich Rickert, Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft (1899), 2nd ed.,
Tiibingen, 1910, trans. George Reisman as Science and History, Princeton, 1962.
Cf. also my essays "Heinrich Rickert und die amerikanische Sozialwissenschaft,"
Der Staat, V (1966), 17-46; "Political Science and the Two Cultures," Journal of
General Education, XIX (1968), 269-295.
Fred R. Dallmayr
how was a "cultural" realm accessible to a subject hopelessly

split into a priori structures and passive sense impressions? It is
at this point that phenomenology, in the modern sense of the
term, enters the scene. To be sure, the basic thrust of this philo-
sophical perspective is not easy to identify; as previously indicated,
the phenomenological "movement" is far removed from consti-
tuting a homogeneous phalanx. Behind the multiplicity of
definitions, however, the rudiments of a common ground can
still be discerned. From this synoptic vantage point, phenome-
nology implies attentiveness to the broad range of experience, a
radical openness to all kinds of phenomena irrespective of their
scientific validation; as a corollary, the perspective counsels
patient exploration of phenomena and a reluctance to prejudge
or truncate their significance through enclosure in rigid and
definitive systems of explanation. Unfortunately, this rudimentary
sketch runs counter to the very spirit of attentiveness, by ignoring
an inordinate amount of individual and historical variation.
Without intimating sharp discontinuities, it is feasible and
customary to differentiate between at least two successive phases
or patterns of focal concern: a first, pioneering phase character-
ized by reliance on a purified transcendental consciousness and
a relative disregard of social contingency-a phase associated
chiefly with the name of Edmund Husser!; and a second phase-
exemplified in the work of Martin Heidegger and some re-
presentatives of the French school of phenomenology, in which
attention shifts to the existential dimension of human experience
and to the predicaments of intersubjective relations. Today, it
may already be possible to identify a third phase of the develop-
ment: a phase in which the investigation of social contingency
has produced a decisive preoccupation both with dialectical
thought and with the hermeneutics of human dialogue.
While reflecting a persistent line of inquiry, Husserl's own work
shows considerable variability and marked shifts in emphasis; in
the present context the barest outline of his endeavors must
suffice. Parallels to Rickert-to whose chair in Freiburg he
PHENOMENOLOGY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE I39
succeeded later in life-can be found primarily in his first major

contribution, the Logical Investigations published around the turn
of the century. Drawing on his extensive training in mathematics,
Husser! in the first volume of this work launched a vigorous attack
against psychologism, interpreted as a doctrine deriving logical
propositions from empirical psychic processes. This attack,
however, was only the starting point of his analysis. Instead of
pursuing the intimations of a pure logic, Husserl in the second
volume turned his attention to a "phenomenological elucidation
of knowledge" focusing on the nonsensory foundation of human
awareness. In this manner, he arrived at the conception of a
transempirical, but fertile, consciousness: a consciousness marked
by a basic "intentionality" or directed ness pointing toward the
essential features of phenomena. The inspection and intuitive
grasp of such features (Wesensschau) was to be the task of "phe-
nomenological" inquiry. Small wonder that this conception
should have captivated the imagination of his contemporaries,
including Dilthey who greeted it as a possible philosophical
underpinning of his own efforts. In contrast to established school
doctrines, Husserl's perspective contained an invitation to take
a fresh new look at the world, to pierce the grey mist of explana-
tions and theories about theories in an effort to return "to the
things themselves" (zu den Sachen). Loosely akin to William
James's radical empiricism, phenomenology in this sense promised
a restitutio ad integrum, a restored access to phenomena in their
pristine splendor and variety.5
During his early years in G6ttingen, Husserl exemplified the
merits of his perspective in a sequence of careful analyses,
especially the investigation of internal time consciousness.
Progressively, however, he became preoccupied with a refinement
of his method and its presuppositions. In the course of this
5. In the words of Helmuth Plessner: "The call 'to the things themselves,' away
from theorizing, had an impact on the young generation of the time comparable to
the impact which the demand of out-door painting must have exerted on the
academicians of the mid-nineteenth century". Diesseits der Utopie, Cologne, 1966, p.
147·
Fred R. Dallmayr
development he steadily moved closer to Kantian transcendent-

alism-and away from the historical school and Dilthey's
concerns. A clear signal of this change was the essay on "Philo-
sophy as Strict Science" of 1910; but the new focus reached its
first culmination in a landmark study whose title announced a
program: Ideas Concerning a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological
Philosophy.6 As an access route to pure inspection, Husserl now
elaborated the procedure of "reduction" or "epoche," a procedure
which could be further differentiated into at least two operations:
"eidetic" reduction, or the disregard of empirical contingencies
in an effort to grasp basic structures; and "transcendental"
reduction, involving a suspension or "bracketing" of questions
of empirical existence in an effort to focus on the source of ex-
perience in transcendental consciousness. The pursuit of purity
was intensified during Husserl's active years at the University of
Freiburg. Increasingly he came to equate phenomenology with
transcendental "idealism" -although there is dispute over the
propriety of the term in this context. His idealist bent found
climactic expression in his studies on logic and on Descartes'
meditations, published or conceived around 1929, the year of his
retirement. Despite his striving for purity. Husserl's later writings
bear ample testimony to his efforts to evade the dangers of
transcendental solipsism. Some of these efforts led him into the
proximity of existentialist concerns, although his formulations
were not free of ambiguities. Perhaps the dominant issues in
Husserl's later thought were the themes of intersubjectivity and
of the "life-world" of everyday experience. The life-world (Lebens-
welt) in particular was conceived as the immediate horizon of
individual and social experience, a terrain marked by distinct
patterns of action and life styles. Yet, one could ask, what was the
phenomenological status of this terrain? Was the life-world merely
6. The first volume of Ideas appeared in 1913, while the second and third volumes
were published posthumously. On Ideas I and Ideas II see especially Paul Ricoeur,
Husserl: An Ana(ysis of his Phenomenology, trans. Edward G. Ballard and Lester E.
Embree, Evanston, Ill., 1967, pp. 13-81.
PHENOMENOLOGY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
a prima facie evidence waiting to be distilled through the channels

of transcendental reduction? Or was it a primordial matrix for
any phenomenological investigation?7
As Husserl's own development suggests, the turn toward an
existentialist perspective was prompted at least in part by the
predicaments of pure inspection. The initial call "to the things
themselves" had encouraged broad-scale explorations of phe-
nomena, explorations devoid of coherence or focal concern. To
some extent, Husserl's resort to idealism was a response to this
dilemma, although the transcendental ego in his treatment re-
mained largely a source of knowledge. Against this background,
existentialism provided chiefly a dominant set of problems, a
fr'amework of investigation; but in the long run, the focus on
human existence was bound to affect the design and character of
the phenomenological enterprise. In an intriguing fashion the
transition from pure cognition to a man-centered outlook was
illustrated in the work of Max Scheler, a work which added moral
conviction and a certain inspirational zest to phenomenology.
According to his own account, the issue which preoccupied
Scheler from the very beginning was the question of man's nature
and status in the universe. 8 Reality to him was not simply a
neutral target area for research but a field encountered in a
concrete human pursuit. "Phenomenological experience," in his
treatment, signified an immediate intuitive insight into the
essential structure of phenomena as they offered themselves in
their qualitative richness and diversity; as a guide to this ex-
perience, "reduction" involved a spiritual act liberating man
7. The first alternative is intimated by Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological
Movement, A Historical Introduction, 2nd ed., The Hague, 1969, I, 16I. For a divergent
interpretation see Ricoeur, Husserl: An Ana{ysis qf his Phenomenology, p. 12. On the
life-world, cf. also Plessner, Diesseits der Uto.bie, p. 158 n.5; Aron Gurwitsch," The
Last Work of Edmund Husserl," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XVII (1957),
397·
8. "Since the first awakening of my philosophical consciousness the questions:
'What is Man? And what is his place in the universe of being?' have occupied me
more deeply and more centrally than any other philosophical question." Max
Scheler, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (1928), 3rd ed., Tiibingen, 1947, p. 9.
Fred R. Dallmayr
from the bonds of contingent reality. On the basis of this con-

ception Scheler ventured into the domain of ethics, developing
a catalogue of nonformal but a priori values amenable to
phenomenological inspection. A similar foundation supported
his "philosophical anthropology," an ambitious effort to assess
man's place in the hierarchy of creation. Mindful of the dangers
of psychologism, Scheler located the distinctive quality of man
neither in his psyche nor in his instrumental intellect, but in his
"spirit" (Geist): a term denoting not only consciousness and
reason but also intuition and even certain refined affections like
love and devotion. 9
The actual convergence of phenomenology and existentialism
is frequently identified with the name of Martin Heidegger,
HusserI's successor in Freiburg; but at a closer look, the con-
vergence seems quite precarious. There are some parallels
between Scheler and Heidegger, arising mainly from their
common concern with man. However, Heidegger was never
tempted by the notion of a full-fledged or substantive anthro-
pology; in addition, man in his writings served increasingly as a
gateway to the exploration of transpersonal messages. A student
of Rickert, Heidegger quickly underwent HusserI's pervasive
influence, an influence which reached its peak with the latter's
arrival in Freiburg. To be sure, emulation soon gave way to
autonomous, even radical reformulation: in Being and Time
HusserI's transcendental ego was dislodged from its pivotal
position in favor of the focus on human existence (Dasein). As in
Scheler's case, this dislodgement implied a reassessment of the
phenomenological enterprise, including the method of reduction.
Eidetic inspection of essences conflicted with the individuality of
phenomena (a point for which Heidegger was indebted to
Rickert), while transcendental reduction was suspect because of
9. Cf. Manfred S. Frings, Max Scheler, Pittsburgh, 1965; also Martin Buber, "The
Philosophical Anthropology of Max Scheler," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,
VI (1946) 307-321; Alfred Schutz, "Scheler's Theory of Intersubjectivity and the
General Thesis of the Alter Ego," ibid., II (1942), 323-347, reprinted in Collected
Papers, 2nd ed., ed. Maurice Natanson, The Hague, 1967, I, 150-179.
its egological overtones. Probing beneath the cogmtIve level,

Heidegger transformed Husserl's method into a relentless
"destruction" or purge, a purge designed to pierce the screens
of false objectivity and theoretical speculation and to reveal the
hidden meaning of experience through fresh interpretation. This
procedure formed the core of a "hermeneutic" or interpretive
phenomenology applied chiefly to existential analysis. Defining
"existence" as openness to alternative possibilities of self-reali-
zation, Being and Time unraveled a series of structural categories
and modes of experience, including man's insertion in the world,
his tendency to lapse into inauthentic complacency, his anxiety
in the face of the deceptive compactness and "uncanniness" of
the universe, and his concern (Sorge) about his own significance.
There is no need, in the present context, to pursue Heidegger's
subsequent development or to settle the question whether it
involved a departure from or an intensification of his initial
perspective. It must suffice here to point to some limitations of
Heidegger's existential analysis. While stressing man's insertion
in the world, the analysis was relatively indifferent to his bodily
dimension. More importantly, man's social involvement was
conceived as a realm of inauthenticity, basically inimical to the
quest for significance; as a result, "hermeneutics" referred not
so much to an intersubjective dialogue aiming at reciprocal
interpretation but to the dialogue between man and Being. Also,
while aiming to provide a more solid basis for the endeavors of
the historical school, Being and Time disclosed primarily universal
existential structures; despite the emphasis on man's temporality,
"history" recorded mainly the advent of Being in its different
forms, depending on man's attentiveness and susceptibility.lo
On many of these points the French school of phenomenology
as it emerged after World War II provided a corrective, without
10. This perspective is sharpened and refined in his essay "Zeit und Sein" (1962)
in L'endurance de La pensee: Pour saluer Jean Beaufret, Paris, 1968, pp. 12-71. Cf. also
Calvin O. Schrag, "Phenomenology, Ontology, and History in the Philosophy of
Heidegger," Revue internationale de philosophie, XII (1958), 117-132.
abandoning some of Heidegger's crucial insights. To be sure, the

background of French phenomenology is extremely complex.
The primary source, both in time and importance, was undoubt-
edly Husserl, probably because of a certain affinity of his argu-
ments to the Cartesian tradition. Yet, Husserl's phenomenology
was fused from the beginning with other intellectual currents of
the time. The publication of the "Paris manuscripts" had
revealed a strong Hegelian legacy in Marx's early thought. At the
same time, Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind was being reinterpreted
in a manner which stressed its concrete, anthropological qualities,
thus rendering it compatible both with existentialism and with
Husserl's injunction "to the things themselves." From this con-
fluence of sources derive various features characteristic of French
phenomenology, including the preoccupation with the "lived
body" and with the domain ofintersubjectivity. The main feature,
however, is the merger between Husserl and Hegel, a merger
exposing phenomenology to the drama of negation and contra-
diction and, ultimately, to the drama of history.ll
Even in its French version, "existential phenomenology" was
not devoid ofcomplications. In Sartre's early writings the elements
of his thought seemed almost irreconcilably pitted against each
other. His prewar essay on "The Transcendence of the Ego"
intensified Husserl's method by "reducing" even the absolute
ego and ejecting it from the realm of transcendental conscious-
ness. This intensification had a dual result. On the one hand, the
ego was now more firmly embedded in the world of empirical
contingency and concrete experience; on the other hand, tran-
scendental consciousness emerged entirely cleansed of en-
cumbrances-a prey to nothingness and at the same time a
constitutive source of human designs. In Being and Nothingness,
transcendental reduction entered into an uneasy alliance with
Hegel's dialectic: consciousness or the "for-itself" -characterized
by privation and yet the root of man's haunting freedom and
1 I. Cf. Ricoeur, "New Developments in Phenomenology in France: The Pheno-
menology of Language," Social Research, XXXIV (1967), 4.
responsibility-was shown locked in relentless combat with the

world of things or the "in-itself," a fateful embrace in which
consciousness was constantly striving to find objective fulfillment
but could reach this goal only at the price of self-destruction.1 2
Sartre's stark antinomies were mitigated and their terms re-
formulated by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose work revealed the
rich potential of a phenomenology sensitive to concrete existence.
Drawing chiefly on Husserl's later writings-and also an intimate
familiarity with Hegel's phenomenology-Merleau-Ponty de-
picted existence as "incarnated" consciousness, a consciousness
not merely thrust into an alien universe but enmeshed and
participating in a life-world and its unfinished fabric of meaning.
Reduction, from this vantage point, became an act of amazement
and wonder in the midst of this world, stimulated by a loosening
of habitual ties; instead of concentrating on anonymous man,
phenomenology delved into the perspectival dimensions of
experience rooted in perception.
In the meantime, phenomenology has branched out in several
directions, animating a variety of pursuits. The most prominent
tendencies are the further development of historical and dia-
lectical inquiry and, more or less closely linked with this inquiry,
the elucidation of the hermeneutics of intersubjective meaning.
With the turn from the absolute ego to embodied existence,
phenomenology could no longer be shielded from the pressures
of social and historical experience; in proportion to the intensity
of these pressures, Hegel tended to give way to Marx. In his
Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre produced a morphology of
social development, integrating the existentialist theme of human
choice and design with the parameters of a Marxist dialectic.
Sartre's work is not the only example of an existentially oriented
Marxism; one could also point to Lucien Goldmann's sensitive
12. Cf. Alfred Schutz, "Sartre's Theory of the Alter Ego," Philosophy and Phenome-
nological Research, IX (1948), 181-199, reprinted in Collected Papers, I, 180-203; also
Maurice Natanson, "Jean-Paul Sartre's Philosophy of Freedom," Social Research, XIX
(1952), 362-380, reprinted in his Literature, Philosophy and the Social Sciences, Essays in
Existentialism and Phenomenology, The Hague, 1962, pp. 62-75.
Fred R. Dallmayr
investigations of historical "structures' and to Leszek Kolakowski's

discourse on historical responsibility.1 3 However, dialectical argu-
ment is no longer a matter of apodictic assertion. With the
demolition of the pretense of a scientific history, the articulation
of historical purpose has to rely on communication and mutual
interrogation; it is at this point that the dialectic makes room for
human dialogue. The elucidation of this dialogue is the task of
hermeneutics, a hermeneutics no longer confined to the silent
discourse between man and his destiny but extended to embrace
the interpretation of concrete life-worlds of meaning. To some
extent this task is furthered by ordinary language analysis,
especially by Wittgenstein's focus in his later writings on concrete
"language games" as contrasted to the artifice of a universal
scientific vocabulary; yet, hermeneutics seeks not only to grasp
internal meaning structures but also to break their code in an
effort of interpretation and open communication. Linguistic
analysis nevertheless serves as a useful reminder of the dominant
medium of meaning assignments; at this juncture a hermeneutics
of purpose enlists the support of the phenomenology oflanguage. 14
2. Phenomenology and Social Science
The phenomenological enterprise has never been the exclusive
domain of philosophers. From the inception of the "movement,"
its arguments have radiated into a broad spectrum of intellectual
and scientific endeavors; due to its primary concern with the
13. Cf. Arthur Lessing, "Marxist Existentialism," Review of Metaphysics, XX
(1967), 461-482; George Lichtheim, "Sartre, Marxism and History," Histor.y and
Theory, III (1963), 222-246; also Lucien Goldmann, Recherches dialectiques, Paris,
1959; Leszek Kolakowski, "Responsibility and History," in Toward a Marxist
Humanism, New York, 1968, pp. 85-157.
14. On hermeneutics see especially Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode,
2nd ed., Tubingen, 1965; Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics; Interpretation Theory in
Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer, Evanston, III. 1969; Rudiger Bubner,
Konrad Cramer, and Reiner Wiehl, eds., Hermeneutik und Dialektik, 2 vols., Tubingen,
1970; on Wittgenstein, e.g., Thomas N. Munson, "Wittgenstein's Phenomenology,"
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XXIII (1962), 37-50; on phenomenology of
language, Ricoeur, "New Developments .. , ," pp. 8-30, and Remy C. Kwant,
Phenomenolog_v qf Language, Pittsburgh, 1965.
search for meaning, repercussions have been strongest in the

humanities and social sciences. To be sure, the demarcation
between philosophy and adjacent disciplines is frequently hazy
and ill-defined; in regard to phenomenology, academic boundary
lines have persistently been ignored both by professional philo-
sophers and by their colleagues in other fields. For this reason, a
review of the impact of phenomenology cannot rigidly segregate
descriptive (or broadly empirical) from philosophical inquiries;
committed to open horizons, phenomenology militates against
narrow compartmentalization. Yet, for present purposes, some
limitations have to be established: using the term in a somewhat
narrow sense, the focus will be on the "social sciences." Apart
from certain border areas overlapping with sociology, this focus
excludes the broad domain of psychology and psychoanalysis
-a domain in which the perspective of phenomenology and
existentialism has proved remarkably fruitful.l 5 Without aiming
at comprehensive coverage or a sharp differentiation of disciplines,
the following presentation seeks to trace phenomenological re-
percussions or echoes in sociology, political science, and some
versions of social psychology.
There are striking affinities between the phenomenological
perspective and the arguments of some of the "founders" of
modern sociology. In the case of Max Weber, the parallels have
frequently been noted. To be sure, Weber was not directly
affiliated with any of the phenomenological circles of the time.
His philosophical frame of reference was provided by Dilthey and
Rickert, or rather the historical school as reformulated by
Rickert; thus his thinking was deeply permeated by the distinc-
tion between natural and "cultural" sciences. In his early
methodological studies the influence of Rickert was particularly
15. Prominent illustrations of this interaction are Gestalt theory, experimental
phenomenology of perception, and existential psychology. Simply for reasons of
brevity, the present pages also neglect the discipline of economics. For some comments,
particularly on Walter Eucken, cf. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Phenomenology and
Science in Contemporary European Thought, New York, 1962, pp. 97-104; see also
Friedrich A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science, Glencoe, Ill., 1955.
pronounced, especially his emphasis on "individualizing" study.

As Weber argued at the time, the goal of the cultural (including
the social) sciences was not simply to subsume data under general
and necessarily abstract laws-although such laws could serve
as subsidiary tools-but to grasp the richness of concrete reality
in its cultural significance, a significance derived from the
embeddedness of phenomena in a context of values. 16 Only to
a limited extent were these sciences amenable to general formu-
lation: through the design of condensed meaning structures or
"ideal types." In Economy and Society, the chief accent was still on
the search for significance although the conceptual arsenal was
vastly expanded. As Weber insisted, physical occurrences and
merely reactive behavior, even if subsumed under laws, were not
the primary targets of social science; rather, the central focus was
on social "action," a term denoting human behavior "when and
insofar as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning
to it." Consequently, sociology was defined as an inquiry aiming
at the "interpretive understanding (verstehen) of social action"-
an understanding involving chiefly the elucidation of the "com-
plex of meaning in which an actual course of understandable
action thus interpreted belongs," but not necessarily an act of
psychic reproduction. 17
In an indirect manner, a linkage between Weber and early
phenomenology can be traced in the work of Adolf Reinach, a
close associate of Husserl and a leading figure in the Gottingen
circle. Although his work has remained a torso, it is possible to
extrapolate suggestive propositions relevant to sociological analy-
sis. The starting point of his conception was a theory of "social
16. See Max Weber, "'Objectivity' in Social Science and Social Policy" (1904), in
Maurice Natanson, ed., Philosophy of the Social Sciences: A Reader, New York, 1963,
P·38 2.
17. In addition to interpretive understanding, however, Weber also referred to
scientific validation, envisaging even the possibility of a "correspondence" between
understanding and demonstration-a balanced view rarely attained in later social
science. See Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, eds., Economy and Society: An Outline
of Interpretive Sociology, New York, 1968, I, 4-22.
acts," referring primarily to acts intentionally directed toward
social partners and "in need of being received and understood"
by these partners. In social experience, a series of such acts
tended to coalesce in characteristic patterns and configurations.
The purpose of phenomenological inquiry, in Reinach's view,
was not simply to explore the psychological motivations of social
agents. Under the impact of Husserl's Logical Investigations and the
injunction against psychologism, he aimed at an inspection of the
essential features or pure structures of social patterns, an inspec-
tion aided by intuition and theoretical idealization. IS Possibly,
the notion of pure structures also provides a connecting link
between early phenomenology and Georg Simmel's "formal"
sociology, as Edward Tiryakian has attempted to show. Like
Weber, Simmel built his theory on the bedrock of social action
and interaction, on the view that society is the product of a
complex web of interlocking pursuits. While "general" sociology
ranged over the broad fabric ofsociallife, the function of "formal"
sociology was to investigate the pure "social forms" of interaction
-such as competition, division of labor, and stratification -
independently of special contents and motivations. "Although
he diverged from Husserl in some respects," Tiryakian claims,
"Simmel's study of social life may be viewed as an eidetic one, in the
sense that he sought to reduce manifestly different forms of
social phenomena to their underlying essential characteristics
('forms')." 19
While Simmel's position may be in doubt, Alfred Vierkandt
is commonly recognized as a leading exponent of phenomeno-
logical sociology. In common with Weber and the historical
school, Vierkandt differentiated between natural and cultural
sciences. In his formulation, natural sciences dealt with the world
of things mute or indifferent to human purpose, while cultural
18. On Reinach see Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, I, 195-205;
Tymieniecka, Phenomenology and Sciene, pp. 90-97.
19. See Edward A. Tiryakian, "Existential Phenomenology and the Sociological
Tradition," American Sociological Review, XXX (1965), 680. cr. also Rudolph H.
Weingartner, Experience and Culture, Middletown, Conn., 1962.
ISO Fred R. Dallmayr
sciences probed the realm of social interaction, a realm resonant

to questions of meaning. Sociology in particular was defined as
science of the essential forms or structures of social interaction and
culture. In developing his theory Vierkandt acknowledged a
certain indebtedness to Simmel's insights; yet, as he emphasized,
these insights required a more solid philosophical and methodo-
logical underpinning. Regarding method, he adopted in large
part the arsenal of pure phenomenology, especially "eidetic"
reduction: the phenomena of social interaction were to be reduced
to their essential structures through intuitive inspection. Actually,
Vierkandt proceeded to reduce social forms further to a deeper
layer-a layer of basic social dispositions or "categories" of social
experience. As he observed, dispositions of this kind were innate
or natural endowments which, for their activation, required the
presence or responsiveness of other human beings. On this
categorial basis, Vierkandt then constructed a typology of major
forms of social interaction, relying to some extent on Ferdinand
T6nnies' dichotomy of "community" and "society"; the distinc-
tion between these types derived primarily from the degree and
intensity of intersubjective communication and concord. Con-
sidering his reliance on phenomenological reduction, he seemed
little perturbed by the peril of solipsism: quite apart from psychic
reenactments, intentionality seemed directly accessible to in-
tuitive understanding and empathy.2o
Vierkandt's categories of social experience can be viewed as a
rudimentary outline of a "philosophical anthropology" -a type
of study launched at the time by Max Scheler (whose influence
he credited at several points). Actually, Scheler's rank as a
sociologist was hardly inferior to his philosophical standing; his
combined endeavors reached a peak during his later life when
20. See Alfred Vierkandt, Gesellschqftslehre, 2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1928, pp. V, 4-7,
19-20, 23-24, 105-107, 161-167, 208-224. On Vierkandt cf. also Tymieniecka,
Phenomenology and Science, pp. 87-88; Don Martindale, The Nature and Types of
Sociological Theo~y, Boston, 1960, pp. 268-273; Nicholas S. Timasheff, Sociological
Theory, Its Nature and Growth, rev. ed., New York, 1957, pp. 267-268; Theodore Abel,
Systematic Sociolog.y in Germany, New York, 1929, pp. 59-79.
he taught in both disciplines at Cologne. His general sociological

outlook showed the imprint both of phenomenology and the
historical school, an imprint reflected primarily in his distinction
between empirical and cultural sociology. While empirical
research dealt with "real" factors such as drives and impulses,
cultural sociology was concerned with the realm of essential
structures, the realm of ideas and values. This distinction formed
also the basis of his philosophical anthropology, with its bi-
furcation between biological drives and a meta biological "spirit."
Yet Scheler was by no means content with the statement of anti-
nomies. In his view, a major task of sociology as well as of philoso-
phy was to investigate the interaction between real and ideal
factors, the convergence of vitalistic and normative elements in
society and history. This objective led him to another new field
of research: the sociology of knowledge, designed to analyze the
concrete matrix of culture. The new focus, to be sure, had little
effect on his basic philosophical outlook; socio-historical genesis
did not jeopardize the essence and validity of knowledge. 21
Scheler's sociological legacy is impressive and diverse; his
major impact, however, has undoubtedly been in the areas of
"philosophical anthropology" and the sociology of knowledge.
Regarding the former, a broad "school" of thought has emerged
in the wake of his analysis-a school, it is true, whose members
have departed considerably from his example and are far from
sharing a uniform outlook. The leading representatives of
philosophical anthropology in this sense are Arnold Gehlen,
Erich Rothacker, and Helmuth Plessner; among these, Plessner
deserves special mention in this context, chiefly because of his
proximity to the phenomenological movement, a proximity
dating back to his association with Scheler at Cologne. Trained
21. In Martindale's words: "The sociological character of forms of knowledge
(of thought, intuition, and cognition) is unquestionable, according to Scheler.
Nevertheless, neither the content nor the objective validity of knowledge is determined
by social structures. Knowledge per se consists of a realm of essences." Sociological
Theory, p. 275. Cf. also Howard Becker and Helmut O. Dahlke, "Max Scheler's
Sociology of Knowledge," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, II (1942), 309-322.
Fred R. Dallmayr
as a biologist but deeply affected by Dilthey and the historical

school, Plessner shared Scheler's overriding concern with man's
nature and status in the order of the universe; yet, he was
comparatively less inclined toward metaphysical speculation or
a substantive ontology. Drawing partly on the theory of multiple
biological environmen ts developed by J ako b von U exkiill,
Plessner defined man as a broken and elusive creature, a creature
deprived of a natural habitat or ecology and compelled to a
continuous search for meaning under open horizons. In the
stress on openness and "ec-centricity," his conception resembled
to some extent Heidegger's analysis of existence (Dasein). How-
ever, PI essner's anthropology included from the beginning a
concern with man's body as well as the dimension of historical
experience; more importantly, society was not relegated to the
level of hopeless inauthenticity.22 Although devoid of a natural
ecology, man was constantly engaged in the construction of an
artificial or cultural habitat of norms and institutions-a habitat,
to be sure, which always remained fragile and tentative. Instead
of being diverted from his goal, man discovered himself and his
tasks through social interaction and through the reciprocal effort
of role interpretation and role assignment.
In the domain of the sociology of knowledge, Scheler's legacy
was cultivated primarily by Karl Mannheim. To be sure,
Mannheim's work is multifaceted and entirely resists a brief
summary, a circumstance related to the diversity of his philoso-
phical inspirations. A student of both Rickert and Husserl, he
was closely acquainted during his formative years with Weber,
Scheler, and Georg Lukacs; the same intellectual versatility
accompanied him throughout his life. To some extent, Mannheim's
development illustrates the transition from pure to existential
22. Cf. Helmuth Plessner, Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, Einleitung in
die philosophische Anthropologie (1928), 2nd ed., Berlin, 1965, esp. pp. VII-XIV for
comments on his relations to Scheler and Heidegger; also Laughing and C~ying: A
Stu(b of the Limits of Human Behaviour, trans. James S. Churchill and Marjorie Grene,
Evanston, 111.,1970; Conditio Humana, Pfullingen, 1964; and "De Homine Abscon-
dito," Social Research, XXXVI (1969), 497-509.
phenomenology. While his early writings reflected a fusion of

pure inspection with neo-Kantian formalism, his exposure to
Marxism-chiefly mediated through Lukacs-turned his atten-
tion to more concrete human and historical dimensions. As he
wrote in "Competition as a Cultural Phenomenon," phenome-
nology had increasingly come to realize that "certain insights
concerning some qualitative aspects of the living process of
history are available to consciousness only as formed by certain
historical and social circumstances, so that the historico-social
formation of the thinking and knowing subject assumes epistemo-
logical importance." 23 In the construction of his sociological
theory, this perspective was corroborated by his broad training
in the "cultural sciences." Together with Weber he conceived
society as a network of purposive social actions; at the same time
he transformed Weber's ideal types into less formalized "struc-
tures" of meaning-structures dynamically emerging from social
interaction and continuously open to reinterpretation. These
structures were also the matrix of values and ideas, sometimes
condensed into Weltanschauungen. While unwilling to embrace
a simplistic doctrine of economic determinism, Mannheim took
seriously Scheler's (and Lukacs') view of the interpenetration of
real and ideal factors. This view, dominant in his sociology of
kowledge, led him to the conception of "relationism," denoting
an interlocking web oflife-worlds and perspectival dimensions. In
the end, of course, his neo-Kantian training reasserted itself, in
the stipulation of a neutral scientific domain, guarded by "social-
ly unattached" intellectuals. 24
23. Karl Mannheim, "Competition as a Cultural Phenomenon" (1928), in Paul
Kecskemeti, ed., Essays on the Sociology if Knowledge, London, 1952, p. 194. Cf. also
David Kettler, "Sociology of Knowledge and Moral Philosophy: The Place of
Traditional Problems in the Formation of Mannheim's Thought," Political Science
Quarterly, LXXXII (1967),400.
24. Cf. Maurice Natanson, "Knowledge and Alienation: Some Remarks on
Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge," in Literature, Philosophy and the Social Sciences,
pp. 167-171; Robert K. Merton, "Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of Knowledge, "
in Social Theory and Social Structure, rev. ed., Glencoe, Ill., 1957, pp. 489-508; Leopold
Rosenmayr, "Max Scheler, Karl Mannheim und die Zukunft der Wissenssoziologie,"
From the vantage point of contemporary social science, the

most prominent representative of a phenomenology sensitive to
existential concerns is undoubtedly Alfred Schutz. Through his
activity on both continents Schutz's writings constitute an im-
portant link between European phenomenology and American
sociology and social psychology. His thought represents a nodal
juncture in other respects as well. Philosophically, he developed
major insights implicit in Husserl's later writings and, in doing
so, foreshadowed some of the arguments of the French school
of phenomenology. Regarding social science, he constructed a
bridge between phenomenological inquiry and Weber's theory
of social action. To be sure, the integration of these diverse facets
was not a sudden accomplishment, nor was it exempt from
revision; despite a remarkable internal consistency, Schutz's life
clearly was a journey in more than a geographical sense.
His early endeavors showed the pervasive imprint of the
transcendental reduction, combined with residues of a neo-
Kantian epistemology. In his Phenomenology of the Social World,
first published in 1932, he subjected Weber's interpretive sociology
to a sympathetic but searching analysis, in an effort to clarify
the core notion of meaningful social action. In undertaking this
task, Schutz enlisted the help of Henri Bergson and chiefly of
Husserl's transcendental phenomenology for, as he wrote, "the
meaning-structure of the social world can only be deduced from
the most primitive and general characteristics of consciousness."
By means of phenomenological reduction he found the source of
meaning in the stream of lived experience or internal time-sense,
and more specifically in the reflective glance of the ego upon such
experience. Against the background oflived experience in general,
"action" was differentiated in terms of the prospective assign-
ment of meaning, an assignment orienting behavior toward a
goal or "project" envisaged "in the future perfect tense"; in
motivational terms the project could be described as the "in-
in Alphons Silbermann, ed., Militanter Humanismus, Von den Aufgaben der modernen
Soziologie, Frankfurt, 1966, pp. 200-231.
order-to motive" of the action as distinct from "because-motives."

Turning to the social world-and replacing the strict method of
reduction with the "attitude of the natural standpoint" -Schutz
defined "social action" as project-oriented experience or be-
havior whose in-order-to motive contains reference to another
self. Regarding intersubjective relations, he argued that genuine
understanding of behavior was possible only in a limited domain,
the domain of directly experienced social reality (Umwelt) , es-
pecially in face-to-face encounters with immediate consociates.
However, there were other horizons of experience beyond direct
encounter: especially the dimensions of contemporaries (Mitwelt) ,
predecessors (Vorwelt), and successors (Folgewelt). In these di-
mensions understanding was possible only through typifications
of behavior, typifications endowed with greater or lesser anony-
mity and including, in the case of contemporaries, mutual role
assignments and interpretations. Social science dealt primarily
with such typified meaning structures. Despite his emphasis on
horizons of experience, Schutz shared Weber's conception of the
social scientist as neutral observer capable of penetrating, through
the construction of ideal types, the diverse meaning dimensions
of social reality.25
Subsequent experiences broadened and enriched Schutz's
perspective. In a series of essays he examined in detail the theme
of intersubjectivity as treated by Scheler and existentialists like
Sartre. Also, especially after his arrival in the United States, he
began to probe affinities between phenomenology and the thought
of William James, Alfred North Whitehead, George Herbert
Mead, and others. The most important development, however,
was his growing concentration on Lebenswelt, the world of "daily
life" and "common-sense" experienced from the perspective of
the "natural attitude." Although the paramount reality for
every individual, this domain was by no means anonymous or
25. See Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenolog.y of the Social World, trans. George Walsh
and Frederick Lehnert, Evanston, ilL 1967, pp. 11-12, 43-44, 59-61, 88, 97,
144-146, 163-194, 202-214, 240.
Fred R. Dallmayr
undifferentiated. For the individual the everyday world was first

of all a system of coordinates centered around his body and his
"biographical situation"; but this system was not a private in-
vention. Individual experience included from the beginning a
"stock of knowledge at hand," a stock made up of typifications
of behavior and sustained by a general "reciprocity of perspec-
tives." Instead of being a fixed premise, the individual ego was
the result of interaction and reciprocal role interpretations. Inter-
subjective understanding, quite apart from its epistemological
and methodological connotations, thus emerged as a primary
type of experience: as "the experiential form of common-sense
knowledge of human affairs." Reflecting its openness, individual
awareness also tended to be fragmented and elusive, due to the
individual's involvement in a variety of social contexts and role
structures. According to Schutz, this involvement was governed
by the individual's active pursuits and framework of relevance.
Even at this point, however, a reciprocity of perspectives pre-
vailed: the diverse frames of relevance were all derived from a
basic existential source, man's "fundamental anxiety" in the face
of his mortality. As a result of his intense concern with Lebenswelt,
Schutz developed a more reserved attitude toward egological
arguments; correspondingly, his perspective became sensitive
both to questions of "philosophical anthropology" and to the
diversified historical dimensions of experience. 26
To be sure, the focus on Lebenswelt did not resolve all quandaries.
Was everyday life merely a surface feature to be purified through
transcendental reduction, or was it presupposed by such an
enterprise? This question was intimately related to the task of
analysis. Was the social scientist a universal observer immune
from the constraints of his life-world? Or was he immersed in the
26. Cf. his comments in "Husserl's Importance for the Social Sciences" (1959),
in Collected Papers, I, 149; also "Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences"
(1953), ibid., p. 57; "On Multiple Realities" (1945), ibid., p. 228. See also his
Riflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. Richard M. Zaner, New Haven and London,
1970; and Aron Gurwitsch, "The Common-Sense World as Social Reality: A
Discourse on Alfred Schutz," Social Research, XXIX (1962),50-72.
"natural attitude," but to the detriment of articulation and

interpretation? 27 Recognition of such quandaries does not affect
the merit of Schutz's main contributions, nor the pervasiveness
of his impact. Largely as a result of his activity, mutually benefi-
cial contacts have been established between phenomenology and
American social science and social psychology, especially with
the school of symbolic interactionism inspired by Mead-a
contact which is hardly surprising in view of Mead's emphasis
on meaningful "social acts" and on the formation of the self
through a process of reciprocal role interpretations. 28
In contemporary social science, the impulse of Schutz's work
is most prominently displayed in "ethnomethodology" and recent
developments in the sociology of knowledge. Of the two trends,
the former is perhaps more ambitiously conceived, but also more
ambiguously formulated; its chief representatives are Aaron
Cicourel and Harold Garfinkel. The basic aim of ethnomethodo-
logy-loosely akin to "ethnoscience" in anthropology-is to
explore the arena of common-sense experience, to understand
the world as perceived and acted upon by participants in everyday
situations. Stimulated by Schutz's distinction between typifica-
tions and common-sense perception, Cicourel has attempted to
remedy the arbitrary features of social science constructions
through an analysis of the life-world. In his view, only a de-
veloped "theory of culture," aiming at the rules and meaning-
structures of ordinary life, can provide a legitimate basis for
scientific analysis and measurement. 29 Garfinkel, who frequently
27. Cf. Maurice Natanson, "Phenomenology and Typification: A Study in the
Philosophy of Alfred Schutz," Social Research, XXXVII (1970), 1-22, and "Alfred
Schutz on Social Reality and Social Science," ibid., XXXV (1968), 217-244; also
Robert Bierstedt, "The Common Sense World of Alfred Schutz," ibid., XXX (1963),
116-121; Richard M. Zaner, "Theory of Intersubjectivity: Alfred Schutz," ibid.,
XXVIII (1961), 71-93.
28. The relationship is explored in Maurice Natanson, The Social Dynamics qf
George H. Mead, Washington, 1956; see also Herbert Blumer, "Sociological Implica-
tions of the Thought of George Herbert Mead," American Journal of Sociology,
LXXI (1966), 535-544.
29. See Aaron V. Cicourel, Method and Measurement in Sociology, Glencoe, Ill., 1964,
esp. p. 14; also his The Social Organization of Juvenile Justice, New York, 1968.
Fred R. Dallmayr
voices his indebtedness to Schutz, has elaborated a series of ex-

perimental devices for testing the parameters of the life-world;
unfortunately, his endavors tend to be obscured by cumbersome
language. According to a competent observer, he is chiefly pre-
occupied "with the practical everyday activities of men in society
as they make accountable, to themselves and others, their every-
day affairs, and with the methods they use for producing and
managing these same affairs." 30 A major technique employed
by Garfinkel in his investigations is the "demonstration ex-
periment," a procedure relying on the disturbance or disruption
of ordinary situations in an effort to uncover implicit common-
sense assumptions. Clearly, this technique is designed to penetrate
the life-world without submerging the observer in the "natural
attitude."
Broadly related to ethnomethodology, but more cogently
stated, are current reassessments of the sociology of knowledge.
The main protagonists in this domain are Peter Berger and
Thomas Luckmann, former students and collaborators of Schutz.
In their formulation, the sociology of knowledge is concerned
primarily with the range of common-sense, prescientific "know-
ledge" in a society-with whatever members of that society
accept as the "reality" of their everyday situation. Since such
knowledge, however, is not privately invented but is developed
in social interaction, the task of this sociology becomes "the
analysis of the social construction of reality." By concentrating
on everyday perceptions the authors redefine and expand the
enterprise initiated by Scheler and Mannheim: instead of limit-
ing themselves to ideal factors or ideologies, their perspective
30. George Psathas, "Ethnomethods and Phenomenology," Social Research, XXXV
(1968),509. See Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,
1967; and for critical comments see "Review Symposium on Studies in Ethnometho-
dology," American Sociological Review, XXXIII (1968), 122- I 30. cr. also Peter Dreitzel,
ed., Recent Sociology No.2: Patterns of Communicative Behavior, New York, 1970; Richard
J. Hill and Kathleen S. Crittenden, eds., Proceedings qf the Purdue Symposium on
Ethnomethodology, Lafayette, Ind. 1968; Norman K. Denzin, "Symbolic Interactionism
and Ethnomethodology: A Proposed Synthesis," American Sociological Review, XXXIV
(1969),922-934,
comprises "everything that passes for 'knowledge' in society."

In developing their conception, Berger and Luckmann acknow-
ledge various sources of inspiration: apart from Schutz, these
sources include Mead and the school of symbolic interactionism,
"philosophical anthropology" as practiced chiefly by Plessner
and Gehlen, as well as the young Marx and elements of Durk-
heim's thought. Against this theoretical background the authors
find the core issue of sociology in general-and the sociology of
knowledge in particular-in the relation between society as an
"objective" and a "subjective" dimension, in the question of how
society can be the result of meaningful human action and at the
same time confront man as objective reality congealed in in-
stitutions and typifications. As they try to show-following a
careful phenomenological investigation of the life-world-this
dilemma can only be resolved dialectically: "Society is a human
product. Society is an objective reality. Man is a social product."31
As described by Berger and Luckmann, the life-world is not
simply a natural ecology, but assumes dynamic and disquieting
features. In their assessment, there is a definite need "to bring to
bear a dialectical perspective upon the theoretical orientation of
the social sciences." Although not abundant, there are examples
in contemporary social thought pointing in the direction of a
dialectical phenomenology and even a phenomenological
Marxism. In this Question of Method, Sartre outlined a "pro-
gressive-regressive" method inspired partly by Henri Lefebvre, a
method including among its steps phenomenological description
and the "understanding" or interpretive comprehension of
phenomena in the context of an evolving synthesis. A similar
intent is reflected in Kolakowski's query whether Marxism can
be adapted to an interpretive type of investigation. 32 In the
31. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, A
rif Know/edge, New York, 1967, pp. 3, 14-15, 18,61, 187.
Treatise in the Sociology
32. Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, trans. Hazel E. Barnes, New York,
1963, pp. 51-52, 133-135, 152-159; Leszek Kolakowski, "1st der verstehende
Marxismus moglich?" in Frank Bense1er, ed., Festschrift zum achtzigsten Geburtstag
von Georg Lukacs, Neuwied and Berlin, 1965, pp. 270-286.
sociological domain, the main representative of a dialectical

phenomenology is Georges Gurvitch, although his perspective
combines a variety of heterogeneous (including positivist) in-
gredients. Despite the complexity of his views, his work reflects
at least in a broad sense the transition from a transcendental to a
dialectical phenomenology. Attracted to phenomenology chiefly
through contacts with Scheler, he sketched in his early writings
the outlines of a "microsociology" concerned primarily with
forms of sociability or basic modes of social experience. At the
same time, a combination of Husserl's transcendental reduction
with Durkheim's morphology of social reality led him to the
formulation of an ambitious "depth sociology," designed to trace
social experience back through a series of layers to the bedrock
of consciousness. More recently, the preoccupation with reduction
has been replaced or at least fused with the emphasis on dia-
lectical method. Far from implying a closed system of explanation,
however, the dialectic to Gurvitch signifies only a tool for open-
ended inquiry; on the basis of a radical empiricism this inquiry
probes the dynamic transformations of meaning-structures, the
continuous differentiation and integration of phenomena in the
broader synthesis of social experience. 33
The notion of an open dialectic is bound to remain opaque
unless it is grounded in an ongoing intersubjective assessment of
situations; such assessment presupposes communication and
articulation. Basing himself to a large extent on Wittgenstein's
later writings, Peter Winch, in his Idea of a Social Science, develop-
ed a sociolinguistic perspective focusing on the linkage between
social action and ordinary discourse. In his view, intelligible
behavior implies adherence to the explicit or implicit rules
characteristic of the grammar of a language community; the
33. See Georges Gurvitch, Dialectique et Sociologie, Paris, 1962; Phillip Bosserman,
Dialectical Sociology: An Anabsis qf the Sociology of Georges GUTVitch, Boston, 1968; for
his earlier work, Martindale, Sociological Theory, 276-278; Timasheff, Sociological
Theory, pp. 268-271. cr. also Stephan Strasser, The Idea qf Dialogal Phenomenology,
Pittsburgh, 1969, and Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, Pittsburgh, 1963, esp. pp.
pp. 245-259.
task of social science is to understand or decipher the meaning of

behavior by viewing it in the context of this grammar which, in
turn, reflects a particular way or "form" of sociallife. 34 Yet, the
social scientist is not exempt from the parameters of ordinary
discourse; understanding, thus, would seem to imply an effort of
translation aiming at the elucidation of perspectival life-worlds.
Traces of such an effort can be found above all in contemporary
social psychology; among others, Anselm Strauss has portrayed
individual life as a story of successive reinterpretations of actions
and episodes. A hermeneutics of this kind seems equally congenial
to the explication of diverse social and historical dimensions of
experience. 35
3. Comments and Appraisals

In the course of its development phenomenology has given rise
to a long line of commentaries and more or less animated evalu-
ations; both its more strictly philosophical and its sociological
formulations have been the target of summary endorsements or
condemnations. For present purposes it must suffice to draw
attention briefly to some of the issues confronting a phenome-
nological social science. In this domain, the lines of debate have
frequently-but not exclusively-been drawn by philosophers
of science; to a large extent, the debate revolves around the
relationship between the natural and social sciences, with the
opponents of phenomenology asserting a basic symmetry or
methodological convergence between the two arenas of investi-
gation. There is no intention here to rekindle the animosities
surrounding the controversy about behavioralism. It seems fair
34. See Peter Winch, The Idea qf a Social Science, and Its Relation to Philosophy,
London, 1958; also Arnold Levison, "Knowledge and Society," Inquiry, IX (1966),
75-93; Karl-Otto Apel, "Die Entfaltung der 'sprachanaIytischen' Philosophie und
das Problem der 'Geisteswissenschaften'," Philosophisches Jahrbuch, LXXII (1965),
239-289.
35. Cf. Anselm L. Strauss, Mirrors and Masks: The Search for Identity, Glencoe, Ill.,
1959; Erving Goffman, Stigma; Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Englewood
Cliffs, N.j., 1963; Arthur C. Danto, Ana~ytical Philosophy qf History, Cambridge, 1965.
Fred R. Dallmayr
to point out, however, that-apart from isolated gestures of re-

conciliation and good will-there has been remarkably little
communication between the protagonists of the dispute. Generally
speaking, spokesmen of the symmetry thesis have been unduly
assertive about the solidity and monolithic firmness of their posi-
tion, thus ignoring dissenting views among philosophers of
science who recognize the need for contextual analysis. 36 Also,
buttressed by the vogue of professional opinion, these spokesmen
have been reluctant to consider the phenomenological argument
seriously and on its own terms. Defects of this kind could easily
be demonstrated with reference to such recurrent sources of
contention as the desirable degree of "objectivity" in the social
sciences and the character of typifications and "ideal" struc-
tures; 37 at this point the notion of interpretive understanding
may serve as an illustrative example.
The main charge leveled against phenomenology in the social
sciences concerns the supposed unreliability of its method of
inquiry, especially the hopeless subjectivism deriving from its
reliance on understanding (verstehen). Critics commonly have made
little or no effort to differentiate among phenomenologists, al-
though there are distinct variations of accent between such types
of investigation as the eidetic inspection of essences and the
hermeneutic scrutiny of life-worlds. Apart from this lack of
discrimination, critical comments frequently display a strange
unfamiliarity with the topic under discussion. Even a cursory
acquaintance with the relevant literature reveals that phenome-
nologists are far from equating understanding with simple intro-
spection or psychic reproduction; as Weber already insisted,
interpretive social science by no means presupposes adherence
to the maxim that "one has to be Caesar in order to understand
36. Cf.John G. Gunnell, "Reduction, Explanation, and Social Scientific Inquiry,"
American Political Science Review, LXIII (1969), 1233-1246.
37. On typifications and typologies see Carl G. Hempel, "Typological Methods in
the Social Sciences," in Natanson, ed., Philosophy qf the Social Sciences, pp. 210-230.
Cf. also Hempel's Aspects <ifScientific Explanation, New York, 1965; John C. McKinney,
Constructive Typology and Social Theory, New York, 1966.
Caesar." Nor does phenomenology assume that psychic states are

more readily accessible than physical objects. What these and
similar charges ignore is the origin of phenomenology in the
revolt against psychologism. In the social sciences, the aim of
interpretive reconstruction is not an indulgence in psychic idio-
syncracies but the elucidation ofsocial action in a meaning context
intelligible from the actor's perspective. 3s Moreover, as Schutz
has pointed out, understanding is not only a methodological
device, but a common-sense experience involved in intersubjective
encounters of everyday life; viewed in this sense, an interpretive
endeavor precedes and is at the basis of the most rigorous
scientific pursuits. This aspect also has a bearing on the issue of
validation. In Ernest Nagel's assessment, understanding serves
at best the purpose of generating imaginative hypotheses, but
lacks entirely the capacity of validating explanations. While it
would certainly be misleading to confuse imaginative insight
with demonstration, scientific method hardly constitutes the only
means of intersubjective verification. As an example, Schutz
points to the interpretive assessment of a defendant by his jury;
others have suggested a broader analogy to the justification of
moral conduct where "testing" normally involves an attempt to
provide adequate reasons. 39 Without such forms of intersub-
jective validation, ordinary social life would seem impossible.
Misconceptions about phenomenology are not always the
result of hasty reading; sometimes they are provoked by short-
comings of its practitioners. The quandaries and hazards inherent
38. Cf. John G. Gunnell, "Social Science and Political Reality: The Problem of
Explanation," Social Research, XXXV (1968),177; also James W. van Evra, "Under-
standing in the Social Sciences," Inquiry, XII (1969), 347-349; Murray L. Wax,
"On Misunderstanding Verstehen: A Reply to Abel," Sociology and Social Research, LI
(1967), 323-333; William Tucker, "Max Weber's Verstehen," Sociological Quarterry,
VI (1965), 156-165; Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry, San Francisco, 1964,
p·32.
39. Ernest Nagel, "Problems of Concept and Theory Formation in the Social
Sciences," in Natanson, ed., Philosophy qf the Social Sciences, pp. 18g-209; Alfred
Schutz, "Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences," ibid,. pp. 239, 245;
Gunnell, "Social Science ... ," p. 187.
Fred R. Dallmayr
in the phenomenological enterprise have been candidly discussed

by such sympathetic critics as Stephan Strasser and Jiirgen
Habermas. In Strasser's view, there are a series of peculiar
"dangers" or temptations to which phenomenologists tend to be
exposed. The chief danger is the lure of arbitrary and undisci-
plined speculation, the indulgence in private monologues; a
formidable obstacle to the search for valid knowledge, this lure
frequently manifests itselfin a disdain for rigorous inquiry, in the
haughty presumption of being exempt from the constraints of
methodology, scientific or otherwise. Among other temptations
he lists the pitfall of a "phenomenological impressionism,"
reflecting a naive trust in superficial observation and in the
virtues of the "natural attitude"; at least equally damaging is
the resort to rhetoric and stylistic subterfuge, the practice of
camouflaging the dearth of insights behind a smoke screen of
sentimentality or verbal obscurity.40 Habermas' comments are
addressed more directly to the predicaments of the phenome-
nological method. Identifying phenomenology somewhat narrow-
ly with pure inspection, he questions the competence of tran-
scendental consciousness, its supposed ability to disentangle the
meaning structures oflife-worlds while being sovereignly immune
from perspectival constraints. A similar query applies to socio-
linguistic analysis, particularly to the observer's ambition of
decoding language games. Turning to hermeneutics and stressing
the merits of this type of inquiry, Habermas cautions against the
perils of a unidimensional methodology and against the neglect
of such limiting parameters as technology and political power. 41
Perhaps this is the place for a personal appraisal. In my
estimate, phenomenological social science would do well to heed
the comments of its friendly critics; its endeavors can only
benefit from a determination to resist the embrace of spurious
allies. Above all, phenomenology should not be confused with
40. Strasser, Phenomenology and the Human Scieru;es, pp. 295-302.
41. jiirgen Habermas, "Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften," Philosophische
Rundschau, Frankfurt, 1967, Beiheft 5, pp. 118-124, 134-144, 172-180.
private phantasy or with the search for peculiar psychic ex-

periences; at least in this respect practitioners must always be
mindful ofHusserl's example, the example of careful, modest, and
painstaking investigation. Uncontrolled subjectivism also leads
phenomenology into the danger of ignoring the limits of purpos-
ive social action. Although a product of continuous human design,
society is capable of subverting well-meant intentions; as Berger
and Luckmann have shown, the social world tends to confront
its agents as an objective reality condensed in institutions and
typical life styles. To the extent that objective reality in this
sense is the target of exact science, phenomenology is ill-advised
to be contemptuous of scientific pursuits. The conflict between
rigorous science and philosophical or humanistic inquiries has
been deplored by leading phenomenologists; as Merleau-Ponty
observed at one point: "We have to show that science is possible,
that the sciences of man are possible, and that all the same
philosophy is possible. It is necessary in particular to end the
rift between systematic philosophy and the advancing knowledge
of science." 42 The contempt of science seems particularly in-
appropriate at a time when social reality is increasingly saturated
with technological devices and when the fruits of science are in
the process of permeating man's life-world and his everyday
vocabulary. Science and technology, however, are not the only
factors impinging on ordinary life; their impact is matched and
perhaps overshadowed by the chronic effects of power and
domination. Far from representing a uniform natural ecology,
the life-world implies vastly different experiences for people at
different levels of the social and political hierarchy. In an age
of worldwide social ferment, phenomenology can ill afford to
42. "Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man," in James M. Edie, ed., ThePrimar,y
of Perception and Other Essays, Evanston, 1964, p. 44. Cf. also his statement in "The
Philosopher and Sociology": "We need neither tear down the behavioral sciences
to lay the foundations of philosophy, nor tear down philosophy to lay the founda-
tions of the behavioral sciences" (Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary, Evanston,
1964, p. 98).
indulge in idyllic portrayals and "picture book" illustrations of

the human condition.
With this emphasis on the fragmentation of the social life-
world, the discussion returns to the crises of our time. These
crises constitute a challenge not only to man's practical resource-
fulness, but also to deeply cherished intellectual habits. Many of
the current dilemmas have been fomented or at least aggravated
by an intellectual myopia which, while insisting on the complete
purity of scientific research, ignored the human and social rami-
fications of the scientific enterprise. According to the approved
canons of methodology, both the scientist's inventiveness and
intuition and the social and political purposes served by this work
are outside the range of his professional concern; hopelessly
tainted by arbitrary preferences, these domains are placed beyond
the pale of intelligible conversation. It is at this point that phe-
nomenology breaks decisively with established convention, by
reclaiming the vast areas of prescientific "knowledge" and
common-sense assumptions as legitimate topics of inquiry. In
its effort to recover even the dark residues of reason for human
dialogue, phenomenology appears as the proper heir of the
European enlightenment-as Husserl has tried to show in the
Crisis ojthe European Sciences. To be sure, ambitions tend to be more
subdued in our time; enlightenment in its present sense does not
imply commitment to the myth of a total rationality, but only
to the elementary standards of common decency and social
discourse. Due to their focus on human interaction, the social
sciences are peculiarly destined to participate in this heritage.
By keeping open the horizons of his inquiry, the social scientist
remains faithful to Husserl's injunction: "We are ... through our
philosophical activity the servants of humanity."
PART TWO
EVIDENCE AND THE EGO

David Michael Levin
HUSSERLIAN ESSENCES RECONSIDERED
Hussed, in fathering phenomenology, envisaged a first science,

a system of evidence that would found, and give an ultimate
intelligibility to, all our ideal cognitive structures. And he thought
that the ultimate evidences should be necessary and epistemically
first (i.e., their truth must be knowable independently of the
truth of all other cognitive structures)-in short, that they
should be apodictic. Phenomenology must faithfully describe
such evidences, in order to achieve the rational reconstruction
of our knowledge. The system of evidence which, alone, can meet
these requirements and provide the desired logos, is a system of
eidetic insights. Phenomenology must recuperate essences. These
essences are the objective accomplishments of a special subjective
method, eidetic variation, and its consummate evidential act,
eidetic intuition (the Wesensschau). In Formal and Transcendental
Logic, this project of reconstruction is construed as an a priori
transcendental logic, designed to exhibit the necessary epistemic
conditions (i.e., the genetic constitution) that determine the
givenness of objects of every sort. Genetic constitution, serving the
highest imperatives of reason, employs the method of eidetic
variation, and reaches fulfillment in the presentation of eidetic
laws. Essentialism is thus the cornerstone, not only of transcen-
dental logic, but indeed of the entire phenomenological enterprise.
Now, in this paper, I would like to point out some of the more
170 David Michael Levin
serious problems with HusserI's theory. Broadly speaking, the

problems which bother me derive from HusserI's overweening
intellectualism and from a natural companion of this stance,
namely, his tendency to depend on a misleading visual model
of evidence.
The theory toward which our study conducts us should have
the rigor of an inquiry which faithfully fulfills its promised return
to the verdicts of experience and which explicitly acknowledges
the limits which this entails.
Phenomenological essentialism, as I conceive it, joins in-
tentional description to the discipline of transcendental logic, in
order to arrive at defeasible a posteriori hypotheses, expressed in
language, about what we have good reason to believe are the
necessary, lawful (i.e., rule-governed) connections among diverse
sorts of intentional description.
II
Let us begin the critique by considering the nature of HusserI's

commitment to philosophical intellectualism. I wish to suggest,
here, the following characterization of H usserIian intellectualism:
( I) the view that philosophy should provide a systematic clari-
fication of the logical structures which our knowledge exhibits,
and that it should legitimate these structures by recovering the
laws of their essential evidential formation; and (2) the view that
this project requires, and can demonstrate the possibility of,
apodictically necessary evidences, and that these evidences,
through which our knowledge is grounded, are purely a priori,
in the sense that, in addition to being presumed necessary and
universal, they are tenable independently of experience.
Now, I believe it is altogether reasonable to accept the first
of these views. (This is the task HusserI initiates in his "criticism
of evidence." But he has not completely freed himself from
notions which subvert this radical project and create a certain
tension within the frame of his system.) But it seems to me that
the second, which constitutes a most important part of what I

have called HusserIian intellectualism, is not only far from
reasonable, but difficult to sustain within an authentic phenome-
nology. This view seems to imply that the essences and eidetic
laws obtainable through phenomenological method belong, in
effect, to a superior ontological worId (the trancendental ego),
temporally unconditioned and epistemologically detached, such
that we should have to assume the possibility of an absolute
infinite observer and the possibility of an object exhaustively
given to reflection. (HusserI's demand for a philosophical
"accounting" of objectivity either carries with it the idea of an
apodictic and absolute egological grounding, or else it is simply
an odd way of saying that philosophy must make explicit the
criteria, or transcendental conditions, of objectivity.) My most
serious divergence from HusserIian intellectualism, therefore, is
limited to view (2) above. It is my hope that, once we have over-
come the temptations which incline us to accept view (2), we may
make better headway in fulfilling the dream which view (I)
expresses.
In particular, my objections to HusserI's sense ofintellectualism
fall into three parts:
I. His evidential and methodological requirements are in-
defensible. The kind of evidence HusserI ascribes to essences (or
to their correlative eidetic insights) is not demonstrably possible,
primarily because he gives us no adequate evidential procedures.
2. His evidential and methodological requirements are un-
necessarily strong. A weaker set of requirements is really sufficient
to yield all the phenomenologically interesting and important
results we can reasonably hope for.!
I. We recognize, and consider it to Husserl's credit, that he always firmly opposed
defining evidence as apodictic, opposed attempts to reduce the diverse modalities and
degrees of evidence to the apodictic. But this position means neither an outright
repudiation of apodicticity nor a late withdrawal from his earlier commitment to
this ideal. (One must read, e.g., p. 157 of the Formal and Transcendental Logic with
extreme care.) Furthermore, it is impossible to maintain that the apodicticity-
requirement is not as strong as it seems-that, in other words, the notion of an
David Michael Levin
apodictic evidence in no sense disrupts the unity and cogency of Husserl's general
theory of evidence. In the Logic, for example, we find the following remarks: "[Eidetic
method yields] results that (as is apodictically evident) govern a universe of con-
ceivability (a 'pure' allness), in such a manner that the negation of any result is
equivalent to an intuitable eidetic impossibility, an inconceivability." (p. 249). Also
"The universal validity of the eidetic method is unconditionally necessary ... "
(ibid.). On p. 261, Husserl speaks of an evidence that is "apodictic, absolutely in-
dubitable, and, so to speak, finished in itself.... " If this is meant merely to explicate
the traditional (Cartesian) notion of "apodictic," but not Hussed's own, then we
should expect to find another definition, explicitly introduced as the new phenome-
nological notion. Yet we look in vain for any different sort of introduction of apodic-
ticity. In Logical Investigations, II, Investigation Four, sec. 51 I, Husserl speaks about
an impossibility grasped with an apodictic self-evidence. Likewise, in Ideas I, 6,
Husserl states: "The consciousness of a necessity, or more specifically a comciousness
ofajudgment, in which we become aware ofa certain matter as the specification of an
eidetic generality, is called apodictic, the judgment itself, the proposition, an apodictic
(also apodictically-"necessary") consequent of the general proposition to which
it is related." Elsewhere in Ideas (chap. I, sec. IS, p. 68), Hussed refers to an "apod-
ictically necessary consequence." And, in the Cartesian Meditations (sec. 34, p. 71),
Hussed writes of "an intuitive and apodictic consciousness of something universal."
These contexts make it hard to view "apodictic" as a mere meaning-equivalent for
"necessary"; and they also seem to preclude construing apodicticity as an act-quality,
the noetic correlate of the noematic ascription of necessary truth to a judgment (as if
"apodictically clear," e.g., could mean "clear as a necessary truth"). Further con-
texts also throw doubt on the view that "apodictic" carries no special (and no strong)
sense, but simply summons up the sense of necessary truth. Consider, e.g., "apodicti-
cally evident that ... " (Logical Investigations, Investigation Four, II, 517), "apodicti-
cally clear" (ibid.), "apodictically certain basis for judgments" (Cartesian Meditations,
sec. 8, p. 18), "apodictic cognitions" (ibid., sec. 9, p. 22), "apodictically experience-
able structure of the Ego" (ibid., sec. 12, p. 28), and "apodictically given 'I am'"
(ibid., sec. 46, p. 103). The peculiar strength of the apodicticity-requirement and its
amorphous connection with certainty (rather than necessary truth) come to the
fore in these passages from sec. 6 of the Cartesian Meditations, in which "apodicticity"
is introduced immediately following an account of the ordinary notion of certainty:
"[An apodictic evidence] excludes the conceivability that what is evident could
subsequently become doubtful, or the conceivability that being could prove to be
an illusion ... " (p. IS); "[An apodictic evidence must give us] some being that
is firmly secured 'once and for all', or absolutely" (p. 16). More revealing of the
strong sense in which "apodicticity" must be understood are some passages in the
Logical Investigations: In the text of Investigation Five, Hussed asserts, in respect of
certain "differences" he has carefully drawn, that they "are immanently appre-
hended, are phenomenologically certain ... "; and in a footnote, Hussed refers to
apodictic self-evidence, which suggests that such self-evidence is a sort of certainty
(see II, 644). In the Appendix to the Logical Investigations, (II, 858-859), Hussed,
while discussing Brentano, shows that, within the immanence ofa purely phenome-
nological domain, it is a question of "the 'evidence' and infallibility of inner per-
ception," although, in his view, Bren tano failed to win his right to claim such evidence,
since he only worked with a psychical/physical, or inner/outer classification. On p.
859, in fact, Hussed says that "there is a well-justified distinction between evidence
and non-evidence, or between infallible perception."
HUSSERLIAN ESSENCES RECONSIDERED 173
3. His attempt to satisfy these requirements is deleterious. If we

are correct, the rigor HusserI wants is not obtainable. Aiming for
this rigor thus distorts the range and sense of our possible
evidences. Furthermore, it tempts us to detach eidetic enquiry
from its experimental moorings, and to transform phenome-
nology, in this way, into a dogmatic program.
Now that the nature of my critique is clear, I would like to
argue in its defense.
I. The visual model

We recall that both Gilbert Ryle and Jean-Paul Sartre have
repudiated the visual model which, for centuries, has dominated
certain analyses of mind. I would like to show how, HusserI's
remonstrations and intentions notwithstanding, the notion of
eidetic insights into truths "bodily present" as such is not
invulnerable to the sort of criticisms which Nausea and The
Concept of Mind advance. Let me elaborate this objection.
Despite his view that eidetic variation is a difficult and laborious
process, HusserI sometimes is inclined to ascribe a peculiar and,
I think, indefensible primacy-one might even say "detach-
ment" -to the final intentional act of eidetic insight. That is,
once you have obtained an authentic insight, it seems as if you
may detach it from its method of genesis, from all the labor
which produced it. Moreover, it seems as if you may steel your-
self against any and all temptations to reappraise the grounds of
your insight, or to survey anew the eidetic boundaries you have
drawn. The Wesensschau, in sum, tends to ensnare us in the
labyrinths of a mischievous visualism. (HusserI is ensnared,
despite his repudiation of what might be termed the "false
immediacy" of evidence. He thus does not fully escape his own
critique of past philosophers. It is sometimes easier, alas, to
notice the faults of others than to correct them.)
HusserI's decision to define eidetic insight in terms of apodicti-
city and a prioricity strengthens his unfortunate emphasis on the
mental act of seeing. Like the man who climbs a tree and then
throws away the ladder so that he will impress us with his magical
powers of flight, HusserI seems to conceal from us the trials and
errors of eidetic variation, and hands us only the tidy achieve-
ments. I have nothing against results; nor do I wish to quarrel
with many of the results HusserI won. But I do find myself skepti-
cal about his epistemic claims for them. An apodictic evidence
is such that what it presents is "finished in itself," and cannot be
conceived to be other than what it is, come what may. The sense of
finality it suggests is not intended to be merely psychological (i.e.,
a merely phenomenological attribute of an evidential judgment,
carrying no implications in respect of subsequent-thus unfulfilled
-evidential conditions). Nevertheless, HusserI fails to de-
monstrate why even the most compelling and most reasonable
termination of a series of eidetic variations must close (in some
truly absolute sense) the work of eidetic investigation. Is it not
conceivable, after all, that we might subsequently wish, if not to
show the falsity of our eidetic laws or discriminations, at least to
decide our eidetic boundaries in a different way? Do we want to
say that new and very different kinds of experience, unforeseeable
at the present time, should never motivate different ways of
drawing certain eidetic boundaries? Similarity, the purported a
prioricity of eidetic insight turns out to be extremely mischievous.
First, it is not sufficiently clear what the tests for a prioricity
consist in. Second, it is puzzling that the results of eidetic variation
should be constructed as a priori when the labor (I mean the
"casting about" of trial and error) in such variation hardly seems
so pure and so neat. Finally, it is insufficient to argue that an
evidence is a priori simply because it is obtained by a variation
conducted in "pure phantasy." Let us not forget, after all, where
our ability to phantasize and to dream up interesting possibilities
comes from! We wish to indicate, however, the fundamental
ambiguity which haunts the H usserIian meaning of this' 'freedom"
from factualness, this peculiar detachment of thought. 2
2. Husser! wants to allow, as genuine eidetic variants, certain phantasied logical
possibilities which may never have been and may never be actualized in any natural
Of course, if eidetic variations are reallly just tests to help us get

hold of our old friends, purely logical possibilities, we should have
trouble enough on our hands. But insofar as they are intended
to be quite different, Husserl has failed to adequately distinguish
them from merely psychological explorations, and he allows his
essentialism to fall back on a peculiar sort of visual immediacy,
as a means of legitimating his evidential acquisitions.
Husserl provides no helpful criteria for final decision, in case
of a conflict (or contradiction) between two insights. 3 Nor does
he help us to account for the very possibility of such conflicts-if,
that is, "apodicticity" must carry a strong, nonpsychological
sense. (Suppose, here, a conflict between A's "apodictic" insight
P and B's "apodictic" insight Q.; and assume, further, that A
and B are each respected phenomenological authorities and that
they appear to be working from the same corpus of evidence.)
Surely, it is not sufficient to know that only one of the two can
have a genuine apodictic insight. So Husserlian insight is arbitrary
and whimsical in precisely the sense, and to precisely the degree,
that it cannot help us to know which of the two insights is properly
certified.
psychological ego. He aims at reaching, through each distinct sequence of variations,
an eidetic law grounded in the coincidence of logical possibilities. But, in order to
reach a state-of-affairs whose "being otherwise" is "absolutely unimaginable" (a
nichts-anders-sein-konnen, and not a mere nichts-anders-denken-konnen), what we envisage
as logical possibilities must be "motivated," clearly given in phenomenological
intuition (thus, not "empty," or merely signitive). (In the Logical Investigations, II,
Appendix, 866, HusserI says: "I cannot doubt an adequate, purely immanent
perception, since there are no residual intentions in it that must yet achieve fulfill-
ment. The whole intention, or the intention in all its aspects, is fulfilled.") Freedom
or detachment, however, can only be measured by appraisals of motivation. And,
since it is here a question of laws, the intuitive motivation surely cannot be perfect:
laws can indeed be grounded in fulfilling intentions, but they never completely lose
their signitive dimension. Ifour thought is proper lydisciplined, why isn't a nichts-ander s-
denken-konnen a sufficiently heady freedom?
3. In the Formal and Transcendental Logic (p. 156), Husserl speaks of an evidence
that is "ostensibly apodictic." Very well, but what is the contrast? How do we
recognize a genuine apodicticity? What independent standard of appeal is there? Or
should we say that "ostensibly apodictic," here, means nothing but "presumably
a necessary truth"? But, in this case, HusserI's choice of the word "apodictic" is, to
say the least, misleading.
David Michael Levin
Often, HusserI seems inclined to think of insight into essences

as if it were a gazing at visual dots, rather than a cross-comparison
of imaginated situations. Seeing, of course, always has a focus,
an entity or state of affairs aimed at; and we are wont to say that
it is built into the logic of seeing that there must be something
which is seen. Consequently, there is a natural temptation to
think that the Deckung ("coincidence") which eventually emerges
from eidetic variation shows one what the several variants have in
common. It should be obvious how this view reinforces the ex-
pectation that apodicticity is feasible. And it should be equally
obvious how this view uses the visual model to make its appeal.
After Wittgenstein, we should perhaps recognize that there might
be essences which are founded on important "family resem-
blances," rather than on self-evidently necessary common pro-
perties. Although a logic of family resemblances has not yet been
satisfactorily developed, I hope it is at least plain that Wittgen-
stein's argument makes it considerably harder to justifY an
apodictic Schaum.
But, if we grant that a visual model is appropriate for eidetic
reflection, how are we to justifY HusserI's refusal to recognize,
at the same time, the adumbrations (unfulfilled, merely signitive,
intentional components) which are implicit in this model? If you
consider essences to be structures (laws), instead of points, then
it is not at all clear that eidetic reflection lacks an analogue of the
adumbrations which constitute perception. HusserI apparently
thought he could avoid this conclusion, inimical to the ideal of
apodicticity, by claiming that there are immanent essences. But
this is squarely at odds with the broad and fundamental sense of
"transcendence" which he developed in Formal and Transcendental
Logic.
Objectivity and Transcendence
2.
I would like to suggest, now, that HusserI's visualism was very
much a part of his continued reliance on the immanence!
transcendence distinction. I mean that, so long as it seems plausi-
ble to treat any essences as genuinely (i.e., literally) immanent,

just so long will it seem permissible to grant them an adequate,
and thus apodictic, evidential status. 4
In the Ideas, Hussed sketched a strong argument for the
objectivity of essences. As Gurwitsch says in his essay "On the
Intentionality of Consciousness": "Objectivity is identifiableness,
i.e., the possibility of reverting again and again to what, through
the present experienced act, is offered to consciousness, and the
possibility of so doing whether in the same or in any other mode
of awareness."
The main thrust of this position should be clear: spatio-
temporal accessibility is not a necessary condition for the possibility
of objectivity. The class of objects is larger than the class of
spatiotemporal things. What has not been so well noted, however,
is the point that objectivity (spatiotemporal or otherwise) entails
the nondemonstrability of an apodictic evidence. My argument,
in brief, is this. If it is the case that (a) essences are intentional
objects, and ifit is the case (as, e.g., Rudolf Boehm has understood)
that (b) objectivity entails transcendence, then (c) it does not
seem reasonable to suppose that the evidences through which an
4. Husserl writes: "... only the perception of one's own actual experiences is
indubitable and evident." (Logical Investigations, II, Appendix, 866). Let us acknow-
ledge at once that a per~on's "perception" of some experience (as an experience)
e.g., my immediate awareness of a pain as it is experienced, or lived, can be incorrigible
or absolute. This incorrigibility (self-evidence), as Hussed profoundly understood,
does not belong to the traditionally "inner" or "psychical" domain as such; rather,
it pertains exclusively to the peculiar field of immanence. But, if immanence be pure
lived awareness, then it can no more encompass and guarantee eidetic insight than
it can the bodily region in which I locate my pain. The self-evidence of the pre-
reflective cogito must not be transferred to the reflective cogito in the guise of an
immanent, thus apodictic, evidence. It might be mentioned here that in the Logical
Investigations Husserl argues well against the claim that the inner/outer distinction
coincides with the adequate/inadequate distinction. And he implies that an apodictic
evidence must be an adequate (hence immanent) evidence. It is well known that,
in the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl severed the unity of adequate and apodictic
evidences, holding that an apodictic evidence can be obtained even though adequation
is not possible. We wish to agree that our knowledge of necessary truths does not require
adequate evidence. But we cannot follow Husserl in holding that an apodictic
evidence is possible even without evidential adequation.
David Michael Levin
essence is given could be adequate, for the reason that the other-
ness of a transcendent object logically entails its incompleteness.
But (a) and (b) are both theses which HusserI himself has
supported. Therefore, insofar as the adequacy of eidetic insight has
not been conclusively shown, the possibility of an apodictic
evidence has not been demonstrated. Now, if you continue to
think that evidential adequacy is plausible despite the tran-
scendence of the eidetic objects, it is likely that you are still in the
grip of the visual model. (We tend, on the one hand, to ac-
knowledge the transcendent otherness of essences while conti-
nuing, on the other hand, to picture them as epistemologically
privileged objects-simple, atomic points, fully and perfectly
illumined through the immanent radiance of a transcendental ego's
absolute eye.)
If we consider HusserI's remarks in Formal and Transcendental
Logic, we shall doubtless want to say that HusserI did make this
crucial connection between objectivity and transcendence, and
that he understood its significance. Unfortunately, most of
HusserI's other works (even those he wrote later) are dominated
by his deep-seated commitment to recuperating essences through
an apodictic insight. Consequently, we are obliged to conclude
that he failed to appreciate the radical significance of his own
notion of objective transcendence.
So what I want to ask is this: Why did HusserI, whose thinking
was always extraordinarily scrupulous, fail to recognize the
profound changes in essentialism which his transcendental logic
inplied? The answer to this query may help us in two ways. First,
it requires us to trace the background of commitments which
haunt his theory of essences. And second, it helps to expose the
difficulties and confusions which imperil it. HusserI's vestigial
intellectualism coerced him, as we have seen, into a useless try
at absolutizing a reflective evidence. And this, in turn, concealed
from him the transcendence of essences that is implicit in their
objectivity. The consequence, however much it was not intended,
was inescapable. The transcendental ego devoured HusserI's
essences. For, if essences must be apodictic, they must be pulled
back into the pure immanence of the transcendental ego. Essences
then, are not only removed from the world, but must fail to bear
fully on our living, existential understanding of the world. Thus,
the essences in Husserlian theory seem to have become pseudo-
objects: noncommunicable and unverifiable ciphers.
3. Eidetic variation vs. induction

Eidetic variation, for Husserl, is a method which operates a
priori, and which results in the perspicuous discernment of
necessary truths. In keeping with this position, Husserl believes
that the evidence of eidetic variation is significantly (or perhaps
completely) different from the evidence of induction. But I shall
argue that, on the contrary, the sharp epistemic distinction he
attempts to draw cannot be made, and that this basis for his
intellectualism is therefore extremely weak.
First, let us consider his argument that eidetic variation can
yield evidences epistemically superior to those of induction be-
cause the eidetic is not a method based on the simple conjunction
of actually examined instances, but is, rather, a method which
depends solely on purely phantasied variants. Eidetic variations
are Gedankenexperimente: they originate when the phenomenologist,
no longer bound to the consideration of mere facts, runs through
a series of purely conceived possibilities. It is supposed that
induction, on the other hand, is tightly bound to the actual world,
bound to the way things actually are.
I submit, however, that it is altogether incorrect to characterize
induction as a Baconian method of simple enumeration. In this
regard, philosophers of science have greatly improved our under-
standing of the inductive procedures operative in contemporary
science. And a cursory examination of current scientific practices
would show how very far away from straightforward enumeration
our scientific induction really is. In The Structure of Scientific Re-
volutions, Thomas Kuhn illustrates his contention that there is
a logical interdependency of observation and theory, and along
with this, a complex dialectic through which the actual and the
possible find their simultaneous articulation. In brief, induction
is not at all confined to the procedure Husserl supposes. It often
involves the use of conceptually possible counterexamples; and
it often yields its results only through the mediation of variables
which introduce nonobservable, but theoretically possible,
entities.
Now let us consider the argument that, since eidetic variation
can be worked out, in principle, as a variation of purely phanta-
sied possibilities, its labors and its evidential results are in no
way bound to the actual world, whereas the inductive method,
by contrast, always yields evidences whose truth can only be
known a posteriori. Assuming it is correct to construe these
phantasied variants according to the standard definition of
"logical possibility," we should question the propriety of using
this notion, within the phenomenological framework, as a tool
of a priori method. It may be that a variation of logical possibili-
ties can establish reasonable (well-evidenced) beliefs concerning
necessary and universal truths. But the knowledge we obtain
through this procedure would seem to be a posteriori in the sense
that it is always grounded in and responsible to our finite human
experience. (HusserI himself recognized this in the Cartesian
Meditations and the Crisis, for example, when he attended to the
"horizons" of evidence and the teleology of reason. Yet, he
failed to apply this sensibility to his goal of apodicticity. The
promised "critique" is never accomplished.) Possibilities do not
float in some mental or metaphysical space, completely without
anchorage in the actual world. Therefore it needs to be shown,
and not assumed, that the results of eidetic variation are a priori
in the relevant, privileged sense. Moreover, so long as our
misgivings have not been settled, it will remain a puzzle how
HusserI can suppose he has avoided the transformation of phe-
nomenology into a purely formal science, whose apodictic insights
are not more (and no better off) than the traditional philosophers'
purely analytic judgments. (What Husserl is after, of course, as
the Logical Investigations clearly indicates, are necessary synthetic

truths-what he calls, following Kant, synthetic a priori truths,
such as "Colors cannot exist without, or apart from, extension.")
I suggest, therefore, that we had best construe the possibilities
of eidetic variation as logically possible experimental situations,
framed provisionally and synthetically (i.e., a posteriori) against
the shifting, partially adumbrated background of our actual
world. 5
Now, if Husserl's "a priori" means nothing but "logically
necessary," then at least it would not be a contradiction to say that
eidetic variation gives us a posteriori hypotheses about what it
is reasonable to believe are logically necessary truths. On the
other hand, if "a priori" is taken to mean "knowable and
tenable independently of experience", it is not at all obvious why
we should characterize eidetic method as a priori. For it simply
does not follow, from the fact that eidetic variations are "freely"
phantasied, that the method and its evidential products are
independent of (i.e., not rooted in and answerable to) experience.
Mter all, the discipline of our natural sciences often seems to
call for Gedankenexperimente; yet surely, this freedom to phantasy
does not entail any a priori privilege.
It might be argued, however, that eidetic knowledge is a
priori because it is formed by a special reflective procedure,
possible only within the transcendental reduction, and thus
limited to purely immanent evidences. To this we must reply,
first, that we regard the transcendental ego, who might otherwise
5. One problem with Husserl's ascribing apodicticity to necessary truths is that

apodicticity seems to conflict with their synthetic character. In a world where creatures
were deprived of color-perception (perhaps they are deprived of vision), or even of
any sense of spatial extension, the "content" of the law "Colors cannot exist without
extension" would be empty, and hence the creatures in this strange world would be
unable to achieve the requisite synthesis. So they would, presumably, not assent to its
being a necessary truth: the law would not be false, yet we should have to say it
did not hold. And, since it is we who have envisaged this possibility (this possible world)
as a variation of our own, it must be acknowledged that we can conceive the possibility
of the law's not holding. Therefore, we cannot say that the law is given in an apodictic
evidence.
David Michael Levin
be doing the reflecting, as banished forever from phenomenologi-

cal theory (and along with it, we may presume, has gone the a
priori power of absolute survey so precious to traditional in-
tellectualism); and second, that if eidetic reflection takes place
only within the reductions, it is true enough that we need not
bother with existential questions. However, unless we are stubborn
Cartesians, securely cradled in the absolute "cogito," we
shall have to grant that the reflections we pursue remain bound,
malgre tout, to the finite conditions of human understanding. (For
example: we may be limited in our generation of sufficient
eidetic variants, we may be unsure of our criteria for genuinely
possible variants, and we may find ourselves limited in appraising
the precise nature of the coincidence).
I should like to agree with Husserl, however, that the results of
eidetic method deserve to be recognized as philosophically first-
transcendental conditions in a more or less Kantian sense. That
is to say, if an eidetic accomplishment P is such that we reasonably
believe it to be a necessary truth, it is also such that we protect
it from contrary evidences. In effect, we can make P irrefutable
by using it in the settlement of possible challenges. (Clearly, what
is at stake is not P alone, but the entire phenomenologically
grounded conceptual system into which P fits.) But we must take
care not to confuse this kind of primacy and dignity with old-
fashioned a prioricity. For the sole grounds on which we claim that
it is reasonable to regard P as a necessary truth are completely
experimental. It makes perfectly good sense to propose P as a
necessary truth, and add that it is in synthesis (in our experience),
methodically tested through eidetic variation, that we determine
if it be reasonable to think that this is so. Thus, we are obliged to
acknowledge, after all, that it is conceivable our experience
should someday change (perhaps from natural causes quite in-
comprehensible to us) in ways so fundamental that P, along with
the conceptual field in which it is embedded, would simply no
longer have any hold on us, and we might, then, willingly
surrender its privilege. Consider the following crude, and of
course not phenomenologically interesting, dilemma as a simple

pointer in the direction my thoughts are suggesting. Alternative
A: "All cats are animals" remains true because we decide to say
that this creature is not a cat. (It looked, felt, and behaved like a
cat for years; but one day, it fell, broke open, and exposed its
mechanical brain.) Alternative B: "Some cats are not animals"
becomes true, because we decide to say that this creature is (shall
be admitted as) a cat. 6
In one of his lectures at the College de France, Merleau-Ponty
ably summed up the position I submit for your consideration:
" ... the concepts of the understanding share in the contingency
of experience and are always weighted by a 'coefficient of facti-
city' which ties them to specific structures of the world .... " It
seems to me that Husserlian phenomenology has not (and need
not have) succeeded in establishing any epistemic distinction
between the evidences of eidetic variation and those of induction.
The results of eidetic variation, like those of induction, are always
provisional and always open to the logical possibility of revision
or even annulment. But, nonetheless, they are of the utmost philo-
sophical importance.
6. "A color cannot exist apart from extension." Yes, given our world, a color is
indeed unthinkable apart from something extended. But, it is precisely because
extendedness is Mt analytically grounded in the concept of c%r, that, in a colorless
world, this proposition (law) could not be held as a necessary truth.
Richard M. Zaner
REFLECTIONS ON EVIDENCE AND

CRITICISM IN THE THEORY OF
CONSCIOUSNESS
"People have ... oriented all their solutions toward
the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must
hold to what is difficult ... that will not forsake us .... "
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet
In his brief addendum to Section 60 of his Formal and Transcendental

Logic,! Husserl stresses the central place of a theory of evidence,
due to whose development alone "has a seriously scientific
transcendental philosophy ('critique of reason' 2) become possi-
ble, as well as, at bottom, a seriously scientific psychology,
conceived centrally as the science of the proper essence of the
psychic .... " 3 Only a full theory of evidence, developed on the
basis of a thorough criticism of "reason," can properly yield a
serious theory and approach to consciousness. He also emphasizes
many times the fundamental failure of traditional philosophy
to develop a proper and adequate conception of evidence. A
briefrehearsal of this, and a systematic placement of the criticism
of evidence in the theory of consciousness, will help to show the
historical and vital urgency of those issues.
The error of traditional theory consists in taking evidence:
I. Edmund Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns, The
Hague, 1969. The bulk of my references to Husserl are from this text-as it is, in my
judgment, his finest and clearest articulation of the ideas with which I here deal.
(Hereinafter FTL.)
2. I later take up the theme of a "critique of reason," Cf. FTL pp. 288-289.
3. Ibid., p. 162.
REFLECTIONS ON EVIDENCE AND CRITICISM
as an absolute apodicticity, an absolute security against deceptions-an

apodicticity quite incomprehensibly ascribed to a single mental process
torn from the concrete, essentially unitary, context of subjective mental
living. The usual theorist sees in evidence an absolute criterion of truth;
though, by such a criterion, not only external but also, in strictness, all
internal evidence would necessarily be done away with.4
He continues to specify this failure as the essentially absurd

effort on the part of a finite human being, the philosopher, to
theorize "from on high" :
To declaim from the heights about evidence and the "self-confidence of
reason" is of no avail here. And to stick to tradition-which for motives
long forgotten and, in any case, never clarified, reduces evidence to an
insight that is apodictic, absolutely indubitable, and, so to speak,
absolutely finished in itself-is to bar oneself from an understanding of
any scientific production. 5
The difficulty is raised specifically in the case of Descartes (but

also, we shall see, Hume and Kant) who, Husserl insists, utterly
failed to stick to his own demands when, trying to secure the
"guarantee" that clear and distinct ideas give us genuine ob-
jective validity, he appeals to the veracity of God. Later theorists,
while they reject the latter, still persist in the basic Cartesian
idea of evidence:
Evidence "must" somehow be an absolute grasping of being and truth.
In the first place, there "must" be an absolute experience; and that we
have in the case of internal experience. Then there "must" be absolutely
valid universal evidences; and we have them in the case of the evidences
of apodictic principles, the highest of these being the principles of formal
logic, which, moreover, govern deductive inferences and thereby make
truths evident that are apodictically without question. Further aid is
then given by induction, with its probability-inferences, which them-
selves come under the apodictic principles of probabilities . .. . Thus an
Objectively valid cognition has been taken care of.6
4. Ibid., p. 156.
5. Ibid., p. 16I.
6. Ibid., p. 230.
186 Richard M. Zaner
Or so it seems-and a mere seeming it in truth is. For, one may

say, what occurs with such later theorists (witness Hume's and
Kant's notions of "relations of ideas" and "analytic Apriori")
is that, while Descartes' appeal to God's veracity is cast away
(for whatever reasons), not only has his basic conception of
evidence been retained, but those "apodictic principles" come
to function in precisely the same manner as the benevolent
Diety of Descartes. Knowledge requires grounds; and grounds,
it is felt, require the security of evidence which is "absolute"-
beyond question or doubt, and thus not itself in need of any
further analysis or evidence. What fills that enormous bill can
only be "self-evidence" and thus happens the wholesale tran-
sporting into epistemology of what in metaphysics goes under
the name of "substance"-the self-existent, self-subsistent, fixed
and secure ground of all grounds-although without many of
the religious trappings. Thus, Descartes' felt need to seek an even
more absolute and fixed ground than that achieved in the cogito-
the guarantee that the cogito's clear and distinct ideas can be
genuinely trusted-is also continued in later theories. Just as his
benevolent Diety has no need of further grounding, so, later,
Hume's "relations of ideas," no less than Kant's "analytic
judgments," are just "there"-absolute, true, and independent
of the vicissitudes of human life.
For Kant no less than for Hume, HusserI shows, what is taken
as analytically apriori is never itself placed in question:
Hume did not raise ... the transcendental problem of the constitution of
ideal objectivities; thus he failed to raise, in particular, the transcendental
problem of the constitution oflogical idealities .... It ought to have been
raised in connexion with those "relations of ideas" that, as the sphere of
"reason" in the pregnant sense, play so great a role for Hume. . ..
[Hence] the corresponding Humean problem ... and ... theory, with
the function of "explaining" the "experience" of such supposed ideal
objects as being likewise an internal producing of mere fictions [is
missing].7
7. Ibid., p. 259.
But Kant is no better off in this respect, for although his logic
is purportedly a science directed to the subjective, a science a-
priori of thinking,
actually, according to its sense, Kant's purely formal logic concerns the
ideal formations produced by thinking. And, concerning them, Kant
fails to ask properly transcendental questions of the possibility of cogni-
tion. How does it happen that he regards a formal logic, with its apri-
ority, as self-sufficiently grounded? ...
That can be understood as a consequence of the ... dependence on Hume
implicit in Kant's reaction against him. Hume directed his criticism to
experience and the experienced world, but accepted the unassailableness
of the relations of ideas (which Kant conceived as the analytic Apriori).
Kant did the same with his counter-problem: He did not make his
analytic Apriori a problem. S
This fact had a profound impact on succeeding philosophy, for

what it resulted in was the failure to take seriously "the painful
question" concerning how it can happen that subjective mental
processes can bring forth, can think or otherwise encounter
strictly ideal objects. 9 There thus set in a crucial double error,
continually plaguing every attempt to think systematically about
mental life or consciousness. First, the realm of the a priori (es-
pecially when conceived as purely analytic) is regarded as a
kind of "in-itself," a self-grounding sphere of apodictic principles
which, so to speak, just "stand on their own" in and for them-
selves-or, less kindly, not unlike Poe's "haunted palace" which
"reared its head. lIn the monarch Thought's dominion, I It stood
there," these principles become regarded as having always al-
ready been present, full-bodied, ready-to-go, and the issue con-
cerning their being objects for specific mental processes has been
buried. That these principles are necessarily objects which are given
or appear, in their own manner, to consciousness, and thus that this
consciousness of apriori principles is itself a prime issue, never
occurs to such a logical absolutism.
Second, a parallel error is one which Kant had already made.
8. Ibid., p. 260.
9. Ibid., pp. 260-61.
Since "the psychical" is given only in "internal experience,"

and this, like "external" experience, can never yield aprioris, the
very idea of a "subjective" investigation of logical formations
was anathema for Kant-strictly a piece of empirical psychology.
"The subjective," then, or a psychology of cognition, quickly
became conceived as strictly a matter of empirical inquiry alone
with the psychological experiencing or thinking of aprioris
regarded as utterly irrelevant to the analysis of these aprioris
themselves. Hence, too, the "subjective" as a theme for philoso-
phical study became all too easily a highly suspicious endeavor
at best. For, since it is given only in "internal experience"-
which, as experience, was thought incapable of yielding certainties
-one can never know, in a philosophically appropriate manner,
what it is. There is an easy move, then, from "subjectivity" to
"subjective," from there to "idiosyncratic" and "unique," fi-
nally to "private and inaccessible" and closed to genuine in-
quiry. The kind of skeptical relativism implicit here, wrong-
headed though it obviously is, enters into that all too familiar
battle with logical absolutism-both of them, as Husserl puts it,
being "bugbears that knock each other down and come to life
again in a Punch and Judy show." 10
The critical error running throughout this entire thematic
history, like a curiously cunning musical merry-go-round, is
found already in Descartes' first meditation:
Descartes gives special prominence to the possibilities of deception that
are always inherent in external experience, and by doing so he wrongly
cuts off his view of the fundamental sense of experience, namely as an
original giving of something-itself. But that happens only because it never
occurs to him to ask what actually determines the conceivability of a
worldly existent ... it happens only because, on the contrary, he has
worldly existence beforehand, as an existence floating above the clouds
of cognition .... [He does not see that the world] is a being "until further
notice," subject to always-possible and often-occurring correction-a
world that, even as the All of being, exists, as a world for the ego, only
on the basis of a presumption deriving its legitimacy (and yet only a
10. Ibid., p. '.:l77.

REFLECTIONS ON EVIDENCE AND CRITICISM 189
relative legitimacy 11) from the vitality of experience . .. he does not see
that the essential style of experience stamps on the being-sense of the
world, and of all realities, an essentially necessary relativity, and that,
accordingly, the attempt to remedy this relativity by appealing to the
veracity of God is a countersense,12
If, thus, a sense experience proves to be "deceptive," this means

necessarily that some other sense experience has occurred with the
intrinsic force of being a "correction" of the earlier one-and
this sense of "deception" or "correction" is itself able to be
grasped by specific processes of consciousness. The fact of de-
ception by no means legitimates the leap to the in principle
possibility of doubt regarding the entire sphere ofsense experiences.
If, furthermore, we should add, Descartes' appeal to God's
veracity and benevolence to guarantee the objective validity of
clear and distinct ideas is countersensical, it is as well unsinnig to
attempt to secure that selfsame objective validity by appealing
to "apodictic principles." For, epistemically, it is precisely the
same kind of appeal which is made.
As if in recognition of this absurdity, what happened histori-
cally is very suggestive. "Logic" (and mathematics) became
conceived as having nothing to say about the "world" of experienced
things; and yet, logic was retained as the set of "criteria" sup-
posedly "legitimating" scientific assertions and methods. Corre-
spondingly, all utterances about that world were delivered over
wholesale to empirical science. But the issue concerning the
justifiability of that very move was not raised-i.e., the essentially
necessary transcendental question concerning the accounting for
our experiencing, not only of that "experienced world" but also
of those ideal logical apriorities ("experienced" in a broader
than usual sense, of course), was lost in the mire of confusion
ultimately stemming from the failure to grasp the essence of
evidence, and correspondingly of experience itself.
I I . "Relative" legitimacy, that is, a legitimacy "until further notice" which is

constitutive of all actualities (empirical affairs).
12. FTL, p. 282.
Such issues as these have been masterfully examined by Husseri.

In particular, his theory of evidence, conceived as a foundational
"criticism qf evidence," is shown to lead necessarily back to "an
ultimate criticism: a criticism qf those evidences that phenomenology, at
the first, and still naive level, carries on straightforwardly." That
implies that "the intrinsically first criticism of cognition ... is tran-
scendental self-criticism on the part qf phenomenological cognition
itself." 13 In other words, the failures of traditional philosophers
to carry through with the inherent sense of their own thinking
leads to the recognition of the necessity for the establishment of
the rigorous discipline ("science") of criticism as an autonomous
thematic field. For, since it is a prime requirement that any philo-
sophical theory be capable of accounting for its own possibility,14
and since precisely this accountable ness was lacking in the prior
theories of cognition, the entire range of issues must be thoroughly
reexamined from the ground up-i.e., radically or transcenden-
tally-necessarily including that very reexamination itself as a
systematic effort at radical criticism. Central to this set of tasks is
the critical explication of evidence, in all of its intrinsic modali-
ties, and a consequent theory of evidence and consciousness thus
emerges.
In still different terms, every theoretical effort in general, and
every philosophical one in particular, is an effort to "come to
know" some state of affairs or other. Quite independently of
which specific affair (or affairs) come into question, and re-
gardless of the character of one's results, "coming to know" in
and of itself is a mode of "taking a stand towards" that affair;
it is a "position" (a "positing") regarding it. As such, it patently
includes an appeal to "evidence" as that which purportedly
"grounds" or "renders accountable" that "position." "Coming
to know" is "taking a stand" (position), and this is an "alleging"
or "affirming" (or "accepting") of the affair in question. Such
13. Ibid., pp. 288-8g.
14. See Aron Gurwitsch, "An Apparent Paradox in Leibnizianism," Social
Research, 33, No. I (Spring 1966),47.
acceptances, by their very sense, inherently refer to something

else whose sense is that it "accounts" or is the "reason" for
(ratio) the acceptance or position itself-i.e., evidence is essential
to the effort in question. Therefore, a criticism of evidence is
likewise essential to all theory as such.
One final formulation seems advisable. Every such "knowing"
(stand, position, acceptance, with whatever modality-certainty,
likelihood, uncertainty, dubiousness, and so on) points in three
directions: (I) to the "what is (allegedly) known"; (2) to the
"knower" who has taken up the specific acceptive-affirming
stance with its particular modality; and therefore (3) to those
processes and acts of consciousness through and on the basis
of which the "knower" first "comes into touch with" or "en-
counters" the affairs he then alleges to "know." The third
functions as the "reasons" (evidence) for the second's supposal
or stance toward the first. Hence, as HusserI consistently insists,
"evidence" is always a matter of "experience." 15 A criticism
(and theory) of evidence is essentially led back to a criticism of
experience; the latter, then, stands primally in need of radical
reexamination in order to make the former at all possible.
HusserI's criticism of evidence, experience and consciousness
(i.e., of intentionality 16) has been rather fully executed by him.
I have thus far been concerned merely to layout something of the
historical and systematic reasons (phenomenological motivations)
for this focal concern. I want now to focus attention on a not-so-
obvious aspect of his effort and results-an aspect which, I
think, is perfectly clear in HusserI's theory, but which has not
generally received the attention it deserves, although it is de-
cisive for his criticism.
HusserI unequivocally asserts his rejection-which sometimes
borders on lampooning-of the idea that evidence is a kind of
privileged and special moment of mental life's cognition of an
15. cr. Edmund HusserI, Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns, The Hague.
1960, sees. 5-6, 24-28; also FTL, sees. 58-61,104-107.
16. FTL, pp. 160-161.
Richard M. Zaner
affair, that it is an insight occurring in a single mental process

which supposedly has the sense of an apodictic, indubitable
security, a product absolutely finished in itself "once and for all."
He emphasizes, too, the deep confusion which sets in by virtue
of the felt need that this evidence is-an affair of "internal ex-
perience." The confusion has two sides. First, Descartes' appeal
to an absolute and benevolent Diety as responsible for creating
"a 'feeling of evidence' that absolutely guarantees the being of
Nature," 17 confuses the fundamental sense of the ego's own ex-
periencing of Nature with whatever it is which such a God would
supposedly introduce, ab extra, into the ego's experience. The
epistemic guarantee from God does not have the same epistemic
status as the ego's own experiencing of itself and its world. Second,
a further confusion is found in the identification of this "apodictic
evidence" with a "privileged 'internal' experience" -the con-
fusion of a merely psychologico-empirical "feeling of evidence"
(a feeling of security) and a philosophical, epistemological evi-
dence (more properly, the phenomenological-critical sense of
evidence).18 If the latter confusion may be termed a species of
the fallacy of psychologism (psychologizing the domain of the
strictly epistemic), the former may be correspondingly termed a
species of the fallacy of logicism or absolutism (introducing from
the outside, "from on high," guarantees or "criteria" having an
unquestionable and absolute status). Evidence is no more an
"uncommon special Datum" 19 than it is a conferral "from on
high" of a special guarantee. 20
These confusions, and the failure to develop an autonomous
discipline of criticism, have resulted in yet another set of con-
fusions which have obfuscated the problem of understanding the
sense of epistemic claims themselves. I propose to get at this issue
by way of an indirection.
I,. Ibid., p. 284.

18. Ibid., pp. 284-285.
19. Ibid., p. 289.
20. Ibid., pp. 161,277,280.
Because of his frequently reiterated claims that phenome-

nological inquiry, thanks to its method of free variation, yields
insights that are "eidetic" (or "apodictic" in HusserI's sense),
HusserI has seemed to open himself to the very critical accusation
he makes against traditional absolutistic conceptions of evidence.
This impression seems seriously compromised, on the other hand,
by his insistence that phenomenological focusing on "purely
psychic" experiences is what yields these insights into "essences"
or "absolutes"-indeed, since such phenomenological focusing
is on the "subjective," it might even be thought that he is also
guilty of his other critical accusation concerning the confusion
of "internal experience" with genuine evidence. Since so-called
"free variation" seems to proceed from particular affairs, seeking
what is "invariant" or "common" to them, finally, it might also
be thought that this "method" is in truth but a form of induction
and hence quite incapable of yielding essences.
These are serious issues, calling for extensive treatment. I
want here merely to focus on some features in order to begin a
clarification of them. And this is the indirection.
One of the more obvious features of Descartes' Meditations
which Husser! seems only partially to have appreciated, at the
beginning of his own Cartesian Meditations,21 is found in the
"Dedication" to the former's work. Speaking of his undertaking
as a kind of "trial" which he submits to others, one whose proofs
and results, he believes, "are such that I do not think there is any
way open to the human mind by which it can ever succeed in
discovering better," 22 he goes on to assert:
Nevertheless, whatever certainty and evidence I find in my reasons, I
cannot persuade myself that all the world is capable of understanding
them ... principally because they demand a mind wholly free of pre-
21. Cf. Cartesian Meditations, sees. 1-2, esp. pp. 5-6.

22. Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, 2 vols.
(1931; reprinted, with corrections, by special arrangement with Cambridge Uni-
versity Press), New York, 1955, p. 135. (All further references are cited textually, and
are to vol. 1.)
I94 Richard M. Zaner
judices, and one which can be easily detached from the affairs of senses.
(p. 135)·
He then asks that these others take the trouble of correcting,
modifying, adding, even rejecting those parts which need it. For,
he says, he is quite "conscious not only of my infirmity, but also
of my ignorance," and hence cannot claim that it is "free from
errors." (p. I36)
That these requests and admissions are to be taken seriously
is reinforced by his careful repetition of them in his "Preface to
the Reader." First, he notes that his Discourse on Method "begged
all those who have found in my writings somewhat deserving
of censure to do me the favor of acquainting me with the grounds
of it .... "(p. I37), and he proceeds to answer the only two
objections he deems worthy. Then, noting again that he has no
illusions that his book will have many readers, he states:
I should never advise anyone to read it excepting those who desire to
meditate seriously with me [emphasis added], and who can detach their
minds from affairs of sense, and deliver themselves entirely from every
sort of prejudice. (p. 139).
Promising to satisfy no one at once, and not presuming to have

foreseen all objections, he decides to set forth "the very con-
siderations by which I persuade myself that I have reached a
certain and evident knowledge of the truth," (p. I39) in order
to see whether these reasonings can also persuade others. He thus
advises no one to judge them until they have studied the entire
work, including the objections and his replies. The very act of
sending out his meditations to others is itself clear evidence of
the seriousness with which Descartes regards their role in his
own thinking as a philosopher.
Whatever may have been his other confusions and mistakes,
Descartes here unambiguously shows several decisive insights
into the character of philosophy and its alleged results or claims.
Like other philosophers, he stresses that his own work is a "trial
(as Hume calls his a kind of "experiment"). This means, as I see
it, that philosophical thinking intrinsically requires being submitted

to others who must "check out" that "trial"-but specifically,
only those others who "desire to meditate seriously with me."
Philosophical thinking is a form of "invitation" to others to
mutually engage in dialogical encounter with whatever issues
are at stake. The effort is always to determine whether the
philosopher's "reasons," "proofs," and "considerations" -in
short, his linguistically expressed and articulated thinking-can
"persuade" others, that is, whether these others can also find
("verify" in the manner peculiar to the affairs in question) what
the philosopher claims to find. But this kind of dialogical
engagement positively requires as well a kind of "detachment"
from affairs not bearing on the issues at hand,23 and a "deliver-
ance" from (freedom from) "prejudices," for the purposes oj the
co-meditative engagement. The injunction here (found in other
thinkers as well) to "detach" and "free" oneself is hardly trivial-
it is, rather, systemically integral to what it means to think philoso-
phically.
Husser! has, as is well-known, addressed this issue systemati-
cally and in depth. But others have as well, and some reference
to them will help to make the point here. Thus, Jaspers writes,
Reading [philosophy] should be undertaken in an attitude compounded
of confidence in the author and love for the subject he has taken up.
At first I must read as though everything stated in the text were true.
Only ... after I have been in the subject matter and re-emerged as it
were from its center,24 can meaningful criticism begin .... We learn to
know [the other's thinking] only if we venture to put ourselves entirely
into it. The remote and the alien, the extreme and the exception, even
the anomalous all enjoin us to neglect no original thought, to miss no
truth by blindness or indifference .... 25
23. To detach "from affairs of sense, " it seems to me, must be broadly interpreted
to refer to "affairs of daily life"; included in this, of course, are those affairs of sense
perception as well.
24. Note Descartes' injunction to meditate seriously with him, and to form no
judgments until one does just what Jaspers here refers to.
25. Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom, trans. Ralph Manheim, New Haven, 1954, pp.
170 - 1 7 2 •
Ortega points to the same phenomenon and to the reason for

its necessity. Contrasting philosophical with literary expressions
(which he regards as "expansive"), he says:
Philosophical expression ... is hermetic. Even in the most favorable
case of the most lucid thinker the little doors of the sentences are firmly
shut, their meaning does not step out on its own feet. To comprehend
them, there is no means but to enter. Yet once inside, we understand the
reason for this strange condition of philosophical sentences, which,
being expressive-and that means a saying-are also, and more, silence
and secrecy. Philosophical thought is systematic, and in a system each
concept carries all the others within it. But language can at one moment
say only a few things; it cannot say them all at once. It is discourse, a
going on saying and never having finished saying. Philosophical sentences
cannot be expansive, for they are essentially inclusive. In this they are
like love and great grief which, when striving to become manifest in
words, seem to choke the throat with the avalanche of all that should
be said. 26
Philosophical thinking inherently seeks to become manifest in

words, it is a "going on saying and never having finished saying"
about some state of affairs or other. To comprehend it, there is
no choice but to make the concerted effort to enter the inclusive
expressions. So entering, I immerse myself at once in the ex-
pressions and in the "subject matter," allowing myself to be
carried away into it-and only on reemerging am I able critically
to assess it. Co-meditative dialogue is, then, the fundamental form of
philosophical thinking, and its internal requirement is that "de-
tachment" and "deliverance" of which Descartes wrote. In no
other way will the "little doors of the sentences" at all open
themselves to me, thus allowing my engaging the affairs being
addressed and alleged. Hence, every effort at philosophical
thinking positively demands "the others."
A second consideration then becomes apparent. Descartes
makes a point of stressing, not simply that he doubts that many
will have the patience or ability to follow along with him, but
26. Jose Ortega y Gasset, Concord and Liberty, "A Chapter From the History of
Ideas," trans. Helene Weyl, New York, 1946, p. 136.
more importantly that he is conscious of his own infirmity, his
ignorance, and that he may not be free from error. Despite his
confidence that he has hold of incontestable "proofs," he insists
that they be submitted to others, corrected, modified, completed,
and, if need be, even censured by them.
This should give anyone pause for careful thought. How can
one at once claim apodicticity and also insist that he might be
in error? Or, how can one reconcile Descartes' (or any other's)
claim to have found "certainty and evidence of the truth" with
his (and others') insistence (I) on the necessity for co-meditative
dialogue and (2) that his thoughts may well be wrong, in need
of modification, extension, and so forth? Or, to refer to Husserl,
how can one make sense out of his obvious claims to have
discovered eidetic laws (indeed, a veritable continent of them),
and his emphatic, often reiterated insistence that "the possibility
oj deception is inherent in the evidence of experience [in his broad
sense] and does not annul either its fundamental character or its
effect .... " 27 Indeed, he quite explicitly denies that evidence oj any
kind 28 can yield "an absolute security against deceptions .... " 29
Husserl's response to this apparent contradiction consists of
an appeal to the "all-pervasive teleological structure" of conscious-
ness,30 i.e., to the essence of consciousness as an ongoing tempo-
ral flux or stream of intentionalities and sets of intentionalities,
each of which has its own essentially connected series of inner
and outer horizons (to adapt Ortega's phrase, the life of con-
sciousness is a "going on saying and never having finished
saying" -but the "ongoingness" is always a "towards ... ").
That intentive, teleological structure, in short, shows that the
widespread belief which "construes evidence conformably to a
naively presupposed truth-in-itself" is fundamentally wrong;
27. FTL, p. 156.

28. Ibid., pp. 284-289.
29. Ibid., p. 157.
30. Ibid., p. 160.
Ig8 Richard M. Zaner
rather, truth is and can only be "an idea, lying at infinity." 31

Universally, no evidence is ever "secure against deceptions":
To judge in a naive evidence is to judge on the basis of a giving of
something-itself,32 while continually asking what can be actually "seen"
and given faithful expression-accordingly it is to judge by the same
method that a cautiously shrewd person follows in practical life wherever
it is seriously important for him to "find out how matters actually are."33
That is the beginning of all wisdom, though not its end ... [which] we
can never do without, no matter how deep we go with our theorizing-a
wisdom that we must therefore practice in the same fashion when at
last we are judging in the absolute phenomenological sphere. . ..
Though further reflective inquiry always follows-and finally the in-
quiry concerning ultimate transcendental essential structures ... still
this pure intuiting 34 and a faithfulness to its pure contents 35 are involved
again and again, are continual fundamental characteristics of the method [emphasis
added]. . .. When we follow this procedure, we have continuously anew
the living truthfrom the living source, which is our absolute life,36 and from the
self-examination turned toward that life, in the constant spirit of self-
responsibility.37 We have the truth, then, not as falsely absolutized, but
rather, in each case, as within its horizons . ... 38
These constantly occurring and unfolding horizons signify that

every evidence essentially stands in need of that "again and again"
reflective inquiry. For, every evidence (I) has its own variant
formations, (2) has its degrees of clarity and perfectability, (3)
functions together with other evidences, interlacing and over-
lapping with them, and (4) is always found in "more inclusive
31. Ibid., p. 277-
32. As he writes (p. 160): "The concept of arry intentionality whatever •.. and the
concept of evidence, the intentionality that is the giving of something-itself, are essentially
correlative . .. ."
33. I have tried to make precisely this point in some detail in my recent book,
The Way of Phenomenology: Criticism as a Philosophical Discipline, New York, 1970, esp.
chaps. 2 and 4.
34. This "pure intuiting" is just the "giving of something-itself."
35. Just this is what Jaspers refers to as "immersion" in the subject-matter, and
Ortega refers to as opening the "little doors of the sentences."
36. Cf. FTL, pp. 270-275 for the full sense of this term.
37. Just this "self-responsibility" is the correlate to the demand for criticism, as
Husser! emphasized in Cartesian Meditations, sees. 2,63.
38. FTL, pp. 277-278.
coherent complexes with non-evidences, [hence] essentially

necessary modifications are continually taking place." 39 With each
of these (and there are other features, too), criticism is required.
In short, evidence is an essential structure of consciousness, precisely
correlative to intentionality and therefore always within the
horizons of temporality-and, most fundamentally expressed, is
the core of a theory of consciousness itself. Thus, finally, to
every type of objectivity there is correlated a specific type of
evidence (or experience of the "giving of something-itself 'in
person' "). Hence, "objectivity" and "evidence" (and therefore
"intentionality") are perfect correlates-each specific objectivity
having its own specific form and mode of evidence and in-
tentiveness.
Thus a great task arises, the task of exploring all these modes of evidence
in which the objectivity intended to shows itself, now less and now more
perfectly, making understandable the extremely complicated perfor-
mances, fitting them together to make a synthetic harmony and always
pointing ahead to new ones. 40
Evidence, as a structure of consciousness, is that specific type

of intentive process which "consists in the giving of something-itself
[die intentionale Leistung der SelbstgebungJ" ; 41 it is the consciousness
of the affair as it-itself-seen, -witnessed, -seized, -grasped, as that
specific intended-to affair itself.
Thus, HusserI cannot be charged with the accusation either
of psychologism (inductivism) or absolutism (essentialism or
logicism). No "single experience" is appealed to as privileged-
if, indeed, it even makes sense to speak of "a single experience"
in strictness. Mter all, as he points out continuously, evidences
are at the very least always components of a continuous flux of
experiences (some of them being evidences in the strict sense,
some more or less so, some nonevidences), and thus always
reciprocally function together. Minimally, any evidence for some
39. Ibid., pp. 285-288, 289.
40. Ibid., p. 161.
41. Ibid., p. 158.
objectivity must have intrinsic connections (syntheses) and re-

ciprocal references (protentions and retrotentions) to other phases
of the same mental life. Again, it is clearly not the case that
Husserl appeals to some apodictic principles which would
"guarantee" or otherwise function to help "secure" the evi-
dential grounds of judgments. Indeed, "absolute evidence," like
its correlate "absolute truth," is strictly an ideal lying in infinity-and
this is so universally, for all regions of objectivities, either realities
or idealities. Just this sense was clearly expressed by him much
earlier in his career, in his seminal essay, "Philosophy as a
Rigorous Science." Speaking of the "spiritual need of our time,"
one which is the "most radical vital need," he points out that:
All life is taking a position, and all taking of position is subject to a must
-that of doing justice to validity and invalidity according to alleged 42
norms of absolute validation. So long as these norms were not attacked,
were threatened and ridiculed by no scepticism, there was only one
vital question: how best to satisfy these norms in practice. But how is
it now, when any and every norm is controverted ... and robbed of its
ideal validity [by naturalism and historicism]?
... The need here has its source in science. But only science can defini-
tively overcome the need that has its source in science ... there is only
one remedy for these and all similar evils: a scientific critique and in
addition a radical science, rising from below, based on sure foundations,
and progressing according to the most rigorous methods . . . [philosophy]
must not give up its will to be rigorous science. 43
Phenomenology, as rigorous "criticism" and "transcendental

self-criticism," is precisely that strict science. Its ultimate aim is
the clear, critical grounding of all human engagements, in-
cluding itself, by giving a radical criticism of consciousness. This
"science," like its prime subject matter, consciousness, "has an
all-pervasive teleological structure, a pointedness toward 'reason' and
even a pervasive tendency toward it-that is: toward the dis-
42. The norms are "alleged" precisely because even such as these are always and
essentially subject to continual criticism.
43. Edmund Husser!, "Philosophy as a Rigorous Science," in Pherwmenology and
the Crisis of Philosophy, trans. Quentin Lauer, New York, 1965, pp. 140-142.
covery of correctness (and, at the same time, toward the lasting

acquisition of correctness) and toward the cancelling of in-
correctness (thereby ending their acceptance as acquired posses-
sions)." 44
Thus, it is unmistakably clear that for Husserl the fundamental
aim of phenomenology (the discipline of criticism) is the search
for and the discovery and faithful articulation of "lasting cogni-
tive possessions"-that is, knowledge as a corpus of eidetic
insights systematically connected with other eidetic insights,
which as "science" are necessarily shareable in common with
other critical philosophers and theorists. Since these eidetic in-
sights are also matters of evidence, hence of ideal norms, they
are necessarily open to continual criticism.
But there is another dimension to this thematic, one which is
not, perhaps, as patent as it needs to be in order for us fully to
appreciate the reach of Husserl's analysis and vision. In the
hope of advancing that, I offer the following concluding remarks,
trying thereby merely to draw out more focally what I think is
surely in conformity with Husserl's views.
Husserl's response to the dilemma mentioned earlier, which
has only been briefly sketched here, leaves unsaid several im-
portant points. I shall try to make these as clear as possible. A
restating of the dilemma will be helpful: how can one reconcile
Descartes' (or any other's) claim to having found apodictic
truths with his insistence on the possibility of deception or error?
Does not the former have the force of closing off all discussion?
And does not the possibility of error (which Husserl also ex-
plicitly emphasizes is "inherent" to every evidence whatever)
rule out the possibility of any legitimate claim to an insight or
judgment as apodictic or eidetic? Does not the possibility of error
in effect imply that one cannot "be certain" regarding the sphere
of the eidetic, and therefore in fact signify that every evidence,
and every judgment based on evidence, is necessarily only
44. FTL, p. 160.

probable? A different way of putting the issue is to ask: what is

the significance of disagreement (especially for phenomenology)
in philosophy? If one claims to have found apodictic evidence,
does this not imply that disagreement is essentially spurious-a
case either of misunderstanding, dishonesty, or blindness? Does
not disagreement require that no evidence (or judgment) can be
apodictic, but only probable-unless it refers, not to "essences"
or "world," but only to language or logical formations? And
thus does not Descartes' or HusserI's injunction to co-meditate
necessarily mean that they cannot go on to claim apodicticity
regarding anything? Does Husserl's response really meet these
issues? I think it does, but, as I stated, it leaves several matters
unsaid-and these are, I believe, decisive for showing that the
dilemma is utterly false.
To speak of an epistemic claim as if it were a single, simple
affair is, of course, not only misleading but seriously ambiguous.
Every claim is inherently complex, and this complexity itself has
several dimensions-only one of which is immediately germane
here. 45 If we consider any particular claim, just as a claim, it is
clear that it has a certain epistemic character, one aspect of which
is that it alleges something to be and to be thus-and-so; it refers
or otherwise points to affairs other than itself, and alleges (supposes)
that they are (Dass-sein) and that they are thus-and-so (So-sein).
Secondly, the claim qua supposed (vermeinter Sachverhalt) just as
clearly "supposes" what it supposes with some modaliry-positive
belief, apodicticity, likelihood, mere belief, probability, dubious-
ness, positive disbelief, and so forth). HusserI calls this the doxic
positionaliry.46 To suppose (claim) something to be the case is to
take a position toward it in one way (modality) or another-but
45. I have examined another dimension of this complexity elsewhere; see my

article, "The Phenomenology of Epistemic Claims: And Its Bearing on the Essence
of Philosophy," in Phenomenology and Social Reali!)!: Essays in Memory of Alfred Schutz, ed.
Maurice Natanson, The Hague 1970.
46. See Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans.
W. R. Boyce Gibson, New York, 1931, sees. 102-106.
in whichever way, the affairs are still supposed to be, and to be

thus-and-so (in some modality).
But this is not the end of the complexity. When Descartes (or
another) maintains or holds a judgment to be certain beyond
doubt, that "maintaining" is itself something to he reckoned with,
over and above the epistemic claims' character and its position-
ality. Further, that maintaining is ambiguous in an important
respect; and its clarification should advance the theme.
On the one hand, it could indicate Descartes' (or another's)
specific mode ojassurance regarding the claim's particular position-
ality, or his confidence in his method as one which will lead to
the affairs about which he makes his claim and the way they
are alleged to be. Thus it is obvious that Descartes does not think
that any better methods or reasonings about the mind, or God,
can be found than those he uses. Or, to use a contrary case, in the
Appendix to his Treatise, Hume begins to lose his assurance (this
epistemic mode undergoes a basic shift) in the results of his own
study-to the point that he despairs that everything seems
merely to come from ourselves, and laments that we apparently
have no choice but between a false reason or none at all. 47 But,
it should be noted that this mode of assurance regarding one's
own thinking and its results may itselfbe well or ill founded-i.e.,
that "maintaining" in this sense must itself be criticized. This
may well force an alteration in one's doxic position, or indeed
oblige one to wonder whether there really are such affairs as one
first claimed, or that they are as they were alleged. In any event,
the mode of assurance is manifestly distinct (albeit inseparable)
from the claim's character and positionality, but is nonetheless
an intrinsic component of the epistemic claim as such-not to
be confused with the other aspects, since one could well continue
to claim the same character and positionality, but alter his
assurance in his own insight.
On the other hand, the "maintaining" may indicate a quite
47. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, London,
1888,pp.266-268.
20 4 Richard M. Zaner
different matter, namely that, independently of the mode of

assurance, one's claim inherently demands the critical co-medi-
tation of others. "I maintain" ; that is, "I maintain that x is the
case and that, if you 'check me out,' you, too, will find it."
However assured one may be, whatever the claim's character
and positionality, it must be submitted to the "test" of the other's
criticism. Thus, Descartes' insistence that others "correct," or
"reject," or "confirm" his findings is no mere gesturing, but is
an inherent component of his activity as a philosopher, and is
essential to the claims issuing from that activity. This criticism, more-
over, requires that "again and again" which Husserl noted. The
stress here is on the "I" who maintains-the "I" who acknow-
ledges that he is conscious of his own infirmity, ignorance, and
liability to error. Precisely this circumstance necessitates the
continuous critical discussion by oneself and by others of one's
thinking as expressed.
As distinct from the epistemic character, positionality, ana
mode of assurance, this further aspect of epistemic claims might
be termed the solicitation for continuous reiterableness of insight and
hence of criticism of the claim in respect of each of its facets-and
this is a systemic component of every epistemic claim as such,
a point seen by Husserl but not altogether clearly. It is now
possible to see that the dilemma in question is indeed a spurious
one, one which arises only from either a psychologistic or an
absolutistic view of evidence.
Regardless of which specific affairs are in question, what they
are characterized as, which positionality is alleged, and with
whatever mode of assurance, every claim whatever is an inherent
solicitation for further inquiry-by oneself and by others.
Furthermore, each of these four aspects can vary (though it
would take a more detailed analysis to determine within what
limits) while the others remain the same-except for the final
"epistemic-solicitative" aspect, which itself indicates the focal place
it has in the discipline of criticism. That is, what has been called
co-meditative dialogue regarding the issues themselves ("die
Sachen selbst"), which was seen to be essential to philosophy, has

its ground in the specific activity and results of philosophy-namely,
"claims," of one type or another, to knowledge.
It is thus only because of this essentially necessary complexity (and we
have sketched but one dimension of it) of such claims that it at all
makes sense seriously to insist on the possibility of errror as regards one's
claims, whether probable, eidetic, or otherwise. Or, in Husserl's
terms, only this specific complexity shows that every evidence
whatever is subject to deception, hence continual criticism. The
"invitation" implicit in Descartes' act of sending out his Medita-
tions turns out to be, as we said earlier, an eidetic feature of
philosophy and of its claims. Hence, a philosophical expression,
in Ortega's phrase, is always a "going on saying and never having
finished saying" -never having finished saying, that is, not only are
there ever more horizons calling for further exploration, but as
well, with each such exploration the evidence is essentially
within horizons and contexts of other intentional processes, all
of which call for critical reflection.
But it must be clearly brought out that the results of this
continual criticism will vary, necessarily, depending on which
specific affairs are in question (and their correlative modes of
evidence) and which specific positionality is alleged. Thus, if
in talking about an empirical affair, one alleges that it is "thus-
and-so" with some degree of probability, a failure to verify by
no means signifies that the probability-modality must now be
rejected, or that its character is in error. Other things being
equal, it signifies only a possible decrease in the modality. On the
other hand, if one is able to show that an affair alleged to be
eidetically thus-and-so cannot possibly be such (since everything
eidetic concerns essential possibilities and impossibilities), the
force of this showing (if it is successful) is that it has been shown
that the affair never was that way-it was only mistakenly alleged
to be so; thus, too, would the mode of assurance necessarily
become modIfied. In empirical affairs (i.e., those with respect to
which the "until further notice" necessarily holds), finding a
case to the contrary of a claim by no means necessarily signifies

the falsification of the claim. But in eidetic matters, since what
is at stake are essential possibilities and impossibilities (never
actualities), all one need do to show grounds for rejecting the
eidetic claim is either demonstrate its inconceivability (impossi-
bility as alleged) or find a single case to the contrary. Since the
eidetic modality alleges that "aT[)l possible affair of the kind in
question must be thus-and-so," showing a single contrary case
is sufficient to reject the claim. I say "reject" and not "falsify"-
for if it is ever shown that a particular instance of a type does
not conform to the eidetically alleged supposal, the force of this
showing is that it never was true (hence cannot be falsified), but
was only mistakenly believed to be such. Hence, we may say,
the very notion of a "false" eidetic claim is an essential absurdity; but
that by no means suggests that the claim is either exempt from
continuous critical discussion or that deception or error is
impossible. The failure to keep these distinctions clearly in mind
is one of the prime reasons for the traditional confusion over the
epistemic status of claims to knowledge alleging apodicticity.
On the other hand, if one does confirm an empirical claim,
this confirmation may well, and usually does, prima facie, in-
crease the probability of the claim. But a similar confirmation
(or an indefinite series of such confirmations) of an eidetic claim
could not possibly "increase" (any more than it could "decrease")
its eideticity. It could not become "more apodictic"; that is non-
sensical. It either is or is not eidetic, one either correctly or
incorrectly believes it to be eidetic-that is up to continuous
criticism to determine, and even then this is a matter of "never
having finished saying." And since each philosopher is "infirm
and ignorant" and thus liable to error, and since no amount of
"verification" here can increase or decrease the positionality,
such criticism of eidetic claims and evidence is necessarily a
process ad infinitum.
Thus, again, there simply is no dilemma, no paradox, no
contradiction, no need for reconciliation. Indeed, precisely the
REFLECTIONS ON EVIDENCE AND CRITICISM 20 7
opposite is true: the very fact of there being eidetic evidences necessitates
the possibility of error and therefore of continual co-meditative criticism.
Finally, since this "never having finished saying" and criticizing
are fundamental characteristics of the method, as Husser! pointed
out, it is simply nonsense to think of the method of eidetic
variation as a kind of induction. Induction of necessity has
nothing to say to essential possibilities and impossibilities-and
this is itself an eidetic insight achieved through eidetic variation, one which
empirical induction could not possibly have achieved. The point to be
stressed here, as elsewhere, is that while induction concerns
actualities and these alone, eidetic variation concerns and works
with exemplifications; and in particular, any possible instance of a
generic type functions as evidence for judgments made about
the type itself. The stress, to repeat, must be on the "possible"
(and impossible); otherwise the entire sense is lost, not merely of
the domain of the eidetic, but of the inductive (the sphere of
actualities) as well-since we could not possibly know the sense,
limits, character of induction except by knowing its eidetic
character.
And with this we have returned to our beginning-the positive
requirement for philosophy is an autonomously established disci-
pline ("science") of criticism and radical self-criticism, and this
means that the ultimate criticism is transcendental self-criticism
(the basic meaning of "radical"). "The whole of phenomenology,"
Husser! concludes, "is nothing more than scientific self-examination
on the part of the transcendental subjectivity, an examination that at
first proceeds straightforwardly and therefore with a certain
naivete of its own, but later becomes critically intent on its own
logos .... " 48 Such a conception of criticism essentially includes
a criticism and theory of evidence, which, focusing "on its own
logos," necessarily yields a general theory of consciousness as
well as the prime approach to that theory.
48. FTL, p. 273.

Jitendra Nath Mohanty
TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF
SELF-EVIDENCE
A phenomenology of self-evidence has to begin with ascertaining

the primary locus of self-evidence, which seems to me to be none
other than consciousness. While phenomenologists have suffi-
ciently recognized the intentionality of consciousness, the self-
evidencing, self-illuminating character of consciousness has not
been brought to the forefront. I propose to dwell on this briefly,
before moving on to the question of truth and self-evidence.
It was recognized by Brentano that mental phenomena are
objects of inner perception. While this in a sense may be true,
the distinctive feature of the original mode of givenness of
consciousness to itself is not captured in that account. For one is
apt to look upon this inner perception as a special case of the
intentionality ofconsciousness-in so far as one act of consciousness
is made the intentional object of another act. While this is possible
-whether in the form of primary retention or of Wiedererinnerung
or of reflection-this possibility does not take into account the
basic mode of consciousness's givenness to itself, which cannot
be reduced to a function of its intentionality. An act of conscious-
ness is given to itself without being an object either of itself (which
is absurd) or of another act, simultaneous or successive. Sartre
comes closest, of all phenomenologists, to grasping this phenome-
non, which he characterizes as the transparence of prereflective
consciousness. The Indian philosophers called it the svayam-
TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF SELF-EVIDENCE
prakasatva of conciousness for which Madhusudana Saraswati, the

great exponent of Samkara's philosophy, found no more suitable
characterization than the negative one: that is self-illuminating
which is immediately given without itself being an object of
knowledge (avetfyatve sati aparoksavyavaharayogyatvam). This tran-
sparence or reflexivity of consciousness is presupposed by the
possibility of reflection (by "reflection" being meant an intention-
al act of a higher order). This is not to say that a self-consciousness
in the form of a consciousness of an ego (an I-consciousness)
accompanies all consciousness. What I want to assert is that
every conscious act is aware of itself as being such. Conscious-
ness in this sense may be said to be self-evidencing; it intimates
to itself its own presence, and it needs, for this purpose alone,
no other evidence than its bare existence.
Several points, bearing on the above thesis, need to be clarified
before we could proceed to make further use of it. In the first
place, although I have said that consciousness is transparent, I
do not hold the view that consciousness is fully transparent.
Similarly, although I agree with Sartre's thesis that an intentional
consciousness should be devoid of all contents and should be an
empty nothingness-I do not think it to be the case that our
actual human consciousness is so fully intentional, so fully directed
toward the other that it is, in itself, nothingness, a mere openness.
If consciousness were fully transparent and also fully intentional,
then it would have been the sort of nothingness which Sartre says
it is. However, it seems to me that human consciousness is not like
that. It is transparent but ambiguously so; it is intentional, but
also contains nonintentional, unformed stuff (here I regard
Husserl's doctrine ofhyletic matter to be an indispensable insight,
and Ricoeur's interpretation of it valuable).! Were it completely
transparent, self-deception (and not objective error, as Merleau-
Ponty seems to suppose 2) would have been impossible and there
1. Husserl, Edmund, Ideas I, sec. 85. Also Ricoeur, Paul, Freedom and Nature: The
Voluntary and the Involuntary trans. Erazin V. Kohak, Evanston, 1966, pt. III, chap. 2.
2. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith,
London, 1962,pp. 294-295,383.
210 Jitendra Nath Mohanty
would be no ignorance whatsoever about one's own current

mental state. 3 Were it completely intentional, the intentional
directedness would not have been mediated by the layer of irreal
noemata. I am thus led to the notion of consciousness as having
degrees of transparence but never being quite devoid of it.
Equally well, I look upon the completely intentional and con-
tentless consciousness as realized only in an instance of knowing
where the meaning-intention has been fulfilled, where the
intended object bodily confronts consciousness without the medi-
ation of meanings. However, this is an ideal to be achieved,
whereas in fact human consciousness seems unavoidably "con-
demned to meaning." 4
This self-evidence which inalienably belongs to consciousness
I shall call "self-evidence!," and I propose to distinguish it from
self-evidence understood as experience of truth which will be
called "self-evidence2." It seems to me that sometimes philoso-
phers have confused between these two senses of "self-evidence" ;
or, if they have not overlooked the distinction, they have at least
wrongly supposed that self-evidence! entails self-evidence2. It
has for example been argued that the theory which ascribes
self-evidence to consciousness cannot account for the possibility
of error-which is tantamount to arguing that a completely self-
evident consciousness will be eo ipso an awareness of truth. This
however need not be so. That self-evidence! does not entail
self-evidence2 may be seen from considering the fact that con-
3. On the stronger version of the self-intimating character of the mental, a mental
state p (belonging to A) is self-intimating for A if and only if: (1) p and (2) (p)
logically implies (A believes that p). It has been argued, e.g., by Margolis (The
Journal of Philosophy, LXVII, no. 21, Nov. 5, 1970) that there would always be some
nonequivalent true description d; of p such that A does not believe, at the time he
has p, in dl.
I concede this point, but only to suggest a weaker version which may be stated as
follows: p is self-intimating for A if and only if: (I) P and (2) there is at least one true
description d k ofp such that A believes, at the time he has p, in d k •
This weaker version of self-intimating nature of mental states does not make one's
mind fully transparent to oneself but also avoids the other extreme of a possible
total opacity.
4. Merleau-Ponty, op. cit., Preface.
TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF SELF-EVIDENCE 211
sciousness may be consciousness oftruth as well as of error, and that

in any case consciousness qua consciousness is self-evident. If A be a
perception by S of an object 0, S not only perceives 0 but is also
aware of perceiving it, i.e., has a nonthetic, prereflective a-
wareness of A. Such an awareness is not a guarantee that A is a
veridical perception. If A is a false perception or even a hallucina-
tion, S may have the same prereflective awareness of A but
surely not of it as false or as hallucinatory, just as when A is a
true, veridical perception, its being true or veridical is not given
to S in prereflective awareness. Truth and falsity concern the
noematic sense, and only indirectly the act of consciousness.
In what respect then is consciousness self-evidenh? In answering
this question, I shall distinguish between the existence and the
content of an act of consciousness-two distinguishable though not
separable aspects. It would then seem that self-evidencel is
nothing but consciousness's awareness of its own existence, and
that it does not extend to its contents. In other words, if a subject
S has an act of consciousness A directed toward an object 0
and having the noematic sense No, then:
as and when S has A, S is also aware that there is A.
This awareness (which is nonthetic and nonpositional) is also
awareness of A's distinctive act-quality (e.g., of its character
of being a perception or a memory), but not of its noematic
content. Of course A is directed toward 0, and if it is a cognitive
act it is a knowledge of 0 in some mode or other. Awareness of
o belongs to A by virtue of the latter's being an intentional act
(and not by virtue of A's self-evidencel), but S's awareness of A
as and when A occurs is owing to A's being self-evidentl. Thus,
that as and when S has A, S is also aware that there is A directed
toward 0 is due to: (1) A's being self-evidenh and (2) A's being
an intentional act directed toward O. To be noted is that, on
this thesis, 0 is not self-evident-a thesis which corroborates my
earlier contention that self-evidencel does not entail self-evidence2.
To sum up: by being aware that I have a belief, a thought,
or a knowledge, I am not aware of its truth. Consciousness's
immediate self-givenness or transparence, therefore, is not a guar-

antee of its being an awareness of the truth of its own noematic
content. On the contrary, as I have argued before, a conscious
act which is erroneous is also self-evident!. Self-evidence! belongs
to consciousness qua consciousness, and not qua consciousness
of truth.
I wish to add one more remark before moving on to a con-
sideration of the notion of truth and its self-evidence. Phenome-
nology has emphasized the essential temporality of conscious
life. While I consider the descriptions of the structure of tempo-
rality given by HusserI, Heidegger, and MerIeau-Ponty valuable
philosophical discoveries, I do not think that we could wholly
and entirely reduce consciousness to a temporal flux. Conscious-
ness exhibits also an atemporality and that in two respects: for
one thing, as pointed out by Aron Gurwitsch, the intentional act
which as an act is in the temporal flux shows an essential corre-
lation with an irreal, nontemporal noema, and consciousness is
just this correlation. Those who exclusively emphasize the
temporality of consciousness do so by unknowingly relapsing
to a unidimensional notion of consciousness which HusserI's
findings show to be incorrect. For another, while the intentional
act as an act is in the flux, the act as self-evidencing! (as main-
tained before, self-eviden.ce! is irreducible to intentionality)
exhibits a different structure. The function of self-evidence! is not
itself another act and is not situated in the flux, but characterizes
the entire flux as consciousness, though not as a flux. Were it itself
another act, whether of inner perception, introspection, retro-
spection, or reflection, then it would have been situated in the
same flux. But self-evidence! is not an act, not an intentionality,
but an altogether different dimension of consciousness by virtue
of which (as also by virtue of the irreality of the noematic layer)
consciousness, though a flux, is also raised above that flux. When
phenomenologists today seek to confine consciousness's self-
evidence! to the lebendige Gegenwart, to the instantaneous living
present, and to derive from this a sort of moderate skepticism
TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF SELF-EVIDENCE 21 3
which questions the possibility of adequate self-givenness of

consciousness to itself, they base their contentions as much on a
complete identification of consciousness with temporality as on
an analysis ofthis temporal flux into instantaneous moments. That
the former is inadequate has been contended in this paragraph;
that the latter is false is, I should think, well established by
modern structural descriptions of temporality given by HusserI
himself (in spite of the fact that he seems to be clinging to the
language of the "now"). Self-evidence! of consciousness, then, is,
within the limits of its scope, total and adequate. An act of
perception is nonthetically aware of itself as an act of perception,
an act of desire as an act of desire, and so on. Truth and falsity
concern not the existence and quality of the act but the act's
intention-in which case they concern the dimension of in-
tentionality and not the dimension of transparence.
II
The notion of "selfevidence2" is much more complex. Self-

evidence! is but consciousness's coincidence with itself, and this
coincidence belongs to a level which is prior to the distinction
between truth and error. The notion of "self-evidence2" defined
as intuitive experience of truth (Erlebnis der Wahrheit) however
involves the notion of truth-and so long as we do not identify
the locus and the nature of truth we shall not be able to decide
whether "self-evidence2" is an empty concept or not.
To say that some or all truths are self-evident is to say that
there are states of consciousness which possess self-evidence2. If
such a state of consciousness be C then:
if S possesses C, then C is an Erlebnis of truth.
Is such a state of consciousness possible? Is it also actual? What
are the conditions of its actuality?
There may be cases of S's knowing a truth as a truth which
are not however cases of Erlebnis of that truth; this is the case
where the knowledge of the truth is indirect, possibly inferential.
A state of consciousness possesses self-evidence2 if it is an Erlebnis

of a truth, and to say that it is an Erlebnis is to say that it is a
direct, immediate, intuitive knowledge of that truth as a truth.
Otherwise, I do not possess any Evidenz for it (in the Brentano-
HusserI sense of "Evidenz") though I may, in ordinary English
parlance, be said to have evidence for it; it is not self-evident to
me. When is such an Erlebnis possible?
In order to answer this question, let us briefly consider another
question: what is the locus of truth? What precisely is that of
which "truth" or "falsity" may be predicated? Taking any
cognitive act, we may distinguish between the act itself, its
linguistic expression, the noematic correlate, and the intended
object. Surely, the indended object cannot meaningfully be said
to be true. Is it the linguistic expression-the sentence used to
make the assertion or the denial or to express the belief-that is
true or false? We need not stop, for our present purpose, to
consider in detail the view that "true" and "false" are predicates
of sentences. Sentences, for me, are used to express intentional
acts, and there is a sense of "meaning" in which the meaning of
the sentence coincides with the noematic correlate of the act. It
seems reasonable to suppose that the truth or falsity of a sentence
is derived from that of the noematic correlate-the perceptual
noema or the proposition, as the case may be.
Furthermore, when we ascribe truth to the noema we do not
consider the latter merely in its internal logical structure but in
relation to the object intended. Thus, in the concept of truth
there is the idea of a certain relation between the noema and the
intended object. What this relation is, and how this relation
could be given in consciousness are questions we cannot avoid
considering in the present context. But one thing seems clear even
at this stage of our inquiry: as soon as we begin to reflect on the
possibility of apprehending truth as truth, we seem to be facing
a paradox. Living in the prereflective intentional act I am aware
of the intended object, I am not aware of the noema. Ordinary
reflection is directed toward the act as my act and as intending
the object it does happen to intend. It is a special kind of re-

flection, the phenomenological reflection which involves a certain
degree tifsuspension of the naturalistic attitude (not yet amounting
to a full-fledged epoche), which reveals the noema as the noema.
Thus awareness of the noema as the noema and awareness of
the object as object belong to two different attitudes. How then
is the apprehension of truth in the sense of a relational structure
involving the noema and the object possible?
It is in the solution of this problem, or rather in illuminating
this situation, that I find HusserI's discussions in the Sixth
Logical Investigation supremely valuable, especially the chapter
on "Zur Phiinomenologie der Erkenntnisstufen." Apprehension of truth
is not just apprehension of the object as it is, even if this appre-
hension be an intuitive experience. It is an experience of a
fulfilling synthesis of identification between the object as intended
(i.e., the noematic sense) and the object as it presents itself. The
notion of synthesis implies this relational structure of the appre-
hension which therefore is not mere nonrelational intuition.
Neither mere intentional reference with its empty sense, nor an
intuitive grasping of the object detached from the context of
thought and its intentions amounts by itself to apprehension of
truth. It is their identifYing synthesis which is the awareness of
truth as truth.
Saying that the apprehension of truth is a relational experience
referring back to the total context of one's intentional acts-we
are for the present limiting ourselves to the cognitive context
alone-has several important implications, one of which is that
the identifying synthesis is an asymptotic process and is not
achieved all at once. I do not mean to say that there is no ad-
equate or total givenness in any sense. However, the sense in which
adequacy or inadequacy is relevant for us now is one which makes
it relative to the intentional context. Let us assume that an object
o is totally or adequately given. The experience of truth requires
over and above this that this givenness should function as the
fulfillment of a prior meaning-intention, and this meaning-
intention may not be an isolated one but may belong to a whole

nexus of intentions, to a system. Now the givenness of 0, even if
it be in itself adequate, may not be adequate to the meaning-
intention whose fulfillment it has to function as or with which it
has to enter into an identifying synthesis. Thus it would seem
that apprehension of truth is not an apprehension of something
detached from context; it is not a self-complete and isolated ex-
perience, but by its very nature it is context-dependent, self-
transcending (depending upon how expansive the contextual
system was) and connected with the rest of one's cognitive
endeavor.
It might seem that what I am pleading for is a sort of coherence
theory of truth as advocated by the British neo-Hegelians and,
in this country more recently, by Brand Blanshard. It is necessary
therefore to state where my thesis differs from theirs. The co-
herence theorists either deny givenness altogether or, if they admit
any, reduce it to the bare minimum needed for serving as the
springboard for thought's movement, the amorphous "immediate
experience" which, as such, has no cognitive role to play. I
consider the category of the "given" indispensable if we are to
avoid skepticism, and central for a phenomenological philosophy.
The given, for me, is not an amorphous, indeterminate mass of
feeling with no inner determinateness, no contours not conferred
by thought. The given, with its horizontal in tention ali ties ex-
tending into the indeterminate frontiers, nevertheless has a de-
terminate core and a determinate style of anticipation. What I
am arguing for is that this given qua given does not constitute the
apprehension of truth, that the given must fulfill a certain role for
that purpose, and that this role depends upon the context of
prior intentional acts. I make truth system-dependent, but want
to place the given outside of the system. 5
It is time we get back to the conception of self-evidence2, with
which this section began. What are we to say about it in the light
5. For further elaboration of this concept of the given, see my Phenomenology and
Ontology. Phenomenologica no. 37, The Hague, 1970.
TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF SELF-EVIDENCE '217
of our foregoing discussion of the concept of "truth" and the

nature of apprehension of truth? Are we to say there is no such
self-evidence? Or, are we to single out any privileged group of
truths whose apprehension is self-evident2?
It is important to remember that self-evidence2 is not meant
to be a criterion of truth. A criterion is supposed to be a special
feature which when added to a judgment lets us know that the
judgment is true. Now both Brentano and HusserI have warned
us against identifying self-evidence2 (which is what chiefly
concerns them) with a special feeling of certainty, a strength of
conviction or an experience of necessity which attaches to all
true judgments. What then is the sense in which Brentano and
HusserI regard truth as Evidenz?
Brentano so defines "Evidenz" that to say that a judgment is
true is to mean that it is either evident in itself or that it is
reducible to an evident judgment. A person may of course judge
truly even if the judgment is not evident to him, but a true
judgment is one which would be made by one to whom truth is
evident. 6 In fact, he seems to make "p is evident to S" and "S
knows that p" equivalent, and of course "S knows that p" implies
p is true. 7 Further, Brentano, like HusserI, would not allowS that
two evident judgments can be mutually contradictory-so that
if p is evident to S and if another person T believes that ---p, then
his belief is mistaken. HusserI denies the possibility of conflict of
Evidenz with Evidenz; such a conflict, he says, is possible only if
"evidence" is interpreted as a feeling. But evidence understood
as insight cannot collide with evidence. 9 (For the present we
take "insight" as simple evidence, without bringing in the notion
of "apodictic evidence.")
If this is what HusserI and Brentano mean, then it is worth
asking what precisely is the nature of their thesis. They are in
6. Bretano, F., The True and the Evident, ed. Oskar Kraus, trans. R. M. Chisholm
et ai., New York, 1966, pp. 118, 122.
7. Ibid., p. 126.
8. Ibid., p. 55.
g. Husseri, Edmund, Logische Untersuchungen, II, sec. 2, p. 127.
fact defining the concept of "knowledge" in terms of "evidence,"

and for both a knowledge, as implying evidence, may have the
same noematic content as a blind judgment. The latter made
without evidence may still be regarded as true, but only insofar
as it is a possible component of an identifying synthesis with a
fulfilling experience. To say that knowledge is knowledge of truth
and further that it is characterized by evidence is only successively to
elaborate the very concept of knowledge, and not to add anything
to it. They are analytic truths, although the concept of knowledge
is the concept of an identifying synthesis. 1o In this sense, then,
all knowledge of truth is characterized by evidence-which is
not to say that truth is intuited in some peculiarly nonrelational
manner. The relational structure "closes up" into an identifying
synthesis: this synthesis is immediately given to consciousness
as an identifying synthesis. Truth is then a possible object of an
identifying consciousness of the form "It is this," and in this
sense possesses self-evidence2.
One has, however, to take into account two distinctions in
order to be able to place the analysis given above on a sound
basis: one, the distinction between "seeming evidence" and
"real evidence"; the other, that between truth as the noematic
correlate of our consciousness of truth and truth in itself. The
former contrast is what gives skepticism its foothold: if some
evidences are only seeming evidences, what guarantee could
there be that any given evidence is genuine? Now this argument,
Cartesian in form, is worthless. The concept of seeming cp, where
cp is a predicate, is possible only if there are valid applications of
cpo The possibility of error about evidence only proves that there
10. I do not wish to suggest that Bretano and Husserl are giving a verbal or
nominal definition of "Knowledge" in terms of "evidence" and "true". The defi-
nition is intended to be a real definition based on eidetic intuition of the essence of
knowledge as exemplified in the paradigmatic case of perceptual knowledge. It is the
choice of this instance as paradigmatic which maybe regarded as being arbitrary;
but again-as in all cases of eidetic intuition-the choice of the paradigm case and
the subsequent variation is itself determined by a prereflective, nascent, vague
acquaintance with the essence which eidetic variation and resulting intuition bring
to reflective clarity.
are real evidences, and that the evident is the true, though the
seemingly evident is not.
The other distinction, namely, that between truth as the
intentional correlate of an identifying synthesis and truth in
itself, is analogous to that between the perceptual noema and the
object that is perceived taken by itself. Although subjectively
oriented phenomenology is not concerned with the real object
existing out there, it nevertheless has to "translate" it into its
own language, it has to clarify its sense by showing its "constitu-
tion." So also is the case with the truth in itself, whose sense lies
in a possibility of reidentification. The notion of possibility, in
this context, reveals an anticipatory character, and we seem to
be back in another confrontation with the skeptical argument.
What guarantee is there that the future has not a different tale in
store-one not of successful identification but of frustrating
differentiation: "It is not really so?" Again, the skeptical
argument directed against the phenomenologist betrays a funda-
mental misunderstanding of what the phenomenologist is doing.
The phenomenologist is laying bare the "constitution" of "truth
in itself." i.e., of what it means for consciousness; in doing this,
he is not providing a guarantee that a truth which one may
happen to regard as being true in itself is really so. However, he
is explaining what it means for anything to be a truth in itself and
it turns out that the constitution of any notion of "in itself"
contains an endless possibility of reidentification. Any particular
judgment about something being a truth in itself may then be a
claim, and no more than a claim, but it contains a claim to
future possibilities of identification. This claim, given in conscious-
ness on the basis of a present identifying synthesis, makes a truth
self-evident; any other truth, not now evident-by its very sense
of being a truth-may be made self-evident2.
III
While all truths possess self-evidence in the sense explained above,

i.e., in the sense that their originary apprehension is an identifying

synthesis, some truths-constituting a subset of the total class of
truths-are regarded as possible objects of a special kind of
apprehension, i.e., of apodictic evidence. Let us call this last-
mentioned concept of self-evidence "self-evidence3." These truths
are called apodictic or eidetic truths and also a priori truths. The
word "apodictic" as qualifying a truth indicates that the truth
is a necessary truth; as qualifying the evidence, it indicates that
there is a special kind of evidence pertaining to these truths, a
special kind of insight which qua insight has its own distinguishing
feature. The words "essential" and "eidetic" indicate that the
said truths concern, or obtain amongst, essences or "eide." The
word "a priori" indicates the mode of our apprehension of these
truths, which is not an empirical apprehension, but has a sort of
intellectual intuition resulting either from an intuitive induction
from a single actual instance or from an application of the method
of eidetic variation based on free phantasy. In any case, both
the truths and their apprehensions are regarded as having some
special features of their own which serve to set them classes apart
from the other, i.e. nonapodictic, empirical, and factual truths and
their apprehensions respectively. It is this concept of "self-
evidence3" which now deserves our attention.
Now, the alleged special feature of self-evidence3 may attach
either (a) to the apprehension itself, (b) to the object or objective
structures apprehended, or (c) to the peculiar mode of origination
of the apprehension. Considering (a), what could be that which
belongs to the apprehension of an essential truth and thereby
confers on it its alleged apodicticity? As an apprehension of truth,
it shall of course be an identifying synthesis of intention and
fulfillment; but in order to be regarded as an apodictic evidence,
should it not besides possess a certain feeling, a feeling of com-
pulsion or of necessity, a feeling perhaps of one's inability to
imagine the contrary? Now both Brentano and HusserI have
rightly made it sufficiently clear (I) that there is no such feeling
of necessity and (2) that any other feeling, were it present, would
have nothing to do with apprehension of truth as truth. Con-

sidering (b), shall we then say that "self-evidences" is to be
defined as an intuitive apprehension, through identifying
synthesis, of a truth which is a necessary truth? In that case, the
difference between self-evidences and self-evidence2 would con-
sist not in any property of the apprehension qua apprehension
but in an important difference between the truths concerned.
The truths whose apprehensions are said to be characterized by
self-evidences are then necessary truths. Necessity then belongs
to the truths concerned, and not to the evidence they have for
conSCIOusness.
Now what is the meaning of this "necessity," and how is this
necessity itself apprehended? The essences are as much objects,
and transcendent objects at that, as particular empirical objects
and facts; they also should be apprehended in the same manner
as the latter, at least to the extent that such apprehension, when
intuitive, is an identifying synthesis. The fact that all that is
colored is extended is as much apprehended as a fact (an eidetic
fact though, as alleged) as the fact that I see a patch of blue now
before me. If the apprehension of the former is no more character-
ized by a feeling of necessity than the apprehension of the latter,
and if in the latter case we have no less a sense of unalterable
facticity than in the former-there seems to be no reason to
suppose that in the former we intuit a necessity which we do not
in the latter. They are no doubt facts of different types, of different
orders of generality, but do they have different modal properties?
I should think the mere isolated Wesensschau cannot yield
necessity, it can merely yield a fact, a structure of a different type
than an empirical structure. Necessity is a relational concept.
"Logical necessity" is relative to a logical system. Essential truths
may be said to be necessary only insofar as they are conditions of
the possibility of empirical facts being what they are. It is in
relation to experience therefore that they acquire their necessity.
In this sense their necessity is a sort of transcendental necessity.
Their contraries or contradictories are logically possible, their
denial does not involve logical self-contradiction. Yet they are

necessary in the sense that they are presupposed by empirical
truths for being what they are. This function of essential truths
is not intuitively apprehended along with those truths themselves,
it is recognized through reflection on their role and function in
relation to experience or empirical knowledge. It may be argued
that the fact that an essential truth plays this role in relation to
experience is itself a truth which should be evident, and that it is
this which one may say possesses self-evidences. But there is no
need for this, for this truth, discovered in reflection, needs only
be evident in the sense of "self-evidence2."
I do not wish for my present purpose to enter into the third
possible answer, (c), namely that the ascription of a distinctive
type of self-evidence to our apprehension of essential truths is
justified by the fact that such apprehension is a priori and not
empirical in origin. The point I wish to emphasize is, however,
this: whatever may be the nature of the method we pursue, the
resulting knowledge (or what is claimed to be knowledge) is of
a fact (or what is claimed to be a fact) and involves self-evidence2.
There is no reason to ascribe to such apprehension another kind
of self-evidence, an apodicticity, because of a likely difference
in the origin of that knowledge.
It seems to me therefore that there is no need for a third and a
stricter concept of self-evidence attaching only to the essential
truths and their apprehensions. Self-evidence2 would be all that
is needed by phenomenology. By rejecting the notion of self-
evidences, I do not wish to deny the distinction between empirical
truths and eidetic truth!l-though I have expressed my suspicion
of the use of the concepts of "contingency" and "necessity" in
this connection in the way they are generally used.
IV
It has been pointed out by HusserI himself and well argued by

others that the idea of adequate evidence needs to be given up.
Neither outer, physical things (as Husserl saw early enough) nor
inner states and essences (as he realized later on) are capable of
adequate givenness. I wish to devote this part of the paper to a
brief examination of this view and its alleged consequences.
Without entering into the history of this issue, let me begin by
distinguishing between three kinds ofinadequacy : (I) Perspectival
inadequacy, (2) Conceptual inadequacy, and (3) Temporal in-
adequacy.
The mode of givenness of physical things is characterized by
perspectival inadequacy. One may also ascribe the same sort of
inadequacy to the mode of givenness ofother persons. Perspectival
inadequacy in the case of physical things is not a consequence of
their spatiality. Nor is it a consequence of all sorts of transcend-
ence. I would rather consider it to be a consequence of that
particularity which things share in common with persons. I do
not think we should say that an essence is given from a certain
perspective, and yet it is undeniable that it may be given in-
adequately. What happens in this last case may be clarified thus:
If an essence W consists in several constituent moments IX, ~, y,
........ , one may apprehend anyone or more of them and not
the rest. This kind of inadequacy I call "conceptual inadequacy,"
fully aware of the inappropriateness of this designation. Of
course, one may mistakenly regard IX' as a constituent moment of
W, whereas not IX' but IX in fact belongs to W. But this would be
a case of error, not of inadequacy. Now from this kind of in-
adequacy several consequences seem to follow: for one thing,
insofar as W is apprehended as IX and, through it, further
apprehended as essentially connected with, say, another essence
K, the correlation W +-+ K is subject to a serious inadequacy
which subsequent progress of knowledge may reveal. It may be
found out that W has other constituent moments fL, for example,
which do not have that correlation with some other moment of
K. But again insofar as IX of W and ~ of K, being constituent
moments of essences, are themselves essences and so are essentially
correlated, the correlation IX+-+~ will remain unaffected, unless IX
and ~ and in fact all constituent moments of an essence are

themselves constituted of other essential moments. Now since I
am not sure of this, i.e., since I do not find reasons to believe that
every essence is a composite essence, I cannot agree that all
essences whatsoever can be given only inadequately. If P be a
simple, further unanalyzable essence and if Q be another such,
then there is no reason why the fact that there is an essential corre-
lation between P and Q cannot be, in principle, adequately
grasped. Of course, one who apprehends such an essential corre-
lation may not be aware of all its further implications, but that
is an inadequacy which need not be taken as affecting the appre-
hension of the P~Q correlation. To what extent, and in what
sense, this essential correlation is necessary or apodictic would
further depend on the system in whose light it is evaluated.
Further, one's apprehension of this eidetic fact as a truth would
depend upon the intentional context in which apprehension of
this eidetic fact serves the function of being a fulfilling experience.
While the apprehension of individuals-things and persons-is
necessarily subject to perspectival inadequacy, and that of es-
sences may be subject to what I have called conceptual in-
adequacy, there is another kind of inadequacy which seems to be
true of the givenness of all entities whatsoever--outer things,
persons, inner states, and essences. We may call this "temporal
inadequacy." Since all givenness is in the living present, there is
always an element of presumption and anticipation in the claim
of a transcendent entity to be given and there is always the possi-
bility of conflict with future evidence, so that a finality regarding
evidence can never, in principle, be arrived at. While the point
thus stated belongs to the horizontal level of thinking, one may
take recourse to genetic or depth reflection and make the point
that all entities whatsoever have a genetic or historical con-
stitution and that this constitution refers as much to the achieve-
ments of the past as to the possibilities in the future. Now if all
entities have such a constitution, an entity may only then be said
to be adequately given when its total constitution is laid bare
and made evident; but such constitution would reveal essentially

unfulfilled and unverifiable presumptions, so that the givenness
by its very nature can never be adequate, the constitution can
never be laid bare in its completion.
The first point owes its weakness to the fact that it takes into
consideration only the temporality ofthe act in which an object is
given but not the possible nontemporality ofthe object. An essence
by its nature is nontemporal. The fact that any apprehension of
any object must be a "now," and so commits us to nothing save
presumption as to the future course of experience, is an im-
portant point, but it loses its relevance in the case of objects which,
ex hypothesis, are not in time, whose nature does not change with
time, and so in whose case the alleged presumption really attains
to complete certainty (only if we leave aside the possibility of the
present evidence being deceptive even now). The second point,
with its appeal to genetic constitution, seeks to compensate for
this drawback by denying that any object whatsoever is non-
temporal, for all constitution is at bottom genetic and historical.
A proper assessment of this point requires a correct understanding
of the relationship between act-phenomenology and constitution
analysis, and also a proper delineation of the scope and intent of
the notion of genetic constitution. These are matters which I
cannot discuss within the limits of this paper. Three provisional
remarks may however be in order:
Constitution analysis cannot be construed as sublating act-
phenomenology. Constitution analysis follows the guidance of
the given and the constituted. l l The Selbstgebung of the object in
an act-whatever may be the appropriate mode of givenness
(sensory, eidetic or categorial, adequate or inadequate)-is not
denied, but an explication of its sense is sought.
My second remark is this: the contention that an objectivity
can be brought to total givenness only when its constitution in
consciousness is fully laid bare wrongly assumes that total given-
II. Ricoeur, Paul, Hussed: An Anarysis of His Phenomenology, trans. E. G. Ballard
and L. E. Embree, Evanston, Ill., 1967, pp. 98-99.
Jitendra N ath M ohanty
ness requires immanence of the object in consciousness. This

assumption is wrong. Neither givenness in general, nor adequate
givenness requires that the objectivity under consideration be
immanent in consciousness. Neither does transcendence as such
entail inadequacy; it is thinghood or particularity that entails it.
Finally, I have great doubts whether the idea of genetic con-
stitution is applicable to all kinds of objectivities and, if it is
applicable, then in what precise sense or senses. If genetic con-
stitution means historical and temporal constitution, then only
cultural objectivities would seem to have such constitution. But
many allegedly genetic constitution analyses are not historical
and temporal in the strict sense, e.g., HusserI's account in Eifah-
rung und Urteil of the "origin" of higher logical objectivities from
elementary forms of experience. In this case, digging into the
constitution does not take us back into the past in any sense: what
is achieved is an explication of the sense of such an objectivity.
No account of origination, excepting where such an origination
is in the strict sense temporal and historical, is incompatible with
adequate givenness; if the possibility of adequate givenness is
ruled out, that must be due to other reasons.
In fact, there cannot be phenomenology ifthere is no possibility
in principle of establishing essential truths. That all outer per-
ception is perspectival is a good example of such an essential
truth. It is evidently so. HusserI rightly recognizes that the
anticipated possibilities of future experience with regard to an
objectivity are contained a priori "in den jeweiligen Wesensarten
von Erjahrungen und Erjahrungsgegenstiinden," 12 and are to be made
evident through intentional Auslegung.
I have distinguished between three concepts of self-evidence:
the first pertains to consciousness either of truth or of falsity; the
second pertains to truths and their Erlebnisse, understood as
identifying syntheses of sense with presence; and the third is
alleged to be apodictic evidence of essences and essential truths.
12. Husserl, Edmund, Formale und transzendentale Logik, Halle, 1929, p. 106.
Of these three, I have accepted the first two and rejected the
third.
However, I have tried to show that though our apprehensions
of essences and essential truths do suffer from inadequacy, there
is no reason why, in principle, the simple, incomposite essences
cannot be adequately given.
I have also argued that the thesis of the temporality of con-
sciousness ought to be balanced by an appreciation of its non-
temporal dimensions; and consequently that the true function of
genetic constitution should both be correctly appreciated and
delimited so that a ubiquitous historicity does not threaten to
swallow up other modes of constitution and all possibilities of
givenness of anything at all.
v
I. In attempting to discard the notion of apodictic evidence, I
am afraid I may be running counter to the main line of phenome-
nological thinking. However, I have tried to retain what seem to
me to be essential methodological concepts of phenomenological
philosophy-the notions of essence and essential intuition-but
at the same time to get rid of the notion of a nonrelational
apodicticity. As should have been obvious, my suspicion of this
latter notion arises out of a deeply felt uneasiness in determining
its nature and criterion. I have sought to give expression, however
meagerly, to my preference for admitting the concept of necessity
as a relational concept in the sense that the necessity of a truth T 1
involves reference to another truth T 2. An eidetic fact F is not per se
necessary but any individual fact belonging to the range of that
eidetic fact may be said to be necessary insofar as it has to conform
to the eidetic structure which it happens to exemplify.
I may point out here-although I have not intended this paper
to be an exegesis of Husserl-that the distinction between eidetic
fact and eidetic necessity is not foreign to Husserl's thought. On
the contrary, Ideas I, Section 3 distinguishes between eidetic fact,
Jitendra Nath Mohanty
eidetic truth, and eidetic necessity. An eidetic truth is a true

proposition about an eidos or an eidetic structure. Eidetic or
essential necessity is defined (in Ideas I, Section 6) as an eidetic
division or individuation of an eidetically general fact, regarded
as such. If P and Q be two eidl, then the essential correlation
A( =P~Q) is an eidetic fact. Let PI and ql be individual in-
stances ofP and Qrespectively. Then the correlation IX( =PI~ql)
is an eidetic necessity. But HusserI does warn us that essential
generality itself is not necessity. IX is a necessary consequence of A.
The application of an eidetic generality to given individuals is
said to be necessary and the consciousness of such necessity is said
to be apodictic. 13 These distinctions between generality, necessity,
and apodicticity may be carried over to the empirical domain
as well: ifB be an empirical generality S~T, where Sand Tare
empirical types, and ~ an individuation ofB, then ~ is necessary,
and the judgment that ~ is a specification of B is apodictic.
Thus, according to HusserI's explicitly recommended termi-
nology, the eidetic structure A is not per se necessary, but the
individual specification IX is necessary insofar as it is such a
specification. This accords well with the thesis, defended in this
paper, that the apprehension of an eidetic truth as such need
not be characterized as apodictic evidence. As evidence, it is not
different from the evidence of empirical facts. The difference
which phenomenology has to recognize concerns the mode of
givenness. Difference in mode of givenness does not amount to
difference in the nature of evidence. All truths, empirical and
eidetic, have the same evidence, namely, self-evidence2. With
variation in the type of objectivity (material things, organisms,
persons, aesthetic objects, abstract entities, essences) the mode of
givenness varies, but a truth qua truth is apprehended precisely
in the same manner, i.e., through an identifying synthesis of
intention and fulfillment in the mode "This is it."
2. It has been sufficiently emphasized that the notion of
13. Ideas I, sec. 16.

Evidenz (in my scheme, "self-evidence2") is not to be understood

as a criterion of truth. The theory of self-evidence 2 of truths there-
fore does not rule out the possibility or necessity of some criterion
of truth. However, if a proposition p satisfies any acceptable
criterion of truth and is therefore judged to be true, this judgment
would remain "blind" so long as p is not self-evident2-in other
words, so long as the intention of judging that p is not fulfilled
in an intuitive apprehension however inadequate. Furthermore,
to say that truths are self-evident2 in this sense is only to say that
only through an intuitive grasp is a truth directly apprehended
as a truth, but this is not to say that all truths are infact so appre-
hended. For it is quite conceivable that there are truths which
are not self-evident2, i.e., which either are not judged as true or,
even if so judged, are judged only blindly and not with evidence.
These are cases of privation. Ideally, however, the concept of
truth relates to the concept of a possible self-evidence2.
3. To talk of self-evidence and of intuitive apprehension is
bound in the present philosophical climate to invite the censure
of relying too heavily upon what may be called a perceptual
model. It has recently been suggested 14 that the model of visual
perception which dominates HusserI's thinking be discarded in
favor of a model of scientific inquiry with its methods of building
hypotheses and confirming or disconfirming them. It is good to
remember that both are models. If I am to choose among them,
the model which can best embody the intention of a phenome-
nological philosophy is, in my view, the perceptual model. It is
more primitive. Use of this model is harmless once we are aware
of the risk we may be running by using it. It seems instructive to
me that the perceptual model is so deeply entrenched in our
ways of talking about truth. I hate to regard it as one of the ways
in which language misleads us. I would rather learn from it
something fundamental about what the concept of truth basically
means for human consciousness.
14. Levin, D. M., Reason and Evidence in Bussert's Phenomenology, Evanston, 111.,1970.
Jon Wheatley
PHENOMENOLOGY: ENGLISH AND

CONTINENTAL
I. Introduction
In this paper I shall be discussing two forms of phenomenology,

Continental and English. This is a very dangerous task because
neither of these is a well-defined school with a known position,
but each is a group of very different philosophers who have, by
all means, discernibly similar philosophical methods but who
also exhibit great differences. But I will not be intimidated by
the fact that, in such an area, almost every generalization could
be challenged: it is an important topic and worth tackling. I
use HusserI as my touchstone for Continental phenomenology
and Austin as my touchstone for linguistic phenomenology. But
I refuse to be tied to either of these philosophers and will discuss
other positions held within the two camps without inhibitions.
I should also add that the paper is very condensed and quite
deliberately so: prolixity is not a sign of profundity.
It is fair to say, I think, that both forms of phenomenology
arose in part through an unease over foundations. For years,
indeed for millennia, philosophers had been spinning their webs,
but just how they managed to do it, and therefore just what they
got when they did it, remained something of a mystery. For at
the bottom there was still the paradox which led Socrates, at
least in the Meno, to the doctrine that knowledge is recollection.
Socrates' statement of the paradox, you may remember, goes
PHENOMENOLOGY: ENGLISH AND CONTINENTAL
something like this: He who knows knows, and can be content

with knowing; and he who doesn't know can never find out,
having no place to start. He appears to leave out the people who
know something and on that basis learn more, but that does not
concern us for the present: the real problem is over the man who
knows nothing and, having nothing to build on, can never learn
anything. The fear is that we can see that man by looking in any
mirror.
It has been widely assumed in this century that there are two
questions here, one concerned with how scientific knowledge is
possible and the other concerned with how philosophical or
conceptual knowledge is possible. Up until a short time ago,
I thought that these questions were separable and that they
had separate answers, the first answer (after Goodman) involving
descriptions of adequate scientific procedures and the like, and
the second using such phrases as "seeing how concepts fit to-
gether," "describing the structure underlying our thought," and
so on. I now think that there are not really two questions here
at all and that both the answers I have given are wrong, or
anyway regrettably partial, for reasons which will come out as
we proceed.
Very crudely put, the way in which both varieties of phenome-
nology can be seen as concerned with foundations is this:
Linguistic phenomenology can be seen as answering the question
"How is (at least some) conceptual knowledge possible?" by
saying "By looking at language, by (in Austin's phrase) drawing
the coverts of the microglot." Phenomenology proper asks a
slightly different question. It asks something like "How is
important knowledge, as opposed to the sort of connections and
regularities thrown up by science, possible?" Or, to use a techni-
cal term I confess I rather suspect, "How is knowledge of essences
possible?" The answer offered is something like this: "By being
very attentively aware of the details of experience or of con-
sciousness.' ,
Although the two questions that the two varieties of phenome-
Jon Wheatley
nology try to answer are clearly different, their similarities are

more important than their differences. Viewing both schools of
thought as historical phenomena, both questions are clearly
variants on what, if vague, is doubtless one of the most funda-
mental philosophical questions; that is, variants on the question
"How is significant philosophical knowledge possible?"
2. How is significant knowledge possible?

If we agree, as we must, that the generic question here is central
to philosophy, we must make some attempt at assessing the
answers offered. My position here is as follows: that both answers
are regrettably partial but that the answer given by phenomeno-
logy proper is at least less deceptive than that given by linguistic
phenomenology .
Before arguing this position I want, first, to develop the Socratic
view that knowledge is recollection for it, of course, is the
granddaddy to the views of English phenomenologists. Socrates,
you may remember, managed to get a slave boy to produce the
right answer to a mathematical question by asking him very
leading questions about a figure drawn in the dust. Socrates'
conclusion was that, as the boy had never been told the answer
which he gave in the end, he must have recollected it from some
previous existence. The conclusion, in that form, is clearly
erroneous. The correct conclusion is that the answer was implicit
in the facts the boy did have. Plato's proof, clued up a bit, leads
validly to the antiempiricist thesis that some knowledge at least
arises not from experience but from taking thought.
You may consider my comparison between Plato's doctrine
that knowledge is recollection and linguistic phenomenology
rather far fetched, but it is not. Consider indeed Wittgenstein's
talk of assembling reminders for a particular purpose, and Wisdom
on how one can, reading other philosophers, learn to see what
had always been there but which we nevertheless missed. Austin
is the odd man out here, though I don't think he would actually
have disagreed with these views, for he speaks primarily of
looking and seeing around the facts of language.
PHENOMENOLOGY: ENGLISH AND CONTINENTAL 233
Before moving on, there is a further point worth noticing about
English phenomenology. Allied to, but not a consequence of, the
point that man can get to know by taking thought is the thesis
that important knowledge, or philosophical knowledge, is not,
or is not fully, statable. This position, what I call the Ineffability
Thesis, is firmly stated, if not I think consistently adhered to,
in Wittgenstein's work, though it is not explicit in Austin's.
The Ineffability Thesis is one link between at least some
English and some Continental phenomenologists, for a form of
that thesis is built into phenomenology proper. Consider: We
are after the suchness, the essence of consciousness, of types of
experience, or of an individual, or whatever. A great deal of
discernment is required, and attention, and discipline: phenomena
and experience do not yield their secrets easily. But let us
assume the process has been successful: over a perhaps limited
range the veil of illusion has been pulled aside and the essence
has been grasped. Now, ideally, comes the statement. But a
logical difficulty arises immediately. All descriptive words (i.e.,
all words except particles, interjections, pronouns, and so on),
saving that chimera the "logically proper name," are designed
to apply correctly to many different things, and indeed their
meanings can only be learned when it is grasped that they do
apply to many different things. Thus, if some description indi-
viduates-which it might well not-that is an empirical matter.
We can put this slightly differently. There is what might be called
an Uncertainty Principle for description just as there is for
measurement in particle physics. It goes something like this:
the more precise a descriptive word or a descriptive phrase is,
the less likely it is to apply in any given case: and when it becomes
totally precise, in that it catches the essence of what it applies to,
then its meaning cannot be given or, to put it another way, it
becomes a proper name and loses all descriptive meaning. Thus
the process of exactly catching with a description is as ill-fated as
exactly measuring both the position and the velocity of a moving
darticle; and in both cases for the same sort of reason: not only
Jon Wheatley
are our tools for the job inadequate, but it is in the very nature
of any possible tools for the job that they shall fail us.
There appears to be one sort of exception to the thesis that
descriptions can never catch essences, namely, when a definition
can be given. 1 But for a phenomenologist a definition must be
sterile: the words in the definition must at some remove be
indefinable or only circularly definable and thus the original
problem remains. Though a phenomenologist may grasp the
essence of some element in experience he cannot state, prosaically
in simple descriptive sentences, what that essence is: and if he
does try to state it, his statement loses the essence. So the In-
effability Thesis is built into this sort of philosophical position.
3. The Ineffability Thesis

The Ineffability Thesis is worth looking into in its own right. It
is, of course, an old and ubiquitous position to be found in a
great many religions, most famously today in Zen, I suppose,
with the doctrine of "No Mind" (this doctrine is also, of course,
a warning against intellectualizing). We might add that jt is
also held in an extreme form by a remarkably large number of the
young today. But old and widely held though it may be, there
are clear logical limitations on it. If the thesis is read "No
important philosophical truths are statable" (we will call that
the General Thesis of Ineffability), then the thesis is either a
contrary case to itself-and thus false-or, alternatively, it must
itself be pronounced unimportant. To take the second way out is
a finagle, and I'm not going to bother with that. So the thesis in
its full generality must be false. The only thesis which could be
true is something like this: Many important philosophical truths
are unstatable. This thesis seems to me to be both important and
true. It is therefore crucial to see that it is not vacuous; and that
holding to it does not constitute throwing in the towel on all
thesis stating in philosophy.
I. It's not really an exception because definition is not description, but let it pass.
I shall call the thesis that many important philosophical
truths are unstatable the Special Thesis of Ineffability. In my
own terms, then, my position is that the General Thesis of
Ineffability is false but the Special Thesis is true. It must be
realized that many, if not all, English phenomenologists, im-
plicitly or explicitly, hold to the Special Thesis of Ineffability.
This, as I already pointed out, is very much the case with Witt-
gensteinians: the whole therapeutic view of philosophy by which,
once certain examples have been thoroughly given and arrayed
in certain ways, there is no longer any temptation to ask or to
say certain things, is a view precisely designed to accommodate
Special Ineffability. Nor is this point confined to what one might
call the Wisdomesque branch of the Wittgensteinian tree. I
myself can only explain, for instance, the perpetual analogies of
Ryle on the same model. To take the most obvious example, in
the Concept of Mind, Ryle explains the whole notion of a category
mistake by a series of examples, never by saying what it is. As his
thesis in the book is that philosophers of mind have made a (or
many related) category mistake(s), it would seem that if Ryle
is right in this thesis, there is probably an unstatable philoso-
phical thesis here. Of course there are Godellian problems of
finding out which exactly are the unstatable truths: there seems
to be no proof possible that such and such particular, but not
fully stated, philosophical truth is unstatable. But I do not think
this should delay us now.
It is worth noticing that there is one provision which could
make the Special Thesis of Ineffability look false. Trivially,
every philosophical truth can be made "statable," that is, put
in some form of words, by making up a new vocabulary in which
to "state" it. Historically this has been done by inventing a new
technical term which is not fully explained or by using an old
word in a new way. The crucial point here, of course, is that the
special term, or set of terms, is not fully explainable, or not fully
definable, or whatever. In the preceding example, Ryle never
explains exactly what is meant by the notion of a category mistake
Jon Wheatley
and therefore fails, in an exact sense of the verb to state, to state

his major thesis, though he has a form of words for it. Equally,
when Wittgenstein makes such remarks as that to imagine a
language is to imagine a form of life, we must realize that he
inexplicitness involved in the notion of a "form oflife" is proba-
bly necessary. I think it extremely probable that a great many
philosophers of the past were doing exactly the same thing when
they used words in odd ways. That is, it is not the case, I suspect,
as people as different as Lazerowitz and Malcolm have urged on
us, that philosophers of the past (or metaphysicians of the past)
were recommending to us new ways of talking (whether they
realized it or not). What they were trying to do, whether they
realized it or not (but a good many of them did realize it, I
think), was to state the unstatable, or anyway they were trying
to state what could not be stated at that point in the historical
development of language. We must get away from the point of
high positivism, which is also high scholasticism, that what isn't
statable isn't true or isn't interesting or doesn't exist. The Un-
certainty Principle governs descriptive statement at its most
fundamental level, just as it covers physical measurement at its
most fundamental level. But this is a fact to be taken into account,
not a tragedy to be bemoaned.
4. The ways around Ineffability

We have still to face the question of whether the truth of Special
Ineffability does not make the philosophical endeavor pointless,
except perhaps as a road to personal revelation of some sort.
Let me first make a general statement. If we take the standard
philosophical maneuvers-proof, explanation, argument,defini-
tion, justification, description, and so on-they all have natural
end points. Argument must come to an end somewhere, for
arguments have premises and though these premises may be
defensible on the basis offurther argument, these arguments must
have premises, and so on: the process must come to an end
somewhere. Similarly, definition is in terms of words, and defi-
nitions of these words will be in terms of words, and so on. And
descriptions, as we have seen, suffer from an Uncertainty
Principle. This, then, is true quite generally: proof, explanation,
argument, definition, justification, description, and so on all
have logical limits. But that does not leave us with nothing. The
limits on argument and justification are overcome (or, if you
like, circumvented) by giving, and correctly marshalling, reasons;
and the limits on definition, explanation, and description are
overcome or circumvented by giving examples or, as I would
prefer to put it, by rubbing our own and other people's noses in
the facts-by confronting the facts. The second of these points
is the kernel thought behind both forms of phenomenology and
is the answer implicit in these schools of thought to their problems
in the foundations of philosophy. I shall explain this to some
degree.
The concern over foundations expresses itself in this way:
"Where do we start?" And, of course, phenomenology proper
is right when it answers, "With immediate experience." But
though linguistic phenomepologists do not answer the question
by saying "With immediate experience," they could not, and do
not, contradict that statement. What here distinguishes linguistic
phenomenologists from Continental phenomenologists is that
the former are eager, perhaps overeager, to add, "But not all
pieces of immediate experience are equally good, or any good."
They go on to say that what distinguishes appropriate immediate
experience from inappropriate immediate experience is given
by the conceptual structure. To take an obvious example, we
can show that dreams are not a reliable guide to the future by
seeing, for instance, that we give no reason for saying it will rain
next week if we say that we dreamed that it will. But an odd
switch has taken place here-from not all pieces of immediate
experience being equally good or any good to ruling out all
immediate experience which will not do, in some way, for science,
broadly conceived. As a consequence we find within English
philosophizing the lack of interest in, for instance, drug ex-
Jon Wheatley
perience and the general desire to find the dividing line between
hallucinatory (or any nonveridical) experience and science
oriented experience. The Continental phenomenologist sees no
such limitation and, one might add, once it is out in the open,
there seems no doubt that he is right. Thus the Continental
phenomenologist feels free to make such points as that it is only
when the hammer breaks, and only presumably when one
divorces one's wife, that one is in a position to have those ex-
periences which correctly revealed the nature of hammers or
one's wife.
What is important here is that there is no conflict between
these views, either in substance or in methodology. In both cases
a point is made by a telling example, though to properly make
good the theses I have cited, a good many more examples, more
carefully elaborated, would probably be needed. In both cases
doubt, if there is doubt, can only be resolved by hacking over the
examples, the ones already given and other appropriate ones. 2
In both cases, the end point must be revelation or understanding,
and one who persists in "not seeing" must ultimately be ignored,
punished, or (less likely) pronounced a genius. Of course, the end
points also differ: in one case, if our work has been well done, we
get the beginnings of a rational or scientific epistemology, which
itself begins to get at the structure of one aspect of reality; in the
other case we get a start on insight into the nature of human ex-
perience and ultimately into the nature of another aspect of
reality. Neither of these should be denigrated: both are clearly
independently valuable.
5. A rational or scientific epistemology

A rational or scientific epistemology must be something like this:
There must be, and indeed are, certain sorts of reports on
2. I don't want to denigrate argument as a philosophical tool, of course. But in
the main, arguments are useful in proving theses false: most philosophical arguments
are of the reductio ad absurdum type. Admittedly an argument to show that p is false
shows, positively if you like, that not-p is true. But not-p here tends to be notably
unspecific.
immediate experience which are prima facie reliable. These
"reports on immediate experience" are not sense-data state-
ments, however they might be cut off from the language of
objects, but entirely conventional reports-that I now see a table
in front of me or that I remember talking to Smith last night.
Which reports on immediate experience are prima facie reliable
is given by the conceptual structure: they are, in the most
obvious instance, such things as eyewitness reports and memory
reports (these two are usually combined, of course). There are
also ways built into the conceptual structure for deciding how
to choose between conflicting prima facie reliable reports. These
do not bring certainty, of course, but they give us a start, which is
what we originally set out to get. The second ingredient in a
rational or scientific epistemology must be some sort of evidence
or reason for relation: this gives the mechanism by which we can
go from reports on immediate experience to other statements and
ultimately to scientific theories. The details in this outline are
problematic. It seems, contra most logicians and philosophers
of science, that the starting point cannot be statements, still less
sentences, but must be speech acts; and the nature of the reason
for relationship (which must be, I think, a relationship similar
to but weaker than entailment and which I have tried to get at
with less than perfect success in a couple of papers 3) is much
more complex than we supposed even five years ago. But though
the details are problematic the outline is clear and, I would
have thought, right.
Another point is worth noticing before going on. I have made
liberal use of the notion of the conceptual structure in what I
have said so far. The conceptual structure is, of course, given by
language, which is the reason for the search within language so
characteristic of English phenomenology. But there is nothing
sacrosanct about the conceptual structure, at least not the peri-
pheral bits of it. It was a discovery, at some time, that dreams
3. "Logical Connection," American Philosophical Quarterly, January 1967; "En-
trenchment and Engagement", Analysis,June 1967.
Jon Whestley
and auguries are not reliable guides to the future; similarly, the
greatest scientific discoveries, for instance those of a Freud or an
Einstein, almost always incorporate a change in conceptual
structure. But granting that there is nothing sacrosanct anyway
about some bits of the conceptual structure, the concern with it,
and the resultant desire for a phenomenology of language, is
fully understandable. This is an area where English phenome-
nology makes absolute sense.
This outline of a scientific epistemology brings out at least one
of the contrasts between English and Continental phenome-
nology. For while English phenomenology is concerned with
immediate experience primarily to see which reports on it can
be the beginning for scientific knowledge, phenomenology proper
is often concerned with the universals of human experience-a
matter which, up till now, science has had little to do with and,
in its present terms, probably could not treat of. Because of these
different areas of interest one gets concern for different data, for
different chunks of immediate experience. Again it must be
noticed that there is no conflict here between phenomenologies.
6. The phenomenological foundations

I have done something to outline the sort of epistemological
concerns which dominate much of English phenomenology, their
origins and their limitations. I should now perform the same
task for phenomenology proper. However, I am not sure that
this is necessary. There are two reasons for this. First, it seems
to me that the English phenomenologist, especially in the pattern
of Austin, is far shakier about the foundations of his discipline
than is the Continental phenomenologist. Secondly, the Conti-
nental phenomenologist has a built-in solution to at least some
of his problems of foundations. To put it another way, if we are
concerned over the foundations of the discipline which consist
in seeking for the universals in human experience, then our
problems are whether there are such universals and, if there are,
whether they can be adequately located. The existence of, in
PHENOMENOLOGY: ENGLISH AND CONTINENTAL
particular, works of literature which can cross cultures is evi-

dence that there are such universals, but it is hardly conclusive.
The only real way to solve the problems of foundations here is to
produce some universals of human experience. Thus the success-
ful practice of this phenomenological activity automatically
provides the foundations for the discipline.
But I am under some obligation to justify my earlier remark
that it was a partial answer to the question, "How is significant
philosophical knowledge possible?" by saying "By being very
attentively aware of the details of experience or consciousness."
It is not just a matter of being aware of but also of talking about
human experience. This, of course, is bedeviled by the U n-
certainty Principle on description. Logically, no description
individuates; but artistically, especially when we are concerned
with the universals of human experience or consciousness,
perhaps some statements (if not prosaic descriptions) can.
Furthermore, as I already remarked, examples-or rubbing
everyone's noses in the facts-can work where descriptions fail.
Examples, offered most obviously within literature, can bring
some state of consciousness home to a reader in a way which no
description can, either in fact or because of the logical limits of
language. Again we see the artistic element at work in phenome-
nology proper.
What is oversimple about any statement of the type, "To gain
significant philosophical knowledge one must be aware of or
describe aspects of our experience or consciousness," is this: that
to deal in this form of significant knowledge one must be an
artist as well as a philosopher. Perhaps I do wrong to distinguish
them, especially with phenomenologists in my audience. But
whether or not it is proper to distinguish between the philosopher
and the artist, the phenomenologist, like the artist, must be more
experienced, more sensitive, more discerning, more articulate,
more perceptive than the ruck of mankind; and it oversimplifies
to ignore that aspect of the discipline. Indeed, the reason I shall
probably remain a prosaic linguistic phenomenologist is that I
Jon Wheatl~
doubt that I really am more sensitive, more discerning, and more

perceptive than my fellows. Perhaps, however, I shall be told
that I am quite wrong to be in doubt here: that I have, in the
course of this paper, shown that I lack these qualities beyond a
shadow of doubt.
Lester E. Embree
REFLECTION ON THE EGO
Confining myself to the Ideas, Formal and Transcendental Logic, and

the Cartesian Meditations, I shall attempt-in the brief time
available-to expose the central features of Husserlian doctrine
and method where the Ego is concerned. 1 But let me make two
preliminary remarks before beginning this exposition.
In the first place, Husserl actually says little about the Ego
in his basic texts and this paucity of statements, along with a
crucial terminological problem, has made his treatment of the
Ego difficult to understand. Here is the terminological problem:
on most occasions, Husserl uses two words-Ego and Ich-with
different senses. Sometimes, however, these two words are
ambiguous or synonymous in one or another sense. But I think
that in most cases we can sort things out. As a rule, the word,
Ich expresses the concept of the Ego as somehow separate from,
although related to, his stream of mental processes. This is the
concept I shall attempt to make distinct today. By contrast, the
word Ego-a loan word from Latin in German-as Husserl
ordinarily uses it, designates a complex thing composed of the Ego
and his stream of mental processes. I shall here attempt to avoid
using a concept with an extension like that. 2
I. This-paper stands as read to the Society for Phenomenology and Existential
Philosophy in 1969. Notes have been added subsequently by way of substantiation,
elucidation, and revision.
2. In a translator's note in the Cartesian Meditations, Dorion Cairns writes: "Some-
244 Lester E. Embree
In the second place, while any thorough understanding of any

part of Hussed's philosophy requires that one understand both
the eidetic and the transcendental epoches, I believe that we can
and should suspend consideration of these procedures and their
effects where the Ego is concerned until we are familiar with the
remainder of Ego theory and method. Hence I leave for another
occasion the questions of what the Ego is as a mundane empirical
Ego, a mundane eidetic Ego, a transcendental empirical Ego,
and a transcendental eidetic Ego.3 So much by way of preliminary
remarks.
The central theme of phenomenology is the mental process
(das Erlebnis). Among Hussed's many classifications of mental
processes is the classification of them into "active," "originally
passive," and "secondarily passive" processes. OriginallY passive
mental processes include functioning associations, the constitutings
of immanent time, and the original givings of physical things.
Active and secondarilY passive mental processes alone can bestow sense
upon things. 4 The strictly active processes have an Ego who is
"living in" them or, as I would prefer to say, "engaging in"
them, "relating through them to objects," and "busied with"
these objects, which are thus "his."
The concept of the Ego as he who engages in "spontaneous
activities," or "acts" in the strict sense, appears already in the
times Husserl uses Ego and Ich to express different senses." A similar note appears
in Formal and Transcendental Logic. I have examined all usage~ of both words in these
texts as well as in the Ideen, thus verifying the difference noted by Dr. Cairns and the
interpretation of it presented here.
3. This is not to say that there are four Egos in a mind, but rather that one Ego
can have four different twofold statuses depending upon the procedures and attitudes
adopted in approaching him. Better expressions for my thought might be: a de facto
Ego in the world, the eidos of the mundane Ego, a de facto transcendental Ego, and
the eidos of the transcendental Ego. More important for the purposes of this paper
is the distinction between the mind qua Ego and life on the one hand and the Ego
qua Ego on the other hand, be these viewed transcendentally or naturally, eidetically
or empirically.
4. Edmund Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, The Hague, 1969, sec. 4.
(Hereafter FTL.)
REFLECTION ON THE EGO 245
Ideas. 5 There Husserl uses the classification of mental processes

into actual and potential processes. When engaged in by the Ego,
a mental process is "actual." Such an actual process Husser! also
calls a cogitatio, a word I want to emphasize here. Cogitationes
include perceptual processes through which the Ego actively
grasps objects about him, distinguishes and compares them,
believes and doubts them, likes or dislikes them, and chooses
among them. All such spontaneous activities Husserl includes
under the Cartesian word cogito. They are "actual" whether
reflected upon or not; an act of reflective observing, believing,
valuing, willing, and so on, however, would also be a cogitatio.
When the Ego engages in a mental process, he is himself "actual"
and the mental process engaged in is "actualized." Presumably
the abilities that Husserl often mentions are the subjective
correlates of potential mental processes.
There are several things said about the Ego which are best
understood beginning from a point made in Section 80 of the
Ideas. There Husserl suggests that mental processes have two sides: an
"objectively oriented" side and a "subjectively oriented" side.
Phenomenological research, he says there, can be directed along
lines relative to these two "sides" of a mental process. Pre-
sumably the objectively oriented side of a mental process is
correlative to the object or cogitatum intended to in that process
while the subjectively oriented side is correlative to the subject
or Ego who engages in the mental process. Unfortunately for our
present interest, Husser! does not develop or explicitly apply this
distinction in the Ideas. 6
5. Ibid., secs 37, 57, 80, 122 passim.
6. The passage that I have referred to has been translated for me by Dorion
Cairns:
On that account there is nevertheless occasion for a multiplicity of important
descriptions, just concerning the particular manners in which, in the sorts or
modes of mental process on the particular occasion, he is a mentally living Ego.
Moreover, there are always to be distinguished from one another-despite the
necessary relatedness to one another-the mental process itself and the pure Ego
of the mental living. And again: The pure subjective moment of the manner of mental
process and the other content of the mental process, the content that, so to speak, is
Lester E. Embree
In the Cartesian Meditations, however, there are several state-

ments which can be pieced together into a development of the
matter of the two sides of a cogitatio suggested in the Ideas.
HusserI says there that the scheme of Ego-cogito-cogitatum is the
most universal type in phenomenology. Within it there is a "dual
topic" composed of "two sides" and HusserI calls these two sides
cogito-cogitatum. 7 But what of Ego-cogito? Certainly the phrase
"ego cogito" occurs frequently. Already in the Ideas it was
suggested that the Ego and his life are "correlates." In the
Cartesian Meditations there is mention of "sides" which we can
construe as composing a "dual topic." Therefore, in interpreting
HusserI's statements about the Ego I shall refer to a second
turned from the Ego. Thus there exists a certain extraordinarily important two-
sidedness in the essence of the mental-process sphere, of which we can say also
that, in the mental processes, a subjectively orientated side and an Objectively
orientated side are to be distinguished: a mode of expression that indeed should
not be misunderstood, as if we taught that the possible "Object" of the mental
process were something in it analogous to the pure Ego. Nevertheless the mode
of expression will become justified. And we add at once that, to this two-
sidedness, there corresponds, at least in considerable stretches, a division of the
investigations (if not also an actual separation of them), some adjusted to the
pure subjectivity, the others to that which belongs to the "constitution" of the
Objectivity for the subjectivity. We shall have much to say about the "intentional
relation" of mental processes (correlatively, of the pure mentally living Ego) to
Objects and about various components of mental processes and "intentional
correlates" that are connected with that relation. Such things can, however,
be analytically or synthetically explored and described in comprehensive in-
vestigations, without one's busying oneself at all more profoundly with the pure
Ego and his manners of participation. Frequently, it is true, one must touch
upon him, as far as he is just a necessary thereness. (Ideen I, sec. 80, para. 6).
In his French translation of the Ideen, Paul Ricoeur adds this comment as a note
to Section 80:
The second question raised here is not dealt with: If the problems of con-
stitution dealt with in the Ideen concern the transcendences which present
themselves in the mental process-hence the object side of the mental process-
is there a problem of the constitution of the Ego--of the subjective side of the
mental process? If we consider that the Ego is an original transcendence, it is
natural that phenomenology encounter this problem. (My translation.)
7. "Inquiry into consciousness concerns two sides (for the present we are leaving
out of consideration the question of the identical Ego)" (Cartesian Meditations, The
Hague, 1960, sec. 17, hereafter eM).
"dual topic" composed of two sides entitled Ego and cogito,

although Hussed does not mention such a thing. 8
Proceeding now along the "Ego side" of the dual topic Ego-
cogito, let me relate some things said about the Ego as he who
engages in cogitationes. In the first place, the Ego not only engages
actively but also has "affected" engagement; he is receptive as
well as productive. Then again, correlative to mental processes
said to be "directed toward" or "turned toward" this or that
thing, the Ego is said to have his "directedness" and to be
"vigilant." Similar{y, the Ego can be "busied with" the object of
one of his acts, be this object perceived, remembered, feigned,
or whatever. Moreover, he can take positions or be "positive"
along various dimensions: doxie, affective, volitional, and so on.
Final{y, let me mention that the Ego can be able to actualize
potential mental processes; Hussed often refers to the Ego's
ability as an "I can." All of these things mentioned are "manners
of relating" through cogitationes to cogitata or "manners of
behaving" on the part of the Ego.
One might suppose that manners of Ego behavior parallel
manners of object givenness on at least the strictly active plane of
mental life. This supposition finds some confirmation in passages
where the Ego is asserted to be identical with the future, past, or
present of the cogitationes in which he will engage, was engaged,
is engaged, or is able to engage.
Turning now to the "cogito side" of the dual topic Ego-cogito,
there are two images used by Hussed which have caused trouble
for his interpreters. In the first place, there is the image of
"polarization." Mental processes which are intentive to an object
as the same object can be multiple along several dimensions.
Perhaps the temporal dimension is most readily understood.
Mental processes located in the past, present, or future of a
mental life which are intentive to the same thing form an identifying
8. "Heretofore we have touched on only one side of this self-constitution, we have
looked at only the flowing cogito" (CM, sec. 3 I); "On the Ego side there becomes
constituted ... " (CM, sec. 38).
Lester E. Embree
synthesis of that thing, which is then the object of the synthesis.

They can then be said to be polarized and their object can be
said to be the pole to which they all point. This is polarization
with reference to a cogitatum. What of polarization with reference
to the Ego? In the Cartesian Meditations, a "second polarization"
is asserted, correlative to the "polar Ego," and in Formal and
Transcendental Logic there is mention of a "subject pole." 9 Such
a subject pole would be identical vis-a.-vis the multiplicity of
subjectively polarized cogitationes, which we may then construe
as a "synthesis of the Ego," who would then be the "subject of the
synthesis." 10
Polarization is an image, indeed a spatializing image. The
equally spatializing image of "radiation" is, I believe, the converse
of the polarization image. In the Ideas, mental processes of the
form cogito are said to be "shot through" with a "regard" or
"ray" that correlates with Ego actuality. This ray quality is the
cogito form. Several rays may be conceived of in a mental life
as branching out of, or radiating from, the Ego and then con-
vergingly terminating at the object or cogitatum. In Ideas II
there is even mention of radiating that comesfrom the o~ject, which
I make out to be the converse of object polarization as discussed
in the Cartesian Meditations. l l
The expression "transcendence in immanence," applied to
the Ego in the Ideas, has also presented a problem to some
interpreters of HusserI. In Formal and Transcendental Logic, the
9. "Intentionality is not something isolated; it can be observed only in the

synthetic unity that connects every single pulse of psychic life teleologically, in the
unity-relation to objectivities-or rather in the double polarity, toward Ego-pole and
object-pole" (FTL, sec. 100).
10. Husserl does not, to my knowledge, use these terms, but they seem called for.
I I. In his Husser!: An Analysis of His Phenomenology, Evanston, Ill., 1967, p. 53,
Paul Ricoeur writes: "We begin with the image of Ideas I whereby all thinking is
a 'ray from the ego.' The ego radiates 'through' its acts. Ideas II completes the image
so that the radiation 'from' the ego is indicated by a counterradiation that issues
from the objects. To say that I desire is to say that the object attracts me. I hate
means that the hated object repels me. I am saddened by grief; I am carried away
by range, elevated with indignation; I give in, resist, etc."
phrase "transcendence of the Ego" occurs.12 But does HusserI

not usually speak of transcendent and even immanent objects?
To understand the transcendence of the Ego, we must first under-
stand the distinction of immanence and transcendence.
Mental processes can be intentive to other things in the same
mental life, namely to other mental processes intended to in
protendings as future and in retrotendings as past, as well as in the
more obvious cases of active reflecting upon mental processes.
In other words, a mental process can be the "intentional object"
of another mental process. The totality of mental processes making
up a mental stream HusserI calls "immanence," and when one
mental process is the intentional object of another mental process
in the same life stream, it is an "immanent object."
In contrast to immanently intentive mental processes, there
are "transcendently" intentive mental processes, processes the
intentional objects of which are beyond the mental stream. Such
"transcendent objects" include real and ideal things, other
mental lives, the Egos of others, and so on. But these things are
transcendent of the immanent stream as objects. They are, we
might say, "outwardly" beyond the mental life. The transcendent
subject or Ego is, on the contrary, we might say, "an inwardly
transcendent thing." This is how I interpret HusserI's phrase
"transcendence in immanence."
While it is relatively easy to conceive how an outwardly
transcendent thing and even a mental process in immanence can
be objects for the Ego, it is a bit difficult to conceive how the Ego,
as the transcendent subject of a life, can be his own transcendent
object, how he can be busied with himself by relating to himself
through his own mental processes. Yet the logic of HusserI's Ego
doctrine requires that we consider this possibility. Before con-
12. "In it [namely: "the universal ideality of all intentional unities"] consists the
'transcendence' belonging to all species of objectivities over against the consciousness ofthem (and,
in an appropriately altered but corresponding manner, the transcendence belonging
to this or that Ego of a consciousness, understood as the subject-pole of the con-
sciousness)" (FTL, sec. 62).
Lester E. Embree
sidering the method of Ego investigation, however, let me outline

the structure of the Ego himself, according to Husser!'
Hussed seems to have conceived of the Ego as having a
structure quite analogous to the structure that he conceived of
the object as having, namely, a structure in terms of a substratum
(or pole) and determinations (properties). Let us first-on the
Ego side of the dual topic Ego-cogito-consider what sorts of
things are "Ego determinations." I have already indicated some
of the dimensions in which mental processes and, correlatively,
their objects and subject can be thetic or positional, namely along
the doxie, affective, and vOlitional dimensions. The positions taken
by the Ego in mental processes called "position takings" 13 can
be relinquished. In the Cartesian Meditations, Hussed outlines a
theory of how habitual positions arise and are annulled. A
position is an Ego determination. Moreover, I have mentioned abilities
already; abilities are Ego determinations. Then again there are frag-
ments of a theory of interests scattered through Hussed's basic
works as well as in Experience and Judgmentj I believe that interests
are Ego determinations. Finally, Hussed everywhere talks about
attitudes-the theoretical attitude, the straightforward attitude,
the reflective attitude, the natural attitude (and within the
natural attitude the naturalistic attitude and the personalistic
attitude), the phenomenological or transcendental attitude, the
empirical attitude, the eidetic attitude, the naive attitude, the
critical attitude, and so on; attitudes should also be construed as Ego
determinations .
The intriguing thing about positions, abilities, interests, and
attitudes relates to the fact that they can change. Over against
his instituted and annulled determinations, the Ego is said to
persist as an identical pole. Hence the Ego, like the object, would
seem to be a pole in two senses: the pole of subjectively polarized
cogitationes and the substrate-pole of Ego determinations. In the
latter connection, something quite remarkable emerges. Let us
13. Setzungnehmen; cf. Stellungnehmen.

REFLECTION ON THE EGO
confine ourselves to a habitual position. The Ego and his positions

are transcendent to the flux of mental processes-crucially, the
determinate Ego is transcendent to the various positional cogi-
tationes in which as a positive Ego he engages, through which
he relates positingly to his posit a, and in which his objects or
cogitata are posited. Over against the multiplicity of changing
positings, it is the same position which is taken, may be defended,
and perhaps is relinquished in different mental processes. The
position is acquired or abandoned beyond the mental stream and
within the determinate Ego. In what temporality are such Ego
determinations changing? It seems to me that HusserI's doctrine
of the Ego requires that we recognize an Ego time in which the Ego
pole is identical and his determinations can change. Such an
Ego time would be parallel to the immanent time of the transcen-
dentally pure mental stream as well as parallel to the world time
of society and nature.
By way of conclusion, let me offer some remarks about what
seems implied methodologically in HusserI's doctrine of the Ego.
The basic phenomenological procedure is that of reflectively
observing and distinguishing mental processes and their corre-
lates. We recall that the Ego is a correlate. Still disregarding the
transcendental and eidetical procedures, attitudes, and their
effects, we can indicate several species of reflective investigation.
Already in the Ideas, HusserI says that there is a reflecting on
the intentional object of a mental process as intended to in that
mental process-reflecting on the noema-and he calls it
noematical reflection. He also speaks there of a correlative reflecting
on mental processes as intentive to their intentional objects-
reflecting on the noesis-and he calls it noetical reflecting. This
distinction between parallel procedures of noematical and
noetical reflecting is quite prominent in the Cartesian Meditations.
ClearIy the two species of reflection just indicated correlate
with the "dual topic" of cogito-cogitatum. If one can also reflectively
observe and distinguish things under the second "dual topic" of
Ego-cogito-which any claim to phenomenological status by
Lester E. Embree
Husserl's Ego doctrine demands-does it not also seem requisite

that we distinguish a "subjective" from an "objective" noetical
reflection in accordance with the distinction between the sub-
jectively and objectively oriented sides of the mental process? And
do we not need to explicate a procedure called, perhaps, "Egoical
reflecting" in HusserI's methodology?
Engaged in acts of "subjective noetical reflecting," the tran-
scendent Ego would be directed at and busied with the subjectively
oriented sides of mental processes immanent to his life as mental
processes in which he was, had been, or would be engaged as
now engaged in, as formerly engaged in, or as yet to be engaged
in. Correlatively, in processes of "Egoical reflecting," the Ego
would be reflectively busied with himself by relating to himself
through his mental life as an identical engager actually or possibly
engaged in one or another manner in these or those cogitationes
and possessing some abilities, interests, attitudes, and positions.
Thus, beside the noematical reflecting on the noema or cogi-
tatum and "objective" noetical reflecting on the objectively
oriented face of the noesis or cogitatio, there would be "subjective"
noetical reflecting upon the subjectively oriented side of the noesis
or cogitatio and "Egoical" reflecting on the "Ego side" of the
dual topic Ego-cogito. Egoical reflecting can also be called "re-
flection on the Ego."
A closing remark: If the distinctions I have traced can be
clarified phenomenologically, they delimit a vast area of concrete
Ego phenomenology in the exploration of which verified results
of Husserl's many investigations within the dual topic of cogito-
cogitatum might guide investigation along the two other sides
called Ego and cogito. I do not yet know if the matters themselves
of the Ego are as Husserl says they are, but I now believe that I
know the way we must take to find out.
Robert V. Stone
THE SELF-CONCIOUSNESS IN SELF-

ACTIVITY
Although Sartre's and HusserI's accounts differ on the exact

relation of the self to consciousness, they seem to agree that the
ego in important ways transcends intentional acts. If we may
speak metaphorically here we can picture the possible relations
of the self to consciousness on the following spatial model: the
self may be "before," "behind," or "in" intentional acts. Sartre
stresses the sense in which we are before acts that are themselves
anonymous. HusserI stresses the sense in which we are behind our
acts as a center from which they emanate. I do not wish to take
a position on either of these views as a whole. Rather, I shall
attempt in what follows to make explicit a third relation of the
self to consciousness, the sense in which we do not transcend
consciousness because we are living in our acts. I shall understand
"acts" in a broad sense in which walking, gesturing, and laughing
are acts. My aim shall be to point out the unique type of con-
sciousness of self that is present in action. Though this project is
descriptive it has certain theoretical consequences that will be
sketched.
What, then, does it mean to say that the ego may "live in" his
acts? We are pointing to the same feeling of being in an act or
identified with it when we say "I was immersed in the task," or
"I was absorbed with what I was doing." Now, if it is indeed
possible at all, how shall we articulate this feeling? It is perhaps
254 Robert V. Stone
helpful to start by distinguishing consciousness of action from

consciousness in acting. What we are pointing to is certainly not
a case of being reflectively conscious of ourselves in the process
of doing something. This kind of self-consciousness is variously
evident in certain preparatory actions of readying and setting
ourselves for some other action, in hesitantly engaging upon a
course of action we may abort, in supervising and monitoring
our actions, in persisting in some activity despite the risk of being
laughed at, and so on. When we live in our acts we do not thus
stand out as being ourselves one among the objective circum-
stances to be dealt with. Are we to say then that the self is not
in arry way experienced when it lives in its acts, and that conse-
quently to live in one's acts is to enter a blindly immediate and
anonymous mode of existence? Certainly we can think of cases
of total object-absorption, offascinated repetition of ritual motions
or of immersion in dull minutiae, where we are not merely
absorbed by our activity but utterly lost in it and carried along
by it. Shouldn't we conclude from such instances that sometimes
the ego is simply absent from consciousness and is not experi-
enced at all?
Despite such alleged experiences of egolessness we should not
so conclude. Gesturing is in its normal occurrence an example of
an act in which the ego is absorbed, even perhaps carried along.
Yet there is, I would hold, an unreflective consciousness of self
in it. Gesturing with the hands, arms, head, and other parts of
the body-or perhaps with the body as a whole-seems to be
involved in interpersonal communication. It is part of our being-
for-others. But it is an aspect of ourselves that we never see
because we live in it, just as our seeing is never itself seen but is
nevertheless experienced as lived-in. Only others truly see our
gestures. If we do see our gesturing and thematize it as such it
will likely change over into a performance, an empty imitation
of ourselves no longer animated by us "in person." Our gestures
are perpetually lost to us. But we are not lost in them: we know
ourselves through them. This knowledge is not primarily evident
THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN SELF-ACTIVITY 255
in our ability later to recognize a gesture of ours when It IS
performed by someone else, nor in our ability to ourselves call
up and perform at will a characteristic gesture. Rather it is
actually given in the sense that we not only direct the motion of
our hand, we as selves "permeate" it, to use Professor Spiegel-
berg's term, l and this sense of self is in the present act; it is not
merely a readiness for future acts of recollection of that act. Nor
is this self-consciousness a positional consciousness of the self as
an item on the margin or horizon of the phenomenal field. An
item on the margin of a given field is still in it. To experience
such an appearance of myself to myself as gesturing while I am
gesturing is already to infect the consciousness with reflection.
We arrive then by a kind of negative phenomenology at the
acknowledgement that there is an irreducible sui generis status
to the consciousness of self in gesturing. In the gesture's flowing
design, in its unfolding to fill a gap in our communication, in the
unreflective living of a personal style, a self is already known to
itself.
If we now consider the intentional objects of unreflective
consciousness that is occupied with examining or observing
something, we can see not only that a viewpoint on those objects
is nonpositionally present, but that there is a self-activity in the
examining that is essential in the constitution of the object as such.
Consider, for example, the examination of a room and its
furnishings. This is a complex act and it can be done wtih varying
degrees of care. Typically, to examine the room one must move
into it and one must move about in it. Now from one viewpoint
an ashtray appears to be in front of a lamp, from another
viewpoint it is hidden by the lamp, and from still another it
appears behindthelamp;yetitis the same ashtray. How shall we in-
terpret this? We may draw attention to the fact that it is an
objective feature of ashtrays as such that they can enter into
relations with other physical objects. But this begs the question
I. Herbert Spiegelberg, "On the Motility of the Ego," in Conditio Humana, ed.
Walter von Baeyer and Richard Griffith, Berlin, 1966, p. 299.
Robert V. Stone
of how this ashtray has these relations to this lamp. This is possible
in virtue of a prior relation of both to me as observer or view-
point. But "viewpoint" is perhaps a poor word here since the
"points" from which the room is viewed meld together to form
a continuing series or "line" of viewings, a series that is itself the
single, articulated act of "examining the room." The various
faces of the ashtray can be given as internally related among
themselves due to my activity of disclosing them in a continuous,
connected manner. The continuously changing relationships
between the ashtray and the lamp are determinate yet coherent
because I am active there among them, laying the groundwork
for such relationships. This synthesizing activity is both ego-
logical-in that I carry it out over a duration-and prere-
flective, in that I am not for myself an object.
Examining a room is a loaded example, it may be said. Since
it is a multitracked activity that might be fulfilled in a number
of alternative ways, we would expect to find a constant reflective
aspect to it, thus it would have to have an ego present in it. It
is not a purely unreflective activity, as, sometimes, reading a
novel may be. But, I would respond, an ego is also arguably
present in more obviously object-absorbed activities such as
reading. Sartre in fact analyzes reading as a typical case of such
activity. It can also serve us as an example. Sartre contends that
in such genuinely unreflective consciousness we are unable to
find any "me." "While I was reading there was consciousness of
the book, of the heroes of the novel, but the I was not inhabiting
this consciousness." 2 All that is given is a prepersonal awareness
of reading the story and a positional, thematized consciousness
of the story read. There is no thematized awareness of myself.
Since we are not thus conscious of ourselves in the same way
that we are conscious of the book, Sartre concludes that there is
no "me" at all in this and similar acts.
Let us review this observation, which is central to Sartre's
2. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego, trans. Forrest Williams and
Robert Kirkpatrick, New York, 1957, pp. 46-47 (Sartre's italics).
THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN SELF-ACTIVITY
position on the ego. It is certainly true that there is no thematized

consciousness of myself in such states. It is the story and the
ongoing lives of the heroes that occupy center stage of my
conscious field, not me with my history, projects, and so forth.
But the ego need not occupy center stage, or even side stage, in
order to be present, any more than a dead brother must be
located in space to be present. The ego is not the object of any
act, it is absorbed in its acts. In stressing that the story is the
focus of attention we must not overlook the fact that there is a
complex, continuous series of manual, visual, and imaginative
acts that I must carry out in order for such higher-order entities
as "the story" or "the life of the hero" to be realized in the first
place. This ego-activity has been noticed by Erwin Straus: "On
a printed page, letters and words are at rest; they do not follow
one another. We, the readers, moving from word to word and
line to line, restore sequence." 3 To this we may add that across
this sequence of reading acts we must further imaginatively
constitute the story and its development in yet a different time
than that of the reading. Weare not, however, speaking here of a
psychological construction out of separate elements, but of active
constitution in the phenomenological sense. For this reason the
active presence of an ego in reading does not at all vitiate the
basic unreflectiveness of the act. There is nothing in the concept
of spontaneous, fascinated dealings with an object that demands
the absence of the ego from consciousness engaged in this manner.
The basic meaning of unreflective action is not the phenomenal
absence of the ego but rather its total active involvement. 4 The
reading is still an articulated act that is done well or poorly and
that shows a characteristic style of a person. In this sense there is
indeed an ego in unreflective, object-absorbed states.
Yet it is possible to imagine how one could be misled into
believing that unreflective consciousnesses are egoless. If one
3. Erwin Straus, Phenomenological Psychology, New York, 1966, p. 207.
4. When Sartre later says in Being and Nothingness that "human reality is action,"
he is himself conveying this same point.
Robert V. Stone
expects the ego to be another object that transcends all acts of

consciousness, a thing in the field of reading consciousness that
is on a par with the heroes of the story, he will not find it. If he
expects to find that ego-thing by introspecting or turning inward
the same sort of objectifying glance by which he discloses external
things, he will perhaps find thrills, rumblings, breathings, and
kinesthetic sensations, but no ego. Failing to find what cannot be
present (by means inappropriate for detecting what is present),
one could thus be led to conclude there are some entirely egoless
states.
If consciousness is not originally mine, how does it come in-
evitably to be recollected as mine, as when we recall some
previous act? In order for any given act to be constituted as mine,
on Sartre's view, I must appropriate it in a second, higher-order
act of reflection. Since my ego is an object like any other in the
sense that it is transcendent to consciousness, this reflective act
is needed to constitute the act as related to "me." This view, it
seems to me, assigns to reflection an impossible task. Unless the
acts I do are not sometimes experienced as mine in a pri-
mordial, first-order way, it is hard to see how we might ex-
perience them as mine in later, higher-order reflection. This is not
to assert that my acts are always given as mine in a primordial
sense. There certainly are detached, confused frames of mind
where we see our bodies-even perhaps our own experiences-
as alien, as not wholly ours. In such a frame of mind I might
genuinely be puzzled whether it was really myself or someone
else who lived through what I in fact lived through. Moreover,
we would likely be concerned to resolve such confusion by a
reflective reconstruction of the sequence of events, the reidentifi-
cation of the persons involved, and so forth; in this way reflection
would indeed fix my acts as mine. But such puzzlements are
parasitic on other states of affairs in which it is obvious that our
experiences are ours. It is a kind of puzzlement that could arise
only if we were accustomed to feel at one with our acts. Now if
our experiences are never originally given as ours in a primordial
THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN SELF-ACTIVITY 259
sense, as Earle has noted, we could always, in principle, ask:

Which one, among all the objects given to consciousness, is the
one that I am, which ones, among all the acts before consciousness,
are my acts? 5 If reflection is itself an egoless act, then it cannot
put a stop to this quandary since a consciousness unacquainted
with that sense of mineness or responsibility that goes with doing
things would not know the criteria by which to recognize a
solution. I must first live in my acts if later I am to be able to be
puzzled and disoriented over who does in truth live in them.
If these descriptions have led us to find an ego present in
consciousness it is not a pure ego, if one means by that a second
center of consciousness behind the empirical stream of conscious
acts. If the ego is construed as something that is both separate
from consciousness and also its source, then self-consciousness-
where we are both subject and object of a single act at one time-
is impossible. The self "illuminated" by rays could not be the
self "illuminating" by emanating rays. To put it another way:
the pure ego, if it is construed as a relational center for which
empirical consciousness is itself an object, must be perpetually
hidden from itself since the acts that would confirm it are them-
selves in the empirical stream of constituted objects. There are
many aspects to the doctrine of the pure ego in HusserI, and
there are other interpretations of that doctrine in which this
difficulty is avoided. But to the extent that the pure ego is an
external principle of unity of intentional acts, it presupposes
that such acts are originally truncated and stand in need of
some higher principle of unity. So the active, ongoing syntheses
of consciousness that we discovered in acts in the wider sense
obviate some of the need for such a principle.
And if my acts are mine in an original way this would mean
we no longer need to hold that they are mine in virtue of being
related to me, where "me" designates a supraconscious entity.
But detailed examination of this original mineness of my acts-
5. Cf. William Earle, "The Life of the Transcendental Ego," The Review of Meta-
physics, XII, no. I, 7-8.
Robert V. Stone
which is unlike the mine ness of my property or the mineness of

my wife-and of the doctrine of the pure ego itself must be
deferred. I wish here not so much to propose solutions as really
to complicate the problem of the ego by drawing attention to an
often inadequately appreciated feature of self-activity.
PART THREE
SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND LOGIC

Theodore Kisiel
SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY: LOGICAL,

PSYCHOLOGICAL, OR HERMENEUTICAL?
In matters of discovery, it has long been the custom to appeal to

such imponderables as intuition, genius, the workings of the
unconscious, and more recently, to the Eureka process or Aha
Erlebnis of a Gestalt switch. This apparent appeal to irrational
and even mystical factors has prompted the logical positivists to
exclude the topic of scientific discovery from the philosophy of
science and to "demote" it to the field of psychology. There is
much to justify this attitude. All of us have been exposed to the
fascinating but obfuscating anecdotes of discoveries made by
"accident," and of illuminations coming as if from nowhere:
Archimedes' bath, Newton's apple, Kekule's dream of the
dancing serpents, Poincare's step onto an omnibus, and so on.
The risks of a genetic fallacy are compounded by the psychological
questionnaires sent to creative scientists to survey not only their
mental processes and methods, but also their daily schedules,
personal habits, and idiosyncracies, in a curiosity that sometimes
smacks of voyeurism. This recital of extremes does not mean to
deny the importance of a factual basis for any psychological study
of creativity, but to suggest the need to go further, toward what
HusserI, for example, called an eidetic psychology, which would
strive for an essentially rational account of the thought processes
which enter into creativity.
In opposition to the total exclusion of scientific discovery from
Theodore Kisiel
the philosophy of science because of its presumed illogicality,

Norwood Russell Hanson,! following suggestions made by Peirce,
maintained that a researcher has reasons even for entertaining
certain kinds of hypotheses from among the infinite number
which could be invoked, and that this rationale constitutes a
logic of scientific discovery. On the one hand, such a logic would
be a conceptual inquiry into the conceptual context in which a
hypothesis is initially proposed, rather than a circumstantial
inquiry into the factual context in which one stumbles on an
improbable idea in unusual circumstances. On the other, it would
be concerned with the reasons for considering certain kinds of
hypotheses as plausible in the first instance, and not the reasons
for finally accepting a particular hypothesis as true through
verification, which the hypothetico-deductive theorists set as one
of their main tasks. Its question would be, not "How did it
actually happen?" or "Why is it valid?" but rather "Why was
the hypothesis entertained to begin with?" It is a question of the
logic of selecting the more or less fruitful leads from among the
many that may come to mind. For example, some twenty years
before all the particulars of the law of universal gravitation were
established, Newton had reason to believe that it would assume
an inverse square form, from the logical gap which he perceived in
the known laws. Once Kepler retroduced that the orbit of Mars was
elliptical, he had analogical reasons for believing the same for
the orbits of the other planets. For similar reasons of analogy,
Maxwell and Einstein sought to uncover a single simple formal
structure or symmetry in the electromagnetic and the relativity
equations. Such appeals to analogy, simplicity, symmetry, and
elegance have a rational function in the discoverer's approach
to the unknown.
I. Norwood Russell Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, Cambridge, England, 1958,

and numerous articles, especially "The Logic of Discovery," Journal of Philosophy, LV
(1958), 1073-1089; "The Idea ofa Logic of Discovery," Dialogue, IV (1965), 48-61;
"Notes Toward a Logic of Discovery," in Richard Bernstein, ed., Perspectives
Peirce, New Haven, 1965.
SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY
Hanson, along with Michael Polanyi, Stephen Toulmin, T.S.

Kuhn, and others, belongs to a burgeoning "revisionist" move-
ment which has come to be known as the "new philosophy of
science." 2 Dissatisfied with the almost exclusive concentration of
the positivist tradition on perfected and idealized systems of
science, it seeks an entirely new approach to the problems of the
philosophy of science, one more concerned with how scientists
actually do proceed in their particular conceptual context than
only with how they ought to proceed. It therefore attempts to
develop a vocabulary for talking about science which is more
descriptive and less normative, which pays attention to the
ongoing work of science, both past and present, and not simply
to the formal representation of scientific expressions in general.
Quite naturally, in such an approach, the history of science
becomes an essential factor in the conception of science. And it
is through research and discovery that scientific history is literally
made, determining the very character and direction of scientific
progress. The enormous emphasis that the culture of science has
given to originality is evident in the education, attitudes, and
activities of scientists, who are trained and conditioned to seek
new discoveries, whose professional prestige hinges on just such
inventiveness, who compete vehemently to be the first to solve
the most current problems in their field, and who thus become
involved in the numerous bitter disputes over the priority and in-
dependence of their discoveries. That each new generation of
scientists is more concerned with the pursuit of science than
simply with its finished products is itself an indication of how
much research is constitutive of the essence of science.
But to balance off the thesis that the history of science is
structured by discovery, there is the converse thesis that scientific
discovery, and in fact all of science, is in turn historically structur-
ed. More specifically, the scientist who grapples with the leading
questions and prominent unknowns of his science does so on the
2. Dudley Shapere, "Meaning and Scientific Change," in Robert G. Colodny,
ed., Mind and Cosmos, Pittsburgh, 1966, pp. 41-85.
Theodore Kisiel
basis of presuppositions which have been historically transmitted

to him by his scientific tradition. These presuppositions have an
all-pervasive power, for they guide and determine every phase of
science: they determine the meaning of all scientific terms, what
counts as a fact and what constitutes an explanation, which
events are to be considered as problematic and which are not.
They therefore represent the fundamental patterns of expectations
according to which nature is to be made intelligible, in terms of
their guiding "paradigms" 3 or "ideals of natural order." 4
Accordingly, these presuppositions also include the basic com-
mitments of the tradition concerning the general nature of things
and the structure of the universe, as well as how these are to be
approached. Even the anomalies that motivate the revolutionary
discoveries that shatter this tradition are determined by these
traditional precedents, against which the anomaly stands out in
bold relief and becomes recognizable as a violation of ex-
pectations. It is thus that the tradition contributes to its own
modification and invites periodic reassessment. Its presupposi-
tions are therefore not hard and fast, but are themselves subject
to continual evolution. For discovery is constantly at work,
remolding the bases of science in each generation, usually
gradually but sometimes radically, depending on whether the
discovery fulfills or disturbs the accepted paradigm. On the other
hand, each discovery must await its proper time, the opportune
moment when the foundations of the science have developed
sufficiently so that the conditions which prompt the discovery
can be recognized. No matter what the state of preparation of
the individual researcher, he is subject to the limits of the level
of his science at that particular point ofits history. The importance
of the preparation of the situation which makes a discovery
3. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, 1962. Cf. also
"The Historical Structure of Scientific Discovery," Science, CXXXVI (1962),
760-764 and "The Essential Tension: Tradition and Innovation in Scientific
Research," in Calvin W. Taylor and Frank Barron, eds., Scientific Creativity: Its
Recognition & Development, New York, 1963, pp. 341-354.
4. Stephen Toulmin, Foresight & Understanding, Bloomington, Ind., 1961.
possible is demonstrated by the frequent occurrence of simul-

taneous discoveries by independent workers in the field. There
comes a time when the potential of the field is such that the
discovery cannot be postponed for long. The most subtle
dimension of this preparation is the gradual conceptual refashion-
ing of the scientific language, which by implication instills novel
intimations into the air, the intellectual atmosphere of the time,
to which the alert scientist attunes himself in order to veritably
read the signs of his time. It is by learning this language that
the novice begins to see in a scientific way. For he thereby
acclimates himself to the basic presuppositions of his science,
which are rarely, if ever, explicitly formulated and transmitted
in the form of definite precepts. They constitute the implicit
premises which permeate the explicit propositions of his science
in a hidden way, as a tacit dimension in the way he as a scientist
speaks and acts and practices his science. Their implications
represent a creative charge out of which untold discoveries are
to be extracted.
These basic theses of the new philosophy of science-its
emphasis on historicity and discovery, on the historical situation
of a finite context of presuppositions within which scientists do
their work, a situation which not only limits but also provides a
scope of possibilities for discovery-all of these themes strike
resonant chords with the phenomenological tradition, particu-
larly with the hermeneutical phenomenology of Heidegger and
Gadamer. Their "hermeneutic offacticity" endeavors to develop
an ontology, more specifically, an ontology which locates the
consideration of the process of discovery in the historical and
linguistic situation in which man finds himself, rather than in
man himself-in what Gadamer calls a "happening of tradi-
tion," 5 which precedes and underlies the psychic activity and
methodic control of discovery. Even the etymology of "discovery"
indicates the need for some sort of ontological evaluation for its
5. T. Kisiel, "The Happening of Tradition: The Hermeneutics of Gadamer and
Heidegger," Man and World, II (1969),358-385.
Theodore Kisiel
ultimate understanding. A discovery is not a pure invention.

Its achievement involves a mighty effort of receptivity and
responsive submission to a hidden reality in the process of
revealing itself. Even Einstein, whose Kantian leanings led him
to stress the free inventiveness of the scientific theorist, at the
same time affirmed the mystery of the cosmic harmonies to which
the scientist responds and the ultimate resonance of his free
inventions with its reality. The discovering scientist is not only
aware of the inner workings of his mind according to a process
of plausible reasoning, but he is also aware of coping with a
problematic situation unique to his inherited scientific world.
The true locus of discovery must therefore be ontological, of
which the epistemological and the psychological would be
ramifications. This ultimate consequence is, I believe, the real
reason why positivism has been inclined to exclude the topic of
discovery from its considerations.
Once it is admitted that discovery occurs, philosophers must
ask how it is possible. Plato first put the question epistemologically
in Meno's query to Socrates: "How can we seek and find what
we don't already know? Is it possible to know the unknown?" 6
But it is only recently that philosophers have become aware of the
ontological import of the issue, where the question becomes:
"What must the character of reality be in order to truly account
for the possibility of discovery, in which something new and
unprecedented always emerges?" The eternal and necessary
categories developed by traditional ontology are incapable of
answering this question. Plato even denied the terms of his own
question by positing the prepossession of an absolute knowledge
through the soul's permanent communion with a stable and
eternal world. In contrast, Heidegger admits the prepossession
of only the partial set of presuppositions into which man is
thrown. Heidegger's answer is that new knowledge does not
emerge simply from old knowledge, but from the inexhaustible
6. Marjorie Grene, The Knower and the Known, New York, 1966, p. 23.
character of the ineffable subject matter to which all knowledge

has always addressed itself, which in its withdrawal draws
thought forward, thereby continually yielding the new and
unexpected. The occurrence of discovery is thus ultimately
rooted in what Heidegger calls the event of the unconcealment
of Being, which itself remains concealed. Its withdrawal is what
gives rise to thought and sustains thought throughout. Thought
is the power of being ahead of itself, of anticipation and discovery,
precisely because of this sustaining relation to the unsaid in what
is already said which man, in his situation, is now called upon
to say. Thinking may discipline itself according to logic, but
what ultimately binds it is not logical methods, but "the
things themselves," for Heidegger, the event of appropriation in
which man finds himself. Man's understanding of Being is an
ontological process before it is a mental process, inasmuch as it
is more of Being than of man. The discussion no longer gravitates
toward man, but toward Dasein, the locus of humanity in which
man dwells. What psychology calls habit and Gestalt-set be-
comes transposed into Dasein's facticity and project. What the
epistemology of the new philosophy of science variously calls
presuppositions, paradigms, and conceptual frameworks now
becomes the world, the meaningful context in which man lives,
moves, and is. Discovery accordingly becomes the process of
making sense of this historical and linguistic situation by submit-
ting to its guidance, by responding to it in order to explicate the
unsaid which is implicated in it.
Among the new philosophers of science, Polanyi has been the
most sensitive to the ultimate ontological character of scientific
discovery, even though his formulations are often heavily couched
in psychological and epistemological categories. Under the
heading of "personal knowledge," he stresses the central role of
a kind of intimacy between the scientist and nature, an indwelling
in its harmonies by means of theoretical patterns through which
the discoverer senses the presence of the hidden truth which has
yet to be revealed. The scientist acquires this intimacy by entering
27 0 Theodore Kisiel
into the inherited interpretive framework of science and passion-

ately committing himself to learning its ways. In the vernacular,
it is a matter of "getting a feel for" nature in the way science
currently comes in contact with it. This tacit knowledge can
only be conveyed by practice and from practicing scientists,
through whom the novice assimilates the subliminal premises of
his science. These premises weave the framework within which
all of his scientific assertions are made, and yet, for this very
reason, they themselves cannot be asserted. But despite its inarti-
culate state, this network is known intimately as his own interpre-
tive framework, in which he dwells "as in the garment of [his]
own skin." 7 Out of this background come the particular but
unspecifiable clues which guide the researcher from surmise to
surmise, as well as intimations of being on the right track and
drawing nearer and nearer to a solution. Even the resulting theory
is more than explicit knowledge; it is a foreknowledge of things
yet unknown, unforeseeable, and perhaps even inconceivable at
present, and it is in anticipation of these implications that the
scientist passionately commits himself to his theory. For he
believes himself to have come in contact with a reality whose in-
exhaustible depth, independence, and power will permit it to
manifest itself through his theory in ways even beyond his ken.
He believes his theory is true, even without confirmation, not
only because of his expectation of future confirmations, but also
and primarily because of the indeterminate range of future
discoveries that he expects will issue from it.
Thus Polanyi sees the entire process of discovery-from initial
investiture, through the exploratory phase, to the final commit-
ment to its outcome-as being under the sway of what he calls
the "ineffable domain," 8 and Heidegger calls Being. And the
pre theoretical know-how that he calls personal knowledge is a
near kin to Heidegger's Seinsverstiindnis. While acknowledging
7. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, New York, 1964, pp. 60, 64.
8. Ibid., p. 87.
SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 27 1
this latter parallel, 9 Polanyi does not follow the Heideggerian
path toward a hermeneutical ontology, but instead outlines an
ontology of emergent evolution in which the body plays the
dominant role in the tacit dimension of personal knowledge. But
it is a bit hard to see how such a stress can do justice to the onto-
logical basis for scientific discovery, especially for modern
science, where even the physical tools possess a high conceptual
charge. This is not to deny the bodily component in the scientist's
situation, but it seems that, when it comes to something like the
intellectual praxis of science, the tacit dimension of the heuristic
field must be centered in language. And this is precisely what a
hermeneutical ontology does.
Now, the hermeneutical in general pertains to the process of
exposing hidden meanings. The exegesis of Biblical and classical
texts, the interpretations of the human actions that constitute
history, understanding a poem, performing one of Shakespeare's
plays, interpreting the precedents of the law in a particular case,
reading the historical signs of the times-all of these aporetic
situations have variously been regarded under the purview of a
hermeneutic. But Heidegger goes further and holds that man's
existence in the aporia of Being is hermeneutical through and
through. By implication, he thereby rejects the view which
restricts the hermeneutical approach to the humanities and ex-
cludes the natural sciences. That the hermeneutical also has a
bearing on the natural sciences is corroborated by Polanyi, when
he affirms the indetenninate number of possibilities latent in the
reading of scientific theories, much like the texts that over the
centuries have come to be known as classical.
At this point, some "Heideggerians" may be inclined to raise
an objection. It is well known that Heidegger makes a sharp
distinction between science and philosophy, calculative and
essential thinking, the mathematical and the hermeneutical
approach. This is perhaps most clearly indicated in his famous
9. Ibid., p. X.
Theodore Kisiel
assertion that "science itself does not think." But this intention-
ally provocative bit of Heideggeriana does not mean that scientists
do not think and that they are not concerned with the issues of
thinking. As a thinking being, every scientist can move onto
various levels of thinking in its essential sense, and in fact does
so whenever he moves beyond the confines of his method to the
problems issuing from the presuppositions of his science. Thus
the revolutionary innovators of science, the men who are led to
make certain metaphysical decisions with regard to the funda-
mental concepts of their science, are thinkers in the Heideggerian
sense-philosophers and not just scientists. And since the primitive
terms of a science are predominantly inarticulate and remain so,
their continuing reinterpretation is a hermeneutical process,
which in effect governs the character of scientific progress. This
is most manifest in the history of fundamental words like physis
and bios, where the metaphysical decisions to which the men of
science were led are concentrated. Einstein, in reflecting on the
fundamental physical concepts of space, time, mass, and energy,
was led by this history to make decisions on the nature of physics
and its domain which created new ways of posing questions and
seeking answers. So when Heidegger says that science does not
think, he restricts the term "science" to the methodical techniques
of calculative thinking, what Kuhn calls "normal science" in a
particularly restrictive sense. By contrast, the effort that goes
into changing the paradigms of science and revising its foun-
dations is a process of discovery that is creative, beyond the
normal methods of science, and hermeneutical. 10
10. Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking?, trans. Fred D. Wieck andJ. Glenn
Gray, New York, 1968, pp. 8, 33; What is a Thing?, trans. W. B. Barton,Jr. and Vera
Deutsch, Chicago, 1967, p. 67; Vortriige und Aufsiitze, Pfullingen, 1954, p. 70; Nietzsche,
Pfullingen, 1961, I, 520-525.
This line of provocation can be taken in another direction on the basis of the
Heideggerian thesis that thinking dwells in close proximity to poetizing. Accordingly,
scientists as thinkers should also have their poetic moments. And scientists themselves
testify to a certain poetic or aesthetic emotion which guides them in their discovery,
which ultimately evokes such criteria for a scientific theory as simplicity, symmetry,
elegance, which are as much aesthetic as logical. Einstein goes so far as to call his
SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 273
It will be helpful to clarify our issue by distinguishing four
interrelated facets of the hermeneutical process. The most evident
is the existential aspect, the part played by man in the exposition
of hidden meaning, in listening for the unsaid in the said.
But more basically, the searcher's endeavor to read between
the lines in order to say what needs to be said involves a leap into
a movement that takes its course beyond human control. In
Heidegger's words, "the hermeneutical does not first signify the
exposition, but even before this there is the bringing of the message
and tidings."ll This appropriating event is properly the onto-
logical aspect of the hermeneutical.
The unique historical aspect of this event of unconcealment
governs, according to its own time, the gradual developments
and the conceptual explosions of even the history of science,
incubating its epochs of discovery and preparing the opportune
situation for the emergence of one discovery or another. Its
experience of the cosmic harmonies a numinous experience, a religious emotion,
akin to what Heidegger has called the experience of Das Heilige, to which the poet
in particular is subject-and evidently scientific poets as well. The "Book of Nature"
(Galileo, Francis Bacon) thus becomes a "sacred" text, and its reading dovetails with
the purposes of the oldest forms of hermeneutics. But the "new hermeneutic" of
Heidegger and Gadamer stresses that the text is always read in historical context,
and is therefore read differently in different epochs, according to shifts, in this
particular case, in the presuppositional bases of science. The Book of Nature is being
read through such fundamental words as space, time, matter, and life, words which
are bottomless in their possibilities, since they open onto the "abyss" (the inex-
haustible source) of physis. Note that the paradigm for the new hermeneutic is once
again the text, in contrast to nineteenth century hermeneutics, born in the romantic
age of genius, which stressed the person of the author, human actions, physiognomies,
and similar psychological and subjective factors, which because of these models
restricted hermeneutics to the humanities. But even on this basis, it could be argued
that natural science as well belongs to the humanities and is therefore subject to a
hermeneutic, in view of Heisenberg's observation that the subject matter of modern
physics is no longer really a nature "in itself," but "the network of relationships
between man and nature" (The Physicist's Conception of Nature, New York, 1958, p. 29).
For the new hermeneutic, this network of relationships is rooted in the contexture
of the primitive, undefinable words of a science, through which the scientist most
fundamentally comes in contact with, not a Natur an sich, but a nature which
"happens" to him through these words, which is thereby in an unending process of
revealing itself.
I I . Unterwegs zur Sprache, Pfullingen, 1959, p. 122.
274 ~heodore lrisiel
rhythms of truth and error, unconcealment and concealment,

serve to put out of play the obstructive prejudices of one gener-
ation through temporal distance and to make way for more
comprehensive prejudgments that provide productive possibili-
ties for a new understanding. Einstein developed his more
comprehensive scheme under the promptings of anomalies that
Maxwell's equations exposed in the Newtonian scheme, which
put Einstein on the path of correcting the defects in Newton's
assumptions: absolute space and time, action at a distance, lack
of justification for the equivalence of weight and inertia-defects
which the level of science in Newton's own day prevented him
from overcoming. But in the larger view, Einstein's achievement
was prepared by Newton himself and the entire tradition of
science. The Newtonian network of presuppositions itselfprovided
the basis for its own displacement.
And the medium of the transmission of this tradition, the
fourth facet of the hermeneutical, is language. Language sustains
and conveys the dynamics of this transmission through its own
subliminal historicity, according to which words used in varying
historical contexts yield new and unforeseen possibilities of
meaning. Language is tacit both in its use, where-like a tool in
its unobtrusive service-we tend to overlook words in favor of
their subject matter, and in the way it reveals this subject matter,
where what is said is pregnant with an indeterminate wealth of
the unsaid. As a tacit means of relating to a tacit reality, language
thus involves a double withdrawal. However, as the medium
without which a man could not function as a man, language is
much more enveloping than a tool that can be put down and
taken up as its function is required. Basically, we don't control
language as we do a tool, we dwell in it as in the fabric of our
Being. Before it is conventional and instrumental and thereby
under human control, language belongs to the situation which
it reveals-receiving its determinations from what it discloses,
from the world which it articulates. It is through this transparent
medium that we discover our world and, at times, can breach its
horizon to glimpse the ineffable domain which addresses us
though it.
Something similar must be said of mathematical language,
despite the stereotype whereby most of us, perhaps from the
bitter lessons of an early education, have come to think of
mathematics as an exact language governed by rigid technique
and proof. We forget the other half, to which mathematical
heuristics addresses itself, namely, the exploratory character of
its formulations and the suggestive power of its symbolism. An
algorithmic language is still akin to the natural language in its
capacity of indefinite yield, always uncovering more of the
world. Mathematics provides a heuristic entry into dimensions of
reality that other languages cannot provide, and indeed obscure.
The source of this purity and fertility lies precisely in its much-
denigrated abstract consideration ofstructures. Its formal patterns
provide insight into the structural reality of the given, much as
maps provide formal insight into a land or a landscape. It is thus
that mathematics in its own way constitutes a continual source
of enrichment of meaning rather than a Sinnentleerung.
With the general traits of the hermeneutical now out in the
open, it might be well to illustrate, through one example, some
of the possible benefits of the alliance between hermeneutical
ontology and the new philosophy of science. One feature of the
new philosophy of science which more logically-minded philo-
sophers find hard to accept is the peculiar circularity of the
procedures that it uncovers in the workings of science. If presup-
positions determine a science in advance in all of its aspects, from
its criteria of explanation down to what it considers to be its
relevant facts, it follows that any defense of these presuppositions
against those with a somewhat different basis-as in the disputes
between Aristotelians and Galileans or between Einsteinian de-
terminists and quantum indeterminists-will entail use of one's
own presuppositions. Each group operates in its own circle of
justifying its own presuppositions through its own presupposi-
tions, in such a way that not only do they not have the same
Theodore Kisiel
standards of explanation, but do not even see the same facts. And
even when it operates normally, without being concerned with
competing paradigms, a science projects theories which are to
be verified and, if need be, modified by facts, but what these facts
are in turn is determined by the theory.
But should this be considered a vicious circle, in the derogatory
logical sense? The hermeneutical approach, in its doctrine of the
hermeneutical circle, indicates otherwise and suggests a new
sense of logic, closer to the actual situation of thinking, in which
the circle is seen as the most naturally logical way of proceeding.
For all understanding involves a circular movement between
the whole and its parts acting reciprocally on each other. In the
course of understanding a sentence, the individual words delineate
the meaning of the sentence as a whole, while the words in turn
get their sense according to their function in the context of the
sentence. When we read a book or view an abstract painting, a
survey of some of the parts gives us an initial sense of what the
whole is about, and this anticipation of the whole in turn de-
termines the significance of the parts. In and through this shifting
emphasis between parts and whole, we gradually develop an
interpretation of the whole in terms of its parts, and of the parts
in terms of the whole. And both parts and whole are understood
in terms of the frame of reference, the larger context of pre-
suppositions that we bring to the work. At times, the reading of
the work may have such an impact on us that it evokes a shift in
our very frame of reference, a shift also brought about in a circular
movement. Even if the shift is radical, challenging our most
cherished presuppositions and calling our entire tradition into
question, we can still only question our tradition from within
that tradition. This ultimate circle offinitude is not self-consuming
and tautological, where we are doomed to vacuously say the same
about the same, only because it contains within itself-in the
inexhaustible source which secretly sustains the tradition through-
out-resources for constant creative renewal.
Now, if it is asserted that something similar happens in the
procedures of natural science, it follows that when a scientist

speaks of interpreting the facts, the facts can no longer be "brute"
facts, but meaningful parts similar to the words that enter into
a sentence. The reductionism of a naive sense-datum theory, in
which a fact is presumed to be stripped of all categorization, will
not do here. And there is a growing recognition that the sense
data of science are never naked facts, but always come heavily
clothed in scientific presuppositions and accordingly manifest
themselves in the form of symbols: degrees Kelvin, ohms of
electrical resistance, Angstrom units of wave length, and so forth.
And like words, these symbols assume a certain range of meanings
when read in different contexts, though this is much more limited
in scope than, for example, the plurivocity of a religious symbol.
Then there is the so-called "stubborn" fact-the anomaly which
resists being assumed into all known contexts, that disturbing but
supremely interesting fact which can lead to new theoretical
discovery, a "phenomenon" in the strongest sense in the word-
that calls out for radical interpretation in order to explicate its
Being, resulting in a shift in the entire linguistic constellation of
science. This was the character of Tycho's data as Kepler read
them: they resisted being garbed in the time-honored circular
orbit. Kepler'S procedure in overcoming this anomaly can be
viewed in terms of the circular movement that hermeneutics
describes.1 2 The first step was the most difficult, namely, to
overcome the ingrained presupposition of circular perfection as
the essence of cosmic harmony, which obstructed his under-
standing of the data in the first eighteen attempts. When he
finally felt logically compelled to break with this long-standing
tradition, Kepler advanced from a circle to an ovoid and finally
to an eJIipse in order to integrate the data for the Martian orbit,
an insight which transformed his data in such a way that it led
to the further integral structures of two additional laws. For
instance, the displacement of the sun from the center of a circle
12. Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften, Stuttgart, 1961, VII, 220.

Theodore Kisiel
to one of the elliptical foci provided a particular insight that

threw light on another integral structure, that of the varying
relationship between planetary velocity and radial distance. C.
S. Peirce described Kepler's achievement as "the greatest piece
of retroductive reasoning ever performed." 13 And retroduction,
Peirce's name for the logic of discovery, operates somewhere in
between induction and deduction, alternately moving from parts
to whole and from whole to parts. The resulting global vision is
not an inductive summary of the particulars, but is only suggested
by them. Their essential structure must be read from the nuanced
hints which they offer. These clues occur in a larger context
which permits them to be recognized as clues calling for a
certain direction of interpretation. By interpreting the clues
which emerge from it, this larger context of our world of presup-
positions is what we really interpret or expose. What we ultimately
interpret are not facts, for facts are never isolated and independent
of their context. Or if you want, it is a world fact, a field, rather
than a atomic fact which is being interpreted. And since the
context from which clues emerge is fundamentally ontological,
it follows that interpretation is not merely an arbitrary subjective
procedure of fabricating intellectual constructions and imposing
them on the data, as modern epistemology by and large asserted.
Interpretation moves in a circle which is guided by the herme-
neutical character of the ontological dimension in which it
occurs.
It follows that if there is logic of scientific discovery, it must go
beyond the standard logic of propositions and its conditions of
truth. If one of the functions of such a rationale ofdiscovery would
be to pinpoint the reasons for entertaining certain kinds of
hypotheses as plausible, as Hanson suggests, then it must refer
back to the presupposed "ideal of natural order," the logos which
establishes the standards whereby specific reasons like simplicity,
symmetry, and analogicity are accepted as indicators of valid
13. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss,
Cambridge, Mass., 1931-1958, I, 31.
theses. But is it possible, over and above the logic of identifying
plausible hypotheses, to articulate a logic for the development
of such hypotheses? Then such a logic would have to be what R.
G. Collingwood called a logic of question and answer. For a
potential discoverer stands in his heuristic field of opportunity
not with the certitudes of intuition but as a questioner. The
decisive trait of the genuine researcher in his sense of what is
worthy of question, his ability to raise the truly productive ques-
tion, to break through more immediate presuppositions and there-
by to see new ways of posing questions and the possibilities of new
answers, by bringing other and more fruitful presuppositions to
the fore. Questioning is precisely the process of laying open and
holding open possibilities. What a logic of question and answer
recognizes as indispensable to modern science is the "principle
of possibility," 14 of what may be there waiting to be discovered,
which the classical logic of propositions excludes. It therefore
entails a shift in the locus of the truth of hypotheses from the old
ideal of exact verification to that of the possible implications of a
hypothesis for further research. Verification must serve discovery.
The researcher who strives to achieve the ideal of verifiability
most diligently is one who has the least to say to us. No doubt the
critical question of verification is essential, but if it overshadows
the receptive question that seeks to discover, it points us down
the barren path of skepticism.
But the openness which lies in the essence of the question is not
the unlimited openness of an "open mind," of an attitude without
prejudices. There are always guiding presuppositions from which
the question is drawn, which give the question a specific sense of
direction. The potential of his situation outlines field vectors
which the receptive inquirer must resolve to follow. In effect, the
questioner first finds himself questioned, so that his own question
is already an answer. The question itself is a decision for one or
another range of possibilities, and therefore a limitation of the
14. R. G. Collingwood, An Essay in Metaphysics, Oxford, 1940, pp. 275-278.

280 Theodore Kisiel
course to be pursued. The logic of question and answer thus

appears to manifest the same features as the Peirce-Hanson logic
of discovery: a predetermined context that frames the form of
our questions and answers and a selective heuristic according to
the lines of this context, which enable us to sort out the relevant
from the irrelevant, the likely from the unlikely, the right
questions from the inept ones. But instead of referring to stan-
dards of explanations and forms of reasoning, it is more situational
in tone and more amenable to temporal treatment. For each
question is suggested by answers to previous questions, and the
entire complex of question and answer is based on presupposi-
tions which are not and never have been the answer to any
question. In the course of a line of questioning, subtle shifts in
these inarticulate presuppositions occur. And the temporal
distance of history brings this shift out into the open, revealing a
breach between promising new premises and older obstructive
prejudices, between truth and error. Here is a model which
seems applicable to scientific progress as well as to other forms
of cultural change. Because of the transcendence of temporal
distance, an Einstein can now ask what questions his prede-
cessors asked in order to arrive at the answers they did, what
constrictive premises prevented them from going further, and
what promising new possibilities are now available for his own
questions, the unknowns which he in his situation must face.
By thus "repeating" his past, he parts with the past and uncovers
his own questions in terms of his own premises.
Finally, in order to come full circle, some brief reference should
be made to the modifications which would result from a her-
meneutical basis to the psychology of discovery. First, a positive
comment on Gestalt and then a negative one on introspective
and associationist psychology.
With regard to Gestalt psychology, it is the merit of Merleau-
Ponty to have recognized the incipiently hermeneutical character
of human Gestalten, and from there, to have thematized the
perceptual field as the primeval hermeneutical topology. For the
characteristic human behavior, already manifest in man's per-

ception, is symbolic in structure. By contrast, the inability of
Kohler's apes to see the box at once as seat and as instrument for
reaching their prize manifests the temporally narrow range of
their behavior and their incapacity to analogize, to perform an
interpretive translation in terms of what Heidegger has called
the hermeneutical "as." This lack of symbolic versatility is further
manifest in the chimpanzee's inability to fictively translate itself
-i.e., its own body-into a variety of points of view at once,
necessary to solve the problems of detouring its prize before
retrieving it and of establishing an equilibrium in a number of
boxes equivalent to the equilibrium needed for bodily support. 15
By contrast, the human infant's mastery of the complex of bodily
relations that enter into the mirror experience points the way to
the mobile translations and refined articulations that enter into
the linguistic symbol. This highly adaptable Gestaltung bespeaks
an indefinite openness to even the organic framework of human
existence, its bodily "context of presuppositions," or what
Buytendijk calls "sensory-motor a priori" 16 which gives meaning
and efficacy to all of its specific bodily movements. The corporal
schema of the human body is already structured like a language;
its gestural system of movements, postures, and roles is structured
such that an indeterminate number of other possible moves are
already present in this particular move; and this is correlated to
the figures and comprehensive horizon ofa world whose suggestive
vectors and interrogative solicitations provide the ensemble of the
paths which my body can take. The body thus set to explore
further is correlated to figures which open onto a world horizon
that admits more and more, and each intertwines into a single
elemental realm of the flesh in which the visible field is pregnant
with invisible sense, with hidden possibilities of restructuration.
For the flesh is Being in dehiscence, the dimension of original
15. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior, trans, Alden L. Fisher,
Boston, 1963, pp. 116-120.
16. Ibid., p. roo.
Theodore Kisiel
gestation and incipient novelty, the realm of perpetual promis-

cuity and parturition, savage luxuriant Being. It is the poly-
morphic differentiation and articulation of this elemental which
is the primeval language, whose silent and invisible logos is
inscribed in filigree in the visible and whose textures gradually
rise to human language. Accordingly, though perception and
language are different, since what I see are perceived things and
significations are invisible, they are not contrary to each other.l?
For they have the same system of differentiations and mutually
gestate and suggest each other. Even a mathematical algorithm
can "go straight to entities no one has yet seen," almost as if its
operational language incorporated a "second visibility."18 It is
thus that Merleau-Ponty places the psychology of Gestalt within
a hermeneutical cosmology of the flesh, whereby he finds in
perception all the characters that Saussure has found in language.
With regard to introspective psychology, the hermeneutical
approach testifies that the conception of the inner life of the
individual scientist is too narrow a context for the understanding
of "the birth of an idea." The life of a physicist is not a matter of
inner states, but of ways of being intimate with the world of
nature. To say that "the context in which a creative idea is born
is either some sort of vague, undefined emotional turmoil or a
chaotic muddle of ideas" 19 is a psychological atavism, which
totally ignores numerous accounts, purged of psychologism, of
the discoverer's moods of Angst, astonishment, wonder, and their
ontological implications. The creative situation may be emotion-
ally charged, but it is hardly an undefined turmoil and chaotic
muddle, a state in which discovery can only be consigned to the
vagaries of "chance"-if it can occur at all. The context of
discovery is one in which directed questions are provoked by the
vectors of a field of opportunity, and therefore an organized
17. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis,
Evanston, Ill., 1968, pp. 213-216.
18. Ibid., p. 153.
19. Taylor and Barron, eds., Scientific Creativity, p. 14.
context, even if obscure. The selective heuristic to which it gives

rise cannot be reduced to the "trial and error" of rats in a maze,
whereby "thinking" is described as a "process of random
scanning."2o The hermeneutical description of the tacit dimension
of discovery outlines an ontological foundation for what in the
testimonials of creative scientists has been attributed to the
workings of the "unconscious," and gives it an organized world
of which it is horizonally aware.
Then there is the recurrent appeal to the "genius" of the in-
dividual scientist, the exaggeration of which not only overlooks
the heuristic context in which his discoveries are made, but also
obscures the halting and unfinished character of his theoretical
achievements. This is not to deny the mammoth and even
obsessive effort of concentration which he must have brought to
bear on the unknown which he made known, but to acknowledge
the finitude and fallibility of even the genius, who glimpsed
something which calls for further refinement, clearer formulation,
and ultimate drastic modification. For things are more or less
discovered, and never discovered outright, never brought from
complete obscurity to total clarity in one fell swoop. And yet,
when it comes to science, it seems that we are not too far from
recent excesses of the cult of the hero. Recall the idolization and
even superstition that followed upon the phenomenon of Einstein.
The press flocked to him for comments on all and sundry subjects,
as one consults an oracle. He was a superman, a thaumaturgist,
and perhaps more-"the consecrated place, the tabernacle of
some supernatural operation." 21 Even his body must have been
different from ours, so that a study of the neural energy and
subtle circuits of his brain might give us some glimpse of the
secret of the sixth sense which evoked the beatific vision of
relativity. One is reminded of a siInilar adulation of Newton in
the eighteenth century, epitomized in Pope's couplet epitaph to
20. Ibid.
21. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Einstein and the Crisis of Reason," Signs, trans.
R. C. McCleary, Evanston, 111., 1964, p. 143.
Theodore Kisiel
him:
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night
God said, "let Newton be," and all was light.
To which Heidegger, in one of his more poetic and Heraclitean

moods, might reply:
But Nature loves to hide from light
So let concealment be and guard the night.
Which does not mean, as is commonly charged, a surrender to the

occult and mystical, but rather a receptivity that looks beyond
all that has already been discovered toward the inexhaustible
source that promises further discoveries now unforeseeable and
even unthinkable. The great Newton himself was not a stranger
to this attitude: "I do not know what I may appear to the world,
but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the
seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother
pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean
of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
Robert Tragesser
ON THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL
FOUNDATIONS OF MATHEMATICS
My aim in this paper is a modest one. I wish to describe in concise

terms the structure of transcendental phenomenology and its
principal application as a universal theory of science.1 I believe
that the terms in which I describe transcendental phenomenology
are amenable to doing phenomenology. I shall furthermore discuss
the problem of the foundations of mathematics from the view-
point of phenomenology and I shall apply phenomenological
analysis to the problem of distinguishing between mathematics
and the empirical sciences as well as to the problem of giving a
characterization of the nature of mathematics.
Any question of the nature of the foundations of a science is

ultimately a question of the possibility of knowledge, and any
such ultimate question will have the form "How can it be known
that p?" where "p" is a variable ranging over the possible
statements of the science. Any science has as its principal task
the securing of a complete and fully validated theory of (the
objects of) a world. At the beginning ofits cognitive investigations,
a science is confronted with a class of possible worlds, anyone
I. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns, The Hague,
1960; Formale und Transzendentale Logik, Halle, 1929.
286 Robert Tragesser
of which, for all that one knows, could be the "real" world. 2
A theory of the sort that I have just described would pick out the
"real" world from among all of the possible worlds. The question
of the possibility of knowledge then takes the form "How is it
possible to know which of all possible worlds is the 'real' world?"
(This is asked relative to those possible worlds of objects that the
considered science asks to know.) I shall describe the phenome-
nological approach to the solution of problems posed by this
question.
3
Given a scientific (cognitive) endeavor, the solution to two
problems will result in its being foundationally secured.
(I) What is the class of all possible worlds from which the
given science must choose the "real" worlds?
(II) By which structures of receptivity is the "real" world
selected?
The first problem is solved by "'immersing ourselves' in the
scientific striving and doing that pertains to the sciences, in
order to see clearly and distinctly what is being aimed at." 3 As
will be seen, the solution to the second problem can be derived
from the solution to the first, and vice versa. Indeed, the ground
of the possibility of solving the first problem is to be found in the
essential structure of experience (Bewusstsein).4 What is this
structure and how is the solution to be found in it?
4
By "intentional experience" 5 is meant any experience (in
the broadest sense-encompassing, for example, perceptions,
2. The notion "real world" will be discussed in sec. 9 of this paper.
3. Cartesian Meditations, sec. 9.
4. This translation was suggested by Professor J. Street Fulton.
5. Are there nonintentional experiences? Yes, on Kierkegaard's analysis, iffaith
is a mode of receptivity.
ON THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF MATHEMATICS 287
thoughts, intuitions, intellective insights, feelings) having the

character of being an experience oj something. The locution "of
something" is intended to convey that in every intentional ex-
perience (I) such and such a something (concrete or abstract,
real or ideal) is meant or intended to be present, (2) something is
given, and (3) what is given has the character of being what one
means or intends to be present. This use of the word "intend" may
be explained as follows: if a person expressed what he intended
to be doing, he would state what he understood himself to be
doing. Likewise, if a person stated what he intended to be seeing,
he would state what he took to be present-what he took as being
seen by himself. The locution "has the character of being" in (3)
is intended to convey that what is given is (a) similar to (some
aspect of) what one intends to be present and (b) presently
indiscernible from what one intends to be present. The reason
for this locution is explained by reference to perceptual acts as
stock examples of intentional experiences: in a perception of a
tree, for example, one intends that a whole tree is present, there
before one's self. What is given-what is actually visible-is (a)
similar to what one intends to be present (namely, the tree) and
(b) presently indiscernible from what one intends to be present
(again, the tree). I will call the meaning or intending component
of an intentional experience "the intentional component," the
intended object as it is intended I shall call the "noematic
component" of an intentional experience, and the component
which is the giving of something I shall call the "noetic com-
ponent." 6 It is through the distinction between the given and the
present that experience of ("transcendent") objects is possible.
In the case of perceptual experiences, this distinction is rather
clear. In looking at a tree, there is that which is visible, and that
which is not. The tree is present, but only that which is visible
is given. However, the distinction between what is given and
6. These terms are well-known and are borrowed from Husser!' It will be more
convenient not to use them later. They are mentioned now to provide the reader with
coordinates for relating this paper to Husser!.
1?obert ~ragesser
what is present applies equally well to experiences of abstract

or ideal objects. Consider, for example, a supposedly valid in-
ference, perhaps involving several steps. When one reflects on
this inference, it is "present." But not all of the properties of the
inference need be given. In particular, the various statements and
the justifications and, hence, the validity of the inference might
not be given. Even though the inference is present and certain
of its properties are given, its validity (or invalidity, if it is
invalid) is still not given, although further reflection and study
may bring this, too, to a state of givenness. These two examples
suggest the following explication of "being present": something
is present if one is aware that certain of its aspects are given, and
if one is also aware that there are properties or aspects which are
not presently given. This explication extends the ordinary
notion of being present, that is, of being nearby, to the case of
abstract and ideal objects. Consequently, because the distinction
between the given and the present makes experiences of objects
possible, we have a notion of objectivity for abstract objects.
I will now explain why intentional experiences have been
selected for special attention. 7
It is rare for an object supposedly present to be completely
given. Achieving the givenness of those aspects or properties of
an object that one intends to be present and which are not yet
given requires further experiences. The intentional component
of an intentional experience provides a sense of which further
intentional experiences are relevant to securing in (having as
given in) experience further aspects or properties of an object
that is currently present. The intentional component provides a
sense of which further experiences could be an experience of "the
same thing" -an experience devoid of an intentional component
would consequently be devoid of any recognition or sense of a
possible relation (for example, a relation of identity) between
what is experienced now and what is experienced later. ~he
7. See note 5.
intentional component provides a sense of which paths through experi-

ence would be relevant to a further experience of the object that
is present. For experiences devoid of intentional components,
so simple an act as looking at a stone, inspecting this side
and that, would be impossible, for there would be no sense
of what relevance an observation of one side of the stone
would have to another; there would be no recognition that
they are observations of different sides of "the same thing."
Indeed, because of the frequent discrepancy between what is
present and what is given (when not all that is present is given),
without an intentional component in experiences there could
be no observation having the character of being an observation
of some thing, e.g., of "a side of a stone." In short, individuation
originates in the intentional components of intentional ex-
periences. Consequently, if an experience is to be an experience
of an individual entity, it must have an intentional component.
The class of intentional experiences therifore consists of those and only
those experiences which can be experiences of individual entities.
5
Let us now return to the question of how to solve problem (I),
namely, the problem of determining the class of all possible
worlds such that a given science must determine which among
the possible worlds is the "real" world. 8 The problem is solved
by fully explicating the intentional components of those in-
tentional experiences which are experiences (e.g., thoughts,
perceptions) of those objects which are such that knowledge of
them is the goal of the given science (e.g., the things of physical
nature in physics). Husserl called "naive" those philosophic and
scientific disciplines which do not base their work and con-
structions on faithful explications of those intentional components
of experiences aiming at the objects of investigations. The
8. See note 2.
Robert Tragesser
importance of eliminating such naivete-namely, by solving

problem (I)-is this. If a science builds on an approximative
conceptualization of the objects it is to investigate, then its
continuing and developing investigations will only have to do
in an approximative way with those objects. Husserl proposed
a method for achieving the required faithful and complete ex-
plications of those intentional components relevant to a given
science. This is the well-known method of reduction (phenome-
nological and eidetic). Essentially, this method (described poorly
by Husserl) involves a shift from the so-called "natural focus"
(Einstellung) 9 of the experiencer to a "transcendental focus,"
that is, a shift of focus from the objects that a science is to in-
vestigate to a focus on the experiences (through the phenome-
nological reduction) and to a focus on the intentional components
of (possible) experiences (through the eidetic reduction) relevant
to that science. This simple conception creates a new philosophic
"science," transcendental phenomenology. It is through this science
that one achieves not only the foundations of a given science, but
of all possible sciences, for transcendental phenomenology will
provide a universal theory of science. Transcendental phenome-
nology is itself a "science" and so requires for its foundations a
solution to the problems (I) and (II). However, because of its
radical character, the formulations (I) and (II) are not ap-
propriate. Instead of searching for a class of possible worlds, it
is more to the point to state the objectives of transcendental
phenomenology: (I) to develop a complete ontology of all
possible worlds, (2) to develop a complete theory of all possible
forms of receptivity (my name for structures of valid or verifying
experiences), and (3) to determine all possible correlations
between possible worlds and forms of receptivity such that the
form of receptivity correlated with a class of possible worlds is in
principle capable of securing a complete and fully validated
theory and of selecting the "real" world from among the possible
9. This translation was suggested by Professor J. Street Fulton.

worlds. Such an accomplishment provides a priori the foun-

dations of any science capable of being founded, for it gives all
possible solutions to (I) and (II). The structure of receptivity
by which the problems represented by (I), (2), and (3) might: be
solved in transcendental phenomenology will be called the
"evidence of intentioll" and shall be described below.
The kind of verbal behavior that is represented by the uttering

of such phrases as "What I meant to say was ... ," "You know
what I mean ... ," and "I can't find the nght word ... " is
familiar. Such verbal behavior suggests that behind every act of
speaking there is a sense of something such that one means to
say it and that accompanying every (intelligent) act of speaking
there is a sense that one is saying what one means to be saying.
Accompanying acts of speaking, in which one is bringing to
expression what one intends to be saying, there is a sense of
rightness, namely, a sense of whether one is saying what one means
or intends to be saying.1 0
Accompanying every intentional experience there is an analo-
gous sense of rightness, namely, a sense of whether what: is given
has the character of being an aspect or property of the object
that one intends to be present. Such a sense of rightness is
necessary for an experience of an individual; otherwise there would
be no distinguishing of objects, no individuation (c£ sec. 4). It
is this sense of rightness that is exploited by those who would
explicate the intended objects of cognitive pursuit; for, if one can
see that what is given has the character of being an aspect of
what is intended to be present, then one can also determine
whether or not a given description applies to the objects that one
intends to be cognizing. Therefore, it is the evidence of intention
10. This analysis is related toJ. F. M. Hunter, "How Do You Mean?," University
of Toronto Quarter?J, XXXVIII, 51-68, and replaces Husserl's "eidetic intuition."
Robert Tragesser
which forms the mode of receptivity through which the problems

of transcendental phenomenology are solved.
7
The foundation of a science is secured by transcendental phe-
nomenology when one gives (I) the class of all possible worlds of
the cognitively pursued objects and (II) the forms of receptivity
which are valid for those objects and which are adequate for
determining which of the possible worlds is the "real" world.
Problem (I) is solved by means of the evidence of intention. But
if problem (II) can be solved at all, it, too, can be solved by the
evidence of intention. If an object that one intends to be present
is to be validly given, the intentional component must provide a
criterion for determining when valid givenness occurs for the
object that one intends to be present. If such a criterion is not
available, then there can never be an experience with the sense
"what is present is validly given in such and such a respect."
For experiences in which such a criterion is not available for the
object that one intends to be present, the object supposedly
present can never be adequately given. The object itself can
never be adequately given, for one has no understanding of what
counts as such. So the object could only be given in an essentially
obscured way-"through a glass darkly." Furthermore, the
solution to (II) follows from the solution to (I): the senses in
which an object may be given validly are certainly part of one's
full understanding of the nature of that object.
The task of the phenomenological foundations of mathematics

is to solve problems (I) and (II) for mathematics. However,
these are problems of enormous complexity. Consider the pro-
blem of determining the class of all possible worlds of mathemati-
cal objects. In the first place, we require an analysis of the notion
"all possible worlds." This, in turn, requires that we have given

a phenomenological foundation to logic and have secured a
logical analysis of the notion "possibility." But supposing that
this has been done, perhaps there are fundamentally different
kinds of mathematical objects, so different that there could be
no conception of them as occurring in the same "world." There
are geometric figures, numbers, infinite sets, intuitionistic con-
structions, algebraic structures, and formal systems. These seem
to be widely divergent kinds of objects, and yet they are, at least
"naively," accepted as being mathematical objects. Here we seem
to be confronting a problem that is "sterile in its complexity."
There is, however, a way out of the difficulty. It is the way that
all foundational efforts of this century have gone: to begin, not
with problem (I), but with problem (H)-or a version of pro-
blem (II). This is (III): to give a full phenomenological analysis
of the structure of mathematical thought. Problem (I) can then
be solved in terms of such a full analysis of mathematical thought
through the following principle: something is recognizable as being a
mathematical object if it can be recognized that it can be completely
thought through mathematically.
The function of thought is to bring the object(s) being thought
about into a state of valid givenness. Indeed, thought can be
adequately characterized in terms of the structures of receptivity
-the forms of valid givenness-that it strives to achieve. Let us
call forms of valid givenness, forms of "evidence." All currently
visible schools of the foundations of mathematics are rooted in
analyses of the nature of mathematical thought-such analyses
formed their starting point. The principal differences between
them are that each has taken a different form of thought as
being fundamental to mathematics; each has construed some
form of evidence as being fundamental to mathematics. Logicists
believed that the properties of mathematical objects were those
which could be derived through the evidence of higher logic,
that is, by "analytic" judgments or, alternatively, by validly
judging propositions to be "analytic." This entails that mathe-
294 Robert Tragesser
matical entities are those which could be described in the

language of higher logic, that is, in class-theoretic terms. The
various schools of Intuitionism each took some form of "in-
tuition" as being fundamental, so that, from their point of view,
the mathematical objects are precisely those whose properties
could be given through the evidence of that form of intuition.
Proof Theory takes as fundamental "Axiom-Evidenz" plus some
form of Intuition (e.g., the evidence of finite manipulation of
concrete objects). The objects of mathematics are precisely those
objects which can be construed as having their properties derived
by, e.g., finite combinatorial manipulation from given "axioms."
Each of the above foundational proposals stems from having
isolated and developed a naiveb recognized aspect of mathematical
thought. Consequently, perhaps each is correct in the sense that
it isolates some aspect of mathematical thought, but each is
incorrect insofar as it absolutizes the aspect selected. How are
we going to decide what is the case? The answer is, by a thorough-
going phenomenological critique of mathematical thought or,
what amounts to the same thing, mathematical evidence.
9
The phenomenological foundations of mathematics will be
achieved through a full phenomenology of mathematical thought.
However, it would seem that such a foundation would be inade-
quate because it would be ontologically neutral; it seems that it
would leave unsolved those problems concerning mathematical
existence that have plagued philosophers and mathematicians
alike. Indeed, some philosophers, for example, Quine 11, take such
problems as being so fundamental that they categorize foun-
dational schools, not according to the forms of evidence that each
takes as being fundamental, but according to the ontological
commitments that each makes (or is willing to make). The impact
II. W. v. O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, Mass., 1961.

of the phenomenological foundation is that it puts questions of

existence into the hands of the mathematicians. Through tran-
scendental phenomenology we describe all possible mathematical
"worlds" and we describe which of all forms of evidence are
capable of securing the real world(s) from among the possible.
Thus, securing the real world is the mathematician's task. When
it comes to the problem of knowing what is the case, "meta-
physical" knowledge 12 is useless. Reality can not be validly
thought outside of the valid givenness of objects save as an
unknown member of a class of possibilities, of possible worlds. 13
Having discussed questions of existence, I shall now give a
characterization of the structure of mathematical evidence.
10
Let us now return to the question of the nature of mathematical

thought (evidence). This question must be settled as a matter of
principle and not by an empirical study of practice-but which
principle? The suggestion that comes immediately to the fore is
that the mathematical sciences coincide in an evident way with
some sharply distinguished subuniverse of the universe of all
possible sciences (abbreviate the latter, "US"). The phenome-
nological sciences, for example, stand out as those sciences in US
whose "truths" can be secured by the evidence of intention
alone. What sharply distinguished this subuniverse from others?
The answer is immediate: a category of evidence-the evidence
of intention. The principle which we seek is what I call Husserl's
Principle of the Categorization of Objectuality (from the
Formale und Transzendentale Logik): categories of evidence and
objectuality are correlated with one another. It is this which
divides US into sharply distinguished subuniverses. I will now
isolate the subuniverse containing the mathematical sciences.
12. This term is used in the pre-Kan tian sense.

13. These remarks were codified in HusserI's Vernunftthesis.
~obert jrragesser
In order to do this I must examine a little more closely how

categories of evidence are determined.
Hussed has observed: "The universal Apriori pertaining to a
transcendental ego as such is an eidetic form, which contains
an infinity of forms, an infinity of apriori types of actualities and
potentialities of life, along with the objects constitutable in a life
as objects actually existing." 14 I shall call such "apriori types
of ... potentialities of life" "parmenidian frames" 15 (e.g.,
rational ego, god, Dreyfus' thinking body [I]). It is the basic
types of parme nidi an frames ("PFs") which determine categories
of evidence. I shall now examine their structure-or at least the
structure of PFs essentially related to mathematics and the
empirical sciences.
Let us call the steps or stages of experience (determined by
the evidence of intention), by which an object is brought to a
state of evidential givenness, "noetic performances." A PF is
determined by
(a) a language L,
(b) a class of noetic performances, N, and
(c) a condition C specifying when, and only when, a sequence
of noetic performances belonging to N brings to valid
(evidential) givenness the state of affairs expressed by the
sentences of L.
Let "N" denote the class of possible sequences (finite and
infinite) of members of N. Let "fi" denote an arbitrary member of
N. Let "I-~s" express that sequences of noetic performances fi
which results in the valid givenness of the state of affairs ex-
pressed by the sentence "s" of L. The C will take the form
l-~s~C[fi, s].
14. Cartesian Meditations, sec. 36.

15. G. Vlastos, "Parmenides' Theory of Knowledge," Transactions of the American
Philological Association, 1946, Fragment 16, pp. 66-77: "For men's minds come to
them at each time in accordance with the mixture of light and dark [truth and
falsity] of their much-wandering frame. For to all men and to each the mixture is
the same as what it thinks. For what preponderates [scil., in the frame] is thought."
We can then define a class of evidences crPF as follows:

<il, s> e:crPF if, and only if,
C[il, s].
What then determines the category (class of classes) of mathematical
evidence? Assume that N has been extended to include "the null
sequence," that is an 0 such that
(y)-C[O, y].
Then crPF is a member of 1;M pF (the category of mathematical
evidences) if, and only if, there is a completely defined function
(rule of correspondance) cp from the class of sentences of L into
N such that
cp(s) = il & il =1= 0 ~ C[il, s], and
C[il, s] ~ cp(s) =1= O.
If s is the case, then cp(s) =1= 0; if s is not the case, then cp(s) = O.
This provides an explanation of why it is that mathematics is
an a priori science: the truths of any mathematical theory are
determined a priori by a function cp which we can assume to be
"computable" by some PF (man or a god). The category of
mathematical evidences can now be seen to be distinct from that
category which founds the statements of the empirical sciences.
In the latter case, there will be sentences e which require verifi-
cation through perceptual experience. The corresponding C will
require that, for such an e, a sequence of noetic performances ne
must be achieved in order to verify e. However, this is not the
case in mathematics. In empirical science, knowing which
noetic performances lead to a verification of a sentence is not
sufficient to determine if the sentence is true, for it may be that
those noetic performances can not be achieved (they cannot be
achieved when the sentence is false). But in mathematics,
according to our analysis, knowing which sequences of noetic
performances lead to a proof of a sentence is sufficient to verify
the sentence.
Robert Tragesser
I I
On the one hand, this work may be developed to give a full

phenomenological foundation for mathematics. The mathemati-
cal analyses of types of proof given by Kreisel,16 Tait,17 and
Feferman 18 is invaluable for this. On the other hand, this work
may be developed to give structure to Heidegger's profound
analysis of the "metaphysical meanings" of mathematical
thought.1 9
16. Georg Kreisel, "Mathematical Logic," in Lectures on Modern Mathematics III,

ed. Saaty, New York, 1965.
17. W. W. Tait, "Constructive Reasoning," in Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of
Science III, ed. Rootselaar and Stahl, Amsterdam, 1968.
18. S. Feferman, "Systems of Predicative Analysis," Jml. of Symbolic Logic, Vol.
29 (1964), pp. 1-30.
19. Martin Heidegger, What Is a Thing?, trans. Barton and Deutsch, Chicago,
1967.
Gian-Carlo Rota
EDMUND HUSSERL AND THE

REFORM OF LOGIC
An unbridled and passionate interest in foundations has often

been singled out as a characteristic trait of both philosophy and
science in this century. Nowhere has this trend been more
rampant than in mathematics. Yet, foundational studies, in spite
of an auspicious beginning at the turn of the century, followed
by unrelenting efforts, far from achieving their purported goal,
found themselves attracted into the whirl of mathematical
activity, and are now enjoying full voting rights in the mathe-
matical senate. As mathematical logic becomes ever more central
within mathematics, its contributions to the philosophical under-
standing of foundations wane to the point of irrelevance. Worse
yet, the feverish technical advances in logic in the last ten years
have dashed all hope of founding mathematics upon the notion
of set, which had become the primary mathematical concept
since Cantor. Equally substantial progress in the fields of algebra
and algebraic geometry 1 has further contributed to cast a shadow
on this notion. At the other end of the mathematical spectrum,
I. The fascinating story of the evolution of the notion of set in modern algebra
remains to be told, perhaps because it is far from concluded. It began in the thirties,
when the discoveries of the nineteenth-century geometers were subjected to rigorous
foundation with the help of the newly developed algebraic methods. By way of
example, the notion of point, which once seemed so obvious, has now ramified into
several different concepts (geometric point, algebraic point, etc.) The theory of
categories offers at present the most serious challenge to set theory.
300 Gian-Carlo Rota
the inadequacy of naive set theory had been realized by von

Neumann 2 since the beginning of quantum theory, and to this
day the physicist's most important method of research remains
devoid of adequate foundation, be it mathematical, logical, or
philosophical.
I t is a boon to the phenomenologist that the notion of set,
together with various other kindred notions, should have become
problematic at this time (as predicted long ago by Husserl);
thanks to the present crisis of foundations, we are allowed a rare
opportunity to observe fundamental scientific concepts in the
detached state technically known as "bracketing." As often
happens, the events themselves are forcing upon us a phenome-
nological reduction.
In high-energy physics, an even worse crisis of foundations is
looming, and yielding a substantive crop of newly problematic
concepts: matter, distance, measurement-to name only a sample
-are losing their former evidence and daily gaining in obscurity,
while at the same time a mass of unexplained and ever more
precise experimental data is waiting for some kind of conceptual
explanation. The focus of the crisis seems to be the concept of
time, heretofore taken for granted and never genetically analyzed
by anyone in the sciences. The need for a reform of this concept
has now been recognized by scientists of all professions, while the
contributions made by phenomenologists to its understanding
are widely ignored.
Can Husserl's philosophy and method help us out of these and
other foundational predicaments? It is our contention that the
way of phenomenology is inevitable in the further development
of the sciences. Because of time limitations, we shall not go far
beyond Professor Tragesser's contribution in justifying such a
2. Most of von Neumann's work in pure mathematics (rings of operators, con-
tinuous geometries, matrices of high finite order) is concerned with the problem of
finding a suitable alternative to Boolean algebra, compatible with the uncertainty
principle, upon which to found quantum theory. Nevertheless, the mystery remains,
and von Neumann could not conceal in his later years a feeling of failure over this
aspect of his scientific work (personal communication from S. M. Ulam).
EDMUND HUSSERL AND THE REFORM OF LOGIC 301
contention. In his footsteps, I shall only sketch a possible be-
ginning of such an enterprise, by an admittedly inadequate and
schematic presentation.
One of Husserl's basic and most firmly asserted themes is-as
his readers know all too well-that of the autonomous ontologi-
cal standing of distinct eidetic sciences. Physical objects (such
as chairs, tables, starts, and so forth) have the same "degree" of
reality as ideal objects (such as prices, poems, values, emotions,
Riemann surfaces, subatomic particles, and so forth). Never-
theless, the naive prejudice that physical objects are somehow
more "real" than ideal objects 3 remains one of the most deeply
rooted in Western culture, and within the West, most firmly
entrenched in the English-speaking world (most of Husserl's
critique of Hume pivots around this one issue). A consequence
of this belief-which until recently was not even perceived as
such-is that our logic is patterned exclusively upon the structure
of physical objects. Mathematical logic has done us a service by
bringing this pattern to the fore in unmistakable clarity: the
basic noema is the set, and all relations between sets are defined
in terms of two of them: a£; b (a is contained in b) and a E b (a
is a member of b). 4 The resulting structure was deemed sufficient
for the needs of the sciences up to a few years ago.
The present crisis forces us into a drastic revision of this logic,
along the lines that Husserl drew. This revision is, I believe, the
unifying intentional theme throughout The Crisis of European
Sciences.
How is such a revision to be carried out? Gleaning from
Husserl's writings, we propose the following preliminary steps.
I. One must first come to a vital, actual realization that the
physical object is no longer to be taken as the standard of reality.
The techniques of phenomenological and existential description
3. Perhaps the clearest exposition and criticism of this attitude is to be found in
Nicolai Hartmann's Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, Fourth Part, Berlin, 1934.
4. Logicians will be quick to point out that this list is incomplete: one should at
least add a (not a) and the empty set. These concepts have become even more
problematic.
Gian-Carlo Rota
have been developed for just this purpose: while at one end they
serve to bracket the physical world and thereby reveal its
contingency, at the other end they bring Qut the experiential
reality of ideal phenomena which used to be-and still largely
are-equivocally reduced to their physical shadows. Unfortu-
nately, among most of us this realization is still moored at a purely
intellectual post. Only a few have carried out the readjustment
of perception that would enable us to gaze at, say, moral or
aesthetic values, inaccessible cardinals or quarks with the same
objective detachment we adopt in gazing at the starry sky above
us.
2. Once the thesis in (I) is admitted, one is led to two "corre-
lative" views of the process of object-formation. First, only when
an object is "taken seriously" and studied "at its own level" will
it reveal its properties within its own eidetic domain. All scien-
tists know this, more often irreflexively, and all scientific work
is done in this spirit. But scientists are reluctant to adopt the
obverse attitude: anything that has been objectified can just as
well be "bracketed," and suddenly be seen as problematic. 5
Every object carries within itself the seed of its own irrelevance.
Thus for instance the development of mathematics has reached
the degree of perfection where the notion of set is turning into a
worn-out coin.
To get out of this impasse, Husser! developed genetic phenome-
nology. Briefly, anything that has been made into an object (in
mathematics, we would say "defined") eo ipso begins to conceal
the original drama that led to its constitution. Most likely, this
drama followed a tortuous historical path, through things
remembered and things forgotten, through cataclysms and re-
constructions, pitfalls and lofty intuitions, before terminating
with its objective offspring, which will thereupon naively believe
5. Following Ortega's thesis that phenomenological reduction is a response to

the problematization of a belief, expounded in Obras Comptetas, Madrid, 1955, V,
379-410, and esp. 544-547.
EDMUND HUSSERL AND THE REFORM OF LOGIC
itself to be alien to its origin. 6 The reconstruction of this genetic

drama is a logical process for which classical logic is totally inadequate.
The examples that HusserI and other phenomenologists de-
veloped of this genetic reconstruction, admirable as they are,
came before the standard of rigor later set by mathematical logic,
and are therefore insufficient to meet the foundational needs of
present-day science. In contemporary logic, to be is to be formal.
It falls to us to develop the technical apparatus of genetic
phenomenology (which, as Merleau-Ponty argued,7 coincides
with the much-looked-for inductive logic) on the same or greater
a standard of rigor than mathematical logic. Again taking as an
example the notion of set, one might begin by formalizing the
ontologically primary relations of being which had to be veiled
as soon as the two relations s; and E were constituted. The
following are a few of them, largely taken from the phenome-
nological literature: a lacks b, a is absent from b (one could
describe in precise terms how this differs from the classical
"a f/= b"), a reveals b, a haunts b (as in "the possibility of error
haunts the truth"), a is implicitly present in b, "the horizon of
a," and so on, and so on. Of great scientific interest is the relation
of Fundierung, which ranks among HusserI's greatest logical
discoveries. 8 The rigorous foundation of the concept of time
provides further examples of such relations: as shown in HusserI's
lectures on Zeitbewusstsein, the relations of object to past and
future are irreducible to classical set theory, and lead to an
entirely novel theory of impeccable rigor.
The stale objection that relations such as the ones listed above
6. This passage is partially adapted from E. Levinas, "Reflexions sur la 'technique'
phenomenologique," in Husserl, Cahiers de Royaumont, Philosophie No. III, Paris,
1959, pp. 95- 10 7.
7. In Les Sciences de l'homme et la phinomenologie, Paris, 1961.
8. The only instance of such a formalization I know of is Alonzo Church's "A
Formulation of the Logic of Sense and Denotation," in Structure, Method and Meaning,
Essays in Honor ofHenry M. Sheffer, New York, 1951, pp. 3-24. Unfortunately, Church's
lead seems not to have been followed up, partly because the reading of his paper is
a veritable obstacle course. We hazard the hypothesis that Husserl's Third In-
vestigation could be subjected to similar formalization without excessive retouching.
Gian-Carlo Rota
are "purely psychological" serves only to underscore the failure

to adopt the attitude described under (I). If there is an evidence
that phenomenology has conclusively hammered in, ever since
the first volume of the Logical Investigations, it is that nothing
whatsoever is "purely psychological." "Tout est dehors," as
Sartre would say.9
3. The crisis of foundations is not limited to full-grown sciences
such as physics and mathematics. As Hussed goes to great length
to point out, it reappears under different guise in the more
"retarded" 10 sciences, such as the life sciences and the social
sciences, as well as in the hypothetical eidetic sciences yet to be
instituted (of which a typical list is found in Ideas I).
The relative lack of success of these sciences is obvious when
measured by the most impartial yardstick, namely, the ability
to make reliable predictions. l l The culprit is to be found-it is
Hussed who speaks-in the hasty adoption of the logic and
methods of physical sciences, in the spirit we have briefly
criticized under (I) . Hypnotized by the success of physics, the
newer sciences have failed to go through an independent
Galilean process of concept-formation, which alone would have
endowed them with an autonomous structure. The very real need
to match the exemplary rigor of physical science was-and is-
erroneously replaced by an uncritical imitation of physical
methods and techniques.
Again, genetic phenomenology, this time with the purpose of
construction (rather than dissection) of ideal objects to be
subjected to yet-to-be-discovered ideal laws and relations, is the
proposed remedy. Whether or not it will work depends on the
inventiveness of scientists and philosophers now active in these
areas.
9. In the well-known note "Une Idee fondamentale de Husser!: l'intentionnalite,"
Situations I, Paris, 1947, pp. 31-35.
10. This felicitous adjective is used in this sense by Jean Wahl in L'ouurage posthume
de Busserl: La Krisis, Paris, 1965.
I I. Lord Rutherford used to remark acidly that all science is divided into two
parts: physics and stamp-collecting.
EDMUND HUSSERL AND THE REFORM OF LOGIC
From (2) and (3) we conclude that genetic phenomenology

intervenes at two stages in the development of a science: at
dawn, by circumscribing an autonomous eidetic domain with
its internal laws; at dusk, by the criticism of that very autonomy,
leading to an enlargement of the eidetic domain. The process
can be schematically represented by the following recurring
pattern:
... ~ideal object~science~crisis~genetic analysis~ideal object~ ...
(a) (b) (c) (d) (a)
It is left to us to develop this program in rigor and detail, with

the help of the awesome amount of material Husserlleft us. Should
this program turn into reality, we may then live to see the birth
of a new logic, the first radical reform of logic since Aristotle.
It is of course all too likely, unless communications between
scientists and philosophers improve, that mathematicians and
scientists themselves, unaware of Husserl's pioneering work, will
independently rediscover the very same way out of their present
impasse. Recall that an inspired genetic analysis of the concept
of simultaneity, carried out by a philosophically untrained
physicist, led to the creation of the special theory of relativity.
Robert Sokolowski
LOGIC AND MATHEMATICS IN

HUSSERL'S FORMAL AND
TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC
Formal and Transcendental Logic is as organic and independent as a

written composition can be. It engenders its own parts, incorpo-
rates them, adjusts them when its growth demands, and finally
subsists in a completeness achieved through its own work. But
like an organism, no philosophical writing can live in sheer
autonomy; Husserl's Logic must absorb words and meanings from
its context-ordinary language and the tradition of philosophy
and science-but it leaves none unchanged. The book builds
itself in assimilating them; it is the assimilation and activation of
sedimented tradition. In comments on his methodology Husser!
says he intends to accept "intellectual formations" from the
tradition and radically investigate their sense by bringing them
to original clarification. But radical investigation and original
clarification mean "shaping the sense anew," bringing it to
clarity and understanding it has never enjoyed.! The completed
I. Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns, The Hague, 1969, p. 10.
(Hereafter FTL.) There are remarks on HusserI's "hermeneutics" on pp. 8-10, 75
(last paragraph of sec. 23b), 76 (first paragraph of sec. 24), and 180-181 (last two
paragraphs of sec. 70). These passages clarify what it means to bring something
latent in sedimented tradition to intuitive givenness in the present.
"Originaliter," or "original clarification," has a technical sense for HusserI,
meaning that the object of analysis is brought to its original way of being present, its
original way of differentiating itself from what is different. This is not a tautology,
but expresses the aim of phenomenological description: to make us aware of the
identity and sameness ofa phenomenon over against the "other" that is proper to it.
LOGIC AND MATHEMATICS IN HUSSERL
book is a constellation of such clarified senses, each determined

in function of the others and brought to its definitive philoso-
phical exposition.
We will follow part of the organic growth of the Logic to see
how Husser! accepts traditional senses of logic and mathematics
and refreshes their meaning in his phenomenology. Two as-
sumptions govern our study. First we shall deal with judgment
forms and the forms of other categorial objects. 2 Judgments are
formalized when we substitute "the moment 'anything whatever'
for each materially filled 'core' in the judgments, while the
remaining judgment-moments [are] held fast as moments of
form .... " 3 Secondly, our judgments must be brought to the
state of distinctness, where the judgment is explicitly executed
and the criterion of noncontradiction comes into play. We go
beyond the morphology ofjudgment forms which is possible even
with vague and confused judgments. Our entire study will be
within the domain of distinctness. 4
Husser! makes two parallel moves to establish the fundamental
difference between logic and mathematics, first in Sections 23
through 25, in Chapter Two of Part I, and secondly in Sections 42
through 45, in Chapter Four of Part 1. The second move exists
tonly as a corrective to the first. It "originally clarifies" the sedi-
men ted tradition.
2. In keeping with FTL, sec. 39, we will always use "judgment" in the broad
sense, covering anything that can be asserted or posited, whether predicatively
formed or not.
3. FTL sec. 12, pp. 48-49; cf. also sec. 6.
4. FTL, sec. 16 shows the move from vagueness to distinctness in the presence of
judgments; sec. 17 shows that the genus "distinct judgment" is the theme of "pure
analytics," the discipline governed exclusively by noncontradiction as a criterion of
validity (secs. 18, 19). See sec. 14 for a description of the "consequence-logic"
governing this domain. The level prior to the distinct judgment and pure analytics
of noncontradiction is the domain of vague or confused judgments, and on this level
we can carry out a morphology ofjudgment forms even though noncontradiction does
not come into question; cf. sec. 13 and sec. 22.
308 Robert Sokolowski
I. Apophantic logic and mathematics in the tradition

In Section 23 HusserI accepts two philosophical traditions, one
from Aristotle and one from Leibniz and 19th century British
mathematics.
Traditional Aristotelian logic provides a discipline that ex-
amines judgment forms and relations among them. HusserI calls
such classical formal logic "apophantic" analysis, to stress its
orientation toward the propositional domain.
Leibniz intoduces another tradition. He considers scholastic
logic as part of a larger whole, the mathesis universalis, which is to
discover and classify formal elements and arrangements like
those determined by classical logic, those found in the formal
science of quantity (mathematics), and those present in any other
argumentation which holds strictly because of its form. HusserI's
treatment of Leibniz is brief in Formal and Transcendental
Logic; a fuller discussion is given in the Prolegomena. 5 There
Husser! distinguishes narrow, wider, and widest senses of
mathesis universalis. The narrow universal mathematics is the usual
formal science of quantities, concerned with more and less, equal
and unequal, large and small. It is sometimes called algebra. The
wider sense comprises Leibniz's ars combinatoria, the formal quali-
tative science dealing with the similar and dissimilar. It examines
arrangements of logical formulas in general, and since algebra
sometimes uses these rules it is subordinated to the wider mathesis
universalis, although its strictly quantitative formulas are not part
of it. The widest sense of mathesis universalis is a formal calculus
that includes both the quantitative and the qualitative sciences,
and formulas and rules either common to both or extending
to other kinds of argumens enforme. At this level "mathematics and
logic form a single science," and scholastic logic is enlarged into
"a universal mathematic in the highest and most comprehensive
sense." 6
5. Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay, London, 1970; Prolegomena to Pure
Logic, sec. 60, pp. 218-220.
6. Prolegomena, sec. 60, p. 219. There is a significant misprint in line 20; "qualita-
tive" should be "quantitative."
LOGIC AND MATHEMATICS IN HUSSERL 30 9
This new tradition has another beginning, with no explicit
influence from Leibniz, in the work of Boole and De Morgan,
who express syllogistic reasoning and traditional logic algebrai-
cally and interpret them primarily from an extensional viewpoint.
Their extensional interpretation leads to paradoxes which provoke
contrived attempts at removal, notes HusserI. He admits it is in
some way legitimate to unify logic and algebra, but these
mathematical logicians do not have the perspective within which
it can be done. They even lack the appropriate interest, he claims,
for they are motivated "not by philosophic reflections on the
fundamental sense and the necessity of a mathesis universalis, but
by the needs of the deductive theoretical technique ofmathemati-
cal sciences .... "7 In this respect they lag behind Leibniz, but
even he cannot properly explain how the science of quantities
and the science of logical formulas can constitute a single formal
mathesis. It is not enough just to subordinate one to the other, as
the mathematicians do, nor simply to put them together, as
Leibniz does.
In an attempt to explain this unity, Husserl interprets the new
mathematical logic, the algebra of classes and relations, as
"formal ontology."8 Formal ontology is defined in contrast to
formal apophantics. The domain of formal apophantics is the
region of judgments, with all the parts, combinations, and pro-
cedures appropriate to them. This discipline uses categories that
refer to meanings (Bedeutungskategorien) , such as judgment,
predicate, subject, proposition, and syllogism. 9 The domain of
formal ontology contains not judgments and meanings, but
7· FTL, sec. 23b , p. 74·
8. FTL, sec. 24 is entitled: "The New Problem of a Formal Ontology. Character-
ization of Traditional Formal Mathematics as Formal Ontology." Formal ontology
must also be distinguished from material or regional ontologies, which examine
eidetic necessities proper to certain regions of being, such as the spatial, the animated,
the personal, etc. Regional ontologies are the result of generalization, not formal-
ization. Cf. Ideen I, The Hague, 1950, secs. 8-10. The term "formal ontology" is
original with Husserl; cf. S. Bachelard, A Study of Husserl's Logic, trans. L. Embree,
Evanston, Ill., 1968, p. 37, and FTL, sec. 27, p. 86.
9. FTL, sec. 27b, p. 88. See also sec. 67 of the Prolegomena.
Robert Sokolowski
objects in their formal relationships and arrangements. It uses

categories that refer to objects (Gegenstandskategorien) , such as
object, sets, numbers, states of affairs, facts, relations, property,
combination, whole, and parts.1 o
Formal ontology and formal apophantics are defined against
one another, but they are inseparable because all the forms of
objects "have being for us '" only as making their appearance
in judgments." 11 The structures examined by formal ontology
are there only in correlation to judgments. The unity between
formal ontology and formal apophantics is a unity of correlation,
not one in which either is deduced from or absorbed into the
other. A judgment (which in its normal state is a judgment
expressed with conviction) is correlated to a fact, because there
are facts only when there are judgments; still, to talk about facts
is not to talk about judgments, and vice versa; and to formalize
systematically facts and their relationships, in formal ontology,
is not to formalize systematically judgments and their intercon-
nections, in formal apophantics. The two domains are distinct
but correlative. 12
HusserI has inherited two philosophical traditions, the Aris-
10. FTL, sec. 27b, p. 88; secs. 24-25, pp. 77-79.

I I . FTL, sec. 25, p. 79.
12. There is a problem about English terminology here. Husserl speaks of Sach-
verhalte as the objective correlates to judgments, and Cairns translates this "affair-
complexes." The term is often translated "states of affairs." Both versions are un-
wieldy in English and have little connection with ordinary discourse; I prefer to
use "facts" instead. The normal state of a judgment is the positing, asserting state,
and the proper correlative to that is a state of affairs we are convinced about, a fact.
This term is much more natural in English. Even later, when we must talk about
vermeinte Sachverhalte als solche (sec. 45), "supposed states of affairs as such," it is quite
proper to speak of "supposed facts as such," because we normally do talk about "the
facts as I see them," "possible facts," etc. Furthermore the term is versatile; we can
talk about the form or structure of facts, or even about syntactic parts of facts.
Therefore we will use "facts" for Sachverhalte. Our usage is like that of Strawson in
his essay "Truth," Proceedin,gs of the Aristotelian Society, supp. XXIV (1950) pt. 2,
133-143. Strawson's position is similar to Husserl's, particularly on the correlation
between facts and judgments (which Strawson calls statements). Of "fact," Strawson
says it is "the only possible candidate for the desired nonlinguistic correlate of
'statement'" (p. 135).
LOGIC AND MATHEMATICS IN HUSSERL 31 I
totelian and the Leibnizian-mathematical, and has purified the

sense of each by contrasting them to one another. Formal
apophantics is his acceptance of scholastic logic, formal ontology
his appreciation of mathematical logic.1 3 So far his exposition
has been controlled by the tradition he receives. He has not yet
attempted to disclose the "original presence" of the things
themselves by a direct analysis of the phenomena. This he does
in his second assault on the problem, in Chapter Four, Sections
42 through 45. For the moment we omit consideration of Chapter
Three.
2. Apophantic logic and formal ontology in their intuitive presence
In Section 37 Husserl asks, "Is it already clear what this properly
signifies: to be focused sometimes on judgments as such and
sometimes on objectivity as such ... ?" 14 The problem is this:
since the objects and structures examined in formal ontology
arise only when we execute judgments, i.e., only when we bring
about the elements and structures examined by formal apo-
phantics, is there truly a difference between formal ontology and
formal apophantics? Formal ontology studies objects only insofar
as they have become objects of judgment; "how then have we
gone beyond a formal judgment-theory?" 15 Is there really a
difference of focus in the two inquiries? Can we explicitly
recognize the difference?
Husserl introduces a new factor to answer his question. In
Section 40 he begins to talk about "the interest in cognizing."
What we have hitherto described is now put into a new horizon,
a new context: the concern with knowing. Apophantic and
ontological forms will now be examined in regard to the work
13. In FTL, sec. I I Husseri gives a formulation of the sense oflogic which is even
more primitive historically than the one he achieves by contrasting apophantics to
formal ontology. This early appreciation oflogic has some positive aspects that will
be retained by Husseri, but it contains many confusions as well, as he shows.
14· FTL, sec. 37, p. 105.
15. FTL, sec. 38, p. 107. The question is raised two more times in sec. 38, at the
end of the first and the second paragraphs. It is repeated in sec. 41.
3 12 Robert Sokolowski
they do for knowledge. This horizon was not made explicit in

Sections 23 through 25, and so the treatment of formal ontology
and formal apophantics had to remain incomplete. With this
new context formulated, Husserl repeats his question once again
in Section 41 and starts answering it in Section 42.
When we wish to know a certain object, we are concerned with
the object itself. We make judgments about the thing, not about
our minds or about our judgments. We may make more and
more judgments about our object as we get to know more about
it. We say, "The animal is brown, and it is small, and it runs fast,
and it barks." We can complicate the process further by making
judgments not directly about the object, but about a fact con-
cerning the object: "The dog is brown because all his ancestors
were the same color"; "It is too bad he is that shade of brown."
Or we can make judgments about something that originally
arose as part of a fact; we can compare attributes-"this shade
of brown is darker than that"-or we can speak about "brown-
ness" as such, thematizing a property and judging about it.
Throughout these elaborations the underlying object of our
concern, "this animal," remains the same. Also facts and parts
of facts remain the same when we go on building upon them.
Husserl says that syntactical operations have a dual function:
they create the syntactic state for their underlying object (they
are form-creating) and they preserve the identity of the created
form when they build still further syntactic forms upon it. 16 A
fact is created as such when we judge, and it is preserved as a
fact when it becomes part of a still higher syntactic structure-
when, for instance, we give reasons for it, declare it to be regret-
table or good, or discover facts about facts.
Husserl describes the syntactic elaboration of an object in
Section 42. The major point is that all such operations take place
without a change of focus. We are constantly busy with the
object or with facts about the object; we never turn our attention
16. FTL, sec. 42d, pp. II4-115.

to our minds or to our judgments. All structures are fashioned

in the objective focus; we never need to leave that focus, turn
to judgments and fetch a category or structure, and impose it on
objects or facts. Now keeping this focus on objects, we can
formalize-eliminate any content in what we are busy with. We
are then left with the skeleton of formal structures, the grid left
as a residue of our categorial activity. We still have the empty
forms of facts, relations, reasons for facts, relations between facts
and relations, groups of objects, sets and subsets of them, and so
on, all taken formally. Even in this move we do not abandon
our objective focus. The formal science we obtain when we try
to elaborate systematically what formal structures, relations, and
operations can be carried out in this focus is formal ontology, the
science we naively inherited from Leibniz, Boole, and De Morgan
in Section 24. We now have read it off the work of knowing and
have presented it originally, phenomenologically.I?
We never turn away from objects during the process we have
described. How and when do we make this turn? In Section 44a
Husser! once again raises the question he repeated so often in
Sections 37, 38, and 41; in Section 44b he "phenomenologically
clarifies" the change of focus.
As we keep learning more about the object of our concern, our
judging goes along harmoniously. The object and its facts remain
there for us, as we make further judgments about it. But some-
times the harmony is broken and some facts change modality,
becoming doubtful, for instance, or questionable or just probable
"facts." Every fact is subject to such perturbations.1 8 Such
disturbances need not change our focus. We are still concerned
with objects and facts, but now we also have to contend with
some purported facts that are not simply accepted as the case.
But a new mode of consciousness is possible in which we become
17. FTL, sec. 42a, p. I I I .

18. We do not go below the level offacts here. Objects are also subject to pertur-
bations, but that is on the level of prejudgmental perceptual experience and calls for
a separate analysis.
Robert Sokolowski
concerned with verification. Having ceased to accept all facts as

real, we now can take steps to make a decision in regard to those
that have become disturbing; we now focus on what we have
meant as supposed by ourselves. We are no longer absorbed in
objects and facts; we now focus on some objects and facts as
supposed. We lose the naivete of consciousness and become aware
that there are not only objects and facts, but also facts and objects
as meant, as supposed; besides being, there is also the opined.
The disturbance of the naive harmony of consciousness, and
the rise of an initial critical attitude, can develop in two ways.
We can become aware of what we supposed as supposed, and
then find that things are indeed as we opined, so the harmony of
thoughtful experience is reestablished. Our conscious life has
suffered a distention, but no break. 19 Or we can find that what
we supposed is not the way things are, that in further experience
the facts falsify what we meant earlier. Then we abandon our
earlier supposition. This break is much more radical. We now
focus on what we supposed merely as supposed, as definitely
cancelled and disqualified from stating what is the case, as only
an opinion and a wrong one. 20 At this point we have a full-blown
reflection on our opinion, on our meaning. We are now complete-
ly disconnected from objects and facts. We are in the sheer
apophantic focus as opposed to the objective focus.
Strictly speaking, Husserl does not have to go so far as complete
cancellation of an opinion to bring out the apophantic focus. In
the less radical case, when we consider a supposed sense as
supposed and then find it to be correct, we already have a focus
on the apophantic domain and a difference from the objective
focus. But the move is much clearer when we cancel the position
entirely, so the extra step is not without value.
A consciousness that is not critical will not fully appreciate the
difference between facts and facts as meant. It will generally live
in the objective focus, captivated by facts, and its awareness of
19. FTL, sec. 44b/b (second paragraph), pp. 122-123.
20. FTL, sec. 44b/b (third paragraph), p. 123.
the supposed as such will be only marginal. People often do not

appreciate the difference between what is and what is meant as
meant, between being and opinion; in areas in which they have
not been educated, it may be impossible for them to distinguish,
so they may take all opinions as stating what is the case. But a
scientific consciousness is one that takes a professional interest
in this difference. 21 Scientific obsession with verifying is precisely
the explicit awareness that there is a difference between what is
and what is meant. It lives first in concern with things and
elaborates facts pertinent to its objects, but then it sharply
changes focus and considers what it has meant as a mere suppo-
sition, to be purified and tested against further experience of
things and formulation of facts. The scientist, says HusserI, lives
in such zigzag motion between supposition and facts; this
awareness and motion defines him as a scientist. And because he
is aware of this verifying dimension, he is also aware of varieties
and degrees within it; he is sensitive to the differences among
necessity, probability, factuality, guesses, clues, and the like, an
awareness that is by no means shared by everybody.22
Through Section 44 HusserI makes us aware how we focus on
judgments. He discloses the origins, the primitive presence of the
apophantic domain. This provides a phenomenologically justified
access to the domain we had naively accepted from the Aristo-
telian tradition in Section 23. The sense of logic is being shaped
anew.
The primitive, authentic presence of the apophantic domain
is brought about by showing that this domain differentiates itself
from the domain of objects in three respects: it initially comes
to light when disturbances in the validity of objects and facts
arise; it comes more radically to light when certain objects or
purported facts are totally disconnected from the worId and its
objects, when they are cancelled as not acceptable, as having been
21. FTL, sec. 44b/c, pp. 124-126.
22. Ibid. Proof of this in ordinary experience is the way scientific hints, clues, or
hypotheses are often presented as established truths by commentators.
Robert Sokolowski
merely supposed at one time; finally, apophantic structures are

teleologically oriented to being brought back to the domain
of objects and facts, they are meant to match things and facts,
and even when they are cancelled and abandoned they have
this sense of abandonment because they fail to match the way
things are. 23 In its origins and in its finality, the domain of
meaning is derivative from the domain of objects.
Since judgments are disclosed only as different from objects and
facts, we are sure that to focus on judgments is different from
focusing on objects and facts. The judgment has been disclosed
and defined precisely as that which, in the truth interest and the
enterprise of knowing, differentiates itself from objects and facts.
It should be clear now why HusserI takes such great pains in
Section 42 to show that facts, relations, and other syntactic
transformations of an object do not depart from the domain of
objects and do not involve a change from the objective focus;
such objective syntactic structures are often mistaken for judg-
ments by philosophers and logicians. 24 When this mistake is
made, all hope is lost of keeping the two domains distinct and
of revealing the true status and original presence ofthe apophantic
sphere.
In the objective focus we are concerned with objects and facts.
In the apophantic focus we are concerned with supposed objects
and facts as supposed. If we were to state the last two sentences
23. Strawson, "Truth," p. 137: "Of course, statements and facts fit. They were
made for each other." For Husserl the domain of objects and the world are not in
turn derived from any other domain as long as we remain in the natural attitude.
The world and its objects are the naturally underived and first presences for con-
sciousness. But the transcendental turn moves us to a new viewpoint, from which
objects and the world are disclosed as constituted by absolute consciousness. This
change of view only takes place in Part II of FTL.
24. I find it hard to see how Bachelard avoids this difficulty in A Study of Husserl's
Logic, p. 34, where she also seems to say the process of nominaliz ation moves catego-
ries belonging to the objective sphere into the apophantic sphere of propositions:
"Ultimately all categories of the object in formal ontology ... exist only insofar as
they playa role in judgments. What is more the operation of 'nominalization' ... "
makes these categories of the object appear as constitutive elements of the proposition.
See below, note 27.
in the context of Hussed's first approach to the problem offormal

ontology and formal apophantics, the approach given in Sections
23 through 25, they would appear contradictory, and so would
the following sentence which occurs in Section 45: "Judgments,
in the sense proper to apophantic logic, are supposed predicatively
formed affair-complexes as supposed ... " 25 To retranslate this
sentence in the terminology we have chosen (where we use
"facts" instead of "states of affairs" or "affair-complexes") would
yield the following: "Judgments, in the sense proper to apophantic
logic, are supposed predicatively formed facts as supposed ... "26
Such statements appear contradictory because, in the initial
formulation of Sections 23 through 25, states of affairs (affair-
complexes) and facts are relegated exclusively to the objective
sphere while judgments are in the apophantic sphere. In the new
formulation, supposed states of affairs, or supposed facts as sup-
posed, are in the apophantic sphere and are equated with
judgments. 27 The new formulation is more acceptable philosophi-
cally because it shows how each focus is possible and intrinsically
relates the two domains. The first formulation merely accepts
both from the tradition and places them over against each other.
Hussed's new formulation is possible because he sets the two
domains within a horizon which is unmentioned in the first
formulation, but which gives both domains their sense: the ho-
rizon or context of the concern to know. There is an objective
domain and there is an apophantic domain only for a conscious-
ness concerned with knowing. The consciousness that undergoes
25. FTL, sec. 45, p. 126. Italics added.
26. Supra, note 12, where "fact" replaces "state of affairs" and "affair-complex."
27. A similar statement occurs in sec. 49, p. 134, where Husserl equates "the
proposition as a sense, the supposed categorial objectivity as supposed." On p. 83 of
A Study of Husserl's Logic, Bachelard distinguishes the objective focus from the
apophantic focus by attributing to the former an interest in possible adequation while
denying it to the latter. In focusing on judgments the following prevails, in her
opinion: "Then I consider the judgment as a simple sense without focusing upon the
objects which this sense intends, hence without placing myself in the situation of
possible adequation." But it seems to me the apophantic focus can well involve
interest in adequation. Also, she puts "categorial objectivity grasped qua sense"
into the objective focus. But shouldn't it be apophantic ifit is grasped as a sense?
Robert Sokolowski
pleasure or pain, the artistic consciousness, and the consciousness

rapt in phantasy do not recognize these domains. To understand
the senses of the domain of objects and of the apophantic domain,
we have to consider them at work in the knowing consciousness.
We would get no help at all by discovering more and more
formal structures within either domain; we must move into a
new dimension and start talking about intentionalities. This is
why HusserI introduces the theme of concern with knowledge in
Section 40 and why he returns to it in Section 46, immediately
after distinguishing the two domains. In Section 46 he proceeds to
analyze truth and evidence, which are exercises of intentionality
and not properties of formal systems, whether apophantic or
ontological.
The two notions of truth HusserI distinguishes in Section 46
are just refinements of what we have already encountered. First,
truth is the correctness of judgments which are found to match
facts; it occurs after we have reflected on a judgment-a supposed
fact as supposed-and then experienced its adequation to intuited
facts. Secondly, truth is the actual presence of the fact or object
as that which saturates our supposition when it is brought to the
things themselves. This second truth allows the first truth,
correctness, to occur. HusserI then gives corresponding definitions
of evidence as the noetic performance proper to each kind of
truth: the experience of correctness, and the experience of actual
presence as saturating.
HusserI stresses the relevance that the distinction between
objective and apophantic domains has for scientific consciousness.
However, his principles can be put to work in the wider sphere
of political life. The possibility of political life depends on the
capacity to speak. Speech makes possible a kind of agreement
which excludes physical violence; Aristotle says that the man who
is by nature an outcast from political life is a "lover of war,"
like an "isolated piece at draughts," obeying neither grammatical
rules oflanguage nor legal rules of politics. 28
28. Politics I, ch. 2, I 253a3-7.
LOGIC AND MATHEMA TICS IN HUSSERL
Nature gives us speech to express the expedient and inexpe-

dient, the just and the unjust, and this use of language suffices
for political life. 29 But if there is to be the kind of political life
where opinions can be subject to criticism, a further exercise of
speech is necessary: one in which it becomes possible to focus
upon what is said, distinguish it from what is, and to match it
against facts. It must be possible to adopt the apophantic focus
-now, of course, in regard to judgments or suppositions that
are not formalized. When we critically examine our own past
opinions, we reflect on our own judgments in this way; this is
what Husserl has described. But if we are to examine other
speakers' judgments, it must be possible for us to be apophanti-
cally oriented toward them as well. We must be able to detach
what they say from them and accept it as supposed, then to
decide its truth according to the facts and not by reason of the
character of the one who has held the opinion. The apophantic
focus is the condition allowing critical toleration of another's
opinion. Here, as in so many other instances, Husserl uses our
awareness of our own past as an analogue for our experience of
other persons: "If it is a matter of another's judging, then, in
case I do not believe too, I have the 'mere idea' of the other's
belief that has such and such a content: I have a presentation
analogous to a memory of some past belief of my own 'in which
I no longer join' but which I nevertheless accept now, in memory,
as my previously exercised believing."3o Such detachment of
judgments either from our own past or from other speakers is
also a function of the "ideality of meaning" which Husserl
describes earlier in Formal and Transcendental Logic. 31 A judgment
29. Politics I, ch. 2, 1253aI4-18.

30. FTL, sec. 16a, p. 59.
31. FTL, sec. 2. Compare this to Augustine's Confessions X, sec. 9: "In memory
also are all such things as we have learned of the liberal sciences and have not
forgotten, lying there as if in a more inward place, which yet is no place; and of
these I have not the images but the things themselves." Trans. F. Sheed, New York,
1944, p. 174· See also X, sec. 10.
or any other sense can appear as identically the same throughout

many repetitions and in many speakers.
The apophantic focus allows that level of political life which
is carried on in debate or dialectic, a form of controversy proper
to man living under the order of law; it does not take place in
transpolitical or prepolitical initiatives or violence. Sciences like
physics are one form of this critical but tolerant conscious life.
Husserl acknowledges a debt to Leibniz in regard to mathesis
universalis, but Leibniz's hope of reconciling conflicting points
of view, in science and in politics, may also be at work in phenome-
nology, with similar deep-seated limitations. 32
3. Formal logic and pure mathematics
We have been working with three dimensions: the objective
domain, the apophantic domain, and the concern with know-
ledge. We have been able to clarify the objective focus and the
apophantic focus. Logic has traditionally been exercised in the
apophantic focus and its attitude has been critical. It tests
apophantic formulations for consistency, with a view to their
service in knowledge. Logic does not focus on the objective
domain, but the apophantic structures it examines are appre-
hended as geared toward objects, facts, and the world. So it does
have ontological reference indirectly. Logic carries on its activity
while the truth interest, the concern with knowledge, is kept
alive; its apophantic themes are kept within the horizon of
knowledge. We now move to distinguish pure mathematics from
logic, and will do so in two steps.
a. Pure formal mathematics, the "mathematics of mathemati-
cians," is defined against formal logic by disengaging the concern
with knowledge or application. Like formal logic it is apophanti-
cally oriented and so it focuses on facts or states of affairs as
32. On Leibniz's program of intellectual pacification see D. Mahnke: Leibnizens
Synthese von Universalmathematik und Individualmetaphysik, Stuttgart, 1964, Intro-
duction, sec. 3, pp. 9-14; this study originally appeared in Husserl's Jahrbuch.
Probably the greatest weakness is the conviction that agreement of minds pacifies
human affairs.
LOGIC AND MATHEMATICS IN HUSSERL 321
supposed, objects as supposed, relations as supposed; it is a
"science that has to do with nothing but apophantic senses." 33
But it disconnects the teleology of what it examines. It studies
these formal structures as ends in themselves.
Apart from this, pure mathematics may be just like formal
logic. Both are essentially concerned with consistency, but
mathematics stops with consistency while logic sees consistency
as a condition for truth. "Mathematical existence" of a certain
form means simply that the form is consistent in a theory within
which it can be derived. 34 The actual formulas articulated in a
logical deduction may appear exactly the same as those in a
mathematical deduction; even the symbolism may be the same.
The difference between the two appears neither in the symbolism
nor in the deduction, but in the sense each has: one is done with
truth interest operative, the other with truth interest shut off.
This simple difference-which could be recognized only after
we introduced the horizon of a concern with knowledge-allows
Husserl to make the bold claim that "in this manner the proper
sense of 'formal mathematics' ... at last becomes fundamentally
clarified. Here lies the sole legitimate distinction between formal
logic and mere formal mathematics." 35
b. There is another dimension, a fourth to the three mentioned
at the beginning of this section, which we have been using im-
plicitly: the process of deduction. Husserl introduces deduction
in Chapter Three, Sections 28 through 36. We skipped this
section when we moved from the early formulation of formal
ontology and formal apophantics in Chapter Two to the later
formulation in Chapter Four; we must now fill this gap in order
to round out our understanding of pure mathematics.
Chapter Three deals with the theory of theory forms and its
33. FTL, sec. 52, p. 14I.
34. FTL, sec. 52, p. 140: "Thus it is understandable that, for a ... 'pure' formal
mathematics, there can be no cognitional considerations other than those of 'non-
contradiction,' of immediate or mediate analytic consequence or inconsistency,
which manifestly include all questions of mathematical 'existence'."
35. FTL, sec. 52, p. 14I.
correlate, the theory of multiplicities. 36 A theory is a series of

judgments (or other propositions) in which some are derived
deductively from others. If we formalize such a concatenation
of judgments we are left with a theory form; for instance if we
take Euclidian geometry and disregard its "content," the spatial
sense of the judgments comprising it, we have the theory form
of this deductive science. If we do the same for other theories we
acquifl~ many theory forms; let us name them A, B, C, and so on.
HusserI then introduces the notion of a theory that will examine
theory forms: it will articulate possible theory forms, show
relations among them (for instance, that theory form A includes
theory form Q), show how certain ones can be transformed into
others (for instance, that Q and R can be combined to yield
theory form M), and so on. This highest formal science will be
the theory of theory forms.37
A theory form is correlated to a multiplicity. This is a group
of objects determined only by the characteristic of being governed
by that theory form. All the x's and y's governed by theory form
A are the multiplicity A; all those governed by theory form B
comprise the multiplicity B, and so on. In analogy to the theory
36. In his translation of the Logical Investigations, Findlay uses "manifold" for
Mannigfaltigkeit (see Prolegomena, sees. 69, 70) while Cairns employs "multiplicity."
We use the latter since we are primarily concerned with FTL.
37. Is the theory of theory forms itself a deductive theory? No, for there are no
"axiomatic theories" from which all the others can be derived.
It would be helpful to clarify Husserl's use of "levels" and "strata" in FTL, sees.
51,52. (I) First paragraph of sec. 51: Analytics has two lower strata, morphology of
judgment forms and analysis of noncontradiction. Then a third level of analytics is
added, the theory of theory forms and theory of multiplicities (p. 138). We now have
three layers. (2) Second paragraph of sec. 51: Cutting across these layers is another
distinction between two strata: analysis as mere concern with senses, and analysis
with the truth interest active, as a concern with possible truth. This duality is possible
on each of the three layers including the highest one, where it will yield a pure
mathesis of noncontradiction, and a mathesis of possible truth. A pure mathematician
can, of course, exclude any concern with possible truth. (3) The "three levels" of
analytics mentioned at the beginning of sec. 52 are the three layers noted above in
(I). (4) But the "essential stratification" mentioned later in sec. 52 refers to the
option between mere noncontradiction and possible truth as noted in (2) above. I
believe this interpretation agrees with Bachelard, A Study of Husserl's Logic, pp. 40-42.
of theory forms, Husser! proposes a theory of multiplicities which

will elaborate the various possible multiplicities and show the
relationships and transformations holding among them, for
instance, that multiplicity B can be included within multiplicity
A, or that multiplicities Qand P combine to produce T.
A theory form is made up ofjudgmental or propositional forms;
a multiplicity is made up of objects.
In Chapter Three Husser! places theory forms within the
apophantic domain, and multiplicities within the objective
domain. A theory form would then be placed over against its
multiplicity. Husser! has to do this because of the rough way he
sets the apophantic domain over against the objective domain
in Chapter Two, where he simply accepts traditional positions
and does not phenomenologically differentiate the two domains.
In Chapter Four Husser! presents his new, phenomenologically
legitimate, differentiation of the apophantic from the objective.
The apophantic domain of senses receives its senses from the
objective domain, but interprets them as supposed. A judgment
is a supposed fact or state of affairs as supposed. Hence a theory
is now a concentration of supposed facts or states of affairs as
supposed.
A multiplicity can also be peeled off the objective domain, and
then it becomes a group of supposed objects as supposed. When
treated apophantically, it is a group of object-senses, while a
theory is a concatenation of judgment-senses. 38 In this new
formulation the theory form and its multiplicity collapse into
the same domain: they are both within the apophantic sphere,
no longer set over against each other as in Chapter Three. This
38. FTL, sec. 53, p. 142: "As the correlate of a possible systematic theory, we
have a possible multiplicity, a possible object-province that it theorizes systemati-
cally. When this possibility is left out of account, its place is taken by a multiplicity,
not of objects simpliciter, but of supposed objects as supposed-that is to say, object-
senses, as substrate-senses, that are adapted to function harmoniously in a judgment-
system as substrates of predications. The substrate-senses, however, are only funda-
mental object-senses belonging to that theory, which has itself been reduced to the
pure theory-sense."
Robert Sokolowski
"reconciliation" is possible because of the new definition of the

apophantic domain in terms of interest in knowledge.
When the pure mathematician restricts himself to the apo-
ph antic domain and disconnects the truth interest, he has within
his scope both theory forms and multiplicities; multiplicities are
still those objects as supposed, the object-senses, which are
governed by a system of states of affairs or facts as supposed or
relations as supposed. The pure mathematician thus has two
possible areas of study: he can work on the theory forms and
engender propositional forms or even theory forms, "or he can
work on the multiplicities and engender classes whose laws and
relations he can examine. He can do both algebra and set theory.
But he does all this without concern for the application of his
theory forms in the actual exercise of knowing the world. The
multiplicities he discusses need not be thought of as possible
multiplicities, as groups that somehow can be active, formally,
in the thoughtful experience of things, facts, and the world. "It
becomes apparent that, when questions about possible truth are
consistently excluded in this manner, and the truth-concept
itself is similarly excluded, one has not actually lost any of this
logical mathesis; one still has the whole of it: as 'purely' formal
mathematics." 39
4. Formal ontology versus apophantic logic and pure mathematics
It only remains to show where formal ontology fits in the new
formulation of apophantics and mathematics. Pure mathematics
is defined by disconnecting the concern with knowledge; we now
activate that concern again, and the mathematical system we
have elaborated "becomes related to any possible objectivity
whatever." 40 Husserl says mathematics now "lies once more
within the theory of science, where it exercises functions of
39. FTL, sec. 52, p. 140. Husser! adds that in practice the mathematician may
well "contaminate" his thinking with concern for application, but this is accidental
and he is not defined by this, any more than a greedy physician is defined as physician
by his concern with gain; cf. Plato's Republic, 341C.
40. FTL. sec. 54a, p. 143.
criticism." 41 But although it has indirect relevance to objectivi-

ties, this science is still apophantically oriented and does not turn
to direct contemplation of objects in their syntactical formations.
As long as we are concerned with judgments, our attitude is not
"formal ontological." 42
We now take an intermediate step. Suppose we recognize the
teleology of the apophantic forms we study; we appreciate their
tension toward objectivities, their aim at fulfillment in objective
formal structures. We follow that teleology and contemplate the
objective formal structures that fulfill apophantic meanings; let
us contemplate them as fulfilling such meanings. For instance,
we examine the formal structure of facts as that which saturates
formal structures of judgments. We are now using the two senses
of evidence Husserl discussed earlier: evidence as having objects
or facts themselves, and evidence as experiencing the correctness
of judgments that are adequately fulfilled. At this point we are
still not doing formal ontology, because the scope of our interest
includes both the apophantic and the 0 bjective domains. We exam-
ine the obj ective domain as fulfilling the apophantic. This contam-
ination of our concern by the apophantic has to be removed.
It is removed when we simply contemplate the objective
domain without co-meaning the apophantic. We activate only
one sense of evidence: having objectivities and facts themselves. 43
If we explore the categorial formations that can be carried out
here, we will be doing formal ontology. We have recovered the
purely ontological focus by eliminating the apophantic sphere
that was introduced in Section 44. We have critically returned
to the place from which we naively began. The whole journey
was made within the horizon of truth interest, the concern with
knowledge: apophantic logic is the critical testing of categorial
formulations with a view toward having them given in immediate
41. Ibid.
42. FTL, sec. 54b, p. 145.
43. Facts and objectivities can be given only as saturating empty intentions, but
we may thematize them simply as given, not as saturating.
Robert Sokolowski
presence; pure mathematics is the disconnection of any concern

with knowledge; formal ontology is the sheer absorption in given
categorial objectivities themselves, without explicit concern with
the critical apophantic domain. All these disciplines remain
purely formal and limit themselves to questions of consistency.44
HusserI does not discover new deductive techniques or formal

systems; the old mathematical and logical "phenomena" remain
the same, but they are viewed from a new perspective. To handle
the foundations of mathematics and the relation between logic
and mathematics, we cannot stay with either discipline but must
move to higher ground for a new, phenomenological viewpoint.
We appreciate formal sciences in their place within intentionali-
ties. Differences then appear which are not manifest to the
mathematician: "In his positivity, living entirely with a view to
discovering new theoretical results, he is not in the least interested
in changes of attitide or focus that convert an equivalent into an
equivalent. Transitions from one thing to another that is
evidently its perfect correlate yield 'the same,' in his sense of the
phrase." 45 The moves made HusserI seem pointless to the
mathematician-they are moves that do not go anywhere-
because they work whithin differences he cannot recognize in
his professional perspective.
In Part II, Formal and Transcendental Logic analyzes, formally,
the consciousness which saturates empty intentions. It moves
beyond logic of consistency into truth logic, then turns to the
experience of individuals and examines the content, as opposed
to the form, of thoughtful experience. Finally, it approaches the
problem of phenomenological experience of consciousness itself.
These themes situate mathematics and logic within ever wider
44. All apophantic structures can be mapped on to the ontological domain; even
complete theories can be so projected. HusserI speaks of the case when "a deductive
theory is understood to be, not a system of judgments, but a system of possible,
predicatively formed, affair-complexes and, in its entirety, a distinctively formed
unity belonging to a categorial objectivity" (FTL, sec. 54b, p. 147).
45. FTL, sec. 54b, p. 147·
horizons, up to the context of philosophical thinking itself, but

they move to perspectives beyond the limits we have set in this
essay.46
46. I am grateful to Paul Weiss and Thomas Prufer for helpful comments on both
the substance and style of an earlier draft of this paper.
PART FOUR
EMOTIONS, ART, AND EXISTENCE

George Schrader
ANGER AND INTER-PERSONAL

COMMUNICATION
I. The problem of anger
There are two major problems posed by the phenomenon of

anger: what is it? and what are we to do about it? Philosophers
have been primarily concerned about the second question and,
thus, have treated anger and kindred emotions more from a
normative than a descriptive standpoint. Psychologists and
psychiatrists, on the other hand, have been primarily concerned
with manifestations of anger and the conditions under which it
arises and is discharged. More often than not the descriptive
accounts of anger have been coupled with recommendations for
the optimum manner of disposing of it; similarly, philosophical
proposals for responding to anger have assumed a phenome-
nological account of it. It is apparent that the descriptive task is
more demanding than has been recognized by either the psy-
chologists or the philosophers. Because of the complexities in-
volved and the clear priority of the descriptive question, I shall
be more concerned with the constitutive features of anger than
with moral responses to it.
The dominant ethical tradition in Western philosophy since Plato
has tended to view human emotion as fundamentally irrational
and thus as an unreliable guide to action. Essentially chaotic and
potentially destructive, appetite and emotion must be brought
under the control of reason. Kant has spoken in eloquent defense
of this tradition in equating the morally good will with the
33 2 tieorge Schrader
completely rational will. Indeed, to speak of "rational morality"

is to employ a redundant expression. If morality is a rational
program for controlling the impulsive life of man, morality itself
can easily be viewed as an elaborate and sustained defense against
the emotions. In considering anger we are confronted with one
of the basic and most commonplace human emotions. Anger can,
therefore, be taken as a paradigm for the emotions and used as
test case for evaluation of this dominant strand in Western moral
theory. If the anthropological assumptions on which this tradition
rests should prove to be incompatible with the actual nature of
human emotion, its normative recommendations would be in
serious question.
2. Aggression and the source of anger

Psychologists have tended to classify anger as one of the negative
emotions which derive from aggression. Some theorists regard
aggression itself as fundamental and others see it as a response
to frustration. Simply to classify anger is not to explain it. If
anger is a special form of aggression, we need first to understand
human aggression itself and, in particular, its manifestation in
the form of anger. Otherwise we have merely introduced ad hoc
postulates from which nothing useful can actually be derived.
I must confess to a certain puzzlement that psychologists have
viewed aggression as fundamentally negative. For reasons which
I hope to make clear, this strikes me as highly dubious general-
ization about the presumably universal disposition toward self-
assertion. It has, in addition, a theoretical and conceptuallimi-
tation in that it proposes to derive all negative emotions from
a single basic negative disposition in human behavior. This
approach disallows the possibility of a positive and/or negative
expression of the same human concern. It thus denies a priori
that emotions might be converted or logically related within a
more complex and possibly dialectical unity. This criticism
applies most directly to those theories which take aggression to be
ANGER AND INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION 333
both fundamental and primitive. To derive aggression from
frustration does not, however, suffice to remedy the situation.
Advocates of the frustration hypothesis view all aggressive
behavior as fundamentally negative and, in that respect are in
basic agreement with those who take aggression to be primitive.
The only question here is whether the basic negative disposition
in human behavior derives from a fundamental negative tendency
or from interference with a more fundamental set of drives.
The frustration theory has some merit in that it assumes a more
basic mode of human assertiveness which, if blocked, produces
aggression. Even though this account of aggression fails to explain
adequately how fundamental positive drives give rise to negative
(aggressive) behavior, it refuses to account for negative emotions
by positing negative instincts. It seems to me far sounder from a
theoretical point of view to regard negative emotions and be-
havior as a qualified response rather than as an innate disposition.
It is important to distinguish anger from aggression, though I
think we need to push the matter a bit further by demanding a
reassessment of aggression itself.
As psychologists use the term, aggressive behavior is assertive
behavior which aims at the injury or destruction of its object.
Even if we take aggression to be primitive, there is clearly a
positive element involved. A self which attacks an object is, at
the very least, asserting its own existence and affirming its right
to be. Insofar as man is an active being for whom self-assertion
is a condition of existence, to be is to be aggressive. This is, of
course, partially a semantic matter and a question of how we
are to use the term "aggression." We can, if we choose, use the
term aggression to refer exclusively to negative forms of self-
assertion or the negative aspect of self-assertion. The resultant
difficulty is that we may be led by our use of the term to accept
some sort of general negative disposition termed "aggression."
There is no doubt that the term has come to have this negative
and somewhat pejorative connotation even in everyday use,
connoting hostile action. The Latin root of the term is, however,
334 George Schrader
quite innocent of any such connotation and means simply to

approach, or move toward. The etymology of terms is not always
philosophically instructive, but in thise case I am convinced that
it is.
Why is it that a word which originally meant simply to move
toward or approach (someone or something), has come to be
construed as hostile or offensive? If approach itself is taken as
offensive in the sense of making an attack, it seems that we have
come to equate approach with attack. To what degree has our
language settled the issue by offering us the alternatives attack/
defense? Is to approach another necessarily to attack him such
that the very meaning of the terms can be equated? If so, our
language seems to commit us to a twofold view that (a) to approach
someone is to attack him and that (b) encounter with another
entails conflict with him. It would be foolish to make too much of
the development of terms in our language; still, this may provide
us with a clue to the understanding of the phenomenon in question.
It suggests the following questions which need to be cleared up:
( I) How are hostile behavior and the feelings which accompany
it related to self-assertive behavior? (2) Under what circumstances
does assertive behavior become hostile? (3) Does the encounter
between assertive subjects inevitably generate conflict?
In his fascinating book The Territorial Imperative, Robert Ardrey
develops and expands the work of Lorenz on aggressive be-
havior in animals. Both writers suggest that there is a strong
analogy between the instinctual behavior of animals and the
moral behavior of men. " ... the territorial imperative-just
one, it is true, of the evolutionary forces playing upon our lives-
is the biological law on which we have founded our edifices of
human morality." 1 Agreeing with Lorenz that aggression is
instinctual though adaptive, Ardrey derives from it all those
positive characteristics such as altruism, sympathy, charity,
friendship, and love which we customarily list among the moral
I. Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative, New York, 199, p. 351.

virtues. "The territorial imperative may have fashioned one
biological morality for this species, another morality for that. But
the territorial principle has perfected the amity-enmity complex
as the supreme morality for ours." 2 Ardrey's thesis, stated in the
simplest possible terms, is that the positive values of what he
calls "amity" derive from the response to hazards and enmity-
hence the "amity-enmity" complex.
Ardrey's contention that human morality is continuous with,
and based upon, man's biological constitution radically chal-
lenges the conception of morality and nature entertained by
Plato and his followers. Whereas philosophical moralists of the
Platonic school view morality as the rational control of nature,
Ardrey interprets it as nothing more than the extension within
the human sphere of deeply rooted and universally practiced
modes of animal behavior. Intriguing though Ardrey's general
thesis about morality is, we must forgo exploration of it here for
the sake of our immediate topic. It is Ardrey's and Lorenz'
analysis of aggression which is of special interest in pointing
toward a more positive interpretation. We need not view
aggression as instinctual in man to acknowledge that it has much
in common with the aggressive behavior of animals. If there is a
strong positive relationship between animal behaviour and the
moral behavior of human beings, it derives largely from the
richly patterned character of the aggressive instincts.
3. Aggression and conflict

As Lorenz and Ardrey interpret animal aggression, it is at once
positive and negative. It is positive in asserting the rights of the
animal over territory which it has staked out for itself. If Ardrey
is correct, the establishing and defense of territory is the most
powerful of all aggressive drives in animals or men. The very
notion of a "territory" is highly interesting in that it connotes a
2. Ibid., p. 275
George Schrader
boundary which delimits the space of the animal. It is his

particular space and the space of those with whom he is amicably
associated. The animal asserts his claim or right to this space,
as it were, by marking it off and announcing his occupancy of it;
his possession of the space or territory is thus a precondition of his
defense of it. His territorial behavior serves to mark off an inner
space and an outer space and thus to define the territory of
potential friends and enemies. It is the defense of territory which
disposes the animal to accept friendly associates and thus to
overcome his natural enmity toward members of his own species.
Though outwardly directed against those who might trespass,
the defensive posture has positive inward repercussions in
disciplining and uniting members of the "in group." It is almost
as if the animal defines himself through the marking out and
defense of his territory. The most interesting aspects of his
behavior stem from the way in which he uses this territory. The
conflict potential with any other territorial creature is obvious.
The fact that each is capable of staking out a territory for himself
means that he can also challenge the territory of others. Terri-
torial delimitation thus carries with it the potentiality if not the
inevitability of conflict.
To the extent that an animal identifies itself with its territory
and defends against trespass as a threat to its existence, the animal
literally inhabits its territorial space. If we are to understand
animal aggression as the activity of marking out, occupying, and
defending such territorial space, then aggression is a highly
positive form of behavior. To be sure, the act of marking out any
territory at all has consequences for other animals sharing the
original open or free terrain. In itself, however, it is no more
a hostile or negatively aggressive act than walking or eating. The
very fact that animals move and thus occupy space establishes the
possibility of conflict. Only to the degree that the animal defines
itself through opposition to others does aggression have an
essential negative component. The sheer fact of multiple ex-
istents in a common space or territory makes conflict, with its
concomitants of attack/defense, more or less inevitable. But even
here the positive element in such conflict should not be suppressed.
If the animal can assert itself only through response to challenge,
conflict itself may, as Ardrey has shown, have positive results-
and, I would add, even be taken up within the essentially positive
project of self-definition.
How strong an analogy there is between aggressive behavior
in animals and men we need not determine. Suffice it to say that
there is a suggestive analogy and one that we can profitably
exploit. Man is an active being who asserts his existence through-
out the space he inhabits. A great deal has been made of man's
temporality, but he is at least as much a spatial as a temporal
being. The space of his existence is not confined to the outer
limits of his body. He is where he acts and extends himself to the
borders of his concern. To exist is thus to be assertive and, in the
nonpejorative sense of the term, "aggressive". If a single human
individual were the sole being on earth, his self-assertiveness
would have no negative implications. At least it would not be
correlated with the disposition to attack and defend. It may well
be, of course, that for both animals and man action has social
implications in that it aims to identify the self through differentia-
tion from others as much as trough self-expression. Conflict may
be, as I think it is, a necessary condition of individuation.
We need not assume, however, that the approach to and even
the contest with other members of the same species is necessarily
or intrinsically hostile. A territory, for example, implies both the
drawing of a boundary and the recognition of that boundary.
Lorenz makes much of the fact that conflict between animals
frequently assumes ritualistic patterns of a nondestructive sort.
This could be, as he tends to assume, because the original aggres-
sive instinct is deflected for the sake of preserving the species or,
alternatively, because the initial aggression was not so unam-
biguously hostile and negative as Lorenz assumes. It is interesting
to note that Hegel made much the same point about human
conflict, namely that the parties to the conflict must be preserved
George Schrader
if their respective aims are to be fulfilled. Though the conflict

itself is essential and negativity is a necessary factor in all human
relationships, conflict need not be destructive. It would not be
difficult to assimilate Lorenz's analysis of aggression to Hegel's
assessment of human conflict. We would not be thereby com-
mitted, however, to a reductionist interpretation of morality.
Instead of saying that morality is simply the modification of
instinctual aggression, we could say with equal justification that
morality simply brings to self-conscious expression those themes
that are operative in animal behavior.
The consideration of aggression is important, I believe, for
two reasons. First, the explanation of aggressive behavior in men
has most frequently been founded on the appeal to hostile
instinctual tendencies analogous to animal behavior. If animal
behavior itself turns out to have a more complex aim and thus
to involve both positive and negative determinants, the inter-
pretation of human aggression must be revised. Secondly, the
exploration of animal aggression leads us to the consideration
of conflict and its significance for assertive and defensive be-
havior. It is here, I believe, that we find our most important clue
to the understanding of negative emotion and action on the part
of human beings. Rather than attempting to explain such
seemingly hostile feelings as anger by appeal to more general
negative dispositions, it is more illuminating to understand how
anger arises and how it functions with respect to the basic
conditions of human life.
4. The characteristics of anger

Before pursuing this clue, namely, that conflict may provide the
key for the understanding of human anger, it is important that
we consider the characteristic features of anger. In the psycholo-
gicalliterature, anger is generally treated as one of the negative
emotions, reflecting a disposition to attack the threatening person
or object. Originally the term referred to a sorrow or affliction
and we still speak of a wound as angry in the sense of being
inflamed. Webster offers the following definition: "A strong
passion or emotion of displeasure, and usually antagonism excited
by a sense of injury or insult." This definition is interesting in
suggesting that anger is essentially a socially determined emotion.
If, for example, anger always involves a sense of indignation, a
sense of being wronged or injured by others, the feeling of anger
is mediated by a moral concept. In his rather brief treatment of
anger in his Lectures on Anthropology, that is precisely what Kant
said of anger, namely, that it involves a sense of being unjustly
or unfairly treated. Moreover, he regarded it as do many psycho-
logists as a more or less specific and passing response. Kant
distinguished between what he termed an "affect" such as anger,
which comes and goes like a gust of wind, and passions such as
hatred. The difference consists in the fact that whereas anger is an
immediate response to a situation, the passions are highly reflec-
tive and well formed dispositions. The distinction between anger,
on the one hand, and the stronger emotions expressed in hostility
and hatred, is in close agreement with Kant. Anger, hostility,
hatred, rage, and violence may share features in common and
even be developments out of the same original situation. Thus
anger might well be a component feature of each of the more
intense negative emotions. Our problem, however, is not to
map the whole field of emotion but rather to analyze one fairly
specific and commonplace variety of emotion-anger itself. Let
us stipulate, therefore, that by anger we shall mean that sort of
immediate response in which the individual feels threatened or
injured.
From what has been said thus far it is apparent that as an
emotion anger represents a determinate form of human con-
sciousness. If anger involves a sense of being threatened or
injured, then this "sense" must be a component of the feeling of
anger itself. In stressing the essentiality of feeling in the con-
stitution of anger we need not exclude behavior, though we are
committed to the denial that behavior can properly be regarded
340 (;eorge Schrader
as "angry" independently of the feeling of being angry. We do

assume that when people act in certain ways (e.g., when they
are fighting), they must be angry, and our inferences are often
correct. What we do in such cases is correlate familiar behavioral
expressions of anger with the feeling of anger and assume that
both factors are present. This need not be the case, however,
since the same behavior form may be and sometimes is motivated
by quite different emotions. Nor need we deny that the feeling
of anger always involves a tendency toward a behavioral ex-
pression. The fact that such expression may be inhibited does
not mean that it is unessential to the feeling of anger.
To be angry is then to feel angry; therefore we would not say
that a man who acted as ifhe were angry but lacked the appropri-
ate feeling was in fact angry. This does not entail, however, that
to be angry is necessarily to be reflectively aware of one's anger.
To have an angry consciousness does not entail that one recognizes
it as such, though it does imply that one is capable of such
awareness. In principle, the angry individual is always in a
position to give an account of his anger. The question before us
is, of course, what is to be included in such an account.
One thing is clear, I believe, namely, that anger is not a simple
unanalyzable negative feeling. Nor is it a purely subjective affect.
On the contrary, it seems to be a phenomenon of interpersonal
relatedness. Following Kant's suggestion, we may further
characterize anger as directed at another person and as about
some feature of the relationship between them. Viewed in this
way, anger is derivative from and a fundamental expression
of human conflict. To use a crude but possibly instructive meta-
phor, anger is a short circuiting which occurs in the encounter
between persons. The wires pop and sparks fly, but that is not
all there is to anger. We must look to the circuitry if we are to
find the short. The metaphor suggests that anger is simply a mani-
festation of our concrete existence with others in a common
world.
It is, I think, a mistake to regard anger as purely negative. On
ANGER AND INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION 34 1
the contrary, it is one of the most important everyday ways in
which we are conscious of our involvement with other persons.
Anger has been related to love, but we might relate it also to
affection. To be affectionate toward someone is to be favorably
disposed toward him, accepting, or as Webster says, "tenderly
attached" to him. The very word affectionate connotes being
affected by and thus attached to others. If the opposite oflove is
hatred, the opposite of anger may well be affection. Still, it would
be mistaken to assume that these feelings are mutually exclusive.
If anger represents a short-circuiting within a relationship,
affectionate attachment might be a necessary condition of anger
rather than something excluded from the feeling of anger. If
anger is a feeling of displeasure or-better-distress which results
from the short circuiting of a relationship, the relationship itself
should provide a clue for understanding both its origin and
significance.
The language I have just used in describing anger is not, I
think, altogether accurate but needs revision. To regard anger
as the result of conflict or friction in a relationship is to treat it
as secondary to the experience in which it originates-and this
misses the whole point about anger. Philosophers and psycholo-
gists alike have been disposed to treat feelings, including anger,
as a result of other primary experiences and, hence, to regard
them as private and subjective. More precisely and accurately
stated, anger is not the result of a short circuiting but the ex-
perience of that short circuiting as it occurs. We cannot, I believe,
give a satisfactory account of anger in causal terms by reference
to disturbing situations. Anger is the disturbance itself as lived in
and experienced by the person involved. The disturbance is a
feature of the situation and, hence, an essential element in the
anger. Anger is of such vital importance in human affairs
precisely because it is one of the most direct and concrete ways
in which we are aware of our involvement with other persons.
In knowing that we are angry we know not simply how we feel
but how we are related to others. The affective tone is not the
34 2 lieorge Schrader
whole of anger but only the emotional quality which permeates

the experience. The analysis of anger must look to the form and
structure as well as to the emotional tone of it.
What then of the structural features of anger? Is it the case that
anger is always toward another person such that to be angry is
always and necessarily to be angry at someone? If so, the in-
tentional form of anger is clearly in evidence. But even if it be
granted that anger is intentional in that sense, we must ask the
further question whether anger is always about something. If
anger were a simple feeling of mild hostility, it might well be
analyzed by reference solely to the person toward whom it is
directed. But it is doubtful that it could seriously involve the other
person if it were a mere negative feeling. If, as I have suggested,
anger is an experienced disturbance within a relationship, then
it must be concerned with some feature of that relationship.
Normally when we are angry at someone we are prepared to
state why. "I am angry at you because of such and such." In
principle we are always in a position thus to explicate our anger.
Such explication does not consist in specifying the cause of our
anger, but rather in making clear what it is about the relationship
which is experienced as disturbing. The "about" concerns that
feature of the relational situation which has gone awry. I might,
for example, be angry with a friend because he failed to keep
an appointment. My anger is directed toward the friend but has
as its ideational content the failed appointment. I would never
say that I am angry about my friend for failing to keep the
appointment. Nor would I or could I sensibly say that I am
angry at the missed appointment. My friend serves here as the
terminus of the feeling of anger because and only because he is
the terminus of the relationship. The relationship itself has defi-
nite content and consists of such things as making and keeping
appointments.
The analysis I have suggested above is seductive because of
its rather neat simplicity. I am not at all sure, however, that it
offers an accurate characterization of anger. We have assumed
all along and correctly, I believe, that anger is registered by an
individual subject and, hence, that angry feelings and behavior
are directed outward toward other persons with whom he is invol-
ved. It suggests, without explicitly stating it, that the anger is al-
ways directed at another person rather than toward oneself and,
further, that it cannot be shared. Most of us would be prepared
to say, I would venture, that the feeling of anger can no more
be shared than a toothache-and toothaches have been no-
toriously private experiences as viewed by philosophers. There
are significant differences, however, which make the comparison
with toothaches seriously misleading.
The toothache is presumably a feeling I have about my own
tooth. It is a way of experiencing the presence of my tooth in my
body, and does not refer in any essential way to other persons.
Anger is different from a toothache in at least two important
respects. First, anger does refer to a relationship and has social
rather than merely personal meaning. Secondly, anger may be
felt on both sides of a relationship such that the anger of the two
individuals can be said to interact. The situation is quite ob-
viously different between two friends who just happen to have
toothaches at the same time and two friends who are angry with
each other.
The fact that anger is interpersonal in that it concerns a re-
lationship between two persons makes me uneasy about saying
without qualification that it is directed at someone. The diffi-
culty with putting it in those terms is that it analyzes anger as
focusing unambiguously on the other person and away from
oneself. If my contention that anger is an experienced disturbance
in a relationship is true, so that anger is always about some
feature of that relationship, then I cannot consistently maintain
that anger is necessarily focused on the other person. Surely I may
be and often am angry with myself for having forgotten an
appointment or otherwise failing to keep commitments to my
friends. Anger is, of course, not just disappointment, but a feeling
that the disappointment should not and need not have occurred.
344 George Schrader
I can be angry at another person, angry at myself, and, in some

instances, angry at both of us because of a situation to which
both of us have contributed-for example, a quarrel. The
question is whether anger, even when ostensibly directed toward
other persons, involves a reflexive element.
Suppose, for example, that--'-:"as not infrequently occurs-I am
angry at one of my children because he has been insolent. Not
only do I feel thwarted in eliciting his cooperation, but I ex-
perience an impairment of my sense of parental self-esteem. In
any situation where I feel angry because I have been improperly
treated-and I use the term "improperly" advisedly as a broader
concept than would be connoted by such terms as "unfairly" or
"unjustly,"-I make implicit appeal to a sense of what would
have constituted proper or appropriate treatment. My anger
bespeaks my sense of eliciting an unsought for but, more im-
portantly, unwarranted response. I am angry because the other
person did not fulfill the role demanded of him by my conception
of mysel£ To ignore his response or to accept it indifferently
would be to accept myself as one meriting the insolent response.
Note that I assign a role to both myself and the other person;
moreover, I expect and demand that these matching roles be
maintained. My anger at my child is the measure of my sense
ofloss due to the fact that the ideal role is not concretely fulfilled.
But is it just the other person who fails to fulfill it, so that my
anger may consolidate itself unambiguously toward him? This
would be true only if I could ignore my concrete involvement
with him in eliciting and receiving the unwanted response. I
seek to be respected as a parent but am treated insolently. It is
not a case merely ofthe nonideal child responding inappropriately
to my role as ideal parent. An important aspect of my anger is due
to the fact that the child's insolent response involves me with
him concretely in a way that disturbs me. And here enters the
inescapable dilemma confronting all parents. Shall I respond
to him out of my anger, meeting him on the ground which he
has chosen for the encounter; or shall I retreat to my role as
parental figure and demand that he respond as a properly
respectful child? What I mean to suggest here is that there is
something like what Sartre termed "bad faith" ingredient in my
anger. This is the reflexive feature of anger which makes it
impossible to interpret it as a pure negative feeling toward one-
self or other persons.
Ifwe acknowledge this essential reflexive component in anger,
we can easily see why it cannot be satisfactory to deal with anger
by moving to the moral plane. To regard anger as an accidental
and irrational component of human communication is to identify
oneself and others abstractly and remove oneself from the arena
of potential conflict. Yet, it is precisely in this arena that we ex-
perience ourselves and others concretely. The anger must be
worked through and worked out because that is the only way in
which we can hope to integrate our ideal roles with the actuality
of our situation. It is quite mistaken, I believe, to regard anger
as fundamentally destructive. If my analysis of anger is correct,
it should be clear why this is the case. Anger is not simply a
negative and hostile response to insult or injury, but the ex-
perience of distress in a positively structured relationship. If, as
I have suggested, anger testifies to a shorting in the circuitry of
human relationships, the working through of anger should aim
at repairing the damage and establishing a more satisfactory
pattern of interaction. The attempt to cope with anger by
subjecting it to rational control by a higher moral faculty is to
deprive anger of its own rational meaning. Anger has its own
logic and its intrinsic rationality. We need be neither grudging
nor apologetic in granting it full status as a distinctively human
emotion.
5
I have deliberately stressed the immediate, transitory character
of anger as an emotion for two reasons. First, I have wanted to
emphasize the fact that as it occurs in everyday life, anger is
George Schrader
frequently quite immediate and relatively uncomplicated. In its

simpler manifestations it is neither violent nor destructive.
Secondly, I have tried to avoid the confusions which might so
easily result from identifying anger with more complex emotional
phenomena in which it may be ingredient. The thesis I wish to
defend is that simple anger as it arises in everyday life is a perfectly
normal, natural, and healthy expression of interpersonal in-
volvement. There are no serious problems about expressing and
responding to anger unless some sort of interference occurs.
The fact that anger is an essential element in healthy human
intercourse is indicated by the fact that when the expression of
anger is inhibited and repressed, the individual becomes seriously
disoriented in relation to other people and, to some degree,
toward himself. In his marvelously revealing book, Psychotherapy
with Children, 3 Clark Moustakas shows in case after case how the
child succeeds in overcoming his crippling conflicts with others
through focusing his anger. This is not to say that the disposition
of anger is the only emotional factor involved either in the
constitution of the disturbances or in their resolution. His study
does make it eloquently clear, however, that being able to express
anger as it occurs and to have it in focus on its proper object
is absolutely necessary for the health and happiness of the child-
and, by implication, all human beings. Those moralists who have
advocated that human conflict be elevated to a higher rational
level where fairness and justice can dictate a formal disposition
of the matter fail to appreciate the essential role of anger in
concrete experience. Moral canons cannot be ignored; but it is
imperative that they not be accepted as a substitute for working
through the conflict at the emotional level. Otherwise, moral
precepts are bound to alienate the individual from himself and
others-the more so the more conscientious he is.
Anger is disturbing even in its simple everyday form. In fact
it is a disturbance. But the real troubles to which anger gives rise
3. Clark Moustakas, Psychotherapy with Children, New York, 1959.

result from the repression and modification of anger. To repress

anger is to deny something about the situation in which one
finds oneself and thus inevitably to alienate oneself from that
situation. To repress anger is to exist in bad faith by being angry
while not permitting oneself to feel or express the anger. When
anger is repressed for whatever reason, a pernicious toxin is
introduced into the emotional life of the individual and indi-
rectly into the social world in which he participates. Repression
varies in type and degree but the result is basically the same in
all cases. If, for example, anger is denied with respect to a
specific person it stands ready for displacement and thus may be
expressed in an altogether inappropriate situation. Because the
anger has already been disengaged from the situation in which
it arose and dislocated from its true object, it cannot achieve
satisfaction through displacement. The original alienation which
stems from the denial of its true object leads to a second alienation
when it is projected onto a substitute object. There is something
obviously false and wrong in a situation where I express my anger
toward someone at whom I am not actually angry and for
something which concerns him not at all.
Or repressed anger may fester and give rise to resentment.
Anger thereby loses its specificity and becomes a general negative
feeling toward the other person. When anger is forced under-
ground, as it were, it follows a devious course and demands
satisfaction. If anger toward others is totally denied it can take
only an inward turn and issue in depression and, possibly,
suicide.
In speaking of repression we have made tacit reference to that
factor which accounts for the more serious, destructive modifi-
cations of anger. It is human anxiety which motivates the
repression of anger as well as the transformation of it into hatred,
hostility, and rage. If depression represents the internalization
of generalized anger, hostility represents the outward expression
of the same phenomenon. It is, I think, extremely difficult to
assess the precise role of anger in depression and hostility; they
(;eorge Schrader
represent defensive reactions in which anxiety plays the dominant

role. Clinical evidence seems to indicate that in both instances
there are traces present of situated anger. The therapeutic work
requires that these strands be sorted out and recognized for what
they are. It would be mistaken, however, to regard such traces
of anger as if there were unaltered bits of experience encrusted
in a containing matrix. In depression and hostility, anger has lost
virtually all its specificity and has little if any focus.
To some degree at least the individual knows and must know
what he is doing with his own anger. No matter how anxious
he is, he has options available. The form and direction of his
response depends upon his choice. This is not to say that all
choice is lucid, rational, or responsible. It is to emphasize that
volition is an important factor in the modification of anger or
any of the emotions. Hatred, whether directed toward oneself
or others, is conspicuously willful. It doubtless has a component
of anger, but is highly potentiated by a willful response qualified
by anxiety. Unlike anger which accepts the other person, often
with genuine affection, hatred totally refuses the existence of the
other and wills his destruction.
Finally, it is important to take cognizance of a somewhat
puzzling phenomenon which looks very much like anger but may
not be anger at all. I am referring to an expression of anxiety in
the form of anger, which is motivated by the desire to reduce the
anxiety to manageable proportions. This reduction is parallel to
the presumed reduction of anxiety to fear. An acutely anxious
person may feel so insecure that he stands in terror before others
and is absolutely threatened by their presence. If such a person
can succeed in reducing the absolute threat of the other to a
finite danger, he can have some hope of coping with it. This type
of behavior is altogether familiar in everyday life and exceedingly
difficult to deal with. In witnessing the behavior of such an
individual we would, I believe, be inclined to regard him as angry
-though I am not at all sure that we would be correct in doing
so. To all intents and purposes he is angry, or at least he behaves
as if he were angry. If anything, he is more exaggeratedly angry
than is normally the case. It is precisely this exaggerated ex-
pression of anger which reveals its pseudo quality. If, as we have
hypothesized, he is attempting to relieve his general anxiety by
reducing it to anger, he is clearly making himself to be angry and
thus is not truly angry at all. He may simulate anger so success-
fully that we are taken in by it-as we often are. But we can and
must learn to distinguish this sort of making oneself to be angry
from spontaneous anger. However much the two phenomena
may resemble each other, the resemblance is superficial. They
have a different origin, a different meaning, and require different
responses.
The conclusion toward which I have been pointing is one that
makes me somewhat uncomfortable, and yet I am not sure that
it can or should be avoided. If the troubles to which anger gives
rise stem from the repression, displacement, generalization, and
potentiation of anger because of an inadequate response to basic
human anxiety, anger is better disposed of as it arises in the
commonplace situations of everyday life. What we need is to be
free for our anger rather than to be free from it-an impossibility
for human beings. I am uncomfortable about this conclusion
because it seems to recommend that human life be kept to the
plane of undeveloped immediacy. The conclusion is compelling,
however, only if human development requires repression and self-
alienation as well as deliberate alienation from others. Although
this form of alienation and "bad faith" represents a genuine
human possibility and one which could be extirpated only by
severely restricting man's freedom, it is not a necessary condition
of human development. Man is a reflexive and dialectical being
who is complexly related to himself and to others. He has problems
enough in achieving self-identity without deliberate attempts at
self-alienation. The burden of my analysis has been to show that
instead of facilitating free development, the repression of anger
impedes and stifles it. It is not, however, simply the repression of
anger that I wish to indict but the attempt to control it by an
350 George Schrader
externally positioned reason. Although the latter strategy is more

honest and direct, it is still alienating in that it requires the
individual to identify exclusively with the rational and deliberative
aspect of himself. The identification cannot be achieved and, to
the extent that it is, it deprives the individual of his concreteness
and spontaneity. This strategy not only misconceives human
reason but assigns to it a rather odious task of unceasingly
monitoring the emotions. Perhaps it is too much to say with
Hume that "reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions."
It would be more temperate and more defensible to suggest that
reason should be modest enough to serve them and autonomous
enough to use them for mutually agreeable ends.
Albert Rothenberg
THE ANATOMY OF ANGER
What is anger? I find it enormously strange that I, a psychiatrist,

must seriously pose such a question in this day and age and I
think it is virtually astounding that the answers are not only slow
in coming but are embedded in a morass of confused definitions,
misconceptions, and simplistic theories. Problems of violence,
destructiveness, and hate are so much with us and there seems a
crying need for clarification and understanding of these phe-
nomena and any phenomena related to them. Anger, particularly,
is of crucial importance in psychiatry where it is an everyday
focus of attention in our patients, whether we do clinical evalu-
ations alone, pass out drugs, or discuss, evaluate, and analyze in
psychotherapy. Yet, there has been almost no attention paid to
the phenomenon of anger in psychiatric and psychological
literature. When it is mentioned at all, anger is subsumed under
some general category such as aggression or affect and little
consideration is given to the assumptions underlying such
categorization.
When we are confronted with the phenomenon of anger as it
occurs naturally in our patients we seem to know what we are
about. We seldom behave as though anger were simply a
manifestation of aggression, for example, and we operate on the
basis of a whole series of assumptions about the nature of anger,
none of which has been clearly spelled out. Philosophical litera-
35 2 Albert Rothenberg
ture has not provided clear definitions nor have philosophers

systematically examined the bases of their assumptions about
anger. Such basic problems require a radical solution. It is
necessary to cut through the superstructure of confusion and
vagueness surrounding the topic and reveal some of the bare
anatomy of anger. Although such dissection may well befit a
surgeon rather than a psychiatrist, it has an honored place in the
history of philosophy and will, I trust, be taken as a manifestation
of my anger about the state of things rather than as an aggressive
act. I will discuss anger in relation to other issues generally
lumped together with it: aggression, hostility, anxiety, and
violence, outline some of the theories which have been pro-
pounded, and hopefully end with a clearly delineated picture of
anger itself.
1. Anger and Aggression

Anger is generally considered to be a manifestation of the broader
phenomenon, aggression. Theories of aggression, therefore, are
considered to be theories of anger as well. "To be angry" is
considered to be an aggressive act and "to feel angry" is con-
sidered subjective awareness of aggressive impulses. Aggression
also includes violence, hatred, hostility, and all manifestations of
destructiveness. Much controversy has existed about the genesis
of aggression in human affairs. Freud and his psychoanalytic
followers eventually took the position that aggression was an
instinct and therefore an inborn aspect of the human endowment.
Recently, this position has been supported, in modified form, by
the ethologists-notably Konrad Lorenz. Learning theorists,
following an early assertion of Freud, have taken the position
that aggression is basically a response to frustration or pain and
therefore is not inborn but learned in the course of human
development. A third position, which stands somewhere between
the others, asserts that aggression is a derivative of anxiety, a
derivative which may assume constancy and drive qualities in
THE ANATOMY OF ANGER 353
human behavior depending on cultural and other circumstances.
This position is generally associated with Sullivan and his
followers.
I do not propose to enter here into a detailed discussion of the
relative merit or validity of these three theoretical positions. I
would, however, like to note that all three positions assume that
anger is a form of aggression and that assumption influences the
logic of each. For example, the frustration-aggression hypothesis
is primarily based on observations pertaining to anger. Controlled
psychological experiments cannot very readily be based on
observations of violence since it would be highly impractical to
try to induce violence in the psychological laboratory (not to say
that such experiments would be short-lived) and the same i& true
of other types of feelings and acts thought to be manifestations
of aggression, such as hate, rage, hostility, and so forth. Further-
more, anger is relatively easily observed and reported since it
has definite physiologic concomitants and is usually clearly
experienced subjectively. As I shall shortly indicate, however, there
is reason to believe that anger is critically different from violence
and other forms of so-called aggression. Therefore, laboratory
observations of induced anger have limited pertinance to the
frustration-aggression hypothesis.
I must hastily add that I am not proposing a frustration-anger
hypothesis. Anger is related to other phenomena considered to
be aggressive albeit in a complicated way. I am arguing against
the simplistic equation of anger with aggression. The instinct
theory of aggression has been influenced by the failure to distin-
guish between anger and aggression in a manner diametrically
opposed to the frustration-aggression theory. Psychoanalysts have
modified their notions about the basic nature of the aggressive
instinct and its operation in human behavior largely, albeit
unwittingly, because of observations pertaining primarily to
anger. The Sullivanian theory also makes assumptions about
aggression as a drive in various cultural and interpersonal settings
on the basis of observations about the manifestations of anger in
354 Albert Rothenberg
those settings. The critical distinction between anger and related

phenomena considered to be manifestations of aggression can
best be illustrated through a specific consideration of hostility.
II. Anger and Hostility

Hostility, like anger, is an affect and/or a behavioral mall!-
festation--one can "feel hostile" or "be hostile." The critical
distinction between anger and hostility is that hostility always
has a destructive component whereas anger does not. "Feeling
hostile" always involves the wish or intent to inflkt harm, pain,
or actual destruction on another person or object. "Being hostile"
always involves inflicting or trying to inflict some type of de-
struction, psychological or physical, upon another. Anger, on
the other hand, does not necessarily involve destructiveness or
even harm to another.
I think we tend to equate anger with hostility because we often
observe the two phenomena occurring together. However, with
some reflection, I think it will become apparent that the association
between anger and hostility is more true of animals than it is of
man. Almost invariably, animals show all the physical mani-
festations of anger prior to an attack. Hair stands on end, pupils
dilate, muscles tense, and loud, piercing, or deep voice sounds
are made, continually or in a repetitive pattern. In some species,
destructive attack always follows these physical manifestations,
whereas in others, attack may be delayed, deferred, or even
aborted at times-literally, "Their bark is worse than their bite."
In humans, anger is seldom followed by destructive attack and,
on a purely statistical level, I refer you to introspection to
determine whether this is so. How often, out of the virtually
innumerable instances of everyday anger, does destructive attack
occur? Very infrequently. How often do we experience irritation,
pique, annoyance, or thoughts such as "I could (or will) kill him
(or her, them) for doing that (or not doing that) "-all variants of
anger in degree but not in kind-without carrying these feelings
into any type of destructive action? Constantly.
Before we rush too quickly to attribute this fact to learning and
the effects of civilization, I would like to suggest that anger, in
humans anyway, is essentially distinct from hostility and de-
structiveness. For one thing, human anger occurs most frequently
under conditions of need, love, and involvement. During the
course of development, we feel anger most consistently toward
our parents and, in our later lives, we feel intense and frequent
anger toward those we love and those we need or toward situations
in which we are involved. Rather than assume that such anger is
a manifestation of attack or destructiveness due to an aggressive
drive (and basic ambivalence to loved ones), inevitable frus-
tration, or whatever, let us briefly consider the natural appearance
of anger and see how it relates to other states.
Invariably, the experience of anger, whether felt or expressed,
is associated with certain physiological events. Muscle tension
and vascular changes, usually in the form of dilated blood vessels
in the skin and some flushing, are minimally present. This is true
even when a person is unaware that he is angry and an observer
can say, "He seems angry." When anger is expressed, there is
invariably some involuntary voice change (although this may
be consciously controlled) and there may be the whole range of
physical "adrenalin" changes as well: fast heartbeat, sweating,
rapid breathing, and dilated pupils. W. B. Cannon, the great
physiologist, called this full-blown physiological picture "the
flight-or-fight" syndrome. Cannon's work (as well as that of
later investigators) makes clear that these physiological responses
are all adaptive in the sense that they prepare the individual for
either flight or fight in the face of threat. His dualistic conclusion,
however, is based on work with animals and, when applied to
humans, it is too simple. Primarily, it neglects the importance of
communication in humans.
In animals, flight or fight are the only alternatives in the face
of threat or significant obstruction, but humans can employ
complicated communications. The physiologic concomitants of
anger and the state of motoric readiness they produce are
Albert Rothenberg
involuntary and discernible phenomena. For humans, therefore,

they are alerting phenomena which provide a basis for communi-
cation. The angry individual himself experiences an involuntary
increase in muscle tension which is almost simultaneous with his
perception of threat or obstruction and he is alerted to the need
for motor discharge. Rather than discharge this tension through
flight or fight, however, the angry individual can employ verbal
discharge and a whole series of specific communications to others
designed to promote removal of the threat or obstruction. Others
around the angry person are also alerted to his state of motor
readiness and if his verbal communications are clear they can
help remove the threat or obstruction. Furthermore, verbal
discharge itself serves to reduce muscle tension. To be sure, both
the angry individual and those around him perceive that attack
or destruction is a possible outcome of the angry state and this is
one of the reasons others act. Attack is far from inevitable,
however, and it occurs only when verbal communication is not
specific to the source of threat or obstruction, is not sufficient as a
motor discharge, does not effect removal of the threat, or is not
permitted in the first place because of external or internal
restraints. In other words, human beings can and do separate
anger from attack. The point I am making is that anger, because
it intrinsically affords possibilities for communication, is potential-
ly constructive rather than destructive, given the inevitable
threat and obstruction that occurs in human experience'!
But what of verbal hostility and hostile thoughts? Aren't these
invariant accompaniments of anger? I'm not sure about the
actual incidence of such phenomena, but I do know that anger
I. The emphasis on anger as communication should not be construed to exclude
instances of so-called anger at oneself. In such instances, the self or the self's action
is considered to be the source of threat or obstruction and communication with the
self, in the sense of a clear specification or realization of what went wrong and how
it can be improved in the future, serves to dispel the anger. I refer to this phenomenon
as "so-called anger at oneself" because it is probably more profitably understood as
a special instance of guilt rather than anger. Furthermore, it may be argued that
anger at the self is often directed at aspects of the self which are internalized re-
presentations of others.
is commonly manifest solely in an altered voice tone and a
communication to desist from some action or other. When
supposedly hostile words or thoughts such as "Go to hell" or
"God damn him" are associated with anger, they often serve
to be primarily alerting phenomena. Such words and thoughts
are not in themselves physical attacks but they are symbolic
designators of the state of motor readiness and perceived threat.
They serve as stereotyped communication cues designed to avoid
attack. We all know that the words in themselves do not necessa-
rily seem destructive if the tone of voice is right. And I insist that
the tone of voice that says "Go to hell" unthreateningly is an
angry one, not a truly hostile one.
I think I can illustrate the point further by specifying the
essential nature of hostility. Basically, hostility does not allow the
object of the feeling or action to remove particular threats or obstructions
but it tends to destroy the object itself. Thus attack, violence, and
revenge are manifestations of hostility but so is sarcasm, teasing,
gossip, and obstructiveness. These manifestations in thought or
action are not simply the result of intense or increased anger, as
is commonly thought. They are related to the angry state but
they occur primarily when the angry individual resigns in
advance, so to speak. He feels that direct communication will
be ineffective or else he feels that anger itself must be suppressed
or avoided for various highly complicated reasons. I say this
because it appears that, in human affairs, hidden or unexpressed
anger leads to true destructiveness. Unexpressed anger does not
become a clear communication but it still requires motor and
symbolic discharge. Indirect avenues of discharge such as gossip,
teasing, and obstruction are aimed at the integrity of the indi-
vidual rather than at the specific threat or obstruction he pro-
duces. Violence and revenge are direct discharges but they are
not expressions of anger per se; they are in part expressions of
failed or unattempted communication. So, for example, if I
notice my friend flirting with my wife at a cocktail party I am
annoyed, but for various reasons I do not say, "I wish you'd stop
Albert Rothenberg
that." Soon, however, I find myselfcommenting "good naturedly"

that he'd better stop eating so much because his abdomen is
beginning to roll over his belt. This trivial incident becomes
magnified when he continues to show real interest in my wife
and she reciprocates. Still, I do not talk with him directly and
express my angry feelings but I "forget" to send him the reference
information he needs for his book, I miss our scheduled lunch
appointment and, in spite of myself, I begin to make remarks to
our colleagues about inaccuracies, flaws, and even plagiarism in
his work. Am I above casting aspersions on his masculinity?
Hardly so, since I am now hostile and oriented to destructiveness.
The point here is not so much that feelings are discharged into
other modes and different methods of expression are employed,
but that anger is qualitatively changed into hostility when it is
unexpressed or handled indirectly.
I cannot enter here into a detailed discussion of the many
reasons for unexpressed anger in human affairs. The feeling that
communication will be ineffective is certainly based on prior or
ongoing experience. It may be based on experience with the
individual or situation that is a current object of the anger or it
may be based on prior experiences with communicating anger
in general. Detailed consideration of this issue requires an ex-
position of the psychopathology of anger as well as the notion
of anger occurring out of an individual's awareness, a task which
is beyond the scope of this paper. One point, however, bears
mentioning. One of the reasons anger is avoided or suppressed
in advance is that it indicates arousal and need. Anger, in
distinction to other forms of communication, is an immediate
and sudden response and arises primarily when need is so intense
that threats and obstructions are readily perceived. For some
reason, such vulnerability is morally suspect in human affairs.
I t is on this basis, rather than on the basis of a fear of destructive-
ness alone, that anger is often inhibited.
Here, we cbme back full circle to the ubiquitous association of
anger and love. Anger is truly highly related to love, both
because of its connection to need and involvement and because
of the constructive communication aspects I mentioned before.
Surely, I could not be accused of being Pollyannish if I said, at
this point, that anger accompanied by clear communication is a
sign of respect for a loved person.
It should now be clearer why I distinguish anger from aggres-
sion. The category of aggression subsumes a whole class offeeling
states and actions, such as hate, rage, violence, revenge, and hostil-
ity, which are essentially destructive in their intent and manifesta-
tions. Psychoanalysts have postulated that the basic aggressive
drive enters into all assertive feelings and actions as well as these
destructive ones. Unwittingly, their basic logic has been in-
fluenced by observations pertaining primarily to anger. They
realize that anger is primarily an assertive state of motor readi-
ness and communication rather than a destructive one. Since they
have previously classified anger as a form of aggression, they
assume that all the properties of anger are due to aggression and
that all assertiveness is due to aggression as well.
III. Anger and Anxiery

I cannot live up to my promise to present a clear picture of anger
by leaving only the relatively benign impression I have given up
to now. Although anger is distinct in many ways from aggression
and hostility, it is not truly distinct from anxiety. Anger is
aroused predominantly under circumstances of threat, pain, or
obstruction. The threat may be physical or it may be symbolic
or psychological as well as physical. In all these circumstances.
anxiety is aroused along with anger. Pushing the process back
to the point of its initial and sudden appearance, both anger and
anxiety are aspects of a diffuse alerted and aroused state. Anger
becomes the predominant manifestation of this state when the
motoric arousal begins to be directed at the source of threat or
obstruction or at some imagined source. Anxiety is the pre-
dominant manifestation when the motoric arousal is undirected
Albert Rothenberg
or is directed toward avoidance or escape. Here, I am returning

to Cannon's observation that the physiologic concomitants of the
aroused state allow for flight as well as fight. The suddenly
appearing aroused state is one of motor preparedness, a feeling of
pressure to action in relation to some change in the environment.
In addition to the relatively organized action possibilities of
attack, communication, or simple motor discharge, there is the
possibility of relatively disorganized action and flight. Knowing
that flight is an alternate outcome of the aroused state helps
clarify the presence of anxiety in the total picture. We have no
trouble at all inferring that a person in full flight is anxious or
afraid, but we may have trouble seeing the anxiety associated
with the appearance of anger. I realize, of course, that I could
be accused of circularity on this point in that I have already
stipulated that anger arises in relation to perceived threat or pain
and that, therefore, anxiety is present by definition. But I think
there is also anxiety when anger occurs in the face of the more
benign experience, perceived obstruction or, as the learning
theorists call it, frustration.
Perceived obstruction must always occur in relation to some
need, an action sequence, or an intended action sequence. When
a need is obstructed, anxiety about the possibility of need
gratification arises. If we are thirsty, for example, and our
attempts to get water are obstructed, we become concerned about
whether we will survive as well as uncomfortable because of our
continued thirst. Lesser anxieties arise in relation to obstruction
of less significant needs. Anxiety also arises in the face of ob-
struction simply because of the perception that alternate action
is required. I am suggesting that there is a basic passivity in all
of us, or, to use the terminology of the physiologists, an intolerance
for interference with the steady state, the state of homeostasis.
We feel uncomfortable during the state of arousal and motor
readiness occurring in the face of obstruction and anxious, in
part, because we are impelled to do something: fight, run away,
communicate, or act by expressing anger. When we actually do
carry out one of these actions, anxiety is reduced and muscle

tension is dissipated.
The presence of anxiety can be demonstrated in those instances
where action is inhibited and anger is unexpressed. The state of
arousal and motoric readiness continues and subtle involuntary
motor and physiologic phenomena-such as trembling, overall
tension, and hyperalertness-occur. A vicious cycle ensues where
further arousal occurs readily and anxiety increases until there
is disruption of thought processes, the irrationality associated
with outbursts of temper or acute anxiety. For example, I become
angry with my colleague as a result of his strong criticism of my
stance on student violence. Moreover, I find that he has the power
to remove me from any administrative role through which I
could influence university policy about such violence. For the
moment, I say nothing. Sitting at the desk in my office, however,
I find it quite difficult to concentrate and I am easily distracted
by noises in the hall. I am hypersensitive to my secretary's typing
errors and, as incident piles upon incident, I find it difficult later
at home to respond to my children's request to engage in some
horseplay and feel irritated at them for asking. When finally my
wife asks me to do some menial but necessary task in the house, I
feel extraordinarily tense and fatigued or, if given to temper out-
bursts, I shout in a whining, tremulous voice, "Why don't you
leave me alone for a minute?" Under conditions of even more
intense blocking of previous anger, I may even experience a
quickened heartbeat, a flushed face and, as I break out in cold
sweat, I may fleetingly wonder if my wife is purposely trying to
provoke me and I seek escape in the confines of my study.
I am proposing that anger is only one of a series of manifesta-
tions of the state of arousal, motoric readiness, and anxiety which
occur in the face of threat, pain, or obstruction. It is often more
effective than flight in the long run since it can potentially effect
change in the source of threat or obstruction while allowing some
degree of motor discharge. It does not allow as much discharge
as immediate fight or flight in response to threat, however, and
some degree of anxiety always accompanies its expression.
Albert Rothenberg
But what of the threatening quality of anger and the hostile,

destructive thoughts and words that accompany it? Clearly, anger
is closer to fight and attack than it is to flight and escape. In
addition to the alerting function of these hostile words and
thoughts which I mentioned before, I think this quality of anger
is an immediate, ingrained response, a defense if you will, against
the anxious flight aspect of the state of arousal and its associated
sense of helplessness. The destructive thoughts and words which
occur to us when we are angry serve to alert us and to give us a
sense of strength and power. If we think of hitting someone or
even of killing someone, we feel far more powerful and in control
of the situation than if we think of fleeing or doing nothing.
Indeed, such thoughts are often accompanied by motor acts,
such as pounding the table, stamping the foot. These acts provide
motor discharge in the aroused state and they reinforce a sense
of strength. Anxiety can provide motor discharge also through
running away, pacing back and forth, or other aimless move-
ments but these acts create a vicious cycle. They reinforce a sense
of helplessness and may lead to even greater anxiety.
I realize that destructive thoughts and words are themselves
associated with anxiety and guilt because of social prohibitions,
fear ofloss of control, and other factors. Furthermore, I am quite
aware that anger itself is socially unacceptable in varying degrees
and expression of anger produces anxiety in its own right. The
relationship between anger and anxiety is quite complex and also
involves many vicious cycles and dynamic interactions. I am not
prepared, at this point, to go into these and to spell out the many
social considerations entering into the issue. At this point, suffice
it to say that both anger and anxiety arise out of a diffuse state
of arousal in the face of perceived threat, pain, or obstruction.
Since anxiety is more disruptive and more uncomfortable than
anger, it seems reasonable to assume that anger is a defense
against anxiety, or, at the very least, a preferred reaction.
The recognition of the association between anger and anxiety
helps us to understand why it is that thought processes are
disrupted in the angry state, producing the so-called irrationality

of anger. I think the disruption is not due to the high degree of
anger, as is usually thought (often this notion ofa high degree of
anger is meant loosely to refer to high aggressiveness or de-
structiveness and I do not mean this either), but is due to the
degree of anxiety associated with anger. Anger, as I have said,
is more goal directed and potentially better organized than
anxiety. Anxiety disrupts the general functioning of the indi-
vidual and it disrupts thought processes as well. This is not simply
a semantic distinction. If we direct our attention to the sense of
threat, fear, and insecurity when confronted with an irrationally
angry person, his rationality usually returns quite rapidly.
IV. Anger and Violence

Finally, what about violence? We all know that violence does
occur in conjunction with anger and that actual destruction can
be associated with the angry state. To explain this, I must go
back and pick up some of the loose threads I have strewn around
and refused to elaborate on when they came up. First, violence
occurs when anger cannot serve as a sufficient alerting process for
the angry person or other persons who can remove the threat or
obstruction, largely because of poor communication. Second,
violence occurs when anger is unexpressed and threats cannot
be removed; motoric readiness is not discharged and the presence
of the threat continues either in memory or actuality. Subsequent
threats and the motoric response to them are enhanced and
destructiveness follows.
I have purposely delayed in introducing memory as a factor
until this point because I think it opens up a hornet's nest of
problems. The human potentiality for remembered threat or
remembered anger is a consideration that moves us both before
and beyond the moment of anger itself. Specifically, it raises
issues about what I would call structural personality factors and
what philosophy would call passions. Since it is certainly true that
Albert Rothenberg
human beings can and do remember experiences of threat and

experiences of anxiety and anger, these memories must influence
the perception of threat throughout life. Therefore, there are
predispositions to anxiety and anger in relation to particular
situations and persons or classes of situations and persons. Such
predispositions are so constant and predictable that we think of
them, metaphorically to be sure, as structural features of the
personality .
A specific formulation of the nature of these structural features
is not vital for an understanding of the relationship between
anger and violence. In relation to any particular instance of the
appearance of violence, we may conceive that the predisposition
or structure is a diffuse accumulation of undischarged motor
tension and anxiety accompanied by a hyperalertness to threat
and obstruction, or else we may conceive of a more organized
drive such as a predisposition to aggression. It is not really
crucial here whether we adopt what I have characterized as the
Sullivanian position and emphasize the learned nature of such
a drive or whether, along with the Freudians, we emphasize its
inborn nature. The main point is that violence appears to be
both quantitatively and qualitatively different from anger in its
manifestations. To account for violence it seems necessary to
postulate some structural factor or passion related to memory.
Lastly, I think violence occurs, to a significant degree, when
there is too much anxiety associated with the angry state itself,
irrespective of predispositions in memory. This may be due to the
intensity of the perceived threat (it may be immediately life
threatening, for example) and it may also be due to excessive
guilt about the experience of feeling angry or excessive fear of
destructive thoughts or words. Excessive guilt induces anxiety
in its own right when anger is in the offing. The added burden
of this anxiety coalesces with the initial anxiety associated with
anger and can result in violence.
Guilt, of course, is also related to memory-though not in the
fashion I just stipulated for the predisposition to violence. Guilt
is a structural feature of the personality and it is related to other

structural features such as hate and rage. I have not previously
mentioned hate and rage (although they both relate indirectly
to anger) because they are complicated structures or passions
which merge with guilt. Hate and rage are products of ongoing
states of anxiety, truly destructive predispositions, and con-
comitant guilt about the destructiveness. Neither hate nor rage
are simply manifestations of intense degrees of anger, as is
commonly believed, but are predominantly manifestations of
prolonged or intense anxiety. In the human adult such prolonged
or intense anxiety is usually related to guilt or to shame. Violence
is frequently associated with hate and rage, and violence is often
a means of overcoming an extreme sense of helplessness and
worthlessness.
As an aside, I might mention that it is very difficult, on the
basis of introspection alone, to distinguish between anger and
rage. In fact, I would venture to guess that the formulation of the
nature of anger I have presented here may, at first blush, seem
strange and unusual because of this difficulty. Memory, that
erstwhile servant of guilt, often directs us to concrete instances
of explosive rage as exemplars of our experience of anger. We
tend to think of anger as outbursts of temper against our wives,
children, employees, or employers and forget the innumerable
instances of assertive arousal or anger which occur during the
course of a day.2 Although rage sometimes has the communicative
potential of anger and can sometimes serve as a constructive
response to threat or obstruction, it is commonly directed at the
2. The confusion and fear about anger which is virtually ingrained in our culture
is reflected in English terminology. The word "mad" is used to refer both to anger
and insanity, and the double usage seems to indicate a belief that being angry is a
form of insanity or possibly that it actually causes insanity-at the very least, the
linguistic adaptation of the word "mad" reveals an emphasis on the irrationality
of anger. The bias that anger is invariably noxious, potentially related to either
insanity or irrationality, has pervaded the formulations ofthe most revered thinkers
in both Western and Eastern culture and has heretofore interfered with a
meaningful phenomenological analysis.
Albert Rothenberg
integrity of others rather than their specific behavior and, there-

fore, like hostility, it tends to be destructive.
Guilt about angry feelings is a puzzling phenomenon. It has
been considered to be a result of fear of destructive impulses, a
manifestation of aggression turned against the self, and a result
of social prohibitions. Also, as I have suggested, it is produced
by a fear of exposing one's involvement and vulnerability.
Regardless of the explanation, our clinical observation is that the
most truly violent people are those who have difficulty dealing
with angry feelings. They are also those who are, in the main,
anxious and insecure. Could we help them if they knew that anger
is an assertive alerted communicative state which arises in
response to anxiety and is not the same as aggression or true
destructiveness?
Eugene T. Gendlin
A PHENOMENOLOGY OF EMOTIONS:
ANGER
Although verbally and recognizably there is some small list of

common emotions and sentiments, experience is vastly multi-
faceted. Innumerable aspects, barely distinct, course through
each other and breed others, utterly defying any thin scheme,
logical system, or dictionary of kinds. Experience is not just
packaged units. The seeming units-experiences, emotions,
perceptions, ideas, feelings-which seem to stand still and stable
always also involve a myriad flux. We will develop some ways to
think about this myriad, hopefully so successfully that the
question will then turn about and, if anything, we will be puzzled
at how there can be something seemingly stable, recognizable,
and universal. How is it, for example, that, with the myriad
facets of any moment and the vast variety of what may make us
angry in each different situation, when we lose our temper the
stomping, hitting, or kicking of anger is always the same? Or is
it? We must ask about both the myriad and the stable.
At first one puzzles most about the myriad flux. One is inclined
to accept more easily the common and familiar, seemingly stable
and recognizable experiences such as anger. We can describe
what anger is like, after all. But if we do this, we miss the point.
How are stably recognizable experiences like this even possible?
What is experience, and what is "an" experience? And what kind
of experience is an emotion like anger?
Eugene T. Gendlin
When Max Scheler wrote on the phenomenology of love, l

Husser! criticized it as not being proper phenomenology. Husser!
meant that phenomenology is philosophy. It must look into the
basic ways we experience and think, and must do any specific
study through such an inquiry. You can study anything-love,
or anger, the present topic-but only with the job and power of
philosophy to undercut and open up the supposedly packaged
units supposedly given. Supposedly stable things like emotions,
perceptions, images, ideas, and experiences cannot be used as a
beginning. To accept these deprives any specific inquiry of the
power of philosophy. We cannot begin with these givens as if we
did not need to see into what they are. For example, concerning
this supposed class, the emotions, we will have to distinguish and
define a number of processes quite different in kind. To do that
we will need a new kind of term and method to make concepts
in a way that stays in touch with experience as we are and have
it. I have presented this new method elsewhere,2 and what I say
here can only include a little of the larger work on which it
leans.
Let me say a few words about this new philosophical method
of experiential explication. One would not want to talk of
emotions or experience without such talk touching upon ex-
perience. But there is no question of a simple flat truth when we
make schemes to think about experience. We have had too much
of the sort of thinking which wants to substitute thin schemes for
concretely lived experience. Let us agree from the start that we
will not confuse thin schemes with experience. Then no one need
fear that philosophical thinking may lose him in abstractions. We
will cling to concrete living and feeling. If what we say shows up
something we then concretely see or feel or have, we will respect
that thinking and saying. All else we will let go by, or we may
consider it good tool-sharpening. (The man who makes an
intriguing abstract scheme deserves our respect still. Toolmaking
I. See Max Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, trans. P. Heath, London, 1954.
2. Gendlin, E. T., Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Glencoe, Ill., 1962.
A PHENOMENOLOGY OF EMOTIONS: ANGER
can be useful, but only later, in relation to something concretely

experienced.) I do not have time here to discuss or justify this
method of experiential thinking, which so fundamentally dis-
tinguishes the effect some (fairly rare) step of thought can have
experientially.
The relation between conceptual patterns and experience is
basic to the impasse in which philosophy currently finds itself:
we must go beyond schemes, beyond substituting abstractions
for life and experience, but to do so we must understand those
rare occasions when what is thought or said has a concretely
experiential effect. I call such a step of thought "explication,"
and I talk of it here as when thinking or saying "shows up"
something which is thereby experienced concretely and sharply.
This explicative "showing up" doesn't make the conceptual
scheme and verbal assertion "true" in an old-fashioned way. It
is characteristic of explication that one may later find a better
way of thinking or saying, and from that later vantage point the
earlier true statement will now be false. Nevertheless, it is also
characteristic of explication that one is glad to have each step of
explication come, and that there is a continuity of what one
claims to have meant. 3
The justification or validation of what I have to say rests in
whether or not my assertions have, for you, a concretely ex-
perienced effect. Keep not my words, then, but this effect;
perhaps from it you can formulate it all better, and go much
further.
What we go through is much more than we "have," though
we call both "experience." Any moment is a myriad richness,
but rarely do we take time to "have" it. When we have, what
we are focused on is usually only some specific. Going through
a simple act involves an enormous number of familiarities,
3. Gendlin, E. T., "The Grounds of Explication," The Monist, XXXXIX, no. I,
(January 1965), 137-164; "A Theory of Personality Change," in Personality Change,
New York, 1964; "Experiential Explication and Truth," Journal of Existentialism,
VI, no. 22, (Winter 1965-66), 131-146; "Expressive Meanings," Invitation to
Phenomenology, ed. James M. Edie, Chicago, 1965.
37 0 Eugene T. Gendlin
learnings, senses for the situation, understandings of life and

people, as well as the many specifics of the given situation. All
this goes into just saying "hello" in a fitting way to a not very
close friend. We go through, we are all this, but we have only a
few focal bits of it. The feel of doing anything involves our sense
of the whole situation at any moment, despite our not focally
reflecting on it as such. This is the myriad multiplicity of which
I spoke. We have it only when we turn from being focused on some
specific, and focus on our feel of all that. When we do, we cannot
have each facet separately or we are again focused only on a
specific. We can only have a feeling of it all.
Since we get angry in many different situations, we could have,
if we focused on it, the feel of the situation, and this would be
different in each situation. There is a basic distinction between
anything "specific," and the myriad experiencing. I call the
myriad experiencing "felt meaning" or "experienced meaning."
(We always are felt meaning, but we do not always have or focus
on it. Therefore, when I talk of felt meaning I may mean either
just being it, always, or I may mean not only being it but also
focusing on it, feeling all that.)
I can now make a first point about anger: it is "a specific."
Emotions are "specifics." My wanting to stomp, hit, kick, my
blowing up, or wanting to blow up-this is the recognizable
specific pattern. It is always the same. But what of the whole
situation which has gotten me angry? This is each time unique.
It might take a long time and a lot of factors to explain, to say,
what and why I have been made angry, but I can feel all that.
If I didn't, I would have forgotten why I got mad. Usually we
haven't forgotten, we "know" why. Without laying it out in all
its many factors and the many words it would require to say, we
feel why.
I began by asking whether and how anger could always be the
same if the situations that make one angry are so different. Now
we have a beginning answer to this question. There is the felt
meaning of the given whole complex situation, which is different
A PHENOMENOLOGY OF EMOTIONS: ANGER 37 1
in each case. And there is the specific stomping, kicking, blowing-
up pattern, which is always the same. Both are said to be "felt,"
and that makes for confusion. However, it is true that we have
each as felt. Since I want to use "felt meaning" for the myriad
sense of a whole complexity, I will use the word "emotion" for
the specific that is always the same.
Now we want to understand these two, and what it is to feel.
To feel is bodily, and we therefore need to think about the body.
We cannot leave the body out of phenomenology and let the
physiologists keep it. Feeling and experience generally cannot
be understood as some mysterious kinds of "things" "in"
"consciousness," nor is anyone ever conscious without body
sense.
For many purposes it is a good thing that the physiologists
study the body with their own conceptual model, but for us
talking about the body need not mean talking about it in their
way. They treat the body as a machine studied from the outside.
Although they do also mention the functional and interactional
aspects of the body, they tend to do so at the beginning and at
the end of a book, as a sort of general avowal. Few concepts have
been made for this aspect of living bodies, hence we must make
some. Let me present this aspect of living bodies in more detail.
A theory of experience and emotions cannot be formulated
without this broader basis which I can give here only in outline.
Two basic characteristics of the body must be understood: it is
functional and interactional. When, in biology, functional systems
are considered, it is clear that "hunger," for example, is not
some simple, self-contained, circumscribed state, but leads to
feeding behavior and perhaps also to hunting, tracking, killing,
tearing, chewing, defecating, scratching the ground and burying
feces, resting, and also getting hungry again. I want to use the
word "implies" here. I want to say that when hungry, the body
"implies" tracking, feeding, defecating, that feeding "implies"
scratching the ground to bury feces, and so on. The body thus
"implies" many behavior sequences which are not now going on,
although only one behavior is now actually going on. The body
"is" both the specific behavior now going on, and it "is" also
the implying of all these other behaviors. "Implies" is exactly
defined by the way in which all these behaviors are in the body
when it is hungry (or at any of the other behaviors listed, for
when any of them is present, all the rest are "implied"). I don't
want to set up an explanatory scheme to "explain" this meaning
of "implied," or any of my other terms. Rather, I will define my
terms always as I just did, by giving a name to some experience
or relationship we have had already, and never imputing anything
more or different to it than it has already. You can judge later
how this method develops concepts. So far we have only tagged
a known but puzzling relationship.
I can now use the word "is" to include both the now-ongoing
behaving and the implying. I don't want to say "the body is this,
and implies that"; I want to say "it is this and is the implying of
that," for it is both. I want to overcome the old model according
to which everything is a perfectly actual entity which has no past
or future in its "is." The body's "is" is always also an implying.
This functional concept of the body already implies inter-
actional concepts. The body implies not only the many behaviors
not now going on, but also the environments in and with which
these implied behaviors can occur. For example, if feeding is
implied, that implies food. Ifburying feces is implied, that implies
a scratchable ground. If a baby squirrel is raised separately from
its mother in a metal cage, so that it has never seen other squirrels
or trees or nuts or the ground or anything outside, it will neverthe-
less at a certain age "bury anutin the ground." It will sit up holding
a nonexistent object, place it on the metal bottom of the cage,
scratch the bottom of the cage, pick up the nonexistent object and
place it where it scratched, then scratch again as if to cover the
spot with earth. The whole sequence of behavior is "implied" by
any squirrel's body. And, of course, along with the behavior,
the environmental aspects of nut and ground are also implied.
The "interactional" aspect of the body is that its implied
A PHENOMENOLOGY OF EMOTIONS: ANGER 373
behaviors also imply the environment. Always, other species
members are the most important "environment" for any
creature, although of course other aspects are important too.
You need only think of the shape of your own body, for example,
to note that it is structured to fit with one of the opposite sex of
your own species. Both sexual intercourse behavior and a mate
are "implied" by your body, and these are the functional and
interactional aspects of the body.
The living body thus "implies" a whole vast maze of behaviors
and the environmental circumstances in which the behaviors
would occur.
If we so consider the living body, we can bring together the

myriad facets of felt experiencing, the fact that this myriad ex-
periencing is felt bodily, and the fact that both behavior and
speaking sequences are "implied" in felt experiencing. Speaking
is also behaving, although of a special kind. Even without
actually speaking, even while the speaking sequences are only
implied, we are and "know" these implicitly.
If we focus on the felt meaning, the sensing of all behaviors
and speakings the body implies just now, we can draw from it
many possible behaviors and speakings we might actually do.
Thus focusing on the felt meaning can give one alternative ways
of acting and speaking.
For example, if I am angry and focus on the felt meaning of the
whole situation, I may find something to do or say, which might
take account of all the facets of the situation.
Felt meaning is "focaled," something I cannot go into here. I
mean that despite its being so many possible sequences, it can be
a whole from which only one sequence-if any-will emerge,
and one that will take account of all the facets. Sometimes no
such sequence can be found. The many implyings interaffect
each other, and what happens results from this interaffecting.
374 Eugene T. Gendlin
You can see this focaling operating, when you notice that your
felt meaning shifts in accord with what you say, for example:
How do you feel these days? How do you feel right now? How
do you feel about this philosophy, so far? What is your felt sense
of the word "felt meaning" as we have been using it? Each time
it is a different whole. From the felt meaning or felt sense of a
given situation as a whole you can get a course of action or a
sequence of words which arise from that whole, from the feel of
all the facets of it.
In contrast, if you focus on the anger, you will get stomping,
hitting, kicking, and fighting. The felt meaning implies a vast
number of behaviors and speakings, and focaled, it may imply
one suited to all this. The emotion of anger implies fighting, or
fighting-like behavior. If you focus on it you will get madder and
and madder.
Animals fight. This fighting itself is not an emotion, of course.
But when animals are about to fight, they get ready to fight, and
that involves a gamut of processes and behaviors. In cats, for
example, thickening of the tail, rapid blood circulation, stiffening
of the muscles, and so forth occur. We humans, looking on, say
the cats are angry. There is no doubt that a sentient body going
through these changes feels the changes, and in this sense fight-
readying is anger for the cats. However, cats engage in this only
as being about to fight. They do not sit at home feeling and
brooding angrily, they cannot become angry alone. This fact is
part of a large human-animal difference; humans can behave in
reaction to situations they are not physically in at a given time.
Before we can speak of anger in the human sense, we must add
this human capacity to take situations along, to take them home,
to be in many situation:s not present.
Animals do not react to pictures. The cat will react to the
picture of a cat as to a flat cardboard object. If it did respond to
the cat aspect of the picture at all, it would respond to it as a real
cat. Animals have no way of responding to pictures as pictures.
This capacity to respond to gestures, sound patterns, and visual
patterns such as pictures involves a new type of process, one in
which in one way the situation is not changed, not behaved in,
and yet in which in another way allows one to process the
situation.
How the body looks and sounds, the patterning of face and
posture and sound, we call "expression." The living body's
expressive patterning affects others of the same species even in
animals, although for them such patterns are part of behavior,
of situation-changing. Only humans make a separate level of
patterns with which to live in a situation and yet not behave in it.
As gesture-sequences and interactions develop (by a derivation I
cannot go into here), the body implies them along with the many
other implied sequences. Thus some of what a felt meaning im-
plies are behavior sequences which, if sequenced (made ongoing),
would change the situation, and others than can be engaged in
without changing the situation. The difference is not between
doing and speaking (or gesturing) but depends on the way our
situations inherently involve gestural patterns. Thus if I yell at my
boss, "I quit," I have acted. But if I do it when he is out to lunch,
or when I know he can't hear, the same behavior was "only"
expressive. I might even have an understanding with him that
this doesn't count as an act but only as an expression. Similarly,
if I write a large check but don't sign it, it is not an action, or if
I sign it but don't send it, again, it is not an action. Human
situations are thus shot through with elaborations in which
expressive sequences are part of action, and can also, under
specific circumstances, retain their role as "only" expressions.
(The word "only" is in quotes because expressing is a kind of
behaving too, but it is a special kind, and we save the word
"behaving" for what changes the situation.)
I t is important to see that expressive sequences cannot be
distinguished from action except in context.
It is thus possible, with a few moves of the limbs or a few
sounds, to run through behaviors whose context-the felt
meaning-is a situation not physically present. We do not need
Eugene T. Gendlin
the situation physically present to do this, we have our limbs and

vocal chords with us.
Thus we have the power to speak, gesture, or behave in the
situation privately, without acting to change it.
Elsewhere I deal with this in detail. I do not wish to sound as
if I accept this "symboling" power of humans as an unexamined
given, but I cannot say more of it here.
What counts for our discussion is that an "emotion" like anger
involves much more than the simple fight-readying of the animal.
We can take the situation which rouses our fight-reading home
with us, and become fight-ready even when the opponent and
context aren't present. Thereby we can have the fight-readying
as such. The animal will either fight right now, or its fight-
readying will subside. 'We can nurse our anger, have it every time
we put ourselves gesturally into the situation, although it isn't
present. Thereby man has an inner life.
Thereby we can also have anger covertly even when we are in
the situation. We can feel angry privately, even when we are
directly before what angers us. Thereby it becomes an "emotion,"
something of our inner life which we mayor may not express or
act on. Instead of directly fighting or subsiding, we can keep our
fight-readying to ourselves even in the situation. We call it an
emotion, and we need not show it or act on it.
Most human action, like expressive gesturing, is deliberate or,
if you like, mimicked. We act in the situations we have taken
along with us, and we act by performing motions which are
fundamentally gestures. Only rarely (when we do) do our
motions or words carry us bodily into them. If this is at the
expense of sensing the whole situation, it isn't usually very good
(some exceptions will be noted later). We blow up, get mad,
"know not what we do." For, as I have said, it is felt meaning
which, as the implying of many symbolic sequences, makes up our
implicit knowing of what we do. However, when this bodily
continuity into behaving can occur with all of our sense of the
situation included, then it is spontaneous and fully expressive
action, the kind which has taken account of all the facets inter-
affecting each other. That rare sort of action isn't a return to
animal impulsivity but a regaining of animal wholeness and
spontaneity for the whole of man. It is a new bodily whole
manner of action. However, most human action is symboling,
deliberate, and quite often, speaking. In human situations some
of the most situation-changing action is done by speaking, and
much physical moving about is really taking no action. There is
thus no basic difference between speaking and doing.
3
We thus far have discussed five different kinds of processes: (I)
animal behavior sequences; (2) spontaneous action which takes
account of a whole situation; (3) action and symboling of the
ordinary kind; (4) emotions, i.e., fight-readying had in a
sequence of symboling; and (5) felt meaning, the bodily feel of
all the body's implying of sequences not now going on.
I t is characteristic of the last two that we cannot make them
deliberately. We can deliberately put ourselves into the situation,
deliberately act, gesture, say or think in the situation, and this
then may make you angry. It also may not. Ifit doesn't you can't
help it, if it does you can't avoid it.
Putting yourself into the situation is what you do. When anger
comes, it does that. What is this independent coming? It is your
body getting ready to fight, hit, kick. Similar are other emotions
such as fear (flight-readying), sexuality, crying, laughing, cough-
ing, yawning, throwing up, hunger, pain, and sleep. Crying and
laughing stick out in this list as things animals don't do, which
nevertheless have this "must come" characteristic. But later I
will discuss other strictly human processes which involve it also.
Indeed, our basic criterion of which concepts we will accept
is this kind: We can fashion schemes deliberately, but if they have
an experiential effect "showing up" something concrete, that
"must come."
Eugene T. Gendlin
Felt meaning, as had and focused on, also "must come." You
may be so fight-readying tense that it would take some time for
it to come. Felt meaning as we "are" it is of course always there.
Whether focused on or not, what it is isn't up to us. Thus, while
we can act or symbol as we choose, we cannot feel what we
choose to feel, neither emotion nor felt meaning. It is true, as I
will mention again later, that anger can be mimicked but it
cannot thereby be had. It may come, or may not. You can fool
others about that, but not yourself.
We defined felt meaning as the body's implying of not now
ongoing sequences. Whatever sequence is going on, it also changes
the myriad maze of implied sequences. Thus any specific
sequence is not only itself but also the changing of the implied
ones.
To feel (either emotion, or felt meaning), some sequence must
be ongoing, and in life some sequence always is. But to have, or
to focus on the felt meaning, one cannot at the same time be
engaged in some specific sequence. Similarly, to feel an emotion,
say, anger, one cannot at the same time be having the felt
meaning, all that made one angry, and all the difference it makes
to blow up now. Thus emotions make us act in ways we may
regret later because while we blow up we have little reflective
sense of all that is involved. And, blowing up angrily is very
rarely that behavior which takes account of all of the situation
(though as I will show later, it may).
In order to feel anything, there must be some sequence. What
we feel may be unreflected, felt in-the-behaving. However,
anything we can call "a" feeling, a "this," is always reflected.
Therefore I have said that "anger" isn't the fight-readying alone,
but the sequence of symbolings or actions in our taken-along-
with-us situation.
Thus there is always a sequence. Felt meaning is either the
felt change made in the maze of implying by the present specific
sequence, or it is a symboled deliberate set in which the whole
situation is to be felt, and a feel of all that "comes." Either way
the sequence now going on will change all that-we will seem
to get it as an object, but this very getting is also a changing of it.
The scheme I have developed renders psychological events
such that only change is felt. Rather than viewing feelings as
static entities, the opposite conclusion results: if something were
unchanged, it would not be felt. Feeling, or sentience, is the
change made in the body, i.e., in the implying.
A given sequence, behavioral or symbolic, makes a myriad of
changes in many of the other implied sequences, the implying of
which is the body. Hence one could not possibly keep up with
the felt knowing by making actual sequences, behavior or verbal.
Each sequence makes myriad changes and if only one of these
were sequenced, that again would make another myriad of
changes. Thus sequences, even if they are novel and not, as so
often, only repetitious, are much too slow to keep up with the
felt effects they themselves make.
Felt meaning and emotion are thus on opposite sides, so to
speak, of a developmental continuum, yet they are both bodily
and not symboling-gesturings or actions. The felt meaning is not
symboling or action because it is more: it is the body implying of
many, many sequences. The emotion is not symboling or action
because it is less! It is-so far as the fight-readying or fight-
readying goes--only the implying of this one sequence of fighting.
We must now add some more detailed considerations.
So far we have found that anger is always the same, but this
applies only to the blowing up, kicking, and stomping behavior,
which is a physical fight-readying.
When humans keep their anger to themselves, symbol-gesture
it without or outside of the situation, they can control it in the
situation. The patterns for controlling anger and symboling it
when one is alone vary among cultures and individuals. In this
sense even anger, the emotion, is not universal (and we did
include the symboling-gesturing as part of the emotion, and not
only the fight-readying). This now explains why we were inclined,
at first, to deny that anger is always the same in the so-different
Eugene T. Gendlin
situations that make us angry, or that it is the same for different

people and cultures. It isn't the same. But the fight-readying,
"must come" aspect is the same.
Sheer anger feels and looks somewhat similar in all humans,
but different cultures provide somewhat different gestural
patterns. That is to say, when a man totally loses control over
sweeping anger you have a particular species of primate-the
human-readying for bodily fight, adrenalin coursing through
him; he gets red in the face, hits, stomps, thrashes, kicks, and
his musculature shows high tension. If there is something breaka-
ble around it will be broken, something throwable will be thrown,
something kick able kicked.
Patterns of controlling anger differ even more. Even Germans
and Americans differ in what they look like when they are angry-
and-con trolling-it, although when they blow up they look simi-
lar. Also, humans exhibit a great and increasing degree of
individual differences in controlling anger (although even in-
dividual fish of the same species differ).4 If you know a person
well you know what he looks, acts, and sounds like when he is
angry-but-controlling-it. Some get very quiet, some walk up and
down, some chain-smoke, some take Turns, and so on.
Long term patterns of controlling anger differ even more, and
can be pathological-by which I mean that the fighting force
of anger affects the organism instead of leading to the implied
fighting. But before we can discuss these (resentment, guilt,
depression), we must add some more items to our distinguished
set of different processes.
4
So far we have found only one aspect of anger to be universal
(the bodily "must come" physical fight-readying), regardless
of different situations, cultures, or individuals. And even at that,
4. Robert McCleary, personal communication.

the emotions of which this is true are very few. Anger, fear, and
sexual and parent-child love are perhaps all of them. And even
these differ in the symboling-gesturing, without which they
would not be emotions, but simply the behaviors or the about-to-
behave.
We must therefore add quite a lot between these few "general"
emotions, and the totally unique felt meanings. As our situations
differ in different cultures, so do our so-called emotions.
There has been little specificity in how emotions have been
discussed. Let me save the word "emotion" for the generals. We
must make distinctions. In Java, the American anthropologist
Geertz found people having an "emotion" he said he couldn't
feel and couldn't find people having in America. This emotion
is a peculiar kind of awe and respect. Geertz concluded from
this and other findings that emotions are not universal for humans.
While anger, fear, and a few others are universal, the emotional
vocabulary varies. Anthropology began with the idea that human
nature would be definable once many cultures had been ex-
amined. One would then see what was common less than for any
animal species. In the last twenty years the results have come in,
so to speak, and the answer from anthropology is: just about
nothing is common. There doesn't seem to be a human nature.
But let us look more closely. When do the Javanese feel this
peculiar type of respect? Geertz says they feel it when they are
in the presence of a spiritual saint. Naturally, then, Americans
cannot feel this emotion since (at least up to a few years ago)
there were no spiritual saints in America-no such situation,
hence no such emotion. It doesn't quite feel like our veneration
emotions of great people, authorities, or geniuses. The functional
and interactional nature of the human organism cannot be
defined as a given set of patterns, for these vary in different
cultures and even individually. We must define it one level of
generality higher: What is felt is the change in the ongoing
change in the whole body which is made by a given activity, and
an activity is always in (and a change of) a situation. The
Eugene T. Gendlin
activity is a certain organized pattern of change called for by the

situation, and this calling for, this requiring, really is what we
call situation. A situation isn't a flat set of circumstances, but a
set of circumstances that calls for certain actions, and that will
have different consequences depending on whether the action or
something like it is done or not.
We thus arrive at three kinds of feelings where before we had
two: in addition to the multifaceted "felt meaning," and the
universally patterned "emotion" (such as anger), we have the
variously patterned "situational emotions." It makes very good
theoretical sense that differently patterned activities-in-situation
should feel different in the body and hence that situationally
various "emotions" should be different.
Not only the general emotions (anger, fear, love) are reflected
on and gestured in the "situation" one takes home. Many action
sequences other than these "general" emotions have attained
to gesturing sequences one can do alone. Thus they have become
named and recognizable, and even when one is present in
the physical situation, one has them as "emotions." I call
them "situational emotions" -all those many, except the gen-
erals.
It will be seen that either sort of emotion is a datum to us, "an"
experience, a "this," only because there is a sequence of action
and/or gesturing which makes the "emotion" a focal object.
There are not only the "situational emotions," but many more
ways of feeling-in-action which have not developed routine
sequences of action or gesturing in one's taken-along way of
having situations. This is particularly true in modern urban
cultures in which during even one day one often finds oneself
acting in novel ways, the cultural routines not sufficing. Routine
ways, on the other hand, are usually capable of being sequenced
into one's imagination, giving rise to routine ways offeeling. This
close tie between action-routines and situational emotions can be
seen in the fact that we don't have words for many of these; hence
we say, "I feel as if I were ... " doing such and such in such and
such a situation, and this communicates the situational emotion,

if it has no name.
Thus what can be sequenced without behavior is an emotion,
and enables us to have it as an emotion even when we are in the
situation.
Even if anger or a situational emotion leads spontaneously to
action, without a sequence that can make the emotion a felt
datum as such, even then we say we had the emotion because
such a sequence was bodily implied. Thus it is possible to say
in retrospect, "Yes, I was angry," even if at the time only action
was focused on. Similarly, it is possible to say now, "Yes, you're
right, I am angry," in answer to a query that focuses one's
attention.
Thus the sequence of acting-gesturing in the taken-along
situation makes anger or situational emotions the data they seem
to us to be. This is so whether the sequence is actually gone
through, or remains only implied.
It is important to see that felt data, such as emotions, aren't
simply given; they are made in the gesturing or acting, or not
made but implied in implied gesturing or acting. For humans,
when anger comes and the body is in fight-readying, gesture-
sequences are always implied.
But didn't we say that the bodily feel of a situation is a felt
meaning? A "situational emotion" is not the feel of the whole
situation, it is an emotion sequence in a situation. The felt
meaning of being with a spiritual saint will be different for each
different person. The felt meaning will involve "respect" as only
one of many, many sequences, whereas actually having this
emotion would be just that sequence. So I have now explained
the difference between "felt meanings" and "situational e-
motions."
Emotions, general or situational, are "stock"; they are repe-
titious, they are what we feel in the situation, not the feeling of
the whole situation.
I will illustrate this in a moment with examples in which we
Eugene T. Gendlin
want to see all three: felt meaning, situational emotions, and

anger.
To the extent you have got beyond the culturally patterned
stock patterns of behaving and gesturing-symboling "stock"
sequences, to that extent your situational emotions are different
in different situations. Even if always unique, they are not the felt
meaning of the whole situation.
Situational emotions, like generals, "must come." There is a
sense in which we make the emotion-we do it by acting and
construing the situation a certain way, we put ourselves into it
by symboling and by action with imaginary verbalization,
gesturing, picturing, bringing it home to ourselves. But then what
we feel comes of its own and overtakes us. We can help how we
define and construe our situations, but only with work. We are
not free to imagine our situations any old way; it takes hard
work to construe them even a little differently-and still truly
(that is to say, still in a way in which the actions implied would
actually work if we acted them as well, so that the different way
we wish we felt would actually come in them).
It would be convenient now, again, if we could say there is no
such single emotion as anger, each case being different depending
on the situation. But this isn't true. It is the situation which makes
me angry and each situation is different, but the anger is in the
sense we said always the same. What about the situation makes
me angry? For animals it is fight-readying, but what is its
general situational significance for humans? Does it relate not at
all to the specific situation? And if it does, why is it not different
in different kinds of situations?
Animals may fight when attacked. The male fights when
another male enters his territory. Thus the animals spread out
and seek new ground. However, in those animals which live
together in societies-for example, monkeys-the fighting be-
tween males is still incipiently present but is obviated by a
system of gestures. A male animal is superior to certain others
in the tribe and inferior to certain others, and this hierarchy is
determined by fighting strength. A male animal turns his back

to another to indicate submission. If he does not perform this
gesture then there is an actual fight, at the end of which one of
the two animals will finally turn his back and submit. Thus the
origin of this gesture can be guessed as the submitting end of a
fight. When the end gesture occurs without a fight, the fight is
skipped.
This can be taken as a model for the more complex human
social patterns which also, when performed properly, skip actual
fighting despite our living so much on top of one another. This
makes understandable how social patterns precisely do not
involve anger and yet sharply indicate where anger would break
out, by structuring exactly what one must do on both sides of an
interaction which, if not done, fails to skip fighting, or fight-
readying.
Conversely, when, despite an indicated pattern of behavior,
an individual gets mad (i.e., finds his body readying to fight, and
especially if he begins to fight), this of course breaks the social
fight-avoiding pattern. Thus we fight when the situational
pattern breaks down, and we break down a situational pattern
by fighting.
Therefore you are likely to get mad when you and the other
person or persons have already failed to handle the situation
within the assigned patterns (or, for humans, failed also to devise
workable new ones). It is a silly notion that anger is some sort of
hostility fluid that is simply in people and has to be got out by
catharting. If you are living in an intolerable situation, no
amount of catharting will exhaust your anger; it will arise anew
every time you are in, or put yourself into, the situation. You
must devise ways of handling that situation-or break out of it
entirely. Anger may help handle the situation because it may
make the other change or back away. Anger can also help the
situation because it may break it entirely and thus give you new
circumstances, In the animal case anger will result only in either
the other animal backing off, or in a fight which ends with one of
the two backing off. The social animal does not leave. But the
human situations, especially in an advanced culture, are so
complex that a situation can be broken and change into a new
one. While you may not have the funds or the courage to quit
your job, your losing your temper may do it for you. You may
then find a better or a worse job, or you may be forced to steal,
but at any rate you have broken out of your old situa-
tion.
When we get mad we are readying to fight-it means that the
fight-obviating situation-making patterns are breaking down,
that in a moment these patterns (which are the situation) may
have broken down. This will change "the situation."
With humans' anger, it isn't always fighting that marks the
breakdown of a situation-you don't fight the boss physically,
usually. Saying "I quit" loudly is enough, and stomping out
and slamming the door isn't necessary to break the situation,
although it is likely. The anger comes from the situation, your
job is intolerable. But the stomping and slamming come from
the anger! You may feel like hitting him, and may even do so.
The anger implies the behavior of physical fighting.
For humans and animals, the situation determines when anger
arises-but anger implies physical fighting. Our situational
patterns have largely elaborated and multiplied the different
situations we can be in, as I already said. Thus if a man were to
talk at you nonstop for twenty minutes without letting you say
a word, you might well get angry, but you aren't angry at me
because this is a "lecture situation," one of the many symboling-
elaborated situations in which what I call "action" goes on.
The same behaviors are different and feel different in different
situations (action-context). Thus both anger and the more
specific situational emotions come upon us depending on the
situational patterns implied in our bodies.
It may seem strange to say that anger is the breaking down of
a situational pattern, and yet also to say that the situational
pattern decrees when anger will come. But on second thought
that is natural; only the pattern determines when the pattern

has been violated.
Anger may also serve to maintain a pattern by threatening its
breakdown in time; it may make the other back off, mend his
ways.
Anger is thus quite important for getting oneself out of a
situation, altering it when no good way can be found in advance
of getting mad, or maintaining it by threatening anger in time.
You do not get angry for nothing. But it is also worth focusing
on the felt meaning of the whole situation. You may have gotten
angry on the basis of a situational pattern which, when you
sequence it as such, you may then choose not to endorse. Only
the felt meaning of the whole situation enables you to make such
an individualized shift; otherwise, you can only act from the
emotions. Emotions will always be worthy of our attention, but
men have, in felt meaning, one more way of changing the patterns
implied in their bodies. But no "talking yourself out of it" can
work. If from your felt meaning and choosing you have devised
a new way to behave or symbol, it must work: it must have a
changed emotion that "comes"-not only when you are alone
but when you are in the situation. You can talk yourself out of
your anger when you are alone, perhaps, but when you go back to
the situation you blow up all over again. This is healthy because
whatever you did to make your anger dissolve or change so that
another emotion came was done with some falsification of the
situation. You managed by gesturing-symboling to make your-
self react to something other than the situation.
It will be unhealthy if you remain in the intolerable situation
without changing it effectively and without getting angry. What
are the alternatives if one neither changes the situation nor gets
angry? There might be resentment, which some people confuse
with anger, but which is a smoldering corroding within. (Re-
sentment and hate are two different forms of long term implied
and controlled anger, both involving a failure to change the
situation or break out of it. Anger is healthy, while resentment
Eugene T. Gendlin
and hate are detrimental to the organism. Anger is fresh, ex-

pansive, active, constructive, and varies with changes in the
situation. Resentment and hate are past-oriented; what happens
now is too late to affect them. They remain and remain, working
chiefly on and against oneself, rather than breaking the situation
or one's opponent. One of the worst results of oppression is the
sickening hate it forces on the oppressed. When one respects one-
self more, anger increases and hate and resentment decrease.)
I now want to look at an example of these three: felt meaning,
situational emotions, anger. Let us say a policeman stops you.
You feel toward the policeman a situationally patterned emotion,
whatever your subcultural pattern may be. (In a varied society
such as ours, it is subcultural groups which have the role that
cultures have in more traditional regions or periods). Now,
depending on your subcultural situational emotion, certain
behaviors of the policeman will make you angry so that you will
either lose your temper or will have to work hard to control it
(either way, the bodily emotion of anger has come). Or your
situational pattern may be such that you never feel bodily anger
coming when talking to the police. It is d:~ar from this example
that the two are distinct, the situational feeling pattern, and
anger which, whether it comes or not, is always the same, anger.
You mav "respect" officers of the law but blow up or have to
control yourself if you are unjustly accused, while someone else
may feel contempt and distaste for policemen and blow up or
have to control blowing up when he isn't dealt with respectfully.
Still a third may hate policemen for brutality he has experienced
or seen and may blow up or nearly so when the policeman puts
a hand lightly on his shoulder. The reaction will be at least
highly similar. A fourth may view policemen as having to be
conned out of making trouble, and may never even come near
blowing up when dealing with them. We note that anger will
"come" at points indicated by the situational pattern. The
pattern itself will include "situational emotions" -aspects of the
interaction which are routine and felt, such as "distaste" or
"respect"-which are not unique to each situation but are also

not general for all people and situations but exactly only the
feeling of this routine pattern with policemen. Differing from
both situational pattern and generals, like anger, is the felt
meaning. One gets past routine pattern or anger when letting
oneself feel the whole situation. Only here is uniqueness. The
felt meaning is also patterned, but so multiply patterned and so
richly related to so much else, that it can only be felt as a whole,
and not via given sequences, however many. The felt meaning
too is bodily, and to be focused on it too must be let "come."
It comes when I put myself into this whole situation I am up
against, rather than just this already thinly defined routine
pattern. Thus I may feel not only "policeman stopping me," but
the whole thing: some of its facets might be that I am on my
way to something important; that I don't have enough money
on me and so could get delayed badly; that I like being able to
deal with whatever comes up, that power is often in stupid hands;
that so many people have to do without pride so maybe I can
too; that I have trouble learning this; that I care about learning
it partly because it's hard for me; that some pride is false and
some is self-protective and humanly important for everybody,
and I can't tell which is in me; that this policeman's face is odd
and he is trying hard; that they train policemen to look at identi-
fications and then to call a person by his first name to assert
authority, so this isn't necessarily this policeman treating me so;
that he is a working man doing a little better in this job than in a
factory, and I can't stand any middle-class self-righteousness on
my part (my experience in the US navy and in hitchhiking on
trucks has made for thousands of facets that are now familiar
to me in dealing with a man like this and a man in a role like
this); that I'm cold; that I wish I hadn't just done what I did
which brought the policeman on; that I know the specific ugly
feeling which I now have and get when I know I did so meting
I wish I hadn't done and yet want to fight that off and blame
somebody; that I hate to be put down; that people are watching;
that this is strange country and no one I know is likely to be watch-

ing; and on and on, involving endlessly many more facets than
one could possibly separate out. But I don't think all this. I don't
think any of it! I am listening to what he is saying. I cannot use
or have a felt meaning if I think anyone of these facets as such
alone. I can have the felt meaning only if I let it come as a
bodily felt whole. If I were to explicate this felt sense, some of the
above and many others could be sequenced. Without experi-
encing, I feel it all and could call it "all that." A few of the above
scraps might go by in words or images, but very little. Most of
it cannot be had in sequences such as I wrote above, because
then one would have again only what is focused on.
Without the felt meaning made to come home to me whole, I
would simply be in the routine patterns. If we stay within our
roles neither of us will blow up and lose his temper, but these
same roles will also indicate where we are to lose our temper,
or come close to it. For example, if the policeman insults me
very much, rather than only calling me Eugene and lecturing
me, I may become angry. Similarly, he will get angry if I insult
him, rather than merely hinting that he can't see straight or is
lying. If I say, "You're wrong, you didn't see me do that because
I didn't do it ... ," that's all right. The cultural pattern indicates
that I can say this without his getting mad.
The more uniquely you have individualized your behavior
and situations by additional sequences, the less "stock" your
emotions are. The emotions are still, even at that, culturally
various, since, for example, whatever way you feel about being
stopped depends on where you were going-probably a situation
possible for Americans and one that would be impossible, or at
least quite different, for New Guineans. The culture patterns our
situations and only these can we then individualizedly pattern
further. Culture is not a set of patterns added on to the individual,
rather the latter develops as further structuring in and out of
culture's patterns. Don't think, therefore, you have left situational
emotions behind-you have only varied them further.
The felt meaning consists of all implied sequences, even some
which have as yet never been sequenced. Thus, if some aspects
of what you have sequenced are novel, then also other sequences
may emerge differently as a result. Thus novelty breeds more
novelty. By focusing on felt meanings, such implicit novelty can
emerge.
Thus all the specific feelings are emotions-situational e-
motions. Even when it isn't at all clear to me what some, say,
"blue and icky," feeling is, it is my being in some situation, some
action-context, probably one that is also unclear and will clarify
if I can sequence the symbol-gesture sequences implied in the
feeling. Only felt meaning focused on is not a specific. Only when
focused on does it have itself, so to speak. Otherwise felt meaning
is the body's vast implying but in the unreflected having of some
specific.
5
There are a few more, rather different processes we must cite,
and one of these is fundamentally important. With the help of
it, I will then conclude with a discussion of how more exactly
we can let our next act or thought come from felt meaning
rather than emotion or routine pattern.
When we do not feel whole and expressed in our actions or
words we can nevertheless do them, because, as I have indicated,
the patterns of action can be done as patterns. You can do a most
unnatural and unspontaneous act because you think it necessary,
just as you can say what you don't feel. Thus we need a new word
for the sort of action in which you do feel bodily whole, not from
emotion but from felt meaning. You might feel bodily whole
while blowing up, and indeed this feels good regardless of how
unjust or inexpedient it may be. You may be ignoring a great
deal of your situation; indeed, culturally patterned anger and
other emotions do ignore much of the increased individualized
complexity of many of our situations. You can trust your
emotions to be about something, but you better see what it is

before you trust what it is. What you can trust is the felt meaning,
because it is all of the situation, all its implied sequences, focaled
in one bodily feel.
Just as action and symboling can be mimicked, so can anger.
But unlike them, when anger is mimicked it isn't anger-it isn't
the emotion, only the action or the symbolic. This again shows
how mimickability is inherent in symboling and action, but
inherently impossible for emotion. Only its acting can be mim-
icked.
To put this into our example of the policeman, I may have
learned that the best defense against the law is getting angry in
the manner of an unjustly accused person-even if I don't have
the situational pattern of getting mad when I am accused
unjustly. I call this type "mimicking." There is all the difference,
since I don't feel the anger rushing onto me, overtaking me from
behind. Rather, I know how to shout and do the gestures that
are the activity of being angry, without the bodily emotion. For
example, in bargaining there is, in most cultures, a slotted anger
that comes right near the end, just before an agreement is
reached. Its function is to squeeze the last bit of concession out
of your opponent. Just as you are close to an agreement you get
mad, chuck the whole thing. All chances of agreeing are off,
it's war. Your opponent is supposed to know, in a way, that this
is the bargaining climax and he isn't supposed to give up
bargaining. Yet he is supposed to be a little cowed and scared.
This accounts for the usual headline, just before a strike is
settled, that the promised agreement has fallen through. 5 One
can see that this is based on the basic role of anger as threatened
breakdown of situations.
Humans fight in many actions (which as we have defined it
includes much speaking). Since action is largely symbolic and mim-
icked, most serious fights are cold. Anger only implies physical
5. Douglas, A., "The Peaceful Settlement of Industrial and Intergroup Disputes"
Conflict Resolution, I (March 1957), 71-8 I.
fighting, and usually that isn't the best way to fight in a given situ-
ation. That would usually leave you open to being swiftly defeated,
not by blows perhaps, but by giving your opponent the chance
to have you arrested. In hand-to-hand combat, it is true, anger
helps, and men are made to scream and gesticulate, so that their
physical fighting anger may come-because usually they have
no situational reason to be angry at the unknown men coming
from the other way. There is no reason to be angry and every
reason to be afraid, but anger and fear are mutually exclusive
at any given moment. Implicitly I may be both angry and
afraid, but actually I can only alternate the sequences of gestur-
ing, angry attacks, then a cowering away.
Similarly, having felt meaning and anger are mutually ex-
clusive. The anger is the implying of fighting physically. The
felt meaning is the implying of the myriad sequences which
together make up the situation. If your body is taken by one,
you cannot be having the other. This shows how bodily these are.
It also shows that anything which "must come" is a whole body
phenomenon; for the time it is there, it takes your body over.
To fight effectively in human situations may involve a time of
anger. First, it may involve the anger remaining implicit,
especially if after having the felt meaning we are still angry and
choose to be so. But we cannot fight effectively from out of being
bodily angry, about to blow up. That gives us only the physical
fight sequence, and we are likely to need a carefully attuned and
complex mode of behaving.
The emerging of such an exactly fitting move, which takes
account of all the factors making up the situation, is the final
member of our list. Let us say we are in that refined fighting
arena, the University. Getting mad will break the situation.
Stomping will only give pleasure to my opponents. Doing nothing
is not to handle the situation, and precisely if I do not, will I then
probably get very angry. The anger I begin to feel already
indicates I have not, so far, handled the situation.
Let me reiterate this principle: Freud said it backwards. He
said there is "aggression" (some hostile energy) in us, but if we

"integrate" it properly we are then adaptively aggressive in
handling our situations. Originally it is unintegrated, just hostili-
ty. I say, rather, if we do not handle our situations ("aggressively,"
one calls this in America) then we will get separately and de-
finably angry. As long as I handle situations so that I can
tolerate them, I am not angry. Others may call me aggressive
because they don't like it and they are angry. (This is not to
be confused with the man who is angry about one thing and acts
aggressively about something else.) Now, in the situation which
is beginning to make me angry, how do I find that move which,
if it succeeds, will let me not need to be angry, and which, to
succeed, must meet a large number of different factors which
make up the situation!' I do it from the felt meaning. Before we
can discuss exactly how I do it, there is one more consideration:
Being angry, physically, may lead me to make a "snide"
remark. People will say I made that remark because I am angry
and they are likely to be right. The remark is not likely to be the
best action under the circumstances, though it could be. But,
at any rate, it is a complexly determined remark, and not physical
fighting, and yet it has in some way come from my being angry.
But we have said that anger implies only physical fighting. Here
is something like what we at first thought we would say about
anger-"snide" is only a category name, each snide remark is
different. We have seen, however, that anger is fight-readying
bodily, and visibly is always the same. The "snide" type, on the
other hand, must always be newly invented within the situation.
It must fit exactly, balance all that has gone before.
We want to know how, in a situation not handled and angry-
making, I can devise a course of action that will take account of
all the factors and handle it. It is clear that I cannot look to the
old and now broken or breaking patterns to find the way. As
between them and fighting, the choice has already been made by
my body; in getting angry, I have already rejected them (though
since I am human I can bide my time before I fight, and keep
my anger to myself). Anger and eventual fighting might be the
right thing, and breaking the situation will then change it. But
before or after fighting, how is a situation changed? In my
example earlier the man who simply quit his job out of anger
had then to see how to find another one. Anger doesn't find jobs,
it only gets rid of an unbearable one. It is often good to break
a situation even if you can't see yet what then to do, and often
we can't help it anyway. But what then restructures a situation?
Not the old fight-obviating patterns, and not the anger.
We can get a lead from the "snide" type, the only one that is
uniquely fitted to a situation. How does one come up with a
snide remark? One is inclined to answer that a snide remark
"must come," and this is important since anger, too, "comes,"
or one doesn't have it. But anger, we said, is bodily fight-readying
and we can understand how it happens to us like hunger,
tiredness, laughing, pain, coughing, yawning, fear, and sexuality.
But these are all physical; how does something verbal like a well-
suited, neatly balanced, snide remark "come?"
To come up with such a well-fitted remark, I must let myself
feel the whole situation as I am in it, i.e., I must let myself have the
felt meaning. I cannot "figure out" a snide remark, no logic leads
to it, any thinking I might do with examples and other snide
remarks would at best give me leads (but no one does it this way).
I can only feel the whole thing, let it all come home to me, and
wait. A series of possible remarks (or, depending on the case,
possible active moves), will come. I may not like the first few,
and if not, then I can only let the whole thing come to me again,
and wait again.
What is this "letting the whole thing come home" of which
I speak here? Everyone has not only the given patterns of
behavior and canned speech, but also the whole felt maze of
experiencing, but only some people know how to let this whole
maze, which is mostly background, itself become figure. (If you
don't like this figure-ground scheme, there are other ways of
saying this). For example, you are reading this now. Doing so
Eugene T. Gendlin
involves, as any moment of living does, a whole maze. Some

of this maze has to do with your situation both today and more
long-term, with why you have time to read now, with what you
will do after you stop, with where you are sitting and who
else is there or absent. Some of the maze has to do with your
background in philosophy or its lack, with your reactions to my
earlier pages, with your own ideas that are related or different,
with reactions to a writing style like mine and a person like me.
The words and phrases mean something to you only as you have
the English and American situational and action patterns of which
words are a part. All this and much more-history and evolution,
eye movements and throat movements and book-holding and so
forth-are here along with still more. But you are not, and need
not, let all this come home to you as you read.
Suppose now that you have had enough of me and you want
to form some new and different chain of ideas of your own. Or
suppose something troubles you enough so that you stop reading
and think. You may find that you have no clear idea. To get one,
you put yourself by symboling into a set of letting the whole
situation come home to you. You say to yourself, "Let's see ... ,"
and thereby you let the whole way you feel about what I have
said come.
Thus the snide remark, and many other well-tuned "ex-
pressions" or actions from anger, involve felt meaning. From
the felt meaning in behaving a snide remark may come as I
hadn't wished, or quite well. From felt meaning as directionally
referred to, it is most likely to come as fitting my sensed situation.
There are people who rarely let a whole felt meaning come home
to them; they talk at themselves all the while they are alone, or
else they are distracted by external events. Even at that they
can come up with snide remarks and original actions because felt
meaning functions all the time and not only reflexively. But it is
a great advantage to be able to let felt meaning function any
time one wishes, rather than only when one is overtaken by some
product of its functioning inadvertently.
How is physical fight-readying anger related to felt meaning

so that, as it were, both can function to produce the snide
remark? Whatever sequence occurs does so from the body, i.e.,
from out of all the implying. Anger implies physical fighting but
is implied by our sense of a situation, i.e., the felt meaning. The
snide remark thus doesn't really come from anger, or express
anger, it comes from our sense of the situation which also makes
us angry, or is about to, or did a moment ago, and continues to
be implied. The snide remark goes with implied anger, and ex-
presses not anger but our sense of a situation that is also making
us angry. But only in the felt meaning do we have that sense of the
situation and how and why it isn't being handled tolerably, and
what would fit.
I t is vital, in our understanding of emotions, for us to under-
stand the difference between an emotion like anger and a felt
meaning-which is the bodily sensing of the whole situational
context and all that the body implies in it, plus all the differences
this makes to much else that the body also implies.
Anger, despite its healthy and beneficial aspects, is a primitive
pattern. Whatever the complexities of the given situation, you
lose sight of much of it when anger overtakes you. This is why
you have to stay cool, i.e., not actually angry, if you must devise
a course of action in a dangerous situation. You must do this
carefully and with the fullest possible sensing of all the circum-
stances together. This can't be done angrily because as anger takes
the body, that body cannot at the same instance also sense all
that is involved. It is either/or: either you feel the anger or you
feel all of the context in which you had gotten or might get angry.
To let a snide remark or a fitting course of action "come", one
must focus on the felt meaning. To sense that a given remark or
course of action is well-fitting (supposing someone else suggested
it), one must focus on the felt meaning to sense if the given
remark or act "handles" the situation as wholly felt. I cannot go
into this effect here. It is a characteristic continuity possessed by
only rare types of change: any remark or course of action could
Eugene T. Gendlin
change the situation, but only the rare one you seek changes it
in the mode of keeping all the implicit facets continuous, and
changes it so that only what needed to be different is made
different.
This relationship between a specific remark or act, and the
experimental felt whole which it changes, is the "explicative"
relation. If what I have said here has explicative validity, i.e.,
is phenomenologically successful, then the distinctions and terms
I have set up had this experimental effect of making a change
in your experience, but the characteristically continuous sort of
change I term explication. If so, you can now reject my formu-
lation despite keeping its effects, if you formulate differently,
making further experiential effects. This might be done
variously, but even one way that has the explicative effect is rare
and hard to arrive at. Rather than any danger of too many good
explications, this experiential explicative criterion cuts down the
relativism of indefinitely many possible schemes to those very
few precious steps which actually explicate.
Alexander Sesonske
CINEMA SPACE
Faced with the peculiar question, "What is a film?" or "What

is the nature of cinema?" the most obvious starting point may
well be the most obvious fact about film: a film is something that
we see. Things seen are, necessarily, spatial. But reasonable as it
seems to insist then that a film must be a spatial object, one
cannot stop there. For while other spatial objects merely occupy
a position within space accessible to our vision, a film also
provides its own space to replace that of our normal visual field.
My concern here is to describe clearly this peculiar space that
cinema presents for our experience-what I call cinema space.
The situation in which a film is properly seen plays a large
role in its effectiveness. We sit still, motionless, in a dark room,
facing a pattern of light and movement. The darkness of the
room obliterates the visual space of our immediate surroundings;
our immobility cuts off the flow of tactual and kinesthetic
sensations that forms a major dimension of ordinary experience.
Our eye, like that of every living creature, naturally turns to
areas of light and is attracted by motion. Hence in this darkness
the rectangle of light and motion before us exercises maximum
visual attraction. In this situation we are very susceptible to
becoming wholly absorbed in the object of our attention. Of our
senses, only sight and hearing are fully active, and the totality
of the audio-visual world present to us is that of the film. The
400 Alexander Sesonske
slightest invitation will persuade us to abandon our ordinary

lives and live wholly within the world of the film. Cinema space
presents that invitation.
Perhaps the peculiarities of cinema space may best be displayed
by a comparison with normal space, the ordinary space of our
everyday experience, the space of the natural world we inhabit.
We not only look around in this normal space, we also brush or
bump into things, handle objects, walk, run, or ride from place
to place. We have, that is, complex experiences of and in this
space, tactual and kinesthetic as well as visual. Our sense of the
space takes shape from all of this; familiar spaces are familiar as
much because we touch and move in them as because we see
them.
The central formal characteristic of this normal space is its
continuity. Normal space is continuous in three dimensions: One
can move from any point in normal space to any other by
passing through all the intermediate points and, in order to
change locations in space, one must pass through the intervening
space, which is, in a way, fixed. That is, between any two points
or locations in space there is a constant distance. Hence an
object cannot be in two locations at the same time; an object
cannot move instantaneously from one location to any distant
one. Many of the most obvious and certain truths about the
world follow from this formal property of space. Among them is
the fact that we are outside of, away from, any area of space
distant from that which our body occupies.
In addition to its form-continuity-some "material" charac-
teristics of ordinary space deeply influence our experience.
Central among these are properties connected with gravity.
There seems to be a natural distinction between up and down
in the space of our world, natural movements of objects (as
noticed by Aristotle) toward or away from the earth, and
a natural relation between the direction of movement and the
amount of effort required. Also constant and natural in our
sense of normal space is the distinction between earth and sky
CINEMA SPACE 401
and their constant conjunction, a setting which establishes

directions for our movements but which is also an almost uni-
versal basis for symbol and myth in the juxtaposition of darkness
and light, earthly and heavenly, and so on.
Much of our sense of security, when we have it, relates to
these aspects of normal space. The idioms in which we voice our
feeling of security or lack of it reflect this: We "know where we
are" or "see where we are going," feel "lost" or "in the dark,"
or "without direction." A moment of greatest anxiety is often one
of spatial disorientation; when it is asked seriously, "Where am
I?" often contains a note of panic. Given the continuity of space,
if we don't know where we are, we don't know where anything
else is either. But, of course, this continuity also assures us that
once we have become reoriented, the rest of the world falls into
place too.
The space of a film, as we experience it, contrasts in several
ways with this familiar normal space. I have already suggested
the difference which underlies the contrasts: cinema space is a
wholly visual space. We see it, but it is not a space in which we
can touch anything, manipulate any object, or perform any
muscular activity. It exists only for this single spatial sense, vision.
But it is a genuine visual space whose visual reality is immediate
and inescapable. It is not an illusion; all normally sighted
persons will see the same things in a film, at least to the same
extent as they see the same things in normal space. In this sense
cinema space is quite objective. But all of our experience of it,
with whatever tactual and kinesthetic resonances this may have,
derives from vision (and sound, of course, though I will not
discuss here the ways in which sound affects the space of a film
since this leaves untouched, I believe, its basically visual charac-
ter). This fact, that cinema space is wholly visual, makes possible
its other major characteristics.
Logically, though perhaps not phenomenologically, primary
among these is duality. Cinema space is two-faced but, unlike
Janus, both its faces are presented at once. We do see films, but
402 Alexander Sesonske
exactly what is it that we see? A pattern of color or light and

shadow reflects from a flat surface before our eyes; in some sense
it must then be this two-dimensional pattern that we see, even
though we would not usually describe our experience in that
way. We know that a film is projected on a screen. We might
even say that we are looking at the screen but what we see is the
picture-John Wayne riding across the prairie, Brigitte Bardot
displaying her anatomy. We can, if we try, actually attend to the
composition within the two-dimensional rectangle-what I call
screen-space-but we seldom do. Sometimes film-makers force
this on us by making their pictures stubbornly two-dimensional.
This usually happens only in abstract or animated films, which
do not endeavor to look like the natural world. One of the charms
of the UPA cartoons in the mid-forties was the utilization of a
sort of rubber space, essentially two-dimensional but ready to
stretch into any degree of depth at any moment. There the inter-
play between two-dimensional pattern and visual depth became
a very overt aspect of cinematic art; usually less obvious, this
interplay nevertheless persists as an almost omnipresent source
of the effectiveness of film. That is, we do in some way remain
aware of the two-dimensional compositions in screen-space even
though our attention centers on the other face of cinema space;
this secondary awareness permits characteristics (or emotions)
expressed in this screen-space design to be strongly felt in our
apprehension of the action of the film.
The other face of cinema space is, of course, the three-di-
mensional space within which the action occurs. This, which I call
action-space, normally wholly occupies our attention. In our usual
mode of awareness, it is the space of film, containing the charac-
ters we love or hate, the events we dread or cheer, the intrigues
that intrigue us as they unfold. Most of our talk about films
concerns persons, objects, things-Ratso Rizzo, the Odessa
steps, or Claire's knee-talk which treats them as if they were
real. But such objects are all spatial things, requiring three-
dimensional space for their being. The casual familiarity of our
CINEMA SPACE
talk about films reflects the degree to which we project into

cinema's action-space the characteristics of the ordinary three-
dimensional space in which we move. Perhaps the fact that the
objects in a film are usually of a very familiar type-people, cats,
cars-helps convince us; such ordinary things must inhabit an
ordinary space.
But of course they don't! This purely visual action-space has
formal characteristics quite different from those of normal space.
Central in this difference is the discontinuity of action-space.
First, the action-space of a film is discontinuous with the space
of our normal world. No point in this action space has any fixed
distance relation to any point in normal space; we cannot get
nearer or farther from a location in action-space by changing
our location in normal space-though we can of course get
nearer or farther from points in screen-space. We cannot go from
where we are to any place within the action-space by traversing
the intermediate space; for there is none. Our relation to
locations within action-space is determined by the action-space
itself, by the film, and not by us. We cannot even sensibly locate
it in relation to normal space, though we can, of course, often
clearly locate objects within action-space.
But all this does not mean that we are forever outside the
action-space of the film. Since it is discontinuous with normal
space, our relation to it is not fixed. While seated in the theater
we can at the same time be taken (visually) into the space of the
film, see the action as from inside this space, move through it at
great or little speed, be rejected or excluded from it. Some of our
most vivid experiences of film occur in scenes where we seem to
be deep inside the action-space and wholly immersed within
the events of the film- for example, in the final battle scene of
Seven Samurai where we are almost overwhelmed by the whirl of
motion yet never lost or confused. In a decent theater and with a
good print, I think that our usual sense of our relation to the
events of a film is that we see them from within the film's action-
space. Usually a somewhat unpleasant shock occurs if we are
Alexander Sesonske
thrust back into an awareness of our place in the normal space

in the theater.
Second, the action-space of film is discontinuous in itself.
Perhaps this would seem the most obvious fact about cinema
space, except most films are made so as to shield us from it.
Instantaneous transference from one location to another, though
exceedingly common in film, hardly joggles our sense of the
continuity of the world of the film because we simply accept such
continuity as holding within the lives of the characters, and the
film-maker usually carefully avoids denying it. But it need not be
so. Comedies, science fiction films, and cartoons often more
fully display the possibilities of cinema space where objects can
be in several places at the same time, appear instantly at distant
locations, completely disappear only to reappear later somewhere
else. What we may see from this is that cinema space is a wholly
created space, with its characteristics determined by the film-
maker who can vary them at will. He also controls the relation
of the action-space to the film's audience. Thus when the space
of a film seems just like that of the ordinary world, this is because
it has been made that way. There is no necessity for it; it is no
more natural to film than the odd spaces we encounter at certain
moments, say, of Marat/Sade or Orphee.
The creative possibilities in the space of film extend beyond
control of the discontinuities noted here; the very density or
"motion potential" and perspective of action-space can be
altered at will by the use of a variety of camera lenses. Wide angle
lenses stretch out the visible space along the axis perpendicular
to the screen, create apparently greater distances and more
sharply visible perspective. Motion becomes different depending
upon its direction, accelerating along the perpendicular axis.
Jean, running down the beach in L' Alaiante, almost disappears
from sight in ten steps. Telephoto lenses have the opposite effect
-flatten the space, squash it together along the perpendicular
axis so that objects seem all on the same plane, crowded together.
With very long focus lenses motion becomes almost impossible
CINEMA SPACE
in the perpendicular axis; speeding cars hang motionless on the

brow of a hill; men run forever in the same spot.
Third, the action-space of film is perceived as contained
within a frame, yet as unlimited. The role of the frame in our
experience of film cannot be overemphasized, in relation to both
aspects of cinema space, screen-space and action-space. We see
the pattern of shapes on the two-dimensional screen as a lighted
rectangle framed by darkness, with sharp edges and a clear and
regular shape. As such a perceived surface, the screen-space has
all the dynamic characteristics and potentialities we talk about
in relation to paintings. The firmly framed rectangle is a very
stable figure which maintains its shape almost no matter what
goes on within or outside of it; it provides the basic structure in
terms of which we can talk of balance, tension, symmetry,
movement. Persons, things, and motions are seen not only in
relation to surrounding objects but also and always in relation
to the stability of the frame, from which they derive their
character as compositional elements. In action-space as well the
frame transforms mere arrangements in depth into expressive
design. Movement within this three-dimensional space, through
its relation to the frame, acquires a clarity of magnitude and
direction it usually lacks; perspectival differences in size, seldom
noticed in unframed normal space, become striking and in-
escapable. In Citizen Kane, for example, in shot after shot a fore-
ground object dominates the composition by its mere size-
Kane's leg, or the back of his head, or the cockatoo, or a medicine
bottle-yet the action of the scene is deeper in the space and
performed by persons diminished in size by the wide angle
perspective; repeatedly this creates a tension between the screen-
space composition and the action-space meaningful movement
that increases the intensity of the scene.
But though the frame always contains and shapes the visible
action-space at any moment, it does not confine it-unless, of
course, the film-maker wishes it to be felt as confined. Usually the
flow of movement in and out of the frame, and particularly
Alexander Sesonske
camera movement, with which the frame itself seems in motion

and with which we find ourselves moving through the world of
the film, presents the action-space of the film as unlimited, as
extending indefinitely beyond the frame in every direction. At
any moment in a film we feel sure that the camera could move
and reveal further details of the same world we now see. It does
not end at the frame line, as the space of a painting does, or with
the walls of an interior we see, as the space of a stage usually
does. There is always more beyond that could be shown; our
perception of a film almost always includes a feeling of assurance
about this. Thus a sort of implicit continuity complements the
perceptual discontinuity of action-space.
Cinema space, then, combines these two aspects, a two-
dimensional screen-space and a three-dimensional action-space
which has formal characteristics different from any other visual
space we ever experience. These aspects are not joined, of course,
by addition since they must be in some sense identical, that is,
contained in the single pattern of light and motion on the screen
which we see in both these ways. But the duality is, I insist, as
real as the identity and this duality-in-identity makes the action-
space of a film different from normal space in a way not noted
before.
In the normal space of our lives our vision is selective, and
objects at varying distances from us are usually not simultaneously
in focus. Focus adjusts as our eye moves; so we tend not to notice
that most of our visual field is not sharply focused at any time.
If we are looking at a person a few feet before us, the window
frame behind him is probably not in focus and the child playing
outside the window is not seen at all. But the depth-of-field
possibilities of camera lenses differ from those of our eyes. By
using small apertures or short focal length lenses one can in-
crease the depth of field; with some wide angle lenses everything
from two feet away to infinity will be in sharp focus, the child
in the street as well as the eye in the room. And of course the
resulting picture is projected on a flat screen; the two-dimension-
CINEMA SPACE
al screen-space which is the actual point offocus of our eyes is all

on the same plane and therefore all in focus at the same time for
our eye even though we may still look at it selectively. Thus the
action-space of a film can be a deep space all in sharp focus; this
makes possible a number of dramatic or emotional or accenting
effects. For example, one can frame portions of the space in a
way which clarifies relations and sets off individual actions or
reactions. Structural elements of the scene-posts, doors,
windows, or wall divisions-though in the background, are still
sharply focused and become frames within the frame which help
determine the way we see or attend to characters or actions. For
example, Antonioni in Blow Up constantly divides his action-
space in half with vertical structural elements, not only creating
complex compositions but also frequently separating his central
character from the person with him and thus reinforcing his lack
of attachment to or communication with others, one of the
major themes of the film.
Space is not, of course, the only primary formal category of
cinema; time and motion share its role as basic formal determi-
nants of the structure and expressive character of any film. And
sound, when it is present, usually becomes a fourth major
category, though it does not therefore dispute the essentially visual
nature of film. The uniqueness of film as an art form lies in the
uniqueness of the modes of space, time, and motion which may
be presented in cinema. I have attempted here to describe
cinema space in a way which will exhibit its differences from the
space of our ordinary experience. Nothing I have said implies a
denial of the fact that most films, for most viewers, will seem to
present a world whose space is quite indistinguishable from that
of our own. But this is a matter of choice, not necessity; a film-
maker's use of "normal" lenses and "invisible" cutting aims at
creating just that sort of world. And our habits of perceiving
normal space conspire with him to make us overlook the in-
evitable differences. The truth of such "realistic" theories of film
as Kracauer's is not that realism in film is necessary, proper,
Alexander Sesonske
inevitable, or somehow more compatible with the actual nature

of the medium, but that the achievement of a realism whose
authenticity and immediacy seems unreachable by any other
art lies within the range of expressive possibilities in film. And
insofar as film-makers seek to create narrative films which
reflect and illuminate our actual experience, such realism remains
a powerful tool. But much of its power derives from a subtle
employment of the very unrealistic aspects of cinema space.
This may involve not only formal differences in the space, but
a rejection or reversal ofthe "material" characteristics of normal
space as well, as in the shocking moments late in Dreyer's Passion
ofJoan of Arc, when the distinction between up and down sudden-
ly disappears.
Let me conclude this account of cinema space with another
comparison with a familiar type of space, this time with the space
of a theater in which live drama is performed-stage-space. In
both its formal and material characteristics the space of the stage
is usually identical with normal space. A sort of discontinuity
exists between the spaces of different scenes and, of course, a
sort of limbo, nowhere, can be created on the stage. But within
a scene the space is continuous and, more importantly, the space
of the stage is continuous with the space in which the audience
sits. Thus our (audience) relation to it is to an area of normal
space. Our experiences in the theater are usually only visual, but it
is clear that we could walk from our seats onto the stage, step into
the action-space of the play, touch its objects, climb its stairs. It
is convention, not necessity, that decrees that our theater ex-
periences shall be only visual, and recent attempts at partici-
patory theater attack that convention. In the theater we are in a
fixed position in relation to the stage-space, though it may
sometimes be extended into the audience area. But it is always
there, while we are here; we always view its actions from outside
and as a part of an audience spatially compact and distinct
from the space of the play. In contrast, there is a sense in which we
always see a film alone rather than as part of an audience; my
CINEMA SPACE
relation to the space and events of the film is felt as my relation,

not as ours. When the camera moves it is I and not we who move
with it through the world of the film.
This comparison suggests, I hope, some important ways in
which film differs from staged drama. Film theorists have often
decried the influence of theater on cinema and have claimed that
the difference between these arts is that drama is essentially
verbal whereas cinema is visual. Even if true this does not, I
think, identify the irreducible and fundamental difference; for
the verbal/visual contrast itself rests upon some underlying
formal differences, of which the central one is that between
stage-space and cinema space.
William Earle
VARIATIONS ON THE REAL WORLD
Andre Breton and Phillipe Soupault used to spend afternoons

popping in and out of movie houses in Paris, seeing a bit of this
film, a bit of that, refusing to observe the names of the films, or
remember their plots. Max Ernst defined his surrealist art as "the
fortuitous encounter upon a non-suitable plane of two distant
realities"; and suggests that in this way "we have already broken
loose from the law of identity." Breton, again, in the Second
Manifesto announces: "Everything tends to make us believe there
exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the
real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and
the incommunicable, high and low cease to be perceived as
contradictions.' ,
To begin with Breton and Soupault, what in effect were they
doing, besides amusing themselves, but creating a new film
composed of the fragments they happened to see, a new film
composed by chance? It is that new film we shall be examining
here, along with its successors, the dadaist and surrealist films of
Rene Clair, Man Ray, Luis BUlluel, and the American films
beloved of the dadaists, those of Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and the
Marx Brothers. No doubt, all nonsense, but perhaps that non-
sense and those dislocations from reality, where we can break
loose from the law of identity, have something to teach a
phenomenology which only very rarely looks at anything but the
real world. Phenomenology has devoted extensive study to the

act of perception, and a perception aimed at perceptual realities;
and yet Husserl himself took some pains in elaborating the method
of imaginative variation in order to disclose phenomenological
essence. Surrealist movies offer us the opportunity of varying
before our own eyes the fundamental principles by which we
constitute what we call the real world. The sense which permeates
that world will be seen as but a minor variation of an encompass-
ing non-sense; if so, then both might become a little bit more
vivid. Surrealism, after all, was never exclusively or even pre-
dominantly an aesthetic movement; it was an effort to liberate
men, a liberation which had as its objective correlate surreality
and not reality itself. I should, therefore, like to elaborate on
these themes: first, to make more precise how the surreality of
surrealist films is indeed an "explosion" of the defining principles
of perceptual reality; secondly, to show the motivations which
motivate both the realist and surrealist constitutive acts; and
finally, to argue for that "point of consciousness" Andre Breton
mentioned, where opposites cease to be perceived as such.
1. The Explosion of Reality

Suppose we see a triangular brass wire and suppose we see this
concrete object as "a triangle," that is, what we choose to note
in the complex is its triangularity. And then we ask ourselves,
what is the very essence of triangularity? What was it we aimed
at, when we noted only the triangularity of the wire? Now of
course we could run to the dictionary, but then how did the
definition of the term ever get there in the first place, is it correct
to what we perceived, and finally, since we already have the
very thing we envisage before us as an example, what need to go
elsewhere? But the concrete brass wire is an example of an
indefinite number of meanings; and so in imagination and
sometimes also in fact we have the possibility of varying the
concrete thing-altering this, omitting that-until through the
412 William Earle
course of imaginative variations, we can see in our mind's eye that

what we originally noted, triangle, in some cases of alteration is
no longer a triangle, but in others remains invariant. We thus
render explicit the eidos as an invariant through certain alter-
ations. Thus if I change the material, I recognize no change in
the essence Triangle. It is the shape of material, and not the
material itself. If now I proceed to alter the shape, obviously I
find that the same shape suffers willingly some changes-such
as size, place, degree of angle-and I still have a triangle; and
yet another one explodes my original meaning; if I increase the
number of angles to four, I no longer have a triangle. And so
I render present to myself the very essence of triangle, as I
originally recognized it. On the other hand, if I had originally
noticed not triangle, but brass, clearly, that essence would
dictate a wholly different series of variations.
And so by imaginative or real variations in experiment, I can
make evident to myself the essential structures of what I perceive
or mean implicitly. All of this can be fixed in words but has
nothing essentially to do with lexicons, since phenomenologically
it is the prethematized meaning which I already have myself
which serves as the standard against which the analysis measures
itself; whereas with lexicons, the same word can carry a variety
of meanings-in fact, as many as the concrete brass wire-and
therefore must in fact also be imaginatively varied to disclose
each distinct meaning:, a procedure put into effect by linguistic
philosophers. And in any event, the method is reasonably clear
and serves the purpose of rendering explicit what was implicit
III my own experIence.
But now suppose we take as our theme the real world. Heidegger
emphasizes that we an: always already in it and with it. It is not
the same as being-in-itself, but is that which is for us, the face so
to speak which being-in-itself turns toward our existence. And,
of course, the world is not itself a being, but that "in which"
beings can be. And we encounter many types of real things and
encounter them in many ways. But without repeating either
Husserl's or Heidegger's analyses, certain conclusions are evident,

conclusions which for all the changes in terminology and differ-
ences of purpose are not too different from Kant. Real things
have their identity, their quantities, their qualities, their proper
character shown in their proper places, their endurance through
time, their causal and reciprocal relations with one another; and
somehow together they compose or exist within a common real
world-a world of real things which can be mutually encountered,
commonly referred to, and-whether defined as things of our
experience or things and events of a physically defined space-
time-together these real things can be progressively and
publicly investigated. It is into that real world we are born, in
it we live and out of it we die.
We might quarrel forever about which candidates for reality
deserved it. Are we ourselves real in the same sense? And yet
even that quarrel would itself be senseless unless we had some
sense of what we meant by "reality," a sense sufficiently clear to
include some things and exclude others. If we were looking for a
generic characteristic for those real things, perhaps "identity"
might serve, provided we understood it as exponible from mere
formal or logical identity into temporal, spatial, causal identity.
This is an identity which in principle would be the same for a
plurality of possible persons and which could be encountered and
referred to by them. Dreams, abstractions, and imaginative
constructions all lack this sort of identity and therefore are not
taken as members of the real world, although they may be
related to members of the real world.
If some such thing is the sense of reality implicit in even the
most ordinary experience, it could receive some measure of
confirmation by the method of imaginative variations. Now if
reality is an absolute horizon within which every meaning must
find its subordinate place, then no variation outside of it is
possible. And yet the loosening of this law of identity was ex-
actly what Max Ernst proposed as the aim of surrealism, and
more or less what we are invited to see in surrealist films: to see
William Earle
the horizons of nonsense within which the sense of reality finds its
subordinate place.
The identity which surrealism loosens is not the formal identity
of a formal logic, but that identity which forms content. That is,
it is the identity of something, somewhere, in some time, for
someone. Thus the identity of the sun is not the empty fact that
an x is itself, but that something, the sun we see, is always that
heavenly body whose shining creates the day as it moves across
the sky. That is what the sun is, its identity. What then are we
to say of Paul Eluard's "sun which shines at midnight"? Since
"the sun which shines at midnight" is "the sun which shines at
midnight," no loosening offormal identity is needed; and yet the
shattering of the sun's own material identity is evident. And so
with Joshua's sun, which stood still at command. And the infinite
varieties of blue suns, square suns, or chariots of the sun which
fall into the sea. And so with god-suns whose offspring were the
pharoahs of Egypt. In all of this, we are offered an extraordinary
phenomenon; the sun which shines at midnight is at one and the
same time our old sun, which anyone can see-that sun which
not merely does not shine at midnight, as a habit, but could not
possibly shine at midnight, without exploding its very own essence
as creator of the day-and not this sun. It is therefore both itself
and something like the moon, or another planet. The surrealist
or simply the imaginative explosion of reality then occurs in a
domain which, while always bearing a reference to the common
perceptual realities, is not restricted to that reference as realism
is, but works the most profound variations upon it to the point
of negating it; and it does this not on the formal logical plane, but
in the realm of the concrete itsel£ Surrealist films show this surreal
domain, the domain where the real is retained and also negated.
Not merely are the identities of real things themselves pro-
foundly varied, and varied in principle and not accidentally, but
the very world in which such new things live and work is pro-
foundly altered. That is, the space and time and interconnections
of such surrealist minerals, flora, and fauna are profoundly
altered. InJean Cocteau's Blood ojthe Poet, the Poet passes through
a mirror into "another world." A real mirror hangs upon his
real wall; really, there is nothing behind the mirror except the
wall; but for the film, passing through the mirror is passing into
another space and time altogether, a space and time absolutely
discontinuous with the real world. There is no sense in which what
happens behind the mirror is but an extension in a common
space or time with what happens before it. It is neither nearer
nor farther, nor is its time earlier, later, or contemporary with
the real time before it. It occurs once upon a time, and elsewhere.
But one might argue that even so, these surrealist times and
spaces obey the same laws as our own real world. If we forget for
a moment Cocteau's film, we can, I think, see that nothing of the
kind need be the case. The laws of perspective can be profoundly
altered, as is easily done with extremely wide-angle lenses or
extreme telephotos. Or there may be no perspective at all, as
when Count Dracula's coach is met on the other side of the bridge
and moves forward and backward at the same time, right and
left, until what we experience is that thorough spatial disorien-
tation which is to dominate Dracula's otherworldly world.
Further, there is no sense in which the events of Andalousian Dog
or Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad can be reconstructed or
constituted as a temporal sequence, whether lived or physicalistic.
I am not referring to the common flashback, which simply alters
the sequence of narration but is easily reconstituted into a
sensible temporal order and intended to be so understood. But
even this understanding of the flashback had to be learned by
audiences; at first, in the silents, and before we were habituated
to the device, words or the turning pages of a calendar explained
it. Without that interpretation, the audience experienced the
disruption of natural narrative order as confusing, that is,
disruptive of real time and space. Those of us who admire the
surrealist sensibility might well envy the naivete of those early
audiences and the resulting experiences surely would have saved
otherwise hopelessly banal movies. And, to note in passing, the
William Earle
affair is curious since what the movies call flashback is an ancient

literary device, which should have caught no one by surprise; on
top of that, the flashback is nothing but the most common ex-
perience of recollection. The confusion, if not shock, which the
flashback in movies offers perhaps then is testimony to the
inherently realistic experience which moving photography pre-
sents; and therefore its absolute suitability for rendering vivid
any variation on that inherent realism. We are accustomed to
reading everything in words, and nothing surprises us anymore;
but to see these radical variations on reality before our eyes in a
moving photograph is something else.
To avoid belaboring the point, is it not clear that everyone
of the fundamental rules governing the very sense of what we
would accredit as real is variable, and variable not merely in a
vague way of theoretical supposition, but made visible to the
mind's eye in surrealist film? Causal connections, mutual inter-
actions, coherence of character or motive, all can easily be
exploded concretely, leaving us not with simply nothing, but the
phenomenon of another domain.
Now it is clear that the surprising and marvelous effects of the
surrealistic domain result from its reference to the common
domain of reality; after all, it is a distortion or variation of that
real world. It is not created ex nihilo. And yet the domain
opened up is not reducible to the real world nor a domain within
it. Since it can be structured with an almost absolute freedom,
it is rather the real world which represents merely one of an
indefinite number of possibilities, one now realized. From the
phenomenological point of view, possibility is prior to actuality,
even if in the course of our experience actuality may be thought
of as coming first.
II. },,{otivations for Construction

If we revert to the actual flowing of our conscious life, we find
of course those passive syntheses which in their own embodied
system and logic generate as objective meanings, real identities,

the furniture of the real world. But we also find those active
syntheses of the imagination in which the identities of the real
world are deformed, reformed, and exploded into quasi-objects
whose identity is always on the point of dissolving, which arouse
contrary anticipations, which are not arranged in any space or
time continuous with experienced space and time, or even
necessarily with themselves. The very passivity of perceptual
synthesis induces or motivates us to take such identities as real
until proven otherwise. They are regular, generate confirmable
expectations, and are not in any evident sense the production of
our own volition or phantasizing consciousness. They are consti-
tuted precisely as identities to which others can turn, which they
can confirm and investigate. And if they are still "products of
consciousness," they are most definitely not arbitrary, personal,
whimsical, or variable on demand.
But consciousness-with its reality, its public world, its regular
identities-is hardly confined to these passive syntheses. It can
just as well dissolve, explode, and reform from ground up the
world which it wishes to attend to. And it need not synthesize at
all, it can as easily negate, disjoin, disrupt-not in the interest
of new identities, but in the interest of none at all-that is, of
living in the domain of possibility in which it can experience the
very phenomenological origin of that peculiar and limited con-
sciousness which directs itself to and attends upon reality.
Phenomenologically, possibility is prior to actuality, and even
turns actuality itself into one more possibility; and yet, this
priority is profoundly reversed by our existential concerns. For those
concerns, existence is prior to possibility, as Kierkegaard never
tired of repeating. In fact, for existential concern, attention to
the domain of possibility is unserious, merely aesthetic, and a dis-
traction from real concern. And while decision decides between
possibilities, the possibilities are themselves real possibilities
within the real world; decision decides for and in real existence.
With this, I believe we touch the core of the fundamental moti-
William Earle
vation which activates the reality-constitution of our ordinary

consciousness. It is moral (providing that term is given its
greatest extention), ranging from my own vital concerns with
my real life to my obligations and affections for others, social
duties, and the like. It is obvious that no one can really live
exclusively in the domain of surreality. My vital interests can
not be satisfied by imaginative air, imaginative food; I can not
really act in an imaginative domain, nor have I any moral re-
sponsibilities to imagined persons or creatures. I was really born
into a real world, really live there, and really will die out of it.
And so, obviously, for existence, reality has a priority; and from
that angle, the surreal domain looks like the home of absolute
unseriousness. The terms "senseless," "merely imaginative" are
all pejorative and pronounced from the platform of a menaced
and problematic existence, which, as Kierkegaard said, "can
have no time for anything else." The conflict between the carefree
world of Dada and the surrealist marvelous on the one hand
and the existential preoccupation with care, concern, and
seriousness on the other was reproduced in the forties by the
strictures of Sartre on Andre Breton. Surrealism, Sartre grants,
is the quintessence of poetry; but poetry is language calling
attention to itself, imagination derouted from its proper and
more prosaic function of really liberating men in life. That
the surrealist movement also had political ambitions was hardly
important, since the surrealists confined their activity to symbolic
demonstrations, public uproars, pamphleteering, and a fluctu-
ating and unhappy association with the Communist party, none
of which could really count in the real world. What is at stake
then is a certain priority of the real and surreal-or the actual
and the possible. For phenomenology the possible has a cognitive
priority over the actual; for the existential thinker the actual,
existence itself, is where the drama lies, and the only possibilities
of interest are those real possibilities within reality which might
be actually chosen. All of this is repeated in the title, "The
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy" which
combines both interests by the meaningless and blessed word

"and." And it is repeated in the history of films, where at the
moment, the poetic and zany sides of dadaism and surrealism
have ceded to the heavier and would-be more serious concerns
of war, race, and poverty. But even here, the surrealist taste
emerges now and then in "psychedelic" films and pure comedy.
III. The Absolute Point of Mind

If the surrealist domain seems frivolous to existential seriousness,
it is essential to the transcendental interests of phenomenology.
It is, I have been arguing, only if phenomenology liberates itself
from a preoccupation with the real, and those ideal essences
which are pertinent to the real, that it can realize the full
transcendental potentialities which lie within it. But that would
require the activation of motives and intentionalities which lie
on the other side of the serious and moral. The early surrealists
sensed this immediately and cultivated a sympathy in the
imagination for the evil, and finally the nonmoral of whatever
color. Lautreamont's vampirism, the Marquis de Sade's variations
on sex, and the absolute indifferentism of Jacques Vache, who
finally succeeded in regarding his own and his friends' lives as
absolute jokes, where life and death were indifferent, all testify
to this particular obsession. Breton in an access of enthusiasm once
expressed his dream of the perfect surrealist act: to discharge a
pistol at random in a crowd, without motivation. Breton, a man
of untouchable morality and responsibility, spent many hours
later qualifying and explaining the real sense of this shocking
idea. And yet, the point seems clear. The so-called real world of
perception, of action, the scene where our lives must choose
whatever responsibilities they finally must choose, the world of
the phenomenological existentialist is but one world; we can
hardly understand even that without seeing it as but one vari-
ation on the theme "world" : it is that variation strictly determined
by those intentionalities governed by the "moral" in the extended
420 William Earle
sense I have given it. This particular correlation between the real
and the moral is of course no invention of mine; Fichte argued
for it over a hundred and seventy years ago. And it is not far from
a Schopenhauer or a Nietzsche, for whom the real is nothing but
that which shows itself to the perspective of our will to power and
for whom there was no possibility for the suppression of the will
to power.
Yet phenomenological adventures into the domain of the
surreal, as perverse or trivial as they can seem to the committed
existentialist or political activist, can, I believe, say something in
their own defense. For what the surrealist "liberation" aims at
is a liberation into that "absolute point of mind" mentioned by
Andre Breton, which is neither good nor evil, neither simply real
nor simply fantastic, but which is the absolute origin of anything
whatsoever that could have meaning-the Transcendental Ego
of Husserl or the Absolute Spirit of Hegel. I believe one can not
understand how transcendental the Ego of Husserl is, unless we
give it a larger play than animating mere perception, concerned
activity, or ideal types of reality. It is of course the source of
everything could have either meaning or unmeaning; to study
it only in its mundane animations, or the essences of these, would
be to miss its extraordinary power. And equally for Hegel, in spite
of the difference of purpose and the dialectical character of his
organizations, Absolute Mind is indeed not identical with the
mind which expresses itself in perception or moral acts or in-
stitutionalizes itself in the state. It expresses itself everywhere;
and yet is finally only at home ultimately in itself where all these
other expressions are understood to be but partial, having their
own systematic positions and values, but invariably betraying
their partiality. And the passion for the Absolute Point of Mind
is realized, Hegel tells us, not in morality, not in society, not in
history, but finally and at first only in the Imagination of Art.
Religion and philosophy follow; we shall limit ourselves here to art.
But what is particularly absolute about art? And why should
it be given such an extraordinary place in the development of
V ARIATIONS ON THE REAL WORLD 421
mind? Let us look at Shakespeare as an example. Both the

dramatist, his audience, and his work are staked on what Hegel
calls the Absolute-not the absolute point of view, since the
absolute is not a point of view but aims precisely at transcending
points of view, particularly the real, the moral, or the social.
Shakespeare in his capacity as artist, the audience in theirs as
spectators, and the work itself all reside in the absolute; that is,
the artist shows without taking sides, the audience looks without
taking sides, and the show shows without taking sides. All is
absolute presence, a presence only possible to the imagination,
and not experience of the real or the moral. Neither the artist nor
the audience nor the play itself argues a morality. It cheers
nobody on, boos or hisses nobody, and in the end, there is nothing
but rest. No one is sent to the barricades, as Sartre desires, no
political action is urged, no sides are taken. We are given what
phenomenology always aimed at, an absolute show. And insofar
as we participate in this show, we are activating very different
intention ali ties than those which engage us in real life; for the
first time we see without vital or moral perspectives of our own.
All of that now sinks to the level of subject-matter, not point-of-
view; it is what we see, not our way of seeing.
This absolute aesthetic fact, akin certainly to the position of
philosophy which, even when it considers reality, ethics, or
politics, is not itself a real, ethical, or political activity, is per-
petually under fire from precisely that from which it has liberated
itself, the real, the moral, and the political. Husserl's transcen-
dental phenomenology is now suffering attacks from various
sides precisely on the grounds that it is not politics-from
Marxists such as Sartre and Marcuse, and from a wide variety of
individual moralists who more or less stem from Kierkegaard.
For the Marxists, philosophy must be redefined; if Hegel aimed
at understanding the world, Marx thought philosophy must
transform it, and thereby become a handmaiden of politics. But
men have always understood that politics is politics and philoso-
phy philosophy; to occupy the absolute point of a Breton, Hegel,
422 William Earle
or Husserl is certainly not either to approve or to disapprove any

course of the world whatsoever. Nor is it incompatible with
political action; it is incompatible, however, with the reduction
of an absolute aesthetic or philosophic position to that of politics.
That particular reduction is nothing short of the denial of
philosophy, the Absolute Mind of Hegel, the Transcendental
Ego of Husserl, and the Absolute Point of Mind of Andre Breton.
At this point, that ancient argument reappears, to wit, from what
standpoint is the absolute denial of the transcendental or absolute
point of view made, except from that standpoint which it denies?
In a word, then, surrealism-particularly surrealist films with
their vivacity-offer us the invitation to occupy the domain of
the absolute. If this seems an inflated claim for the few surrealist
films around, and the occasional surrealist moments in any film,
the answer could simply be that surrealist films themselves have
not taken their own destiny seriously enough; certainly the seeds
of the absolute are there as they are in any absolutely hilarious
comedy. Pushed far enough, we have the possibility of seeing
with our own imaginative eyes, the variations on the real world
which are absolutely essential to any phenomenological ex-
perience of either reality or surreality. For Hegel again, comedy,
if deep enough, is the final aesthetic experience of Absolute Mind
-not tragedy, let alone the moral or political.
Aesthetically considered, then, surrealism, or its correlate the
transcendental, offers us the incomparable exhilaration of the
marvelous, within which the merely real is either its own stale
self, or achieves, after the transcendental turn, the status of the
marvelous itself. The ultimate accomplishment of the surrealist
experience is to see the most banal as the most extraordinary.
Religiously considered, surrealism offers some direct experience
of the ancient religious conviction that for God "all things are
possible." Philosophically considered, surrealism offers a unique
opportunity for the mind to experience its own transcendental
freedom, a freedom seriously dissipated by our own existentialist
concern with "real life."
William Cobb
BEING-IN-THE-WORLD AND ETHICAL

LANGUAGE
Recent ethical theory shows a retreat from the emotivism of the

first half of the century. Philosophers are pretty well agreed that
evaluative statements are not simple ejaculations; most ascribe
to them some kind of logic, and some even call them identical,
in important respects, to statements of fact. Moore's proof, that
evaluative terms cannot be analyzed in terms of descriptive
predicates, has not prevented philosophers like R. M. Hare from
pointing out significant respects in which their use is governed
by descriptive meaning rules.
At the same time it remains fashionable to try to collect the
many functions of discourse which involves value-terms under
some single heading. Prescriptivism has acquired some standing
as such a catchall. In holding that prescription is the single
thread common to all evaluative discourse, proponents of the
prescriptivist theory are echoing a key Stevensonian view: that
one important, ever-present function of evaluative discourse is
to commend or persuade. Now the thesis that value-terms are
thus used is no surprise to anyone familiar with them. What is
less trivial, however, is the view that prescriptive functions of
language can be somehow confined to a semantically distinct
region of language. And it is precisely this view that is sheltered
under the still current distinction between describing and
prescribing. This distinction clearly presupposes an aboriginal
William Cobb
species of language as yet uncorrupted by prescriptive meaning.

"Pure description," as such language might be called, would
then occupy an Empyrean position as a standard for "cognitive"
uses of language.
Broadly speaking, the purpose of this paper is to challenge the
view that there is any purely descriptive function in our use of
language. This thesis must be distinguished from others I am not
going to defend. One is the view that there are no syntactic and
semantic criteria for a "pure" descriptive language. It is ob-
viously possible to decide upon a test ("reference to fact" or
"verifiability," perhaps), then call "descriptive" all statements
which satisfY it. Another is the view that evaluative language
shares no syntactic or semantic characteristics with descriptive
language; this view has been thoroughly disposed of elsewhere. 1
My thesis is that the practice of forming, formulating, and
testing beliefs is itself a reflection of practical aspects of our
being-in-the-world. Specifically, I wish to bring to light the
strong inner connection between the role of truth-values in
testing beliefs and the fact that our practical life consists, mainly
and typically, in choosing what to do.
I
The correlative notions of truth and falsity are norms which apply
by definition to beliefs. So strongly do we insist that they be
applicable to whatever we are willing to call a belief that we
neglect to wonder why this should be the case. We do not, in
other words, usually raise the question whether beliefs ought to
be evaluated using the categories of truth and falsity at all. Its
being true is considered a good and sufficient reason for adopting
a belief-so much so that no one has seriously pondered the
following questions: (1) Why apply truth-values to beliefs at
I. R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals, Oxford, 1952, and Freedom and Reason,
Oxford, 1963, P. H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics, London, 1954.
BEING-IN-THE-WORLD AND ETHICAL LANGUAGE
all? (2) Why should we adopt a belief just because it is true? I

shall consider these questions in reverse order.
As Plato recognized, "X believes p" does not entail "p is true."
Clearly, then, its being true is far from being the only reason
why beliefs in fact get adopted. We adopt beliefs for many
reasons, among which are that they are reassuring, scandalous,
consistent with other beliefs, and so forth. Clinical literature is
replete with examples of rationalization, delusion, projection,
compensation, and reaction-formation, all of which testify to
the fact that, in practice, many factors other than their truth
enter into our adoption of beliefs. Even when our beliefs are
true, this may be entirely irrelevant to the question why we hold
them. Our beliefs may overtly defy contrary evidence, or they
may be held in the absence of any relevant evidence, pro or con.
It would seem to follow that their truth is only one of the
possible reasons that can be given for forming beliefs. Truth is,
in other words, a prescriptive notion insofar as it has a part in the
evaluation of beliefs, not all of which are naturally motivated by
the desire to believe what is true.
Having said this, however, it is important to acknowledge
that the notion of truth plays a unique role in our evaluation of
beliefs. It is normally considered to override other reasons for
believing something in two different ways: (I) we consider a
belief unworthy of being held if it is false, no matter whether it
satisfies any or all other possible criteria and (2) we consider a
belief worthy of being held if it is true, even when it satisfies no
other possible criteria. Because truth has this privileged standing
as a reason for forming beliefs, we consider the formation of
beliefs on any other grounds to be at least odd, and at most
evidence of psychological disturbance. Now if we ask why the
notion of truth comes to play such an important prescriptive
role in the activity of belief-formation, it is clear that this
question cannot be answered simply by investigating the logical
conditions under which a belief deserves to be called true. For
the question is not how and why this or that particular belief
William Cobb
becomes entitled to the label "true," but rather why we apply

this label to any of our beliefs at all.
The crucial phenomenon in need of consideration is the two-
valued polarization of our notions of truth and falsity. We do
not ordinarily consider a descriptive formula "well-formed"
unless we can specify clear-cut conditions under which it is true
(and false) . Yet clearly some uses of the concepts "true" and
"false" do not involve the sharp polarity imposed by a two-valued
logic. We often speak of an account's being more or less adequate
to the facts, and show how this is so, without being able (or
obliged) to tell what it would have to lack in order to be entirely
inadequate. In many cases, the difference between what is true
and what is false is a matter of degree; in such cases the law of
excluded middle puts: what we consider an intolerable con-
straint upon our description of the facts. Thus, since alternatives
to sharply distinguishing between truth and falsity can be
conceived, the question arises why we impose this rigor in
evaluating actual or possible descriptions of fact.
Now it seems to me that we can understand our persistence in
applying these mutually exclusive norms to descriptions and
beliefs only by appreciating the existential significance of having
beliefs and describing facts. Human action, as existential philoso-
phers have stressed, is distinguished by the obligation to choose.
The description of human actions as choices will, I believe, offer
a useful clue to the essential function of a polarized two-valued
set of normative categories in describing in general.
The concept of choice contains two indispensable elements:
( I) when we choose, some definite description must be able to
be given of the alternatives from which the choice is made and
(2) choosing always involves rejection as well as selection of
alternatives. We would reject the claim that a man had chosen
to do something if we could neither describe the particular
alternatives faced and chosen from, nor show that the alternative
chosen was really an alternative, i.e., was something whose
choice precluded choice of something else. These two elements
BEING-IN-THE-WORLD AND ETHICAL LANGUAGE
are, of course, not sufficient conditions for actions issuing from

choices, since they must also be part of the description of a mere
event in general. But it would be impossible to attribute choices
if the alternatives were not definitely describable and mutually
exclusive.
These conditions apply to the description of an occurrence as
a choice even when the person who makes it is not conscious of
these aspects of his situation. Often we ascribe choices to ourselves
and others without explicitly referring to rejected alternatives.
And we will concur in a description of ourselves as having chosen,
e.g., to sit down, without confessing, or being obliged to confess,
that we recognized all the alternatives at that moment and
dithered between them. What seems even more crucial to the
correct ascription of a choice to a person is the requirement that
the person, to be correctly described as having chosen an al-
ternative, must be able to give some definite account of what he
intended to do. It is doubtful, if not impossible, that a person
who was fully conscious of something as being that which he
intended to do could remain oblivious to other courses of action
that are ruled out by the choice he makes. The clear con-
sciousness of options we select leads inexorably to consciousness
of those we thereby reject.
Being able, as well as obliged, to give a descriptive account of
one's intentions provides a basic motive for learning a descriptive
vocabulary. Learning to formulate one's intentions in de-
scriptive terms is a necessary condition for a person's coming
to acknowledge that some of the things he does are the outcome
of choices. Without the ability to describe what he is attempting
to do, it is difficult to imagine a person's identifYing something
he did as the result of a choice he made. Our powers as agents do
not remain unaffected and unaltered by the intelligible de-
scription of our intentions and actions. To be able to describe
our desire as desire for a concrete objective, for example, is to
be able to focus it on that objective; this in turn makes our
agency much more efficient than when desire is diffuse and
William Cobb
unspecific. Clarity in describing alternatives and objectives is a

major part of determining when there has been a successful trial
at attaining them. And a familiar case of bad faith occurs when
a person deliberately formulates descriptions of what he is trying
to do in vague language; the less clear and explicit his objectives
may be to himself and others, the harder it will be to hold him
accountablef or failure to attain them. As Kierkegaard puts it,
the question posed in the first instance by the ethical mode of
existence is that of choosing to choose-the question whether one
will conscientiously describe his own intentions as such to him-
self, acknowledging the appropriateness of an intentional de-
scription of what he does.
It seems unlikely (though not formally inconceivable) that a
person's descriptive abilities in general can develop quite in-
dependently of his decisiveness. Being able to describe what we
are doing (in the most inclusive sense of "doing") makes it clear
to us what we can and cannot do by our own agency. That is why
we often face a difficult choice by attempting to make the
situation more obscure than it really is. It is not that we have
perfectly adequate knowledge of the alternatives facing us, and
merely dither between them. Escape from such a predicament
(other than by choosing one of the alternatives it offers) ordinarily
comes by means of the pretense that we lack sufficient information
for making the choice, that "some of the data are missing," and
so on. The adoption and correction of our beliefs by truth-
criteria is an essential condition for the "realistic" assessment
of our possibilities and limitations as agents within the world.
But coming to know the boundaries between what we can and
cannot change at the same time throws us into a typically
"existential" predicament. It is the inevitable consequence of a
realistic description of our own situation within the world that
we must distinguish between those aspects of the situation which
we can actively change, and those we are destined merely to
endure.
It is as though coming to be able to form beliefs forces us to
BEING-IN-THE-WORLD AND ETHICAL LANGUAGE 42 9
consciousness of our situation, in Sartre's rich sense of that word.
This means that we become not only able but required to
distinguish between fated and optional courses of action. It is
important to notice that this reflection need not be charged with
values: indeed, in many cases, recognition of something as an
option is an antecedent condition for giving it a value. Re-
flection merely yields understanding of my situation as a situ-
ation, i.e., as presenting some possibilities in the form of options
for choice and at least sometimes forcing me to make such a
choice. To acquire expertise in describing, without at the same
time being forced to recognize oneself as a being-in-situation, is
clearly impossible, despite familiar efforts we all make to avoid
this consequence. Not surprisingly, Kierkegaard's aesthetic hero
sings the praises of the "heady wine of possibility" while la-
menting the fact that he must view some possibilities as his own
options. Though not part of the logic of descriptive language,
our being-in-the-world demands that, for us, the use of descrip-
tive language acquaint us with certain possibilities as options
for our own choice.
Thus far I have been trying to show the need for us to act by
choosing what to do depends on the development of cognitive
abilities. Condemned to meaning, we are largely on that account
condemned to freedom, since the concrete description of our own
possibilities inevitably shows us that we must choose in order to
realize any of them. Knowing, therefore, cannot be for us an
innocuous theoretical enterprise, without practical consequences.
Inasmuch as it entails awareness of possibilities as mutually ex-
clusive, it is a condition sine qua non for being in the choice-
situations in which our practical life, for the most part, consists.
II
Believing, in general, is an unavoidable condition for the possi-
bility of acting by choice. But does choosing in any way in-
fluence the structure of describing? An answer to this question is
43 0 William Cobb
suggested by the issue raised earlier: Why should we believe

something just because it is true? There is clearly some-
thing oddly redundant about this question; it is as though
worthiness of being believed is contained within the very
meaning of "true" such that it would be strange to ask "Yes, but
should I believe it?" of a proposition one knows to be true.
Exactly the same question has often been raised concerning the
terms "good" and "right": writers on ethics have consistently
pointed out the oddness of "Yes, I know it's good, but ought I
to prize, value, or choose it?" The notion of truth shares with
that of goodness (and rightness) an inherent honorific meaning,
and it is this which makes these questions odd. Now if we ask
why we should apply a prescriptive notion like that of truth to
our beliefs, it seems to me that we must answer: because our
beliefs themselves must frame clear and concrete alternatives
for choice. Unless some of the things we are conscious of are
alternatives which our situation forces us either to select or
reject, none of our beliefs would need to be formulated in a way
that would require the applicability to them of polarized
descriptive categories of truth and falsity.
Without the need to act by choosing what to do, belief would
be a kind of pure appreciation of its objects and, if any norms
applied to it at all, they would doubtless reflect the degree to
which particular belief,; produced incremental satisfactions of a
broadly aesthetic nature. There is no reason to suppose that a
two-valued, polarized set of norms like truth and falsity would
apply to our beliefs unless our existence sometimes obliged us to
choose, rather than allowing us simply to appreciate things. For
such an austere polarity never does justice to the nuances of truth
and value that are given to a detached aesthetic gaze. To the
extent our situation permits us this kind of passive contemplation,
we can and do regularly renounce this standard in favor of more
flexible evaluative categories. And the individual who embarks
on a life given over to aesthetic appreciation soon becomes aware
that will, choice, and their polarized descriptive norms are what
BEING-IN-THE-WORLD AND ETHICAL LANGUAGE 43 1
must be avoided if his project is to succeed. But he is caught in
a serious conflict, since the very satisfaction he seeks through
passive appreciation must, if it is to become secure and reliable,
be engineered by his will. At the other extreme, it is no accident
that choosing is made considerably simpler and more efficient
by an attitude of black-and-white thinking. When things appear
unclear and their description ambiguous, we cannot perceive
distinct alternatives for choice. Thus the decisive person is apt
to be characterized, not merely by certain behavioral dispositions,
but by a strongly polarized way of seeing the world and the things
within it.
Pure appreciation or contemplation is a limiting case of human
existence. Even in the case of a work of art, a person's relation to
it is seldom merely that of a spectator. Its creator must decide at
some point whether to continue working on it, to call it finished,
to scrap it, or to sell it; the curator must decide whether to hang
it; and even the spectator must decide whether to give it more
than a glance. I do not mean to suggest that every decision of
this kind is made by consulting rational criteria. But the fact of
having to make decisions of this kind about things we encounter
gives us the strongest possible incentive for developing a polar
set of categories for judgment and a two-valued logic which
preserves truth in making inferences from such judgment. Having
the categories of truth and falsity, then, enables and forces us to
encounter things in our world as actual or possible objects for
choice. We cannot avoid the context of choice by deciding to
ask merely what propositions are true of the objects of our ex-
perience. This question already embodies a choice of descriptive
concepts and the conception of a standard that must be met by
propositions if they are to be worthy of being believed, not to
mention the normative concept of a proposition as an adequate
way of representing facts. As the logicians say, truth-criteria are
requisite to every meaningful descriptive concept in order to
furnish a decision-procedure for cases purporting to come under it.
What is said here about truth-values applies also to the termi-
43 2 William Cobb
nology of ethical values-in particular, to "good" and "right."

It is possible to envision a view of the world in which the concept
"good" is not polarized with "bad," because everything in the
world or outside of it is considered good in some degree. But if
the concept "good" was not polarized, evaluative appraisal of
alternatives as such could not have a place (as it does in our
world) in people's deciding what to do. The fact that we have to
act by choosing means that some concept like "good" or "right"
would have to be polarized, as is "true," by means of de-
scriptive criteria. Whether there is, or can be, any set of de-
scriptive criteria that will produce a decision in all cases where
"good" is attributed is, of course, a matter of some concern to
moral philosophers, and the issue is deeply controversial. But the
familiar fact that, for better or worse, we do give descriptive
reasons for our uses of "good" and "right" (when we give any
reasons at all) bespeaks our need to evaluate mutually exclusive
alternatives for choice. In a world where we could have our cake
and eat it too as a matter of course, nothing would require a
concrete, polarized interpretation of value-concepts-if, indeed,
such concepts had currency at all in such a world.
For us, on the other hand, describing things and deciding
what to do about them are evidently necessary and interrelated
consequences of being-in-the-world. If successful, this paper has
shown how neither of these activities can be thoroughly under-
stood without the other. Without the ability to formulate ideals
and intentions in descriptive language, it is doubtful that we
would recognize the fact, so heavily stressed by philosophers of
existence, that choice and freedom are heavy burdens to bear.
The either/or of mutually exclusive alternatives can only be
compelling for a being who can reflect on his own situation and
describe the alternatives it offers. But it also seems that the either/
or of choosing conditions description to the extent the latter must
be governed by a two-valued logic of truth and falsity.
Many philosophers and poets object to the two-valued
character of ordinary descriptive language, saying that it distorts
BEING-IN-THE-WORLD AND ETHICAL LANGUAGE 433
the real nature of the world by subjecting pictures of it to the
starkly unambiguous law of excluded middle. But since de-
scriptions must at least sometimes frame alternatives and furnish
reasons for choosing, they must have the requisite clarity. We
can recognize, with Wittgenstein, that a vague concept is not
always useless; we must also recognize, however, that such
vagueness can sometimes paralyze action by making description
incapable of showing us how to view a particular case. Where
the question "What is it?" is preliminary to the question "What
shall I do about it?" it is of the utmost importance to be able to
settle the former matter by some privileged definite description.
It seems to me that the either/or of practical choice thus accounts
at the transcendental level for the two-valued polarization of
descriptive discourse. As the poets and others have shown, this
is not the only way description can be carried on. But any
proposal to reform descriptive language, endowing it with a
permissive logic that is more sensitive to the nuances and shadings
among things will, in the end, be a proposal to change our way
ofliving. It would be no less than an invitation to relinquish the
intimate connection between description and action. The radical
changes this would call for in our way of being-in-the-world
make it highly unlikely that description can ever abandon the
polarity that gives it prescriptive meaning.
Charles E. Scott
EXISTENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS
Philosophers interested in Heidegger's thought and those inter-

ested in the nature of consciousness seem to have assumed that
their areas of interest are mutually exclusive. Heidegger clearly
is not doing philosophy of mind in any of his works. He does not
even make constructive use of the term consciousness in Being and
Time, much less in his reflections on thinking and language. He
wants to avoid giving primacy to discursive understanding as
well as to the self with regard to both existence and thought. But
his way of understanding existing and thinking appears to me
to be helpful when one wants to understand the existential
immediacy of consciousness, that is, when one attempts to
articulate the insight that consciousness is a state of human being
which transcends the particular intentions of the self. This
problem area is not new. Leibniz, for example, spoke of the
essence of substance in terms ofa type of urgency or Drang toward
the realization of that order which each monad embodied. Kant
puzzled over the mind's unavoidable "interest" in rational unity,
an interest which appeared to him, albeit faintly, to be immediate
to the rational act. He further speculated on the felt power of
reason's ethical nature. One is under a categorical demand
intrinsic to reason, such that he suffers self-disunity or a sense of
inner unworthiness-l think that we would say guilt today-if
he acts contrary to those demands. There are many other ex-
EXISTENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS 435
amples which point to the possibility that some dimensions of

consciousness may be understood with reference to the inevitable
drift or felt teleology of one's state. Usually, however, one finds
the suggestion that man is deeply inclined toward some type of
self-actualization without finding that suggestion carefully
developed.
I want now to consider the existentials, as Heidegger develops
them, in terms of fundamental, lived drifts or tendencies which
constitute in themselves a lived perspective basic to human
existence and which transcend the individual, existentiell self. In
this way I believe that we can get an initial hold on a type of
existential consciousness which is not intentional in nature and
which is receptive in the sense that it allows experienced realities
to be. I believe that relating the existentials to the idea of con-
sciousness is important in order to emphasize their lived nature
and to show that human awareness begins with the disclosure of
things, not with the use of things. When human awareness is
defined without reference to one's fundamental, existential state
or with primary reference to use and control, it seems to me that
human mentality is interpreted as though it were not basically
existential and disclosive in nature. And, as I hope to make clear
in an initial way in this paper, that is a damaging understanding
of what happens when man is aware in and of his world.
Although Heidegger's post-Being and Time reflections on
language and thought are helpful for developing ideas concerning
the openness and disclosiveness of consciousness, I will presently
limit my attention to small portions of Being and Time in the
interests of brevity. I should point out that my intention is not
to bend his thought in order to show that deeply embedded in
his position one can find an understanding of consciousness
developed to some extent by a predecessor. I am also not con-
tending that my use of Heidegger in this paper should form a
basis for a general interpretation of his thought. I am interested,
rather, in understanding some characteristics of human conscious-
ness which have not been extensively developed in our philoso-
Charles E. Scott
phical tradition, and I think that some of Heidegger's investiga-

tions are particularly helpful when one attempts to see what
consciousness is like when it is not conceptual or specifically
willful in nature.
We should recall that in his early studies of human judgment
and of Duns Scotus' understanding of categories and signification,
Heidegger was attracted by the idea that a priori and changeless
structures provide the context for all synthetic mental relations.
He wanted to find a "pure" grammar which gives the universal
form for all language, i.e., a "steady" structure which defines the
possibilities and limits for all meaning. He came to see that this
approach left out of account the life and energy as well as the
historicity of the structures he was analyzing. When he wrote
Being and Time he had come to think of the structures of ex-
istence as self-moving, in the sense that they potentiate as well
as define human openness in the world. He dropped the word
"category" as used in the Aristotelian and Kantian traditions
and used instead the term "existential" to name the disclosive
openness of human existence. By emphasizing the living nature
of existential structures he emphasized that they are their own
drift, their own power. To be a structure is to be on one's own
way. This idea places considerable emphasis on the self-pre-
sentational power of existence, and self-presentational power is
what makes an existential structure a form of awareness.
The existantials, as Heidegger develops them, cannot be taken
as limited to the structure of a sel£ They name the enabling
elements which allow selves to be as we know them. They point
to such inevitabilities as language, history, relative involvements,
and concerns. The existentials define the situation of human
existence, but they do not define a self in its particularity or in
its intentional cohensiveness. Being an unavoidable demand for
selfhood, for example, is quite different from being a self, and when
we consider existentials we are considering inevitabilities which are
intrinsic to human existence, which constitute its openness to
occurrences and identities, and which provide a living context,
as it were, for particularization. I understand Care, for example,

to mean the inevitability of concerns and interests, an inevi-
tability which characterizes the finiteness of human existence.
A self is structured by concerns, influences, and so on. Care, on
the other hand, names the existential situation of having to have
structures of concern. I do not know exactly what such an inevi-
tability is beyond the lived and unavoidable demand that one
project himself, but it seems clear that such a demand transcends
the structured identity that is the self. Similarly, Everydayness
does not name a particular state of mundane relations on the
part of the self. It names the inevitability of such relations. Like
Care, it is an existential condition for selfhood which transcends
selfhood. Were we to put all the existentials together by themselves
we would not have a self, because both the individual self and
its specifically identifying characteristics arise through concrete
interaction with persons and things. They constitute, rather, the
openness, the being-there for intentional identities, i.e., for selves.
The self is the specific way one lives in the world. It is con-
stituted by the way one interrelates with things, one's own
history, his culture, and so forth. Hence, self-understanding, one's
sense of his existence, is to be understood in terms of what one
functions with, what one speaks, the social places one lives in,
as well as in terms of what one needs and wants, the ways he
expresses himself, and by reference to the particular forms of
his involvements. Self-understanding is made up of worldly
relations in which one is created in part by what he uses and in
which one manifests and directs what in part creates him. The
definiteness of a self is developed through particular time spans
and under particular influences, and is a particular and histori-
cally originated structure of identity. The existentials, on the
other hand, are lived potentialities. They are not specific self-
relations, but constitute the inevitability for finite world- and
self-relations. As such, they transcend self-relations, and as lived
they transcend who one is in his existentiell identity.
Yet, these existentials are not utterly passive. They are lived.
Charles E. Scott
They are disclosive in the sense that they are the horizons for all
human occurrences, horizons which internally condition what
occurs within them-e.g., as finitude and care manifest in one's
planning and intending. As internal conditions of human ex-
istence, they define man's inclination toward their manifestation
or their realization in ontic events. To be an inevitability,
analogous to being an identity, means that one "goes" unavoida-
bly in some direction. One is intentional, linguistic, historical,
and so forth in the sense that he intends, communicates through
symbols, and lives through his past whether he means to or
not.
One seems inclined, almost natively, to resist the idea that his
consciousness exceeds the domain of his intentions and control.
And to put it most baldly, I am contending that human ex-
istence and not only the self is conscious. But when one considers
the event of consciousness in which things are apparent both in
their difference from the conscious self and in a context which far
surpasses what one does with them, it seems evident that that
event is not definable by reference solely to man's intentional,
appropriative powers. We may note that Heidegger points out
the unavoidableness of anxiety or Angst, a feeling state that makes
apparent in the midst of all that one has and is that one's ex-
istence is not complete and is not absolute, in spite of the urge
toward self-realization. Anxiety is the felt awareness that one's
present state of self-actualization is not enough for the future,
that he also exists as possibility. This native uneasiness, this felt
insecurity with one's present moment does indeed seem to be
characteristic of human existence, and I believe that an ex-
planatory account of it involves the recognition that the inevi-
tabilities of human existence in their sheer possibility, vis-a-vis the
self, are potent. Otherwise there would be no fundamental drive
toward the future, no sense of the insufficiency of one's present
state of actualization. The existentials, I am saying, are apparent
as tendencies toward communication, concerns, and so on when
one is nonetheless an actual identity, an accomplished self; they
are tendencies which are shown through anxiety in their tran-
scendence of the self and in their peculiar efficacy.
Or with a view to the past, we can note the sense of thrown ness,
the awareness of the utter givenness of one's past even though one
intends to "change things" or to make things new. Pastness is
potent in the sense that one feels his givenness and dependence
on what is present in its mode of having been. He finds himself
and his world "past" in spite of present direction toward the
future. Through this and the preceding example, I am suggesting
that the "horizons" of human existence have a part in the life
and movement of human existence, that they are lived as in-
evitable tendencies, drifts, or felt states, and, I now want to say,
that as such they may be understood to compose a distinct type
of consciousness which is important to consider when one wants
to understand what consciousness in general is like.
One objection to this idea might be phrased as follows: "Even
if one grants that there are 'situational states,' something like
what Heidegger calls existentials, and even if they are lived as
certain fundamental tendencies by human beings, why consider
them in terms of consciousness? 'Consciousness' refers to waking,
intentional, self-relational states, and we gain nothing by ex-
panding the term to include self-transcending drifts." In con-
sidering such an objection we should be clear that "conscious-
ness" does not name conscious things, but the occurrence in
which things are manifest. I want to contend that the horizons
of human existence, as we have called the existentials, are
intrinsic to the manifestation of things and that the occurrence
of consciousness does not necessarily mean that we are reflectively
aware either of the occurrence or of what is manifest. The
manifestation of things, I am saying, does not involve necessarily
a conceptual, reflective, or intentional cognizance of them, but
is conscious nevertheless.
First, regarding the idea that the existentials are intrinsic to
the manifestation of things. Within a Heideggerian context it
seems reasonably clear that the existentials compose human
440 Charles E. Scott
openness in the world, the thereness of being. When something

is manifest, regardless of what an individual intends for it,
situatedness, temporality, mundanity, and so on appear in the
appearance of the thing. The crucial question is, how are we to
consider the appearance of things as conscious unless one focuses
his specifying attention on them? First it seems clear that "focus"
does not necessarily imply a using action. I use things that are
available to me, i.e., that appear or are present to me such that
I can put them to use. The often used example of a workshop
points out a context in which things have place and significance
by virtue of the setting in which they are found. Every context
of familiarity is characterized by things and situations which are
focused by the context, which reflect their context, and which
have a discoverable significance whether we attend to them or
not. Given the context of familiarity, we often know intuitively
when something occurs that is inappropriate or strange, when
an intrusion takes place. Analogously, the self composes an
individual domain in which one is intuitively aware of who he is.
Occurrences which are cohesive with who one is are experienced
as individually significant or meaningful. And further, it seems
that human existence itself composes a focus, which can be
concentrated in what Heidegger terms an Augen-blick. This broad
focus of finitude which one is allows events to occur such that
they can be recognized conceptually, used intentionally, and
related according to specifying interests. This lived focus itself is
conscious in the sense that it presents. It allows what appears.
Things appear on the horizon of our awareness in the sense that
they have a discoverable place within our finite world, and they
are discovered to be there as we turn specifYing modes of at-
tention to them. Just as the hammer has significance in the
context of the workshop, the workshop has meaning within the
context of Care. Care is a lived meaning for everything that we
experience and as such must be considered conscious, i.e., as
manifesting or disclosing what is. The existentials define the
dynamics of human openness. They occur as the temporality
of things, and it seems to me that if they do no more than

provide existential time and place-human situatedness-for
what occurs for man, they must be thought of in terms of con-
sciousness. We can use or intend only that of which we are
already conscious in a rudimentary way. Or, stated generally,
the presentation of something for man is conscious, and we have
been considering presenting structures.
This position means, by way of elaboration, that we are
conscious in some sense of the term when we are sleeping dream-
lessly. When dreams or disturbances occur they do not happen
in a total vacuum. Otherwise, how could the dream be significant
or how could a disturbance occur? With regard to the self, a
dream means something. The person's history, which allows the
dream and its significance, does not cease as personal history when
he sleeps. Indeed, it helps to produce the dream, to occasion it and
allow it, such that the person's history is in part manifest as he
dreams. How could dreams come to be if one were absolutely
unconscious prior to dreaming? Analogously, the fundamental
elements of one's existence, his openness to the world, do not
cease to be as he sleeps dreamlessly. They are the living context
for the self which experiences symbolic or image events. One is
there even as he sleeps. He is a limited occasion of openness which
allows experiences, and this allowance is dynamic, occurring
even when one has lost his control over his immediate environ-
ment. This context of openness is manifest when one dreams as
a conscious dimension of which the dream is now a part.
As a final illustration of this view of consciousness, we can
consider that type of experience, which is often traumatic, in
which one experiences himself jarred loose from the moorings
of his identity. In such an event one is aware of himself as passing
and as suspended within limits which do not secure who in
particular he is. Yet he is aware of this passing change of himself.
What allows this awareness of oneself as a passing occurrence?
It seems to me that in our consciousness our identities occur as
transcended by and as grounded in an awareness of ourselves
as situated, qua our identities. This situatedness stands out in the

intense experience of dislocation. One seems to be situated as an
identity within a conscious perspective which allows the re-
cognition that even though conscious, one's existence is also
characterized by dispersed identity and fundamental changes
within the self.
This inquiry into the obscure richness of consciousness has led
us no further than to the idea that the situated openness of man
is intrinsically aware. I have contended: (I) that existentials are
lived and as such should be considered as internal conditions of
existence, (2) that existentials as lived are potent directions
within existence; (3) that the existentials transcend the individual
self, which is the specific way one lives in the world; (4) that the
potency of the existentials is found in their disclosiveness of things;
and (5) that the existential state is conscious in the sense that the
existantials are lived as a peculiar kind of context for the oc-
currence of experiences, a context which is disclosed in the ex-
periential occurrence and which is part of the intrinsic meaning
of the experience. We have not considered the world as tran-
scending the privacy of an individual, which is crucial when one
considers consciousness in a Heideggerian framework. We have
not probed the nature of an event of being, which is also crucial,
or language as an occurrence of consciousness. And I have had
to rely on allusions to Heidegger's analyses rather than on their
close scrutiny. But in spite of the sketchiness of this short dis-
cussion, perhaps it is possible to see an opening into an under-
standing of consciousness which is not centered solely on con-
ceptual analysis or on self-oriented intentions, but rather is
founded in part on the existential situation of potent human
receptivity and the lively foundation for self-formation.
This initiating discussion also allows an approach to con-
sciousness which is not centered in deficiency and deficiency
motivation. Although the ontology of Being and Time understands
human existence as having to project itself because it is finished
only in death, and although in that context "need" plays a
prominent role in defining finitude, existential consciousness
nonetheless is founded in a fundamental situation which gives
meaning to needs and deficiencies. By understanding existential
consciousness as states of being which are lived as fundamental,
disclosive inclinations, we can see that human consciousness
is not purely consumptive or, in a broad sense of the word, only
manipulative. Authenticity, for example, as Heidegger projects
it, is not a state of mind defined by controlling categories or a
state in which man controls anything in particular. It is a state in
which the wqy one intends is fully consonant with one's funda-
mental state of being. This consonance is not something that one
does or manages. It is an occurrence in which the source and
meaning of individuality are affirmed intrinsically, existentially,
by the way in which one relates to himself, others, places, and
times. One experiences a need for authenticity in the sense that
he suffers despair or existential disjunction when he lives at odds
with the thereness of his being. One is also inclined toward
authenticity by virtue of living a demand to be individually
cohesive, even as his thereness is already cohesive. This need
presupposes the presence of the existentials. It is suffered, as it
were, "between" his fundamental awareness and his particular,
situated, and environmentally relative awareness.
Because the existentials do compose a type of preintentional
consciousness and because they are lived-are intrinsic to one's
acts and actions-we can understand how authenticity is ex-
istential realization, transcending self-realization, and how it
is that authenticity is experienced with serenity and profound
delight or happiness. The authentic person is conscious of himself
in his existence through actions in which his relative awarenesses
articulate his given consciousness in his existential state. His self-
consciousness and his existential consciousness are then harmoni-
ous. Or, concretely stated, his finitude is positively and non-
disjunctively expressed in his ontic consciousness. The full open-
ness of his being-there, not a total absence of being or a mere
vacuity, is given expression. The vacuity "between" his given,
existential state and the way he lives when he is unresponsive to

the intrinsic conditions of his existence is overcome. Given the
full perspective of Being and Time, we can say that in authenticity
a person experiences a consciousness which immediately involves
the world as well as the private individuality of the person.
But if we ignore the consciousness of our existence, it seems to
me that we isolate consciousness unjustifiably in the self or in
some dimension of specifYing action and that we fail to see that
man's state of being is lived and disclosed as a given demand for
human articulation.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
DAVID CARR was born in Parkersburg, W. Va., in 1940 and studied at

the University of Paris and Yale University, where he is now Associate
Professor of Philosophy. He has translated Husserl's The Crisis of European
Sciences and is the author of "Merleau-Ponty: Incarnate Consciousness,"
"HusserI's Problematic Theory of the Life-World," and "The Fifth Medita-
tion and Husserl's Cartesianism."
EDWARD S. CASEY was born in 1939 in Topeka, Kansas. Following graduate

work at Northwestern University and the University of Paris, he taught at
the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is presently Assistant
Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He has translated Mikel Dufrenne's
The Notion of the A Priori and has written "Meaning in Art," "Truth in Art,"
and "Man, Self, and Truth."
WILLIAM COBB was born in Pasadena, California, in 1938 and did his graduate
work at Yale. He has taught at Park College and the University of Arizona,
and is presently Instructor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut.
He has translated Merleau-Ponty's "The Child's Relations with Others."
FRED R. DALLMAYER was born in Ulm, Germany, in 1928 and studied at

Munich, Brussels, and Duke University. He has taught at Purdue and the
University of Hamburg, and is now Professor of Political Science at the
University of Georgia. His publications include Freedom and Emergency Powers
(with R. S. Rankin) and "Hobbes and Existentialism: Some Affinities."
WILLIAM EARLE was born in 1919 in Saginaw, Michigan. His graduate work
was done at the University of Chicago and the University of Aix-Marseilles.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
He has taught at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford; at present he is a Professor

in the Philosophy Department at Northwestern University. He has written
two books, The Autobiographical Consciousness and Objectivity, in addition to
numerous articles.
LESTER E. EMBREE was born in San-Francisco in 1938, studied at the New

School for Social Research, and is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at
Northern Illinois University. He is the editor of Life world and Consciousness:
Essays for Aron Gurwitsch and has translated Suzanne Bachelard's A Study of
Husserl's Logic.
EUGENE T. GENDLIN was born in 1926 in Vienna, Austria, and received his
Ph. D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago. He is presently an
Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of
Chicago. His publications include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning as
well as many articles.
HANS JONAS was born in Germany in 1903 and studied at the universities of
Heidelberg, Freiburg, and Marburg. He has taught at McGill University
and the Hebrew University of jerusalem, and is now Alvin johnson Professor
of Philosophy in the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research.
He is the author of The Gnostic Religion, Gnosis und spiitantiker Geist, The
Phenomenon of Life, and many other books and essays.
THEODORE KISIEL was born in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania, in 1930 and

studied at Duquesne University. He has taught at Canisius College and The
University of Dusseldorf and is now Associate Professor of Philosophy at
Northern Illinois University. He is co-author of Phenomenology and the Natural
Sciences, and has translated Werner Marx's Heidegger and the Tradition.
DAVID MICHAEL LEVIN was born in New York City in 1939 and received his
doctorate from Columbia University. He has taught at the University of
Connecticut and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is now
teaching at Northwestern University. His publications include Reason and Evi-
dence in Husserl's Phenomenology and "Reasons and Religious Belief."
jlTENDRA NATH MOHANTY was born in Cuttack, India, in 1928 and studied
at the universities of Calcutta and Gottingen. He has taught at Burdwan
University and is presently Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Oklahoma. His books include Nicolai Hartmann and A. N. Whitehead: A Study
in Recent Platonism, Phenomenology and Ontology, Edmund Husserl's Theory oj
Meaning, and The Concept of Intentionality.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 447
PAUL RICOEUR was born in Valence, France, in 1913 and received his
doctorate from the University of Paris. He has taught at the universities of
Strasbourg and Louvain, and is presently Professor of Philosophy at the
universities of Paris and Chicago. Among his books are Freedom and Nature,
Fallible Man, The Symbolism of Evil, and Freud and Philosophy.
GIAN-CARLO ROTA was born in Vigevano (Milan), Italy, in 1932 and received
his Ph. D. from Yale. He has taught mathematics at Harvard and Rockefeller
universities and is presently Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. He is the author of numerous books and articles on
mathematics.
ALBERT ROTHENBERG, was born in New York City in 1930. He received his
medical education at Tufts and at Yale and has taught at the Puerto Rico
Institute of Psychiatry. He is now Associate Professor in Psychiatry at the
Yale University School of Medicine. His publications include "The Process
of Janusian Thinking in Creativity," "The Iceman Changeth: Toward an
Empirical Approach to Creativity," and the forthcoming book The Creativity
Question (with C. F. Hausman).
GEORGE SCHRADER was born in English, Indiana, in 1917 and received his
Ph. D. at Yale, where he is now Professor of Philosophy. He is the editor of
Existential Philosophers: Kierkegaard to Merleau-Ponty and the author of "The
Thing in Itself in Kantian Philosophy," "Ontology and the Categories of
Existence," "Basic Problems of Philosophical Ethics," and other articles.
CHARLES E. SCOTT was born in 1935 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His

graduate work in philosophy was done at the University of Tiibingen and at
Yale University. He has taught at Yale and is presently Associate Professor
of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of "Heidegger, the
Absence of God and Faith," "Heidegger and Consciousness," and "Wonder
and Worship."
ALEXANDER SESONSKE was born in 1917 in Gloversville, New York. His

graduate studies were carried on at the University of California in Los
Angeles, where he also taught. Other teaching positions have been at Co-
lumbia University and at the University of Washington. Currently Professor
of Philosophy at the University of California at Santa Barbara, he has
written Value and Obligation and edited What Is Art? His book The Films of
Jean Renoir is forthcoming.
ROBERT SOKOLOWSKI was born in 1934 in New Britain, Connecticut. His

graduate work was done at Catholic University and at Louvain. Recently a
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Visiting Associate Professor at the New School for Social Research, he is now
Associate Professor of Philosophy at Catholic University. He is the author of
The Formation of Husserl's Concept of Constitution as well as several critical
studies of Aristotle, Hume, and HusserI.
ROBERT V. STONE was born in New York City in 1938. His graduate work
in philosophy has been at the University of Texas, and he is presently Assis-
tant Professor at C. W. Post College on Long Island. He is preparing for
publication a book on Hume's skepticism and is translating Francis J eanson's
Le probleme moral et La pensee de Sartre.
CHARLES TAYLOR was born in Montreal in 1931. He studied at McGill and

then as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He has taught philosophy at the Uni-
versity of Montreal and is presently Professor of Political Science at McGill.
He is the author of The Exp,lanation of Behavior as well as of numerous articles.
ROBERT S. TRAGESSER was: born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1943, and

studied at Rice University. He has taught at Idaho State and Stanford
universities and at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. He is the
author of "Eidetic Analysis" andis at work on studies entitled "Epistemological
Foundations for Logic" and "The Heat Problem, Fourier Analysis, and the
Mathematization of Nature."
JON WHEATLEY was born in London, England, in 1931. His graduate work
was done at the University of British Columbia and London University.
Previously at the University of California at Santa Barbara, he is now
presently Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Graduate Studies at Simon
Fraser University in Canad.a. His most recent book is Language and Rules. He
is also the author of numerous articles.
RICHARD M. ZANER was born in Duncan, Arizona, in 1933 and received his
doctorate from the New School for Social Research. He has taught at Trinity
University, the University of Texas, and the State University of New York,
Stony Brook, and is now Easterwood Professor of Philosophy at Southern Me-
thodist University. His publications include The Way ofPhenomenology and The
Problem of Embodiment.

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Explorations in Phenomenology

SELECTED STUDIES IN PHENOMENOLOGY

RICHARD M. ZANER (Southern Methodist University)

DAVID CARR (Yale University)

PAPERS OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY

AND EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY

DAVID CARR AND EDWARD S. CASEY

ISBN-13: 978-90-247-1561-9 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1999-6

PAUL RICOEUR, Human Sciences and Hermeneutical

EVIDENCE AND THE. EGO

DAVID MICHAEL LEVIN, Husserlian Essences Reconsidered 169

SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND LOGIC

THEODORE KISIEL, Scientific Discovery: Logical, Psycho-

EMOTIONS, ART, AND EXISTENCE

GEORGE SCHRADER, Anger and Interpersonal Communi-

Contrary to popular belief, professional philosophers want and

change. Though composed chiefly of academic philosophers, it

nological studies involve an uncritical acceptance of Hussed's

ed out systematically by his leading disciples. 2 The most frequent

on the real world, illustrating in a dramatic visual presentation

All can be seen as explorations within the phenomenological horizon

HUMAN SCIENCES AND HERMENEUTICAL

My aim in this paper is to test a hypothesis which I shall begin

are: (I) To what extent may we consider the notion of text a

I. THE PARADIGM OF THE TEXT

In order to justify the distinction between spoken and written

present, whereas the language system is virtual and outside of

inscription. What we want to fix is what disappears. If, by

Therefore it is necessary to understand by the meaning of the

not language, is addressed to someone. This is the foundation of

I. The Fixation of Action

interlocution is overcome in writing, interaction is overcome in

in that they are irreducible to the kinds of predicates which may

to interpret. Moreover, this noema has not only a propositional

2. The Autonomization of Action

3. Relevance and Importance

This third trait has important implications for the relation

4. Human Action as an "Open Work"

topic of the methodology of interpretation that we shall now

I want now to show the fruitfulness of this analogy of the text at

Our task therefore will be to show to what extent the paradigm

I propose that we consider this dialectic in two different ways:

I. From Understanding to Explanation

Why do we need an art of guessing? Why do we have to

Such is the balance between the genius of guessing and the

it is possible to argue about the meaning of an action, to argue for

2. From Explanation to Understanding

world gives rise to two opposite attitudes. As readers, we may

in Levi-Strauss's terms, a "bundle of relations" : "It is only in the

lucidity, sexuality and truth. Without these existential conflicts

If we follow this suggestion, then the kind of explanation

followed to this ultimate implication. This means that the con-

INTERPRETATION AND THE

Is there a sense in which interpretation is essential to explanation

can speak in terms of coherence or its absence, of making sense

Before going on to see in what way, if any, these conditions are

inquiry. We might say that it is an ontological issue which has

and for this we appeal to readings of its partial expressions; and

chosen; the aim is rather to bring understanding to an inner

nizable input which could themselves be matched by programs

When we speak of the "meaning" of a given predicament, we

Moreover, our understanding of these terms moves inescapably

meaning above, I mentioned that we can distinguish between

terizing these meanings and the related feelings, desires, pre-