Dieter Lohmar
Husserl’s phenomenological method is a descriptive analysis of acts of consciousness. It seeks not only to be an empirical-psychological investigation of factual consciousness but to determine the essential, necessary structures of consciousness. It aims at those structures and laws that must necessarily be present in every possible case of a determinate conscious achievement. The goal is thus an a priori determination of the structures of consciousness. The distinctive traits discovered in this investigation are independent of each empirical case investigated and independent of the person.
The methodological advance decisive for realizing this aspiration, an advance that Husserl utilizes in his phenomenology in opposition to empirical psychology, is so-called eidetic intuition (or “ideating abstraction” or “intuition of the universal).1 This method is supposed to ensure that in describing the particular characteristics of conscious processes, one does not simply undertake an enumeration of psychological-empirical facts. Empirical facts provide only a limited point of departure for inductions; they can never encompass all cases and they can even change under certain circumstances. Eidetic intuition (or, the eidetic method) claims that we not only relate to empirical-accidental facts but unveil a priori (necessary) interconnections that pertain to every future case and absolutely to every possible case of a particular conscious phenomenon.
In Logical Investigations, the method of eidetic intuition is carefully justified, specifically by working out its cognitive character. The presentation of the method itself is found, however, only in concretely conducted analyses and in the very terse presentation in §52 of the sixth logical investigation. Here we already see a facet of phenomenology’s claim to want to be and to be able to be an ultimately grounded and thereby a self-grounding science: eidetic intuition, as a fundamental method of cognition, is worked out as a case of cognition in the context of the analysis of cognition in the sixth investigation. That is to say, it essentially possesses the same characteristics as other cases of cognition. Ideating abstraction is in the first instance an everyday human capacity for insight that can and must be methodologically refined so that it can serve as the basis for a specifically phenomenological analysis of consciousness. Over the whole course of the development of his thought, Husserl adhered to and further developed the eidetic method.2
In Logical Investigations, Husserl still understood his phenomenology as “descriptive psychology.” Admittedly, he realized shortly thereafter that this designation is misleading.3 Phenomenology is not meant to be merely a collection of accidental facts and empirical inductions. For systematic reasons, phenomenology depends on its descriptive work being supported by methods that allow a priori insights—universal cognitions that are independent of every particular factual case. Phenomenology seeks to make statements concerning consciousness in general, that is, statements concerning every possibly occurring form of consciousness. Thus, Husserl must show in what methodologically governed way phenomenological description can hit upon what is, in Husserl’s sense, a priori, that is, what is essential, what stays the same and must stay the same in every possible individual instance of the object described. Thus, phenomenology’s claim to be a grounding science and not just an empirical science depends on whether the method of eidetic intuition can be grounded as a form of cognition.
In the following section, I will briefly develop the analysis of the cognitive character of eidetic intuition from the sixth logical investigation as a particular form of categorial intuition. I will also discuss the often-expressed suspicion that the method of eidetic intuition amounts to a Platonism. Next, I will deal with Husserl’s clarification of the method of eidetic intuition as “eidetic variation” in the lectures on Phenomenological Psychology from the summer semester of 1925. Therein the function of phantasy will be the focal point. Finally, I will pursue five systematic, intimately interrelated questions concerning eidetic method. The first two questions arise within the technical clarification of the eidetic method, while the last three questions go beyond this and discuss the sense and the necessary limitations of this method:
(a) How can I ensure that I have actually gone far enough in my variation, that is, to what extent and in what way can I approach the ideal of “endless variation”?
(b) How can I be sure that I have not gone too far in the variation of the initial example and thereby overstepped the potential for variation of “the same” example, that is, overstepped the limits of the “concept” with which I conceived the initial example?
(c) Is the procedure of eidetic variation and the attentive, intuitive singling out [aufmerksame Herausschauen] of what is invariant thus not also a method for getting to know our “concepts”?
(d) Since almost all our concepts concealed cultural senses that can be different from community to community, are we not because of this forced to narrow considerably the method of eidetic variation?
(e) Does not the bonding [Bindung] of variants to a mundane initial example imply a limitation of the variation that could only be offset [aufzuheben] by the performance of the transcendental reduction?
Eidetic Intuition as a Form of Cognition in Logical Investigations
The analysis of the cognitive character of eidetic intuition is provided by the sixth logical investigation. Eidetic intuition—here, Husserl also calls it “ideating abstraction” or “intuition of the universal”—is founded on the simple intuition of individual objects in the same way as the other elementary forms of cognition.
In the sixth logical investigation, in his theory of categorial intuition, Husserl shows the differences between simple perception and founded categorial intuition.4 The objects of simple perception can be grasped “directly”; they are “immediately given,” intuitive “in one blow.” This implies that the objects of perception are already “there for us” in a single act-level [in einer Aktstufe]; that is, they can be intended in one act-level and perhaps even given. Categorial intention and categorial intuition, by contrast, require a series of acts with articulated and founding acts that are then consolidated by an overarching act with a new intention at a higher level. In this founded, categorial act of cognition, something is then intended and perhaps also given that was not yet meant and could not have been given in the simple, founding acts of perception. It is only with categorial intention, and the fulfilling categorial intuition, that there is knowledge.
This relationship between founding, simple acts and the cognitions founded by them is one-sided and constant. That is, running through all the various founding perceptions is the condition of the possibility for the intuitive execution of the categorial act. In the simplest cases of categorial intuition, the founding acts can be simple perceptions. However, on the basis of the same model of cognition, there are also categorial acts at higher levels that can ultimately reach the level of systematically interconnected theories.
One difficult question concerns the fulfillment of categorial intentions: sensuous sensations fulfill sensuous perceptions, but what fulfills categorial acts? More broadly, we must decide whether the extension of the concept of intuition from sensuous perception to categorial intuition is truly justified. For this, Husserl presents the so-called “syntheses of coincidence” [Deckungssynthesen] between partial intentions that arise [sich einstellen] between the founding acts. At issue here is designation of the human mind’s ability to notice in the passage from perceptions that merge into one another that there are common sense-elements [Sinnelemente] present in the preceding and following perceptions. Of course, these sense-elements belong, on the one hand, to the same sense [gleichsinnig], but, nevertheless, in varying determinations. That is to say, in the syntheses of coincidence between partial intentions of the founding acts, we notice that the same partial intentions occur, although they occur with different nuances of sense, modes of attention, and degrees of fulfillment.
The function of the syntheses of coincidence in categorial intuition can be best illuminated with an example. I see an object, perhaps a green book. In this total perception, all the elements belonging to the sense of this object are already implicitly intended, although they are not explicitly noticed. Then, I explicitly and deliberately direct myself to the moment of color, although it is still the book that I perceive. One could say that I now see the book “right through” the explicitly noticed green color. In the transition from the total perception to this emphatic, specific perception, there arises [sich einstellen] a coincidence of sense between the previously only implicitly intended green moment of the book and the moment of the green color that is now explicitly and deliberately noticed. Both intentions direct themselves on top of the same partial intention, but they have entirely different characteristics: the one is implicit, unnoticed, and rather incidentally executed, while the other is actively, deliberately executed, explicit, and aimed at an individual element of the sense of the whole. The synthesis of coincidence between these two partial intentions is the intuitive givenness that intuitively fulfills for us the synthetic cognitive intention “The book is green.”
Someone could object that in the first total perception, we already, as it were, “knew everything” that the emphatic emphasis then made explicitly conscious to us. However, it is precisely this achievement that presents the difference between the distinctive traits that we incidentally perceive in a perception and the explicitly cognized distinctive traits. When we perceive various objects, it can happen that some feature of an object suddenly “strikes” us, something we previously had seen the whole time without making it thematic for cognition. On the basis of the transition from the total perception to the ensuing, emphatic, specific perception of the distinctive trait, we are in a position to cognize that this object possesses this distinctive trait.
In eidetic intuition, then, we again find precisely the same elements that signal the here presented simplest forms of cognition. The intuition of the universal (which we then label with a universal name, e.g., “blue”) is thus only possible for us while we run through a series of perceived or phantasized blue objects.5 The intuitive character [Anschaulichkeit] of the intention directed toward this universal (i.e., the feature common to all the individual cases) is satisfied by a continuous [durchgehend] synthesis of coincidence among the “blue” sense-elements occurring homogenously in all of these cases.
If one describes eidetic intuition as a specific form of categorial intuition, as Husserl does in §52 of the sixth investigation, then eidetic intuition also possesses the three-fold structure characteristic of categorial intuition: total perception, specific perception, and categorial synthesis. In running through the articulating acts, a partial unity of coincidence arises among the intentions directed to the moment of color. In the case of eidetic intuition, the names of the phases are thus “perception,” “the generation of variants along with the syntheses of coincidence that arise among the variants,” and finally “the singling out and objective conceiving of what is invariant.” The fulfilling syntheses of coincidence among the articulating acts can appear only when multiple acts directed toward individual cases have been run through.
Admittedly, questions and concerns obtrude here: How can we be sure that the common feature is present in absolutely every possible case? Husserl’s answer is that the “surety” sought here is by no means possessed in advance, but rather only after the performance of the process of eidetic intuition. If, in free transformations in perception and phantasy, we imaginatively transform [umfingieren] the object in question in indefinitely many possible variants and observe in all of them the same element, then we can be sure that this element must also be present in further cases. That is to say, this element is necessary, a priori in the sense characteristic of eidetic intuition. However, this Husserlian notion of a priori must not be equated with the Kantian a priori in the sense of “valid prior to all experience” and “independent of all experience.”6 All extended objects necessarily have a determinate color; all tones necessarily have a determinate intensity and duration, etc. The a priori of eidetic intuition that shows itself in this way has, therefore, its own species of necessity and universality.
Of course, such variation in phantasy presupposes that I already have a vague, albeit roughly determined, presentation of the object that is to be envisaged in all possible variations. Our presentation (e.g., of “blue”) is vague; nonetheless, it is already suited for meaningfully limiting the formation of variants. The theory of eidetic intuition is no genetic-psychological theory; that is, it is not supposed to explain how we arrive at concepts. Eidetic intuition is a method that can intuitively give us universal objects (i.e., concepts and the cognition of universal structures of consciousness). For Husserl, the theory of eidetic intuition is also concerned with establishing the justification of concepts on the basis of a fulfilling intuition, which in this case is the intuition of the universal. Our concepts must conform to this intuition.
For that reason, it is not circular when we, phantasizing or perceiving, direct ourselves in articulating acts to blue objects in order to make the universal “blue” intuitive for ourselves. We always already possess vague presentations of universal concepts, but these presentations are not yet intuitively clarified concepts. In a mysterious way, we are even in a position to perceive objects as such (e.g., as blue) with this vague preknowledge. However, this capacity somehow rests—as Kant once put it—“in the dark depths of the human soul” and it depends on the way in which we acquire the conceptual functions requisite for the synthetic unification of what is sensuously given into perceived objects. At the time of Logical Investigations, Husserl still did not possess a theory of the origin of concepts in experience. The detailed analyses of this topic—of the genesis of types [Typus] grounded in experience—are only to be found in his late, genetic phenomenology.7 Next, I will discuss in greater detail the modifications of the eidetic method made there.
In the act of ideating abstraction, we thus grasp the special union of coincidence that arises among the specific advertences [Sonderzuwendungen] that have been passed through (perceptions, memories, or phantasies) as the intuitive givenness of the species “blue.” The specific advertences are directed toward all conceivable variants of the object. As in an act thematically directed toward the identity of a thing, here too the union of coincidence among specific perceptions serves as the intuitive fulfillment for the intention directed toward identity. However, it is not here the identity of individual things that is given, but rather the identity of the universal. Through the series of specific perceptions of individual objects, and in the overlapping of their intentional constituents, the same color appears. In the act of eidetic intuition, the possibility of the intuition of the universal and of identifying syntheses directed toward this universal reveals itself [sich erweisen]. In this way, the universal emerges as an object of cognition in the full sense of the word.
The syntheses of coincidence, too, can be described more exactly. In the case of the intuition of the species “blue,” a peculiar union of coincidence between the articulating acts arises. One perhaps describes it most fittingly as a sharply contrasted domain of self-preserving coincidence and a “margin” of difference and diversity.8 This blurred “margin” corresponds to the variety of blue moments sensuously given or phantasized in the specific advertences; it originates, as it were, in the spectrum of the same color or in the variety of objects as individual objects.
In accordance with this basic model, the intuition of universals at higher levels can also be made intelligible. We can perform ideating abstractions that are on their part founded on categorial intuitions. In this way, for example, the concept of color can be made intuitive by running through individual colors, and the concept of perception can be made intuitive by ideatively running through individual acts of perception.9
With the question concerning the mode of givenness of universal concepts, Husserl stands in a critical line of succession stemming from English empiricism, especially that of David Hume. Hume sought to clarify critically the meaning of individual and universal names by resolving them to their corresponding intuitions. Husserl’s extension of the concept of intuition to include categorial intuition allows him to apply this “sense-critical” procedure to universal concepts.
It thus seems all the more astonishing that Husserl is accused of Platonism. Of course, upon hearing the phrase “eidetic intuition,” one thinks at once of the Platonic ideas, which can be “seen” in an esoteric way. When one accuses Husserl of Platonism, the method of eidetic intuition is usually falsely interpreted as the seeing of something like Platonic ideas, that is, of ideas that belong, as they did for Plato, to their own proper domain of being that is foundational for the sensuous world. Plato’s ideas require their own, esoteric kind of seeing, one that is not accessible to everyone without the help of maieutics. However, it is fundamentally perverse to understand Husserl’s essential seeing on the model of Plato’s. For in the concrete execution, it can quickly be seen that what is at issue for Husserl is a precisely conceived methodological conception that has simply been named with an infelicitously chosen term. Husserl never advocated a Platonism. Nonetheless, the appellation “eidetic intuition” facilitated this misunderstanding, and the fact that Husserl chose it clearly shows that he was not even aware of the risk of being misunderstood as a Platonist. He held Platonism to be a long dead “mythical” or “metaphysical hypostasization” that one could leave to rest.10 This somewhat naive attitude toward the virulence of such doctrines (which were “long dead” in his eyes) led immediately, however, to the false interpretation of the eidetic method and the criticism that Husserl himself was a Platonist.
The most important difference from Plato’s position lies in Husserl’s desistance from hypostasizing essences. For Husserl, essences, like all categorial objects, belong to the irreal objects of the understanding. These do not present their own domain of being. Rather, they are merely objects of cognition that always demand realization in empirically real tokens or structures of real objects. Here, too, the seemingly Platonic talk of “participation” has for Husserl very nearly the opposite sense. For Plato, sensuous objects must participate in ideas. Sensuous objects can only be objects—they can only exist—by participating in the ideal world of ideas. For Plato, the ideas are eternal, the authentic reality, while sensuous things are real only insofar as they preserve, as it were, a part of the reality of the world of ideas in the sensuous. The Platonic ideas are more real than the world of the senses. Husserl, by contrast, formulates the relationship between irreal formations [Gebilden] (such as eidē) and reality in conscious contrast to Platonism: “Every sort of irreality … has manners of possible participation in reality.”11 The relationship of “participation” is thus precisely the reverse of what Plato conceived. It is not reality or human thinking that can participate in ideas, but rather irreal ideality can and even must participate in reality; it must be intuited, thought, and grasped in spoken and written signs. Essences, the essential structures of consciousness and reality, are thus not already real for themselves. They rely upon a sensuous realization in the actual world, the world in which we live. For Husserl, our real world is the only reality.
The Clarification of the Eidetic Method as Eidetic Variation
A further problem for the eidetic method is the relationship between phantasy and perception within it. In Logical Investigations, the positional characteristic of those acts that are supposed to attach to the initial intuitive [intuitiven] act and to represent all possible cases of the same object was initially regarded merely as indifferent.12 For the fulfillment of an intention directed toward a universal object, however, it is of decisive importance that among the founding acts there is at least one intuitive [intuitiver] act, that is, an act that gives the object itself. Intuition [Intuition] is the name for that kind of apprehension belonging to sensuously given intuitions that apprehends the given as the object itself. Other modes of apperceiving are usually also possible, for example, the kind that apprehends something as a sign (symbolic-signitive) for something else or as a figurative presentation (pictorial-signitive) of the object that is properly meant.
In Logical Investigations, Husserl writes that ideating abstraction must be built up upon at least one intuitively [intuitiv] presenting act. Interestingly, however, this act, which presents the initial example, may also be an imaginative presentation. The initial example may be pictorially signitively presented; that is, it may intend the presented individual instance of a concept with the help of an image of it: “Our consciousness of the universal has as satisfactory a basis in perception as it has in parallel imagination.”13 Husserl also maintained this position later. In Phenomenological Psychology, Husserl elaborates: “The fundamental achievement upon which everything else depends, is the shaping of any experienced or phantasized objectivity into a ‘variant,’ shaping it into the form of [an] arbitrary example and [a] guiding ‘model.’ ”14
There are, however, problematic aspects in this position. A phantasized initial example certainly makes sense with respect to a situation in which we cannot begin with a perception owing to external circumstances. For example, we may want to consider the essence of a chair when one is not present, the essence of a sad mood when we are not sad, or the essence of a memory when we are not remembering anything. In the last example, the difficulty is easily solved since I can awaken a memory at any time. However, in the case of mood, this is not so easy, and in the case of the chair, a presentiation [Vergegenwärtigung], too, can properly suffice. And, of course, it makes no difference whether I now see red or imaginatively present it to myself. The same is true for tones.
The problem with using objects of phantasy as initial examples lies in the fact that they can be pictorial intentions. With respect to intuitiveness [Anschaulichkeit], pictorial intentions occupy a certain middle position between intuition [Intuition] (i.e., the intuition [Anschauung] of the thing itself) and signitive intention that relies on a sign. Pictorial intentions reveal some characteristics of the object meant. For example, a sketch of a path through a city has a bend where the street makes a curve, a cross where there is, for example, an intersection. By contrast, I can present in images many things that do not exist. For example, Escher’s well-known images present staircases that close in upon one another and always lead upwards. Initial examples from phantasy can belong in the realm of fiction, poetic inventions that never have been and never can be. There are thus objections against choosing a point of departure for eidetic intuition in an imaginative presentation that need to be taken seriously. Intuitive [intuitive] perception seems here to be a better guarantee than phantasy for rationality (i.e., for Husserl, proximity to intuition and sustained orientation in intuition). The demand for at least one intuitively [anschaulich-intuitiv] given case thus presents a certain “dialectically” functioning limit to the sense [Sinngrenze].
Here, however, one must further differentiate according to the object. If, for example, it is a matter of insight into essential laws such as “Every color is extended” or “Every tone possesses a duration,” then one can also begin with an example from phantasy. Phantasized colors and tones are equally suitable. However, it is important to notice that phantasy functions in a different way in these initial examples. Specifically, it functions in a simple mode that does not imply consciousness of an image. Husserl calls this mode “mere phantasy.”15
Alongside this one intuitive [intuitiven] act (which is directed toward the initial example), there can and must occur acts of phantasy in the further process of the intuition of the universal, specifically, acts that vary the initial example in accordance with phantasy. This variation of the initial example makes it possible in principle for me to make the essence of a thing intuitive to myself on the basis of a single, intuitively [intuitiv] given example. I can do this by departing from the intuitively given initial example and then forming all the possible variants in phantasy.
There is an obvious question here: Is it not necessary to present in unrestrained phantasy unlimitedly many conceivable (perhaps even infinitely many) variants of the object in order that the universality of what has been presented can actually be reached? Husserl’s later clarification of the procedure of eidetic intuition in the Phenomenological Psychology lectures also seems to point in this direction.
In Phenomenological Psychology (1925), and as early as in Ideas I (1913), Husserl explicitly indicates the necessity or the preferential position of imaginative, “free” variation. In Logical Investigations, by contrast, the positional quality of the variational acts was regarded merely as indifferent.16 In Ideas I, it is clearly stated that seeing the essence “can be effected on the ground of a mere presentiation [Vergegenwärtigung] of exemplifying particulars” alone,17 and that in the framework of the sciences of essences, “free phantasies acquire a position of primacy over perceptions.”18 The application of phantasy variations is “necessary,”19 and this compels Husserl to state “that fiction makes up the vital element of phenomenology as of every other eidetic science, that fiction is the source from which the cognition of ‘eternal truths’ is fed.”20
In the lectures on phenomenological psychology, the definitive form of the eidetic method as “eidetic variation” is worked out. According to this elaboration, we begin the procedure with “any experienced or phantasized objectivity” from which we depart as from an initial item and guiding model which we then freely vary in phantasy.21 In the process of running through the particular variants, there arises an “overlapping coincidence” among the particulars,22 and what is invariant in all the variants is intuitively singled out. The properly categorial achievement is then built up on these syntheses of coincidence; that is, they are the conceptual groundwork [Auffassungsgrundlage] (the presenting content) for the intuition of the universal. Admittedly, it is no longer sensuous contents that are at issue in the syntheses of coincidence between intentional components but givennesses that can arise only in the transition between intentional acts.23 In opposition to the vague presentation of a concept that we initially have, seeing an eidos is the self-givenness of the universal itself. Of course, it is not to be understood as a sensuous seeing, but (as already elaborated above) as an intuition in the sense of categorial intuition.24
In eidetic variation it is not a question of actually producing all possible variants. This would not be possible, since in practice we must break off the process of variation at some point. What guarantees the universality of the seen invariants is thus the consciousness of the free “and so on freely” [und so weiter nach Belieben] that is effected along with all the variations.25 The additional sense [Sinnzusatz] that comes with this “and so on freely” is the decisive new element in the method of eidetic variation.26 A free variation, unrestricted so far as the further number of instances is concerned (i.e., a variation that is infinite in the idealized case27), must be run through in order to see the pure eidos.
The requirement that in the procedure of eidetic variation an unrestricted variation of the initial object must be undertaken in phantasy is an important condition for fulfilling the claim to the complete extension of the sample specimen surveyed: “An indifference towards actuality is put into play in a free activity, and thereby that which stands there as actuality is, as it were, transferred to the realm of free phantasy.”28 Free phantasy ought to ensure that the given universality is not just a factual commonality of a restricted region of the world.29 The factual actuality of the individual cases that occur in the variation is thus irrelevant.30 Indifference with respect to the factual, the merely empirical facts, is an essential characteristic of the eidos.31
The procedure of eidetic variation thus allows us to transform the vague concepts with which every science must necessarily begin into clear concepts on the basis of actual intuition. This a priori knowledge, which is fundamental for all empirical sciences, begins at first with simple, “approximately intuitive” [anschauungesnahen] concepts, such as color, tone, brightness, timbre, and spatiality, among others. When we, in the further elaboration of science, then come to more complex concepts, such as the concept of a natural thing, or that of the human being, it then becomes clear that these concepts exhibit many different dimensions, each of which requires “an entire infinite science” for its development.32
Five Systematic Questions on the Process of Eidetic Variation
A number of systematic questions tie in with the variation of the meant object in phantasy.
(a) How can I ensure that I have actually gone far enough in my variation? How can I approach the ideal of infinite variation, and how close must I approach it in order that the goal of determining the eidos can actually be reached?
(b) How is variation restricted? That is, how can I be sure that I have not gone too far in the variation of the initial example? Does the limit of the possibility of variation of “the same” not also depend on the concept with which I have conceived the initial example? And to what extent do I know this concept at all?
(c) The last phrasing of the second question directs our attention to the following conjecture: In addition to being a method that makes the universal intuitive, is the procedure of eidetic variation, and the attentive, intuitive singling out [aufmerksame Herausschauen] of what is invariant, not also a method for acquainting ourselves with the content of our concepts in the first place?
(d) The fourth question results from the analysis of the preceding ones, which shows that in almost all of our concepts there is a hidden cultural sense that can be different from community to community. This compels us to narrow considerably the achievement potential of the procedure of eidetic variation.
(e) A further question can be tied in with this necessary constraint. It concerns the relationship of the two foundational methods of Husserlian phenomenology, namely, the transcendental reduction and eidetic variation: Does not the bonding [Bindung] of the variants to a mundane initial example imply an imperceptible limitation that can only be overcome [aufzuheben] through the performance of the transcendental reduction?
Concerning (a): The second phase of eidetic variation is the formation of all possible perceptions, memorial images, or phantasies of the initial example or of an object similar in kind (i.e., if a tone is at issue, then another tone, and so on). In the ideal case, infinitely many variants ought to be considered with an eye toward whether the common trait sought actually occurs in all the possible cases, that is, whether it is actually invariant and accordingly a priori. If we satisfy ourselves with perception alone in our selection of all possible cases, then we necessarily remain prejudiced by a relatively small, narrowly limited domain of different cases of the same object. Even if we take memories into account, the situation is not yet changed. One only approaches the ideal goal of bringing all the possible variants before the eyes in an infinite variation by employing phantasy-variation, but the ideal case remains in practice unattainable.
For all of the phantasy-variants I can form, it is only a finite number of them that can ever be considered. Here a fundamental limit becomes apparent, one that we cannot overcome in the process of variation. The only possible solution that seems to offer itself here is induction from a finite number of cases to all cases, but, as is well known, this solution itself presents considerable problems. One cannot achieve a priori certainty with induction, and Husserl thus felt himself motivated to distinguish his procedure of eidetic variation from empirical induction. Eidetic variation is not an inductive procedure.
Utilizing phantasy for the production of variations is also important because Husserl’s eidetic intuition is an attempt to disengage oneself from empirical facts and to discover what is necessarily invariant in all possible cases (and not only in all actual cases). Eidetic variation is a complex process that manifests methodological problems in many places, problems that endanger attaining the ideal goal of reaching “all possible” variants. The turn to phantasy and the insight that phantasy-variation is to be connected with the requisite character of arbitrariness [Beliebigkeitsgestalt] [in the variations] overcomes part of the problem. Through the use of phantasy, it is thus not only the cases that have factually come to my attention that I can survey. This already constitutes a clear difference from induction on the basis of empirical information.
Still, Husserl sees clearly that the process of variation always remains restricted in practice. That is, as “finite” beings, we always and necessarily can make reference in the experience we have actually had only to a finite multiplicity. At some point, we have to “break off” every process of variation.33 In reply to the objection against Husserl’s procedure of eidetic variation implicitly contained in this observation, Husserl takes the following measure: Every individual variation must already exhibit in itself a sense-element [Sinnelement] that points forward to a further variation of the initial example, makes this further variation possible, and even demands it. Every variant must, therefore, bear within itself co-meant content [Mitmeinung des Inhalts]: I can always carry this variation further, indeed without limit. Of course, this “I can” (ever again) is an idealization of a factually limited possibility. Nonetheless, it is a positing that is rationally motivated.34 Husserl calls this the “form of arbitrariness” [Beliebigkeitsgestalt] of the variants.
Concerning (b): The freedom of phantasy in variation is not limitless, for we always begin with the vague presentation of a concept or a structural connection in consciousness that we seek to turn into an intuitive presentation. For purposes of the procedure, this vague presentation of a concept is incorporated, as it were, into the intuitively given initial example, which we thereby take as a guide or model and vary, always presenting only similar objects. Beginning with the initial example, we proceed over and over again to “copies” [Nachbildern] that must still be similar to the model.35 Thus complete freedom does not reign here, since the variation remains and should remain a variation preserving the same, and it is thus not a complete change, that is, not a change that transgresses the limits of the genus. No variant is permitted that does not belong to the initial example according to its genus: “A color can only alter to another color and not, for instance, to a tone.”36 Free variation is bound by the preliminary sketch [Vorzeichnungen] contained in the vague concept.37
Husserl’s proposal of a similarity-variation of the initial example is thus supposed to remove the difficulty that lies in the open question concerning the limitation of variation. But if, in principle, I can convert any given object into another by means of variation, then in what way has variation been limited? Husserl’s proposal in Phenomenological Psychology requires that the variants resemble the initial example. The initial example guides the formation of the imaginative variation: “Thus similar images are continually to be won as ‘copies’ [Nachbilder], as phantasy-images which are all concrete resemblances of the original.”38 However, Husserl does not explain what “concrete resemblance” means with respect to its content [inhaltlich].
However, the concept of similarity is for its part a name for multifarious problems. One could even assert that with the reference to similarity, no problem has yet been solved but, on the contrary, new ones have merely been generated.39 Still, this proposal also has its good aspects: Husserl at least attempts to solve the problem of limiting variation, and indeed in a manner that, while demanding similarity, is oriented toward the intuitively given. One of the obvious disadvantages of this proposal is that it relocates the sought-after ability to limit variation in the enigmatic depths of human consciousness, that is, in our capacity to ascertain what kind of objects are still (only just) “similar” to one another, and which no longer appear similar to us.
Concerning (c): Nonetheless, let us try to approach the problem of limiting variability in yet another way: If objects are similar to one another, this means that they are not completely the same, yet still display enough common characteristics to fall under the same concept as the initial example. The common elements of sense [Sinnelemente] are the distinctive traits that we formulate in our elaboration of the concept: a chair has a surface for sitting on and legs that support this surface, and perhaps a backrest. Admittedly, we are now confronted with a new difficulty, for in so doing the concept has obviously been presupposed in various respects. It has been presupposed that we know what exactly the concept means [meint], what it “signifies” [bedeutet] or “says” [besagt], and which elements of sense [Sinnelemente] it “contains within itself.”
For a procedure that is in the first place supposed to clarify what a concept “is” by bringing about the intuitive fulfillment of an intention directed toward a universal, all too much depends—according to the first objection—on the confident use of a concept and on the recognized content of that concept as already known beforehand. Even if one does not view exact knowledge of the content of a concept as a condition of its use, (for example, in perception or imaginative variation), one has again arrived with the presupposed, confident use of the concept in perception and phantasy at one of the enigmatic depths of human consciousness. We can somehow sense, or decide in accordance with feeling, what can still count as “chair,” “perception,” or “memory,” and what no longer counts. However, we do not know exactly how we do this and upon what basis such an opinion rests.
We here see the fundamental difficulty: we do not know exactly how our concepts function in perception (and in phantasy), and furthermore we do not know exactly whether it is actually concepts in the full sense of the word that make our perception possible. This diagnosis may sound puzzling to some readers at first, but it is connected with the genetic concept of a concept, that is, with the concept of a type. Husserl determines the genetic concept of a concept—the presentation of an object that we obtain from homogeneous experience—as a type. The type is a presentation containing those constituents of sense that in my preceding experiences have shown themselves to be reliable with respect to an object or a group of objects.40 Types thus concern a product or a sediment of passive syntheses that have not been deliberately effected by an ego and that arise, as it were, “behind our backs,” (without awareness or deliberateness) in the experience of perceived objects. Nonetheless, these passive syntheses lead to an abiding acquisition. That is to say, in further perceiving we can have at our disposal the achievement [Leistung] of the type; we can, for example, apperceive other objects as “similar to previously seen objects.” In doing so, the type guides syntheses in our perception by giving us reason to expect the “typical” elements of an “object of this kind.” This typical tracing also codetermines the boundaries of phantasy-variation in the eidetic method.41 In variation, we orient ourselves, so to speak, with respect to the spectrum that occurs in the previously known group of typically similar objects. The type’s elements as regards content are thus “present to us in perceiving”; that is, we can apply them without question and with them perform our objectivating [objektivierend] syntheses. However, we know the conceptual content of our types only approximately, in a vague and not fully particularized way.
An important feature of a type is that in its original form, as long as it has not been transformed by further communication with names and intersubjectively canonized concepts, it is still prelinguistic. This can be seen, for example, from the fact that we very often cannot even name the elements of a type that we can apply confidently in usage. We see this, for example, in the difficulty we have describing to someone the face of a certain person. We can recognize this person at once, but we cannot grasp the particular traits and the proportions of his face in words. This is not possible for us. Similarly, it is almost impossible to explain the difference between cows, dogs, and horses to someone using concepts alone. Nevertheless, in concrete perceptual situations, we are completely confident in our application of a type.
Eidetic variation, with its demand for the free variation of an initial example, reveals itself as a reflective-experimental procedure. With its help, we can thus—with conscious attention—ascertain the extent to which we can imaginatively modify the presentation of an individual case without thereby overstepping the limits of the concept (i.e., without imagining “something different”). Through eidetic variation, we thus uncover in a certain way not only the intuitiveness, but also the limits of our concepts, which we ourselves cannot arbitrarily determine. There are thus interpretations of eidetic variation that understand it as a procedure that is also suitable for making clear to us the content of our concepts.42
In addition to producing an intuition of the universal, one can thus also meaningfully speak in another respect of “clarifying” concepts, specifically of a clarification with respect to content. This sounds strange at first, for when we apply a concept, surely we must have at least an approximate idea [Vorstellung] of which elements in regard to content are contained in it. In order to understand the respect in which the procedure of eidetic variation can tell us something about the content of our concepts, one must take into consideration some general aspects of the theory of types.
First, it should be made clear that in general phenomenology does not begin with the presupposition that we already possess concepts that we then merely apply to intuitions in perception, as Kant characterized the fundamental cognitive activity. In Logical Investigations, Husserl begins with the descriptive-eidetic analysis of our perceptual and cognitive achievements as though we initially do not at all know what a concept is and what it achieves. Nor are alternative conceptions of concept acquisition, as, for example, empiricist or pragmatist theories, taken up. Perception is then understood as apprehension, that is, as an interpretation and a synthetic assemblage of intuition, the result of which is a sensuous presentation of the perceived object. Husserl initially did not advance a theory concerning the function of concepts in this synthetic bonding. It becomes clear, however, that the selection of sensuous elements [sinnlichen Elemente], the interpretation of the constituent parts, and the kind of assemblage depend on the “concept” that we apply in perception.
Nonetheless, in the eyes of phenomenology, when it comes to perception, the “concept” (in the full sense of the word) is not yet the decisive tool for making possible this synthetic achievement. The place of the concept is rather to be seen in cognition, that is, in the categorial acts that intend something as an instance of a universal concept and, as the case may be, also intuitively cognize it, a cognition that is also communicable. That is to say, the concept as it functions in perception is something different from the concept that functions in an expressible cognition. Admittedly, this view is only implicit in Logical Investigations; it is not explicitly expressed.
Only in Husserl’s genetic philosophy (from circa 1920) is the difference between these two variants of the concept more clearly worked out. It becomes clear that the function that makes possible for us the perception “of something” does not yet concern a universal concept [Begriff mit einer Allgemeinheitsform]. Perception is a matter of a type that is a connection of presentations that has been formed in our own experience and that is also transformed in further experience.
The demarcation of a type from a concept can best be made intelligible with a glance back at the genetic emergence of a type. A type at first unifies only the distinctive traits of objects that have already once been given to the individual subject in perception. One can also here see (and broadly equivalently) the connection of a limited group of individual objects, that is, a group of objects familiar to me that stand in a relation of similarity. A type thus does not yet possess the form of universality, but rather merely that of a commonality of finitely many objects.
Some limitations and peculiarities of types in opposition to universal concepts now become intelligible: If a person has only seen dogs of a certain size, then, upon coming across an unusually large specimen, it is difficult to convince her of the correctness of the assertion “This is a dog.” What types I have depends on my perceptual history; they are by no means universal.
We come here to a further element of types, specifically, the intersubjective norming [Normierung] of the use of types. This norming cannot be reduced to the perceptual history of the individual person. In conversations that typically take place between children and adults, we establish the use of the type; that is, we norm it in accordance with convictions shared within our group. When a child points to a cow, for example, and says “woof,” parents intervene and correct the child’s use of the type. Through these norming interventions, along with one’s own further experience, the type receives its further formation.43 As a sediment of these norming interventions, we acquire a limit, imposed upon us by the community, for the use of types, which are at the same time designated with concepts.
During the detailed introduction to the use of language, a person’s types undergo an additional transformation when it is established what an “individual object” is as opposed to a “universal object,” that is, a universal concept. Only for the latter do we then apply naming conventions of the form “an A,” for example, “a dog.” The types of individual objects and those of universal objects are admittedly already separated through various contexts of experience. Otherwise, the regulation of their use would be without a basis in experience. For example, when it comes to individual objects, we can ascribe a particular history of movement and change to them. However, from these very general considerations, let us now return to the application of the type in the perception.
The function of types in perception is to make it possible for us to know when we perceive an object what in sensibility is suited to present it and what is not. That is to say, we “know” with the help of the type acquired in experience that the backrest and the seat, as well as the legs, belong to the chair we see, while the floor, the mild aroma of cigarette, and my toothache do not belong to the presentation of the chair.
To the process of perception belongs a phase in which we examine our sensuous givenness for what is suited to the sensuous presentation of this object. In the process, the type “tells” us what is suited to the presentation. For example, when we see the shape and color of a lemon and at the same time notice a mild, fruity aroma, we readily incorporate this aroma into the presentation of the lemon.44 If, on the contrary, we perceive a book, we will not incorporate the aroma into the presentation.
When perceiving, we must out of what is sensuously given interpret what is suited at once as something and, to be sure, as a determinate constituent element of the typified percept. We must, as it were, add a determinate sense to it. We clearly notice this, for example, when we consider the example of the duck-rabbit familiar from Gestalt theory: The duck’s beak can be “regarded,” “interpreted,” “construed” as a beak or just as easily as the ears of the rabbit.45 Types are thus also a tool for this activity of interpreting.
Furthermore, we must synthetically connect the newly construed parts or aspects of the object and take (apperceive) the sensuously given complex, the content of which has already been newly construed, as this object, for example, this chair, a lemon, a rabbit, or a duck.46
Of course, to a certain extent, the sense-elements [Sinnelement] of the object always remain “behind the back” of the perceiver—we have them available to us in perception, but we are not explicitly aware of them. One can thus employ the procedure of eidetic variation to determine more exactly the constantly implicit boundaries of our concepts and their sense-elements [Sinnelemente].
Let us consider a concrete example: this chair here. When we attempt to bring the essence of this object to intuition, we must, following the method of eidetic variation, modify the initial example in variants that are similar to it, that is, variants that are still chairs. This works as long as we limit ourselves to the concrete specifications. Every variant has a “surface for sitting,” “legs for support,” and perhaps a “backrest,” too.
But now we must go into somewhat greater detail, for the “backrest” is clearly a sensuous element [Sinnelement] that does not unconditionally belong to a chair. Moreover, it is not necessary for a chair to have four legs. It can also have three, or more than four. We could also be dealing with a stone suited for sitting, or the stump of a massive tree. But in these cases, we would not be so sure when it comes to determining the concept. If we actually want to call the stump or the stone a “chair,” this might just be a metaphorical determination.
In addition, we note that the sense-element of the “artifact,” of the “thing produced for a purpose,” is even more lively in the case of the sawed-off tree than in the case of the stone that is suited for sitting. There is, therefore, a noticed gradation of metaphoricity that shows us that the element of the “produced for a particular purpose” definitely belongs to the concept. If we now imagine skillfully produced objects whose “sitting surface” is not level but steeply inclined so that this purpose is no longer fulfilled, then the name “chair” becomes entirely metaphorical. It is a work of art [Kunstwerk] that no longer fulfills the purpose that a chair ought to have, namely, that of “being suited for sitting.”
Consequently, what constitutes the final boundary of variation is the function of the object, specifically, a function that is relative to our body. This refers back to the incorporation of our universal presentations into our everyday practices. Our body expects something determinate here, a determinate achievement [Leistung]! This becomes clear when we vary the height of the sitting surface and determine that an artifact that has the shape of a chair but that is much too high for one to be able to sit on it is only to be called a chair in metaphorical speech. Now let us reverse matters: If we lower the sitting height to just above the floor, then we notice that this artifact (e.g., a straw mat) is, for the normal Middle European, no longer something “for sitting.” Here we strike upon a hidden cultural component of the “something for sitting.” For traditional Japanese and many other Asians, the body’s practical presentation is not directed toward an elevated sitting surface raised above the floor by supporting legs. A mat on the floor is already “something for sitting” and the chair conceived by us is not something for sitting at all!
In this way, we become familiar not only with the material elements of our regionally informed concept of a chair. We notice also that what we conceive in a universal presentation depends on our cultural socialization, and that this socialization can conceal elements found only in variations performed at the boundaries of our concepts.
Concerning (d): In this way it can also be seen, however, that a critical limitation of the capacity for the performance of eidetic intuition is necessary. Intuition of the universal cannot be applied without differentiation to every kind of concept. In particular, one can with the help of eidetic variation note cultural senses clinging to concepts and objects, but one can by no means regard them as universal and general [universell und allgemein]. Of course there are other, more technical limitations to eidetic variation. For example, complexly compound concepts (hat-of-the-Danube-steamship-captain [Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitänsmütze]), metaphorical concepts (canard [Zeitungs-Ente]), or concepts produced through specific definitions (computer, telephone, helicopter) cannot be made intuitive with this procedure.
A fundamental limitation reveals itself in concepts that contain cultural senses. They cannot be made unambiguously intuitive in the procedure of eidetic variation. Thus, the sense of the concept “God” is for the ancient Greeks and other peoples with polytheistic religions connected with plurality. By contrast, it might seem to a person who employs the procedure of eidetic variation in naively reflecting on the comparison of cultures as though the singular form were essential to the concept “God.”47 Eidetic intuition, one must conclude, is only appropriate for a determinate kind of concept with a proximity to intuition, namely, concepts whose individual instances can by and large be completely given in inner or outer sense. This must be maintained for the purpose of limiting the application of eidetic intuition. Otherwise, one must restrict the theory of eidetic intuition with the important addendum that a reduction of complex concepts to simple ones that can be intuitively fulfilled must precede variation. Such a reduction was presupposed by classical empiricism, for example. In this way, I can admittedly see a computer and note its “reactions,” but in doing so I by no means grasp the essence of a computer (e.g., as a device for processing information).
What “blue” is can be grasped in the comparative survey of many different blue things, in which survey one pays attention to the common moment of color. If we vary and run through many different sorts of color—“red,” “green,” “blue,” and so on—we can see the common essence of color. One can also in this way experience the essential determinations of the central activities of consciousness, such as perception, memory, phantasy, and so on. To this extent, eidetic intuition still achieves for phenomenology what it is supposed to achieve, even without the necessary critical reflection on its applicability and the limits of its applicability. However, what “justice” is, is not to be experienced in this way. Otherwise, most philosophical questions would quickly be answered by eidetic intuition. This seemingly naive hope could have motivated some of the first phenomenologists.48
Concerning (e): Even if one keeps the regional nature of all our concepts attentively in view and brackets all objects with cultural senses, a significant problem remains for the procedure of eidetic variation: it could be the case that we never attain the pure eidos. That is, it could be the case that we never determine what holds for all possible cases of the object but rather that we always determine only what is factually common to a limited sample of the totality of all realities. Here Husserl mentions the ideally unlimited variation of the presentation of tones. If we vary the presentation in such a way that we restrict ourselves to “arbitrary tones in the world”—that is, to “tones heard or able to be heard by human beings on the earth”49—then there obtains a “secret,” “unnoticed bonding [Bindung]” of variation to our earth and “our factually actual world.”50
A restriction [Beschränkung] to what is merely regionally common can occur if we do not consciously and deliberately suspend every binding to pregiven actuality: “the eidos is actually pure only when every bonding [Bindung] to the actuality given beforehand is in fact most carefully excluded.”51 We must attempt “consciously to put out of play” these bonds,52 which may be difficult to notice. A primitive, natural attitude can already effect such a bond: “Every fact and every eidos remains related to the factual world.”53 We can only escape this “hidden world-positing and bonding to existence … when we become aware of this bond and consciously put it out of play.”54 Only through the complete separation [Lösung] of variation from the factual world do we attain “complete purity” of the eidos, that is, the “absolutely pure eidos.”55
Here it seems as though Husserl would like to unite his two fundamental methods: eidetic variation, as completely free variation, seems possible only if the transcendental reduction is performed. In my view, however, this is misleading. Complete freedom from the factual can and must already be attained in the individual steps of variation through the arbitrariness [Beliebigkeitsform] in the variants. The transcendental reduction, as the bracketing of the claims to validity of all intentional acts, serves a different purpose, namely, the critique of these claims to validity, which the natural attitude universally connects with objects.56
A further argument against the here suggested suspicion that eidetic variation can only be free with the help of the transcendental reduction lies in the structure [Aufbau] of Husserl’s writings. Both in Ideas I and in Phenomenological Psychology, and even in Cartesian Meditations and Crisis, there is the possibility of a mundane eidetic science of consciousness, of a successful eidetic without the transcendental reduction.
A further—apparently merely methodological—question emerges here: at what point in the procedure is the sought-after “freedom from the factual” actually attained? Is it already attained in the phase of the variation of the initial example, or only upon attaining the self-given eidos? Husserl placed great value on the fact that the variations themselves by and large (or even completely) already break loose from the factual. Otherwise, the danger that we commit ourselves in the variants of the initial example to a merely local, widespread commonality that cannot actually claim universal validity persists. The question as to how we actually bring about the independence of the formation of the variants from everything factual thus has not yet been answered, nor has the question as to whether this independence can actually be attained.
Of course, one can object that every variant of the initial example is and always remains a factual variation, executed by me here and now. The eidos, by contrast, as an ideal object, is actually independent from everything factual. But here a different sense of “to be independent of” has crept in unnoticed. For with this expression, what is meant is surely that only the eidos in the Platonic, ontological sense can actually be independent of the factual. It is thus the ontological independence from different regions of being that is meant. However, in Husserl’s phenomenology, irreal, ideal objects of the understanding, such as an eidos, do not form an equally valued ontological counterpart to the domain of real objects. They remain always a moment dependent upon reality. They are objects of cognition, and as such they do not form an independent domain.
The particular achievement of the procedure of eidetic intuition thus reveals itself in two important respects: first of all, in the possibility of making our universal presentations intuitive, but, moreover, in the discovery of hidden sense-elements [Sinnelementen] in all of our concepts.57
Translated by Hayden Kee
NOTES
1. There is comparatively little secondary literature on eidetic intuition: R. Bernet, I. Kern, and E. Marbach, Edmund Husserl: Darstellung seines Denkens (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1989), 74–84; J. N. Mohanty, “Individual Fact and Essence in Edmund Husserl’s Philosophy,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 19 (1959): 222–230; E. Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970), 137–168; and B. Hopkins, “Phenomenological Cognition of the a priori: Husserl’s Method of ‘Seeing Essences,’ ” in Husserl in Contemporary Context, ed. B. Hopkins (Dordrecht: Springer, 1997), 151–178. I would like to thank the participants of the reading group for Husserl’s texts at the Husserl Archives of the University of Cologne for many critical suggestions.
2. An edition of research manuscripts on the topic of essence and seeing of essences has been planned in the Husserliana series. [This volume is now available as volume 41 of Husserliana: Edmund Husserl, Zur Lehre vom Wesen und zur Methode der eidetischen Variation: Texte aus dem Nachlass (1891–1935), ed. Dirk Fonfara (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012).—HK]
3. On the relationship of phenomenology to descriptive psychology, see Husserl’s “Report on German Writings on Logic from 1895–99,” in Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Rezensionen (1890–1910), ed. Bernhard Rang (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), 203–208 [translated by Dallas Willard as Early Writings in the Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 247–253].
4. For the theory of categorial intuition, see Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, ed. Ursula Panzer (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 674, 676–680 [translated by J. N. Findlay as Logical Investigations, 2 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 786–787, 788–792] and Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe, 4th ed. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1948), 299–325 [translated by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks as Experience and Judgment, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 250–269]. See also Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967), 111–136; R. Sokolowski, “Husserl’s Concept of Categorial Intuition,” Phenomenology and the Human Sciences. Philosophical Topics 12 (1981 Supplement): 127–141; D. Willard, Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1984), 23–241; D. Lohmar, “Wo lag der Fehler der kategorialen Repräsentanten?,” Husserl Studies 7 (1990): 179–197; T. M. Seebohm, “Kategoriale Anschauung,” Phänomenologische Forschung 23 (1990): 43–66; D. Lohmar, Erfahrung und kategoriales Denken (Dordrecht: Springer, 1998), 178–273; and D. Lohmar, “Husserl’s Concept of Categorical Intuition,” in Hundred Years of Phenomenology, ed. D. Zahavi and F. Stjernfelt, (Dordrecht: Springer, 2002), 125–145.
5. Cf. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2:111–115, 176–178, 225–226, 690–693 [337–340, 390–392, 432, 799–802].
6. In a footnote from Formal and Transcendental Logic, Husserl indicates that he always uses the concept of the a priori in this sense, which is not to be confused with Kant’s concept of the a priori. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Formale und Transzendentale Logik, ed. Paul Janssen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 255n1 [translated by Dorion Cairns as Formal and Transcendental Logik (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), 248n1].
7. Cf. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, §83.
8. Cf. Husserl, 418–419 [346–347], and Edmund Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie: Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, ed. Walter Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), 78 [translated by John Scanlon as Phenomenological Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 58].
9. Eidetic intuition (or, eidetic variation) that leads to higher levels of universality is extensively presented in the lectures Phänomenologische Psychologie, §9(e).
10. Cf. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2:127–128 [350–351], and also the “Draft of a ‘Preface’ to the Logical Investigations,” in Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen: Ergänzungsband, ed. Ullrich Melle (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 272–329 [translated by P. J. Bossert and C. H. Peters as Introduction to the “Logical Investigations”: A Draft of a Preface to the Logical Investigations (1913) (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975)]. Here, Husserl insists that the accusation is unjustified and that it stands in contradiction to his theory. For Husserl, a metaphysical hypostasization of essences clearly lay in a mythical obscurity that was not worthy of discussion. The lapidary statement from 1911 that “eidetic insight conceals no more difficulties or ‘mystical’ secrets than perception” shows that he still assessed the risk of misunderstanding to be low at that time; cf. “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft,” Logos 1 (1910–11): 315 [translated by Quentin Lauer as “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy (New York: Harper, 1965), 110]. In Ideas I (1913) we also find the assertion that “mystical thoughts” are to be “cleanly eliminated.” See Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch, Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. Karl Schuhmann (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 16 [translated by F. Kersten as Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983), 11]. Hereafter referred to as Ideen I.
11. Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, 163 [155].
12. See Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2:691–692, 670 [800, 784].
13. Husserl, 691; cf. 670 [801, 784].
14. Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, 76 [57; trans. modified].
15. Husserl, 73 [54].
16. On free phantasy in eidetic variation, see Husserl, Ideen I, 145–148 [157–160]; Formale und transzendentale Logik, 206, 254 [198–199, 247]; Erfahrung und Urteil, 410, 422–423 [340, 349–350]; and E. Ströker, “Husserls Evidenzprinzip,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 32 (1978): 3–30. Thomas Seebohm holds the view that, substantively, there is already phantasy variation in the Logical Investigations (“Kategoriale Anschauung,” Phänomenologische Forschung 23 (1990): 14–15). One could also see a variational procedure already in the determination of the concepts “material,” “quality,” and “fullness” in the fifth investigation. Here, the content of these concepts is made intuitive by means of deliberate variation of the respective other moments of the act.
17. Husserl, Ideen I, 145–146 [157–158].
18. Husserl, 147 [158–159]
19. Husserl, 148 [160].
20. Husserl, 148 [160].
21. Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, 76 [57].
22. Husserl, 77 [58].
23. On the question concerning the character of the syntheses of coincidence as given content and groundwork for fulfillment of categorial intentions, see Lohmar, “Husserl’s Concept of Categorial Intuition,” 125–145. Here, the enduring function of sensuousness for the fulfillment of categorial intentions is also investigated.
24. Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, 85 [63–64].
25. Husserl, 77 [57].
26. Husserl, 79 [59].
27. Husserl, 79 [59].
28. Husserl, 86 [64].
29. Cf. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, 419–425 [347–351].
30. Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, 74 [55].
31. This aspect of the juxtaposition of fact and eidos can already be found in Husserl, Ideen I: “Pure eidetic truths contain not the slightest assertion about matters of fact” (17 [11]).
32. Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, 93 [70].
33. Husserl, 77 [57].
34. Cf. A. Aguirre, “Die Idee und die Grenzenlosigkeit der Erfahrung: Kant und Husserl,” in Philosophie der Endlichkeit, ed. B. Niemeyer and D. Schütze (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1992); and my contribution “Warum braucht die Logik eine Theorie der Erfahrung?”, in Phenomenology on German Idealism, Hermeneutics, and Logic, ed. R. Dostal, L. Embree, J. N. Mohanty, J. J. Kockelmanns, and O. K. Wiegand (Dordrecht: Springer, 1999), 149–169.
35. Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, 77 [58].
36. Husserl, 75 [56].
37. Husserl, 89–90 [67–68].
38. Husserl, 72 [54]. In another passage, we read, “following it as a model, I shape multiple fancied copies as things and fictions concretely similar to it” (71 [53]); the initial object is a “guiding ‘model’ ” (76 [57]); and within variation, we pass over “from copy to copy, similar to similar” (77 [58]).
39. Cf. my contribution on the topic of similarity, “Wittgenstein, Husserl and Kant on Aspect-Change,” in Husserl et Wittgenstein, ed. Sandra Laugier (Stuttgart: Verlag Frommann-Holzboog, 2004); and also R. N. Smid, “Ähnlichkeit als Thema der Münchener Lipps-Schule,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 37 (1983): 605–616.
40. On Husserl’s theory of types, see Erfahrung und Urteil, §83, and A. Schütz, “Typus und Eidos in Husserls Spätphilosophie,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze, Bd. 3 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971), 127–152; and Lohmar, Erfahrung und kategoriales Denken, 245–254. It is especially important to know that there are not only types as what is common to many objects, but also types of individual objects. Cf. my “Husserl’s Types and Kant’s Schemata,” in The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, ed. Donn Welton (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2003), 93–124.
41. Concerning the transition from the typifying intention directed toward an object to its intuitional illustration in eidetic variation, Husserl writes, “Passive synthesis … is everywhere our support for putting into play the activities of relating and of constituting logically universalizing universal concepts and propositions” (Phänomenologische Psychologie, 99 [75]).
42. Cf. Klaus Held’s introduction to Edmund Husserl, Die phänomenologische Methode: Ausgewählte Texte, Teil 1 (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1985), as well as Ulrich Claesges, Edmund Husserl’s Theorie der Raumkonstitution (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), 29–32.
43. [Reading erhält rather than enthält—HK]
44. Kant chooses a comparable formulation for his description of apperception (i.e., the perception of something as something). Cf. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A120–121 [translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood as Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 238–239].
45. On this example from Gestalt psychology, see Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophy of Psychology—A Fragment [formerly part 2 of Philosophical Investigations], trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009), §§118–137.
46. Indeed, one can compare Husserlian types with Kant’s schemata of concepts. See my “Husserl’s Types and Kant’s Schemata.”
47. See, for example, Husserl’s identical statement in the “Vienna Lecture” (1935), in Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, ed. Walter Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954), 335 [translated by David Carr as The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 288]. Husserl’s attempts to secure something identical everywhere in different life-worlds must thus be regarded with considerable skepticism. The success of an analysis that seeks such universal distinctive traits depends not only on eidetic variation, but also on conducting comprehensive historical and cultural comparisons. The insight that corresponds to this requirement is that what was once seen differently in another time or another culture cannot count as universal.
48. On the history of the phenomenological movement, see Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, 3rd ed. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982).
49. Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, 74 [55].
50. Husserl, 74 [55, trans. modified].
51. Husserl, 74 [55, trans. modified].
52. Husserl, 74 [55].
53. Husserl, 74 [55].
54. Husserl, 74 [55, trans. modified].
55. Husserl, 74 [55]. Many of the same passages can be found in Erfahrung und Urteil, 422–426 [349–352]. On the application of the text of §9 in Erfahrung und Urteil, see D. Lohmar, “Zu der Entstehung und den Ausgangsmaterialien von Edmund Husserls Werk ‘Erfahrung und Urteil,’ ” Husserl Studies 13 (1996): 31–71.
56. Cf. D. Lohmar, “Die Idee der Reduktion: Husserls Reduktionen und ihr gemeinsamer methodischer Sinn,” in Die erscheinende Welt. Festschrift für Klaus Held, eds. H. Hüni and P. Trawny (Berlin: Duncker und Humboldt, 2002), 751–771.
57. In Ideen I, and also in later presentations, Husserl writes that seeing the a priori—the “ideation” undertaken in the eidetic procedure—is also applied in mathematics. Admittedly, we are for the most part not aware that we are here performing an eidetic procedure, for we have not yet “learned to look into the inwardness of mathematizing activity and to witness how universalities arise out of necessities there” (Phänomenologische Psychologie, 87 [65]). Cf. Husserl, Ideen I, 17–22 [12–17] (and also Erfahrung und Urteil, 425 [351–352]), where Husserl presents pure geometry as an eidetic science, that is, a science of essences (cf. also Husserl, Ideen I, 24, 137, 149 [18–19, 149, 160–161]), and works out the close interconnection of judging concerning essences and judging in the mode of “in general” [überhaupt]. Judgments in the general mode can also have the characteristic of essential universality. Geometrical “axioms” (here specifically understood not in the modern sense of arbitrarily posited assumptions, but rather in the ancient sense of immediately evident judgments about spatial figures) are due to eidetic intuition. From these axioms (i.e., primitive essential laws), one can derive all valid propositions concerning the realm of spatial figures (cf. Ideen I, 151–152 [162–163]). The geometer’s object is thus not actually drawn figures but rather ideally possible figures. The variants that the geometer forms in the ideating method can thus originate from actuality, but also from phantasy (cf. also Ideen I, 147 [158–159]). Decisive for the results is what is invariant in all possible cases. Geometry as an eidetic is hereby radically distinguished from all sciences of experience. Bernhold Picker also refers to geometry as a model and inspiration for the eidetic method in “Die Bedeutung der Mathematik für die Philosophie Edmund Husserls,” Philosophia Naturalis 7 (1961): 266–355.