Re-visiting Heidegger's critique of Edmund Husserl's Idea of Intentionality

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RE-VISITING HEIDEGGER’S CRITIQUE OF HUSSERL’S CONCEPT OF

INTENTIONALITY

1.0 GENERAL INTRODUCTION

The 20th century phenomenological movement is principally

associated with the name of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938).

While it is obvious that there was a long-standing

relationship between Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Martin

Heidegger (1889-1976), on the philosophical level

especially from the phenomenological point of view, both of

them parted ways as would be demonstrated in this thesis.

While for instance Husserl speaks of ‘pure phenomenology or

what he calls ‘transcendental phenomenology’1 as being

different from psychology which is a science of empirical

evidence, Heidegger also was not interested in the science

of facts for instance psychology but rather he was more

interested in the science of being (ontology) and this is

made clear in his work ‘Being and Time’ precisely in this

quotation: “this question (that of Being) has today been

forgotten.(...) Yet the question we are touching upon is

not just any question. It is one which provided a stimulus

for the researches of Plato and Aristotle, only to subside

from then on as a theme for factual investigation”2. The

structure of Being and Time leaves one with no doubt that

Heidegger was interested in the destruction of traditional

1 Husserl E, Ideas Pertaining to a pure phenomenology and a transcendentalphenomenological philosophy, Trans by F. Kersten, Martinus Nijhoffpublishers, The Hague/Boston/Lancaster, 1983, xx.2 Heidegger M., Being and Time, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford,1962, 2

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ontology giving birth to what might be called ‘a

phenomenological ontology’. Hence, Heidegger’s

phenomenology is the one that has the character of

revealing Being whose question according to him needs to be

re-awaken.

Intentionality has been an interesting theme in the

Husserlian phenomenology. Its importance in the

phenomenology of Husserl could not be over emphasised. Our

human consciousness is characterised by its directedness to

an object. We are conscious beings and this consciousness

if about or of something. Heidegger himself is aware of

this fact but as would be demonstrated in this thesis, he

re-interpreted intentionality, pivoting it around the being

of Dasein while criticising Husserl for neglecting the

question of the being in his phenomenology. When for

instance Perler D. unequivocally affirms that “It seems

quite natural that a large number of our mental acts and

states share a common feature: they are all about

something, i.e., they are intentional”3, it implies

therefore that when for instance I am in love, there is

something that I love; when I think, I am thinking about

something; when I am hoping there is something that I hope

for. When for instance I experience an object, it is an

experience of something; of that particular object. In

order words, it sounds strange and even impossible to say

that I love, hope, think without anything that I love, hope

for or think about. When I am thinking about the Festival3Perler D. (ed.), Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality, Brill, Leiden,Boston, Koln 2001, vii.

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of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) held in Lagos Nigeria in 1977,

it is this very festival that furnishes my act of thinking

with a vivid content and for this reason makes it quite

different from any other form of thinking. When I sit

beside the lake and contemplate how the water flows, it is

the water that gives my thinking a clear content.

This way of thinking about human consciousness has a long

history as examined in thesis. Moreover, in the 20th

century phenomenology, Husserl is seen as its founding

father who conceived that our consciousness is always

consciousness of something. Inspired by Brentano, Husserl’s

phenomenology centralises intentionality as one of its main

area of investigation. On the other hand, his assistant

Heidegger came up with quite a different approach. He

instead claims to take phenomenology to its radical

conclusion by rejecting the cognitive and theoretical

dimension of phenomenology as he claimed Husserl over

emphasised. Hence, Heidegger re-interpreted intentionality

from the point of view of Dasein’s transcendence thereby

placing much interest on the practical aspect of it and

making the question of being its major objective

(ontology), criticising Husserl’s ‘forgetfulness’ of this

all important question.

The crux of this thesis is therefore to re-examine these

critiques of Heidegger on Husserl’s phenomenology,

particularly with more detailed attention on his conception

of intentionality. In evaluating both philosophers, I will

contend that Heidegger’s critiques of Husserl demonstrate

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his inability to comprehend the sort of phenomenological

project which Husserl himself initiated. Firstly, contrary

to the Heidegger’s critique that Husserl ignored the

question of being (ontology) in phenomenology, I would

contend that Husserl engages in phenomenological issues and

not real ontology as Heidegger claims to do in his work

Being and Time. Therefore, Husserl does not entirely neglect

the question of being; consciousness does not take place in

the vacuum, rather it happens within an ego. Without this

there would be no theorising about the structure of

consciousness and its relation to object. Secondly, even

though Husserl paid more attention on the cognition in his

phenomenology and more especially from the point of view of

intentionality, he nevertheless neglected in totality the

practical aspect of it as Heidegger claimed. I will argue

that the pure study of consciousness and its relation to

object which Husserl began might be thwarted by the over

emphasis on the practical engagement of Dasein in the world

as Heidegger holds, thereby ignoring this important aspect

of human relation with the world (consciousness).

Furthermore, I would argue that Heidegger is just

furthering the Husserl’s phenomenological project although

from another perspective; that of paying more attention to

ontology, questioning the being of intentional. Finally, I

would also maintain that Heidegger demonstrates very little

knowledge of this important theme in the phenomenological

enterprise (intentionality) in his main work (Being and Time)

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and this would not be a good foundation for his critique of

Husserl.

To realise this task, this work is divided into four

chapters. Giving the fact that Heidegger criticised

Husserl’s phenomenology of which intentionality is

obviously its crux, the chapter one examines the meaning

and centrality of intentionality in phenomenological

discourse. In realising this, it explicates the meaning of

phenomenology within which intentionality is embedded. It

further delineates the term intentionality from its general

perspective while presenting in a very precise manner its

historical development with special emphasis on the pre-

Socratics when it was not considered a philosophical

problem down to the scholastics from where Brentano

borrowed a lot. The chapter two concentrates on Brentano

and Husserl’s view of intentionality. In the first place,

it examines some central issues of Franz Brentano, a core

psychologist who defended the psychological knowledge and

considers it more superior to any other sciences. Not only

on this issue, Brentano makes a distinction between what he

calls the mental and the physical phenomena and concedes

intentionality only and strictly to the mental and never to

the physical. Husserl would not view it from the same view

point and so this chapter also examines the Husserlian re-

interpretation of Brentano’s thesis. The chapter three

highlights the Heideggerian re-interpretation of

intentionality and even his own notion of phenomenology,

placing as its central aim the question of being. Hence,

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his re-interpretation of intentionality where emphasis is

placed on its practical aspect, the worldhood of Dasein and

its involvement in the world makes it possible for him to

give his own phenomenological conception a practical

interpretation and placing emphasis on ontology thereby

criticising Husserl as would be explained in the main work.

The fourth and last chapter re-visits Heidegger’s critique

of Husserl, affirming that most of the criticisms that

Heidegger used against Husserl were not adequate.

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CHAPTER ONE

MEANING AND CENTRALITY OF INTENTIONALITY IN

PHENOMENOLOGICAL DISCOURSE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

This thesis has as its goal the re-examination of

Heidegger’s critiques of Husserlian notion of

intentionality. Before this, this first chapter examines

the meaning of intentionality from a general perspective

within the ambient of phenomenology. Therefore, before

going into examining briefly the meaning of intentionality,

it is pertinent to first of all delineate the term

phenomenology.

Phenomenology has become an interesting field of research

in the contemporary philosophical enterprise. This way of

doing philosophy in the 20th century was sequel to Edmund

Husserl who introduced it as the first person perspective

of experiential analysis of phenomena. From its

etymological origin, phenomenology comprises of two Greek

words: andimplies that which

appears while signifies studies, discourse or

science. In other words, the merger of these two Greek

words implies phenomenology which ordinarily could be

interpreted as the science of phenomena, i.e., the science

of that which appears. Other philosophers also have defined

phenomenology from their own perspectives but I would like

to highlight that offered by Moran D. According to him

(Moran D.), phenomenology “is a radical, anti-traditional

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style of philosophising which emphasises the attempt to get

to the truth of matters in which it appears, that is, as it

manifests itself to consciousness, to the experiencer”4. As

a new way of doing philosophy following this definition of

Moran, phenomenology in the process of analysing any

phenomena, tries to a “avoid all misconstructions and

impositions placed on experience in advance whether these

are drawn from religious or cultural traditions”5. In other

words, there is a sort of ‘distance’ between the

phenomenologist and the phenomena under experience. By this

I mean, trying not to experience any reality having any

previous conception of that which might impede a pure

experience.

As a branch of philosophy and a new way of philosophising,

phenomenology investigates different topics of which

intentionality is at its crux. Intentionality is important

in the phenomenological studies and it is because of this

that its brief analysis would be paramount in this thesis.

DELINEATING INTENTIONALITY AND ITS CENTRAL PLACE IN

PHENOMENOLOGY

In phenomenological traditions, the term intentionality is

very central and important. It is quite different from its

ordinary usage. An example would help to clarify this. For

instance one may say, “I would go to the University because

4 Moran D., Introduction to Phenomenology, Routledge London andN.Y., 2000, 4.5 Moran D., Introduction to Phenomenology, Routledge London andN.Y., 2000, 4

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I have the intention of becoming a Medical Doctor” or “I

will go to the mountain top because I have the intention of

viewing the whole city from there”. These are expressions

that we are used to utter in our daily interactions and

most times, people tend to presume that intentionality

represents exactly the above expressions. Sokolowski R.

begins his book “Introduction to Phenomenology” by raising the

question, “What is Intentionality and why is it

important?”6. He observed that “the core doctrine in

phenomenology is the teaching that every act of

consciousness we perform, every experience that we have is

intentional: it is exactly consciousness ‘of’ or an

experience of something or other”7. In order words,

phenomenological intentionality is quite different from its

practical notion as I have explained in the examples above.

Husserl sees intentionality as ‘the principal theme of

phenomenology’8. According to Husserl, ‘Intentionality is

what characterises consciousness in the pregnant sense and

which at the same time justifies designating the whole

stream of mental processes as the stream of consciousness

and the unity of one consciousness’9. On his own part,

6 Sokolowski R., “Introduction to Phenomenology”, Cambridge UniversityPress, U.S.A, 2000, 8.7 Sokolowski R., “Introduction to Phenomenology” Cambridge UniversityPress, U.S.A, 2000, 8.

8 Husserl E., Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and aTranscendental phenomenological philosophy, Bk. One, Translated byF. Kersten, Martinus Nijhoff publishers, TheHague/Boston/Lancaster, 1983, 199.

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Heidegger would see it as the structure of lived

experiences as would be discussed later.

Moreover, a lot of other definitions have also been given

to intentionality but among all there is something that is

very common: Intentionality has to do with directedness or

‘of-ness’ or ‘aboutness’ of consciousness. That is to say

that when one perceives or judges or feels or thinks, all

these mental states are ‘about’ or ‘of’ something10. Every

act of consciousness that we perform, every experience that

we have is intentional. This is the central point in the

doctrine of intentionality. That is to say that every

intending has its intended object. Phenomenological

intentionality being different from its practical relevance

as has been pointed out earlier, gives the chance to

understand some other topics like consciousness and its

importance in experiencing things. As Sokolowski R. Still

puts it, in phenomenology “intentionality is primarily

mental and cognitive”11.

Why is it that phenomenologists talk about the fact that

consciousness is always ‘of’ or ‘about’ something when it

seems obvious that everybody knows that already? I share

the opinion of Sokolowski still when he reasons that

raising the problem of the question of intentionality in

9 Husserl E., Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and aTranscendental phenomenological philosophy, Bk. One, op. Cit. 19910 Gallagher S. And Zahavi D., “The Phenomenological Mind: anintroduction to philosophy of mind and cognitive science”, Routledge,London and NY, 2008, 109.11 Sokolowski R., “Introduction to Phenomenology” Cambridge UniversityPress, U.S.A, 2000, 8.

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our contemporary phenomenological tradition seems pertinent

because in the past centuries, human consciousness and

experiences have been understood in quite a different way.

He observes that “In the Cartesian, Hobbesian and Lockean

tradition which dominate our culture, we are told that when

we are conscious we are primarily aware of ourselves or our

own ideas. Conscious is taken to be like a bubble or an

enclosed cabinet; the mind comes in a box. Impressions and

concepts occur in this enclosed space, in this circle of

ideas and expressions, and our awareness is directed toward

them, not directly toward the things outside”12. In this

sense, we can only try to get to things outside by making

inferences, i.e. reasoning by our mental impressions and

not by having them presented to us. This way of thinking

about intentionality could be said to have been reinforced

by the scientific understanding of the brain and nervous

system whereby all our mental states and happenings are

assumed to take place only inside the head and not outside.

The necessity for the legitimacy of the new concept or

interpretation of phenomenal intentionality emerges because

of the above way of understanding intentionality. Now,

phenomenologists take into consideration the relationship

between the ‘Noesis’ and the ‘Noema’. In the process of

cognition there is what Husserl calls ‘moments’, ‘noetic

moments’. Both moments go together in the sense that there

is no noetic moment that goes without a corresponding

noematic moment. Both terms (Noesis-Noema) are derivative

12 Sokolowski R., “Introduction to Phenomenology”, op.cit. 9.

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of the Greek Nous meaning intellect. Their plural form then

becomes noeses and noemata13. The noesis is an interpretive

or meaning – giving part of an act while the noema is act’s

meaning14. Now we talk about the experiential subject that

unifies the whole experience and also the object that is

being experienced. One of the weak points of the Cartesian

and former notion of intentionality is that we can only get

to things (i.e. objects) only by reasoning from our mental

impressions. This would mean that our consciousness is not

of anything at all. From this way of thinking, there is no

mental correlation between our consciousness and the

external objects, be them extra-mental or mental objects.

But one thing which is basic is that we human beings in

general are not caged in our own subjectivity; we always

being-with-others; we live and interact with the external

world. Our contact with the external world is not a mere

illusion. How can we really proof this fact? If there is

anything about which we cannot doubt, it is the fact that

the world in which we live is real. We feel things, touch

solid objects, we can see things and also we can hear some

sounds. Our sensory organs enable us to carry out these

tasks. This does not deny the fact that sometimes our

senses are erroneous when it comes to perceiving things.

For instance, driving on a high way I might see some pieces

of glass scattered on the road from afar, only to get13 McIntyre R and Smith D.W., Theory of Intentionality, in J.N. Mohantyand William R. McKenna, (eds.), Husserl’s Phenomenology: A textbook(Washington D.C. Centre for Advanced research in phenomenology andUniversity press of America, 1989, 157-16014 McIntyre R and Smith D.W., Theory of Intentionality, op. Cit. 157-160

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closer and discover it is ice. Or sometimes I see someone

who appears to be my younger brother but getting closer to

him I discover he is not. These are some extra-ordinary

cases where our senses seem not to be reliable in

perception but one thing that is stable is that we do live

the real world where all these take place.

Our consciousness is always in relation to the real world

and to highlight this, Gallagher and Zahavi observe that

“The aim of phenomenological treatment of intentionality is

first and foremost to provide a descriptive analysis of the

structures of conscious intentionality. In doing so the

phenomenologist also seeks to clarify the relation between

mind and world (rather than the relation between mind and

brain)”15. The mind in this perspective is seen as

something public and not caged in the brain. Sokolowski

holds that “by discussing intentionality, phenomenology

helps us reclaim a public sense of thinking, reasoning and

perception”16.

A BRIEF ON THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF INTENTIONALITY

The philosophical belief that all our experiences, beliefs,

mental states are of or about something has a long history.

The debate began long before the 20th century philosophical

inquiry into the theme of intentionality. This goes in line

with what Gallagher and Zahavi affirmed when they avowed

15 Gallagher S. And Zahavi D., “The Phenomenological Mind: anintroduction to philosophy of mind and cognitive science”, op.cit.111.16 Sokolowski R., “Introduction to Phenomenology”, op.cit., 12.

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that “The concept of intentionality has a long history that

stretches at least as far as Aristotle”17. This section

traces although not in detail the historical survey of the

problem of intentionality in the ancient and medieval

period. This will help for a proper understanding of the

topic under investigation (Intentionality) especially how

it has come to be understood in our contemporary time. The

contemporary interest in intentionality could be traced

back to Husserl and Brentano back to the scholastics.

Historically, the problem of intentionality predates both

the contemporary and scholastic notion of it and this is

made explicitly in this long text of Gallagher and Zahavi:

Aristotle had already spoken of this psychical

indwelling. In his books “On the Soul” he says that

what is experienced, as something experienced, is

in the experiencing subject; that the sense

receives what is experienced without the matter;

and that what is thought is in the understanding.

In philo, we likewise find the doctrine of mental

existence and inexistence; but because he confuses

this with existence in its proper sense, he arrives

at his contradictory doctrine of logos and Ideas.

The same holds for the Neoplatonists. Augustine in

his doctrine of the Verbum Mentis and its issuing

internally touches on this same fact. Anselm does

this in his famous ontological argument; and the

17 Gallagher S and Zahavi D., The phenomenological mind: An introduction tophilosophy of mind and cognitive science, Routledge, London and NY, 2008,109.

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fact that he considered mental existence to be a

real existence is held by many to be the basis of

his paralogism (cf. Ueberweg, Geschichte der

Philosophie, II). Thomas Aquinas teaches that what

is thought is intentionally in the thinker, the

object of love in the lover, and what is desired in

the desiring subject, and he uses this for

theological ends. When scripture speaks of the

indwelling of the Holy Spirit, he explains this as

an intentional indwelling through love. And he even

attempts to find an analogy for the mystery of the

Trinity and the possession ‘ad intra’ of the Word

and the Spirit in the intentional inexistence which

occurs in the thinking subject18.

From this text, it is clear that intentionality as a

philosophical problem has a long history. One might ask,

how do we determine the history of intentionality or how do

we trace it? This is a bit difficult to approach directly

but it is quite clear that the Greeks had worried about

intentionality earlier on although without a technical

terminology. In other words, it could be said that

intentionality was latent in the thoughts of the pre-

Socratic philosophers. For instance as Perler D. observes

that “There are plainly ancient Greek philosophers

concerned with intentionality from early on, despite the

lack of technical terminology. It has already become

problematized by the mid-fifth century in Gorgia’s ‘On Not18 Dominik P. (ed.), Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality, Brill,Leiden, Boston, Koln 2001, 23.

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being’, as well as in the work of various other

Sophists...”19. According to him, it was in the time of

Plato and Aristotle that it became thematized, as a

recognised difficulty that needed an answer.

Throughout antiquity there have been some expressions which

ordinarily in the modern time could be said to have some

elements of intentionality. For instance “the antithesis of

presence in absence is used to describe the way in which

desire and thought can make present to us what is absent

from immediate environs or even absent from reality

altogether”20. There are some expressions that implicitly

justify the claim that intentionality was present in the

ancient Greeks and in the late antiquity we see such

expression as “existing in mere thoughts alone”21 to

justify the status of merely intentional objects. It

implies therefore that intentionality was used in antiquity

although it was not really defined as a philosophical

problem. I will limit myself to discussing only Plato and

Aristotle but before that it is pertinent to examine how

the concept was viewed before them.

INTENTIONALITY BEFORE PLATO AND ARISTOTLE

Prior to Plato and Aristotle were some philosophers like

Parmanides of Elea, the sophists etc who already developed

some doctrines that under a close examination show that

they had already little ideas about intentionality.

19 Ibid 26.20 Ibid 26.21 Ibid 27

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Pamenides’ Poem ‘On nature’ and the protagoras’ claim in

Theaetetus 167a, that “one cannot believe what is not and

that whatever one experiences is true”22 demonstrate this

fact.

It was not until Plato and Aristotle therefore that

references about intentionality became a bit emphasised.

Most of the dialogues of Plato are characterised by the

emphasis on the relational character of some mental states;

for instance: sight, perception, belief, knowledge, love,

fear etc. The Theaetetus of Plato which is of course a

difficult dialogue attests to this fact. In this work

(Plato’s Theaetetus) translated by J.M. Levett, numbers

151e-187a dwells on what knowledge is all about. Therefore,

the aim of the dialogue is to figure out what knowledge is

and Socrates represents the chief speaker. Here, Socrates

and his interlocutors always agree to the fact that each of

these mental states for instance seeing, perceiving, etc is

always of something rather than nothing. In number 144b of

the dialogue Theodorus responds to Socrates and he makes

use of ‘love’ for instance.

In the aforementioned dialogue, Socrates convinces Crito to

agree to the fact that all the above state of affairs must

have an object rather than themselves, even if they are

sometimes self directed. For Socrates, it would be very

22 Caston, V., Intentionality in Ancient Philosophy, in The StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),URL =<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/intentionality-ancient/>

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unusual if knowledge for instance is not knowledge of

something. Every vision is a vision of something; hearing

could only be meaningful if there is sound that is heard.

In desire for example, there is always a desired object. In

wish, there is something good that constitutes the object;

love and the beloved; in fear there is something frightful

etc. So, it is pertinent to justify the fact that even in

the time of Plato the problem of intentionality had been

raised.

Furthermore, another philosopher in whose works we could

see the traces of the doctrine of intentionality is

Aristotle. During the medieval period, most theories of

intentionality by the medieval philosophers and even in the

modern debate drew their inspiration from his doctrines.

Thomas Aquinas’ theory of cognition as would be discussed

later took almost all Aristotelian principles and

Christianised them; cf. ST, Q14 where he discussed God’s

knowledge. Furthermore, when for instance Brentano affirms

that only mental phenomena exhibit intentionality23 he

makes reference to Aristotle in the footnote affirming that

he (Aristotle) himself spoke of this mental in-existence.

In the chapter 2 of the ‘De anima’ number 403b24, Aristotle

begins by re-examining what his predecessors believed to be

the essential attributes of the soul which according to him

are “movement and perception”. In his own words he writes,

“To begin with our inquiry, we must set out those things23 Brentano F, Psychology from an Empirical Stand Point, Routledge,London, 1973

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that are particularly believed to belong to it, (i.e. the

soul) by nature. The ensouled being is generally believed

to differ from the unensouled in two respects, movement and

perception...”24. The style of language here is interesting

because Aristotle did not say that these are the essential

attributes of the soul rather what has been believed to be

the essential attributes of the soul. The reason for this

is because his predecessors believed what is itself not in

motion cannot move anything else, and thus they regard the

soul as something that is in motion (cf, no. 403b28 of De

anima). Aristotle himself is aware of these attributes but

he criticizes his predecessors for failing to account for

intentional states whose objects are not their causes. He

would give his own opinion regarding the soul and for him

what belongs to the soul in general is living25 because it

causes those in which it is present to live. The soul then

is seen as the form of the body; the principle of life. It

is defined by Aristotle as ‘the first actuality (form) of a

natural body that is potentially alive26. This would help

for a better comprehension of his notion of intentionality.

Aristotle’s Idea of Intentionality:

Aristotle begins the book III of the ‘De anima’ precisely

in number 424b22-22 by affirming thus: “That there is no

other sense apart from the five (and by this I mean sight,

24 Aristotle, De anima, number 403b24, translated by Philip J.Van der Eijk, Duckworth and co Ltd, London, 2005, 8325 Aristotle, op. Cit, 8326 Aristotle, De anima, 412a27

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hearing, smell, taste and touch)”27. After affirming this,

he goes on to make a claim that it is certain that we see

and hear. He makes use of the term ‘sense’ which in the

modern usage could mean ‘know’; for instance he says in

Book III number 425b12 that ‘since we sense that we see and

hear...’, this implies since we know that we see and hear.

Precisely in book II-5 he had already pointed out that the

sense cannot sense itself except something else; this means

that for instance thinking or thought cannot think itself

except something else and likewise love cannot love itself

except something else. A finger for example, cannot touch

itself but it can touch some other part of the body.

Putting it in another way, Eugene affirms that “The

material sense organ does not sense its sensible qualities,

only those of other things which activate the sense”28.

Furthermore, he observes that “Sensing that we sense” is

Aristotle’s version of what the Western tradition calls

‘consciousness’ or ‘awareness’, but Aristotle uses no such

separate term and does not consider such a separate

awareness. For him, sensing inherently includes the sensing

of the sensing”29. He believes that in sensing we should be

conscious of the fact that we sense and this is where

consciousness plays a role.

His notion of perception is another interesting area to

examine. He points out that two distinguishing

27 Aristotle, op. Cit. 424b22-2428 Eugene T.G., Line by line commentary on Aristotle’s De anima Book III,focusing Institute, N.Y., 2012, 2.29 Eugene T.G. op.cit. 2.

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characteristics by which people mainly define the soul are:

motion in respect of place and thinking (noein),

discriminating (krinein) and perceiving. Perception is

either potentially like sight or an activity like seeing

although something appear to us in the absence of both like

in dream (cf, 428a5-7). This sort of appearing, (in dream),

occur when the eyes are shut; when they are not active. So

it is not active seeing. Unlike imagination, in perception

something is always present. I can perceive the apple tree

standing in my garden. In this sort of experience, the

apple tree standing there in front of me becomes the object

of my perception and it is active. An object can appear

falsely too. The sun for example appears to be small but in

the real fact it is bigger than it appears to the sight.

But we are not in error when a perception or an image is

false if we have a true opinion along with it. The sun I

perceive is small but it is known that it is bigger than

the actual inhabited earth for instance. One of the central

issues in Aristotle’s ‘De anima’ is the view that what is

experienced as something experienced is in the experiencing

subject. Franz Brentano acknowledged this view of Aristotle

in the footnote of his work30. Aristotle made this claim in

his Bk. III-2 of ‘De anima’ when he states that “The

30 Brentano F, Psychology from an Empirical Stand Point, translated byAntos C. Rancurello, et all, Routledge, London and N.Y., 1973,88. Here Brentano writes: ...In his book on the soul he(Aristotle) says that sensed object , as such, is in the sensingsubject; that the sense contains the sensed object without itsmatter; that the object which is thought is in the thinkingintellect...

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activity of the object and of the sense is one and the

same...

Moreover, in his Bk III-3 Aristotle speaks about mental

imagery which is quasi-perceptual experience. He uses the

term ‘phantasmata’ to qualify this. This may be likened to

perceptual experience (i.e. the act of perceiving a

particular object that stands there). The only difference

is that the former (phantasmata) occurs without any

external object of perception physically given. It bears

intentionality, i.e. mental images which are always images

of something. So, Aristotle believes that there are changes

which occur in our bodies that represent the object in

question. Such changes occur only in images for instance in

dreams. While criticising his predecessors for not

outlining how error could occur cf. Bk III-3, 429a29-427b2,

he believes that “...they all take thinking to be corporeal

like perceiving and prudence to be of like by like” cf.

427a21-29. One of the major problems he discovered among

the ancients (Pre-Socratics) and precisely Empedocles was

that they equate thinking and sensing as simply having some

appearance before oneself. This they called likeness and

explained it physically as due to like by like. Aristotle

believes that this way of reasoning makes it impossible to

determine the possibility of error. Unlike the ancients, he

does not believe that all mental states are to be explained

as they had done. He rather argues that phantasma is a sort

of mental state that cannot be reduced to sensation,

understanding, belief and perception.

23

Most of Aristotle’s works are replete with ideas or

doctrines that explicitly make references to

intentionality. His work ‘On Memory and Reminiscence’ would

not be an exception. Here he assigns the possibility of

remembering something to a state of either perception or

conception but conditioned by lapse of time since no one

can remember the present while present; the present is only

an object of perception (cf. Part 1, On Memory and

Reminiscence). One can only remember something, an event

etc that took place in the past. That is why he takes the

object of memory to be the past; all memories imply a time

elapsed (cf. Part 1 On Memory...op. cit).

INTENTIONALITY IN THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD

Perler D. affirms that “The late 13th and early 14th century

discursions about intentionality did not only grow out of

commentaries on the ‘De anima’ and other philosophical

sources, but were also deeply rooted in the theological

debates about God’s knowledge”31. In the medieval era,

philosophical debates shifted from the cosmocentric

character of the ancient Greeks to theocentricism of the

medieval theologians whose thinking and reasoning were all

characterised by theology. The reason for this way of

philosophising was because majority of the medieval

philosophers were priests and theologians thereby applying

theology to their philosophical reasoning. The famous

medieval dictum “credo ut intelligam” (I believe that I may

31 Dominik P. (ed.), Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality,Koninklijke Brill, Netherlands, 2001, 206.

24

understand) was applied in every discourse. First of all,

one needs to faithfully believe before trying to comprehend

reality.

How then did they approach the problem of intentionality?

Having seen their way of reasoning (Theocentric in nature),

some references they made were all directed toward God and

what God could know. Perler D. affirms that “For all

medieval theologians who commented on Peter Lombard’s

‘Sentences’ had to address the following question: What

exactly did God know before he created the world? If God is

Omniscient as every medieval author conceded, he must have

known every possible creature. But since the creatures did

not have material existence before the creation of the

world, God cannot have known them as concrete, materially

existing things. This one may be inclined to think that God

knew them only in so far as they already had a certain

essence”32. This explains that in this period God became

the paradigm of judgement. As reflected above, there was

already the act of knowing because God was seen to have

known his creatures (essentially) before creating them. In

other words, there was a correlation between God and what

He knows (creatures). Also from the above citation, what

God knew was not something material, rather intentional

things since they are not extra-mental objects. I would

like to examine briefly the thoughts of Thomas Aquinas as

one of the prominent thinkers during this epoch.

32 Dominik P. (ed.), op. Cit. 206.

25

THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)

Aquinas flourished in the later period of the medieval

period, that is, between 12th and 14th century A.D. It was a

period noted for some flourishing in philosophical

enterprise. This is because among other things, “it was

then that Western Europe literally rediscovered philosophy,

in the writings of Aristotle, a discovery that led to the

renewal of systematic philosophical thought”33. Thomas

Aquinas was famous in Aristotelian philosophy and he was

equally known for formulating a comprehensive account of

the Aristotelian theory of cognition. In this regard Pasnau

writes that “Aquinas took the various Aristotelian elements

of cognition as they were spelled out in more or less

detail by various commentators on the basis of Aristotle’s

own notoriously murky remarks in the ‘De anima’ and

developed an account that is not just coherent but

philosophically deep and compelling”34. Furthermore,

“Cognition is Aquinas’ most general term for the process of

acquiring and processing information about the world

through the senses and intellect”35.

I would like to consider briefly his account of cognition

as this is where one could really come to terms with his

idea of intentionality. In line with the fact that medieval

thinkers were preoccupied by the question of what God could

know, Aquinas’ theory of cognition also takes its point of33 Pasnau R., Theories of cognition in the later Middle Ages, CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, 1997, 1.34 Pasnau R.,op. Cit. 12.35 Pasnau R.,op. Cit. 12

26

departure from God’s knowledge, see ST 14, a16,1. Here,

Aquinas while responding to whether there is knowledge in

God, responds thus: “In God there exists the most perfect

knowledge. To prove this we must note that intelligent

beings are distinguished from non-intelligent beings in

that the latter possess only their own form; whereas the

intelligent being is naturally adapted to have also the

form of some other thing; for the idea of thing is in the

knower”, cf. STh 14, a16.1.

From the above Thomistic argument, it implies that

cognition entails having the form of the cognised object to

be present in the one cognizing. Also, this would

ordinarily mean that for Thomas Aquinas, “to know is to

possess the form of what is known”36 Furthermore, in

Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles 1,47, he reiterated this

notion when he affirms that ‘any intelligible thing is

understood in so far as it is one in act with the

intellectual cognizer’ see Sc. G. 1,47. When for instance

Aquinas admits that ‘non cognizers have only their own form

while cognizers have their own form and the form of the

cognized object (see ST I,14,1), he admits that at least

there is a sort of intellectual identity which is obtained

via the act of knowledge between the cognizer and the thing

cognized. From the Aristotelian tradition of form and

matter, Aquinas also sees material things as composed of

matter and form. While the form is that which constitutes

36 Murray A., ‘Intentionale in Aquinas’ St Patrick’s college Manly1993,1.

27

the very essence of the thing, matter accentuates its

particularity. I would like to illustrate this with an

example: When for instance Mr A stands and contemplates a

particular animal for example a dog walking in the garden.

The dog appears directly to Mr A directly. At this point,

Mr A can observe the movement of that particular dog, the

colour of the dog, the sound it makes, the colour of the

eyes, even the size of the dog in question etc. These

observable features of the dog are the accidental

qualities, the accidental form of that particular dog

walking right there in the garden. At that particular time

too these accidental form of the dog are received by Mr A.

Upon further cognitive process, Mr A via intellectual

abstraction would grasp the essence of the dog as dog. Now

there is a movement from that particular dog to the

universal dog. In Summa Theologica I, Q85,a8 Aquinas

affirms that “...to know what is in universal matter, not

as existing in such matter is to abstract the form from

individual matter which is represented by the phantasm.

Therefore we must need to affirm that our intellect

understands material things by abstracting from the

phantasm...”

This Thomistic view was drawn from Aristotle who rejected

the Platonic idea that the essences of sensible things

exist apart from matter. Aristotle believes that the

essences of sensible things exist in matter with only a

potential intelligibility and this could be met by invoking

some abstractive principle in the mind itself to render

28

these essences actually intelligible37. So, Aquinas holds

that the senses are the source of our knowledge; via this

medium (senses) the mind receives impressions from extra-

mental particular objects, by abstraction, these

impressions are converted into universal knowledge.

A detailed examination of the historical view of

intentionality has not been presented here because of the

scope of this work. This chapter has introduced the concept

of intentionality and its importance in phenomenological

discourse with a brief view of its historical development.

This would help in understanding the different ways in

which Husserl and Heidegger would approach it later. This

would form the crux of this thesis but before that the next

chapter would examine Brentano and Husserl’s understanding

of intentionality

37 See, Aquinas’ Commentary on De anima, $731, translated by FenelmFoster, O.P. et al, new Haven, Yale University Press, 1951.

29

CHAPTER TWO

MODERN DEBATES ON INTENTIONALITY: (BRENTANO AND HUSSERL)

The previous chapter delineated the meaning of

intentionality within the phenomenological tradition as

well as how gradually it has been developed right from the

Pre-Socratic philosophers although without being a pure

philosophical problem as we have it today in the modern day

phenomenology as championed by Husserl. In the same

previous chapter, it could be deduced that intentionality

was latent in the various philosophical discourse stemming

from the ancient period to the medieval period. Very much

influenced by Aristotle and the scholastic view on

intentionality, it would be Franz Brentano who would really

in his descriptive psychology give intentionality another

momentum that triggered Husserl to develop interest in it.

So, although the concept of intentionality has a long

history, in its contemporary debate it was Franz Brentano

who revived it. That is why it is crucial to first of all

study Brentano before reading Husserl since Husserl drew

his main ideas on intentionality from Brentano although

30

while partially rejecting the Brentanian view on

intentionality as I would explain later.

This chapter will examine to a considerable extent how

intentionality was understood by both Brentano and Husserl.

In doing this, I am going to use the Brentano’s Psychology

from Empirical Standpoint and Husserl’s Logical

Investigations and Ideas I and II.

FRANZ BRENTANO AND INTENTIONALITY

Franz Brenatno was born in Marienberg bei Boppard in

183838. He began his studies in Berlin under Aristotelian

Trendelenburg. His academic pursuits made him Move from

Berlin to Munich and from Munich to Tubingen where he

obtained his doctoral degree in 1862. He majored on

Aristotle as the topic of his dissertation reflects: Von der

mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. According to

Rollinger, “Not only was Aristotelianism viewed as an

antidote against the current scepticism about philosophy,

but it was also seen by Brentano as preferable to the neo-

Kantianism which began to come into vogue during the 1860’s

and continued to attract adherents well into the twentieth

century”39. This is the reason why it has been intuited

that most students of Brentano including Husserl began

their philosophical careers with a profound bias against

Kant and post Kantian Idealism. After his priestly

38 See, Rollinger R.D. Husserl’s Position in the School of Brentano,Neterlands, Department of Philosophy Utrecht University Press,1996, 11.

39 Rollinger R.D. 11.

31

ordination in 1864, a couple of years afterward Brentano

did another habilitation on Aristotle viz: Die Psychologie des

Aristoteles, insbesondere seine Lehre vom Nous Poietikos. In 1874 was when

he published his work Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte

(Psychology from Empirical Standpoint) and in this year he began as

a professor in Vienna. He died in 1917 in Zurich.40

Relevant doctrines of Brentano:

Descriptive Psychology

Brentano was interested in Psychology. This claim is

justified when one closely examines his claim in the first

chapter of his work (Psychology from an Empirical Stand Point) where

he sets out to affirm the superiority of Psychology over

other sciences. Having said that other sciences lead the

way to Psychology, he goes ahead to affirm that “The other

sciences are, in fact, only the foundation; Psychology is,

as it were, the crowning pinnacle. All the other sciences

are a preparation for Psychology; it is dependent on all of

them”41.This accentuates in a very obvious manner his

interest in psychology. Brentano defines psychology

borrowing from Aristotle as the “Science of the soul”42.

Making reference still to Aristotle, ‘soul’ means ‘the

form’, ‘the first activity’ etc. Brentano explains how the

field of psychology has been circumscribed; that is, how

40 This brief biography of Brentano was culled from Rollinger’sHusserl position in the school of Brentano quoted already inthis paper, pgs. 11-12.41 Brentano F, Psychology from an Empirical Stand Point, Routledge,London, 1973, 3.42 Brentano F, op. Cit. 3.

32

psychology came to be understood substantially as the

science which studies the properties and laws of the soul.

According to him, Psychology as a science had a wider field

of investigation; for instance when it discussed the

general characteristics of beings endowed with vegetative

as well as sensory or intellectual faculties43. According

to him also, psychology studied vegetative activities but

on the account that they lacked consciousness, it ceased to

be an area of investigation for psychology. Furthermore,

the animal kingdom in so far it is an object of external

perception also was excluded in the psychological studies.

This exclusion also extended to phenomena closely

associated with sensory life such as the nervous system and

muscles so that their investigation became the province of

the physiologists rather than the psychologist44. So, the

wider field which psychology covered was substantially

reduced.

Furthermore, defining the soul in the Aristotelian sense

seems also to be dismissed by Brentano especially in the

modern sense of it. Despite the modifications, psychology

is still defined in its modern form the way Aristotle

defined it, that is, as the science of the soul. But

Brentano argues that this might imply that to psychology

belongs only the study of the properties and laws of the

soul just as natural science examines the properties and

laws of physical bodies. Thus understood, it appears that

psychology and natural science divide the entire field of43 Brentano F, op. Cit. 4.44 Brentano F, op. Cit. 4.

33

empirical sciences between them45. Brentano does not share

this idea because of the fact that there are facts which

can be demonstrated in the same way in the domain of inner

perception or external perception. And because they are

wider in scope, these more comprehensive principles belong

exclusively neither to the natural science nor to

psychology46. Physiologists and Psychologists investigate

some facts that are closely correlated despite their

differences. He avowed that “We find physical and mental

properties united in one and the same group. Not only may

physical states be aroused by physical states and mental

states by mental, but it is also the case that physical

states have mental consequences and mental states have

physical consequences”47. So, the encroachment of

physiology upon psychology and vice versa is not something

to be worried about according to Brentano having examined

the above affirmation.

Still on this debate (relating to the definition of

psychology), Brentano goes ahead to affirm that some

Psychologists have defined psychology as the science of

mental phenomena. The term ‘phenomena’ as used here refers

to the opposite of that which truly and really exists48.

For instance we often say that the object of our senses or

those things which the senses furnish us with

(appearances), are mistaken and do not really exist as we

45 Brentano F, op. Cit. 6.46 Brentano F, op. Cit. 6.47 Brentano F,. Op. Cit. 6.48 Brentano F., op. Cit. 9-10

34

perceive them. When I drive along the express in the cold

winter for instance and observe some pieces of glasses

littered the road only to get closer and discovered they

were pieces of ice. At first glance they appear to be

pieces of glass but on a closer observation they turned to

be pieces of ice and not glass. Also, when I observe a man

coming in front of me to be my elder brother but upon

getting closer I discovered he was another person etc.

These and similar cases do happen and in the philosophical

traditions especially in the area of epistemology it has

been shown that most times the senses do not really provide

us with indubitable knowledge. So, in contrast to that

which truly exists they understood the objects of our

senses to be mere phenomena. Owing to the fact that the

truth of physical phenomena could be relative while that of

inner perception is seen as being certain and true in

themselves, Brentano demonstrates the advantage of

psychology over natural sciences. The following text of

Brentano demonstrates this fact:

The high theoretical value of psychological

knowledge is obvious. The worthiness of a science

increases not only according to the manner in

which it is known, but also with the worthiness of

its object. And the phenomena the laws of which

psychology investigates are superior to physical

phenomena not only in that they are true and real

in themselves, but also in that they are

incomparably more beautiful and sublime. Colour

35

and sound, extension and motion are contrasted

with sensation and imagination, judgement and

will, with all the grandeur these phenomena

exhibit in the ideas of the artist, the research

of a great thinker and the self-dedication of the

virtuous man. So, we have revealed in a new way

how the task of the psychologist is higher than

that of the natural scientist49

In fact, not only that Brentano concedes more importance to

psychology over natural science, he goes ahead using

another analogy to still defend his thesis or claim of the

superiority of psychology over other sciences as the

underneath text exemplifies. He affirms:

It is also true that things which directly concern

us claim our attention more readily than things

foreign to us. We are more eager to know the order

and origin of our own solar system than that of

some more remote group heavenly bodies. The

history of our own country and of our ancestors

attracts our attention more than that of other

people with whom we have no close ties. And this

another reason for conferring the higher value

upon the science of mental phenomena. For our

mental phenomena are the things which are most our

own. Some philosophers have even identified the

self with a collection of mental phenomena. And in

the ordinary language we say that physical changes49 Brentano F, op. Cit., 20

36

are external to us while mental changes take place

within us50.

It should not be surprising that Brentano’s interest is

mainly on psychology given the fact that his major

philosophical work was titled ‘Psychology from an Empirical

Stand Point’. This at least in one sense clarifies the fact

that he must of have been influenced by the works of some

psychologists during his academic career. Although his

interest in psychology is obvious, his understanding of it

differs from other psychological movements of his time.

While clarifying this, Rollinger also affirms that “This

concern with psychological matters is of course a feature

which the school of Brentano shared with other

philosophical movements in the nineteenth century. One of

these movements is to be found in the associationist

psychology which James Mill and his son, John Stuart Mill

took up from David Hume”51 . Unlike other psychological

movements, Brentano’s psychology was rather taken from

Aristotelian tradition especially his idea of intentional

reference. A desire for instance is to be regarded as a

psychical phenomenon because it intentionally refers to the

desired object, but an act of imagining a unicorn likewise

intentionally refers to a unicorn and is therefore a

psychical phenomenon as well52. In this way Brentano

distinguishes himself from associationist psychology as

championed by J.S. Mill and others.

50 Brentano F. Op. Cit. 2051 Rollinger R.D., op. Cit., 4.52 Rollinger R.D. op. Cit 4-5.

37

The Brentanian over-emphasis on psychology is quite

obvious. Every other field of inquiry for instance Logic,

Aesthetics, Politics, Medicine, and Ethics is in one way or

the other concerned with psychology. All of them draw their

fundamental concept and meaning from psychology. Brentano

observes that “Without the use of psychology, the

solicitude of the father as well as that of the political

leader remains an awkward groping”53. Psychology according

to Brentano had undergone a considerable setback in the

past and this made him to opt for a psychology that is in

itself empirical; the sort of psychology which should have

influence upon the practical aspects of life54. This sort

of psychology would draw its concepts from our experience

of psychical phenomena. Also this kind of psychology ought

to be both empirical and descriptive according to Brentano.

This is because “it has to be able to give clarity about

what inner experience immediately shows, hence not a

genesis of facts but first and foremost a description of

the subject matter”55. According to Brentano, “Psychology,

like the natural sciences has its basis in perception and

experience. Above all, however, its source is to be found

in the inner perception of our own mental phenomena”56.

Descriptive psychology therefore is a science which draws

its concepts from inner experience. This would take us to

the next level where tries to distinguish mental phenomena

53 Brentano F., op. Cit. 21.54 Brentano F., op. Cit., 2555 Rollinger R.D. Husserl’s Position in the School of Brentano, op.cit., 20.56 Brentano F, op. Cit. 29.

38

from those of the physical by assigning intentionality to

be strictly attributed to the mental and not the physical.

Intentionality as the mark of the mental phenomena

Brentano assumes that the concept of the mental phenomena

is obviously clear with respect to those of the physical.

He makes a distinction between the mental and the physical

phenomena by categorising all the data of our consciousness

into these two main categories: the mental and the

physical. In his ‘Psychology from an Empirical Stand Point’,

Brentano argues that “All the data of our consciousness are

divided into two great classes-the class of physical and

the class of mental phenomena”57. This argument is so clear

to Brentano that he never attempts to argue for it. There

are three theses of Brentano which I would like to explain

to a certain detail:

The idea that mental phenomena are presentations which

appear to us while physical phenomena are not

One specific characteristic of the mental phenomena is

its reference to an object (intentionality)

Mental phenomena can be perceived only through inner

consciousness; physical phenomena are perceived

through outer perception

Brentano argues that the physical phenomenon does not

actually appear to us and indeed we have no presentation of

it whatsoever while on the other hand he affirms that

every idea or presentation which we acquire either through

57 Brentano F., op. Cit., 77.

39

sense perception or imagination is an example of a mental

phenomenon58. He further explicates what he meant by

presentation by explaining the distinction between what is

presented and the act of presenting. According to him, “by

presentation I do not mean that which is presented, but

rather the act off presentation. Thus, hearing a sound,

seeing a coloured object, feeling warmth or cold, as well

as similar states of imagination are examples of what I

mean by this term (presentation). I also mean by it the

thinking of a general concept, provided such a thing

actually does occur”59. Mental phenomenon includes every

judgement, recollection, expectation, inference, conviction

or opinion, doubt etc. Also to be included are emotions

like joy, sorrow, hope, courage, despair, anger, love, hate

desire, act of will, intention, astonishment, admiration,

contempt etc60. All these are classified under mental

phenomena and Brentano sees them as activities which are

peculiar to the mental realm and what characterises them is

their reference to a particular object; that is, they are

of something or about something. Those that belong to

physical phenomenon on the other hand are a colour, a

figure, a landscape which I see, a chord which I hear,

warmth, cold, odour which I sense; as well as similar

images which appear in the imagination61. The term

‘presentation’ or ‘to present’ is equivalent to ‘appearing’

for Brentano as he clearly states in the page 81 of his58 Brentano F., op. Cit., 78-79.59 Brentano F., op. Cit., 79.60 Brentano F., op. Cit., 77.61 Brentano F., op. Cit., 79-80

40

work ‘Psychology from an empirical Standpoint’. What this

means is that when I imagine an object for instance, that

object appears to me and as such presented. In this way, I

do not need to perceive the appearing object, not even do I

need the object to have an extra-mental reality.

By explicating what he means by mental phenomena, he

opines that ‘mental phenomenon applies to presentations as

well as to all the phenomena which are based upon

presentations’. Presentations refer to the act of

presenting; in this sense he believes that nothing can be

judged, desired, hoped for or feared unless one has a

presentation of that thing62. We would see afterwards that

ascribing solely and exclusively presentations to the

mental phenomenon as Brentano did will not be a welcoming

idea for Husserl; it would be modified by Husserl.

Now, Brentano moves further in explaining what

distinguishes mental phenomena from physical phenomena.

According to him, many scholars have tried to establish

this through the means of negation, that is, by formulating

that all physical phenomena have extension and spatial

location whether they are phenomena of vision or of some

other sense, or products of the imagination which present

similar objects to us while the opposite is true of mental

phenomena, that is, that some mental states like thinking,

willing and the like appear without extension and without

spatial location. Although going by this explanation, it

might seem easy to identify physical phenomena from mental62 Brentano F., op. Cit., 80.

41

phenomena since physical phenomena have extension and are

located spatially while mental phenomena are not extended

and have no spatial location. Notwithstanding, Brentano

rejects this traditional way of defining physical phenomena

in terms of extension and spatial determinativeness since

it only provides negative way of interpreting mental

phenomena63. Extension and spatial determinativeness should

not be the paradigm of determining the differences between

the mental phenomena and physical phenomena since according

to notable psychologists, not only mental phenomena but

also many physical phenomena appear to be without

extension.64. He maintains that mental phenomena are also

localised by us in some sense, for instance when we locate

a phenomenon of anger in the irritated lion and our own

thoughts in the space which we occupy65. Many psychologists

reject the above thesis not primarily because all physical

phenomena are said to extended and located spatially but by

the fact that mental phenomena lack extension since certain

mental phenomena also appear to be extended, for instance

the feeling of pains which could be located in the external

body etc. What then did Brentano to posit a distinction

between mental and physical phenomena and how did he

realise this? This takes us to his famous notion of

intentional reference by mental phenomena.

According to him, “psychologists in earlier times have

already pointed out that there is a special affinity and

63 Brentano F., op. Cit., 85-88.64 Brentano F., op. Cit., 86.65 Brentano F., op. Cit., 87.

42

analogy which exists among all mental phenomena and which

physical phenomena do not share”66 and in this sense

Brentano makes the following claim that:

Every mental phenomenon is characterised by what

the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the

intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object,

and what we might call, though not wholly

unambiguously, reference to a content, direction

toward and object (which is not to be understood

as a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every

mental phenomenon includes something as object

within itself, although they do not all do so in

the same way. In presentation something is

presented, in judgement something is affirmed or

denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire

desired and so on. This intentional in-existence

is characteristic exclusively of mental

phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits

anything like it. We can therefore define mental

phenomena by saying that they are those phenomena

which contain an object intentionally within

themselves67.

In this way, Brentano affirms that all mental phenomena

exhibit intentionality, no physical phenomena do.

Intentionality then becomes the defining mark of the mental

alone. By the above quotation, Brentano is not trying to

66 Brentano F., op. Cit., 8867 Brentano F., op. Cit., 88-89.

43

say that every given act cannot be an object but rather

that every mental act has an object, i.e., is directed to a

certain object, has something it refers to. In the footnote

of this passage where Brentano made his famous assertion

about intentional reference, he makes reference to

Aristotle as the philosopher who invented this idea as

such. According to him, “Aristotle himself spoke of this

mental in-existence. In his book on the soul he says that

the sensed object as such is in the sensing subject; that

the sense contains the sensed object without its matter;

that the object which thought is in the thinking

intellect”68. Same holds for Thomas Aquinas who in line

with Aristotle holds that the object which is thought is

intentionally in the thinking subject, the object which is

loved is intentionally in the person who loves and so on.

In other words, Brentano was to a great extent influenced

by the Aristotelian-Scholastic view on intentionality.

The third thesis is still about what makes mental phenomena

different from the physical ones. Having established that

lack of extension and spatial determinativeness are not

sufficient to prove the difference between the mental

phenomena and physical phenomena, and also that

intentionality is strictly a distinctive quality of the

mental phenomenon alone, Brentano further affirms that

another characteristic which all mental phenomena have in

common is the fact that they are only perceived in inner

consciousness, while in the case of physical phenomena only68 See the footnote of the page 88 of Brentano’s Psychology from anEmpirical Stand Point, work already cited.

44

external perception is possible69. So, it could be deduced

that inner perception is the perception of mental phenomena

while outer perception is the perception of physical

phenomena. He assigns a deeper meaning and significance to

inner perception when he affirms that immediacy and

infallible evidence belong to it alone among other

cognition of experiential objects. So mental phenomena are

those which are apprehended by means of inner perception

and their perception is immediately evident70. Not only

that inner perception is infallible and immediate, it is

really the only perception in the strict sense of the word

according to Brentano.

On the hand, outer perception or external perception is not

perception; it cannot be proved true and real even by means

of indirect demonstration71. So, not only that physical

phenomenon is fallible but in the strict sense of the word,

it is not perception. It is only mental phenomena that

could be described as the only phenomena of which

perception in the strict sense of the word is possible72.

They are those phenomena which possess real existence

together with intentional existence. Brentano gave an

example using knowledge, joy and desire as those mental

phenomena that truly have real existence together with

intentional existence while some physical phenomena like

colour, sound and warmth have only intentional existence73.69 Brentano F., op. Cit., 91.70 Brentano F., op. Cit., 91.71 Brentano F., op. Cit., 91.72 Brentano F., op. Cit., 9173 Brentano F., op. Cit., 92.

45

This implies then that although physical phenomena exist

outside the mind, they are the objects of possible

perception.

Before moving to Husserl I would like to make some comments

on some the claims of Brentano as I have exposed in this

work. The division which Brentano succeeded in creating

between the mental and the physical phenomena seems to

posit some sort of dualism which could be difficult to

handle from epistemological point of view. Now, there is

bound to be a problem of determining which of the two

realms: mental or physical that guarantees objective

knowledge; the foundations for epistemological

justifications of certain truth claims seem to be left

aside since according him, only the objects of inner

perceptions truly exist and those of outer perceptions do

not really exist in the strict sense of the word.

Furthermore, Brentano affirms that no mental phenomenon is

perceived by more than one individual74. This implies

therefore that all mental phenomena are strictly speaking

private. I think this could amount to saying that what one

can truly perceive is only the content of one’s own mind;

leading to solipsism and since no physical phenomenon is

perceivable it means that they cannot be known; that is,

they are unknowable. This has no epistemic justifications

and some of the claims of Brentano seem confusing although

I am not condemning his claims in general. But I think some

74 Brentano F., op. Cit., 92.

46

of his claims need revisiting and this what Husserl would

take upon himself as would be considered below.

EDMUND HUSSERL

The 20th century witnessed a new way of doing philosophy

whereby there was a shift from the traditional ontological

inquiries and epistemological claims to the way things

present themselves to us in consciousness. In other words,

there began another program whereby attention is paid to

phenomena and the manner in which they are experienced by

us. This is designated by the name phenomenology thanks to

Edmund Husserl who is considered the initiator of modern

phenomenology.

Edmund Husserl was born in 1959 in Prossnitz, a Village in

Czechoslovakian Moravia which at the time formed part of

Austrian Empire. He studied mathematics and physics at

Leipzig and Berlin. He was a mathematician although he made

a shift to philosophy when he was transferred to the

University of Vienna and in winter semester 1884/85 he

began attending lectures of Brentano with enthusiasm. It

was this contact with Brentano that made him change from

mathematics to philosophy75.

Husserl’s Phenomenology

In this part of the work, I would briefly examine Husserl

from these three areas:

75 This little bibliographical account on Husserl is culled fromChristopher Macann: Four Phenomenological Philosphers, Routledge,London and N.Y, 1993, 1 and Rollinger op. Cit. 13-14.

47

His epistemological phenomenology

His idea of intentionality (Revisiting the Brentanian

doctrine of inner and outer perception)

His transcendental phenomenology

The idea is not to exhaust Husserlian phenomenology since

it would be superfluous and fall outside the scope of this

essay but a brief examination of the above points would

help in understanding his main doctrines and subsequently

in Understanding Heidegger’s different view of doing

phenomenology as would be exposed in the next chapter. The

Husserlian Logical Investigations and Ideas I & II would be used

mainly for this section.

As has been observed earlier on, Edmund Husserl came to

philosophy from mathematics and even this is substantiated

looking at his earliest work, ‘The philosophy of

Arithmetic’. Notwithstanding, his phenomenology especially

in his Logical Investigation could be said to have as its

target epistemology. This is a bit controversial but some

of Husserl’s commentators also hold to this opinion. For

instance J.N. Mohanty, observes that “Husserlian

phenomenology aims at an absolute, i.e. non-relative,

grounding of human knowledge”76. Furthermore, Smith and

McIntyre also writes in this regard as follows, “The basic

task of philosophy, he (Husserl) believes, is to discover76 J.N. Mohanty, Husserlian Transcendental Phenomenology, inEdmund Husserl and the Phenomenological Tradition, RobertSokolowski(ed.) (Washington: The Catholic University ofAmerica Press, 1988, 177.

48

the ultimate foundations of our beliefs about the world and

our place in it, and to justify or at least effect an

understanding of the framework within which all our

thinking about the world takes place, both our everyday,

common-sense thinking and our theoretical, scientific

reasoning. Like Descartes, Husserl thinks these foundations

lie with an understanding of the nature of the experiencing

subject and his consciousness”77. Furthermore, Gallagher

and Zahavi observe that “it is clear that Husserl

considered the task of phenomenology to be that of

providing a new epistemological foundation for science.

However, he soon realized that this task would call for an

unnatural change of interest.”78

Moreover, like Descartes, Husserl also sets out to look for

a proper ground of knowledge as could be deduced from the

above affirmations. He affirms in his work that “...it

(phenomenology) will become established as a science which

exclusively seeks to ascertain cognition of essences and

not matters of facts”79. So from the above, one could say

that unlike Heidegger whose phenomenology is ontological,

that of Husserl is essentially epistemological although as

I have pointed out, my argument is based also from the

attestations of some of Husserl’s commentators as I have

77 David Woodruff Smith and Ronald McIntyre, Husserl andIntentionality (Boston: D. Reidel Publishing company, 1982, 93.

78 Gallagher S. And Zahavi D., The Phenomenological mind,Routoledge, London and N.Y.,2008, 22.79 Husserl E., Ideas Pertaining to a pure phenomenology and a transcendentalphenomenological philosophy, op.cit. xx

49

cited above. A philosopher could be influenced either

positively or negatively depending on the cultural and

academic background where he philosophises from. In the

case of Husserl, he was greatly influenced by some relevant

doctrines of Brentano which he sets out to re-examine.

Among which was his idea of intentionality. In the course

of this, Husserl re-examines the Brentanian division of

data of our consciousness into physical and mental

phenomena from where he talked about the inner and outer

perception stating avowedly that one of the characteristics

of mental phenomena is that they are only perceived in

inner consciousness while that of physical phenomena are

only perceived by outer perception80. Therefore it is

pertinent to examine the Husserlian touch on this before

finally examining his notion of intentionality.

Husserl in the Logical Investigations II added an appendix where

he re-examines the Brentanian famous classification of the

internal and external perception. Brentano had already

affirmed that the object of the inner perception are

immediate and real and only them exist; those of external

are prone to deception and in the strict sense of the term

do not exist81. This corresponds to the Cartesian famous

dualism of body and mind. This distinction is motivated by

the way both external and internal organs perceive things:

external perception results from the effects of external

things via the senses which in most cases are considered to

be deceptive while the internal perception results from the80 Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, op. Cit. 91-92.81 Brentano, op. Cit. 91-93

50

reflection on our own minds; this is seen as more evident

and Brentano is of the same view too. Because of this

notion, Husserl began by tracing the division that

ordinarily a naive man could make by the external and

internal perception. This is crucial in understanding his

own development and understanding of intentionality which

is different from that of Brentano. According to him, for

the naive man, “external perception is the perception of

external things, their qualities and relationships, their

changes and interactions”82.

According to Husserl still, “What we call inner perception

on the other hand concerns mainly such spiritual

experiences as thinking, feeling and willing, but also

everything that we locate, like these, in the interior or

our bodies, do not with our outward organs”83. Citing the

Lockean conception of sensation and reflection, Husserl

maintains that this has introduced two corresponding

classes of perception in modern philosophy which has

lingered till today84. According to him, Descartes on his

own emphasis on the epistemological position of inner

perception, doubts all the objects of external perception

while affirming the doubting I, whose doubting could result

to obvious irrationality. Husserl is not comfortable with

this Brentanian-Lockean-Cartesian interpretations given to

inner and outer perception. In fact he refers to Brentano

82 Husserl E, Logical Investigations II op. Cit. 33583 ibi84 Husserl E, Logical Investigations II op. Cit. 336

51

directly in the following long passage of the Logical

Investigations:

According to Brentano, inner Perception

distinguishes itself from outer perception: 1. By

its evidence and its incorrigibility, and 2. By

essential differences in phenomena. In inner

perception we experience exclusively psychic

phenomena, in outer perception physical

phenomena...As opposed to this, inner and outer

perception seem to me, if the terms are naturally

interpreted, to be of an entirely similar

epistemological character. More explicitly: there

is a well-justified distinction between evident and

non-evident, or between infallible and fallible

perception. But, if one understands by outer

perception(as one naturally does, and as Brentano

also does) the perception of physical things,

properties, events etc and classes all other

perceptions as inner perceptions, then such a

division will not coincide at all with the division

previously given. For not every perception of the

ego, nor every perception of a psychic state

referred to the ego, is certainly evident, if by

the ego we mean what we all mean by it, and what we

all think we perceive in perceiving ourselves, i.e.

our own empirical personality. It is clear too that

most perceptions of psychic states cannot be

evident, since these are perceived with a bodily

52

location. That anxiety tightens my throat, that

pain bores into my tooth, that grief gnaws at my

heart: I perceive these things as I perceive that

wind shakes the trees, or that this box is square

and brown in colour etc. Here indeed, our outer

perceptions go with inner perceptions, but this

does not affect the fact that the psychic phenomena

perceived are, as they are perceived non-existent85

So, Husserl rejects the Brentanian analysis regarding the

inner and outer perceptions. By classifying the inner

perception as evident, in the mental realm and the outer

perception as non-evident, in the physical realm, Brentano

is in accordance with some traditional thinkers as I have

pointed out earlier like Descartes and Locke, even down to

Plato but Husserl rejects this for the fact that inner and

outer perceptions do not have always the same

epistemological character for instance as he rightly

mentions, not every perception of the ego is evident going

by the common notion of the term’ i.e. one’s own empirical

personality86. He is of the view that since certain mental

states are perceived having a location in the body, they

are not evident. When I experience pain in my limbs, it is

my limbs that pain me and not my head for instance. In this

case both inner and outer perceptions are summed up in one

experience. Against Brentano again Husserl holds that

“However we may decide the question of the existence or

nonexistence of phenomenal external things, we cannot doubt85 Husserl E, Logical Investigations II op. Cit 340-34186 Husserl E, Logical Investigations II op. Cit. 340

53

that the reality of each such perceived thing cannot be

understood as the reality of a perceived complex of

sensations in a perceiving consciousness”87. Brentano is

correct when he says that outer perception is not evident

(for example the perception of a tree) but for Husserl, the

term perception is ambiguous and ought to be understood

correctly since not all outer perceptions are delusive.

Husserl claims that outer perception is not evident if by

the term we mean “what such perception perceives, physical

things, their properties and changes etc”88. But when it is

perception as related to the lived sensible contents, i.e.,

present as real parts in perception then Brentano is wrong

and he failed to make this distinction clear according to

Husserl. Husserl presents it very clearly in this text when

he says:

If an external object (a house) is perceived,

presenting sensations are experienced in this

perception, but they are not perceived. When we

are deluded regarding the existence of the house,

we are not deluded regarding the existence of our

experienced sense-contents, since we do not pass

judgement on them at all, do not perceive them in

this perception. If we afterwards take note of

these contents - our ability to do this is, within

certain limits, undeniable – and if we abstract

from all that we recently or usually meant by way

of them, and take them simply as they are, then we87 Husserl E, Logical Investigations II op. Cit 34288 Husserl E, Logical Investigations II op. Cit 344

54

certainly perceive them, but perceive no external

object through them. This new perception has

plainly the same claim to inerrancy and evidence

as any ‘inner’ perception89.

Husserl is convinced that we cannot doubt what is immanent

in consciousness. One may doubt the existence of any outer

object; whether the perception is correct but he cannot

doubt the now experienced sensuous content of the

experience and this idea, He maintains that there are

therefore, evident percepts of physical contents as well as

of psychical90.

Having rejected the Brentanian division and classification

of inner and outer perception as well as their qualities,

Husserl goes ahead to amend them. He replaces the

Brentanian evident and non-evident with adequacy and

inadequacy91 respectively. This is made very clear in the

Logical Investigations when he affirms that “If one means

by ‘psychic phenomena’ the real (realen) constituents of our

consciousness, the experiences themselves that are there,

and if one further means by inner percepts, or percepts of

psychic phenomena, adequate percepts, whose intention finds

fulfilment in the experiences in question, then the scope

of inner perception will of course coincide with that of

adequate perception”92. Although he warns that psychic

phenomena as used here is not the same as that of Brentano

89 Husserl E, Logical Investigations II op. Cit 344-34590 Husserl E, Logical Investigations II op. Cit 34591 Husserl E, Logical Investigations II op. Cit 34692 Husserl E, Logical Investigations II op. Cit 346-347

55

nor Descartes’ cogitations and Lockean acts or operations

of mind since in the sphere of experiences as such all

sense contents, all sensations, also belong93.

Furthermore, Husserl avowed that “Adequate perception

involves, however that in it the perceived is experienced

as it is perceived (as the perception thinks or conceives

it). In this sense we obviously and only have an adequate

percept of our own experiences and of these only to the

extent that we apprehend them purely, without going

apperceptively beyond them”94. On the other hand according

to Husserl “I can doubt the truth of an inadequate, merely

projective perception: the intended or if one likes,

intentional object is not immanent in the act of appearing.

The intention is there but the object itself, that is

destined finally to fulfil it, is not one with it”95. So,

when a perception is inadequate it implies that what is

perceived is not perceived completely, that is, that there

is an aspect of it that is not presented to me who is

perceiving it whereas the in the case of adequate

perception the object is perceived completely as it is. A

physical object always presents itself to the perceiver

from a particular adumbration that is perceived by the

person; so it is obviously impossible for a perceiver who

is located in space, at a particular place to have a

complete perception of a physical object since only certain

parts could be presented at a particular time. So, when

93 Husserl E, Logical Investigations II op. Cit 34794 Husserl E, Logical Investigations II op. Cit 34695 Husserl E, Logical Investigations II op. Cit 346

56

Husserl says that outer perception could be deceptive as I

have pointed out earlier, it simply implies that at some

point I could be deceived but not at all times. In this

sense he distances himself from the Cartesian doubt. With

this, Husserl takes up also the re-examination of concept

of intentionality as understood by Brentano through his

analysis of consciousness.

Intentionality through the analysis of consciousness

In the phenomenological tradition, intentionality is

central and of great importance. It is quite different from

its ordinary or practical usage. For instance, one might

say, ‘I go to University because I have the intention of

becoming a medical doctor’, or ‘I will go to the mountain

top because I have the intention of viewing the whole city

from there’. These are some obvious statements that do not

fit in the phenomenological understanding of

intentionality. To present the real phenomenological

meaning of intentionality, Husserl devotes the V

investigation to analyse the meaning of consciousness as

intentional experience. It is important to understand that

Brentano had already classified as intentional all mental

phenomena, affirming that no physical ones exhibit this

character96. Husserl’s analysis of consciousness

concentrates on the fact that we have conscious awareness

and as such this consciousness is consciousness of

something or about something97. Among all the various96 See, Brentano’s psychology from empirical standpoint, translated byAntos C. Rancurello et al, Routledge ,London and N.Y., 1973, 88.97 See Husserl’s Logical Investigation II, V investigation.

57

definitions given to intentionality, there is something

that is very common: intentionality has to do with

directedness or ‘of-ness’ or ‘aboutness’ of consciousness.

That is to say that when one perceives or judges or feels

or even thinks, our mental state is about something. In

other words, every intending has an intended object.

The cognitive aspect of intentionality is to be understood

in terms of how the external world is given to us in

conscious experience. This is why in the V Investigation

Husserl sets out to analyse consciousness98. Since it was

held that consciousness belongs to the domain of psychology

and Husserl points out that psychology speaks of

consciousness, conscious content and conscious

experiences99. He is not going to repeat consciousness from

the psychological view but rather he discusses

consciousness from three areas, viz: 1. Consciousness as

the entire real (reelle) phenomenological being of the

empirical ego, as the interweaving of psychic experiences

in the unified stream of consciousness, 2. Consciousness as

the inner awareness of one’s own psychic experiences, and

finally, 3. Consciousness as a comprehensive designation

for mental acts or intentional experiences of all sorts100.

From these three aspects from which consciousness is

defined, it could be deduced that the term is ambiguous and

even Husserl himself admits this fact101. Husserl takes up

the third notion of consciousness as pointed out above and98 See Husserl Logical Investigation II, op. Cit., 8199 See Husser’s Logical Investigation II. Op. Cit. 81100 Husserl E., Logical Investigations II op. Cit op. Cit., 81

58

from there he begins to criticise Brentano. First of all,

the number one definition of consciousness with its

empirical connotations ought to be set free of this

(empirical connotations) and be understood from a

phenomenological point of view. According to Husserl, it

ought to be understood in “a manner which cuts out all

relation to empirically real existence (to persons or

animals in nature): experience in the descriptive-

psychological or empirically-phenomenological sense then

becomes experience in the sense of pure phenomenology”102.

He illustrates this with an example when he affirms as

follows:

The sensational moment of colour, e.g., which in

outer perception forms a real constituent of my

concrete seeing (in the phenomenological sense of a

visual perceiving or appearing) is as much an

‘experienced’ or ‘conscious’ content, as is the

character of perceiving, or as the full perceptual

appearing of the coloured object. As opposed to

this, however, this object, though perceived, is

not itself experienced, and the same applies to the

colouring perceived in it. If the object is non-

existent, if the percept is open to criticism as

delusive, hallucinatory, illusory etc, then the

virtually perceived colour, that of the object,

101 See Husserl’s Logical Investigation II, V investigation, op. Cit.,81.102 See Husserl’s Logical Investigation II, V investigation, op. Cit.,82.

59

does not exist either. Such differences of normal

and abnormal, of veridical and delusive perception,

do not affect the internal, purely descriptive (or

phenomenological) character of perception103

The second notion of consciousness, i.e., ‘inner

consciousness as inner perception’ too is saddled with a

lot of ambiguities as regards the distinction made (mainly

by Brentano) about ‘inner perception’ and ‘outer

perception’. This is why Husserl holds that it would be

best to have different terms for inner perception, as the

perception of one’s own experiences, and adequate or

evident perception104. As I have pointed out earlier,

Husserl had used adequate and inadequate in place of the

Brentanian inner and outer perception. Therefore, in

applying adequate for inner perception, Husserl claims that

“The epistemologically confused and psychologically misused

distinction of inner and outer perception would then

vanish; it has been put in place of the genuine contrast

between adequate and inadequate perception which has its

roots in the pure phenomenological essences of such

experiences”105. This second way of understanding

consciousness too ought to be dismissed because of the fact

that it is caged under the web of infinite regress which

according to Husserl sprung from the circumstance that

103 See Husserl’s Logical Investigation II, V investigation, op. Cit.,82-83104 See Husserl’s Logical Investigation II, V investigation, op. Cit.,87105 See Husserl’s Logical Investigation II, V investigation, op. Cit.,87

60

inner perception is itself another experience, which

requires a new percept, to which the same again applies

etc106. Hence, this second conception of consciousness is

not accepted by Husserl. This takes us to the third

understanding of consciousness.

The above misconceptions of consciousness ushers into the

examination of the third and broadest understanding of

consciousness where Husserl examines it as the

comprehensive designation for every kind of mental act or

intentional lived-experience. Husserl recognises the fact

that Brentano had conducted his enquiry in the form of a

two-edged separation of the two main classes of phenomena:

psychical and physical. Brentano arrived at sixfold

differentiation in which Husserl decides to concentrate on

two as being relevant for his own analysis on the

Brentanian thesis. Of his two principal differentiations,

only one directly reveals the essence of psychic phenomena

or acts; the fact that in perception something is

perceived, in imagination, something is imagined, in a

statement something stated, in love something loved, in

hate hated, in desire desired etc107. According to Husserl,

because of this fact, Brentano looks to what is graspable

common to such instances and say that every mental

phenomena is characterised by what the medieval schoolmen

106 See Husserl’s Logical Investigation II, V investigation, op. Cit.,87107 See Husserl’s Logical Investigation II, V investigation, op. Cit.,95

61

called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an

object108. Husserl insists that each mental phenomenon

contains something as object in itself, though not all in

the same manner. As pointed out above, like Brentano

“Husserl argues that one does not merely love, fear, see,

or judge; one loves a beloved, fears something fearful,

sees an object and judges a state of affairs”109. Husserl

did not just begin an altogether different doctrine from

that of Brentano. This is why R.D. Rollinger affirms that

“Both the habilitation thesis of 1887 and the first volume

of ‘Philosophie der Arithmetic’ 1891 are written by a

wholeheartedly orthodox Brentanist”110. According to him

(Rollinger), “a shift, however began to occur a few years

after the publication of the latter work”111. So it could be

deduced that Husserl’s interest in intentionality was

inspired by Brentano who used the term intentional

borrowing from the scholastic ‘intendere’ meaning ‘to point

to’, ‘to aim at’ but he gives it another interpretation.

Husserl even affirms that whether we think the Brentanian

classification of mental phenomena is successful or not

does not matter; instead what is important is that there

are essential, specific differences of intentional relation

or intention...the manner in which a mere presentation

108 See Husserl’s Logical Investigation II, V investigation, op. Cit.,95

109 Gallagher S. And Zahavi D., The Phenomenological Mind: an introductionto philosophy of mind and cognitive science, op.cit., 113.110 Rollinger R.D. Husserl’s Position in the School of Brentano, Neterlands,Department of Philosophy Utrecht University Press, 1996, 37.111 Ibid, 37.

62

refers to its object differs from the manner of a

judgement, which treats the same state of affairs as true

or false. Most, if not all acts are complex experiences,

very often involving intentions which are themselves

multiple112. Brentano had classified mental phenomena into

presentations, judgements and emotions which are based upon

manner of reference. For Husserl, these are ways in which

objects are intended, for instance, one to intend an object

is to present (perceive) it; likewise one could make

judgement about any object etc. But for Husserl, not all

mental phenomena are intentional. Take for instance as I

have pointed out before, when I feel pain in my leg, the

leg therefore refers to a part of my body, which in this

sense is the object. But such referring is not all act-

like. That is, pain sensations and some feelings are not

acts in the real sense of the term although some feelings

are acts, for instance when I am pleased, I am pleased

about something; so to be pleased is to be pleased of

something irrespective of its mental or extra-mental

existence.

Furthermore, Husserl advocates for the abandonment of

Brentano’s terminology. He suggests that that the term

‘mental phenomena’ be avoided entirely to be replaced by

‘intentional lived-experiences113. Likewise, the term

112 See Husserl’s Logical Investigation II, V investigation, op. Cit.,96113 See Husserl’s Logical Investigation II, V investigation, op. Cit.,97-99

63

‘phenomena’ as used by Brentano is also replete with

‘dangerous ambiguities’ according to Husserl and it

insinuates that each intentional experience is a

phenomenon114.

Further objections surround the expressions used by

Brentano as parallel with, or roughly

circumscribing, his term ‘psychical phenomena’ and

which are also in general use. It is always quite

questionable and frequently misleading to say that

perceived, imagined, asserted or desired objects

etc ‘enter consciousness’, or to say conversely

that ‘consciousness’, ‘the ego’ enters into this or

that sort of relation to them, or to say that such

objects are taken up into consciousness in this or

that way, or to say similarly that intentional

experiences contain something as their object in

themselves etc. Such expressions promote two

misunderstandings: first, that we are dealing with

a real (realen) event or a real (reales)

relationship, taking place between consciousness or

the ego, on the one hand and the thing of ehich

there is consciousness on the other; secondly, that

we are dealing with a relation between two things,

both present in equally real fashion (reell) in

consciousness, an act and an intentional object, or

114 See Husserl’s Logical Investigation II, V investigation, op. Cit.,97.

64

with a sort of box-within-box structure of mental

contents...115

From this passage, Husserl tries to affirm that for

instance when I perceive an object, say a table, I

perceive it (the table) and not just a sensation of it.

Experience may change when for instance I perceive it

at a different time but it remains the same object. A

perceived object is not in consciousness or even part

of it; it is always transcendent

From this analysis of consciousness, Husserl tends to

explicate our experiences from the way things appear to us

from the first person perspective, i.e., when I perceive an

object, there is a relational structure of consciousness,

the relationship between consciousness and the external

world. This relational structure of consciousness enables

us to understand the notion of intentionality in the

phenomenological tradition. This is why Husserl pays

particular attention to a group of experiences that are all

characterised by being conscious of something, that is,

which all posses an object-directedness116. When I imagine

an object that does not even exist extra-mentally, it is

intentional because my imagination is imagination of

something and not nothing. My consciousness is

characterised by the intending object.

115 See Husserl’s Logical Investigation II, V investigation, op. Cit.,98116 See Zahavi’s Husserl’s Phenomenology, op. Cit., 14.

65

As the name implies then, phenomenology sets out to study

phenomena especially as they present themselves to us in

conscious reflection. One can have variety of intentional

acts for instance; fear, love, hate, perception,

imagination etc and all these mental states have immanent

intentional content. For Husserl, most of these intentional

acts if not all are complex experiences, very often

involving intentions which are themselves multiple117. What

really makes Husserl’s phenomenology peculiar is the idea

that there is a condition which must be met before any

inquiry must be called phenomenological; the fact that

phenomenology only begins after the transcendental

phenomenological reduction has been performed. This takes

us to the next stage of this paper which is about the

epoche.

Our everydayness, un-philosophic attitude that most times

pervade our consciousness is what Husserl refers to as the

natural attitude118. In his work “Ideas: General

Introduction pertaining to a pure phenomenology and

Phenomenological philosophy” Husserl talks about the

natural attitude in these words, “The world is always there

as an actuality, here and there, it is at most otherwise

than I supposed; this or that is, so to speak, to be struck

out of it and given such titles as ‘illusion’ and

‘hallucination’ and the like; it is to be struck out of

the world which according to the general positing, is

117 See Huuserl’s Logical Investigation II op. Cit. 96.118 See Husserl’s Ideas II, Bk 1, 51-60.

66

always factually existent”119. Husserl did not want to

remain in this natural attitude; rather he opted for a

radical change and his text unequivocally demonstrates

this. He writes:

We put out of action the general positing which

belongs to the essence of the natural attitude; we

parenthesize everything which that positing

encompasses with respect to being: thus the whole

natural world which is continually there for us, on

hand; and which will always remain there according

to consciousness as an actuality even if we choose

to parenthesize it. If I do that as I can with

complete freedom, then I am not negating this world

as though I were a sophist, I am not doubting its

factual being as though I were a skeptic; rather I

am exercising the phenomenological epoche which

also completely shuts me off from any judgement

about spatiotemporal factual being120

In the above text, Husserl absolutely rejects anything

about the ‘natural’ attitude and all its positions, all its

sciences etc. This is the method introduced by Husserl;

that of bracketing our entire natural attitude to enable

the phenomenologist perceive things the way it is really

presented without any previous and un-philosophic bias. As

119 Husserl E., Ideas Pertaining to a pure phenomenology and a transcendentalphenomenological philosophy, op.cit. 57.18 Husserl E., Ideas Pertaining to a pure phenomenology and a transcendentalphenomenological philosophy, op.cit., 61.120

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the above text explains, it is different from the Cartesian

total doubt in the sense that here the phenomenologist does

not put to doubt the existence of the material world rather

he puts them aside, bracketing and not doubting121. By this

method, Husserl had found a method of overcoming dogmatism

of any sort that impedes us from getting to the real

experience of the things themselves as they appear to us in

consciousness. The phenomenological transcendental

reduction would help filter out those pre-conceived and un-

philosophic ideas that accrue from the natural attitude.

This exercise (epoche) takes one from the natural realm to

the realm of transcendental consciousness. Heidegger would

criticise Husserl in his idea of reduction as would be

explained later in this paper for being too transcendental

in his idea of reduction especially for not asking the

question of the being of consciousness.

The next chapter of this thesis sets out to revisit

Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s transcendental

phenomenology. Before delving into that, I would first of

all examine Heidegger’s phenomenology briefly.

121 See Husserl’s Ideas I, 58-59

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CHAPTER THREE

HEIDEGGER’S PHENOMENOLOGY AND HIS CRITIQUE OF HUSSERL’S

TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY

1. INTRODUCTION

The previous chapter concentrates on the evaluation of the

views of Brentano and Husserl about intentionality. This

chapter analyses Heidegger’s own notion of intentionality

as distinct from that Husserl. Heidegger was a

phenomenologist although with a different approach. This is

because while Husserl thinks of phenomenology as being the

“eidetic doctrine not of phenomena that are real but of

phenomena that are transcendentally reduced”122, Heidegger

sees it as that which is responsible for letting “that

which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in

which it shows itself from itself”123. In other words, for

Heidegger, phenomenology is the method through which one

can get to the Being of Dasein. As would be elucidated in

this chapter, I would also concentrate on exposing

Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s transcendental

phenomenology paying more attention to his critique of

Husserl’s idea of intentionality. First of all, some

aspects of Heidegger’s phenomenology would be examined as

122 Husserl E., Ideas Pertaining to a pure phenomenology and a transcendentalphenomenological philosophy, op.cit. xx123 Heidegger M, Being and Time, op.cit., 58.

69

this would help for a better understanding of his own

notion of intentionality and subsequently his critique of

Husserl’s. Afterwards, I would examine the differences

between himself and Husserl who according to Heidegger was

too transcendental in his phenomenology.

HEIDEGGER (from the Husserlian transcendental ego to the facticity of Dasein)

I am concentrating on three books of Heidegger in writing

this part: ‘The History of the concept of Time’ published

in 1992, his ‘Basic Problems of Phenomenology’ 1982

publication by Indiana University press and his ‘Being and

Time’ 1962 by Blackwell Publishing. I would like to

approach this section of this thesis briefly from these

three areas:

The aim and method of Heidegger’s philosophy

His own conception of intentionality

The idea of the Worldhood of the world; the background

toward the understanding of intentionality.

First of all it is necessary to point out that in his book

“Being and Time”, Heidegger sets out to re-awaken the long

forgotten ontological question; the question of Being which

according to him “has today been forgotten”124. Right from

the introduction of Being and Time, Heidegger sought to lay

down the basic principles of his own conception of

phenomenology which he considers quite different from that

of his master Husserl. Even the meaning of phenomenology as

124 Heidegger M., Being and Time, Blackwell Publishing Ltd,Oxford, 1962, 2.

70

Heidegger sees it is not to be traced to Husserl but rather

to the Greek understanding of the terms: Phenomenon and

Logos125; in this way of interpreting it, it means letting

what is to be seen show itself in the manner in which it

shows itself. So, Heidegger believes that the true meaning

of phenomenology could be seen in its Greek understanding

of it. Therefore, the central aim of this book (Being and

Time) is to draw the attention of philosophy back to

understanding of the meaning of Being and the method he

proposed for doing this is the phenomenological method. He

affirms this when he writes, “With the question of the

meaning of Being, our investigation comes up against the

fundamental question of philosophy. This is one that must

be treated phenomenologically”126.

The Husserlian dictum ‘Back to the things themselves’ tries

to lead us back to the way things present themselves to us

in consciousness. This return must be within the

guidelines of the methodology which he calls the

‘phenomenological reduction or the epoche’. Heidegger on

the other hand holds that philosophy should go back to the

question of being via the method of phenomenology which

enables the question taken for granted to be raised anew

(That of being). It is a method through which one can

apprehend the Being of beings. Heidegger affirms that “this

being can be covered up so extensively that it becomes

forgotten and no question arises about it or about its

125 See Heidegger’s Being and Time, 50-63 for a detailed analysisof the term phenomenology.126 Heidegger M., Being and Time, op.cit. 50

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meaning”127. The object of phenomenology should therefore be

to uncover this being that has been covered up for long.

That is why he states that, “Thus that which demands it

becomes a phenomenon, and which demands this in a

distinctive sense and in terms of its ownmost content as a

thing, is what phenomenology has taken into its grasp

thematically as its object”128. Phenomenology has the

character of letting “that which shows itself be seen from

itself in the very way in which it shows itself from

itself”129.

Heidegger defines philosophy as a universal

phenomenological ontology130 which takes its departure from

the hermeneutic of Dasein. According to Heidegger, the

object of philosophy is ontology and its method is

phenomenology. Notwithstanding, ontology and phenomenology

are not to be understood as two distinct or separate

disciplines as he affirms, rather both of them characterise

philosophy itself in relation to its object and its way of

getting to that object. So, as a science of ontology,

philosophy delves into the most suitable way of realising

the meaning of being via phenomenological method where

being is allowed to show itself from itself. For Heidegger,

“only as phenomenology is ontology possible”131.

127 Heidegger M., Being and Time, 59.128 Heidegger M., Being and Time, 59129 Heidegger M., Being and Time, 58130 Heidegger M., Being and Time, 62131 Heidegger M., Being and Time, 60

72

Having exposed the aim and method of philosophy, Heidegger,

sets out to give his own concept of intentionality. Before

discussing his conception of intentionality I would briefly

examine his examination of Kantian thesis which he made

clear in his work ‘The Basic problems of Phenomenology’.

Heidegger and Kant

Husserl had earlier on acknowledged that he made use of

Kantian concept especially when he was taking phenomenology

to its transcendental realm. In his book “The Basic

Problems of Phenomenology”, Heidegger begins the chapter 1

by carrying out an exegesis of the Kantian thesis when he

(Kant) affirmed that Being is not a real predicate.

According to Heidegger, “Kant was interested in the

existence of God and also talked about the existence of

things outside us, i.e., the existence of nature”132.

Heidegger uses the term ‘existence’ only for Dasein and for

Kant and the scholastics, existence could be used for

‘extant’133 things, being-at-hand. He criticises Husserl for

using the same word to refer to the same things as Kant

did. He writes thus, “In his terminology, Husserl follows

Kant and thus utilises the concept of existence, Dasein, in

the sense of being extant. For us in contrast, the word

‘Dasein’ does not designate as it does for Kant, the way of

132 Heidegger M., The Basic problems of phenomenology, translated byAlbert Hofstadter, Indiana University Press, Bloomington U.S.A.,1975, 28.133Heidegger uses the terms: ‘being-extant’, ‘being-at-hand’ or‘extantness’ to refer to the way of being of natural things inthe broadest sense. This can be seen on pg. 28 of his work “TheBasic problems of phenomenology”.

73

being of natural things. It does not designate a way of

being at all, but rather a specific being which we

ourselves are, the human Dasein. For Kant and

scholasticism, existence is the way of being of natural

things, whereas for us on the contrary, it is the way of

being of Dasein”134. From this exposition, it is very

glaring to see that although the same ‘existence’ was used

for Kant, scholasticism and Husserl to designate the same

thing but it designates a different thing in Heidegger.

Heidegger’s understanding of intentionality goes back to

his notion of the terms: perceiving, the perceived and

perceivedness of the perceived especially as it was

understood by Kant who according to him did not give clear

meaning to it. Heidegger observes that “the ambiguous or

the unclear use of the terms ‘perception’ and ‘position’ in

Kant is the index of the fact that he leaves altogether

undetermined the ontological nature of position and

perception”135. He argues further, “comportments have the

structure of directing-oneself-toward, of being directed

toward”136. This structure for him is what phenomenology

calls intentionality. Scholasticism speaks about ‘intentio’

of the will. From this perspective, ‘intentio’ only refers

to the will. From phenomenological point of view it is

different and Heidegger tries to elucidate it as follows,

134 Heidegger M., The Basic problems of phenomenology, translated byAlbert Hofstadter, Indiana University Press, Bloomington U.S.A.,1975, 28.135 Heidegger M., The Basic problems of phenomenology, op.cit., 56136 Heidegger M., The Basic problems of phenomenology op. Cit., 58.

74

Every comportment is a comporting-toward;

perception is a perception-of. We call this

comporting-toward in the narrower sense the

‘intendere’ or ‘intentio’. Every comporting-toward

and every being-directed-toward has its specific

‘whereto’ of the comportment and toward-which of

directedness belonging to the ‘intentio’ we call

intentum. Intentionality comprises both moments,

the ‘intentio’ and the ‘intentum’ within its unity,

thus far still abscure. The two moments are

different in each comportment; diversity of

‘intentio’ or of ‘intentum’ constitutes precisely

the diversity of the modes of comportment. They

differ each in regard to its own perculiar

intentionalioty137

Heidegger is very much interested in how the structure of

intentionality is grounded ontologically in the basic

constitution of Dasein. For him, intentionality is

structure of the Dasein’s comportments. His aim in this

section of his work (The Basic Problems of Phenomenology)

on intentionality is to undertake the theory of

intentionality without bias; that is, freeing

intentionality from “natural and constantly importunate

misrepresentations”138.

As already pointed out above, in Heidegger’s Basic Problem

of Phenomenology, Heidegger makes reference to the

137 Heidegger M, The Basic problems of phenomenology, op.cit., 58138 Heidegger M., op.cit., 59.

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scholastic notion of intentionality as ‘intentio’, as

referring only to the will139. Also he talks about the

Brentanian use of the term borrowing from the scholastics

although with sharper emphasis relating it to the sum total

of all psychical experiences as exhibiting

intentionality140. Against all this, Heidegger claims that

the structure of intentionality is grounded ontologically

in the basic constitution of Dasein141.

For him, intentionality is structure of the Dasein’s

comportments. His aim in this section of his work (The

Basic Problems of Phenomenology) on intentionality is to

undertake the theory of intentionality without bias; that

is, freeing intentionality from “natural and constantly

importunate misrepresentations”142. He outlines two ways in

which intentionality has been misinterpreted: First is the

erroneous objectivization of intentionality, i.e.,

‘characterisation of intentionality as an extant

relationship between two things extant’143. This implies the

characterisation of intentionality between a psychical

subject and a physical object such that when one is removed

there would be no intentional experience144. According to

Heidegger, the problem with this notion is the fact that it

“takes the intentional relation to be something that at

139 Heidegger M, The Basic problems of phenomenology, Indiana Universitypress, Bloomington, 1982, 58.140 Heidegger M, The Basic problems of phenomenology, Indiana Universitypress, Bloomington, 1982, 58.141 Heidegger M, The Basic problems of phenomenology, op. Cit. 59.142 Heidegger M., op.cit., 59.143 Heidegger M. Op cit. 60144 See Heidegger’s The Basic problems of phenomenology, op. Cit. 60

76

each time accrues to the subject due to the emergence of

the extantness of an object”145. For him, “the intentional

relation to the object does not first fall to the subject

with and by means of the extantness of the object; rather

the subject is structured intentionally within itself; as a

subject, it is directed toward...”146. Just like Husserl, he

argues against this with an example of hallucination as the

following text demonstrates:

Suppose someone is seized by a hallucination. In

hallucinating he sees here and now in this room

that some elephants are moving around. He perceives

these objects even though they are not extant. He

perceives them; he is directed perceptually toward

them. We have here a directedness toward objects

without their being extant. As we others say, they

are given for him as extant merely in an imaginary

way. But these objects can be given to the

hallucinatory in merely imaginary way only because

his perceiving in the manner of hallucination as

such is of such a nature that in this perceiving

something can be encountered-because perceiving is

intrinsically a comporting-toward, a relationship

to the object, whether that object is extant

actually or only in imagination. Only because the

hallucinative perceiving has within itself qua

perception the character of being-deirected-toward

145 Heidegger M. The Basic problems of phenomenology , Op.cit., 60146 Heidegger M. The Basic problems of phenomenology , Op.cit., 60

77

can the hallucinatory intend something in an

imaginary way147.

In this way Heidegger is affirming that prior to having an

imaginary perception, at least there must still be

perception. So, irrespective of whether or not the

perceptual object is extant or not an intentional relation

can perfectly exist. A moving mountain which I imagine for

instance constitutes the object of the imagination

irrespective of the fact that it does not exist extra-

mentally. In imagination something is imagined; in this

case the moving mountain. So Heidegger sees intentionality

not as an objective, extant relation between two things

extant but as the comportmental character of comporting;

that is to say that our experiences are intentional and

they belong to the subject, they are immanent in the

subject. The subject does not need the object for

intentional relation to take place and vice versa.

The second misinterpretation of intentionality according to

Heidegger is that erroneous subjectivization of

intentionality. As soon as Dasein is, he finds himself in

the midst of ‘extant’ things in the world. Hence, Dasien’s

comportments are intentional since he dwells within the

world. According to Heidegger, the methodological

conviction of modern philosophy since Descartes has it that

the subject and its experiences are just that which is

given for the subject, the ego itself as above all solely

147 Heidegger M. The Basic problems of phenomenology Op.cit., 60

78

and indubitably certain148. The problem with this way of

reasoning is to determine how intentional experiences of

the subject could relate to the extant things in the world.

For him therefore, intentional comportment itself as such

orients itself toward the extant149. So, it could be deduced

that the two misinterpretations of intentionality tried to

relate intentionality either wholly belonging to the

subject or the object but for Heidegger intentionality

should not be so.

What Heidegger tries to explain is that Being-in-the-world

is the basic state of Dasein150 and that it operates not

only in general but pre-eminently in the mode of

everydayness. Intentional comportments belong to Dasein.

Something which is basic in Heidegger’s re-interpretation

of intentionality is the fact that Dasein must be and exist

with things. It’s comportments in which it exists are

intentionally directed toward and intentionality is founded

on Dasein’s transcendence151. So, it is Dasein who does the

transcending; transcendence is a fundamental determination

of the ontological structure of the Dasein152.

Worldhood of the world

In other to help in grasping the re-interpretation of

intentionality by Heidegger, I shall consider briefly his

notion of the worldhood of the world. The world as

148 Heidegger M, The Basic problems of phenomenology op. Cit., 61149 Heidegger M, The Basic problems of phenomenology op.cit., 63.150 Heidegger M, Being and Time, op. Cit. 86151 Heidegger M, The Basic problems of phenomenology Op. Cit. 161-162.152 Heidegger M, The Basic problems of phenomenology op. Cit. 162.

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generally we understand it is quite different from the way

Heidegger interprets it. Hence, Heidegger sees the world

not from its ontical point of view, i.e., not the totality

of things nor is it the Being of that totality (Nature),

i.e. from its ontological point of view. For Heidegger,

Dasein possesses the phenomenon of worldhood both ontically

and ontologically153; in other words, Dasein is absorbed in

the world. We encounter entities in the world and these

Heidegger calls equipment154. We make use of these

equipments to accomplish some tasks, we use them for some

purposes. Heidegger affirms that “A totality of equipment

is constituted by various of the ‘in-order-to’, such as

serviceability, conduciveness, usability,

manipulability”155. Equipment is defined by its

functionality. I call my computer equipment only when I

make use of it to accomplish some tasks for instance

writing, storing information, etc. In our everydayness, we

encounter equipments in an ‘unthought’ manner, i.e., they

are not thematically apprehended for deliberate thinking156.

Our understanding is interpretative from the very beginning

of our encounter with things (objects), and this

interpretative involvement with things need not be at a

level of intellection or cognition but rather it should be

from the point of view of praxis (practicality).

153 Heidegger M, Being and Time, op. Cit., 94.154 Heidegger M, Being and Time, op.cit., 97.155 Heidegger M, op cit., 97.156 Heidegger M, The Basic problems of phenomenology op. Cit. 163

80

Dasein is not an ordinary entity like stone, chairs, tables

etc that that stand on its own; Dasein is always in the

world. Heidegger offers a detailed analyses of the idea of

worldhood from paragraph 14 of Being and Time where he

maintains that in the strict sense of the word, only Dasein

could be said to have a world. The fundamental nature of

Dasein is always to be in a world. The worldhood depends on

Dasein and it does not signify the sum of all beings but

rather it is so self-evident, so much a matter of course,

that we are completely oblivious to it...it is a

determination of being-in-the-world, a moment in the

structure of Dasein’s mode of being157. Moreover, it is not

as if Dasein is occupying the world like other entities, or

sitting side by side with the world. Dasein is in a world,

there is involvement, there is engagement, Dasein is world-

invloved. This creates an avenue for intentionality. As

Heidegger observes, there is a way in which Dasein comports

itself towards entities in the world. He gave an example

using a hammer. When one is hammering a nail in, the person

does not think about oneself. There is no consciousness

involved; rather he places his gaze and attention on the

hammering at that particular time. One ‘s mode can only

change if for instance the hammer breaks, at this time the

unreflective mode is interrupted because one would find a

way of fixing it and making it work again. One would now

want to restore its functionality, in other words, this

mode is characterised by reflective states, trying to

157 Heidegger M, The Basic problems of phenomenology op.cit., 166

81

figure out how to restore the broken equipment158, orienting

it to continue with the task at hand. Heidegger from the

above analysis tries to give more attention to praxis and

not theoretical reflection of Husserl. Hence, Husserl’s

notion of intentionality is replaced by a phenomenological

account of Dasein’s practical comportments within the world

of practical relations with things (Zuhandensein)159.

It is very obvious how Heidegger turned away sharply from

Husserl, to the extent that in his magnus opus (Being and Time)

almost no reference was made to intentionality. He briefly

makes reference to Husserl and Scheler’s notion of person,

where Heidegger affirms that “Essentially the person exists

only in the performance of intentional acts and is

therefore essentially not an act”160. Heidegger tries to

affirm that treating intentional acts as ‘psychic acts’

robs them of their connectedness with the person as the

performer of the acts. So, in Being and Time, the idea of

intentionality was not fully developed. It was during

Heidegger’s instance in Marburg and his lectures that his

critique of Husserlian intentionality could be found and

precisely in his book ‘The History of the concept of Time’.

Heidegger in the (e) section of the chapter one of this

work with the title ‘The situation of philosophy in the second half of

the 19th century: philosophy and the sciences’ both Brentano and Husserl

but not until chapter two paragraph 5 that a detailed

158 Heidegger M, Being and Time, op.cit. 91-99.159 Dermot M., Introduction to Phenomenology, Routledge London andN.Y., 2000, 231.160 See Heidegger’s The Basic problems of phenomenology, op. Cit. 73

82

analysis of intentionality is presented. Here, Heidegger

sees intentionality as the structure of lived experiences,

i.e. the manner in which we direct ourselves to objects. In

this chapter two, Heidegger affirms that “It was through

Brentano that Husserl learned to see intentionality”161. The

problem which he tries to expose is that Husserl learned

that idea of intentionality from Brentano who obviously

took it from the scholastics where intentionality according

to him is ‘notoriously obscure, metaphysical and

dogmatic’162. So, the aim of the chapter two of this work

(The History of the concept of time) is to show that intentionality

is a structure of lives experiences as such and not a co-

ordination relative to other realities, something added to

experiences taken as psychic states163.

Brentano had done well by reviving the concept of

intentionality and Heidegger acknowledged this but he

criticises him for not explaining the character of psychic

phenomena as such which made him to fall into the same

problem as Descartes164. Brentano did not specify the

distinction between the object intended and the content

through which it was apprehended, in other words, he failed

to make a proper distinction between the thing intended

from the mode of presentation and from this Heidegger

161 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, Translated byTheodore Kisiel, Indiana University press, 1992, 28.162 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit., 28163 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit., 28164 See, Heidegger’s The History of the concept of Time, Translated byTheodore Kisiel, Indiana University press, 1992, 32.

83

reasons that Brentano had left unattended the main idea of

intentionality.

Heidegger’s emphasis on the practical at the detriment of

any form of theoretical knowledge would lead him to see the

entire Husserl’s phenomenology as being trapped down by the

problem of giving a proper account of the being of the

intentional object. Husserl still reasons intentionality

mainly as a structure of consciousness and Heidegger

emphasises that we must go beyond this to examine how the

being is related to its being intended. Of course Heidegger

sees intentionality as a defining characteristic of our

lived experiences as has been pointed out earlier but he

emphasises the practical and embodied nature of these

experiences. We encounter objects in the world and we do

this using our bodies and not abstract and theoretical

manner. When I see a table in my room for instance, it is

that particular chair that I see and not the sensation of

the table. Hence, I can say that this chair is black, white

or that it is not comfortable etc. Trying to abstract from

the practical engagements with this table makes it an

object of theoretical investigation.

Furthermore, in his idea of the reduction, Husserl

emphasises more on consciousness more than the Being of

consciousness. Here again Heidegger unequivocally

articulates thus:

For Husserl the phenomenological reduction, which

he worked out for the first time expressly in the

84

ideas Towards a Pure phenomenology and

Phenomenological Philosophy (1913), is the method

of leading phenomenological vision from the

natural attitude of the human being whose life is

involved in the world of things and persons back

to the transcendental life of consciousness and

its noetic-noematic experiences, in which objects

are constituted as correlates of consciousness.

For us phenomenological reduction means leading

phenomenological vision back from the apprehension

of being, whatever may be the character of that

apprehension, to the understanding of the being of

this being (projecting upon the way it is

concealed)165.

Heidegger believes that Being is to be laid hold of and

made the theme of philosophical investigaton. He was

interested in the difference between Being and beings (Sein

and Seindes). Husserlian phenomenological reduction according

to Heidegger explicitly puts the ontological question to

the side examining the above Heidegger’s text. Heidegger’s

critique of traditional philosophy and even Husserl lies on

the fact that they buried what he calls the question of

Being.

So, there is a notable difference in their understanding of

reduction. In Husserl for instance, the reduction has the

effect of drawing us away from the natural attitude (pre-165 Heidegger M., The Basic problems of phenomenology, translated byAlbert Hofstadter, Indiana University Press, Bloomington U.S.A.,1975, 21.

85

philosophic ideas), those biases that impede us from

perceiving the thing as it presents to us in consciousness.

It (reduction) is a movement; a phenomenological movement

from the natural attitude up to a higher one

(transcendental real). On the other hand, Heidegger with

his idea of ‘ontic’ and ‘ontological’ takes another step;

there is rather a movement from the ontic level up to the

ontological level with the aim of bringing to the fore the

ontological structures constitutive of the being of the

entities in question166. Macann captures this idea when he

writes,

The fundamentality of Husserl’s phenomenological

analyses lies in the fact that it traces the meaning

of different regions of being back to those

structures of transcendental consciousness in and

through which the regions in question get

constituted with the objectivity which belongs to

them. The profundity of Heidegger’s phenomenological

analyses lies in the fact that he traces the taken

for granted meaning which attaches to the being of

the various entities encountered in day to day life

back to that unitary structure of Being from which

they all originally emerged167

166 Macann C, Four Phenomenological philosophers, Routledge, London andN.Y., 1993, 64.167 Macann C, Four Phenomenological philosophers, Routledge, London andN.Y., 1993, 64.

86

In the above text Macann intelligently points out the

differences between Heidegger and Husserl’s conception of

phenomenology. Now, the question is to understand why

Heidegger criticised Husserl for being idealistic in his

own conception of phenomenology. Was Husserl really

imagining his phenomenology to be idealistic? If this is

the case, how could Heidegger who was to a great deal,

influenced by his mentor Husserl come to understand

phenomenology from another point of view? The following

text of Husserl could to a certain extent help in

understanding his position:

Carried out with this systematic

concreteness, phenomenology is eo ipso

“transcendental idealism”, though is a

fundamentally and essentially new sense.(...)

The proof of this idealism is therefore

phenomenology itself. Only someone who

misunderstands either the deepest sense of

intentional method, or that of transcendental

reduction, or perhaps both, can attend to

separate phenomenology from transcendental

idealism168

This Husserlian quotation simply affirms his interest

although to a barest minimum to idealism. According to

Zahavi, ‘This is because of his admiration to the Kantian

168 Hua 1/118-119: This text was culled from Zahavi D., Husserl andthe absolute, centre for subjectivity Research, 76,http/www.cfs.ku.dk

87

philosophy as he rightly put it in Erste Philosophie I that when

he decided to designate his own phenomenology as

transcendental, he was exactly making use of a Kantian

concept (Hua7/230)169. This would help in understanding the

position of Heidegger vis-a-vis his own notion of

phenomenology and precisely intentionality.

When Husserl was moving phenomenology toward transcendental

idealism, Heidegger was imagining it as a ‘hermeneutic of

facticity”170. For Heidegger, before phenomenology could be

a reflection on intentionality as Husserl would agree, it

ought to be an understanding, a self-interpreting process

in which factic life intuits itself in its practical, pre-

theoretical unfolding. Heidegger was not so much interested

in such terms as epoche, consciousness, subjectivity etc

which were used so much by Husserl; instead he was more

interested in such terms terms as Dasein, being-in-the-

world, facticity, involvement in the real world etc.

The question of ontology is the main aim of philosophy;

going back to raise the question of the being of entities.

Husserl would affirm that in order to overcome

psychologism, it is better to go back to the things

themselves. So, for Husserl there is need to go back to the

things themselves via the means epoche whereby the

phenomenologist after leaving behind all the natural169 Zahavi D., Husserl and the absolute, centre for subjectivityResearch, 77, http/www.cfs.ku.dk170Dreyfus H.L. and Wrathal M.A., (eds.) Part I: EarlyHeidegger:Themes and Influences. “A Companion to Heidegger, BlackwellPublishing, 2004. Blackwell Reference Online, inhttp/www.Blackwellreferences.com

88

attitudes and presumptions, faces the things as they are

without any natural judgements. Heidegger believes that

the notion of Being has been forgotten (covered) for ages.

The object of phenomenology should therefore be to uncover

this being that has been covered up for long. Heidegger

admits the importance of this Husserlian concept

(phenomenology) but he uses it for a different purpose.

This is clarified when he observes that, “In the

phenomenological conception of phenomenon, what one has in

mind as that which shows itself is the Being of entities,

its meaning, its modifications and derivatives”171.

Methodologically, Husserl affirms that philosophy should

return to the things themselves. This return must be within

the guidelines of the methodology he called the

‘phenomenological reduction or the epoche’. Heidegger on

the other hand holds that philosophy should go back to the

question of being via the method of phenomenology which

enables the forgotten entity to be seen. It is a method

through which one can apprehend the Being of beings.

Husserl thought of phenomenology as the rigorous study of

that which is given to us in phenomenological reflection,

in order to arrive at the essential features of experience.

For Heidegger, phenomenology is a method through which one

can apprehend the being of beings. Heidegger’s

phenomenological reconception of intentionality in terms of

ontological interests leads to a fresh understanding of

human experience.

171 Heidegger M., Being and Time, op. cit. 60

89

In a rigorously theoretically articulated fashion, Husserl

proposes a program of transcendental phenomenology that has

as its goal phenomenological description of what

constitutes our word. With this idea, he thought he had

found a method that would perhaps overcome the dogmatism of

previous epistemological and ontological theories. He

thought he had found the method to deduce true knowledge.

The method of reduction and epoche takes the

phenomenologist from the concrete ego to the pure ego, that

of transcendental consciousness. Just like Descartes only

that perhaps for him, Descartes did not develop a method

rigorous as his own that overcome this dogma and

preconceptions. In the epoche we let go our natural

inclinations, thus, reaching the transcendental ego. At

this juncture one simply describes the phenomenon as it

appears in itself.

Husserl wants to use his phenomenology with the goal of

generating a body of pure ontic knowledge, i.e., he is more

interested in epistemology than ontology172. Heidegger

clearly inverts this position, focusing more on reviving

the question of ontology which he claims has been forgotten

since the time of Plato and Aristotle, namely; valuing more

epistemology at the detriment of ontology. In his Being and

Time, he asserts “ontology can contribute only indirectly

towards advancing the positive disciplines as we find them

today. It has a goal of its own, if indeed beyond the

acquiring of information about entities, the question of

172 See chapter two of this work

90

being is the spur for all scientific seeking”173. This

implies that for Heidegger, Being is the source from which

all flows and fundamental ontology is the way to approach

it..

For Heidegger, Husserl does not ask the important

ontological questions. He neglects to inquire into the

being of consciousness, taking the ego for granted. This

would be elaborated more later especially from his Marburg

lectures (History of the concept of time) where he

apparently demonstrates this fact. Husserlian

transcendental phenomenological reduction explains this

fact and Heidegger unequivocally writes thus

For Husserl the phenomenological reduction, which

he worked out for the first time expressly in the

ideas towards a pure phenomenology and

phenomenological philosophy (1913), is the method

of leading phenomenological vision from the

natural world attitude of the human being whose

life is involved in the world of things and

persons back to the transcendental life of

consciousness and its noetic-noematic experiences,

in which objects are constituted as correlates of

consciousness.. For us phenomenological reduction

means leading phenomenological vision back from

the apprehension of a being, whatever may be the

character of that apprehension, to the

173 Heidegger M, Being and Time, op. Cit, 77

91

understanding of the being of being (projecting

upon the way it is unconcealed)174

As pointed out above, The History of the concept of Time was the

lecture that Martin Heidegger gave at the Marburg

University during the summer of 1925175. In it we could see

lots of charges or criticisms that Heidegger levelled

against Husserlian phenomenology.

First of all, Heidegger feels that Husserlian idea of

phenomenology is too cognitive and theoretical. This is

made very clear in the following statement of Heidegger:

In its initial breakthrough, the phenomenological

endeavour concentrated on determining the basic

phenomena by which the objects of logic and

epistemology are given. In short, it concentrated

on the intentional comportments which are

essentially theoretical in character, in particular

on cognitive comportments which are specifically

scientific176

Not only that the intentional comportments are theoretical

but also that it was naturally expounded in the two main

directions of intention and intentum which according to

Heidegger these two structural moments of the basic

constitution of intentionality were not yet brought to full

174 Heidegger M, The Basic Problems of phenomenology, op. Cit. 21.175 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of time, Translatedby Theodore Kisiel, Indiana University press, 1992, xiii176 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, Translated byTheodore Kisiel, Indiana University press, 1992, 91.

92

clarity177. Heidegger was interested in how these

comportments in the structure of intentionality could be

accessed.

Furthermore, Heidegger criticises Husserl for not giving

priority to the being of consciousness in his

phenomenology. He raises these questions, “Does this

elaboration of the thematic field of phenomenology, the

field of intentionality, raise the question of the being of

this region, of the being of consciousness? What does being

really mean here when it is said that the sphere of

consciousness is a sphere and region of absolute being?”178.

Heidegger feels that the discourse of intentionality would

not be complete if this all important is left unaddressed

and untouched. He claims that if this question (question of

being, ontology) is important and necessary, then the

reflection upon the being as such is phenomenologically

even more neccessary179. For Heidegger, Husserl failed to

expose or rather he neglected the question of the being of

the intentional as the basic field of phenomenological

research180. Heidegger discussed the four determinations of

being which Husserl gives to consciousness (consciousness

is immanent being, consciousness is absolute being in the

sense of absolute givenness, consciousness is absolutely

given in the sense of nulla re indigent ad existendum, and

177 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, Translated byTheodore Kisiel, Indiana University press, 1992, 91

178 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 102.179Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 102 180 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 108

93

consciousness as pure being) and holds that they are not

drawn from the entity itself but are attributed to it

insofar as this consciousness as pure consciousness is

placed in certain perspectives181. Hence, because these

determinations are not originary determinations of being

itself then they only determine the region as region but

not the being of consciousness. They are not determinations

of the being of intentionality but rather they are solely

concerned with the region consciousness182.

An example was given by Heidegger to buttress his claim

above: He observes as follows:

The mathematician can circumscribe the mathematical

field, the entire realm of that which is the object

of mathematical consideration and inquiry. He can

provide a certain definition of the object of

mathematics without ever necessarily posing the

question of the mode of being of mathematical

objects. Precisely in the same way, it can at first

be granted with some justification that here the

region of phenomenology can simply be circumscribed

be these four aspects without thereby necessarily

inquiring into the being of that which belongs in

this region. Perhaps the being of consciousness

should not be inquired into at all183

181 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 108182 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 108183 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 108

94

In this way Heidegger continues with his attack on Husserl,

this time, on his forgetfulness to inquire into the being

of intentionality. Even in the Husserlian reduction which

takes off from the factual real consciousness in the

natural attitude was this important raised; not even was it

made its target, instead its task was to arrive at pure

consciousness. In the reduction, the reality of

consciousness is disregarded also184. In fact his main

attack is unequivocally made clear in this statement:

The sense of the reduction is precisely to make no

use of the reality of the intentional; it is not

posited and experienced as real. We start from the

real consciousness in the factually existing human,

but this takes place only in order finally to

disregard it and to dismiss the reality of

consciousness as such. In its methodological sense

as a disregarding, then, the reduction is in

principle inappropriate for determining the being

of consciousness positively185

According to Heidegger, not only that the reduction

disregards the reality of consciousness but also it

disregards any particular individuation of lived

experiences. It disregards the fact that the acts are mine

or those of any other individual human being and regards

them only on their what186. It regards the what, the

structure of the acts, but as a result, does not thematize184 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 109185 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 109186 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 109

95

their way to be, their being an act as such187. So Heidegger

clearly demonstrates that Husserlian view of reduction and

epoche does not concentrate on the ‘important’ question of

the being of intentional or of consciousness.

Heidegger believes that being is to be laid hold of and

made the theme of philosophical investigation. Husserlian

phenomenological reduction explicitly puts the ontological

question to the side. Heidegger’s critique of traditional

philosophy and even his mentor Husserl lies on the fact

that they buried that question of Being. Even Husserl would

criticise Heidegger of doing philosophical anthropology. It

is this ontological question that occupies the central

place in the Heideggerian philosophy because he believes

that all the previous analysis of humans have been mere

ontic and not ontology. He affirms that since the Cartesian

dualism into rex extensa and rex cogitans, Dasien has been

classified as mere extant, like other entities in the

world. Heidegger characterises the mode of Dasein as

existing as I have pointed out earlier and that is why he

criticised kant and scholasticism and even his mentor

Husserl for using the same term ( existent) to refer to

other extant entities. He asserts that “a distinguishing

feature between existent and the extant is found precisely

in intentionality”188

Unlike Husserl, Heidegger thinks that intentionality is a

feature of Dasein, not of consciousness. It is not a one

187 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 109188 Heidegger M, Basic Problems of phenomenology, op. Cit. 64

96

for one substitution of Dasein for Ego. In order words,

there is a movement from the consideration of

intentionality from the epistemological light to the

ontological one.

.

CHAPTER FOUR

REVISITING THE HEIDEGGERIAN CRITIQUE OF HUSSERLIAN CONCEPT

OF INTENTIONALITY AND CONCLUSION

97

It was Crowell S.G. who opined that “Husserl and Heidegger

are incompatible but inseparable”189. This is quite

interesting having undertaken a rigorous study of the views

of these great icons of the 20th century phenomenological

enterprise. Both Husserl and Heidegger were notably great

in their respective views through which they considered

phenomenology. Husserl who was the mentor of Heidegger is

accredited to be the founding father of the 20th century

phenomenology. Heidegger on the other side who was his

student came up with another idea of phenomenology, tending

towards radicalising an already laid foundation by Husserl.

The critiques of Heidegger to Husserl’s essential doctrines

in the phenomenological research should not be held

sacrosanct; I mean, there is need to revisit them looking

at their plausibility. That is exactly what this part of my

thesis sets out to achieve. In the course of achieving this

aim, I am not going to condemn everything that Heidegger

said about Husserl neither am I going to do an appraisal of

Husserl. The aim is to critically examine the criticisms of

Heidegger on Husserl by carrying out an unbiased evaluation

of his criticisms.

So far in this thesis I have tried to expose to a certain

level; not in detail (given the scope and page limit) the

phenomenological ideas of both Husserl and Heidegger,

concentrating more in their understanding of

intentionality. From this exposition, it could be said that

189 Crowell S.G., Does the Husserl?Heidegger Feud rest on a Mistake? An essay onpsychological and Transcendental phenomenology, in Husserl Studies 18,Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands, 2002, 123.

98

Husserl’s main concern is the fact that there is

consciousness awareness. This consciousness awareness ought

to be awareness of something, i.e., consciousness must be

of something or about something. As humans, we have direct

access to the way objects present themselves to us in

consciousness and can as such investigate them without

necessarily relying on assumptions or speculations. I

perceive something because it is given to me in experience.

Right from the modern time, especially with Descartes’

dualism of subject-object relationship, there has been the

problem of trying to understand human beings as subjects

reaching out to corresponding objects in the world.

Epistemologically, there has been a problem of how we as

subjects could know other entities in the world. In trying

to understand the possibility of this knowledge there have

been many schools of thought in the philosophical

tradition; some trying to affirm that the senses furnish us

with knowledge, others give more credence to the

acquisition of knowledge through the faculty of reason and

others affirm that we cannot know anything for certain

thereby denying the possibility of knowledge entirely. This

is very certain that even Heidegger was not denying it,

rather he is of the opinion that this should not be the

main business of philosophy or philosophical inquiry. As

has been explained earlier in this paper, Heidegger

observes that we are not subjects trying to know separate

objects out there in the world but rather we are beings in

the world, being with others, we are in the world existing

99

alongside other entities and it is from this perspective

that we should begin to philosophise and not the

traditional notion of subject-object relation.

This section examines Heidegger’s critique from two major

perspectives: (a) His critique that Husserl neglects the

ontological question (the question of being) in his

conception of intentionality and reduction (b) Heidegger’s

over emphasis on praxis and his critique of Husserl’s

‘cognitive’ and ‘theoretical’ phenomenology. Thirdly I

would argue also that such a major phenomenological theme

as intentionality is almost absent in his major work (Being

and Time).

1. ‘HUSSERL’S NEGLECT OF THE BEING OF INTENTIONALITY’

One of the strongest arguments that Heidegger used against

Husserl was that Husserl did not ask the question of being,

i.e., that he did not give preference to ontology, setting

the question of being to the side. Some texts of Heidegger

as have been used in this thesis would help to expatiate

this. In his Marburg lecture Heidegger asks:

“Does this elaboration of the thematic field of

phenomenology, the field of intentionality, raise

the question of the being of this region, of the

being of consciousness? What does being really mean

here when it is said that the sphere of

consciousness is a sphere and region of absolute

being?”190

190 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 102.

100

On another occasion still he writes also against

Husserl stating the following:

The mathematician can circumscribe the mathematical

field, the entire realm of that which is the object

of mathematical consideration and inquiry. He can

provide a certain definition of the object of

mathematics without ever necessarily posing the

question of the mode of being of mathematical

objects. Precisely in the same way, it can at first

be granted with some justification that here the

region of phenomenology can simply be circumscribed

be these four aspects without thereby necessarily

inquiring into the being of that which belongs in

this region. Perhaps the being of consciousness

should not be inquired into at all191

Examining the above criticisms, one could actually

understand that for Heidegger, Husserl did not ask the

question of being in his phenomenology. Also, that Husserl

did not make the being of consciousness his main task in

his phenomenological enterprise. In the first place, it is

necessary to understand that philosophy as a field of study

is a broad discipline. It constitutes within itself

different branches with different fields of investigation.

Epistemology for instance is a branch of philosophy that

investigates human knowledge; ethics concerns mortality,

the moral person within the ambient of philosophy. Ontology

studies being and phenomenology pays attention to191 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 108

101

phenomena, consciousness and the first person experience of

phenomena. All these branches focus at particular areas of

studies. It is very obvious after going through the pages

of Heidegger’s Being and Time for instance to capture the

main aim of Heidegger (Question of Being). On the other way

round, Husserl starts another program which is geared

towards the analysis of the structures of consciousness. He

is aware that we are conscious beings and that this

consciousness is directed to some object. This new way of

philosophising about the nature of consciousness as lived

or experienced from the first person perspective is what

Husserl tries to achieve in his phenomenology. Of course

Heidegger could be right that Husserl did not give priority

to the question of being but it is important to understand

that Husserl was not doing ontology whose area of

investigation is being, rather he was interested in pure

phenomenology although not forgetting the being of

intentional entirely as Heidegger claims. Crowell S.G tries

to capture this when he writes that:

Husserl’s idiom of subjectivity is in certain way

preferable to Heidegger’s idiom of being since it

makes clear that modernity made a contribution to

philosophy. Only someone wholly infatuated with the

chimera of the Greeks will think that Heidegger

recovers something hidden and forgotten when he

turns phenomenology toward being. Without Husserl’s

analyses of subjectivity Heidegger would have

102

gotten nowhere, since the Greeks never got as far

as the phenomenological notion of Sinn...192

These critiques of Heidegger on Husserl could not be

justified on the ground that in phenomenology, the analysis

of the structures of consciousness takes precedence over

the ontological question of being. Of course, it is the ‘I’

that is conscious of the fact that I am conscious, but

devoid of this consciousness there would be no I. The ego

constitutes the subject of experience and serves as that

which unifies all the experiences. Notwithstanding, in

phenomenology, one does not just observe things for

observing sake, rather he is conscious of the fact that he

is observing things. This consciousness of the fact that

one is conscious makes it meaningful when Husserl began

analysing consciousness and its relation to something.

Heidegger should not be making ontology more fundamental in

phenomenology as he demonstrates in Being and Time since it

would imply ontologising phenomenology which of course

Husserl does not support. Husserlian phenomenology

especially in his Logical Investigation could be said to be

epistemologically inclined. This is a bit controversial but

some of Husserl’s commentators also hold to this opinion.

For instance, Mohanty J.N. observes that “Husserlian

phenomenology aims at an absolute, i.e. non-relative,

grounding of human knowledge”193. Furthermore, Smith and192 Crowell S.G., Does the Husserl/Heidegger Feud Rest on a Mistake? An Essay onPsychological and Transcendental Phenomenology, in Husserl’s studies 18,Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands, 2002, 124.193 J.N. Mohanty, “Husserlian Transcendental Phenomenology,” inEdmund Husserl and the Phenomenological Tradition, Robert

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McIntyre also writes in this regard as follows, “The basic

task of philosophy, he (Husserl) believes, is to discover

the ultimate foundations of our beliefs about the world and

our place in it, and to justify or at least effect an

understanding of the framework within which all our

thinking about the world takes place, both our everyday,

common-sense thinking and our theoretical, scientific

reasoning. Like Descartes, Husserl thinks these foundations

lie with an understanding of the nature of the experiencing

subject and his consciousness”194.

Like Descartes, Husserl also sets out to look for a proper

ground of knowledge as could be deduced from the above

affirmations. He affirms in his work that “...it

(phenomenology) will become established as a science which

exclusively seeks to ascertain cognition of essences and

not matters of facts”195. So from the above, one could say

that unlike Heidegger whose phenomenology is ontological,

that of Husserl is essentially epistemological although as

I have pointed out, my argument is based also from the

attestations of some of Husserl’s commentators as I have

cited above. Heidegger does not criticise Husserl only from

Sokolowski(ed.) (Washington: The Catholic University ofAmerica Press, 1988, 177. 194 David Woodruff Smith and Ronald McIntyre, Husserl andIntentionality (Boston: D. Reidel Publishing company, 1982,93.

195 Husserl E., Ideas Pertaining to a pure phenomenology and atranscendental phenomenological philosophy, op.cit. xx

104

this area (the neglect of being in his phenomenology) but

also as explained below, his emphasis on cognition and

theory and not practical, embodied and factical Dasein in

the world.

2. ´HUSSERL’S OVER EMPHASIS ON COGNITION´

Heidegger has always tried to demonstrate that Husserl’s

phenomenology rests most of its tenets and analysis on the

theoretical and cognitive plane, thereby not paying

attention to the practical and embodied realities. I would

not only refer to the last publication of Husserl in his

life time (The Crisis of European Science...) where of

course he devotes much attention on the life-world and

intersubjectivity but also to affirm that there abound some

problems with the over emphasis placed on praxis, the

practical knowledge by Heidegger over the ‘theoretical’ and

consciousness emphasis which Heidegger thinks Husserl was

over-emphasising. According to Heidegger, Dasein is to be

understood in its practical involvement in the world196.

Dasein encounters things as ready to hand, as equipment for

instance the example of the hammer given above when he

holds that the person who is hammering is not really

conscious of the hammer except when there is a problem,

maybe when the hammer damages. Emphasising the practical

dimension of intentional acts is not enough to criticise

Husserl as being too theoretical in his phenomenology.

Every thinker or philosopher goes on to mature or improve

his philosophical ideas. This fact is not exception in196 Heidegger M, Being and Time, op. Cit. 91-101

105

Husserl. Husserl might have over emphasised the cognitive

aspect of phenomenology but that doesn’t mean he remained

at that point. His thoughts and writings have also

undergone some changes within his lifetime. In the opinion

of Moran D, this is very much captured in this quotation:

Husserl´s understanding of phenomenology evolved

and changed over his life time, and the Crisis...

represents the mature expression of his

transcendental phenomenology. Initially he focused

on individual process of consciousness –

perception, imagination, memory, time-consciousness

and so on – understood as ‘lived experiences’

(Erlebnise), mental episodes. But gradually he came

to recognise the need to address the manner in

which the flowing, connected stream of conscious

experiences is unified into a life, centred around

an ego but interconnected with other egos in a

communal life of what Husserl calls broadly

‘intersubjectivity’, leading finally to the shared

expericen of a world as a whole (primarily

experienced as the familiar ‘life-world’)197

Furthermore, as a way of still holding on to the fact that

practical involvement in the real world takes precedence

over the theoretical, Heidegger holds that the manner in

which things are given initially is not theoretically nor

197 Moran D., Husserl’s Crisis of European Science and TranscendentalPhenomenology:An Introduction, Cambridge, Cambridge UniversityPress, 2012,4.

106

neutrally to our sight, rather things are given as

materials which we encounter to accomplish our various

tasks. In the ‘Basic Problems of phenomenology’ he quotes

Fichte when he says ‘Gentleman think the wall198’ as a way

of emphasising that individual objects are not first

encountered on their own. In the lecture hall for instance

as he puts it I can only begin to contemplate the wall when

I am bored, in this case the thinking or contemplating the

wall is motivated by boredom. According to Heidegger, what

is given primarily is a thing-contexture (ein

Dingzusammenhang)199. He is emphasising that praxis is a

better way of describing Dasein instead of consciousness

and theoretical point of view.

In fact, in paragraph 15 of Being and Time, Heidegger

dedicates this section to examine ‘The being of entities

encountered in the Environment’. Here he makes reference to

the Greek use of the term ‘pragmata’ and holds that Dasein

was understood as praxis, as a pure action200. Therefore for

him, a better way of describing or understanding Dasein is

that of praxis and not consciousness. This made him to re-

think intentionality in terms of Dasein’s transcendence.

This way of reinterpreting Dasein in terms of transcendence

enables for the understanding intentionality in terms

praxis and not consciousness. Heidegger claims that it is

neither things nor objects who do the transcending instead

198 Heidegger M, The Basic problems of phenomenology, op. Cit., 162199 Heidegger M, The Basic problems of phenomenology, op. Cit., 163200 Heidegger M, Being and Time, op. Cit. 95-102

107

transcendence is a fundamental determination of the

ontological structure of the Dasein201.

Examining Heidegger’s claim that things we encounter in the

world are encountered in an ‘unthought’ manner as I have

explained before, implies that our dealings with things are

not conscious oriented, it is rather through unreflective

manner. From this way of reasoning, he thwarts the

fundamental endeavour of phenomenology as established by

Husserl, which is all about having an objective notion of

perception and the structures of consciousness. Heidegger

is of the view that we can only begin to have real

reflection when there is interaction in the goal which we

set out to achieve but I think this is not justifiable

because as humans, we are consciously related to the world.

We are characterised by our consciousness and we are always

conscious of something except in certain cases where one

loses his consciousness; but ordinarily we are conscious

beings and this consciousness is always directed to

something. Moreover, if consciousness is the state of being

aware of external objects or something then it is all about

consciousness ‘of’ or ‘about’ something. I do not think the

Greek term ‘pragmata’ alters this fact that man is a

conscious being. The over emphasis as Heidegger placed on

the practical aspect of Dasein could be indicative of the

fact that we could be seen as mere ‘robots’ in our dealings

with things, objects in the world. Descartes also

recognised the fundamentality of our conscious awareness

201 Heidegger M, The Basic problems of phenomenology, op. Cit., 162

108

when he affirms that “we cannot have any thought of which

we are not aware at the very moment when it is in us”202

although this idea is not shared by many philosophers.

Furthermore, given the fact that Husserl moves his

phenomenology to transcendental subjectivity as some of his

texts clearly indicate for instance when he writes thus:

Carried out with this systematic concreteness,

phenomenology is eo ipso “transcendental

idealism”, though is a fundamentally and

essentially new sense.(...) The proof of this

idealism is therefore phenomenology itself. Only

someone who misunderstands either the deepest

sense of intentional method, or that of

transcendental reduction, or perhaps both, can

attend to separate phenomenology from

transcendental idealism (Hua 1/118-119)

I would rather say that Heidegger replaced this with his

more concrete term ‘Dasein’ whereby the transcendental

figure is considered from a historical point of view,

seeing it as co-existing with the natural entities in the

world but his work (Being and Time) remains a work that has

language of transcendental phenomenology. What Heidegger

does is simply taking the Husserlian phenomenology from

another perspective, using another language. Here, Dasein

which is being-in-the-world is rather seen to replace the

202 Descartes R., The philosophical writing of Descartes (1961), ed. Andtranslated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch, 3vols, Cambridge University press, Cambridge 1948-91, vol II.

109

Husserlian way of interpreting intentional relation which

for him is same with that of Descartes.

The claim of Heidegger when he emphasises that we relate

with entities in the world in a circumspective manner203,

meaning that the ‘circumspection’ with which we encounter

things is ‘unthought’ because we do not basically analyse

them rather we live in it, shows what he contributes to the

notion of intentionality. The fact that he describes Dasein

as existing in the world, involving in and with things

implies that Heidegger thinks of intentionality not in

terms of transcendence but rather in terms of the worldhood

of Dasein and what is involved in the intentional act.

Every experience we have, thoughts, perception etc are

determined by our engagement in the world. Did Husserl

really over-emphasise the cognitive aspect of human

experience at the detriment of its praxis? Husserl indeed

focused more on the cognitive dimension but he did not

overlook the practical aspect as is clearly demonstrated in

his last publication (The Crisis...). I would rather infer

that he is more interested in those aspects that are of

importance to his phenomenological project for instance

perception etc. In the V Investigation precisely paragraph

15 we see him addressing the issue of intentional relation.

Here he talks about the intentional relation of feelings,

say, joy, sadness etc. According to him, it is unthinkable

to think of pleasure without anything pleasing because the

specific essence of pleasure demands a relation to

203Heidegger, Being and Time, op. Cit., 98-99.

110

something pleasing204. Phenomenology might run the risk of

being converted to anthropology if the Heidegger’s over

emphasis on the human Dasein is not properly situated and

phenomenologically studied.

3. SCARCITY OF THE TERM INTENTIONALITY IN BEING AND TIME

The doctrine of intentionality is very fundamental in

Husserl’s phenomenology. Notwithstanding, Heidegger’s

magnus opus scarcely treats this aspect of Husserl’s

phenomenology. On the contrary, his Marburg lectures

manifest that Heidegger was rather very familiar with

Husserlian account of intentionality. And it could be seen

that Heidegger makes references to Husserlian

intentionality but only stressing the need to give priority

the ontological aspect of it. In these lectures (Marburg

lectures) especially in his work ‘History of the concept of

Time’, Heidegger analyses the account of intentionality as

it was explained by both Brentano and Husserl. From his re-

examination of the views of Husserl and Brentano on

intentionality, it accentuates the fact that Heidegger was

very much acquainted with both the Brentanian and

Husserlian accounts of intentionality. This familiarity

with Husserlian phenomenology could be seen also in some of

the areas that even Heidegger acknowledged. For instance,

Heidegger sees phenomenology in the Husserlian terms as the

‘science of the apriori phenomena of intentionality205.

Furthermore, he equally accepts the Husserlian

204Husserl E., Logical Investigations II op.cit., 108205 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 86.

111

characterisation of epoche and reduction206. These are some

notable areas where at least Heidegger seems to be

acquainted with Husserlian ideas in phenomenology.

Notwithstanding, in his main book (Being and Time),

Heidegger demonstrates exactly the opposite (no detailed

analysis of intentionality) for instance. This little

attention paid to intentionality in Being and Time

demonstrates that Heidegger in this very book (Being and

Time) was interested in ontological philosophy, that is,

the question of being and not really pure phenomenological

as Husserl was.

What I have tried to argue in this part of my thesis is the

fact that basically Husserl’s phenomenology and

specifically his idea of intentionality has the greater

part of the emphasis placed on its cognitive aspect. Some

of the texts of Husserl as contained in this essay attest

to this. Notwithstanding, he did not abandon the practical

aspect entirely as Heidegger claimed. On his own part,

Heidegger continues the project of Husserl obviously from

another aspect; that of ontological, giving priority to the

question of Being of the intentional. The being of the

intentional according him had not been interrogated and the

manner of its treatment especially in the recent philosophy

has been ‘inadequate and external’207. Indeed, Heidegger

owes a lot to Husserl from whom the inspiration to continue

this phenomenological project began but of course the

debate is still on for further researches.206 Heidegger M, The History of the concept of Time, op. Cit. 94-97207 See Heidegger’s The Basic problems of phenomenology, op. Cit. 161.

112

Furthermore, it is necessary to examine the entire program,

that is, the aim of Heidegger in his Magnus Opus Being and

Time. After the introduction, precisely in paragraph 8 with

the title ‘Desing of the Treatise,’ we see Heidegger affirming

that the question of Being could be traced from two

distinct areas:

(a) Part One: The interpretation of Dasein in terms

of temporality, and the explication of Time as the

transcendental horizon for the question of Being.

(b) Basic features of a phenomenological destruction

of the history of ontology, with the problematic of

temporality as our clue208.

From the above part of the introduction, Heidegger plans to

write ontological philosophy and not purely

phenomenological. I think that his critiques of Husserl

could be seen from the point of view that Heidegger might

not really understand all the details of Husserl because

Husserl wrote works mainly phenomenological while Heidegger

was interested in ontology.

Of course, it is understandable that Heidegger approached

phenomenology from another point of view which is different

from Husserl but his Being and Time lacks some of the terms

like consciousness, intentionality, etc which are very

central in Husserlian phenomenology. He was making the

question of being the primary aim of his work (Being and

Time). So, most of the criticisms he levelled against

208 Heidegger’s Being and Time, op. Cit., 63

113

Husserl could actually not have stemmed from a purely

phenomenological analysis as Husserl intended. For

instance, the phenomenological reduction is the corner

stone in Husserl’s phenomenology; it is the method which

Husserl introduced so that the phenomenologist would have

access to the ‘eidos’, the essence of the thing perceived.

It is a method through which the phenomenologist could

transcend the natural attitude, un-philosophic ideas and

bias, and then reach the transcendental subjectivity where

he or she can only perceive the thing as it is in itself.

Without this method for instance, one cannot really engage

in the activity of phenomenology. It could be said that

Heidegger and his own idea of phenomenology is still within

the mundane circle; I mean that his own phenomenology

revolves within the world of persons and objects.

He has demonstrated very little interest in the

phenomenology of consciousness, cognition etc. So, it is

obvious that Heidegger was doing rather ‘phenomenological

anthropology’ since almost everything he posits revolves

around Dasein and the world of things. The rigorous aspect

of consciousness was left not fully attended to. His

phenomenology is not thorough in the real sense of the

word. He tries to defend the claim that intentionality

could only be possible through Dasein, placing much

emphasis on the factual things in the world. He affirms in

Being and Time that “Taking up relationships towards the

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world is possible only because Dasein, as being-in-the-

world, is as it is”209.

Husserl and Heidegger were great thinkers. Heidegger would

find the phenomenology of Husserl as difficult to attain

while Husserl would see the phenomenology of Heidegger as

not phenomenological. Each of them would think the other

has not really grasped the essence of phenomenology. But

permit me to affirm that the phenomenology of Husserl is

credible looking at what he has contributed in philosophy:

the transcendental reduction. The reduction and epoche

remain the main the central area where Husserl is acclaimed

in his phenomenological enterprise. This is because it

enables us to get to the essential properties of realities.

Furthermore, epistemological justification of how things

are known is a central issue in philosophy right from the

ancient period. This led the Greeks and the entire

philosopher afterwards to take different stands as regards

how objects could be known. Questions like: how do I know?

How do I know that I know? And what is known? etc remain

central in philosophy. Some idealist philosophers claimed

that reality could only be known via the mind so that

anything the senses cognise is false. On the other hand,

empiricist philosophers emphasise the supremacy of the

senses over the mind. In 20th century therefore Husserl

sought a new way cognising reality which could be more

reliable than the previous methods. That was why he thought

that the thorough study of consciousness could enable us in209 Heidegger M., Being and Time, op. Cit. 84.

115

perceiving reality as it is. In doing this he developed

this method called phenomenology which is all about the

first person perspective through which consciousness could

be studied. In this, he introduces the method of reduction

and epoche which is about to suspending previous

conceptions of reality in order to reinterpret them in

terms of first person immediate experience. I do believe

that Husserl left a legacy in philosophy although his

thoughts are most often misinterpreted. This however does

not mean that Husserl was right in all his thoughts and

reasoning. For instance the idea of bracketing all

preconceived ideas in order to comprehend the reality seems

quite impossible since our knowledge, thoughts would always

be contaminated by one’s previous knowledge and thoughts no

matter how little it might be. Notwithstanding, his

contributions in philosophy remain a landmark in which

subsequent philosophers would continue to explore in their

respective philosophical careers.

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116

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