[contributions to phenomenology] encyclopedia of phenomenology volume 18 || g

HANS-GEORG GADAMER Gadamer is most noted for developing a philosophical hermeneutics on the basis of MARTJN HEIDEGGER 's Sein und leit ( 1927). Born in Marburg in 1900 and schooled in Breslau, Gadamer took his doctorate in philosophy at Marburg in 1922 under the direction of NJCOLAJ HARTMANN

and Paul Natorp ( 1854-1924). His dissertation (unpublished) was on Plato (Das Wesen der Lust in den pla

tonischen Dialogen). He spent 1923 in Freiburg, where he studied with EDMUND HUSSERL and MARTJN HEIDEGGER.

In 1924, he returned to Marburg where he studied philosophy with Heidegger and classical philology with Paul Friedlander ( 184 7-1923 ). Gadamer successfully took the state examinations in philology in 1927, and in 1928/29 with Heidegger's sponsorship he completed his philosophy Habilitationsschrift, Platos dialektische Ethik ( 1931; Plata s Dialectica! Ethics, 1990). His orientation in this work is clearly Heideggerian; its subtitle translates as "Phenomenological interpretations relating to the Philebus." He presents his task as the attempt phenomenologically to solve the problem of pleasure as it is posed by Plato, particularly in that dialogue. The work suggests a deep proximity between Plato and Aristotle -a proximity with respect to the questions of pleasure and the good as well as in regard to the notion of science (episteme), for Gadamer argues that Aristotelian episteme is rooted in Platonic dialectic, which, in turn, is rooted in dialogue.

Afterteaching foryears in Marburg, Gadamer's academic career took him to Leipzig ( 1938-4 7), Frankfurt ( 194 7-49), and finally Heidelberg, where he was the successor of KARL JASPERS in 1949. In conjunction with HELMUT KUHN he founded the journal Philosophische

Rundschau in 1952. He retired from his chair of philosophy in 1968, though he continued to lecture, both in Heidelberg and abroad. He began annual semester visits to American universities, especially Boston College, which he continued for more than twenty years. Until the publication in 1960 of his main work, Wahrheit

und Methode (Truth and Method, 1975), Gadamer had published relatively little-scattered essays, commentaries, and introductions that concemed themselves primarily with the texts of Plato and Aristotle as well as the work of Herder, WILHELM DJLTHEY, and Heidegger and the poetry of Goethe and Holderlin. In Wahrheit

und Methode he attempts to establish a philosophical HERMENEUTJcs, i.e., a general theory of interpretation, which is at the same time an ontology.

The starting point for Gadamer's hermeneutics is Heidegger's treatment of understanding (Vers tehen) in Sein und leit. There Heidegger describes his project of fundamental ontology as phenomenological and hermeneutica!. Understanding is always interpretation. Assertion, which Heidegger analyzes as the "apophantic as," is founded upon the more primordial "existential-hermeneutica! 'as'." Understanding accordingly takes place within the hermeneutica! circle and can never be presuppositionless. Gadamer adopts Heidegger's account of understanding and follows his lead in turn ing to the philological and theological hermeneutica! tradition to find clues for a philosophical account ofhuman experience. The experience of reading and understanding a text becomes a model for human experience generally; hermeneutica! experience, Gadamer writes, is universal. The decisive feature ofthis experience ofthe text is its circularity: any part (text) can only be understood in terms ofthe whole (context) and the whole is tobe understood by means of its parts.

Gadamer also takes over Heidegger's notion of TRUTH as an event that is both revealing and concealing. Truth, then, is nota matter of ah istorica! subjective representation secured by scientific method, but is historically situated and limited. Situations are defined in part by the tradition(s) and authorities that ha ve shaped them. Inevitably the participants bring prior understandings to the situation, i.e., prejudgments. Gadamer, accordingly, is sharply critica! of the methodologism and scientism that he finds in 19th century philology and much of modern philosophy, and he wishes to rehabilitate notions such as "prejudice," "authority," and "tradition"- notions that Enlightenment thought had discredited.

Three central and closely related concepts of Gadamer's hermeneutics are the concepts of play (Spiel), "effective-historical consciousness"

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. C/aude Evans, Jose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, 25 8 Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner ( eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

HANS-GEORG GADAMER 259

( wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein ), and the fus ion

of horizons. "Play" is a metaphor of hermeneutica!

experience inasmuch as the game has order and struc

ture and the participants experience the play of the

game as being taken over by it. "Effective-historical

consciousness" is "consciousness of the hermeneuti

ca! situation" - a task that can never be satisfied.

In accord with this concept, there is no immediate or

simply neutra! approach to a work of art or a tradi

tion, for the work of art affects the situation in which

we approach it. This is the power of history over fi

nite consciousness. Later, in response to criticism for

making "consciousness" a central concept, he insists

that Bewusst-Sein (being conscious) is more Sein (be

ing) than Bewusstsein (consciousness). On his account

the historical situation provides the horizon or context

for any understanding. Inevitably, historically situated

understanding is an event of the fusion of horizons.

Expressed in terms of the reading of a text, this fus ion

results from the coming together ofthe horizon ( expec

tations) of reader/interpreter and the horizon provided

by the text. We bring something to the text, and the

text makes a claim on us. The logic of READING is the

logic of question and answer and, so too, the logic of

experience. The basis for this fusion !ies not in the

text or the reader, but in the matter under discussion

(die Sache). Gadamer's notion of die Sache is indebted

both to Husserl and to HEGEL. He means to have his

hermeneutica! position cut across the theory/practice

distinction. The implicit model for the inquirer after

the truth of some matter is not the ideal, so-called

"scientific" observer but the active participant in the

world of affairs who has something at stake in the

sought-for truth. Thus the referent is not so much an

object (Gegenstand) as an enterprise in which we are

involved. Gadamer paraphrases Hegel when he writes

that "the true method is the doing ofthe thing itself."

Legal and theological HERMENEUTICS are exemplary

for Gadamer's hermeneutics inasmuch as understand

ing is always at the same time application. To under

stand is to see what must be done or to see the implica

tions of what has been done. He would deny any fun

damental distinction ofmeaning and significance. Ap

plication (or significance) is essential to meaning. Ul

timately, hermeneutica! experience displays the unity

oftheory and practice. Gadamer finds a philosophical

model for the practica! understanding ofhermeneutics

in Aristotle's notion of practica! wisdom (phronesis).

Understanding is not only practica!, but linguis

tic. Gadamer means his philosophical hermeneutics

not only to develop the notion of understanding in

Sein und Zeit but to develop and make accessible the

work of the !ater Heidegger, for whom the themes of

language and poetry become central. The concluding

section of Wahrheit und Methode is devoted to the

theme oflanguage and linguisticality. LANGUAGE is the

medium of hermeneutica! experience and the horizon

of hermeneutica! ontology. Gadamer asks us to think

of languagc not as a barrier to be overcome but an

enabling bridge. He writes that "Being that can be un

derstood is language." This does not mean that Being

is linguistic, but that understanding is. Gadamer thinks

about the experience of language in relation to aes

thetic experience. Wahrheit und Methode begins with

a critique of the subjectification of aesthetics in the

work of KANT and concludes by asking us to return, not

to Platonism, but to Plato's understanding of beauty,

especially in the Phaedrus, where beauty is closely

related to truth.

How is Gadamer's work phenomenological? In the

first place, it is phenomenological in the sense of Hei

degger's HERMENEUTICAL PHENOMENOLOGY to which it

is so heavily indebted. But Gadamer's philosophical

hermeneutics is positively related to Husserl 's coNSTI

TUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY as well. Gadamer expresses his

(and Heidegger's) great debt to Husserl's overcoming

of the priority of epistemology in modern thought, as

well as its scientism, NATURALISM, and objectivism. He

appeals to Husserl's account of PERCEPTION in his dis

cussion ofhistoricism and ofthe RELATIVISM that might

seem to follow from his notions of situatedness, his

toricity, and human finitude. Gadamer insists that un

derstanding is perspectiva!, but at the same time, he ar

gues that relativism does not follow from this feature of

human experience. Following Husserl, Gadamcr sug

gests that the fact that we always have a certain per

spective does not mitigate against the fact that the per

spective is a view ofthe thing itself. Most importantly,

however, he presents his inquiry as a phenomenologi

cal account ofthe experience ofunderstanding; it is, he

says in the foreword to the second edition of Wahrheit

und Methode, "phenomenological in its method." By

this he means that the book's task is to describe the

phenomenon of understanding. His concern, he says,

260 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

is "not what we do or what we ought to do, but what

happens to us over and above our wanting and do ing." Wahrheit und Methode was sharply criticized from

the perspective of philological hermeneutics by fig

ures like Emilio Betti (Die Hermeneutik als allgemeine Methodik der Geisteswissenschafien, 1962) and E. D. Hirsch ( Validity in Interpretation, 1967) for not providing a sufficient methodological foundation for validating interpretation. Jiirgen Habermas has found Gadamer's hermeneutics valuable in his attempt to fashion a phiJosophy of the HUMAN SCIENCES (Zur

Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, 1967), while at the same time, he criticized Gadamer's hermeneutics for being uncritical with respect to tradition. His cri

tique unleashed a large debate concerning Gadamerian hermeneutics and the critique of ideology (Hermeneu

tik und Jdeologiekritik, 1971 ). More recently there has been extensive discussion ofthe relation ofGadamer's

hermeneutics and French POSTMODERNISM and deconstruction. The centerpiece of this discussion is the exchange between Gadamer and JACQUES DERRIDA in Paris in 1981 (Dialogue and Deconstruction, 1989). Central to their differences is the way in which they regard Nietzsche. For Gadamer, Nietzsche and Derrida adopt

a hermeneutics of suspicion, while Gadamer calls for a hermeneutics of trust. The task of conversation and understanding for Gadamer is to tind what the parties ha ve in common- the fus ion of horizons.

After Wahrheit und Methode Gadamer devotes himselfprimarily to work on Plata, though he has published numerous articles concerning poetry, Hegel, Heideg

ger, and the clarification ofhis hermeneutics, for which "Text und Interpretation" (in Dialogue and Decon

struction) is particularly important. He makes clear that the textual model for hermeneutics does not mean

that everything is a text. Even things written are not necessarily texts. There are texts and non-texts; among texts, there are eminent texts and texts that are not eminent. For the most part, he is concerned with eminent texts, i.e., important literary texts. In this case, he calls for the effacement ofthe reader and the disappearance

of the interpretati an- the reader becomes "ali ear." The sign of a good interpretati an is the way it returns one to the original text. Strictly speaking, philosophy does not provide us with "eminent" texts that ask for

effacement in this way, but rather invite us to a con versation in which we need to respond.

In his !ater work on Plata and Aristotle (most importantly, Die Idee des Guten zwischen Plata und Aristote

les, 1978; The !dea o(the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy, 1986) as well as his numerous essays on

Heidegger ( many collected in Heideggers Wege, 1983 ), Gadamer reiterates his debt to Heidegger, but at the

same time, he clarifies their disagreements. In particular, he rejects Heidegger's reading of the history of philosophy as a history of the forgetting of Being.

Most importantly in this regard, he resists Heidegger's interpretati an of Plata as a primary agent of this forgetfulness. Gadamer illuminates Heidegger's project and its development by showing us its religious char

acter and its religious motivation. A consistent theme ofGadamer's treatment of Heidegger is the breakdown of language (Sprachnot) in the !ater Heidegger. While truth for Heidegger is often presented metaphorically as a sudden flash of lightning, the mediated character of truth is important for Gadamer. In his autobiographical writing he characterizes his own way as that between phenomenology and dialectic. "Phenomenology" means Heidegger but also Husserl. "Dialectic" means Hegel but, even more significantly, Plata, for

Gadamer remains truc to the thesis ofhis Hahilitationsschrift that the roots of dialectic are in dialogue and

conversation.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Dostal, Robert. "The World Never Lost: The Hermeneutics ofTrust." Philosophyand Phenomeno/ogical Research 47 (1987), 413-34.

Frank, Manfred. Das individuelle Allgemeine. Textstrukturisierung und Textinterpretation nach Schleiermacher. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Gesammelte Werke. 9 vols. Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1987.

Grondin, Jean. Hermeneutische Wahrheit? Zum Wahrheitsbegrif{ Hans-Georg Gadamer. Konigstein i. Ts: Forum Academicum, 1982.

Hahn, Lou E., ed. The Philosophy ofHans-Georg Gadamer. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1995.

Michelfelder, Diane P., and Richard E. Palmer, eds. Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989.

Rosen, Stanley. Hermeneutics as Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Seebohm, Thomas. Zur Kritik der hermeneutischen Vernunfi. Bonn: Bouvier, 1972.

Wachterhauser, Brice, ed. Hermeneutic~ and Modern Philosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1986.

GENERATIVE PHENOMENOLOGY 261

-, ed. Hermeneutics and Truth. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1994.

Warnke, Georgia. Gadamer· Hermeneutics. Tradition, and Reason. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987.

Weinsheimer, Joel. Gadamer :~ Hermeneutic~: A Reading of Truth and Method. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985.

Wright, Kath1een, ed. Festivals of lnterpretation. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990.

ROBERT J. OOSTAL 81)'11 Mawr Ca/lege

GENERATIVE PHENOMENOLOGY Gen-

erative phenomenology is the most concrete dimen

sion ofphenomenology and was broached initially by

EDMUND HUSSERL during the last seven years of his

life ( 1930-3 7). Concisely put, the thing or the "mat

ter itself' of generative phenomenology is generativ

i(v ( Generativităt). Generativity is the intersubjective,

geo-historical, and normative generation of MEANING

or sense. Generative phenomenology and its matter

can be discussed in three stages: the distinctiveness of

generative phenomenology in relation to other dimen

sions of phenomenology; the phenomena peculiar to

generative phenomenology; and the place and role of

generative phenomenology.

There are three methodological strategies explored

in Husserlian phenomenology: static, genetic, and gen

erati ve, the latter being the most encompassing. More

over, each strategy can have an "ontologica!" and a

"constitutive" dimension, where the former can pro

vide a "leading clue" (Leitfaden) to the latter.

As an inquiry in FORMAL AND MATERIAL ONTOLOGY,

a static methodology relies on EIDETIC METHOD to at

tain material essences, essential types, regions, formal

essences, and so forth. Whereas an ontologica! analy

sis inquires into what something is, or the being of its

being, a constitutive analysis investigates the way in

which something is given, how sense emerges. Thus

a static methodology can analyze how sense is consti

tuted through intention and fulfillment in a way that

holds for ali conscious beings without this constitu

tive analysis necessarily being a genetic analysis. The

primary contribution of a static analysis is to identify

structures (such as intentionality, noesis, NOEMA, sen

sation, intention, fulfillment, etc.) that provisionally

serve as cornerstones for "higher level" analyses.

Whereas a static method is undertaken without

regard to temporal development, GENETIC PHENOMEN

OLOGY treats the process of self-temporalization. It be

gins with the "living present" ofretention, the impres

sional now, and protention, and ranges to fu li concrete

monadic individuation or facticity. It does this through

descriptions of active genesis, the phenomenology of

(passive) association, and the transformation of pre

judicative life into active judication. In an ontologica]

re gard, the region of psychophysical being functions

as a leading clue to a constitutive analysis. Accord

ingly, the ontologica! discipline that can guide con

stitutive analyses is intentiona! psychology. Because

genetic method is confined to egological temporaliza

tion between the birth and death of the individual, its

contribution is limited to contemporaneous individuals

or synchronic communities where intersubjectivity is

concerned. The distinctiveness of a generative method

ology that goes beyond static and genetic methods is al

ready anticipated at the conclusion ofHusserl's Carte

sianische Meditationen [ 1931]. Like genetic method,

it goes beyond a static analysis by examining tem

porality. Yet it goes beyond a genetic methodology

by describing phenomena that transcend the strictures

of monadic facticity. Individual sel(-temporalization

yields to socio-historical generativity.

Generative phenomenology is a phenomenology

of generativity. Generativity is intersubjective, geo

historical, normatively significant transformation.

Generativity is not a mere biologica! becoming or

species repetition because it concerns the generation of

meaning. The expressions "generativity" and "genera

tive" appear directly on the heels ofthe Cartesianische

Meditationen. In addition to the third volume edited un

der the ti tie, Zur Phănomenologie der Jntersubjektivităt

[1929-35], the main leading clues for a generatiV'e

phenomenology are found in severa! A manuscrypts

(whose general title is "Mundane Phănomenologie"),

in a majority of B manuscripts (entitled "Die Re

duktion"), in a broad range of writings from the C

manuscripts ( assembled under the rubric of "Zeitkon

stitution als formale Konstitution"), and in numerous

manuscripts from the E signature (named, "lntersub

jektive Konstitution"). Except for o ne manuscript from

circa 1920, these "generative writings" date from the

early to middle 1930s. Husserl's investigations that

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, Jose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner (eds.), Encyclopedia ofPhenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.


treat historicity and intersubjectivity are imbued with the themes of"generativity" and the "generative," and

these terms appear unique to Husserl, not being found, for example, in either WILHELM DILTHEY Of MARTIN HEI

DEGGER.

For Husserl, ETHNOLOGY or cultural anthropology

serves as the mundane leading clue to constitutive generative matters. Ethnology has an advantage over, e.g.,

psychology, because it begins with a communal context that is shaped by tradition (ritual, myth, etc.); integrates linguistic communication into the make-up of intersubjectivity; bears on a social life that is marked by spatio-temporal limits; treats individual becoming within these geo-historical lifeworlds; and addresses

lifeworld communities as they transform themselves over the generations.

Rather than merely presupposing the generation of the cultural world, a generative phenomenology will proceed by inquiring into how its complex network of sense is generated. In distinction from Dilthey's HERMENEUTIC approach, which addresses structural dif

ferences occurring over the generations in terms ofthe objectifications of life, a generative phenomenology inquires into the generation ofthese structures as well

as the structure of generation. Sincefuture becoming is also incorporated into this analysis, phenomenological description will take on a normative dimension.

Generativity can be further explicated in terms of primary generative phenomena. These include normality and abnormality, homeworld and alienworld, and intergenerational constitution through appropriation, critiquc, and communication.

Husserl appeals to normality and abnormality because he wants to provide an account of the constitution of "transcendence" that takes place contextually and over time. His concepts of normality and

abnormality are accordingly not psychological, therapeutic, or medicinal, but rather constitutive; they ha ve

to do with modes of sense-givenness. He distinguishes four modes ofnormality and abnormality: concordance

(Einstimmigkeit) and discordance ( Unstimmigkeit), op

timality and non-optimality, typicality and atypicality, and familiarity and unfamiliarity.

Normality and abnormality characterize a lived relation between the individual and environing worlds.

An experience is normal when it coherently unfolds over time, and though suffering infractions or discor-

dances, remains concordant overall. But an experience can also be normal if it is optimal, or concretely the

"best" under certain circumstances. The optimal functions as a norm, and thus as a te/os. Even a discordance (abnormality) that breaks a concordant appearance can institute a new normal order (and a new teleology),

rendering the previous one now "abnormal" and issuing in competing normalities. When the optimal is repeated, becoming itself concordant and achieving

a certain ideality, the optimal becomes a "type"; in this way an object or an experience can be said to be "typical." As typical of experience, a normal cx

perience becomes one we can count on and is thus "familiar."Husserl first discusses normality and abnormality in his early lectures on PERCEPTION (found in manuscript signature F 1 9 [1904-5/1898]), and does not return to them in a concerted manner until he undertakes a genetic research perspective (for example in the D manuscripts from 1917-21 entitled "Primordiale Konstitution [Urkonstitution]"). Here normality and abnormality apply to particular organs or senses

(usually tactile and visual ones) and to the lived BODY

(Leib) as a whole. Furthermore, abnormality is almost cxclusively characterized as a modification ofnormal

ity. But in Husserl's generative undertaking, normality and abnormality are treated as co-relative terms and go beyond the individual lived body. In order to understand how something can count for us as objective, he turns to an account oftranscendence within communal contexts and provides a constitutive account of these very communities, historical traditions, and lifeworlds precisely in terms of normality and abnormality. Individuals can only be described as constitutively normal or abnormal by virtue oftheir practices within horizons of community and HISTORY, that is, within homeworlds and alienworlds.

Homeworld and Alienworld. The concept of the LIFEWORLD as presented in Die Krisis der eu

ropiiischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phiinomenologie ( 1936) is only a provisional notion.

Transcendentally understood, the lifeworld is articu

lated geo-historically in two modalities as earth-ground (Erdboden) and world-horizon (Welthorizont). Within

a normative register and from a generative perspective, Husserl calls the normal lifeworld the "homeworld"

(Heimwelt) and the abnormal lifeworld the "alienworld" (Fremdwelt). Homeworld and alienworld are


ways in which generativity is taken up and expressed socially, geo-historically, and normatively.

Husserl 's first mention ofhomeworld occurs nearly seven years before the appearance of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (1927). Yet it was not until after 1930 that homeworld and alienworld are investi

galed as generative matters. Homeworlds and alienworlds are spatio-temporal, normatively significant social spheres. Homeworlds are connected to this land or that place, exhibiting this tradition or sharing that future. A home can range anywhere from "mother and child" to a politica! and national complex, where the ge

ological or geographical and historical aspects take on greater or lesser ro les. Furthermore, those who are coconstitutors of a homeworld, past or present- those

who share values, attitudes, patterns of conduct, etc.are called "home comrades" (Heimgenossen). One is a home comrade to the extent that he or she participates - in any number of ways- in the re-constitution or

historical generation ofthe homeworld. Alienworlds are those lifeworlds that are not con

cordant, optimal, typical, or familiar for the practices, interests, and beliefs of the home comrades. In other words, as a phenomenologist, Husserl cannot simply

take the perspective of the alien; rather, he must inquire into its modes of accessibility or experiencability. Thus often these other styles, typicalities, etc., do not "make sense" from the perspective of the home; they are experienced as non-optimal, atypical, unfamiliar, in short, as constitutively abnormal. For a phenomenologist, alienness is "accessible" only in the mode of inaccessibility and incomprehensibility. Such an inaccessibility is expressed as the generative density of an alien historicity and as the uniquely personal "foreignness" ofthe individual.

In the co-constitution of the homeworld, an alienworld is simultaneously delimited and constituted as alien. But equiprimordially the experience ofthe alien is co-constitutive of home, delimiting its sense: from

the very start there is a becoming alien of the home.

This means that home and alien are co-relative and co

founding. Even though Husserl does aspire toward a solidarity ofhumanity where "the o ne world" would be

posited beyond cultural differences, the home is nevertheless not an "original" or "foundational" sphere. Be

cause generative phenomenology does not begin from the primacy of the EGO, but with normatively signifi-

cant lifeworlds that are co-constituted geologically, geographically, and historically, generative intersubjectivity decisively goes beyond the static, quasi-genetic, and foundational Cartesian interpretation explpred in the fifth of the Cartesianische Meditationen. In fact, generative phenomenology cannot merely be a reflection on intersubjectivity, but a participation in it.

When Husserl characterizes constitution from a generative perspective, he does not appeal to the static animation of hyle by the noetic component of apprehension, nor does he speak of the genetic selftemporalization of the ego. Generative sense does not merely originate from an individual. On the one hand,

sense stems .from a historical tradition. As a result of communal practices that span generations and are articulated in a concordant HISTORY, this sense is in some measure always already "pregiven." On the other hand, where the individual qua home comrade is concerned, constitution takes the form of the "appropriation" of

sense: I make it my own by taking it up. Generative phenomenology must take into account modes of sense-pregivenness and the reconstitution of sense as its unique generation- not only for myself, but for

others: for my home comrades and for individuals who are in relation to the home as constituting alienworlds. But genera ti ve phenomenology will do this with a directedness toward the future and the transformation of the entire generative framework.

A genetic method was unable to examine birth and death as transcendental occurrences because its

scope was restricted to an individual life. But because generative phenomenology treats modes of sensepregivenness and types of appropriation of that sense as it develops over the generations, hirth as well as death must be integrated into a constitutive framework and become problems for phenomenology.

Appropriation is an explicit relation to others qua home comrades of a homeworld, and is implicitly the constitution ofthe alien of an alienworld. Husserl does

not elaborate the mode of encounter of the alienworld

by the home, but does hint at it both with the term

"transgression" ( Uberschreitung) and by his characterization of alienness as being given in the mode

of inaccessibility. From these descriptions one could formulate "transgression" positively as the encounter

of the alien from the perspective of the home where

the limits of the encounter are left intact. It would


have to be distinguished from a relation of "occupa

tion" (Besetzung) where the limits of the home are

merely expanded. Because this appropriation can also

be naive, the constitution of sense and the reconsti

tution of homeworlds in relation to alienworlds also

demands "critique," or critica! appropriation ~ what

Husserl called "renewal" in his earlicr phenomenology

of culture.

Finally, the generative descriptions of LANGUAGE

IN HUSSERL, and specifically linguistic communication,

begin to challenge thc predominance that Einfiihlung or

empathy had played in his accounts ofthe constitution

of INTERSUB.IECTIVITY. A homewor]d is fundamentally

determined by language, writes Husserl ~in partic

ular by communication and narrative. Empathy alone,

which requires the bodily presence of the other, could

never constituie a community with those preced ing or

succeeding me. Although Husserl does explore how

communication constitutes a home, he does not ~ like

MAX SCHELER ~ dcvelop the contribution that the life

ofthe EMOTIONs makes to this co-constitution.

Ontology can provide a leading clue for coNSTITU

TIVE PHENOMENOLOGY (in this case ethnology or cultural

anthropology for generativity). But for Husserl static

(qua constitutive) phenomenology can also serve ini

tially as a leading clue to genetic phenomenology. This

order of progression reveals a procedural bias held by

Husserl, namely, that the "simple" provides the starting

point for descriptions ofthe "complex." For example,

Husserl began with the abject at rest and then advanced

to the abject in motion; he moved from static structures

of consciousness to the genesis ofthe monad, from self

tcmporalization to communal historicity. And he did

not wish to advance "higher" until the "lower" levels

had been sufficiently clarified phenomenologically.

Nevertheless, many of Husserl's descriptions took

him beyond the bounds of his avowcd level of analy

sis. Ultimately they led him to what he called "gener

ative phenomena," and led the generations succeeding

him to formulate this new methodological enterprise

as generative phenomenology. As is appropriate to a

generative phenomenology, that project was left to fu

ture generations. From the perspective of generativity

and of generative phenomenology there is a necessary

reinterpretation ofwhat phenomenology means.

Firs!, the so-called "simple" or "independent,"

which was initially identified with the "concrete," is

abstract. Now generative historicity, transcendental in

tersubjectivity (i.e., non-independent phenomena), are

the most concrete. In relation to generativity, self

temporalization (regarded previously as absolute), is

labeled "prior to generation" and thus an "abstract

historicity." In relation to genetic phenomena, static

matters are not foundational, but abstractly temporal.

Rather than genetic method presupposing static anal

ysis, the static method, Husserl maintains, cannot be

undertaken without presupposing genesis. By impli

cation, this means that static and genetic methods are

only possible through generative observations. Thus

generativity properly understood encompasses static

and genetic dimensions.

Second, the disclosure of generative phenomen

ology requires that the three methodological strategies

delineated above have to be described either as a pro

gressive removal of abstraction (leading from static

to generative) oras the movement from the concrete

to the abstract, whereby generative phenomenology

functions as a leading clue to static phenomenology.

Accordingly, the results won from the previous inves

tigations have to be reinterpreted in light of genera

tivity. Some will be left intact, others will be enriched

through gencrative insights, still others will have to

be surpassed or rejected as mere(v provisional or even

misleading. Perhaps this unflagging process ofmethod

ological reevaluation helps explain why Husserl char

acterizes the phenomenologist as a perpetua! beginner,

and why phenomenology advances only by zigzag.

Third, the generative phenomenologist describes

the structure of generativity and the generation of this

structure expressed as the correlation of homeworld

and alienworld. Because this structure is generativity

in generation, the phenomenologist must describe it

as it is taking place, i.e., while he or she participates

in its movement. Accordingly, phenomenology itself

is modified in and through this generation. Instead of

simply recalling the position of the phenomenologist

as the disinterested observer, Husserl will insist that

both phenomenology and the phenomenologist remain

in this historicity, i.e., within the generative framework

of a homeworld in relation to alienworlds. And he will

assert, further, that the transcendental dimension and

phenomenologizing activities themselves flow into this

generative movement. Such a recognition of the im

plicit participatory character of phenomenology shifts


the merely descriptive character of phenomenology

onto a normative axis as well. Now the phenomen

ologist is engaged in directing the course of gener

ativity by taking on responsibility for the generation

of humanity. The normative character of generative

descriptions enables Husserl to charge the phenomen

ologist with such a responsibility and with the ethical

ro le of "functionary." What is the ro le generative phenomenology can play

in contemporary thought? Philosophy. Husserl's articulation of the genera

tive framework provides us with a means of analyzing

how the universal aspirations of philosophy are at the

same time rooted in the uniqueness of a homeworld

from which philosophy itself emerges- a theme that

JACQUES DERRIDA, among others, has taken up. It also al

lows us to grasp the very structure of generative singu

larities such as "family home," "home-town," "home

polis" or "home-nation" in their generation. These sin

gularities are presupposed by any philosophical enter

prise- even a generative one- that makes universal

claims. Social ontology. Phenomenological description

of homeworlds and alienworlds, and of their co

constitutive relation for the gen erati ve framework, ad

dresses the structures of concrete human communities,

the meaning of social ties, shared as well as divergent

interests, and the generative meaning of unique per

sons, both individual and communal. Accordingly, it

provides the descriptions necessary for a phenomen

ology of solidarity and for a philosophy of "limits"

(see MAX SCHELER, MICHAEL THEUNJSSEN, and BERNHARD

WALDENFELS).

Ethical theory. Generative phenomenology pro

vides a phenomenological account of the ethical de

mand by describing the experience ofthis demand as it

is given or pregiven through the encounter with others

qua home comrades and qua aliens. The "other" is not

just any "other" but the gendered other, the familiar

home comrade sharing similar customs, the alien who

bears an inexhaustible strangeness within the home, the

insuperable particularity of the alien from the alien

world, etc. Phenomenologically, this is described as

experiencable inaccessibility, or what EMMANUEL LEV

INAS has called "infinity." Such generative descriptions

are lacking in ethical discourse theory (e.g., Jurgen

Habermas, Jean-Fran<;ois Lyotard).

Normality and abnormality. Generative pheno

menology can COntribute to a PSYCHIATRY, PSYCHOL

OGY, and SOCIOLOGY of normality and abnormal

ity (Georges Canguilhem, MICHEL FOUCAULT, Emile

Durkheim [ 1858-1917]). It does not presuppose the

normal to be the natural, original, or average, or the

abnormal to be unnatural or deviant. lnstead, normal

ity and abnormality are cast as concordance, optimality,

typicality, and familiarity, enabling generative pheno

menology to take into account both normality as a lived

relation developed in socio-historical contexts and ab

normality as an ability to institute new norms. Gener

ative phenomenology is in its own way a "genealogy,"

since it accounts for the generation of normative tele

ologies in experience, and for the way in which norms

qua norms can be overcome through the institution of

competing teleologies.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Bemet, Rudolf. "Le monde et le sujet." Philosophie 21 (1989), 57-76.

Carr, David. Phenomenology and the Problem of History: A Study of Husserl :S Transcendental Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1974.

-. Time. Narrative. and History. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Held, Klaus. "Heimwelt, Fremdwelt, die eine Welt." In Perspektiven und Probleme der Husserlschen Phănomenologie. Phănomenologische Forschungen Band 24125. Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1991, 305--37.

Holenstein, Elmar. "Europa und die Menschheit. Zu Husserls kulturphilosophischen Meditationen." In Phănomenologie im Widerstreit. Zum 50. Todestag Edmund Husserls. Ed. Christoph Jamrne and Otto Poggeler. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989, 40--64.

Husserl, Edmund. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918-1926. Ed. Margot Fleischer. Husserliana Il. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966.

-. Zur Phănomenologie der Intersubjektivităt. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil: 1929--1935. Ed. Iso Kem. Husserliana 15. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973.

-. "Gmndlegende Untersuchungen zum phănomeno

logischen Urspmng der Răumlichkeit der Natur" [1934]. In Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl. Ed. Marvin Farber. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 11940, 307-25; "Foundational Investigations ofthe Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature." Trans. Fred Kersten. In Husserl: Shorter Works. Ed. Peter McCorrnick and Frederick A. Elliston. Notre Dame, IN: University ofNotre Dame Press, 1981, 222-33.

-. "Notizen zur Raurnkonstitution" [1934]. Ed. Alfred Schutz. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1 (1941 ), 21-37.


-. "Die Welt der lebendigen Gegenwart und die Konstitution der ausserleiblichen Umwelt." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 6 ( 1946), 323--43; "The World of the Living Prescnt and the Constitution of the Surrounding World Externa! to the Organism." Trans. Frederick A. Elliston and Lenore Langsdorf. In Husserl: Shorter Works. Ed. Peter McCormick and Frederick A. Elliston. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981, 238-50.

Sprondel, Walter M., and Richard Grathoff, eds. Alfi·ed Schtltz und die Idee des Alltags in den Sozialwissenschaften. Stuttgart: Enke, 1979.

Steinbock, Anthony J. "The New 'Crisis' Contribution: A Supplementary Edition of Edmund Husserl's Crisis Texts." Review of'Metaphysics 47 ( 1994), 557-84.

-. 'The Project of Ethical Renewal and Critique: Edmund Husserl's Early Phcnomenology of Cu !ture." The Southem Journal o{Philosoph1· 32 ( 1994), 449--64.

-. "Phenomenological Concepts of Normality and Abnormality." Man and World 28 ( 1995). 241--60.

-. Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology afier Husserl. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1995.

-. "Generativity and Generative Phenomenology." Husserl Studies 12 (1995), 55-79.

Waldenfcls. Bernhard. Der Stache/ des Fremden. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990.

Welton, Donn. "Husserl and the Japanese." Review of'Metaphysics 44 ( 1991 ), 575--606.

ANTHONY J. STEINBOCK Southern Illinois University

GENETIC PHENOMENOLOGY One of the most important and most baffiing developments

in EDMUND HUSSERL's philosophical method was the

expansion between 1917 and 1921 of the tran

scendental phenomenology of 1deen zu einer reinen Phiinomenologie und phiinomenologischen Philosophie 1 ( 1913) into a "systematic phenomenology" that

includes both a "static" and a "genetic" component.

The overwhelming importance of this difference is

brought home by the fact that it also frames MARTIN

HEIDEGGER 's working method in Sein und Zeit ( 1927).

The key to understanding genetic phenomenology

is first to clarify its relationship to the project of a tran

scendental phenomenology as Husserl first framed it in

1deen1-to set that project in relationship to a reframing

of the field of transcendental analysis once the results

of his Cartesian way are seen as provisional and once

Husserl begins to search for "origins" - and then to

understand how his account of eidetic structures is sup-

plemented by a theory oftransformation. The sequence

of disciplines that forms Husserl's systematic pheno

menology are also, roughly, stages through which the

development ofhis systematic phenomenology passed.

The first discipline, developed in 1deen 1 and 11 [ 1912-15], attempts to secure a transcendental ground

for FORMAL ANO MATERIAL ONTOLOGIES. That ground is

the structure of INTENTIONALITY. Husserl thinks of re

gional ontologies as phenomenological studies that use

EIDETIC METHOD to describe the essential structures of a

given, restricted domain of beings or objects in terms

of the manner they are presented in experience. He

sometimes labels his method here "analytic pheno

menology," but it may be better to call it categoria!

phenomenology in that its goal is to clarify the basic categories of beings in terms of certain structural

invariants that constitute and certain rules that regu

late the relationship between kinds ofbeings and types

of experience. Regional ontologies each articulate a

"part" of the "whole." The clarification of the total

ity itself requires recourse to what is "foundational"

to ali regional fields. That discipline is transcendental

phenomenology proper. But in 1921 Husserl goes on

to restrict its scope as he describes this grounding dis

cipline as a "universal phenomenology of the general

structures of consciousness." Together with categoria!

phenomenology it forms the core ofwhat he, also during this period, labeled "static" phenomenology.

The task of a static phenomenology is to secure the

structure (intentionality) that provides the irreducible

ground to the various regions, which then allows us

to frame each as a sphere of constitution. The method

that secures the ground of ali regions in intentionality

also provides each with its basic form of analysis: since

the as-structure of appearances is understood in terms

of the one to or for whom objects and complexes are

manifest, all intentiona! analysis is "correlational"; in

accounting for the determinacy of the region in ques

tion, the relevant type of sense structure (NOEMA) is

placed in relationship to the type of act (noesis) or

acts in and through which objects or complexes are

apprehended or used. The transcendental phenomenology of 1deen 1 was

limited to the immediately intuitable, essential struc

tures of transcendental subjectivity. Accordingly, the

transcendental domain was not a field but a "system

atically self-enclosed infinity of essential properties."

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, Jose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner ( eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

GENETIC PHENOMENOLOGY 267

The treatment of intentionality as a grounding struc

ture rather than a field of analysis was fostered by

his Cartesian formulation of the reduction in Ideen !,

which created an ontologica! divide between the being

of the world and the being of subjectivity. As a result

the ground of the various regions of the world is se

cured apart from a regressive analysis that would move

back from their structures to their origins. Instead, we

are limited to an account that gives us an irreducible,

necessary, and universal structure apprehended "ali at

once" in a transcendental reflection, without a clear

understanding of how it is internally connected to the

regional ontologies we are attempting to clarify.

In Ideen J transcendental phenomenology was taken

to be CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY. But with the de

velopment of genetic phenomenology Husserl carne

to treat constitutive analysis as different from his first

"universal phenomenology ofthe general structures of

consciousness" in that through its study of the "hor

izontal" structure of experience and through its anal

ysis of underlying modalizations and transformations

that give rise to manifest structures, constitutive anal

ysis uncovers a depth to the "sphere of being" first

opened by the transcendental EPOCHE AND REDLICTION.

In contrast to a "horizontal" axis along which we might

situate regional fields, a "vertical" axis is opened, trans

form ing the grounding structure of intentionality into

a transcendentalfie/d to be explored. In adding depth

it enables us to understand how the regions basic to

and explicated by regional ontologies are derived. The

difference between "surface" and "depth" establishes

an interna/ connection between regional and transcen

dental fields.

Without using regional ontologies as our guiding

thread, we wi\1 not understand the difference between

the horizontal and the vertical axes ofthe field of consti

tution. Constitutive phenomenology, properly under

stood, does not give us yet "another" region besides

the ones opened by categoria! analysis but rather de

scribes structures belonging to the order of sense or

MEANING, which allow them to become determinate

fields. I f the focus in categoria! phenomenology is on

the identity and difference ofthe eidetic structures of a

given field, the concern in constitutive phenomenology

is to trace the "origin" of those structures by looking

at, for example, the series oftransformations by which

everyday speech becomes propositional discourse, as

well as the experiences that make them possible. As

will be discussed shortly, this involves a study of the

internat ties between modalities of active synthesis and

then between active and passive synthesis.

The account of origins in constitutive phenomen

ology forms a bridge to genetic analysis proper. Be

fore dealing with their relationship we should situate

Husserl's genetic analysis more generally in contrast

to static phenomenology.

Genetic phenomenology reframes the results of

Husserl 's static account by rescinding two "abstrac

tions" that made his first characterization of intention

ality possible. ( 1) The "pure EGo," first described as

a "pole" of unity definable only in terms of the acts

and actions that it serves to relate, is recast as an "ab

stract" structure of the "concrete ego," which has yet

other transcendental features. It possesses general ca

pabilities or capacities, whose exercise leads to the

acquisition of dispositional tendencies to experience

things one way rather than another, what Husserl calls

"habitualities." Together they introduce a certain his

toricity to consciousness. (2) The WORLD, which Jdeen

J reduced and drew into the sphere of "immanence"

as a counterpole, as something identica! posited by

consciousness, is reframed as a concrete world that

has undergone a process of "sedimentation" in which

achievements in HISTORY have been deposited into its

structure. In short, the first notion of intentionat con

sciousness is now elaborated as intentionat lţfe; the

first notion ofworld is recast as lifeworld. As a result,

genetic analysis expands the parameters of the inten

tiona! structure first opened by static analysis: ( 1) how

ever fixed Husserl was onan ego logica! starting point,

the concrete ego itself is understood as essentially re

lational, as subjectivity immersed in intersubjectivity

and situated in a community; and (2) the world is now

elaborated both as equiprimordial with INTERSUBJECTIV

ITY and as a historically circumscribed lifeworld. The

effect of reframing and expansion was to internally

connect the being of the field of intentionality with its

becoming.

Static analysis deals neither with the "enigma" of

TIME-consciousness nor with SPACE. The recovery of

these moments, which carries us beyond Husserl's

categoria! analysis into his constitutive and then his

genetic phenomenology, takes place in two different

registers. In his constitutive analysis they are studied


as "syntheses" underlying the varieties of experiential acts. And this account is extended in his genetic analysis when Husserl discovers, through a further analysis of protention, an interna! connection between space and time. But from the point of view of the method itself, we can think of constitutive phenomenology as an explication ofthe "spatiality" ofthe transcendental field, while genetic analysis unfolds its "temporality."

This second register is brought into play by a development in phenomenological method that allowed it to integrate temporally and historically configured structures into its first "formal" notion of the horizon. The depth first discovered through a constitutive account can be described not only in terms of structural but also temporal transformations. At the same time this locates the difference between constitutive and genetic phenomenology. As he puts it in Zur Phănomenologie der lntersuhjektivităt II [ 1921-28], "To trace [the order of] constitution is not to trace the [ order of] genesis, which is, precisely, the genesis of constitution, itself actuated as genesis in a monad." Genetic phenomenology deepens the account of the world by adding to a constitutive account an analysis of the ro le of background and context in the configuration of regions of experience. It deepens the account of our being in the world by schematizing the interplay of experience and discourse constitutive of the transformation of o ne region internally or one region into another as temporal. It treats the dynamic interplay of experience and discourse as deployed over time and as itself part of a process, historical in nature, that accounts for the concrete configuration of a region.

In general we can say that genetic analysis treats the relationship between the regions or the transformation of a whole region into another historical form by seeing transformative structures as temporal. What is distinct about genetic analysis is that it accounts for various lateral relationships between different vertical Iines of constitution found in the transcendental field. These lateral relations define the diachronic interplay of language, experience, and appearances in terms of background and context, an interplay that is at work in the deep structure ofthose regions covered by categoria! phenomenology.

The acts of experience in and through which objects, fields, and even the self are presented are ali characterized as syntheses by Husserl. Static analysis

describes them in terms of their form and then examines the rules regulating different noetic-noematic correlations. By contrast, genetic analysis understands syntheses notjust in terms ofform, but also in terms of productive achievement, not just in terms of their being but also their becoming. Husserl dealt mainly with two form of genesis, which he distinguishes as active and passive. Active genesis refers to the conscious or deliberate production of different ideal complexes of understanding or real cultural complexes from preconstituted elements or objects. Complexes of understanding can range from something like counting to advanced scientific theories. Real cultural complexes run from a shepherd 's song to Beethoven 's N inth Symphony, from a child's sketch to a composition by Paul Klee.

Husserl 's own focus is upon the transformations of meaning that allows us to effect a change from "occasional," everyday talk to something like propositional discourse. He suggests that ali truth statements indicate "earlier" types ofspeech and then experience from which they arise. Judgments have a "genesis ofmeaning." They point back, level by level, to moda! transformations from which they are derived, to nested or implied meanings in any one ofthose levels, to a context not directly expressed in their content yet constitutive of the meaning in play, and finally, to the origination oftheir semantic elements from experience. This gives not only a certain "occasionality" but also a definable "historicality" to "objective" discourse.

AII active synthesis, however, is interwoven with what is not spontaneously produced. The final level to which active synthesis points is passive synthesis. This level might itself be the result of previous acts of active production that ha ve become sedimented into the world and, as a result, form a "secondary sensibility." Or it might be a level of embodied perception through which things are presented without active construction or interpretation, a level of"originary sensibility."

Husserl 's account of passive synthesis moves through his constitutive to his genetic analysis. He turns, for example, to the presence of similarity and contrast played out in the relationship between adumbrations and objects, recurring across a number of different regional fields, and undertakes a clarification of their "origin." In doing so he studies the differential interplay of associative, spatial, and temporal synthe-

GENETIC PHENOMENOLOGY 269

ses that account for the transfer of sense involved in

our recognition of something as familiar and for the

transformation of sense that arises either as a result

ofbecoming acquainted with new fcatures or ofbeing

disappointed in our anticipations. Transformation has not only a structural but also a temporal dimension.

Protention, to the extent that it directs experience and

cuts a certain "line" of anticipation through the mul

tiple possibilities thrown up by a given object, even

links us to the motility of the lived BODY and a certain

affectivity that draws our intentions into a nexus ofin

volvements. Ultimately ali passive syntheses rest upon the interplay ofretention and protention, which allows

Husserl then to treat the basic laws of genesis as laws

of time-consciousness. The account ofpassive synthesis belongs to a disci

pline that Husserl, echoing but greatly expanding KANT,

calls transcendental aesthetics. Husserl takes originary

PERCEPTION as his paradigm case here, which he sets

in contrast to the active production of propositional

claims studied by his transcendental logic. But it also

seems that previous active constructions that have be

come sedimented and thus part of our sensibility and

sense ofthings fali under its jurisdiction as well. Tran

scendental aesthetics, then, covers not just perceptual senses but, with modification, the acquired and habitual

meanings that also shape our concrete lifeworld. This gives us yet another interesting way of un

derstanding the difference between constitutive and genetic analysis. We can say that constitutive pheno

menology schematizes the structural transformations

making phenomenal fields possible according to tran

scendental space. They are framed as layers or strata

beneath each field, providing it with its supporting

ground. Genetic phenomenology schematizes those

transformations in terms of transcendental time, and

thus as a process of development in which the earlier

gives rise to the !ater and in which the future draws

and gives direction to the now. Not only is the ideal

ity of sense and meaning clarified through the notion

of repeatability over time, but their transference anei

transformation rest upon the interlacing of retentions

and protentions across a living present.

At yet a deeper and final level of genetic analysis

Husserl discovers that space and time themselves are

not just "forms" but are generated, on the one hand,

by the interplay of position, motility, and place, and

on the other, by the streaming flow of the process of

self-temporalization itself. Husserl's studies ofthe self

generation of space and time are clearly the most diffi

cult of ali his genetic studies.

For reasons having to do with his theory ofEVIDENCE

Husserl uses the ego and its acquired world as his start

ing point. But Husserl's recognition that subjectivity is

necessarily concrete - that the other is not merely

a correlate of my own intentiona! acts, but someone

who affects me - led him to speak of a genesis at

the level of community, ETHICS, culture, and RELIGION.

In his published writings this appears for the first time

in a series of articles he wrote for a Japanese periodi

ca!, partially published between 1923 and 1924. There

he traces a development through the course of history

toward a certain te/os in which rational interaction be

comes normative. Once Husserl found a way of integrating the notion

of development and transformation into his phenomen

ological method, and once he found a way of moving

from his first starting point to communal existence and

the lifeworld, new horizons open for his phenomen

ology. For this reason we find Husserl 's very late work

moving in the direction of yet another type of anal

ysis, called GENERATIVE PHENOMENOLOGY, in which the parameters of life and death, homeworld and alien

world, and even earth and world are used to expand his first notion of genetic analysis. What holds these

accounts together is that temporality is understood as

the final source in terms ofwhich ali development, ali

becoming, including that interplay of conscious life

and world constitutive of our essential historicity, is

explained. Time, seem from within, is the form of in

tentiona! genesis. This clarification ofthe difference between catego

ria!, constitutive, and genetic phenomenology shows us

how deeply Heidegger's working method in Sein und Zeit, for ali the striking differences in content resulting

from its application, is indebted to Husserl's frame

work. While it does not actually attempt to carry them

out, Sein und Zeit establishes a place for regional on

tologies. Because he wants the use of"ontological" to

be reserved for his transcendental account, Heidegger

characterizes such regional disciplines as "ontic." With

that to the side, Division 1 undertakes extensive struc

tural descriptions of the various moments of DASEIN as

being-in-the-world, as well as accounts ofthe "origins"


ofthe present-at-hand, on the one hand, and assertions, on the other. It clearly works with the resources of a constitutive phenomenology with one important qualification: Heidegger avoids treating any one constitutive level as absolutely basic, stressing in its stead the sense in which founding relations are relative and in which each level is yet another dependent "moment" of the whole structure of Dasein. Division Il then attempts to reframe the results of this account in terms of temporality, which is precisely what Husserl's notion of genetic phenomenology calls for. However different the content oftheir theories, there is a surprising coincidence between the different levels oftheir systematic phenomenological methods.

Because references to the notion of genetic phenomenology are very sketchy in the works Husserl published during his lifetime and because seminal texts that discuss and use the notion of genetic phenomenology only became available in the Husserliana volumes published after 1965, the concept is rarely taken up directly by !ater figures in the phenomenological tradition. Philosophers such as Heidegger, MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY, JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, and PAUL RICCEUR understood that a difference between static and genetic phenomenology was at work in the development of Husserl's thinking, but they tended to appropriate the contrast for their own ends rather than discuss it directly.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Aguirre, Antonio. Genetische Phănomenologie und Reduktion. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970.

A1meida, Guido Antonio de. Sinn und lnhalt in der genetischen Phănomenologie E. Husserls. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972.

Bernet, Rudolf, Iso Kern, and Eduard Marbach. "Statische und genetische Konstitution." In their Edmund Husserl. Darstellung seines Denkens. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1989, chap. 7; "Static and Genetic Constitution." In their An Introduc! ion to Husserlian Phenomenology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993, chap. 7.

Carr, David. "Genetic Phenomenology." In his Phenomenology and the Prohlem o{ Histmy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974, chap. 3.

Husserl, Edmund. "Statische und genetische Methode." In his Analysen zurpassiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918-1926. Ed. Margot Fleischer. Husserliana 1 1. Thc Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966, 336-45.

-. Zur Phănomenologie der lntersuhjektivităt. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil: 1921-1928. Ed. Iso Kern.

Husserliana 14. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973, 34--48, 217-21.

-. "Flinf Aufsătze iiber Erneuerung." In his Auf~ătze und Vortrăge (1922-1937). Ed. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp. Husserliana 27. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988, 3-94.

-. Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft. Ed. Paul Janssen. Husserliana 17. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974, 213-22, 315-22; Formal and Transcendental Logic. Trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969, 205-15, 314--24.

-. Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortrăge. Ed. Stephan Strasser. Husserliana 1. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963, 99-121; Cartesian Meditations: An lntroduction to Phenomenology. Trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960, 65-88.

Welton, Donn. "Static and Genetic Phenomenology." In his The Origins o{ Meaning. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983, chap. 5.

-. The Other Husserl. Forthcoming, chap. 1-7.

DONN WELTON State University o{ New York, Stony Brook

GEOGRAPHY, BEHAVIORAL

GEOGRAPHY. See BEHAVIORAL

GEOGRAPHY, SOCIAL See SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY.

GERMANY Intensive research has been done on the development of phenomenology in Germany before World War II and the main figures and central themes ofthat time are covered by other entries in this Encyclopedia. This entry will survey the early development. The period after the war will be considered in more detail.

Phenomenology had its roots in AUSTRIAN philosophy and beyond that in BRITISH EMPIRICISM, but its original growth has been in Germany and it has spread from there to FRANCE, JAPAN, RUSSIA, the UNITED STATES, and the rest ofthe world. EDMUND HUSSERL, the founder of phenomenology, studied with FRANZ BRENTANO and was deeply inftucnced by Brentano's project of a descriptive psychology. But it was above ali Brentano's account of intentionality or object-relatedness as the


GERMANY 271

prime characteristic of psychic phenomena that influenced Husserl, whose work before the mid-1890s, including the Philosophie der Arithmetik (1891 ), is fundamentally Brentanist in conception. Husserl broke with his teacher and advocated a non-immanentist account of INTENTIONALITY in his tradition-founding Lo

gische Untersuchungen ( 1900--1901 ). From the very beginning Husserl's conceptions of

formal LOGIC and MATHEMATICS were guided by David Hilbert (1862~1943). Husserl's new approach in the Logische Untersuchungen might be understood as a reaction to GOTTLOB FREGE's Platonistic criticism ofhis PSYCHOLOGISM in the Phi/osophie der Arithmetik, but his phenomenology of logic has nothing in common with Frege's radical Platonism. The Logische Untersuchungen reject the psychologistic interpretation of logic that goes back at least to John Stuart Miii and could sti li be found in Brentano's reduction of ideal entities to psychic entities as well as in the transcendental psychologism present in the theory constructions ofthe neo-Kantians. But Husserl retained Brentano 's concept ofintentionality as the basic tool for his own enterprise. He maintained that a clear account ofthe difference between real, mental, and ideal entities can only be given with the aid of intentiona! analysis. The ma in question for Husserl was the "how of the givenness" of ideal objects for consciousness. In contrast, Frege's critique ofpsychologism rejected any position that recognized ideal entities but was sti li interested in the question of their givenness to subjectivity. Husserl called philosophy back to the "matters themselves," to the descriptive analytic investigation of experience itself: both to objects of every sort as they present themselves and to the structures of consciousness of such objects.

The Logische Untersuchungen had an immediate impact. WILHELM DILTHEY described it as "epochal," and as its influence spread, Husserl attracted increasing numbers of students to Gottingen. Another group emerged in Munich. ALEXANDER PFĂNDER, who used the term phenomenology even before Husserl in the title of a book, was the head of this group. Husserl visited Munich in 1904. While he was primarily concerned with the philosophical foundations oflogic and mathematics and had focused on the phenomenology of cognition, those under his early influence begun to use his approach, especially his EIDETIC METHOD, on a quite diverse set of problems. The work they initiated

during these early years on ACTION, EMOTION, ETHICS, FEMINISM, LANGUAGE, LAW, LOGIC, PERCEPTION, RELIGION, VALUE, etc. continued thereafter. This early group included THEODOR CONRAD, HEDWIG CONRAD-MARTIUS, JOHANNES DAUBERT, MORITZ GEIGER, NICOLAI HARTMANN, ROMAN INGARDEN, ALEXANDRE KOYRE, HANS LIPPS, ALEXANDER PFĂNDER, ADOLF REINACH, WILHELM SCHAPP, MAX SCHELER, EDITH STEIN, and, !ater, HERBERT SPIEGELBERG. At this same time, Husserl's work began to influence PSYCHIATRY through KARL JASPERS and LUDWIG BINSWANGER.

Most ofthe members ofthe early group ofphenomenologists at Gottingen adhered to so-called mundane or REALISTIC PHENOMENOLOGY. Their work involved substantive objections to Husserl 's own work along with their own creative appropriation of it. Some remained essentially phenomenologists, while others established independent philosophical positions strongly influenced by phenomenology. Although not strictly from Gottingen, the most influential philosopher belonging to this early group was MAX SCHELER, and much ofhis work continued tobe deeply phenomenological, especially his discussions of emotion, value, and religion, as well as ethics. But while Husserl was to speak of "anthropologism" as a philosophical error, Scheler became one ofthe advocates ofPHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY.

Husserl had referred to phenomenology as "descriptive psychology" in the first edition ofthe Logische Untersuchungen. But he soon carne to characterize this as a misnomer. The descriptions of the intentiona! acts in which objects are given are themselves eidetic and refer toana priori. But for Husserl this was sti li insufficient for understanding phenomenology as a first philosophy seeking an ultimate grounding. According to Husserl, this could only be achieved by a transcendental turn. In Ideen zu ei ner reinen Phiinomenologie und phiinomenologischen Philosophie 1 ( 1913) he asserted that philosophical radicality requires us to view intentiona! processes not as parts of the world, but rather in their function of constituting the world. Intentionality

is the "origin" ofthe world qua phenomenon and thus cannot itselfbe merely another part ofthe world. Purely transcendental consciousness as an abject of study is the correlate of a specifically transcendental attitude on the part of the phenomenologist, and this attitude is adopted through transcendental EPOCHE AND REDUC-


TION. The transcendental turn for Husserl opened up

the fu li range and significance of CONSTITUTIVE PHENO

MENOLOGY.

The idea of "ultimate grounding" (Letzt

begriindung) as the central task of philosophy is

neo-Kantian. The radical rejection of KANT and neo

Kantianism in the Untersuchungen is considerably

weakened in the !deen. Husserl even claimed that he

was now a bie to recognize a pure transcendental EGO in

the framework of his phenomenology. The treatment

of Kant in his !ater work, though highly critica! with re

spect to Kant's constructive and hypothetical method,

is, in general, positive. In particular, Husserl recog

nized the viability of Kant's transcendental question.

The influence of the neo-Kantians and especially of

Paul Natorp (1854--1924) on the development leading

to the Ideen and beyond cannot be denied. Most ofthe

phenomenologists of the Gottingen circle, however,

were not able to follow Husserl's turn to transcenden

tal constitutive phenomenology. Ingarden in particular

was to write a sustained critique of Husserl 's tran

scendental turn and a thoroughjustification ofrealistic

phenomenology.ln the 1920s Husserl gathered together

a group of young phenomenologists in Freiburg that

incJuded OSKAR BECKER, EUGEN FINK, FRITZ KAUFMANN,

LUDWIG LANDGREBE, HANS REINER, and above al!, MARTIN

HEIDEGGER. Husserl 's hopes for the fu ture ofphenomen

ology centered increasingly on Heidegger. He sketched

out a project in which the task of Becker was to de

velop the phenomenology of logic and mathematics

as well as the NATURAL SCIENCES. Heidegger's domain

was to be the phenomenology of the HUMAN SCIENCES.

When Husserl retired from Freiburg in 1928, Heideg

ger was his designated successor, but he soon decided

that Heidegger had abandoned transcendental pheno

menology and turned to anthropologism with the pub

lication of Sein und Zeit (1927). Most ofthe members

of the Freiburg ci rele eventually, and in different de

grees, carne under Heidegger's influence. In the 1920s

Husserl was also influential among phenomenologists

beyond the Freiburg group such as FELIX KAUFMANN, AL

FRED SCHUTZ, and ARON GURWITSCH. In fact, with the aid

of GEST ALT PSYCHOLOGY, Gurwitsch deveJoped a subtJe

criticism of certa in implications of Husserl 's transcen

dental reduction without rejecting it completely. He,

together with Schutz, Spiegelberg, the two Kaufmanns,

and the Americans MARVIN FARBER and DORION CAIRNS

took German phenomenology to the United States be

ginning in the 1920s.

Husserl 's own attempts to develop his project in

further volumes of the !deen and most of his other

work as well as his lectures and research manuscripts

remained unpublished for many years. The richness of

the work ofthe 1920s only appeared and had influence

on German phenomenology after 1950. By his death in

1938, Husserl had only published severa! variants of

introductions to his phenomenology, among them the

Encyclopaedia Britannica article ( 1929) and the Cartesianische Meditationen [ 1931] in its earlier French ver

sion. Excluding the Vorlesungen zur Phanomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins [ 1905], edited by Heideg

ger in 1928, Husserl's last book published in Germany

was Formale und transzendentale Logik ( 1929), a new

exposition ofhis phenomenology oflogic in the frame

work of transcendental phenomenology. The first two

parts ofhis last great though unfinished work, Die Kri

sis der europaischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phanomenologie ( 1936), where he developed

the concept of LIFEWORLD, had to be published in YU

GOSLAVIA. In addition, Erfahrung und Urteil ( 1939),

a collection of manuscripts on the phenomenology of

logic edited by Landgrebe, was printed outside Ger

many in CZECHOSLOVAKIA and became available in Ger

many only after 1948.

Heidegger's preference in the 1920s for the pre

transcendental phenomenology ofthe Logische Untersuchungen over transcendental phenomenology was

the harbinger for the future. With the publication of

Sein und Zeit in 1927, he shifted the focus of pheno

menology to EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY and !ater to

HERMENEUTIC AL PHENOMENOLOGY. The question of Be

ing (Seins.fi·age) was for Heidegger the hidden presup

position ofHusserl's approach. In his early lectures the

analysis ofthe ontologica! difference took the place of

the phenomenological reduction. In what he took tobe

opposition to Husserl 's transcendentalism, Heidegger

first turned to the interpretive analysis of a worldly

situated and historical engagement. (Drawing on the

work of Jaspers as well as Heidegger, HANNAH ARENDT

appears the first in this existential-phenomenological

tendency.) While Sein und Zeit was still genuinely

phenomenological in inspiration, after the so-called

Kehre or "turning" ofthe early 1930s, when Heidegger

turned his attention from the analysis of DASEIN's pre-

GERMANY 273

comprehension of Being to Being itself, his thought

became less and less phenomenological, although the

origins in phenomenology never entirely disappeared.

Toward the end of his life, Husserl himself real

ized that the project of a pure transcendental pheno

menology had lost its influence. The philosophies of

Scheler and Heidegger, his "antipodes," and, accord

ing to a letter to Ingarden, the general irrationalism

of the 20th century dominated the field. His hope was

that future generations would rediscover the signifi

cance of his work for a true, rational philosophy. In

the wake of the emergence of the interna! crisis of

the phenomenological movement, the politica! and cul

tural catastrophe ofthe Nazi regime and its racism and,

ultimately, the war caused a brutal disruption ofphilo

sophical discourse in Germany. Further discussion of

different conceptions of phenomenology was simply

impossible.

In the first decades after the war, the phenomen

ological movement "in the broader sense," as Spiegel

berg !ater defined it, was ali ve in Germany in the strong

influence of French existential phenomenology, above

alJ through thc works of.JEAN-PAUL SARTRE and MAURICE

MERLEAU-PONTY, on the one hand, and Heidegger on

the other. Heidegger's involvement in the Third Reich

was remembered in Germany after the war, but many

considered it a personal mistake not connected with

his philosophy. His earlier writings had had a powerful

influence on Husserl 's students ofthe 1920s with very

few exceptions, e.g., HANS REINER, and he was the lead

ing figure in German philosophy from the 1930s into

the 1 960s. With Sartre, Heidegger, and Jaspers the catchword

of the first decade after the war in Germany was

not "phenomenology" nor even "existential pheno

menology," but EXISTENTIALISM, and Heidegger himself

was initially understood as the leading figure of this

movement. There was, in addition, a certain interes!

in Scheler's !ater speculations but no intensive Scheler

research. The older phenomenological movement was

of interes! only for the first historical surveys of philos

ophy in our century, e.g., that ofWolfgang Stegmi.iller.

The question ofwhether or not Husserl was forgotten in

Germany even began to be raised in non-professional

intellectual journals. The question was justified since

in general the rejection of the phenomenological re

duction by Merleau-Ponty was, for different reasons,

shared by the Heideggerians and even the former as

sistants of Husserl.

Right after the war Landgrebe's interes! was to find

a transition from phenomenology to metaphysics, and

Fink explored the possibilities of ontologica! expe

rience; discussed the operational presuppositions in

Husserl 's reduction; and was looking for new founda

tions forphenomenology in speculative thinking. They

kept a critica! distance from Heidegger, but admitted

implicitly that Heidegger 's critique of Husserl was, in

principle, justified. The attempt to do as much jus

tice as possible to Husserl under these circumstances

produced some myths in Husserl interpretation. Al

most commonplace for a long time was the thesis that

Husserl himself had abandoned his original program

in his turn in the Krisis essays to the LIFEWORLD. In

1963 HANS-GEORG GADAMER, by no means a follower

of Husserl but still a skilled interpreter, proved that

these myths were untenable. Unfortunately, this mes

sage failed to reach many phenomenologists 1in Ger

many and, especially, many outside Germany.

The presupposition for a new start ofthe phenomen

ological movement in Germany during the mid-1950s

is the edition ofHusserl's collected works, the Husser

liana, by the Husserl Archives founded by HERMAN LEO

VAN BREDA at Louvain. The availability of the tran

scriptions of Husserl 's research manuscripts at Koln

and Freiburg was also significant for this new begin

ning. The first eight volumes of the Husserliana in

the late 1 950s and 1 960s triggered vigorous discus

sion ofthe phenomenological method and its ultimate

grounding (Letztbegriindung). The significance of the

phenomenology ofthe consciousness ofinner TIME had

already been discovered in this context and remained a

central topic. The volumes ofthe Husserliana that fol

lowed introduced further material relevant to the more

application-oriented research after 1970. Other topics,

not known in their significance before, include GENETIC

and GENERATIVE PHENOMENOLOGY and INTERSUB.IECTIV

ITY. The significance ofHusserl's late phenomenology

for a phenomenology of HISTORY and the HUMAN sci

ENCES could finally be discovered with the aid of this

material, and new possibilities provided by Husserl's

analyses of passive synthesis were used in the pheno

menology of logic.

The history of the institutional framework of the

phenomenological movement in postwar Germany is


a practica! guide to the periods of its development.

The first phase, from 1950 to 1970, was in the begin

ning sti Il under the guidance of scholars from FRANCE

and THE NETHERLANDS. The center of the new begin

ning was the Husserl Archives in Louvain. Landgrebe,

fink, STEPHAN STRASSER, and WALTER BIEMEL, i.e., the

first generation of postwar phenomenologists, worked

at the Archives. In 1949, Fink founded the branch ofthe

Archives at Freiburg. The branch at Koln was founded

in 1951. Jts first director was KARL-HEINZ VOLKMANN

SCHLUCK, who was followed by Landgrebe after 1956.

Van Breda also initiated a series of international collo

quia in phenomenology. Fink was the only German on

the original committee. The first meeting took place

in France in 1951, the second in Germany in 1956,

the third again in France in 1957, and the fourth in

Germany in 1969.

The foundation of the "Deutsche Gesellschaft fUr

phanomenologische Forschung" (German Society for

Phenomenological Research) was prepared at the

fourth colloquium in Schwabisch Hali. With this, the

second period of the development of phenomenology

in Germany began. Two international meetings in

Munich in 1971 and Berlin in 1974 were organized

by the society and published in the first three vol

umes in the series of the society, Phanomenologische Forschungen (Phenomenological Studies), edited by

ERNST WOLFGANG ORTH. The society institutionaiized its

international meetings in 1976 and the proceedings

of its biennial meetings have been published in the

Phanomenologische Forschungen together with the

proceedings of other conferences on phenomenology

in Germany. The development leading to the activities

of the Deutsche Gesellschaft was, in the beginning,

devoted to the rediscovery of Husserl in the wake of

the publication of the Husserliana. But the activities

of the society were by no means restricted to such

research. The entire extent of the phenomenological

movement, both its past and future development, has

been discussed.

The first meeting organized by the society was de

voted to "Munich phenomenology." It concentrated

primarily on Pfander's work and was published in

1975 in the Phaenomenologica series. Further research

was done by Spiegeiberg and KARL SCHUHMANN. The

Pfander-Studien (Pfander studies) were published in

1982 by Spiegelberg and EBERHART AVE-LALLEMANT.

The Pfander Archives at Munich are under the care

of Ave-Lallemand. The center for Brentano research

is Brentano-Studien, which was founded by Wilhelm

Baumgartner. The Scheler Gesammelte Werke, under

the care of Maria Scheler and MANFRED FRINGS, was

published in Bern and !ater in Bonn beginning in

1954, but very few publications devoted to Scheler's

work have appeared. However, a collection of essays,

Max Scheler im Gegenwartsgeschehen der Phi/osophie, was published by PAUL GOOD in 1975. The Max

Scheler Gesellschaft was founded in Ko1n in 1993.

The first volume ofthe Heidegger Gesamtausgahe ap

peared in 1976. The publication ofthese early lectures

has shed new 1ight on the links between phenomen

ology and Heidegger's first steps toward FUNDAMEN

TAL ONTOLOGY. The Martin Heidegger Gesellschaft was

founded in Messkirch in 1986 and has organized sev

era! conferences and publishes its own series.

The first postwar period of phenomeno1ogical re

search had its roots chiefly in the circles growing out

ofthe Husserl Archives at Louvain, Freiburg, and Koln.

GERD BRAND, who worked at Louvain, published the first

study extensively using the unpublished manuscripts

of Husserl in 1955. 1so KERN, also connected with

the archives, published a monumental historical work

on Husserl's relations to Kant and the neo-Kantians

in 1964. Landgrebe, the director of the archives at

Koln, published his new conception in 1963 and Fink

at Freiburg developed his critique of Husserl 's tran

scendental phenomenology grounded in his personal

knowledge of Husserl's intentions. He reached his fi

nal position in which speculative thinking and dialec

tic provide the foundation for phenomenology in Sein,

Wahrheit, Welt ( 1958). Biemel contributed a signif

icant essay on the development of Husserl's pheno

menology.

Landgrebe had many students and assistants in

Koln and founded a very productive school. Two

Festschrifien, one edited by ULRICH CLAESGESand KLAUS

HELD, the other by Biemel, were both published in 1972.

Independent publications belonging to this context are

the early essays ofHERMANN LOBBE, a former assistant of

Landgrebe; the investigations of HANS ULRICH HOCHE on

non-empirica! knowledge in Kant and Husserl, KLAUS

HELD on the transcendental ego and the living present;

and Claesges on the constitution of SPACE. LOTHAR

ELEY's critica! investigations concerning the crisis of

GERMANY 275

the a priori, influenced by HEGEL and CRITICAL THEORY,

belong to this early Koln tradition as well.

The schoo] begun by GERHARD FUNKE at Mainz had

a very different origin. Husserl 's development was ac

companied in part by the sympathetic and in part by

the critica] and even polemica] responses of the neo

Kantians. The publications ofthe Husserliana renewed

their interest. The critica] remarks of Hans Wagner

and a series of essays written by Funke collected in

a volume published in 1957 were the first responses

of this type. WOLFGANG HERMANN M0LLER, a student of

Funke, wrote the first book interpreting Husserl as a

transcendental idealist. But an independent interest in

Husserl's phenomenology can be found in Mainz be

fore Funke inaugurated this Kantianizing tradition of

Husserl interpretation there. ALWIN DIEMER wrote the

first monograph on Husserl 's philosophy as a whole in

1956. ALOIS ROTH's dissertation is the first attempt to

reconstruct Husserl 's ETHICS.

Funke's coming to Mainz developed a strictly

transcendental methodological approach to Husserl 's

phenomenology with a strong bias toward Kantian and

neo-Kantian problematics. The main topics of con

cern to this school were systematic and critica] reflec

tions on the concept of phenomenology and the history

of phenomenology and its development, especially in

Husserl. Funke's program was corroborated and mod

ified first by THOMAS M. SEEBOHM in 1962 and ]ater by

Orth in 1967. The general tendency of this school is

captured in the title of Funke's Phănomenologie

Metaphysik oder Methode? (1966), which questions

the tendency toward providing phenomenology with

a metaphysical foundation, evident in such works as

Langdrebe 's Phănomenologie und Metaphysik ( 1949). Furtherpublications belongingto this school have been

published since 1970 in the series Conscientia and the

Mainzer philosophische Forschungen.

The structure of the phenomenological movement

and the topics changed after 1970. ELISABETH STROKER

became the director of the Archives at Koln and

WERNFR MARX followed Fink at the Freiburg Archives.

The phenomenological tradition continued at Mainz

with Funke and ]ater Seebohm. But phenomenology

was now well represented in severa! other universi

ties. Munich became the center of Pfănder research.

RUDOLF BERLINGER and HEINRICH ROM BACH, together with

the psychiatrist DIETER wvss, are phenomenologists

working at Wiirzburg; OTTO POGGELER and BERNHARD

WALDFNFELS are at Bochum; He]d and ANTONIO AGUIRRE

are at Wuppertal; and Orth together with KARL-HEINZ

LEMBFCK are at Trier. The problems of the essence of

phenomenology and the justification and possible lim

its of especially Husserl's phenomenology have been

discussed at length and the main interest has now

turned to the various fields of phenomenological re

search. The topics of the majority of the conferences

organized by the German Society for Phenomenology

are devoted to what can be called "applied phenomen

ology." It is therefore difficult to distinguish differ

ent phenomenological schools in this period. The dis

tinction between the different fields of application is

clearer.

Phenomeno]ogy of the NATURAL SCIENCFS has a sigc

nificant place in the work of Elisabeth Stroker, and

other activities in this field were mostly results of her

initiatives. Stroker has been in addition the leading

figure in Husserl scholarship during this period and

has made significant contributions to the phenomen

ology of logic and of history. A collection of her es

says was published in 1987. Werner Marx published

studies of Heidegger and ]ater of Husserl. Interest in

the phenomenology of logic in the narrower sense has

been marginal and in general critica!. ERNST TUGEND

HAT turned tO ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY after his influentiaJ

book, published in 1967, on the concept of TRUTH in

Husserl and Heidegger. He has since published sev

era! critica! essays concerning Husserl's phenomen

ology from this point of view. Hoche made a similar

turn in 1982. Eley's metacritique of formal logic is

written from a quasi-Hegelian perspective and also in

cludes a metacritique of Husserl 's phenomenology of

logic. Husserl's phenomenology of mathematics was

analyzed in two monographs, one by ROGER SCHMIT,

published in 1981, and the other by DIETER LOHMAR,

which was published in 1989. Attempts to apply pheno

menology to the state ofthe art in this discipline in the

second half of the century have been made by See

bohm. Most ofthis work has, however, been published

in English.

The vast majority of work during this period has

been devoted to the Geisteswissenschaften, i.e., pheno

menology of LITERATURE, SOCIOLOGY, HERMENEUTICS,

etc. Significant work in this field had already been

done before 1970- for example, Hans Reiner's in-


vestigations on the foundations of ethics. Fritz Kauf

mann and Walter Biemel made significant contribu

tions in phenomenological AESTHETICS. Roman Ingarden 's books on the literary work of art ha ve been highly

influential in this area, and phenomenological research on history was revived as early as 1953 with the in

vestigations of Wilhelm Schapp. History and lifeworld ha ve also been considered in the works ofboth Stroker

and PAUL JANSSEN. Seebohm published a critica! pheno

menological study on hermeneutics as a methodology

of philological-historical research in 1972, and KARL

HEINZ LEMBECK published work on history as a science

in 1988. The phenomenology of the lifeworld along

with the works of Merleau-Ponty, Schutz, and Gur

witsch are at the center of the research conducted by

the group surrounding RICHARD GRATHOFF conceming

INTERSUBJECTIVITY and LANGUAGE. BERNHARD WALDEN

FELS' study of dialogue published in 1971, his mono

graph on French phenomenology published in 1983,

and the series Ubergiinge ali belong to the activities of

this group. In recent years, significant research has also been

done on the prehistory and history of phenomen

ology. Orth, Schuhmann, and lately also NIELS w. BOKHOVE ha ve published studies on the prehistory ofthe

term "phenomenology:" An investigation conceming

Husserl 's relation to FICHTE was published by HERMANN

TIETJEN in 1980, and the dispute between Husserl and

Jonas Cohn ( 1869-194 7), a neo-Kantian and Fichtean, is, together with a systematic comparison, the topic of

REINALD KLOCKENBUSCH's most recent work.

The productive phase of German phenomenology

carne to its end with the last works of Heidegger af

ter the war. The period of intensive interpretation and further development of this productive phase has lost

its strength. German philosophy now has the character

of experimental investigations including severa! influ

ences from abroad, first of ali pragmatism and analytic

philosophy. In addition most of the philosophers who

had their education after the war and received positions

at the universities wili retire within the next decade. In

these circumstances it is very difficult to give a re

liable estimate for the future, but perhaps there wili

be a retum to the first phase of development, like the

"back-to-Kant" movement in the middle of the 19th

century.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Biemel, Walter. "Die entscheidenden Phasen der Entfaltung von Husserls Phănomenologie." Zeitschrifi fur philosophische Forschung 13 (1959), 187-213; "The Decisive Phases in the Development of Husserl's Philosophy." In The Phenomenology of Husserl: Selected Critica/ Readings. Ed. and trans. R. O. Elveton. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970, 148--73.

Bokhove, Niels W. Phănomenologie. Ursprung und Entwicklungdes Terminus im 18. Jahrhundert. Ph.D. Dissertation, Utrecht, Rijksuniversiteit, 1991.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. "Die phănomenologische Bewegung." Philosophische Rundschau 11 (1963), 1-45; "The Phenomenologica1 Movement." In his Philosophical Hermeneutics. Ed. and trans. David E. Linge. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, 130--81.

Holz, Hanz Heinz. "Husserl - in Deutschland vergessen?" Deutsche Woche Munchen, 2, Nr. 50, 1952, 10.

Orth, Emst Wolfgang. "Der Terminus Phănomenologie bei Kant und Lambert und seine Verbindbarkeit mit Husserls Phănomenologiebegriff." Archiv fur Begriffsgeschichte 26 (1982), 231-49.

-. "On the Present Stage of Research in Phenomenology in Germany." Research in Phenomenology 12 (1982), 197-209.

-. "Phănomenologie." In Handlexikon zur Wissenschaftstheorie. Ed. Hans Seiffert and Gerhard Radnitzky. Munich: Ehreuwirt, 1989, 242-55.

Schuhmann, Karl. "Phănomenologie. Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Reflexion." Husserl Studies 1 ( 1984 ), 31-68.

Sepp, Hans Rainer, ed. Edmund Husserl und die phănomenologische Bewegung. Zeugnisse in Text und Bild. Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1988.

Spiegelberg, Herbert. The Phenomenological Movement. 3rd rev. and enl. ed, with the collaboration of Karl Schuhmann. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982.

Stroker, Elisabeth, and Paul Janssen. Phănomenologische Philosophie. Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1989.

Waldenfels, Bemhard. "Phănomenologie in Deutschland. Geschichte und Aktualităt." Husserl Studies 5 (1988), 143--67.

GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY

ERNST WOLFGANG 0RTH Universităt Trier

THOMAS M. SEEBOHM Universităt Mainz

Eight schools

of Gestalt theory have been identified by BARRY

SMITH, but the Berlin school led by Max Wertheimer

(1880--1943), Kurt Koftka (1886--1941 ), and Wolfgang

Kohler ( 188 7-1967) is what "Gestalt psychology" usu

aliy signifies and is the school that, through the work

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, Iose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner ( eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY 277

Of ARON GURWITSCH and MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY, has

most interested phenomenology.

Gestalt psychology arose through examination of

earlier work. In 1891 Christian von Ehrenfels ( 1859-

1932) in AUSTRIA published "Uber Gestaltqualităten":

when one hears a piece of music, the notes that one

senses are caused by externa! factors, i.e., air waves,

but the me1ody is a "gestalt quality" that is added

by the mind, something shown by how this quality

stays the same when the notes are changed in melodic

transposition. With similar views, Alexius Meinong

(1853-1920) founded a school of psychology at Graz

in which the experimentalist Vittorio Benussi (1878-

1927) posited a factor he called "production" as the

subjective explanation of gestalt qualities. For those at

Graz, the gestalt quality is an ideal object ofhigher or

der, while for von Ehrenfels (and similarly for EDMUND

HUSSERL in his Philosophie der Arithmetik [ 1891]) it is

sensuous or quas1-sensuous.

The Gestalt psychology of the Berlin school began

when Wertheimer investigated apparent motion or phi

phenomena in 1912: if objects a short distance apart are

illuminated in rapid succession, a single object is seen

to move and one can be said to ha ve seen a gestalt or

configuration. A gestalt. in this new signification, is a

concrete structure of constituents that mutually support

and determine one another and not something added

to sense data. Wertheimer and his followers held that

neither a "gestalt quality" nor "sensations" can be given

concretely. When two dots, for example, are seen as a

twosome, both dots function as terminals, one to the left

and the other to the right. In musical transposition, there

is not an identica! melody but two or more particular

auditory configurations ofnotes that are highly similar

with respect to their structures. Many other gestalts

have been described. Probably the most widely known

is how, as Edgar Rubin ( 1886-1951) showed, the figure

in figure/ground configurations is detached from the

ground, contour belongs to it, the ground extends under

the figure, and, while the figure is shaped, coherent, and

particular, the ground is relatively shapeless, indefinite,

and generic. The dot used as a period at the end of a

sentence fits this description of a figure with the page

as the ground, as does a sound against stillness. Rubin's

work was accepted by the Berlin school.

Then again, in what is known as "Stumpf's para

dox," a device can produce three slightly different fre-

quencies of sound waves, .r, y, and .::, such that when

the first two frequencies are produced in succession,

one hears equal sounds, i.e., .r = y, when the second

two are produced, one hears y = .::, but when the first

and third frequencies are produced, one hears :r :f- .:. Koffka observed, however, that the constituents in the

first two gestalts have a "platform structure" while

the third has a "step structure," and contended that

constituents in different structures are different con

stituents. Reformulated as .r = y, y' = .::, and .r' :f- .:', there is no paradox: .r and .r', etc., are two and similar,

not one and the same.

So-called "categoria! terms" such as identity, dif

ference, similarity, dissimilarity, equality, inequality,

unity, and diversity ha ve been of interest to phenome

nologists since Husserl 's Philosophie der Arithmetik.

And the names of small numbers such as "three" can

refer either to a gestalt of perceived items, a three

some, or they can refer to sets of elements determined

in categoria! thinking. The ideal structures constituted

in thinking are distinct from the perceptual structures

constituted in perception, according to Gestalt psychol

ogy.

In opposition to those in modern thought who distin

guish sensations, sense data, or sensa as concrete parts

within perceptual objects, the Berlin school follows

Koffka 's 1915 rejection of the constancy hypothesis,

according to which there is a one-to-one correspon

dence between physical stimuli ( e.g., sound waves ); the

neurological events they directly cause; and the sensa

they then cause indirectly. In other words, if the same

sense organ is stimulated in the same way, a sensation

ofthe same sort must occur, which implies atomism not

only in physics, but also in neurology and psychology.

And if an analytic attitude fails to disci o se the predicted

sensations, unnoticed objects and even unconscious

processes are posited, and psychology is then preoccu

pied with the discrepancies between what is predicted

by the constancy hypothesis and what is actually ob

served. Beginning in his French essays from the 1930s,

however, Gurwitsch emphasizes that this hypothesis is

neither self-evident nor experimentally demonstrable.

Moreover, his friend Merleau-Ponty suggests in his

first book, La structure du comportement ( 1942), that

atomism is outmoded in 20th century physics and neu

rology and that even to posit unobserved differences in

data due to differences between sense organs- e.g.,


the object as heard through the ear as sharply distinct

from the object as seen through the eyes- assumes

the constancy hypothesis (he urges instead the notion

of synaesthesia, whereby gray objects look cool even

when not touched). Many today nevertheless continue

to assume this untestable "hypothesis."

While the Graz school posited an often unobserv

able difference in the percept due to externa! stimula

tion, on the one hand, and interna! factors, especially

Produktion, on the other hand, the Berlin school held

that unitary effects might arise from multiple causes.

Gurwitsch asserts this as the difference between ex

planations of the form P = !1 (:re) + h(.ri) and P =

f(.rc . . ri). Interna! factors include attitude and past ex

perience and also physiological conditions (e.g., blood

alcohol). Assuming the light reflected in the follow

ing area and also the reader's neurological system re

main constant, the interna! factor of attitude can be

recognized with respect to the following set of sixteen

asterisks.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Through subtle shifts in attitude, one can see a

square within a square, four horizontallines, two pairs

of horizontals, four vertical li nes, two pairs of verti

cals, groups of three lines with outliers above, below,

to the left, or to the right, two ta li rectangles, two wide

rectangles, a square of four squares, two horizontal

pairs of squares, two vertical pairs of squares, four

larger squares with L-shaped outliers, twenty triangles

of varying size and orientation, eight tent-shaped fig

ures on diagonals, i.e., at least sixty configurations or

gestalts. In each there is a different structure in which

the constituents play subtly different roles in relation

to one another.

One does not constantly "see" the same sensations

and just "interpret" them differently, for one cannot

reflectively observe sensa and concept in the percept,

the one a sensuous object and the other an ideal object,

nor can o ne distinguish a stratum of sensing and a stra

tum of thinking within the perceiving. The tendency

nevertheless to accept such an "interpretation theory"

may stem from reflection on speech, where an identi

ca! ideal concept is indeed expressed in different marks

and sounds. The sixteen asterisks, however configured,

are not a text with author, reader, or referent, which is

not to deny that speech can function as yet another in

terna! explanatory factor, e.g., how the exercise above

involved the reader's vision being affected by his or

her reading ofthe list of gestalts.

According to Gurwitsch, "Following the dismissal

ofthe constancy hypothesis, the percept has tobe con

sidered as a homogeneous unit, though internally artic

ulated and structured. It has to be taken at face value;

as that which it presents itself to be through the given

act of perception and though that act alone; as it ap

pears to the perceiving subject's consciousness; as it

is meant and intended (the term 'meaning' understood

in a properly broadened and enlarged sense) in that

privileged mode of meaning and intending which is

perceptual presentation. In other words, the percept

as it is conceived after the constancy hypothesis is

abandoned proves to be what we called the perceptum

qua perceptum, the perceptua/ noe ma or the perceptual

phenomenon."

The abandonment of the constancy hypothesis is

considered by Gurwitsch tobe an incipient phenomen

ological EPOCHE AND REDUCTION that enables avoiding

the vicious circle whereby perception is "explained

with reference to real things and physical processes

which, in turn, have to be accounted for in terms of

perceptual consciousness." Although he intends this

as a transcendental-phenomenological epoche and re

duction, it can also be construed as a psychological

phenomenological epoche and reduction, whereby one

remains in the worldly or natural (and even naturalis

tic) attitude but suspends consideration of causal rela

tions between psychic phenomena and not directly ob

servable extrapsychic factors, such as photons. Gestalt

results can thus be used in phenomenological PSYCHOL

OGY.

The phenomenological interest is not in the phys

ical and neurological explanations but in the broadly

descriptive results of Gestalt psychology, especially

those concerning PERCEPTION. These include "gestalt

laws" that hold within that which can be reflectively

observed, e.g., if constituents are closer, similar, form

a closed unit, or continue others, then they tend to be

grouped. An analytic attitude is necessary to discern the

connections of proximity, similarity, etc., among the

constituents, and Merleau-Ponty urges that those that

GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY 279

are antecedent conditions be called "motivcs" rather

than causes to avoid confusion with externa! physical

conditions, such as sound waves. An analytic attitude

does not provide access to constituents independent

of their ro les in gestalts, but rather reconfigures them.

Gestaltist experimentation was practiced on subjects

who remained in the unreftective attitude, but the psy

chologists engage in reftection on others insofar as they

relate the objects as perceived to the others perceiving

them. Results ofreftective-descriptive analysis are ex

pressed in statements that purport to be objective or

nonrelative knowledge, which is to say that others of

good will and skilled in the pertinent approach can

verify, correct, and extend them.

The attempt to appropriate Gestaltist descrip

tions began with Gurwitsch 's dissertation of 1929.

He begins with the analysis of the NOEMA in

Husserl 's Ideen zu einer reinen Phiinomenologie

und phiinomenologischen Philosophie I (1913). The

object-as-it-presents-itself is distinguished from the

thing perceived or the object-that-presents-itself. Then

a distinction is roade within the object as it presents it

self- the noema-between the noematic nucleus and

the noematic characteristics, i.e., belief-characteristics,

so that the latter can be disregarded. The emphasis is

then on the nucleus of realities as perceived. Funda

mental for Gurwitsch 's revisions of Husserl 's account

of sensuous perception is his rejection, on Gestaltist

grounds, of hyletic data as chaotic sensa, on the one

hand, and sense-bestowing noetic functions on the

other.

Gurwitsch 's first phenomenological use of

reftective-descriptive Gestalt findings concerns what

is traditionally cal\ed attention. Whereas Husserl and

others conceived of attention as a matter of the objects

remaining the same while attention is directed at them

in this way or that like a beam of light, Gurwitsch

recognizes three series of modifications of the object

as thematized. First, a house-theme can be enlarged to

become the-house-and-yard or it can be narrowed to

omit the porch; similar constituents then play subtly

different roles within the configurations. Second, the

theme can become relevant to another theme - e.g.,

the house as destination of the person approaching it,

the house as merely on the margin as one thematizes

a scientific problem while sitting on the porch - or

the house can disappear from the perceptual field. And

in the third series, the thematized object is internally

restructured, as when one ignores the color to consider

the shape.

Gurwitsch 's second use, developed further in The

Field of Consciousness ( 1964 ), concerns the overall

structure of what one is at any moment aware of.

There is always a "theme" in the center with "gestalt

connections" among its constituents, e.g., windows and

doors, and there is always a "thematic field" composed

of items that are "relevant" to the theme and thus also in

gestalt-connections with it, but extra- rather than intra

thematically, e.g., the perceived porch can move from

a role within the theme to something "outside" and

relevant to it. Various nonrelevant "marginal" items

are also always objects of awareness, but with merely

"and-connections" between them and the thematic and

relevant items. Interestingly, the perceiver's own soov,

stream of conscious life, and WORLD are always objects

of awareness, at least marginally, for Gurwitsch.

Examples of functional objects such as houses raise

the question of whether this account of relevance only

holds in the perspective of NATURALISM or whether it

also pertains to a cultural analysis in which spatial,

temporal, and causal relations also ha ve practica! char

acteristics and even VALUES for the subject and thus

more than the noematic nucleus is considered. This is

significant because there is "indefinite continuation of

context" that extends from any real theme to the whole

cultural lifeworld, aspects of which are approached in

various ways in the HUMAN SCIENCES and CULTURAL DIS

CIPLINES. Such cultural characteristics are suspended to

yield the naturalistic objects thematized in the NATURAL

SCIENCES.

Gurwitsch 's third and fourth uses of Gestalt psy

chology pertain to the structure of the perceptual ob

ject naturalistically considered. A physical thing can

be seen from a fixed distance and angle, but one can

also move closer, around, within, and in addition touch,

smell, hear, and otherwise sensuously perceive it. For

Husserl, it would be the same noema while appear

ances grew larger upon the subject's approach, but for

Gurwitsch the appearance is part and parcel ofthe per

ceptual noema and there is a series of noemata in this

case. Then again, as one walks around the physical

thing, it ceases to present itselffrom the front and goes

on to present itself from a side, the back, the other

side, the front again, and actually from an infinity of


standpoints along the way, i.e., there is again an infinite

multiplicity of noemata.

Husserl holds that each noema has an interna! refer

ence to an "X" or object-pole so that the sameperceived

thing or object might present itself in infinitely differ

ent ways. Gurwitsch contends that no such reference

to an X is discernible (and also, in a way that was fol

lowed by JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, that there is no need for an

EGO to organize, pay attention to, etc., what are already

self-organizing constituents) and that the entire object

presents itselffrom each point ofview as a structure or

system of noemata, some of which are quite indeter

minate, e.g., the arrangement of rooms within a house

one has never entered, though the house is presented

as having an inside arrangement of some sort. The

structure of the object as system of noemata he calls

"conformity to sense," asserting that "the total noematic system must be of such a kind as to be capable

ofreceiving the present perceptual noema as a part or member of itsel(."

Finally, the unity ofthe stream of consciousness in

TIME, with its expected, protended, impressional, retro

tended, and recollected phases can be observed refiec

tively to be configured: conscious life is also a gestalt.

The constituents are the actualized as well as the fu ture

and past inactual immanent noetic phases, and ifthere

is gestalt-coherence and indeed "good continuation" to

the structure, then "the mutual confirmation of single perceptions following upon each other in the course

of the perceptual process is, we submit, the sufficient condition of the existence of material things." Gestalt

psychology is thus ultimately useful in coNSTITUTIVE

PHENOMENOLOGY for the purposes offirst philosophy.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty attended Gurwitsch's lec

tures at the Sorbonne, himself !ater taught psychol

ogy there for some years, and drew extensively on

Gestalt psychology in La structure du comportement, Phimonu?nologie de la perception (1945), and !ater

works. Earlier, he refiects on form in physiology (and

physics) and, most significantly, in instinctual, replace

able (amovable), and symbolic structures ofbehavior,

the Berlin school having long recognized gestalts in

speaking, writing, singing, sketching, etc. He further

more opposes the naturalistic and even physicalistic

tendencies of Gestalt psychology, is quite aware ofthe

transcendental philosophical implications of his own

critique, and seems prepared along the way to recog-

nize the double signification of categoria! terms: "I f o ne

understands perception as the act that makes us know

existences, ali of the problems that we have touched

upon lead back to problems ofperception. It resides in

the duality ofthe notions of structure and signification.

A 'form,' such as the 'figure-ground' structure, is a

whole that has a sense and thus offers a bearing for

intellectual analysis. But, at the same time, it is not an

idea- it constitutes itself, changes, and reorganizes

itselfbefore our eyes like a spectacle."

Merleau-Ponty's second book can be interpreted,

following the repeated1y cited "Objectivite en psy

chologie" ( 1 932) of the French Gestaltist Paul Guil

laume ( 1 887-1962), as chiefiy approaching ali the

same phenomena as the first book, but through self

observation rather than through the refiection on others

dominant before. The emphasis (and use ofthe some

what Gestaltist neurologist Kurt Goldstein [ 1878-

1 965]) is, if anything, more on the BODY: "In the last

analysis, ifmybody can bea 'Gesta1t' and ifit can ha ve

privileged figures on indifferent grounds before it, this

is insofar as it is polarized by its tasks, that it exists toward them, that it collects itself in order to reach its

goal, and the 'body image' is finally a way of express

ing that my body is in the world." The appreciation

of Gestalt psychology by EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY

in FRANCE is also evident in the work of SIMONE DE

BEAUVOIR and JEAN-PAUL SARTRE.

Interest in the first or Graz school of Gestalt theory

has recentJy reemerged in REALISTIC PHENOMENOLOGY,

where gestalt qua1ities are subjected to analysis, along

side other categories, in the framework of FORMAL AND

MATERIAL ONTOLOGY. The volume recently edited by

Barry Smith contains not only essays and translations

but also a 250-page annotated bibliography, includ

ing one item on 100 gestalt laws and others show

ing how this set of eight schools, going back to the

1920s, included social psycho1ogy within its scope.

While Gestalt psychology may have declined in recent

decades due to the infiuence ofbehaviorism and other

historical circumstances, it has not died, and there are

those who currently believe it has great affinities and

thus future in reJation to ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE and

COGNITIVE SCIENCE. Much more USe of such Gestaltist

work as that of Albert Michotte (1881-1 965) on per

ceived causation can be made within phenomenologi

cal philosophy and psycho1ogy.

GREAT BRITAIN 281

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Embrcc, Lcster. "Gestalt Law in Phenomenological Perspective," Journal ol Phenomenological Psychology 10 (1979), 112~27.

-. "Merleau-Ponty's Examination of Gestalt Psychology," Research in Phenomenology 1 O ( 1980), 89~121.

Dillon, Martin C. "Gcstalt Theory and Merleau-Ponty's Concept of lntentionality," Man and World 12 (1979).

Gurwitsch, Aron. "Phănomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich. Studien iiber Beziehungen der Gestalttheorie und Phănomenologie." Psychologische Forschung 12 ( 1929), 19~381; "Phenomenology ofThematics and ofthe Pure Ego: Studies ofthc Rclation between Gestalt Theory and Phenomenology." Trans. Fred Kersten. In his Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966, 175~286.

-. "Quelques aspects ct quclques developpements de la psychologie de la forme." Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique 33 ( 1936), 413~70; "Some Aspects and Dcvclopments ofGestalt Psychology." Trans. Richard M. Zaner. In his Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology, 3~55.

-. "The Phenomenological and Psychological Approach to Consciousness." Phi!osophy and Phenomenological Research 15 ( 1955), 303~19; rpt. in his Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology, 89~106.

"Beitrag zur phănomenologischen Theorie der Wahrnehmung." Zeitschriftfiirphilosophische Forschung 13 ( 1959), 419-37; "Contributions to the Phenomenological Theory of Perception." Trans. Fred Kersten. In his Studies in Psychology and Phenomenology, 336--49.

-. The Field o( Consciousness. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964; Tlu'orie du champ de la conscience. Trans. Michel Butor. Paris: Desc!ee de Brower, 1957.

-. "Pcrccptual Cohcrence and the Judgmcnt ofPrcdication." In his Phenomenology and the Theory ol Science. Ed. Lester Embree. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1974,241-67.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. La structure du comportement. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1942; The Structure olBehavior. Trans. Alden L. Fisher. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963.

Rock, Irwin, and Stephen Palmer. "The Legacy of Gestalt Psychology." Scientific American ( 1990), 84-90.

Smith, Barry. ed. Foundations ol Gestalt The01y. Munich: Philosophia, 1988.

LESTER EMBREE Florida Atlantic University

GREAT BRITAIN In the first edition ( 1960) of

his classical work The Phenomenological Movement,

HERBERT SPIEGELBERG headed his account ofphenomen

ology in Britain as follows: Great Britain: Low Ebb.

He went on to say, "There can be little doubt that at

the present moment, phenomenology, along with exis-

tentialism has less philosophical status in Britain than

in any other country outside Soviet Russia. It has no

spokesman in either Oxford or Cambridge, and but few

sympathizers elsewhere." He further pointed out that

some ofthe more explicit statements about phenomen

ology revealed an animus rather than sheer indiffer

ence, and quoted Gilbert Ryle's remark in Philosophy

(1946 ): "I do not expect that even the corporate zeal

ofthe International Phenomenological Institute (sic!),

will succeed in winning for Husserl 's ideas much of a

vogue in the English-speaking world. In short pheno

menology was from its birth, a bare. Its oversolemnity

of manner more than its equivocal lineage will se

cure that its lofty claims are ignored." Nevertheless

Ryle then waxed prophetic and said that an offshoot

of phenomenology known as EXISTENTIALISM may be

smuggled overseas in someone 's warming pan; he con

tinued, MARTIN HEIDEGGER's "graft upon his master's

former stock is not unlikely before long to be adam

ing Anglo-Saxon philosophy." It has taken about thirty

years for this prophecy to come true.

Ryle did in his early years show a certain amount

of sympathy for phenomenology, although he became

highly critica! of it !ater on. There are indeed a sur

prising number of parallels between EDMUND HUSSERL 's

phenomenological analysis of mental acts and Ryle's

philosophical psychology, particularly in the fields of

PERCEPTION and IMAGINATION. During the J920s and

1930s, Ryle was one of the few British philosophers

to show an interes! in continental philosophy. Starting

from the theories of Bertrand Russell, GOTTLOB FREGE,

and Alexius Meinong (1853-1920), he went beyond

them to look at the work of FRANZ BRENTANO, among

others. He was particularly interested in Edmund

Husserl 's Logische Untersuchungen (1900-190 1 ), as

he found in it an extensive treatment of some of the

logica! problems he had been concerned with. Aris

ing from his studies of these writers, Ryle reported in

his autobiographical essay that he offered a course of

lectures at Oxford, which had as its title: "Logica! ob

jectivism: Bolzano, Brentano, Husserl, and Meinong."

However, this course did not attract any students. We

are told that these faur philosophers become known in

Oxford as "Ryle's three Austrian railway-stations and

one Chinese game of chance."

Ryle's opinion of Heidegger is expressed in his re

view of Sein und Zeit(1927), where he says: "He shows



himself to be a thinker of real importance by the im

mense subtlety and searchingness of his examination

of consciousness, by the boldness and originality of

his methods and conclusions, and by the unflagging

energy with which he tries to think about the stock

categories of orthodox philosophy and psychology."

It is interesting to note here that the fundamental dis

tinction that Ryle draws in the The Concept of Mind ( 1949) between "knowing how" and "knowing that''

between practica! and theoretical knowledge- bears

a considerable resemblance to Heidegger's distinction

in Sein und Zeit between Zuhandenheit (readiness

to-hand) and Vorhandenheit (presence-at-hand). There

was much importance attached to this distinction in

Ryle's work before it became known in Britain that

Heidegger had made a similar distinction some twenty

years earlier.

Phenomenology was not much cultivated as a sub

ject in Britain between the two world wars. There were

Husserl 's somewhat abortive London lectures in the

early 1920s, followed by two Joint Session Symposia

in 1932 and 1959 respectively. The 1932 symposium

reads as if the symposiasts were discussing a piece of

intellectual history, as if phenomenology had carne to

a dead end. They could not, of course, have any fore

knowledge of the !ater developments of phenomen

ology, expecially its influence on philosophical thought in FRANCE and GERMANY after Wor]d War II.

Over the past three decades, however, there has been a growing interest in Britain in both phenomen

ology and existentialism, partly as a result of the writ

ings of .JEAN-PAUL SARTRE and MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY,

which have been read and discussed by specialists

in the field of French studies as well as by philoso

phers. Phenomimologie de la perception ( 1945) has

even been read and discussed by analytic philosophers.

Merleau-Ponty was invited to Manchester in 1958,

where he gave a seminar on politics and delivered a

lecture criticizing LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN's theory oflan

guage. Indeed, in more than one university department

of philososphy, students have pressed for courses on

Sartre. As a consequence of this increased interest in

the subject, some philosophers began to turn to the writ

ings of Husserl and Heidegger upon which Merleau

Ponty's and Sartre's writings were based. The work

of the PoJish phi]osopher ROMAN INGARDEN, a pupi] of

Husserl, also struck a note of sympathy in Britain. He

visited Manchester in the early 1960s lecturing on aes

thetic theory.

At first Sartre's philosophy, no doubt because ofits

literary qualities, attracted attention. Analytic philoso

phers like Mary Warnock wrote introductions to his thought that sold well. Later Merleau-Ponty's works

aroused interest, and then Husserl began to be read.

But even up to about twenty years ago Heidegger was

still regarded as a figure to be poked fun at. His onto

logica! use of the notion of "nothingness" was taken

as a textbook examplc of the philosophical misuse of

language, to be cured by analysis. How, it was asked,

can a syncategorematic word such as "not'' be used in

categorematic way?

Sin ce about 1980, however, this pic ture has changed

again quite significantly. Contradicting Ryle's forecast

about the imminent death of what we generally caii "Continental philosophy," this time has witnessed a

major revival of interest in Continental philosophy by

the phenomenological movement. This started with a

number of new universities, namely the Universities

of Essex, Sussex, and Warwick, which concentrated

their graduate work exclusively on German idealism,

phenomenology, CRITICAL THEORY, and contemporary

French philosophy. Now there is a wide range of institutions having strong "Continental departments," from

those already mentioned to other places like Middlesex University, the University of North London, the

University of Wales in Cardiff, and Greenwich in the south, as well as Manchester Metropolitan University,

Lancaster University, and the Bolton Institute in the

northwest. Many other universities, like the University

ofNottingham, offer a Master of Arts degree in cultural

studies or critica! theory, in which phenomenology is

taught. The University of Essex, through its Centre

for European Philosophy; the University of Warwick,

through its Centre for Philosophy and Literature; and

Manchester Metropolitan University, through its newly

proposed Centre for European Philosophy, are well

placed to build on and develop this revival of pheno

menology in Britain. Even the other universities, spe

cializing in ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY, tend to empJoy more

specialists in phenomenology than ever before. This

trend, due to positive responses on the part of students,

is still on the increase. Philosophers who have been

the odd ones out at their institutions now see their sup

port increasing. Still, there has been a positive side

GREAT BRITAIN 283

to its isolation: during the 1980s Britain saw the de

velopment of a Iively community of people interested

in phenomenology. Scholars traveled from conference

to conference, in search of discussions with compe

tent colleagues working in their own field. Interest in

Husserl 's philosophy has always continued in those

aspects that deal with MFANING and with FORMAL ANO

MATERIAL ONTOLOGY. These are important to the ana

lytic community insofar as they relate to Frege's ideas

ofmeaning and signification. Scholars in SOCIOLOGY, in

particular, seem taken up with Husserl 's notion ofL!FE

WORLD. Furthermore, there had always been a sustained

interest in Sartre's existentialism, which has been re

newed by the recent translation of Cahiers pour une

morale [ 194 7]. And sti li, while aga in entering through

the back door, this "second revival" ofphenomenology

during the 1980s did not go back to the existentialist

avant-garde. Having realized the change of generations

in FRANCE, it rathcr built upon POSTMODERNISM. As can

be seen in the programmatic title of a paper given by

DAVID wooo in the late 1980s to a conference on de

construction at the University of Warwick, it was first

through the significant impact of the work of JACQUES

DERRIDA and MICHEL FOUCAULT on American academia

- on literary theory and sociology respectively- that

British philosophers rediscovered phenomenology on

its own merits. This paper was called "Heidegger after

Derrida" and, thus combining two philosophers highly

inftuenced by Husserl, reftected in its title the upsurge

of research in phenomenology. Although Heidegger

has become the most inftuential author of this tradi

tion, as could be seen in the interest given to the Hei

degger debate in Germany and France, the revival of

phenomenology has led to a diversified and sustained

academic interest in Continental philosophy in general,

mirrored by the foundation of societies, like the Sartre

Society of Creat Britain and the Nietzsche Society,

and in the many publications on Nietzsche, Husserl,

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice Blanchot, EMMANUEL LEVINAS,

Derrida, and even Georges Bataille. Nowadays books

on Heidegger are even reviewed in such journals as

the Times Literal)' Supplement and the Times Higher

Education Supplement.

AII the same, the British establishment remains

more than skeptical. Oxford and Cambridge are vir

tually frec from phenomenology as from Continental

philosophy in general, while some other old univer-

sities even discourage their lecturers from teaching

HEGEL, because, after ali, he is not a serious philoso

pher. This state is reftected by a prominent publishing

house recently turning down an offer for a volume on

Merleau-Ponty contributing to their scries ofintroduc

tions to the masters of philosophy, on the ground that

it would not sell enough copies.

Contemporary British philosophers of an analytic

turn of mind are thus sti li suspicious of what they see

as the metaphysical worries about life and the uni verse

that some Continental philosophers, they claim, man

ifest. They participatc in ORDINARY LANGUAGE PHILOSO

PHY and believe that their own function is rather to deal

with problcms of conceptual nature that ari se through

our misuse of language. They go on to argue that once

these problems are resolved, philosophy will cease to

exist as a subject. In this climate it was necessary for

phenomenologists to find a context for their research.

lndeed, one ofthe reasons for starting the British Soci

ety for Phenomenology arose from the fact that when

Merleau-Ponty died in 1961, COLIN SMITH and WOLFE

MAYS suggested to a certain British philosophical soci

ety that it should have a symposium on his work. The

idea was not rejected but politely noted. Some thirty

years have now elapsed, but the symposium has never

materialized.

The manner in which the British Society for Pheno

menology came into existence explains why its ini

tial membership consisted of individuals drawn from

a number of different disciplines- PSYCHIATRY, psy

chology, sociology, university teachers of French, and

the occasional philosopher of an independent mind.

The situation is somewhat different today. There is

a strong contingent of young philosophers trained in

phenomenology, who are now members of the soci

ety. And for better or worse the society has a much

more profcssional look that it had at its inception.

Since 1969, the society has had at least one confer

ence a year, and usually a workshop on some spe

cialized topic. The annual conference is usually at St.

Edmunds Hali, Oxford, at Easter, where it is regarded

as a Trojan horse planted in the center ofthe stronghold

of analytic philosophy. Our first joint conference was

held at Southampton in September 1969, in conjunc

tion with the Royal Institute of Philosophy and with

many participants from the Continent, under the title

of "Philosophers into Europe." The proceedings were


!ater published as the volume Linguistic Analysis and Phenomenology (1972). Furthermore, there have been a number of small specialized workshops at the Universities ofReading, Manchester, and Warwick. They ha ve covered such topics as STRUCTURALISM, reductionism, IMAGINATION, the phenomenology ofthe soov, and the works of Merleau-Ponty, Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. The activities ofthe society ha ve not been confined solely to phenomenology. The society has provided a focus ofphilosophical interest lying outside the narrow field of academic philosophy.

The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, which is published in January, May, and October of each year, first appeared in January 1970 under the editorship of Wolfe Mays. While it orginially had no university or other subsidy and not even secretariat help, it is now based in the Institute of Advanced Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. Some ofthe past numbers of the journal ha ve been devoted to definite themes, such as, for example, the phenomenology ofthe imagination, structuralism, and phenomenology and LITERATURE. Special issues have been devoted to the work of Husserl, Sartre, ARON GURWITSCH, ROMAN

INGARDEN, Michael Poianyi, and MAX SCHELER. Whiie being among other things concerned to publish scholarly work relating to phenomenology, the journal has kept in touch with philosophical developments on the Continent through its correspondents living there. Our American friends have also helped us by informing us about trends in the UNITED STATES. To keep these links alive there have been articles on philosophy in GERMANY, FRANCE, SCANDINAVIA, and AUSTRIA. The journai has since its inception wished to stimulate interest in the phenomenological approach in HUMAN SCIENCES.

We publish on such topics as the relation of phenomenology to SOCIOLOGY, PSYCHIATRY, and EDUCATION.

We believe phenomenology has a special role to play in enriching these fields of inquiry.

Despite the difficulties faced by phenomenologists in Britain, the future seems to bring hope. The number of Continental philosophers is on the increase and consequently the quality oftheir research is rising too.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Beii, David. Husserl. London: Routledge, 1991. Bowie, Malcolm. Lacan. London: Fontana, 1993.

Critchley, Simon. The Ethics ol Deconstruction, Derrida, Levinas. Oxford: Basi1 Blackwell, 1992.

Hammond, Michae1, Jane Howorth, and Russell Kcat. Understanding Phenomenology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.

Llewelyn, John. The Middle Voi ce ofEcological Conscience: A Chiasmic Reading in the Neighhourhood ol Levi nas. London: Macmillan, 1991.

Macann, Christopher, ed. Martin Heidegger: Critica/ Assessments. 4 vols. London: Routledge, 1993.

MacQuarrie, John. Existentialism. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962.

Manser, Anthony. Sartre: A Philosophical Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Norris, Christopher. Derrida. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Smith, Barry, and David Woodruff Smith, eds. The Cambridge Companion ta Husserl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Steiner, George. Heidegger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986; rpt. 1993.

Whitford, Margaret. Luce Irigaray: Philosophy olthe Feminine. London: Fontana, 1991.

WOLFEMAYS Institute of Advanced Studies, Manchester

JOANNA HODGE Manchester Metropolitan University

ULRICH HAASE Manchester Metropolitan University

ARON GURWITSCH Born January 1 7, 1901 in Vilnius, Lithuania, as the son of a wealthy timber merchant who !ater lost his fortune due to World War 1 and the Russian Revolution, Gurwitsch studied mathematics, philosophy, physics, and psychology at Berlin, where he also became a protege of Cari Stumpf ( 1848-1936). He was sent by Stumpf to study with EDMUND

HUSSERL at Freiburg in 1922, where he was especially impressed not only by the dedication of the phenomenologist, but also by his lectures on Natur und Geist (Nature and spirit), a theme that emerged periodically in his own work during the next fifty years.

Stumpf subsequently sent him to study the problem of abstraction with the psychiatrist Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965) at Frankfurt am Main, who was working brain-injured veterans. During a lecture at Frankfurt by the Gestaltist Adhemar Gelb ( 1887-1936), Gurwitsch had the insight that the abandonment in GESTALT PSY

CHOLOGY of the constancy hypothesis, whereby phys

ical stimuli had been assumed to be in a one-to-one correlation with sensations, was an incipient transcen-


ARON GURWITSCH 285

dentaJ EPOCHE ANO REDUCTION. Thereafter, Gurwitsch

eJaborated a vers ion of CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY

that may be called "Gestalt phenomenology."

In his dissertation accepted by MORITZ GEIGER and

published in Psycho/ogische Forschung, the organ of

the Gestalt school, under the title "Phanomenologie

der Thematik und des reinen Ich" (Phenomenology of

thematization and the pure ego, 1929), Gurwitsch pro

ceeds in the perspective ofthe Husserl's Ideen zu einer

reinen Phanomeno/ogie und phanomenologischen

Philosophie 1 ( 1913), but includes the beginning of

his objections to Husserl 's theory of hyletic data. Phe

nomenologically, hy/e and m01phe are not concretely

distinguishable in perceptual objects as they present

themselves, and Gurwitsch suspected that Husserl had

mistakenly modeled perception on linguistic compre

hension.

Furthermore, ifsensuous objects are always already

structured or organized, then there is no need for a pure

EGO to structure or organize them and, in any case, Gur

witsch returned to the position of WILLIAM JAMES and the

Husserl of the Logische Untersuchungen ( 1900-1901)

whereby no pure ego can be observed on the inward

side of conscious life. This position was also taken

by JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, possibly under the indirect influ

ence ofGurwitsch, who afterwards published "A Non

Egological Conception of Consciousness" ( 1941 ), the

first essay on Sartre in English.

Gurwitsch goes on in his dissertation positively to

analyze the inherent structure of any field of conscious

ness whatever into the focus or theme of conscious

ness; the thematic fie1d of items relevant to the theme;

and the margin of items devoid of relevancy to the

theme. Then he carefully describes severa! ways in

which themes can be restructured within perception

and thus without need for a separate act of attention

bestowing form upon them. This account is refined

in !ater works including the posthumously published

Marginal Consciousness [ 1953], where he shows at

length that the margin always contains the perceptual

WORLD, the stream of consciousness, and the BODY, at

least two of which are always intended to in nonthe

matic rather than thematic awareness (and ali three

of which are nonthematically intended to when ideal

objects are thematic ).

Husserl was impressed with this dissertation, per

sonal discussions ensued, and the phenomenologist

was willing to habilitate Gurwitsch at Freiburg if he

could not find a position elsewhere. By 1931 he had

completed most of his Habilitationsschrift, Die mit

menschlichen Begegnungen in der Milieuwelt (Human

encounters in the social world, [ 1931 ]). This posthu

mously edited work is devoted to the problem ofiNTER

SUBJECTIVITY raised at the end of the dissertation and

draws on ERNST CASSIRER with respect to how humans

are originally encountered as animate and also MARTIN

HEIDEGGER's Sein und Zeit (1927) with respect to the

originally encountered practica! world of equipment.

Gurwitsch had begun to search for an academic po

sition when the National Socialists carne to power in

1933 and his fellowship from the Prussian Ministry of

Education was canceled because he was a Jew. He had

previously read Mein Kampfand immediately left Ger

many for France, where he initially knew hardly any

one but eventually was in contact with everyone. The

Habilitationsschrift was abandoned because it would

take too long to complete, adapt for the new philo

sophica1 situation, and translate, and because ALFRED

SCHUTZ's Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (The

meaningful structure of the social world, 1932), to

which Husserl had drawn Gurwitsch 's attention, had

although differently- begun the constitutive pheno

menology ofthe HUMAN SCIENCES very well.

In Paris, Gurwitsch soon met MAURICE MERLEAU

PONTY, who then attended his lectures at the Sorbonne

and helped to polish the expression on two of his

French publications; the younger man had previously

read Gurwitsch 's dissertation and !ater learned of the

work of Goldstein and Gelb from him. Gurwitsch was

pleased at his influence and reviewed Phhwnu!nologie

de la perception ( 1945) twice.

Gurwitsch 's pub1ications while in FRANCEare chiefly

devoted to PSYCHOLOGY and the PHILOSOPHY OF PSYCHOL

OGY-"La place de la psychologie dans 1 'ensemble des

sciences" ( 1934) and "Quelques aspects et quelques

developpements de la psychologie de la forme" ( 1936),

the latter based on his first set of lectures at the Sor

bonne, being the most significant. But a critica! study

on the psychology oflanguage includes the first pheno

menological appreciation of phonological linguistics,

also known as STRUCTURALISM.

Before he left Paris Gurwitsch was again well

along in preparing a book manuscript, this one based

on another set of his Sorbonne lectures and entitled


L 'esquisse de la phenomenologie constitutive (Outline

of constitutive phenomenology). Also abandoned due

to politica! events and the exigencies of moving to yet

another new country, this 1939 text has also been edited

posthumously. It relates phenomenology to the modern

tradition and continues the development of "Gestalt

phenomenology." Along the way, and quite interest

ingly, it distinguishes the NATURAL SCIENCES from the

HUMAN SCIENCES in terms of whether the "functional

characters" characteristic of cultural objects are ab

stracted from or not.

Gurwitsch always looked back on his time in France

as his most creative, returning practically every sum

mer in the 1950s and 1960s and continuing to publish

there, but his early postwar attempts to find an aca

demic position in the happiest stopping place in a life

of forced wandering was unsuccessful.

Gurwitsch arrived in the America in 1940 as a

refugee from the Nazis for the second time. He had

finally met Schi.itz in Paris in 1937. Alfred Schutz, Aran

Gurwitsch: Briefivechsel, 1939-1959 (The correspon

dence of Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, 1985)

documents their intellectual interaction and friendship

as isolated representatives of a philosophy still alien

in America. A division of labor arose between them

whereby Schutz worked in the philosophy ofthe human

or cultural sciences and Gurwitsch in the philosophy of

logic, mathematics, natural sciences, and psychology.

Gurwitsch only wrote again about the human sciences

after Schutz had died. Schutz observed that Gurwitsch

began with sensuous perception while he himself be

gan with MUSIC. They disagreed about the ego and also

about transcendental phenomenology, Schutz advocat

ing the CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE NATURAL

ATTITUDE. Even their theories of relevance are different.

Nevertheless, they believed themselves to be digging

a single tunnel from two si des of the same mountain.

They also played leading ro les in the founding of the

journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

and ofthe ill-fated International Phenomenological So

ciety just before World War II.

Living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gurwitsch

held one-year jobs, received small grants, and taught

physics and mathematics for a decade. Eventually he

secured his first full-time continuing position in phi

losophy in 1951 at Brandeis University when he was

fifty years old. Meanwhile, Schutz - who had also

emigrated to the United States in 1940 and joined the

Graduate Faculty of Politica! and Social Science at

the New School for Social Research in 1943 - had

plans for forming a center for phenomenology, bring

ing DORION CAIRNS there after FELIX KAUFMANN died,

and making severa! attempts to bring Gurwitsch, who

finally carne in 1959 as Schutz's successor. At the New

School, Gurwitsch taught graduate students, and those

whose work he directed include LESTER EMBREE, ROBERT

JORDAN, FRED KERSTEN, WILLIAM R. MCKENNA, GIUSEPPINA

MONET A, GILBERT T. NULL, OSBORNE WIGGINS, and RICHARD

M. ZANER.

Gurwitsch was also a leader in the second and

more successful attempt at founding phenomenology

in the UNITED STATES. "The Last Work of Edmund

Husserl" ( 1956--57) is a long, two-part critica! study of

Husserl 's Die Krisis des europăischen Wissenschafien

und die transzendentale Phânomenologie ( 1936) that

accurately presents that work and challenges the then

common view that Husserl had turned to EXISTENTIAL

PHENOMENOLOGY in the end. During the founding ofthe

Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philoso

phy in 1962, Gurwitsch was in particular responsible

for the duality within that name. Overall, during the

1960s he functioned as the grand old man of Ameri

can phenomenology. In reaction to the student revolts

of that decade, he urged a return "to the desks them

selves." Besides his participation in French pheno

menology Gurwitsch also helped in the restoration

of phenomenology in GERMANY after the war, almost

accepting a caii to Berlin and serving as a Fulbright

professor at Koln in 1958-59, where he drafted his

posthumously published Kants Theorie des Verstehens

(Kant's theory of understanding, 1991 ).

Gurwitsch 's magnum opus, The Field of"Conscious

ness, was begun soon after he fled to America, but was

first published in French translation in 1957 because

an American publisher for a work in phenomenology

could still not be found, the original finally appearing

in English in 1964. After relating phenomenology to

William James and various dualistic theories of per

ception - Husserl's included- he offers probably

the best systematization of Gestalt theory; presents

his version of constitutive phenomenology, including

his Gestalt-phenomenological account of sensuous per

ception; and sketches an ontology involving ideal and

real "orders of existence," each with its own relevancy

ARON GURWITSCH 287

principle. The "perceptual world"- which is actually

also cultural and sometimes called the "lifeworld," and

which has the objective time into which ali biogra

phies and history find their places as its principle

is the paramount reality of everyday life and includes

familial, politica!, professional, and other "spheres of

Jife" within itse]f. JAMES M. EDIE, JOSEPH J. KOCKELMANS,

and HERBERT SPIEGELBERG, who were a]so becoming in

fluentiaJ, immediately responded favorably, the latter

in The Phenomenological Movement ( 1960) caii ing it

"the most substantial original work produced by a Eu

ropean phenomenologist in the United States."

While at the New School, Gurwitsch published

Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology ( 1966),

which retrospectively includes eighteen essays from

thirty-sevcn years and handsomely contextualizes The

Field o(Consciousness. He also spent much ofhis last

decade preparing Leibniz: Philosophie des Panlogis

mus ( 1974 ). (Husserl's daughter once asked him how

important her father had been and Gurwitsch replied

"the greatest since Leibniz.") A different series of es

says on physics, mathematics and logic, psychology,

and the human sciences became chapters in Pheno

menology and the Theory of Science (1974). Included

there is his "Perceptual Coherence as the Foundation

of the Judgment of Predication," which is his attempt

to correct Husserl 's Er(ahrung und Urteil ( 1939). Gur

witsch had planned to write Reality and Logic during

his retirement. He became emeritus in 1972, and died

June 25, 1973. Thcre was a Festschrift in 1972 and

there ha ve been two memorial volumes thus far.

While others would begin theoretically with phys

ical objects and then consider cultural characteristics,

animation, and attentional form as somehow added to

them, Gurwitsch bcgins with cultural objects thema

tized in the practica! attitude, some of which are from

the outset animate. He then seeks how the cultural, for

mal, and natural sciences originale in sociohistorical

or lifeworldly experience. Unlike many phenomenolo

gists, Gurwitsch follows Husserl in seeking a transcen

dental grounding of science. In addition, and more than

any other phenomenologist, he emphasizes analysis of

the NOE MA. Then again, however, and contrary to most

self-identified phenomenologists, Gurwitsch expends

little energy in the interpretation of phenomenologi-

cal texts, but rather chiefly produces reflective analy

ses of phenomena. He was among the very el o sest of

Husserl 's followers, and not least for his critica! revi

sions ofhis master's doctrines in the light ofthe matters

themselves.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Embree, Lester. "Some Noetico-Noematic Analyses of Action and Practica! Life." In The Phenomenology o{ the Noema. Ed. John J. Drummond and Lester Embree. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992, 157-21 O.

-, ed. Life-World and Consciousness: Essays for Aran Gurwitsch. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1972.

-, cd. Essays in Memory of Aran Gurwitsch. Lanham, MD: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology/University Press of America, 1983.

Evans, J. Claude, and Robert Stufflebeam, cds. To Work al the Foundations: Essays in Memory o{ Aran Gurwitsch. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996.

Gurwitsch, Aron. "Phănomenologie dcr Thematik und des reinen Ich." Psychologische Forschungen 12 ( 1929), 19-381; "Phenomenology ofThematics and ofthe Pure Ego." Trans. Fred Kersten. In Gurwitsch, Studies, 175-286.

-. Theorie du champ de la conscience. Trans. Michel Butor. Paris: Desclec de Brouwer, 1957; The Field o(Consciousness. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964.

-. Studies in Phenomenology and Psychologv. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Prcss, 1966.

-. Phenomenology and the Theory o{ Science. Ed. Lester Embree. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974.

-. Die mitmenschlichen Begegnungen in der Milieuwelt. Ed. Alexandre Metraux. Berlin: Waltcr de Gruyter, 1977; Human Encounters in the Social World. Trans. Fred Kersten. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1979.

-. Marginal Consciousness. Ed. Lester Embree. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1985.

-. Esquisse de la phi'11omenologie constituti{. Ed. Jose Huertas-Jourda. Ottawa: Ottawa University Press, forthcoming.

Schutz, Alfred, and Aron Gurwitsch. Alfi·ed Schiitz. Aron Gurwitsch Brie{wechsel. 1939--1959. Ed. Richard Grathoff. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1985; Philosophers in Exile: The Correspondence ofAlji·ed Schutz and Aran Gurwitsch. 1939--1959. Trans. J. Claude Evans. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989.

Gurwitsch 's Nachlass is held at the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center at Duquesne University, with copies at the Archival Repository of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, !ne. at The University ofMemphis, and the Sozialwissenschafts Archive at the Universi tăt Konstanz.

LESTER EMBREE

Fl01·ida Atlantic University

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