A. TheWay into Phenomenological Transcendental Philosophy
by Inquring Back From the Pre-given Life-
World
28 Kant’s unexpressed “presupposition”: the surrounding
world of life, taken for granted as valid.
KANT IS CERTAIN that his philosophy will bring the dominant rationalism to its downfall
by exhibiting the inadequacy of its foundations. He rightly reproaches rationalism for
neglecting questions which should have been its fundamental questions; that is, it had never
penetrated to the subjective structure of our world-consciousness prior to and within scientific
knowledge and thus had never asked how the world, which appears straightforwardly
to us men, and to us as scientists, comes to be knowable a priori-how, that is, the exact
science of nature is possible, the science for which, after all, pure mathematics, together
with a further pure a priori, is the instrument of all knowledge which is objective, [i.e.,]
unconditionally valid for everyone who is rational (who thinks logically).
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But Kant, for his part, has no idea that in his philosophizing he stands on unquestioned
presuppositions and that the undoubtedly great discoveries in his theories are there only in
concealment; that is, they are not there as finished results, just as the theories themselves are
not finished theories, i.e., do not have a definitive scientific form. What he offers demands
new work and, above all, critical analysis. An example of a great discovery — a merely
preliminary discovery-is the “understanding”
which has, in respect to nature, two functions1 : understanding interpreting itself, in
explicit self-reflection, as normative laws, and, on the other hand, understanding ruling in
concealment, i.e., ruling as constitutive of the always already developed and always further
developing meaning-configuration “intuitively given surrounding world.” This discovery
could never be actually grounded or even be fully comprehensible in the manner of the
Kantian theory, i.e., as a result of his merely regressive method. In the “transcendental
deduction” of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant makes an approach to a
direct grounding, one which descends to the original sources, only to break off again almost
at once without arriving at the genuine problems of foundation which are to be opened up
from this supposedly psychological side.
We shall begin our considerations by showing that Kant’s inquiries in the critique of
reason have an unquestioned ground of presuppositions which codetermine the meaning of
his questions. Sciences to whose truths and methods Kant attributes actual validity become
a problem, and with them the spheres of being [Seinssphren] themselves to which these
sciences refer. They become a problem in virtue of certain questions which take knowing
subjectivity, too, into account, questions which find their answer in theories about transcendentally
forming subjectivity, about the transcendental achievements of sensibility, of the
understanding, etc., and, on the highest level, theories about functions of the “I” of “transcendental
apperception.” What had become an enigma, the achievement of mathematical
natural science and of pure mathematics (in our broadened sense) as its logical method, was
supposed to have been made comprehensible through these theories; but the theories also
led to a revolutionary reinterpretation of the actual ontic meaning of nature as the world of
possible experience and possible knowledge and thus correlatively to the reinterpretation of
the actual truth — meaning of the sciences concerned.
Naturally, from the very start in the Kantian manner of posing questions, the everyday
surrounding world of life is presupposed as existing-the surrounding world in which all of
us (even I who am now philosophizing) consciously have our existence; here are also the
sciences, as cultural facts in this world, with their scientists and theories. In this world we
are objects among objects in the sense of the life-world, namely, as being
1. Reading “. . . ist der hinsichtlich der Natur doppelt fungierende Verstand. . . .”
here and there, in the plain certainty of experience, before anything that is established
scientifically, whether in physiology, psychology, or sociology. On the other hand, we are
subjects for this world, namely, as the ego-subjects experiencing it, contemplating it, valuing
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it, related to it purposefully; for us this surrounding world has only the ontic meaning given
to it by our experiencings, our thoughts, our valuations, etc.; and it has the modes of validity
(certainty of being, possibility, perhaps illusion, etc.) which we, as the subjects of validity,
at the same time bring about or else possess from earlier on as habitual acquisitions and
bear within us as validities of such and such a content which we can reactualize at will. To
be sure, all this undergoes manifold alterations, whereas “the” world, as existing in a unified
way, persists throughout, being corrected only in its content.
Clearly the content-alteration of the perceived object, being change or motion perceived
as belonging to the object itself, is distinguished with self-evidence from the alteration of its
manners of appearing (e.g., the perspectives, the near and far appearances) through which
something objective of this type exhibits itself as being itself present. We see this in the
change of [our] attitude. [If we are] directed straightforwardly toward the object and what
belongs to it, [our] gaze passes through the appearances toward what continuously appears
through their continuous unification: the object, with the ontic validity of the mode “itself
present.” In the reflective attitude, [by contrast,] we have not a one but a manifold. Now
the sequence of the appearances themselves is thematic, rather than what appears in them.
Perception is the primal mode of intuition [Anschauung]; it exhibits with primal originality,
that is, in the mode of self-presence. In addition, there are other modes of intuition which in
themselves consciously have the character of [giving us] modifications of this “itself there” as
themselves present. These are presentifications, modifications of presentations2; they make
us conscious of the modalities of time, e.g., not that which is-itselfthere but that which
was-itself-there or that which is in the future, that which will-be-itself-there. Presentifying
intuitions “recapitulate” — in certain modifications belonging to them — all the manifolds
of appearance through which what is objective exhibits itself perceptively. Recollecting
intuition, for example,
2. Vergegenwrtigungen, i.e., modifications of Gegenwrtigungen. The former are explicit acts of
rendering consciously present that which is not “itself present,” as in the case of recollection or
imagination.
shows the object as having-been-itself-there, recapitulating the perspectivization and other
manners of appearing, though in recollective modifications. I am now conscious of this
perspectivization as one which has been, a sequence of subjective “exhibitions of,” havingbeen
in my earlier ontic validities.
Here we can now clarify the very limited justification for speaking of a sense-world, a
world of sense-intuition, a sensible world of appearances. In all the verifications of the
life of our natural interests, which remain purely in the life-world, the return to “sensibly”
experiencing intuition plays a prominent role. For everything that exhibits itself in the lifeworld
as a concrete thing obviously has a bodily character, even if it is not a mere body,
as, for example, an animal or a cultural object, i.e., even if it also has psychic or otherwise
spiritual properties. If we pay attention now purely to the bodily aspect of the things, this
obviously exhibits itself perceptively only in seeing, in touching, in hearing, etc., i.e., in
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visual, tactual, acoustical, and other such aspects. Obviously and inevitably participating
in this is our living body, which is never absent from the perceptual field, and specifically its
corresponding “organs of perception” (eyes, hands, ears, etc.). In consciousness they play a
constant role here; specifically they function in seeing, hearing, etc., together with the ego’s
motility belonging to them, i.e., what is called kinesthesis. All kinestheses, each being an “I
move,” “I do,” [etc.] are bound together in a comprehensive unity — in which kinesthetic
holding-still is [also] a mode of the “I do.” Clearly the aspect-exhibitions of whatever body
is appearing in perception, and the kinestheses, are not processes [simply running] alongside
each other; rather, they work together in such a way that the aspects have the ontic meaning
of, or the validity of, aspects of the body only through the fact that they are those aspects
continually required by the kinestheses — by the kinesthetic-sensual total situation in each
of its working variations of the total kinesthesis by setting in motion this or that particular
kinesthesis — and that they correspondingly fulfill the requirement.
Thus sensibility, the ego’s active functioning of the living body or the bodily organs,
belongs in a fundamental, essential way to all experience of bodies. It proceeds in consciousness
not as a mere series of body-appearances, as if these in themselves, through themselves
alone and their coalescences, were appearance of bodies; rather, they are such in consciousness
only in combination with the kinesthetically functioning living body [Leiblichkeit], the
ego functioning here in a peculiar sort of activity and habituality. In a quite unique way
the living body is constantly in the perceptual field quite immediately, with a completely
unique ontic meaning, precisely the meaning indicated by the word “organ” (here used in its
most primitive sense), [namely, as] that through which I exist in a completely unique way
and quite immediately as the ego of affection and actions, [as that] in which I hold sway 3
quite immediately, kinesthetically — articulated into particular organs through which I hold
sway, or potentially hold sway, in particular kinestheses corresponding to them. And this
“holding-sway,” here exhibited as functioning in all perception of bodies — the familiar, total
system of kinestheses available to consciousness — is actualized in the particular kinesthetic
situation [and] is perpetually bound to a [general] situation in which bodies appear, i.e., that
of the field of perception. To the variety of appearances through which a body is perceivable
as this one-and-the-same body correspond, in their own way, the kinestheses which belong
to this body; as these kinestheses are allowed to run their course, the corresponding required
appearances must show up in order to be appearances of this body at all, i.e., in order to be
appearances which exhibit in themselves this body with its properties.
Thus, purely in terms of perception, physical body and living body [Krper and Leib] 4
are essentially different; living body, that is, [understood] as the only one which is actually
given [to me as such] in perception: my own living body. How the consciousness originates
through which my living body nevertheless acquires the ontic validity of one physical body
among others, and how, on the other hand, certain physical bodies in my perceptual field
come to count as living bodies, living bodies of “alien” ego-subjects-these are now necessary
questions.
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In our reflections we confined ourselves to the perceiving consciousness of things, to one’s
own perceiving of them, to my perceptual field. Here my own living body alone, and never
an alien living body, can be perceived as living; the latter is perceived
3. walten. “Holding sway” is somewhat awkward in English, but it seems to best approximate
Husserl’s use of this archaic term. The latter is often used in religious language (Gottes Walten) to
signify God’s rule and power over the world and his intervention in its affairs. The English “wield”
is related to it but is transitive. Husserl uses the term primarily in connection with the living body
(unlike Heidegger, who resurrected it for a different purpose), meaning one’s “wielding” of the body
and its organs so as to have some control of one’s surroundings.
4. See §g, note 15.
only as a physical body. In my perceptual field I find myself holding sway as ego through
my organs and generally through everything belonging to me as an ego in my ego-acts and
faculties. However, though the objects of the life-world, if they are to show their very own
being, necessarily show themselves as physical bodies, this does not mean that they show
themselves only in this way; and [similarly] we, though we are related through the living body
to all objects which exist for us, are not related to them solely as a living body. Thus if it is
a question of objects in the perceptual field, we are perceptually also in the field5 ; and the
same is true, in modification, of every intuitive field, and even of every nonintuitive one, since
we are obviously capable of “representing” to ourselves everything which is nonintuitively
before us (though we are sometimes temporally limited in this). [Being related] “through the
living body” clearly does not mean merely [being related] “as a physical body”; rather, the
expression refers to the kinesthetic, to functioning as an ego in this peculiar way, primarily
through seeing, hearing, etc.; and of course other modes of the ego belong to this (for
example, lifting, carrying, pushing, and the like).
But being an ego through the living body [die leibliche Ichlichkeit] is of course not the
only way of being an ego, and none of its ways can be severed from the others; throughout
all their transformations they form a unity. Thus we are concretely in the field of perception,
etc., and in the field of consciousness, however broadly we may conceive this, through our
living body, but not only in this way, as full ego-subjects, each of us as the full-fledged
“I-the-man.” Thus in whatever way we may be conscious of the world as universal horizon,
as coherent universe of existing objects, we, each “I-the-man” and all of us together, belong
to the world as living with one another in the world; and the world is our world, valid
for our consciousness as existing precisely through this “living together.” We, as living in
wakeful world-consciousness, are constantly active on the basis of our passive having of the
world; it is from there, by objects pregiven in consciousness, that we are affected; it is to
this or that object that we pay attention, according to our interests; with them we deal
actively in different ways; through our acts they are “thematic” objects. As an example I
give the observant explication of the properties of something which appears perceptively, or
our activity of combining, relating, actively identifying and distinguishing,
5. I.e., as a physical body (Krper).
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or our active evaluation, our projection of plans, our active realization of the planned means
and ends.
As subjects of acts (ego-subjects) we are directed toward thematic objects in modes of
primary and secondary, and perhaps also peripheral, directedness. In this preoccupation
with the objects the acts themselves are not thematic. But we are capable of coming back
and reflecting on ourselves and our current activity: it now becomes thematic and objective
through a new act, the vitally functioning one, which itself is now unthematic.
The consciousness of the world, then, is in constant motion; we are conscious of the world
always in terms of some objectcontent or other, in the alteration of the different ways of being
conscious (intuitive, nonintuitive, determined, undetermined, etc.) and also in the alteration
of affection and action, in such a way that there is always a total sphere of affection and such
that the affecting objects are now thematic, now unthematic; here we also find ourselves, we
who always and inevitably belong to the affective sphere, always functioning as subjects of
acts but only occasionally being thematically objective as the object of preoccupation with
ourselves.
Obviously this is true not only for me, the individual ego; rather we, in living together,
have the world pregiven in this “together,” as the world valid as existing for us and to which
we, together, belong, the world as world for all, pregiven with this ontic meaning. Constantly
functioning in wakeful life, we also function together, in the manifold ways of considering,
together, objects pregiven to us in common, thinking together, valuing, planning, acting
together. Here we find also that particular thematic alteration in which the we-subjectivity,
somehow constantly functioning, becomes a thematic object, whereby the acts through which
it functions also become thematic, though always with a residuum which remains unthematicremains,
so to speak, anonymous-namely, the reflections which are functioning in connection
with this theme.*
* Naturally all activity, and thus also this reflecting activity, gives rise to its habitual acquisitions.
In observing, we attain habitual knowledge, acquaintance with the object which exists for us in
terms of its previously unknown characteristics-and the same is true of self-knowledge through selfobservation.
In the evaluation of ourselves and the plans and actions related to ourselves and our
fellows, we likewise attain self-values and ends concerning ourselves [which become] our habitually
persisting validities. But all knowledge in general, all value-validities and ends in general, are, as
having been acquired through our activity, at the same time persisting properties of ourselves as
ego-subjects, as persons, and can be found in the reflective attitude as making up our own being.
Considering ourselves in particular as the scientists that we here factually find ourselves to
be, what corresponds to our particular manner of being as scientists is our present functioning
in the manner of scientific thinking, putting questions and answering them theoretically in
relation to nature or the world of the spirit; and [the latter are] at first nothing other than
the one or the other aspect of the life-world which, in advance, is already valid, which we
experience or are otherwise conscious of either prescientifically or scientifically. Cofunctioning
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here are the other scientists who, united with us in a community of theory, acquire and have
the same truths or, in the communalization of accomplishing acts, are united with us in a
critical transaction aimed at critical agreement. On the other hand, we can be for others,
and they for us, mere objects; rather than being together in the unity of immediate, driving,
common theoretical interest, we can get to know one another observingly, taking note of
others’ acts of thought, acts of experiencing, and possibly other acts as objective facts, but
“disinterestedly,” without joining in performing these acts, without critically assenting to
them or taking exception to them.
Naturally, all these things are the most obvious of the obvious. Must one speak about
them, and with so much ado? In life certainly not. But not as a philosopher either? Is this
not the opening-up of a realm, indeed an infinite realm, of always ready and available but
never questioned ontic validities? Are they not constant presuppositions of scientific and,
at the highest level, philosophical thinking? Not, however, that it would or could ever be a
matter of utilizing these ontic validities in their objective truth.
It belongs to what is taken for granted, prior to all scientific thought and all philosophical
questioning, that the world is-always is in advance-and that every correction of an opinion,
whether an experiential or other opinion, presupposes the already existing world, namely,
as a horizon of what in the given case is indubitably valid as existing, and presupposes
within this horizon something familiar and doubtlessly certain with which that which is
perhaps canceled out as invalid came into conflict. Objective science, too, asks questions
only on the ground of this world’s existing in advance through prescientific life. Like all
praxis, objective science presupposes the being of this world, but it sets itself the task of
transposing knowledge which is imperfect and prescientific in respect of scope and constancy
into perfect knowledge-in accord with an idea of a correlative which is, to be sure, infinitely
distant, i.e., of a world which in itself is fixed and determined and of truths which are idealiter
scientific (”truths-in-themselves”) and which predicatively interpret this world. To realize
this in a systematic process, in stages of perfection, through a method which makes possible
a constant advance: this is the task.
For the human being in his surrounding world there are many types of praxis, and among
them is this peculiar and historically late one, theoretical praxis. It has its own professional
methods; it is the art of theories, of discovering and securing truths with a certain new ideal
sense which is foreign to prescientific life, the sense of a certain “final validity,” “universal
validity.”
Here we have again offered an example of exhibiting what is “obvious,” but this time
in order to make clear that in respect to all these manifold validities-in-advance, i.e., “presuppositions”
of the philosopher, there arise questions of being in a new and immediately
highly enigmatic dimension. These questions, too, concern the obviously existing, ever intuitively
pregiven world; but they are not questions belonging to that professional praxis and
technique (techne) which is called objective science, not questions belonging to that art of
grounding and broadening the realm of objectively scientific truths about this surrounding
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world; rather, they are questions of how the object, the prescientifically and then the scientifically
true object, stands in relation to all the subjective elements which everywhere have
a voice in what is taken for granted in advance.
29 The life-world can be disclosed as a realm of subjective