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

NATURAL SCIENCE IN CONSTITUTIVE PERSPEC-

TI VE Philosophy of science, as usually under-stood, approaches scientific theories from the methodological standpoint, i.e., it theorizes about scientific procedures in order to make scientific knowledge understandable. In such an approach the problem of scientific validity becomes the chief philosophical issue. Phenomenology proceeds in a way different from, but in clase connection with, this methodological approach. Instead of taking natural science for granted - i.e., science as a system ofpregiven scientific statements and arguments that only require logica! and methodological analysis - it inquires into the conditions that make such statements and arguments possible.

These conditions can be understood in various ways: they can be the real conditions of worldly objects themselves or they can be the conditions of the scientists as members of a scientific community with ali the personal, social, and sociocultural relationships that make their research possible. But phenomenology confronts a different set of conditions. Through philosophical reflection on science in the proper sense, phenomenology rei ies on the EIDETIC METHOD to inquire into the universal structures of human subjectivity, which, in the final analysis, count as the ultima te conditions of the possibility of objectivity in general and of scientific objectivity in particular. These subjective conditions to which phenomenology claims to gain access are, to be sure, not the defacto capacities and cognitive activities of particular scientists, for these could not be the conditions in which such matters as scientific validity and TRUTH are grounded. Rather, something like transcendental subjectivity will prove necessary for objective knowledge to be possible.

It was EDMUND HUSSERL who first took up the task of grounding science in this way and who stressed throughout his life that phenomenology was to provide such a grounding. The method he developed for this purpose was initially a type of descriptive analysis that

only !ater became part of what is called constitutive analysis. Both names, however, are only informative with respect to the domain of phenomenological analysis. The way in which everything we deal with is given and becomes accessible only through intentiona! acts ofconsciousness shows that the domain ofphenomenology is focused on the relations between intentiona! acts and intended objects. Thus Husserl 's turn to the abject was simultaneously supplemented by a turn to the subject. He relies on a new type of reflection that discloses relations between the subject and the abject, referred to as INTENTIONALITY, as a matter of mutual relations. It is basically these relations that count as the "given" in his phenomenology. Phenomenology must investigate what is given in the world of everyday life as well as in the scientific universe correlative to such intentiona! activities, which stand behind ali scientific research.

Husserl 's insight into the parallelism between the structures of subjective acts and the structures of the objects to which these acts refer forms the basis for the first conception ofthe phenomenological grounding of natural science: science is tobe regarded as constituted in specific intentiona! activities ofthe subject in such a way that these activities always take place on the foundation of simple originary acts. For example, the truth of an empirica! proposition as asserted in processes of thinking is founded upon perceptual processes of observing the objects that such claims are about. It

then becomes a principal task for phenomenological analysis to show how the epistemological roots of fundamental scientific concepts - for instance, space, time, mass, force, energy - can be traced back to the corresponding concepts formed and used in the nonscientific world of everyday life and how, on the other hand, the scientific concepts originale and are built up from these original concepts. The different kinds of abstraction and the specific types of generalization, idealization, and formalization - which are intentiona! activities and constituie scientific concepts step by step at different levels of consciousness until

their precise meanings in science are achieved- need to be analyzed, distinguished, and classified.

Husserl himself actually presented no detailed analyses of these processes, leaving them instead to his successors, but he struggled throughout his research to tind the true starting point for such inquiries. Numerous

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, Jose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna,4 74 Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner (eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

NATURAL SCIENCE IN CONSTITUTIVE PERSPECTIVE 475

descriptions of things and states of affairs of everyday

life and- especially in his last work, Die Krisis der

europaischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phănomenologie ( 1936) - his turn to the LIFEWORLD

were principally motivated by the concern to scrutinize

the relations between this world of everyday life and

natural science. It is obvious that the so-called world

of science does not represent a second world beside

or above the reality of everyday life, for it is precisely

the latter world that is, on the one hand, experienced

straightforwardly and is, on the other hand, objectified

by science. This led Husserl to the fundamental question ofhow

the objectification of the world by natural science can

be comprehended and how science in general can be

understood as an achievement ofthe subject. This fun

damental issue of his phenomenology refers basically

to the problem of the structure of subjectivity. How is

it that the same subject who lives its life here and now

within the world as a finite being is, at the same time,

capable of constituting, examining, and corroborating

statements in science, thus participating in truth and bringing forth accomplishments of scientific validity

that outlast its life in the everyday world?

This problem of subjectivity led Husserl to a radi

calization of his analysis of constitutive acts. In terms

of method it is characterized by a series of "reductions," the most significant ofwhich is the transcenden

tal EPOCHE AND REDUCTION providing the crucial move

from the earlier descriptive phenomenology of acts

of consciousness to the [ater CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMEN

OLOGY of subjectivity. The transcendental EPOCHE ANO

REDUCTION involves an abstention from all judgments

ofbeing and does so in such a way that the WORLD, and

all that belongs to it, becomes a theme for phenomen

ology as a world as it is "meant as being." That is, in

Husserl 's terminology, the world is thereby reduced to

the "transcendental phenomenon" of the world. This

phenomenon is "transcendental" in the sense that the

subject, while performing this peculiar reduction, es

tablishes itself as a transcendental subject: reflecting

on its own intentiona! activities, it detects doxic po

sitional or thetic components in all acts that "posit"

being and do so only as being in a certain sense. By

these components the intentiona! acts are now recog

nized as sense-bestowing (sinnstifiende) acts, and are

set out and investigated as such in strict correlation

with the modalities of being of the intended objects.

Through the latter being "given" in the natural attitude,

transcendental phenomenology thereby arrives at the

insight that the being of all that is given is "posited"

in the course of its experience. Ali natural givenness in everyday life as well as in natural science is thus to

be recognized as a transcendental sense-product of a

subjectivity in which being is posited.

The phenomenological concept of constitution thus

acquires its precise meaning through the transcenden

tal reduction, which is then, so to speak, the gateway

to a field of discoveries to be made by "constitutive analysis." The constitution of an object in this field

no longer simply means that the phenomenon is to be

described in its essential features, nor does it mean

merely the mental procedures of identifying syntheses

as they are in principle needed for the unification of in

dividual modes of appearance of any object in order to

make it conceivable as one and the same. Rather, con

stitution in the strict sense of transcendental pheno

menology means that the former merely descriptive

analyses, being referred to singular intentiona! acts,

must be replaced by investigations ofthe intentionality

that, from the teleological standpoint of its function,

make the synthetic unity possible. This holds especially for al! constituted unities of

theory and object in science, which are extremely com

plex in themselves and based on unities in the lifeworld.

Constitutive analysis must trace these back to the lifeworld by reactivating their sense levels, on which for

mer sense-bestowing achievements are "sedimented."

Constitutive phenomenology must furthermore exam

ine these transcendental achievements in all their com

plexity and implications through penetration into the

"intentiona! horizons" of every performance.

What is especially significant are the intentiona! re

lations between actuality and potentiality with respect

to sense-bestowing acts. These show that ali acts are

temporal and that the constitution of an object can in

principle only take place as a process in TIME. This

holds for the constitution of any object whatsoever and

is, in a final analysis, due to how consciousness is basi

cally structured temporally. Thus since the temporality

of constitution essentially consists in the fact that what

has been already achieved is included in the present

constitution, all constitution is genetic constitution.

GENETIC PHENOMENOLOGY opens up a wide field of

476 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

constitutive analysis for Husserl, especially where the constitutive problems of natural science are concerned. This is a science for which nature must first be given, for nature is that which is approached through the methods of science. According to constitutive phenomenology, this implies that one has to regard the constituting subject not only as a transcendental subject, but at the same time as a human subject who is the origin not only of natural science but ofthe constitution ofnature as we11.

The inherent problems ofthis twofold determinati an of the subject and of its identity need not be pursued here. But it should be mentioned that the human subject is the foundation of natural science - and this not only because, and not only insofar as, it is active in science, but already by virtue of its ro le in constituting the sense of existence of the object of science, i.e., nature. Furthermore, nature thus conceived is to be constituted as the hasis for a science of nature that claims objective knowledge in a special sense. Its objectivity refers to a certain property ofpropositions and arguments about its objects that we ca11 "objective" if they can in principle be made by and demonstrated to everybody. Objectivity can only be constituted by a plurality of subjects. A solipsistic subject would not be able to understand the term "objectivity"; it could not even conceive it. Objectivity essentia11y refers to INTERSUBJECTIVITY.

Further study shows how Husserl tried in very subtle and detailed investigations to elucidate how intersubjectivity itself is constituted. In conducting these investigations he again carne across the human, i.e., the somatie existence of the subject as one of the necessary conditions for intersubjectivity. The human BODY

is thus not irrelevant to foundations of natural science. In turn, the possible commonality in which the difference and distinctiveness ofthe single subjects must be overcome is the commonality oftheir sense-bestowing achievements that make the objectivity of natural science possible.

Notwithstanding that Husserl had not solved a11 the problems ofthe constitutive analysis of intersubjectivity, he could thus claim to have discovered the transcendental origin of natural science. One of the urgent requirements placed on philosophy of science in general is then to revive and preserve in our present consciousness the knowledge of the constitutive con-

ditions of natural science. This is so not only because science is the theoretical structure developed in the highest and most advanced form ofhuman activity, but also because the progress of science is accompanied by an ever increasing estrangement ofhumanity from scientifica11y investigated and configured nature. Husserl had this estrangement in mind when he ca11ed attention to the "covering over" ofthe sense ofthe originary lifeworld and thus the forgetting ofthis foundation and spoke ofthe crisis ofthe modern sciences. Ifthis crisis is to be overcome, it must first be exposed, i.e., the concealments and the shiftings of sense through former sense-bestowals have to be made visible and the genesis of sense reactivated by methods of constitutive analysis.

Thus Husserl 's constitutive phenomenology of nature is to serve a double purpose: (1) to show the fruitfulness ofthe phenomenological method for establishing a philosophical grounding of natural science, and (2) to help us better understand what natural science is and what is means for our practica! life that the world is increasingly shaped by natural science.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Gurwitsch, Aron. Phenomenology and the Theory ofScience. Ed. Lester Embree, Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1974.

Hardy, Lee, and Lester Embree, eds. The Phenomenology of Natural Science. Dordrecht: K1uwer Academic Pub1ishers, 1991.

Hee1an, Patrick A. "Husserl's Philosophy of Science." In Husserl:~ Phenomenology: A Textbook. Ed. J. N. Mohanty and William R. McKenna. Lanham, MD: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology/University Press of America, 1989.

Kocke1mans, Joseph, and Theodore Kisie1, eds. Phenomenology and Natural Science. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1970.

Stroker, Elisabeth, ed. Lebenswelt und Wissenschaft in der Philosophie Edmund Husserls. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1979.

-. The Husserlian Foundations of Science. Ed. Lee Hardy. Lanham, MD: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology/University Press of America, 1987.

-."Husserl and the Philosophy of Science." Journal ofthe British Society for Phenomenology 19 (1988), 221-34.

-. Husserl s Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. Lee Hardy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.

-. "Lebenswelt durch Wissenschaft." Proto-Soziologie 5 (1993), 28-47.

ELISABETH STROKER Universitiit zu Kăln

NATURAL SCIENCE IN HERMENEUTICAL PERSPECTIVE 477

NATURAL SCIENCE IN HERMENEUTICAL PER

SPECTIVE The basic insights of HERMENEUTI

CAL PHENOMENOLOGY can be appJied to the domain of

the natural sciences. Authors who work in this field

often take their point of departure from MARTIN HEIDEG

GER and particularly from his conception ofthe nature

of science and of the relation of the sciences to phi

losophy. Heidegger formulated his view in Sein und Zeit (1927), in some essays in Holzwege ( 1950), and

in Vortrăge und Aufsătze, as well as in Die Frage nach dem Ding (1962).

Some authors working in this field have made an

effort to explain Heidegger's own position in regard

to the natural sciences in detail or to subject it to

a critica! analysis (CARLOS ASTRADA, HAROLD ALDER

MAN, RAINER BAST, PIETRO CHIODI, KARLFRID GRUNDER,

THEODORE KISIEL, JOSEPH J. KOCKELMANS, HANS SEIGFRIED,

VINCENZO VITELLO, MICHAEL ZIMMERMAN). Others, in ad

dition, have made an effort to develop these semi

nal ideas in new directions (PATRICK HEELAN, THEODORE

KISIEL, JOSEPH J. KOCKELMANS). Although JOHN COMP

TON's work in the philosophy ofscience was deeply in

ftuenced by MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY, and that of JOSEPH

ROUSE has found inspiration in MICHEL FOUCAULT, one

can nonetheless in an indirect manner find the inftu

ence ofHeidegger's conception ofthe sciences also in

their ideas.

Hermeneutica! phenomenology is not preoccupied

with logica!, methodological, or epistemological is

sues, but rather focuses on the ontologica! problems

with which the natural sciences confront us. The fol

lowing are some examples of such questions: what is

the ontologica! status of the concept of "nature" as

this is studied in physics, chemistry, and biology? In

what sense and within what limits can one meaning

fully speak about the TRUTH of scientific theories and

scientific claims? To what do the empirica! sciences

of nature really owe their high degree of rigor and

certainty? What is the ontologica! status oftheoretical

entities? What is one to think about scientific realism,

constructive empiricism, conventionalism, etc.? How

does the LANGUAGE used in the natural sciences relate

to the language we speak outside the domain ofthe sci

ences? How is one to measure the enormous impact of

the sciences on our entire world through modem TECH

NOLOGY? How do the sciences affect the way we think

outside the domain of the sciences? How do the sci-

ences affect our conceptions ofRELIGION, morality, AES

THETICS, and our politica! practice? What is the impact

of the natural sciences on our "system" of EDUCATION?

How do the sciences actually change our social and

politicallife? There are many other such questions, yet

the basic questions are always: what is natural science?

How do scientific activities relate to nonscientific ac

tivities? Precisely what happens when one adopts the

theoretical attitude? What is the exact relationship be

tween a scientific object and the corresponding thing

that we encounter in the everyday WORLD? What is the

nature of our scientific thematization and objectivation

and what is the ontologica! status ofthe objects consti

tuted in the scientific thematization and objectivation?

It is one ofthe basic theses of hermeneutica! pheno

menology that understanding, to the degree that it is

articulated and unfolded, is interpretation. This thesis

implies that our scientific understanding ofnature, too,

is no more than an interpretation of what is. Thus our

large-scale research programs and theories are ali very

sophisticated interpretations of natural phenomena that

rest on a limited number of assumptions, the validity

of which cannot be justified on the basis of empirica!

grounds alone. This state of affairs implies, in turn,

that no research program or theory can ever compre

hensively express the ontologica! structure ofthe real,

natural world. Every scientific theory, even though it is

and remains a theory ofwhat is real, is in truth no more

than a possible interpretation of a large set of phenom

ena on the basis of certain principles, some of which

are accepted only on pragmatic and historically condi

tioned grounds. To explain what is characteristic for a

hermeneutico-phenomenological approach to the natu

ral sciences, it is necessary first to show that the natural

sciences are indeed in need of careful ontologica! re

fiections that concern themselves with the meaning of

scientific theories and claims. From the discussions

between dogmatists, skeptics, transcendentalists, op

erationalists, logica! empiricists, positivists, etc., it is

clear that the foundations of the natural sciences can

be, and have been, interpreted in different ways. Thus

it is necessary to determine critically the precise mean

ing of scientific theories and claims, and to explain

how such claims relate to other possible claims about

natural phenomena.

In this task hermeneutica! phenomenologists care

fully examine how the theoretical approach to the

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.


world develops from a more original practica! preoc

cupation with things. Here they are particularly con

cemed with the meaning and function ofthe objectify

ing thematization in which the mathematical projection

ofthe natural world is brought about. In our prescien

tific life we deal concemfully with things. When we

adopt the scientific attitude we give up this concemful

preoccupation in order to look at things in a purely the

oretical manner. Yet adopting the theoretical attitude

does not consist in abandoning our concern, but rather

in taking a second look at things.

Because ofthe change in our attitude toward them,

the things that originally were things of concern now

begin to assume a different character. They Iose their

location in their original world and henceforth appear

only in a place that is unrelated to us and is also without

limitations. The thing's actuallocation does not matter

any longer; its location has become a world-point, as it

were, which is in no way distinguished from any other

such point (demundanization). In addition, space and

spatial determinations of things we encounter in our

everyday life also become objectified and stripped of

their typicallimitations. At the same time, a similar ob

jectification takes place in the temporal determinations

and aspects ofthings and events as well as in the con

ception of time characteristic of everyday life. For in

the sciences we no longer consider these things in the

perspective oftheir possible use in concrete situations.

The advantage of this way of proceeding is that from

now on we are a bie to describe and determine with pre

cision the structural moments ofwhat is merely there,

present-at-hand. Another important characteristic ofthe modem nat

ural sciences consists in the fact that these sciences

make the things appear only in that kind of objectivity

which is constituted by the different scientific objec

tivations. It appears that the things can be made into

objects of theoretical research in more than one way.

Each form of objectivation implies a particular attitude

ofthe scientists toward the things in the world, so that

the things that are encountered in this way are always

seen from a particular point ofview. By making the as

pect that has been revealed from a given point ofview

the object of a critica! and methodical inquiry, the sci

entists, in their theoretical attitude, lay the foundation

of a particular empirica! science.

Accordingly, by their very attitude toward the things

in the world, the scientists definea certa in area ofthings

as their domain of inquiry. The discovery and delim

itation of a well-defined domain of inquiry is the first

step of every form of scientific inquiry. The entities

that belong to this domain are then made into a theme

of investigation and constituted as objects with only

a limited number of characteristics. In Newton's me

chanics this is brought about by definitions and "laws

ofnature." Once the objects ofthe domain are thus pro

jected mathematically, the rest is then also determined:

the approach to this domain is given its particular me

thodical direction, the structure of the conceptual and

discursive explanation has received its orientation, and

a specific technical language is established. The pur

pose ofthematization is to free the things ofthe world,

or a particular group of them, in such a way that they

can be the object of a purely theoretical discovery and

can therefore be examined objectively.

Now if it is indeed true that ali forms of human

knowledge are forms of interpretation, then it is also

legitimate to claim that scientific PERCEPTION, too, is

already an interpreti ve act. One can show, for instance

- as does Heelan - that visual space tends to have

a Euclidean geometrica! structure only when the envi

ronment is filled with objects that always ha ve the same

pattern and always show the same aspects, and when

these shapes and patterns continually exhibit standard

Euclidean shapes. On the other hand, our perception

tends to have a hyperbolic structure when vision is

not aided by these clues. From this it follows that ali

scientific perceptions are hermeneutica!. The scientific

observers leam to "read" perceptual and instrumental

stimuli as one learns to read a text. Thus the hermeneu

tica! aspect ofthe natural sciences is located at the heart

ofthese sciences where one would ha ve least expected

it, namely within the acts of scientific observation.

Other hermeneutica! dimensions of the natural sci

ences on which hermeneutica! philosophers have fo

cused are scientific discovery and scientific rationality.

As far as the first issue is concemed, hermeneuticists in

this case take up issues raised earlier by Norwood Rus

se! Hanson, Stephen Toulmin, and Michael Polanyi. In

the view of these authors, one was concerned in the

tradition of logica! empiricism mainly with scientif1c

explanation, and a very sophisticated logic of science

was developed there. It is usually assumed in that tra

dition that there is no parallel logic of discovery. With

NATURAL SCIENCE IN HERMENEUTICAL PERSPECTIVE 479

respect to questions conceming discovery one usuaUy appealed to intuition, the gestalt switch, the concept of genius, etc. Problems of scientific discovery were claimed to lie outside the domain of philosophy of science proper, and were thus usually relegated to psy

chology and the social sciences. Later, when a revisionist movement in philosophy

of science developed that focused explicitly on science as an ongoing process in finite historical contexts, the

history of science began to play a much more important role in philosophical reflections on the sciences; in some cases sociology of knowledge and cognitive science also played important parts. Yet the work done in this movement was mainly philosophical in nature.

Hermeneuticists are positive about this development in the philosophy of science. Yet they are also convinced that many of the authors working in this area are somehow stuck in an unacceptable philosophical

framework ofmeaning. This is the reason why the basic issues need to be rethought from the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology and why one must pay special attention to the meaning and function of the hermeneutica! circle in reflections on scientific discov

ery. As far as the debate about REASON in the sciences is

concemed, some hermeneuticists feei that the domain ofthe rational in logica! empiricism was usuaUy more or less identified with the domain of the logica!. This led, in turn, to the view that scientific discovery cannot be rationally accounted for; thus there simply cannot be a logic of discovery. There can only bea psychology or sociology of discovery. Hermeneuticists disagree with this view and propose that one pay more attention to the situation and the historical context in which every discovery comes about, instead of one-sidedly focusing on the actual behavior ofthe relevant scientists. To

substantiate their criticism ofthe logica! empiricist position and to justify their own hermeneutica! approach

to the natural sciences, these hermeneutica! phenomenologists reflect criticaUy on a number of issues that

psychologists and sociologists often tend to overlook. First, scientific problems arise oftheir own accord;

they are not solicited; they demand the attention of the scientists. The scientists respond to this appeal; this is the reason why a psychology of discovery is

not very helpful. Second, problems are always very

complex because they manifest themselves as some-

thing that runs against a background of meaning with which they conflict. In addition, the problem always

stands in a much broader background of meaning that is taken to be unproblematic and that is assumed to contain in principle aU the insights needed to sol ve the problem. Furthermore, scientific discovery takes place

within the domain of language in which ali known insights have already been formulated in a manner that

severs them from their historical situation so that they can be applied time and again in new and different contexts. Third, scientific problems have a vectorial character that is closely related to their contextual nature: they are obtrusive, solicit inquiry, and push, as it were, in a certain direction, as far as possible solutions are concerned. FinaUy, these problems appear to show themselves from a chiaroscuro situation; they are not seen or experienced by aU, but must be brought into the open, clearly formulated, and placed into their proper

contexts. These issues explain why we need a hermeneutic

of the natural sciences. For the rationality of scientific discovery can perhaps be described best by caUing scientific discovery a narrative explanation. The process of scientific discovery always takes place in a social and historical situation; it is articulated and structured from the perspective of a shared tradition, and it is studied by researchers trained in the skiUs, habits, attitudes, and conditions of the discipline at a certain stage of its development. Scientific discovery can therefore correctly be called a rational - be it also a faUible- response to a changing problem situation that is interpreted and resolved according to the resources provided by a concrete conceptual context

or world. The kind of rationality operative here can be called ontologica!, because it is concemed with a set of relationships between the context of meaning

from which the discoverers proceed and the scientific problem and meaning with which they are concretely concemed; it is in this domain that the hermeneutic circle is of great importance. This rationality can be caUed hermeneutica!, insofar as discovery is always an

interpretive response, a response from the perspective

of a carefully defined horizon of meaning. FinaUy, this

rationality is historical to the degree that the discoverer rei ies on a particular tradition for its resources and

insofar as every discovery is irreversible in time. The question ofwhether the position ofhermeneu-


tical phenomenology can be called realistic is debated

among phenomenologists. Heelan caUs his position re

alistic but qualifies the term by calling it hermeneu

tica! or horizonal realism. For in his view it belongs

to the essence of science to specify ever new hori

zons of reality that become accessible to perception

by "readable technologies," a special product of sci

entific theory. Kockelmans, on the other hand, argues

that hermeneutica! phenomenology cannot be called a

form of realism, because every form of realism is at root stiU a form of dogmatism, whereas hermeneuti

ca! phenomenology is a transcendental, critica! form

ofphilosophy. Yet at the same time, he also maintains

that every good scientific theory is a theory of what

is, just as every good scientific claim is a claim about

what is. To avoid contradiction in this latter view, it is

necessary to broaden the classical coherence theory of

truth and to detine truth basically as revealment.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Heelan, Patrick. Space-Perception and the Philosophy ofScience. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

-. "Natural Science as a Hermeneutic oflnstrumentation." Philosophy ofScience 50 (1983), 61-75.

-. "Hermeneutic Phenomenology and the Phi1osophy of Science." In Gadamer and Hermeneutics. Ed. Hugh J. Silverman. New York: Routledge, 1991, 213-28.

Heidegger, Martin. Holzwege [ 1950]. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 1963.

-. Vortriige und Aufsiitze. Pfullingen: Neske, 1954. -. Basic Writings. Ed. David Farrell Kre11. New York:

Harper & Row, 1977. -. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays.

Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. -. Die Frage nach dem Ding. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio

Klostermann, 1962; What is A Thing? Trans. W. B. Barton Jr. and V era Deutsch. Chicago: Regnery, 1967.

Kisiel, Theodore J. "Zu einer Hermeneutik naturwissenschaftlicher Entdeckung." Zeitschrift fiir allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 2 ( 1971 ), 195-221.

-. "The Rationality of Scientific Discovery." In Rationality To-Day. Ed. Theodore F. Geraets. Ottawa: Ottawa University Press, 1979, 401-11.

Kockelmans, Joseph J. The World in Science and Philosophy. Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1969.

-. Heidegger and Science. Lanham, MD: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology/University Press of America, 1985.

-. Ideasfor a Hermeneutic Phenomenology o(the Natural Sciences. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993.

JOSEPH J. KOCKELMANS The Pennsylvania State University

NATURALISM Sometimes also called scien-tism, positivism, or objectivism, naturalism has been

and remains the main opponent of phenomenology.

In most naturalism, nature is ali that there is; gen

uine philosophical and scientific knowledge is solely

based on the sensuous perception of physical objects;

and thus values and purposes, as well as minds and gods, are beyond nature, do not exist at ali, or can

not be known. They are merely words. Other forms of

naturalism recognize humanly imperceptible realities,

such as x-rays and the unconscious. ANALYTIC PHILoso

PHY, ORDINARY LANGUAGE ANALYSIS, LOGICAL POSITIVISM,

MARXISM, and PSYCHOANALYSIS are naturaJistic. In ad

dition, ECONOMICS, POLITICAL SCIENCE, SOCIOLOGY, PSY

CHOLOGY, and others of what are sometimes called the

"behavioral sciences" are often pursued in a behavior

istic fashion that is associated with naturalism. Behaviorism classically denies that the inside or first person

perspectives on subjects can yield scientific results. Fi

nally, naturalists tend to deny insight into ideal objects,

such as logica! forms, and thus tend to be nominalists

as well.

There ha ve been naturalistic movements in AESTHET

ICS and LITERA TURE that emphasize nature in contrast to

the traditionally emphasized human or religious sub

jects. The naturalism in philosophy and science that

phenomenology opposes is not incompatible with such

cultural movements. But the chief source of inspiration

for "intellectual naturalism," as it might be called in

order include psychological and social scientific dis

ciplines, is not the aesthetic experience of nature, but

rather modem NATURAL SCIENCE. Such science, which is

basically mathematical physics, began to supersede an

cient and medieval Westem natural philosophy around

the time of Galileo; it has produced century after cen

tury ofstunning accomplishments, and is well reftected

in the epistemology and metaphysics of modern phi

losophy. That KANT as well as Descartes were also

physicists of the first rank seems not unrelated to this

emphasis.

Naturalism has been considerably strengthened in

two respects since the second half of the 19th cen

tury. First, this was when the centuries-old dreams of

scientific TECHNOLOGY began to be fulfilled with the ap

plication ofphysical scientific knowledge in founding

and developing the chemical and electrica! industries, a

process that has intensified and generalized into every


NATURALISM 481

industry sin ce then. Second, this was also when Darwin

made his revolution in biology, which was followed by a biologica! form of naturalism before World War 1 that affected HENRI BERGSON and WILLIAM JAMES among others. Continuing developments in biologica! science and biotechnology promise to support considerable biologica! naturalism into the 21 st century, some of it currently reflected in COGNITIVE SCIENCE and ARTIFICIAL

INTELLIGENCE.

Few phenomenological philosophers (and none of the leading figures) either disparage the achievements of modem natural science per se or are unconcemed about the problematic impacts of scientific technology, which became unignorable with the industrialized

slaughter of World War 1. But they have grave hesitations about the generalization of natural scientific attitudes into philosophy such that metaphysics is in effect considered coterminous with physics and epistemology is considered conterminous with the method

ology ofphysics. They do not oppose science but scientism. The peripheralization if not outright ignoring

of normative disciplines such as AESTHETICS, ETHICS,

and POLITICS in the name of how human nature "actually works" is also cause for concern, for what besides particular economic interests can then guide the vast powers ofscientific technologywhen traditional values are set aside and no altematives ha ve been developed?

For naturalism to be understood phenomenologi

cally, NATURAL SCIENCE and its relations to everyday life, the cultural or HUMAN SCIENCES, the formal sciences, technology, and philosophy itselfneed tobe re

flected upon. This reveals that the nature investigated in natural science is the result of special efforts, so that natural science is nothing natural. Fundamentally, a specific attitude must be cultivated in order to thematize contents of cultural worlds as naturalistic objects. In this attitude, the practica! and evaluational characteristics that belong to objects as originally encountered

in everyday life are habitually regarded. Then the sun and moon, for example, have their ordinary human

uses as means to recognize the time of day, month,

or year abstracted from and become strictly abstract astronomical objects. That such objects can be more

easily related to mathematical models and that such models then make more precise clocks and calendars

possible is part of the attraction of the naturalistic approach, which advances not merely theoretical science

but also scientific technology. And when an approach is astonishingly effective in one specialized area, it is often tried in ali disciplines, philosophy included.

It would be an error merely to consider the naturalis

tic attitude of natural science as theoretical in contrast to the practica! attitudes of nonscientific life. This is an error because it is possible to take up a theoretical attitude toward contents of the everyday lifeworld that does not abstract from their everyday values and

purposes and that thus remain basic concrete objects. One can then theorize about communities, traditions, persons, and wor!ds in ECONOMICS, ETHNOLOGY, COM

MUNICOLOGY, GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY, POLITICAL SCIENCE,

SOCIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, and other human Or cultural

sciences. A scientific attitude specifically pertaining to sciences of this kind can consider teleological explanations. In contrast, explanations of phenomena in terms of ends and values for persons and communities are suppressed in the naturalistic attempt to explain

events in terms only of efficient causes, which become prominent when the WORLD is regarded as structured not in terms of culture, communities, and traditions, but solely in terms ofnaturalistic events in space, time,

and causality. One consequence ofthe remarkably rapid advance

of not only the theoretical natural sciences but also the natural scientific technologies derived from them is the contemporary tendency in the common mind to identify "science" with "natural science" to the disregard of the human sciences, e.g., history and sociology. A

more balanced view would recognize the scientific in general and then divide it along one dimension into the natural or even the naturalistic and the human or cultural sciences and along another dimension into theoretical and applied science, so that there are then four bideterminate forms ofthe scientific, and this is stiU not to consider the formal sciences of LOGIC and MATHEMAT

ICS. It is in disciplines such as ARCHITECTURE, MEDICINE,

NURSING, and PSYCHIATRY that cultural scientific knowJedge as well as natural scientific knowledge can be

used for practica! purposes. An adequate account of

"application" is still needed, but it can begin with the

insight that rarely are results and methods from but

one theoretical discipline employed in a science-based practica! discipline.

It is also a common mistake among the less sophisticated opponents of naturalism to include the promi-


nence of mathematical methods in modern natural science among the defining characteristics of what they oppose. Such thinkers would tend to advocate qualitative instead of quantitative approaches. This is an error first of all because qualitative accounts have always been produced in the phase of natural science called "natural history." Second, it needs tobe recognized that not all mathematical methods are quantitative in the strict sense that requires units, counting, and measurement. The recognition of nonquantitative mathematics helps it be seen that mathematics is fundamentally continuous with logic in what might generically be called "formal analysis." Such formal analysis has also been consciously practiced since ancient times in logic (and applied in rhetoric) and is thus nothing peculiar to science that is either modern or natural or, for that matter, to naturalistic technology, philosophy, and culture.

If the error of considering formal analysis, which can also be called "applied formal science," as a detining trait of naturalism is avoided, then a place for mathematics in the cultural sciences can be recognized as of methodological use apart from any naturalistic abstraction to which the originaUy useful and valuable cultural objects of socioculturallife might be subjected. This is not to deny that mathematical approaches in sciences of aU types involve formalization and idealization as abstractive techniques that transcend the various unique qualitative features of naturalistic as well as cultural objects. Then again, there is also no denying that formal methods, which are chiefly statistica!, have made possible the constantly more powerful science-based techniques for manipulating cultural life, e.g., in the advertising industry and also in the opinion polling that increasingly guides politica! campaigning and governance.

The physicalistic emphasis within naturalism involves a further disregarding of the psychic components that were the preoccupation of premodern thought and are always the preoccupation ofprescientific life, where people are chiefly interested in people. Thus the question of whether the heavenly bodies are gods is excluded by physicalistic astronomy. Beyond this, humans as weU as other animals also have their psyches physicalistically disregarded and then only atoms, molecules, chemistry, and physiology are reaUy real. A naturalistic epistemology tends to emphasize physicalistic forms through a preoccupation with the

sensuous perception of material objects and an emphasis on the logica! reconstruction of natural scientific methods for establishing knowledge of such objects. This excludes methods for understanding personalities, traditions, and communities through RE-PRESENTATION

and interpretation, all of which involve psychic lives, values, volition, teleological explanation, and culture. Chief among the techniques included in the cultural orientation ofthe human sciences are those that pertain to HERMENEUTICS, which is concerned with the interpretation and critique not only of texts but also of traces, i.e., data that are nonlinguistic, such as archaeological remains and facial expressions. Hermeneutics is much appreciated by phenomenologists of ali tendencies.

When psychic, social, historical, and cultural objects are not as such excluded from consideration, the issues central for disciplines and multi-disciplines such as ETHNIC STUDIES, ECOLOGY, and FEMINISM can be approached, aUowing difficult problems of RELATIVISM

and reductionism to emerge and be generalized. Are objective or nonrelative knowledge and purposes at aU possible when even scientists and practitioners and. what they claim to know and do might vary according to the professional (and, sometimes, extraprofessional) communities and traditions in which their accounts and purposes are constituted? Would recourse to EIDETIC METHOD in order to establish what holds for any cultural situation or world whatever be sufficient in such a case? One of the attractions of naturalism as a broad outlook in philosophy as well as science is that if one habituaUy abstracts from cultural characteristics in order to gain access to naturalistic objects, then one readily believes in a nature that is the one nonrelative reality in contrast to the many relative cultural worlds. But the price ofthis objectivity is suspiciously cheap.

What is essential for natural science and naturalism as the general outlook if not ideology derived from it is that the cultural characteristics with which ali objects are originally encountered are abstracted from in order to have the naturalistic objects. The naturalistic attitude is fostered in the professional training of natural scientists and natural-science-based technologists and practitioners and is thus automatically adopted in or

der to do physics or, in different variants, botany, and behavioristic psychological and social science, engineering, as weU as some areas of medicine and even types ofpsychiatry. As intimated, however, naturalism

NATURALISM 483

is ultimately a new and problematic type of culture.

Natural scientific knowledge and thus control ofnature

has even become an object of a new and religion-like

faith for many, while for others the very project and

its consequences are deeply disturbing. It is ironic that

an alternate to traditional religion would engender new

religious attitudes.

While an increasing tendency to oppose natural

ism can be discerned in the history ofphenomenology,

phenomenology cannot be said to ha ve been utterly in

nocent of naturalism. EDMUND HUSSERL was originally

interested in astronomy, received his doctorate in math

ematics, chiefly published works in the philosophy of

logic and mathematics, and developed his philosophy

at Gottingen, a major center not only for 20th century

mathematics and physics, but also for natural scien

tific technology. Naturalism was opposed by him as

part ofhis objection to PSYCHOLOGISM in Logische Un

tersuchungen ( 1900--1901 ), where he vigorously held

that ideal objects can be grasped in categoria! intuition.

Places for a theory of VALUE, a theory of ACTION, and

a philosophy of the human or cultural sciences can be

found in subsequent publications of his lifetime, be

ginning with "Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft"

( 1911) and in his characterization ofthe natural attitude

in §27 of Ideen zu einer reinen Phănomenologie und phănomenologischen Philosophie 1 (1913). Neverthe

less, after the emphasis on the grounding of logic and

mathematics, Husserl 's emphasis in the works of his

lifetime is on natural scientific psychology and physics.

Only with the posthumous publications in 1952 of

Jdeen II [1912-15], with its central distinction within the natural attitude between the naturalistic attitude of

natural science and the more fundamental personalis

tic attitude of the cultural sciences; the publication in

1954 ofthe full text of Die Krisis der europăischen Wis

senschaften und die transzendentale Phănomenologie

( 1936), with its emphasis on the world as lifeworld; and

the publication in 1962 of Phănomenologische Psy

chologie [ 1925], with its project of a human or cultural

scientific psychology, did it become conspicuous that

any naturalism in Husserl was a matter of emphasis

rather than essence.

The philosophy of the cultural sciences of AL

FRED SCHUTZ, beginning with Der sinnhafte Aujbau

der sozialen Welt (The meaning-structure of the so

cial world, 1932), is at least as naturalistic in empha-

sis as the works Husserl published, but, again, careful

study discloses not only the teleological explanation

involving "in-order-to motives" but also the inclusion

of values and purposes under his operative concept

of MEANING. SimilarJy, ARON GURWITSCH's The Fiefd of

Consciousness ( 1964) and other works, and the GEST ALT

PSYCHOLOGY centrally appropriated by him, will be

comprehended naturalistically if one does not watch for

the occasional passages devoted to how the "percep

tual world" and the life-spheres within it are originally

cultural, something systematically advocated in !ater

essays and in the posthumously published Die mitmenschlischen Begegnungen in der Milieuwelt [Human en

counters in the social world, 1931] and Esquisse de

la phenomlmologie constitutive [Sketch of constitutive

phenomenology, 1937]. Such naturalistic emphases in

the second generation of CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY

relate in part to the times and audiences in GERMANY

and the UNITED STATES before and after World War II.

More recent work, such as that of RICHARD M. ZANER

in the philosophy of medicine, THOMAS M. SEEBOHM in

the philosophy of hermeneutics, and LESTER EMBREE in

the philosophy of archaeology reflect more culturally

oriented work in this tendency.

The analyses of equipment, practica! concems, lan

guage, and interpretation in MARTIN HEIDEGGER's Sein und Zei! ( 1927) can hardly be considered naturalistic.

Carefully considered, the opposition to naturalism dis

cernible in the EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY in FRANCE

of JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY, and SI

MONE DE BEAUVOIR does not include opposition to natu

ral science, but only rejection of its naturalistic attitude

for metaphysical and epistemological purposes. Fol

lowing the work of GABRIEL MARCEL as well as MAX

SCHELER, the phenomenology of the BODY in France

opposed the naturalism that would reduce the corps

propre from the culturally encountered soma of a psy

che to the naturalistic object of anatomy and physi

ology. Merleau-Ponty was especially concemed with

naturalism in biology and psychology. Later concems

in French phenomenology with history, politics, and

feminism show an appreciation of the lived world as

cultural and of human existence as more than the in

tellects of natural scientists. "The world is more than

nature" might be an apt slogan. After all, human life or

existence always already includes valuing and willing

and its situations and worlds always already include


the cultural characteristics that are constituted in those strata oflife; naturalism can only pretend that they are not there.

With the work of HANS-GEORG GADAMER and others, including PAUL RICCEUR and JOSEPH J. KOCKELMANS, and in complex connections with other approaches, including STRUCTURALISM and CRITICAL THEORY, HERMENEU

TICAL PHENOMENOLOGY has additionally COntributed !O the philosophy ofthe human sciences and the appreciation of cultural life and cultural worlds as such. But that phenomenological alternatives to naturalism are positively interested in natural science is clear in the work of PATRICK HEELAN as well as Kockelmans for hermeneutica! phenomenology, JOHN COMPTON for existential phenomenology, ELISABETH STROKER for constitutive phenomenoJogy, and HEDWIG CONRAD-MARTIUS

for REALISTIC PHENOMENOLOGY. DON IHDE Jeads the curren! hermeneutica! phenomenology oftechnology.

Systematically speaking, the alternatives to naturalism among phenomenologists are oftwo sorts. The worldly or mundane alternative consists essentially in an appreciation of cultural worlds and ali that this entails in the way of theories of understanding and interpretation, emphasis on values, purposes, teleologies, personalities, communities, traditions, etc. This position is epitomized in the widespread phenomenological contention that the human sciences are prior to the natural sciences. At least tacitly, the assumption in mundane or worldly phenomenology is that ali genuine philosophical problems can be solved from intramundane standpoints. In this perspective, the difference between philosophy and science may be only that between the one "generality" and the numerous specialities. Schutz's CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY OF

THE NATURAL ATTITUDE seeks phiJosophically to found historical and social science upon psychology in the same way that many philosophers of natural science would found biology upon chemistry and physics, but it is sometimes mistaken for sociology, while he increasingly Jooked to a PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY.

The other non-naturalistic phenomenological philosophical alternative is transcendental. The modem project of grounding ali specialized theoretical, normative, and practica! disciplines in conscious life goes back to Descartes and can be seen in MODERN PHILOS

OPHY, BRITISH EMPIRICISM, KANT, FICHTE, and others. It would be an error to see an exclusive historical con-

nection ofthis modern project in first philosophy with naturalism and the rise ofnaturalistic science and technology as essential, for Husserl and others in transcendental phenomenologycomfortably include the human sciences (and cultural scientific methods) along with the formal sciences of logic and mathematics and the physical and biologica! natural sciences among the positive disciplines in need of transcendental grounding.

The primary difference between the mundane and transcendental alternatives to naturalism concerns the status of conscious life. Secondary issues include whether the life in question is exclusively human or includes nonhuman species and whether it is fundamentally personal or communal. But can conscious life have the always already established belief in its own being-in-the-world suspended, so that the problems of grounding the whole of the world in a part of it are dissolved, or must conscious life be considered only as part ofthe world, so that the modern transcendental task of grounding the world, nature included, must be abandoned? In other respects, there are many convergences between the mundane and transcendental versions of phenomenology on various issues, ali of which are, in various ways, opposed to naturalism but not natural science.

In decades to come, as natural sciences and natural scientific technologies will continue their astonishing progress, phenomenologists will constantly need to examine how these disciplines originate from and then ha ve social and environmental impacts back upon basic cultural life. Work in value theory, ethics, and philosophical politics, along with the philosophies of human and formal as well as natural science and technology, will be indispensable. Naturalism will not go away.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

De Boer, Theodore. The Development of Husserl s Thought. Trans. Theodore Plantinga. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978.

Cobb-Stevens, Richard. Husserl and Analytic Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1984.

Conrad-Martius, Hedwig. Die Erkenntnistheoretischen Grundlagen des Postivismus. Bensarben, 1920.

Husserl, Edmund. "Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft," Logos 1 (1911-12); rpt. in his Aufsătze und Vortrăge (1911-1921). Ed. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp. Husserliana 25. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1987; "Philosophy as Rigorous Science." In his Pheno-

THE NETHERLANDS ANO FLANDERS 485

menology and the Crisis of Philosophy. Trans. Quentin Lauer. New York: Harper & Row, 1965, 71-147.

Levinas, Emmanuel. La tfzeorie de l'intuition dans la phenomenologie de Husserl. Paris: Vrin, 1963; The Theory oflntuition in Husserl:~ Phenomenology. Trans. Andre Orianne. Evanston, IL: Northwcstem University Press, 1973.

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

Sinha, Debabrata. "Phenomenology and Positivism." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 23 (1962-{)3), 562-77.

LESTER EMBREE F!01·ida Atlantic University

THE NETHERLANDS AND FLANDERS Two

dominant movements can be distinguished within the

philosophical climate in The Netherlands and Flanders

at the beginning ofthe 20th century with respect to the

reception ofphenomenology. Neo-Thomism was dom

inant within the Catholic circle and neo-Kantianism

was dominant outside this circle. This climate deter

mined the reception of phenomenology until the end

ofWorld War II. From a neo.:rhomistic point of view, which had its

firm base in the Higher Institute ofPhilosophy at Leu

ven, the central question was whether Husserl 's pheno

menology is reconcilable with a realistic metaphysics.

In 191 O in the first French article on Husserl, Mgr.

Leon Noei (1878-1953) considered the Logische Un

tersuchungen (1900---190 1) as an effective refutation

ofpsychologism. He notes with satisfaction that in the

Prolegomena Husserl defends the traditional Scholas

tic logic against the customary contempt of that time.

Some decades !ater, in his capacity as president of the

Higher Institute, Msgr. Noei would be one ofthe peo

p1e who made the foundation ofthe Husserl Archives

possible.

During the first decades ofthe 20th century ali com

mentators agreed that Husserl had turned toward an

idealistic philosophy. The debate now focused on the

question whether Husserl's phenomenology had been

an idealistic philosophy from the outset or whether

phenomenology, taken as a purely descriptive method,

could be separated from the idealistic doctrine. Some

participants in this discussion were Joseph Marechal

(1878-1944 ), who claimed that such a separation was

not possible, and Rene Kremer (1887-1934), who de

fended the other option.

Outside the Catholic ci rele Husserl 's phenomen

ology was mainly received in a neo-Kantian perspec

tive. The University of Groningen, where Gerard Hey

mans (1837-1930) taught at the time, held a compe

tition in 1922 on A Comparative Study Concerning

Plata s Doctrine of Ideas and Husserl s Doctrine of an

Intuition of Essences. Henri Schmidt Degener ( 1891-

1969) wrote his doctoral dissertation for this occasion.

His study relies heavi1y on Paul Natorp's (1854-1924)

interpretation of both Husserl and Plato. He claims

that after the Logische Untersuchungen, Husserl's

thought developed more and more in a Kantian di

rection. He concludes that in Ideen zu einer reinen

Phănomenologie und phănomenologischen Philoso

phie 1 ( 1913 ), Husserl 's essences can no longer be

distinguished from ideas in the Kantian sense.

HENDRIKJ. ros was one ofthe first in The Netherlands

and Flanders to apply the phenomenological method

to a specific scientific discipline, namely linguistics. In

the 1920s he studied under Heinrich Rickert ( 1863-

1936) in Heidelberg and under Husserl in Freiburg.

In his doctoral thesis, Kritische Studien iiber philol

ogische Methode ( 1923 ), he stresses the necessity of

a phenomenological, i.e., a descriptive analysis of the

ways in which, in this case, linguistic phenomena are

given. He opposes this newly discovered method to

the constructive method, which he attributes to Paul

Natorp, among others. In a contribution to the volume

of the Revue Internationale de Philosophie dedicated

to Husserl in 1939, Pos pointed out the importance of

Husserl 's discovery of the LIFEWORLD as the founda

tion for ali scientific knowledge, including that about

LANGUAGE. Pos also organized Husserl's visit to The

Netherlands in 1928, where he gave his so-called "Am

sterdamer Vortrage" (Amsterdam lectures), published

in 1962 in Husserliana, volume IX.

The development ofphenomenology in The Nether

lands and Flanders gained momentum after World War

Il. This impetus was called EXISTENTIAL PHENOMEN

OLOGY. Important sources of inspiration wcre MARTIN

HEIDEGGER, GABRIEL MARCEL, and JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, but

above ali the influence ofMAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY can

hardly be overestimated. Existential phenomenology



not only became the dominant movement within the philosophical climate of The Netherlands and Flanders, but also determined the way in which Husserl's phenomenology was interpreted.

The work of ALPHONSE DE WAELHENS can illustrate this. In some articles dating from the 1930s he rejected Husserl's phenomenology: it cannot even serve as a philosophical method because as such it inevitably leads to idealism. According to de Waelhens the same holds true, mutatis mutandis, for Heidegger. After World War II, however, he strikes a different note. He then stresses the importance of the discovery of the Jifeworld, i.e., the existential reservoir of ali sense that is to be constituted. Because of this discovery it is possible, according to de Waelhens, for phenomenology to overcome the traditional opposition between realism and idealism. He repeatedly defended the possibility of interpreting Husserl 's phenomenology along these lines, for instance during the second and third International Colloquia on Phenomenology. The prerefiective experience of an anonymous subject is also the central theme of La philosophie et les experiences naturelles ( 1961 ). De Waelhens played an important ro le as a mediator between phenomenology in FRANCE

and GERMANY. Besides severa] extensive studies on Heidegger, he translated, partly in collaboration with WALTER BIEMEL and RUDOLF BOEHM, a number of Heidegger's works into French. Finally, the monograph on his greatest source of inspiration- Une philosophie de l'ambiguite: L 'existentialisme de Maurice MerleauPonty ( 1951)- should be mentioned here.

Numerous philosophers threw themselves into existential phenomenology during the first decades after World War II. Within the scope ofthis survey only a few names can be mentioned. NICO WIM LUIJPEN acquired international fame with his Existentiele fenomenologie ( 1959; Existential Phenomenology, 1960), which was translated into severa! Janguages and reprinted severa] times. In this work he calls the notion of existence or INTENTIONALITY the fa it primiti[ of existential phenomenology. He defines this notion as the unity ofreciprocal implication ofhuman being and world. With this, it is possible to escape the dichotomy between realism and idealism. Luijpen points out that the openness of the subject is not restricted to the world. It includes the possibility of a relation to the transcendent absolute, God. He elaborates on this point in Phenomenology

and Metaphysics (1965; Fenomenologie en metafYsica, 1966).

Closely related to the position of Luijpen is that of REMIGIUS KWANT. Together with Luijpen he defended existential phenomenology against the objection, mainly from neo-Thomistic opponents, that it excludes the possibility of a metaphysics. Kwant's main source ofinspiration was Merleau-Ponty. He wrote severa! studies on his philosophy, for instance on his !ater work in From Phenomenology to Metaphysics ( 1966). In other works he also relies on the oeuvre ofthe French phenomenologist, for instance in Mens en expressie, in het licht van de wijsbegeerte van Merleau-Ponty ( 1968; Phenomenology of Expression, 1969).

REINOUT BAKKER also paid a great deal of attention to Merleau-Ponty's thought. He translated some ofhis work into Dutch. He was also the first and only one in The Netherlands and Flanders to write a general history of phenomenology, De geschicdenis van het fenomenologische denken (The history of phenomenological thought, 1964 ), in which he deals with MAX SCHELER as well as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty.

JOSEPH J. KOCKELMANS was the first in The NetherJands and Flanders to write a general introduction to Husserl 's thought, Edmund Husserl. Een inleiding tot zijn fenomenologie ( 1963; A First Introduction to Husserl 's Phenomenology, 1967). He concludes this book with an attempt to settle the issue concerning the realistic or idealistic character of Husserl's doctrine. He argues in favour of the unity in the development of Husserl 's thought by stressing the different attitudes from which Husserl thinks. Because the transcendental attitude is most fundamental for Husserl, his phenomenology can be considered an idealistic doctrine. But this does not affect the lasting value ofhis analysis from a phenomenological or existential point ofview, if only the phenomenological reduction is seen as a reduction from the cultural world to the lifeworld. Kockelmans has also written a study of Husserl 's phenomenological psychology entitled Defenomenologische psychologie volgens Husserl. Een historisch-critische studie ( 1964; Edmund Husserl 's Phenomenological Psychology: A Historico-Critical Study, 1967) and an introduction to Heidegger's thought, Martin Heidegger. Een inleiding in zijn denken ( 1962; Martin Heidegger: A First Introduction to his Philosophy, 1965). In addition to these historical studies Kockelmans has also written severa!

THE NETHERLANDS ANO FLANDERS 487

books in the phiiosophy of NATURAL SC!ENCE- for in

stance, Phaenomenologie en natuurwetenschap ( 1962;

Phenomenology and Physical Science, 1966).

In the 1950s and 1960s phenomenologywas applied

to the sciences on a large scale, particularly the HUMAN

SCIENCES. It has often been said that the most original

contributions to phenomenology in The Netherlands

and Flanders lie in this field. The so-called Dutch,

or more specifically, the Utrecht school in particular

gained an international reputation. The members of

this school applied the phenomenological method to

PSYCHOLOGY and PSYCHIATRY.

The central figure around whom this school was

formed was FREDERIK J. J. BUYTENDIJK. His interest in

phenomenology was first aroused in the 1920s, when

he regu!ariy met MAX SCHELER and HELMUTH PLESSNER.

On the occasion ofBuytendijk 's sixty-fifth birthday his

companions offered him a collection of essays, Per

soon en Wereld. Bijdragen tot de Phaenomenologis

che Psychologie (Person and world: Contributions to

phenomenological psychology, 1953). The main theme

ofthis phenomenological psychology is human situat

edness. Human beings can on1y be understood from

their lifeworld. On the one hand, this is a world in

which one finds onese1f, and on the other, it is a world

that one actively constitutes. Much attention is paid

to the human BODY and HISTORY. The point of depar

ture and the touchstone ofthis psychology is everyday

lived experience. It finds its theoretical justification in

the philosophical notion of intentionality, because this

notion refers to the indissoluble bond between human

beings and the world. The leading members ofthis Utrecht school are the

psychiatrists HENRICUS RUMKE and JAN HENDR!K VAN DEN

BERG; the theorist of EDUCAT!ON MARTINUS LANGEVELD;

and the psychoiogists DAVID VAN LENNEP and JOHANNES

LINSCHOTEN. Two other collections of essays with which

this school presented itself are Situation: Contribu

tions to Phenomenologica! Psychology and Psycho

Pathology ( 1954) and Rencontre, Encounter. Begeg

nung ( 1957).

The concept of phenomenological psychology

this group advocated was not undisputed. STEPHAN

STRASSER, Buytendijk's colleague at the University

of Nijmegen, was never a member of this school.

Without explicitly referring to this group, he wams

in his Fenomenologie en empirische menskunde. Bij-

drage tot een nieuw ideaal van wetenschappelijk

heid ( 1962; Phenomenology and the Human Sciences,

1963) against the dangers of what he calls phenomen

ological impressionism. In the Dutch edition of this

book he predicts that a fu ture historian of phi1osophy

will conclude that an incomplete knowledge ofpheno

menology has led especially in The Netherlands to a

conception of phenomenology that can be expressed

in two words: I see! In this connection the Husser

lian phrase Bilderbuchphănomenologie (picture book

phenomenology) is often used.

Johannes Linschoten, once considered to be Buy

tendijk's most talented pupi!, eventually tumed away

from phenomenological psychology. This did not

mean, however, that he renounced phenomenology

altogether. In his article "Die Unumgiinglichkeit der

Phanomenologie" ( 1962) he argues that so-called

phenomenological psychology, which concentrates on

describing the pre-reflective sphere of experience, co

incides with phenomenology in general. This pheno

menology, being a philosophical discipline, is relevant

to psychology, but Linschoten now reserves the term

"psychology" for the scientific endeavorthat strives for

objective knowledge by means of formalizing, quan

tifying, and experimental analyses. With this vision

Linschoten anticipated the actual developments. In the

mid 1960s phenomenological psychology rapidly lost

ground to experimental psychology. Existential phenomeno1ogy as a whole lost its dom

inant position in the philosophical climate of The

Netherlands and Flanders during the 1960s.lt was con

fronted with the rise of various new movements such

as CRITICAL THEORY and STRUCTURALISM. Some authors

who commented on these confrontations from a the

matic point of view are, besides the above-mentioned

K want and Bakker, JAN BROEKMAN and KEES STRUYKER

BOUDIER.

In 1966 and 1967, the confrontation with ANALYTIC

PHILOSOPHY led to a fierce controversy, in which nu

merous authors participated. One of them was coR

NELIUS VAN PEURSEN. In Fenomenologie en analytische

filosofie (1968; Phenomenology and AnaZvtic Philos

ophy, 1972) he defends phenomenology by pointing

out the convergence between developments in ana

lytic and phenomenological philosophy. In both move

ments an awareness has broken through that the logica!

realm cannot be separated from the realm of contin-


gency, i.e., in the case of analytical philosophy, ORDINARY LANGUAGE, and in the case of phenomenology, the lifeworld. More recently, Herman Philipse's (195 1) doctoral dissertation on De fundering van de logica in

Husserls 'Logische Untersuchungen '(The foundations oflogic in Husserl 's Logica! Investigations, 1983) was motivated by the question whether this work is still valuable from a analytic philosophical point ofview.

Another participant in this discussion was THEO DE BOER. His defense of Husserl's phenomenology rests partly on stressing Husserl's own phenomenological

orientation, which he distinguishes from the dominant existentially oriented interpretation of Husserl's

phenomenology. This point is elaborated in De on

twikkelingsgang in het denken van Husserl (1966; The Development of Husserl s Thought, 1978). In this study De Boer argues that many Husserl interpretations approach his philosophy too much from existing

philosophical movements. Consequently they misunderstand its unique character. These approaches often result in making absolute what is only a stage in the development of Husserl 's thought. He argues for the unity of Husserl's oeuvre as being a unity of development. The same major problems are dealt with by Husserl in

an ever more radical manner, ultimately leading to a transcendental idealistic solution.

The impact of Heidegger's philosophy on philosophical Iife in The Netherlands and F1anders is documented by many interpretive monographs and essays. After de Waehlens, it was especially SAMUEL ussELING who wrote authoritative studies of Heidegger, beginning with his doctoral dissertation on Heidegger. Denken en danken, geven en zijn (Heidegger: Thinking and thanking, giving and being, 1 962). Later he investigated the relations between phenomenology, HERMENEUTICS, and rhetoric in Retoriek en Filosofie. Wat gebeurt er wanneer er gesproken wordt? (1975; Rhetoric and Philosophy in Conflict: An Historical Survey, 1976). Theo De Boer published an important study in 1978 on Heidegger's critique ofHusserl in Sein

und Zeit. PAUL RICCEUR became known to the Dutch pub

lic through the edition ofthree antho1ogies in Dutch by ADRIAAN PEPERZAK in 1968, 1970, and 197 J.

The first Dutch translation ofEMMANUEL LEVINAS appeared in 1966. It was a rather deficient translation of

Totalite et infini and did not attract much attention. A

very good new translation with notes by Theo De Boer

was published in 1987. In 1969 Adriaan Peperzak published Het menselijk gelaat (The human face), a collection of central texts by Levinas translated into Dutch. In his own work, Peperzak has defended a version of

phenomenology in which elements of Hegel, Heidegger, and Levinas are combined with elements of the metaphysical tradition. This can be seen in Verlangen (Desire, 1971) and in Weeftels (Textures, 1974). U en Ik

(You and I, 1976) tries to overcome the differences between Levinas's descriptions of intersubjectivity and Hegel 's analysis of the master-slave relation. In Sys

tematiek en geschiedenis (1981; System and History in Philosophy, 1986), he defends a phenomeno1ogical perspective on the unity of thematic philosophy and the history ofphi1osophy.

Finally, there is the way in which phenomenology is dealt with from a deconstructive point of view. The guide here is of COUfSe JACQUES DERRIDA. RUDOLF BERNET has paid considerable attention to Derrida's Husserl reading. A number of articles bear witness to this. In "Is the Present ever Present? Phenomeno1ogy and the

Metaphysics ofPresence" ( 1982), for example, Bemet offers a deconstructive reading of Husserl 's analysis of

time-consciousness. He argues that Husserl carne to a result that could undermine his program, which can be characterized as a metaphysics of presence. However, Husserl recoiled from these results and did not want to accept the consequences of his own analysis. Some of Bernet's essays on Husserl and the ways in which his phenomenology ha ve been interpreted are collected in La vie du sujet: Recherches sur 1 'interpretation de Husserl dans la phenomenologie (1994).

A survey ofphenomenology in The Netherlands and Flanders, or for that matter ofphenomenology in general, is not complete without mentioning the Husserl Archives in Leuven, Be1gium. One name is closely Jinked to the Archives, that of HERMAN LEO VAN BRE DA.

He rescued Husserl 's Nachlass. This resulted in the foundation ofthe Archives in 1939. Van Breda initiated the publication of Husserl 's collected works in the

series Husserliana, and the series of studies in pheno

menology called Phaenomenologica. Up to now thirty volumes ha ve been published in the Husserliana series.

The complete series will contain some forty volumes. Furthermore, Van Breda was the initiator of severa! in

ternational colloquia on phenomenology in the 1950s and 1960s. Sin ce the death of Van Breda, Samuel IJs-

THE NETHERLANDS AND FLANDERS 489

seling bas been director ofthe Husserl Archives. In the course of time the Archives have known

numerous collaborators who edited volumes in the Husserliana series. Restricting ourselves to those who worked or still work in The Netherlands and Flanders on a more permanent basis, the following names can be mentioned. Stephan Strasser, already referred

to above, was the editor ofthe first volume, Cartesian

ische Meditationen und Pariser Vortriige, published in 1950. Walter and MARLY BIEMEL edited six volumes. Rudolf Boehm edited three volumes; since 1974 he

has been co-responsible for the series. KARL SCHUH

MANN edited the new edition of Jdeen zu einer reinen

Phiinomenologie und phiinomenologischen Philoso

phie I in 1976. Furthermore, he edited the first volume

in the series Husserliana-Dokumente, entitled Husserl

Chronik (1977), a very detailed survey of Husserl's

philosophical life. Together with his wife, Elisabeth

Schuhmann, he has edited the third title in this series, Husserl's ten volume Briefwechsel (1994). He is

one of the founders of the journal Husserl Studies. At

present he teaches at the University ofUtrecht. ULLRICH

MELLE edited two volumes in the Husserliana series. At

present he teaches at the Katho1ieke Universiteit Leu

ven, as does the above-mentioned RudolfBernet, who is responsible for the fourth series in English, Edmund

Husserl: Collected Works. Some of the authors mentioned ha ve made sugges

tions concerning the future of phenomenology. One of them is Stephan Strasser. Having been occupied

with phenomenology for some fifty years, an occupation that led among many other studies to Das Gemut (1956; PhenomenologyofFeeling, 1977), he asks him

self in Welt im Widerspruch (posthumously published in 1991) what the significance ofphenomenologyis today. According to Strasser, phenomenology, Husserl 's

phenomenology included, is a philosophy of experi

ence rather than a reftective philosophy. The possibil

ity of reflection presupposes an original contact with

the world, and experience brings about this contact.

Strasser's answer to the question ofthe most fundamen

tal experience differs from that of Husserl. According

to Strasser, perception cannot be the fundamental mode

of experience, not even inner perception, because its

results are inevitably ambivalent. In the search for a

fundamental experience he finds support in Levinas.

The most fundamental experience has to be an ethical

experience that shatters the noetic-noematic scheme,

an experience that consists of an unselfish turn toward the other. This foundation is in a way reconcilable with Husserl's own intentions because, according to Strasser, these pertain to ETHICS.

In an article published in 1985 and included in his Van Brentano tot Levi nas. Studies over defenomenolo

gie (From Brentano to Levinas: Studies on phenomenology, 1989), Theo de Boer evaluates the phenomen

ological method, especially EIDETIC METHOD. He concludes, in accordance with Heidegger, that essences

should not be taken as objects, but instead as the frames or conditions of possibility of ali experience. These

frames themselves, however, can be experienced, and thus the element of Husserl 's intuitionism is preserved. De Boer agrees with Rica:ur that phenomenology is

not only the abject of criticism by HERMENEUTICS, or for that matter, by a deconstmctive reading. It also is the foundation for the possibility of criticism insofar as

phenomenology, on the level of perception, discloses the dimension of sense along which hermeneutics as well as a deconstmctive reading li ve.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Coenen, Herman. "Phănomenologie und Sozialwissenschaft in den Niederlanden. Eine Skizze der aktuellen Lage." In Sozialităt und lntersubjektivităt. Ed. Richard Grathoff and Bemhard Waldenfels. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1983, 338-49.

!Jsseling, Samuel. "Das Husserl-Archiv in Leuven und die Husserl-Ausgabe." In Buchstabe und Geist. Zur Uberlieferung und Edition philosophischer Texte. Ed. Walter Jaeschke et al. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1987, 137-46.

Kockelmans, Joseph J. Phenomenological Psychology: The Dutch School. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987.

Kortooms, Toine, and Kees Struyker Boudier. "Een bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de Husserl-receptie in Belgie en Nederland." Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 81 (1989), 1-20, 79-101.

Spiegelberg, Herbert. Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1972.

Struyker Boudier, Kees. "Phănomenologie in den Niederlanden und Belgien." In Dialektik und Genesis in der Phănomenologie. Ed. Ernst Wolfgang Orth. Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1980, 146--200.

-. Wijsgerig leven in Nederland. Belgie, en Luxemburg 1880--1980. 8 vols. Nijmegen: Ambo, 1985--92.

Van Breda, Herman Leo. "Le sauvetage de 1 'heritage Husserlien et la foundation des Archives d 'Husserl." In Husserl et


la pensee moderne/Husserl und das Denken der Neuzeit. Ed. Hennan Leo Van Breda and Jacques Taminiaux. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959, 1-41.

TOINE KORTOOMS Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen

KITARO NISHIDA The founder of the so

called "Kyoto school" of philosophy, Kitaro Nishida

(1870-1945) was called to a professorship at the Im

perial University in Kyoto in 1911. Through his teach

ing and his writings he played such a preeminent ro le

in Japan's academic philosophy that many talented

philosophers gathered around him. Nishida is almost

the only philosopher in Japan since the Meiji Restora

tion ( 1868) to build up an independent and original

philosophical system. He introduced phenomenology

into JAPAN, and his Students- HAJIME TANABE, SHUZO

KUKI, GOICHI MIYAKE, TOKURY0 YAMAUCHI, and others

were so attracted to phenomenology that they went on

to study with EDMUND HUSSERL, MARTIN HEIDEGGER, and

EUGEN FINK in Freiburg im Breisgau.

With his strong desire for knowledge, Nishida, in the

Far East, steeped himself in the European and Ameri

can philosophy ofhis time. He was the first in Japan to

recognize the important meaning of the philosophers

of that time, such as HENRI BERGSON, Husserl, Alexius

Meinong ( 1853-1920), FRANZ BRENTANO, and WILLIAM

JAMES. His sympathy with James's philosophy is al

ready to be found in his diaries before the appearance

of his first work. And he retained a strong affinity to

Bergson ali his life. This is not to deny that Husserl, too,

had a deep and strong affinity to James (e.g., the con

cept ofthe "fringe") and Bergson (e.g., ROMAN INGAR

DEN showed that the "dun?e" ofBergson is very similar

to Husserl 's concept of the stream of consciousness ).

Nishida was born near Kanazawa. He experienced

the rise of the Japanese empire and died in 1945 as

it fell. He was eleven years younger than Husserl,

whose first important work, Logische Untersuchun

gen, appeared at the turn ofthe century (1900-1901).

Nishida 's first major work appeared in the year 1911,

entitled Zen no kenyku (A study of good). This work

already evinces his characteristic thought. He was

the first in Japan to present Husserl's phenomen

ology in its connection with neo-Kantianism and with

the Brentano school. His papers, e.g., "Ninshikiron

niokerujun-ronri-ha no shutyo nitui te" (On the position

ofthe purely logica! school in epistemology, 1911) and

"Gendai niokeru risoshugi no tetsugaku" (The idealis

tic philosophy of the present, 1917) are representative

works of that time.

Another simi1arity between Husserl and Nishida is

their JifeJong interest in LOGIC and MATHEMATICS. It is

well known that Husserl began his studies and his aca

demic career as a mathematician and that his disser

tation, Beitriige zur Theorie der Variationsrechnung

(1882), and his Habilitationsschrift, Ober den Begriff

der Zahl (1887), published in Philosophie der Arith

metik ( 1891 ), dealt specifically with the foundations

ofmathematics. On the other hand, Nishida had some

hesitation about choosing his professional field. He

chose philosophy because the problem of life was of

the greatest interest to him. But he retained his interest

in the foundations of mathematics throughout his life,

as the countless letters to Shimomura, his pupi! and a

philosopher of mathematics, show.

There is also a similarity in their modes ofthinking.

Tokuryu Yamauchi, his eminent student and pheno

menologist, who studied with Husserl in Freiburg and

was the successor to Nishida's chair at Kyoto Univer

sity, called Nishida "a man who thinks as he writes."

Likewise it bas been said: "Husserl ne pensait qu 'en

ecrivant." Both philosophers dedicated their lives to

the analysis ofthe "matters themselves." It is no exag

geration to say that they died thinking and writing.

Nishida related himself to Husserl 's phenomen

ology in a somewhat different manner than did the

philosophers ofthe Kyoto school, such as HAJIME TAN

ABE, TOKURY0 YAMAUCHI, GOICHI MIYAKE, KEIJI NISHITANI,

and others. As Nishida was the founder of this school

and a contemporary ofHusserl, Bergson, and James, he

considered phenomenology to be valuable and a pos

sibility of philosophical thinking, but he maintained

a critica! distance from it. In addition, it should be

mentioned that Nishida practiced Zen meditation in

temples. He built up his system of philosophy on the

experience of Zen meditation, which is expressed in

his concept of pure experience. This concept was de

rived from the experience of sanmai, e.g., samiidi, in

Zen BUDDHISM. Thus Keiji Nishitani bas said rightly:

"Nishida's philosophy owes its originality to the East

Asian spiritual tradition, that is, to Buddhism."


KITARO NISHIDA 491

Nishida's attitude toward Husserl 's phenomenology

is expressed critically with respect to the essence of

consciousness. Nishida poses the question ofhow con

sciousness is determined to be consciousness, i.e., the question ofthe essence of consciousness. Nishida was dissatisfied with Husserl's phenomenology on the following points: (!) its subjectivism, that is, the circum

stance that consciousness is regarded only as an individual existing entity and experience as always belonging to an individual person; (2) the difference between

the subject and the object is presupposed as already

self-evident; and (3) comprehension, feeling, and will

are considered tobe only different levels of conscious

ness. In actuality, the question is put in such a way

that while phenomenology defines the essence of consciousness as consciousness of something, that is, as

directedness toward something, it does not go on to

inquire into the essence of INTENTIONALITY. It seems

to Nishida that insofar as the essence or basis of consciousness is not discussed, phenomenology is not ad

equately established. That Nishida maintained this ob

jection until his death is clear in his letters to his disciples, RISAKU MUTA! and GOICHI MIYAKE. Nishida posed

the question as to the essence of consciousness radically and found a way out of solipsism.

A Study of Good has four topics: ( 1) pure experience, (2) real being, (3) the good, and (4) religion. The

concept of "pure experience" also appears in William

James, but with Nishida this concept is independent

of the historical connection. This work is very near to

phenomenological research in the sense of its descrip

tive way ofthinking. The concept of pure experience is a concept of im

mediate consciousness and thus a psychological concept insofar as it is about a kind of consciousness.

Yet it is never a subjectivistic concept. Investigation

into true being begins with doubting everything that

one can doubt. This doubting approach corresponds to

the phenomenological method of EPOCHE. By means

of doubting as his method, Nishida gains "immedi

ate consciousness, which one cannot doubt." This is

a fact of intuitive experience, namely, knowledge of

the phenomenon of consciousness. But the conscious phenomenon is an essence prior to the difference be

tween subject and object, thus before the realm ofthe

subject-object relation. "The appearance-phenomenon

of what is present and the becoming-consciousness

of what is present are simply the same." This recalls Husserl 's theory of the difference and indifference of thing-appearance and the appearing act.

The so-called externa! thing, i.e., the thingphenomenon, is not transcendent and independent

of our consciousness. The immediate primordial fact is the consciousness-phenomenon, never the thing

phenomenon. Our BODY is a part of our consciousnessphenomenon. Consciousness is not in the body,

but vice versa, the body is in the consciousnessphenomenon. The consciousness-phenomenon is ali

there is. The thing-phenomenon is only that aspect of the consciousness-phenomenon that is com

mon to everyone and unchanged. The consciousnessphenomenon does not consist of the soul separated

from the thing. "Experience" means to know the fact, after be

coming aware of it and putting prejudices aside. "Pure" means the state of experience per se, without

adding thought or judgment. Thus experience is prepredicative experience. Pure experience is prior to the relation of consciousness to its object. According to Nishida it is something prior to directedness-towardsomething. It is the original experience per se on which

intentionality is grounded. Nishida reftects on the nature of pure experience.

This reftection is similar to phenomenological reftection. Although pure experience is implicitly complex,

it is always a simple fact in the moment of percep

tion. When past-consciousness gains a new meaning in present-consciousness, the experience of the

past-consciousness is not the same as past consciousness itself, even when it is only a repetition of pastconsciousness. That which is analyzed by present consciousness is stiU not the same as present conscious

ness. This problematics is the same as Husserl 's in his

late philosophy of time-constitution.

Nishida grounds the purity and immediacy of pure

experience on the fact of the unity of concrete consciousness. "Consciousness actually forms a system,"

he says. This concept of the system of consciousness

is similar to Husserl 's concept of the horizon, which is

expressed as the wholeness of the phenomenological

consciousness, the world. Consciousness per se is for

Nishida a chaotic unity from which various manifold

states of consciousness differentiate themselves.


Even in the case of externa! perception, attention

is not directed by the externa! thing, but by an un

conscious unifying power of consciousness. Attention,

turned toward the externa! thing, is actually directed by

the unity of consciousness. By means of the concept of the "unity of consciousness" (the unifying power of

consciousness), Nishida designates consciousness as a system that develops itself out of itself. Thus think

ing overcomes PSYCHOLOGISM. There is neither inward

nor outward experience. Consciousness is, as a unified

system, true being. For Nishida consciousness is an

ontologica! concept. Pure experience shows itself as present-conscious

ness. In the present it is the unity of consciousness,

which, as an attentive gaze, is itself the foca! point

of consciousness. MEANING (sense) or judgment results

from the present-consciousness's distancing itselffrom

the unity of itself. Thereby the present-consciousness

becomes a past-consciousness, i.e., a represented con

sciousness. Thence a difference between subject and

abject comes to expression. Consciousness estranged (alienated) from itself is united in the greater con

sciousness by means of now-consciousness. Pure ex

perience shows itself as present-consciousness. In the

present it is unifying. Therefore meaning (sense) or

judgment is based on the interruption of the unity of

consciousness. Yet the interruption is produced by the

opposition between present-consciousness and pastconsciousness. It is phenomenologically understand

able that Nishida regards consciousness as a system,

but not that he explains two modes of consciousness,

present and past regarding consciousness, through consciousness-unity and its interruption.

Thinking is first of ali an act that brings a relation

ship to unification. In judgment, the fact of original

pure experience is analyzed and developed into sub

ject and predicate. Judgment is in the deepest sense the self-division of primordial ( originary) being. Be

hind every judgment !ies the experience of that which

it unifies. According to Nishida, in the background of

purely logica! judgment there is intuitive pure expe

rience. "The horse is galloping" is based on the pure

experience in which the galloping horse appears as

such. "Only when we have surrendered ourselves to

the object ofthought and have lost our self in it, do we

see thinking accomplished."

That thinking develops itself out ofitself is a central

thesis. Therefore Nishida's basic view ofTRuTH is that

"truth will emerge by means of our always losing our

subjective self and becoming something objective."

His description ofthe self-differentiation oftrue being

is carried out phenomenologically: the whole (as horizon) appears at first implicitly. Its content differentiates

itself and presents itself. When this self-differentiation

oftrue being is accomplished, the whole oftrue being

is actualized and perfected. In short, the One develops

itself out of itself.

The distinctiveness ofNishida's thought consists of

the following points: ( 1) The basic experience, namely

pure experience, is grasped metaphysically as true be

ing. (2) The development of true being is regarded as

a dialectica! movement. (3) The ground (basis) of the

world and my ground are the same, i.e., the self. Phe

nomenologists may assert, in objection to Nishida's

thought, that he was metaphysically oriented from the

beginning. Many objections may be raised against the

presupposed dialectica! method and his assertion about

the self in us and in the world.

But if one chooses to evaluate Nishida's way of

posing the question positively, one must remember

that Husserl viewed the intentionality of conscious

ness as unarguable. In intentiona! analyses the basic idea, "consciousness of something," is presupposed as

self-understood. Nishida found Husserl's subjectivism

inadequate. But if we could interpret the question of

the essence of consciousness as the essence of intentionality, we could conclude that the question as to the

essence of consciousness is concerned with the scope

ofthe relation between subject and abject. This scope is precisely that upon which the intentionality of con

sciousness is based. With Nishida the question as to

the essence of consciousness - as a question about

the scope of the relation- is: what is placed between

the subject and the abject? He inquires into and seeks

the bases of the relation of the two as such, which is

precisely as a relation that is neither subject nor object.

The relation as such is grasped as pure experience,

which is the immediate consciousness of the unity of

subject and object.

When HEINRICH ROMBACH distinguishes the basic in

tention of Heidegger's phenomenology from that of

Husserl, Nishida's question as to the essence of inten

tionality may be seen to have something in common

with Heidegger's criticism of Husserl, for intention-

KITARO NISHIDA 493

ality itself is a founded mode of being-in-tbe-world.

Wbat Nisbida and Heidegger bave in common is tbe

question of tbe mode of being of directedness to tbe

object, tbus oftbe relation between subject and object.

Tbe question of tbe mode of being of intentionality

was carried out, in Nisbida, as tbe self-differentiation

of pure experience, and in Heidegger as FUNDAMENTAL

ONTOLOGY. Rombacb's interpretation oftbe fundamen

tal concept of Husserl 's pbenomenology is quite close

to Nisbida's pure experience wben be writes: "Tbey

(subject and object) always bave to appear togetber,

for tbe subject is notbing otber tban tbe structured lo

cus of tbe capacity-for-presence of a particular kind of

object and tbe object is notbing otber tban a manner of

possible being-grasped by a subject."

From tbe perspective ofbis late pbilosopby,A Study

of Good is merely tbe beginning of Nisbida 's pbilos

opby. Tbereafter, based on tbe tbeory of pure experi

ence, be confronted tbe nea-Kantian pbilosopbers and

carne to tbe point wbere pbilosopbical reflection could

be carried out no further. Tbis spbere of irreflectiv

ity involved tbe same problematics tbat Husserl found

in bis very last years in connection witb tbe "living

present." In Husserl too pbenomenological reflection is

founded onan unreflective dimension. Nisbida tbougbt

tbat tbis unreflective dimension is tbe absolute will

(Jikaku niokeru chokkan ta hansei [Intuition and re

flection in self-consciousness, 1917]). Tbis will must

be transformed by action-intuition seeing (Hataraku

mono kara mitru mana e [From tbat wbicb acts to tbat

wbicb sees, 1927]).

BODY and action-intuition are tbe tbemes in

Nishida 's late pbilosopby. We could find some pbeno

menological elements in tbese tbemes, but tbe bigb

est point of bis late pbilosopby !ies in tbe tbougbt of

"place" as absolute notbingness. In bis final stage of

pbilosophical tbinking be elucidates tbe "place" (topos)

and tbe "notbingness" oftbe world. In tbis connection,

be analyzes tbe structure of tbe judgment. Wbat does

not become tbe subject but becomes tbe predicate is

tbe foundation of tbe consciousness as tbe wherein of

consciousness, its essence. "Not to become tbe sub

ject" means "not to be objectified." Consciousness is

tbe place wberein objectification occurs. Tberefore, if

consciousness as sucb becomes conscious, tben tbis

is tbe objectified consciousness. Consciousness as act

ing is always bidden in tbe darkness of tbe "place" of

"notbingness." Consciousness is tbe "place" of"notb

ingness" in wbicb being is.

But consciousness is not really tbe "place" of ab

solute "notbingness." Tbere is a most comprebensive

notbingness, tbe ultimate wherein in wbicb conscious

ness is tbe place oftbe notbingness tbat Nisbida names

"absolute notbingness." Tberefore, tbere is a tbreefold

stratification: (1) tbe "place" of being, (2) tbe "place"

of relative notbingness, and (3) tbe "place" of absolute

notbingness tbat is endless openness. Tbese places mir

rar eacb otber. Tbis tbougbt about tbe tbreefold place

again recalls tbe concept ofborizon. Husserl too defines

tbe concept of borizon as tbe possibility of tbe scope

and finds it in tbree dimensions: ( 1) tbe o uter borizon,

(2) tbe inner borizon, and (3) tbe universal borizon,

tbe borizon of borizons as tbe WORLD. Tbe borizon in

Husserl bas tbe cbaracter of endless openness, but it

bas notbing to do witb notbingness.

Tbere are also similarities between Nisbida and

Heidegger. For Heidegger tbe buman being is in tbe

world: being-in-tbe-world. Tbe buman being or DA

SEIN is out of itself, in tbe openness of tbe world.

In tbis sense Nisbida's late pbilosopby is very simi

lar to Heidegger's, even if be expressed critica! argu

ments against Heidegger. For example, be objected tbat

in Heidegger's pbilosopby tbe place wberein we will

die will be found, but tbere is no place in wbicb we

will be bom. Nishida also asks wbere tbe project (En

twurf) comes from and in wbicb place tbe resoluteness

(Entschlossenheit) occurs. He says tbat it is out of tbe

self-consciousness ofnotbingness tbat we can explain

tbese. Nisbida does not besitate to say: it is in my self

tbat I know my self. Tbere is a definitive difference

between "I know tbis tree" and "I know my self." "I

know my self' is not adequately expressed, because

it can be said about tbe objectified knowledge of my

self. Tberefore Nisbida adds "in my self': "1 know

my self in my self." Wbere tbis knowing act bappens,

namely in my self, is very important. Tbe self is out of

my self, existence. Tbis wherein is tberefore necessary,

because I must distinguisb object-knowledge from self

knowledge. Tbis expression "in my self' means tbe

realm between tbe subject and tbe object, wberein I am.

Tbe place of my self is illuminated by tbe openness of

tbe place in wbicb my self is. Tbis place in wbicb my

knowledge ofmy selfwill bappen is tbe world and tbis


world is vertical, structured into absolute nothingness.

This nothingness is the endless openness ofthe world. This world, the place of the absolute nothingness, is structured in vertical and horizontal ways such that the place of our selves, the world, has the manifold structured dimensions in depth and width of endless

openness. Nishida's method is ultimately not phenomenologi

cal but dialectica!. Therefore, what Goichi Miyake,

Nishida's eminent disciple, said as a phenomenologist against Nishida's absolute reflection is very important. It is precisely by virtue of absolute reflection that Nishida could insist that pure experience is the essence of consciousness. His inquiry into the realm

ofthe subject-object or the absolute place ofnothingness is the result ofhis absolute reflection. But he had

to base it on the phenomenological theory of reflection. Reflection on our experience confirms that there is no reflection that- illuminating itself as a source of light- at the same time performs the act of reflection. In other words, with reflection there is always something dark left over that is not illuminated by reflection. Therefore, no philosophical reflection, insofar as it is

based on experience-reflection, can escape naivete. According to Miyake, Nishida's absolute reflection is to be condemned as impossible. Miyake's objection leads to the final situation ofhuman being-in-the-world.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Dilworth, David. "The Concrete World of Action in Nishida's Later Thought." Analecta Husserliana. 8. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978, 249-70.

Kosaka, Masaaki. Nishida Kitaro and Watsuji Teturo. Tokyo: Shicho-sha, 1964.

-. Nishida Kitaro sensei no shogai to shiso (My teacher Nishida Kitaro- his life and thought). Tokyo: Sobumsha, 1966.

Miyake, Goichi. Heidegger no tetsugaku (Phenomenology of Heidegger). Tokyo: Kobundo, 1950.

Nishida, Kitaro. Nishida Kitaro Zenshu (Complete works with lettcrs from Nishida and diary). 19 vols. 4th ed. Tokyo, 1987-89.

Voi. 1. Zen no kenkyu (A study of good). Voi. 2. Jikaku niokeru chokkan to hansei (Intuition and re

flection in self-consciousness). Voi. 3. Ishiki no rnondai (The problem of consciousness) Voi. 4. Hatarakurnono kara rnirurnono e (From that which

acts to that which sees ). Voi. 5. lppansya no jikakuteki taikei (Self-conscious system

of the universal).

Voi. 6. Mu no jikakuteki Gentei (Self-conscious definition of the nothingness).

-. Die Intellegible Welt. Drei philosophisch Abhandlungen. Trans. Robert Schinsinger. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1943 [German translation of Eichiteki sekai (from voi. 5 ofthe comlete works), Goethe no haikei (from voi. 12 of the complete works, Zettai rnujun no jiko-doitsu (from voi. 9 of the complete works).]

Nishitani, Keiji. Nishitani Keiji Chosaku shu (Collected works of Nishitani Keiji). Voi. 9. Nishida-Tetsugaku to Tanabe- Tetsugaku (Nishida-philosophy and Tanabephilosophy). Tokyo: Sobum-sha, 1989.

Rombach, Heinrich. Gegenwart der Philosophie. Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1962.

Shimomura, Torataro, ed. Nishida Kitari5 - Dojidai no kiroku (Nishida Kitaro - documents of the contemporary). Tokyo: Iwanami, 1971.

Ueda, Shizuteru. Nishida Kitaro wo yornu (A lecture to Nishida Kitaro). Tokyo: lwanami, 1991.

NOEMA

TADASHI 0GAWA Kyoto University

EDMUND HUSSERL introduced the

technical term noema in Ideen zu einer reinen Phiinomenologie und phiinomenologischen Philosophie 1 ( 1913) to denote the intentiona! abject of con

scious experience. In that work Husserl describes the INTENTIONALITY of experience as a noesis-noema correlation. These terms refer to the two moments (inseparable parts) of the intentiona! experience. "N oesis" refers to a really inherent content of the "subject's" experience, viz., the meaning-intention that is directed toward an abject in a determinate manner and with certain po

sitional or thetic characteristics. "Noema" refers to the intentiona! content of the experience, its "objective"

correlate, i.e., the intentiona! abject or the object as intended. These terms were meant to be used in the course of phenomenological descriptions. However, Husserl

also gives us an account ofwhat they themselves mean and how they are to be used in phenomenological descriptions. Unfortunately, his account, at least in ldeen

1, is somewhat tentative and appears ambiguous. Husserl uses (1) the language of objects, suggest

ing the noema is the intended abject itself but simply as intended (e.g., the perceived as such, as perceived);

(2) the language of contents (irreal, ideal, or inten

tiona! contents); and (3) the language of sense (i.e.,

language that connects the notion of noema to that of

sense as a determinate mode ofpresentation). Because he used a new term and used it in an apparently am-

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.

NOE MA

biguous way, exactly what he meant by the term and

what he meant to denote with its use has become a sub

ject of much controversy, especially among American

philosophers concemed with the interrelation between

so-called Continental and so-called ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY's theories oflanguage.

Husserl understood himself to be advancing a new theory of intentionality that avoided central difficul

ties in the theories of intentionality known to him,

especially FRANZ BRENTANo's. Husserl first explicitly

developed his theories of meaning and of intentional

ity in the Logische Untersuchungen ( 1900--1901 ). This work, even while disagreeing with Brentano, extends

the latter's notion of what is best called "descriptive

psychology." Husserl distinguishes the really inherent

contents of an individual experience from its inten

tiona! contents. The really inherent contents (e.g., the

temporally successive phases of an experience and the

sensation-contents) are the concrete parts that make up

the real bcing of an experience as a psychic occurrence;

they are peculiar to an individual experience and con

stitute it as an intentiona! experience. The intentiona!

contents belong to the experience by virtue of its being

directed toward a particular objectivity; they present

that objectivity in a determinate manner and can be

common to many individual experiences. They are not really contained in the act; they are "ideal" or "irreal''

contents. More particularly, Husserl in the Untersuchungen

distinguishes the object that is intended from the ob

ject as it is intended in a particular experience, and

he incorporates the latter into his notion of intentiona! contents. He then claims that the intentiona! content or

the MEANING ideally contained within an experience is related to the experience itself as a species is related

to its instantiation. Insofar as the intentiona! content

is distinct from the real contents and insofar as the

intentiona! content explains how different acts can be

directed to the same object in the same determinate manner and with the same thetic character, the inten

tiona! content must be separate from the real content

of the act. However, insofar as the intentiona! content

directs this particular act to its object, it must be really

present in the act. This doubled character of intentiona!

content is possible on the view that the intentiona! con

tent or the meaning ofthe act is a species (an essence)

instantiated in particular acts.

495

Husserl soon carne to recognize that phenomen

ology could not properly be conceived merely as a

descriptive psychology, for as such it was unable ade

quately to address problems surrounding the nature of

cognition. Consequently, he moved beyond descriptive

psychology to an explicitly transcendental CONSTITU

TIVE PHENOMENOLOGY. His understanding ofthe distinction between really inherent and intentiona! contents is

transformed in his transcendental phenomenology, and

comes to be expressed in the language of noesis and

noema. The decisive moment in this transformation is

Husserl's development ofthe theory ofthe phenomen

ological or transcendental EPOCHE and transcendental

attitude. The epoche or reduction is a methodological

technique by which the philosopher suspends participation in the general thesis of the natural attitude,

the thesis or positing whereby the objects of our experience - including the experiences themselves as

refiected upon in the science of psychology- are real,

worldly existents. The result ofthe performance ofthis

suspension is that our attention is drawn away from

objects simpliciter, as straightforwardly experienced,

to the objects of experience simply insofar as they are

objects experienced in a certain manner and with cer

tain determinations. The performance ofthe reduction,

in other words, invites the philosopher to concentrate attention on the intentiona! correlation between expe

rience and its object precisely as experienced, i.e., the

noesis-noema correlation. It is in Ideen 1 that Husserl

first explicitly recast his theory of intentionality in the

light ofthe reduction, and in so doing he fashioned the

technical vocabulary ofnoesis and noema.

The terms are first introduced as a way of explicating

the distinction between the real and intentiona! contents of experience. Husserl characterizes the noema

(using ontologica! terms such as "the perceived [ ob

ject] as perceived," "the remembered [object] as re

membered," "the judged [state of affairs] as judged,"

or, more generally, "the intended [object] just as in

tended." He analyzes the noema into three components,

but his language now begins to vacillate between onto

logica! and logica! terms. He speaks ofthe "full noema"

within which he distinguishes the "characteristics" of

the noema, i.e., its thetic character as well as its manner

of givenness, from the "noematic core." The noematic

core is also characterized as the "noematic sense," and

is further analyzed into an object and its attributes or


"predicates." The object, which Husserl calls the "determinable" or "pure X," is the identica! object intended in the experience and the logica! subject ofthe "predicates."

Writing this article, for example, I am perceptually aware of the computer monitor. I see it as presenting the words I write, as sand-colored, as having a set of controls along its bottom, as resting on the shelf of a computer table to the left ofthe laser printer and above the dot-matrix printer and keyboard. I am aware of its base, of the unseen si des and rear of the monitor, and all the while I take for granted its existence as a real, physical entity in the world. To understand this perception in Husserl's terms, we might say that the determinable X of the perceptual noema is the spatial individual of a particular type; its noematic sense or core are those elements (including the determinable X) that present the object as such-and-such. Hence, the noematic sense ofthis experience is the "computer monitor as sand-colored, on the computer table, to the left of the laser printer, and so on." In the full noe ma is added to this noematic sense the object's manner of givenness (perceived) and the thetic characteristic that posits the perceived object as (presumptively) existent. Moreover, if outside my study I recall the look of the monitor and describe it to someone, both the noematic sense of the memorial experience on the hasis of which I offer my description and the noematic sense of the describing experience- which is at the same time the expressive sense of the description- are the same as the noematic sense of the perception. Furthermore, I continue to posit the real existence ofthe monitor, although the manner of its givenness has changed from perceptual to memorial and presented in words. Were the monitor destroyed in a fire, I could still remember it, and this experience would have the same noematic sense as the previous perception, memory, and description; the monitor's manner of givenness would remain memorial, but I would no longcr posit its real existence. I would instead posit it- and thereby, vary for the first time the thetic characteristic ofthe full noema -as once, but no longer, existing.

In these descriptions there already appears an indication of the ambiguities surrounding the ways in which Husserl speaks ofthe noema. He sometimes describes it as the intended object just as intended, which certainly leaves open the inference that the noema is

ontologically identica! with the intended objectivity itself. But insofar as the object that is intended is distinguished from the object as intended, he also leaves open the inference that the noema is an intentiona! object ontologically distinct from the intended objectivity itself. At other times, Husserl speaks ofthe intentiona! contents of an act, and since he has given the notion of"intentional contents" at least three different meanings in the Logische Untersuchungen, there is room for controversy about how to understand the doctrine of intentiona! contents in Ideen 1. At still other times, he identifies the noema ( or at least a part of it) with the notion of (expressive) sense. And, finally, since it is possible that an experience can be directed to an object that does not actually exist or to that object in a manner other than it actually exists, the formulations in terrns of"content" and "sense" again lea ve open the inference that the noema as intentiona! object is an intensional entity (i.e., the meaning of a linguistic expression) that is ontologically distinct from the intended objectivity, but bears a referential (i.e., semantic) relation to it. The notion ofthe noema cannot properly be understood unless some account is given of the relation between the notions of"intentional content," "sense," "intended object as intended," and "intended object itself."

Since interpreters of Husserl must clarify what he means by the term "noema," and given the ambiguities in Husserl 's own usage, it is no surprise that controversy has ensued. His interpreters, adhering at least at the outset to the principle of charity, must reconcile these different formulations and these different perspectives when giving a comprehensive interpretation ofhis theory ofthe noema. And any such account must explicate the relation between the noema and the intended objectivity itself, for even ifthe intentiona! object is ontologically identica! to the intended objectivity, there remains some manner of difference between the intended objectivity itself and that objectivity considered just in the manner in which it is intended.

AROJ\ GURWITSCH was among the first of Husserl's followers to focus attention specifically upon the

noema as a theme. His criticism of Husserl 's theory of hyletic contents in perception led him to develop a detailed account of the perceptual noema. Gurwitsch views the perceived object, i.e., the object that is intended, as a whole of parts, i.e., the infinite, systematically organized totality of the object's (noematic)

NOE MA

appearances (the object as intended). The object is the

ideally realizable, but not actually realized or realizable, totality of noemata presenting it. There are clear difficulties in Gurwitsch 's account. Sin ce the noema for

both Husserl and Gurwitsch is, at least in part, a sense,

and since for Gurwitsch the perceived object is a total

ity of noemata, his view transforms the intended object into a whole composed of a multiplicity of senses. Even

if Gurwitsch could avoid this charge by distinguishing the full noema from its core, i.e., the noematic sense

itself, his interpretation, understanding the noema as the appearance of the object, yields a phenomenalism

wherein the perceived object itself is a whole whose parts are perceptual appearances. Gurwitsch's account

fails properly to distinguish the whole ( or concrete) presentation of the object with its multiple noemata

from the identica! perceived object itself. JOHANNES DAUBERT, a leader in the development

of REALISTIC PHENOMENOLOGY at Munich, was another

early interpreter of Husserl who investigated the doctrine of the noema. Unlike Gurwitsch, however, who

sought to develop the notion of the noema as an aspect of the experienced object, Daubert criticizes the

Husserlian notion of the noema. He interprets the reduction and the disclosure ofthe noema as a separation

of consciousness and sense from the object, as a retreat

from the autonomous reality of the experienced world

in favor of a dependent world of consciousness and

its ideal world of senses, and as a reduction of the real

world to an ideal world. Daubert understands Husserl 's

claim that acts intending nonexistent objects have a

noematic correlate tobe a falsification ofthe very cog

nition on which Husserl claims to reflect. According

to Daubert, normal cognition is always engaged with real objects and is nothing apart from them. This direct

engagement with objects is an immediate awareness

(Innesein) to which intentiona! consciousness with its

noema is secondary. In immediate awareness itself,

and here Daubert departs from Husserl and Gurwitsch,

there is no noema. Intentiona! consciousness arises

when an interpretive moment, a taking-the-object-as,

supplements our immediate awareness. But, and here

Daubert agrees with Gurwitsch, the noema-sense is de

pendent upon the object of immediate awareness and

can never be separated from an object; it is impossible

for Daubert that there exist a noema without an object

from which it is derived.

497

Another interpretation of the noema departs from

what most concemed Daubert, viz., Husserl's sepa

ration of sense from the object. This interpretation arose as an alternative to Gurwitsch 's and its spirit was shaped by DAGFINN F0LLESDAL 's claim that Husserl 's

phenomenology was very much influenced by the thought of GOTTLOB FREGE. This "Fregean" interpre

tation of Husserl 's doctrine of the noema, developed

at [ength by DAVID WOODRUFF SMITH and RONALD MCIN

TYRE, centers around two claims: ( 1) the noema is the intentiona! content but not the intended object of the act, and (2) the noema is an abstract, intensional entity that is to be understood as a linguistically expressible meaning and characterized basically as Frege charac

terized meaning. This interpretation transforms Gurwitsch's "object theory" of intentionality, wherein the

noema is the intended objectivity itself (as intended), into a "mediator theory" of intentionality, wherein the noema is the intentiona! (but not intended) object that

mediates semantically the experience's directedness to the intended object itself.

The Fregean interpretation, unsurprisingly, did not go unchallenged, and the challenges to it, especially those of RICHARD HOLMES, LENORE LANGSDORF, and

ROBERT SOKOLOWSKI, were directed at the central thesis of the Fregean interpretation that the intentiona! object is an abstract, intensional entity ontologically

distinct from the intended object and semantically mediating the act's directedness to the intended object. Holmes and Langsdorf stress the point that the identica!, determinable X, which Husserl calls the object,

is the most fundamental moment contained within the noematic core; hen ce there is no mediating relation be

tween the noema and the object. Sokolowski, on the other hand, stresses the point that the manner in which Husserl discloses the apophantic domain, i.e., the domain of sense, in, for example, Formale und transzen

dentale Logik ( 1929), is prior to and different from

the phenomeno[ogica[ EPOCHE ANO REDUCTION; hence the notions of noema and sense are not identica!. In

sofar as ali these challenges insist on some sort of

identity between the noema and the intended objectivity itself, they are also defenses of the Gurwitschian interpretation. However, beyond asserting the identity

of noema and intended objectivity, these challenges to

the Fregean reading did not detail a new understanding of the relation between the object as intended and


the intended objectivity itself to replace Gurwitsch's whole-part analysis, although much of Sokolowski's other work suggests one.

Other authors, while disagreeing with important features of the Fregean reading, have tried to mediate the dispute in various ways. J. N. MOHANTY for example, argues that the differences between the Gurwitschean and Fregean readings are not as marked as they first appear and that the two readings can ultimately be reconciled. If we understand the perceptual noema as a pre-conceptual but conceptualizable entity, we render Gurwitsch's view reconcilable with the Fregean interpretation, which understands the noema as an abstract (conceptual) entity. This account, however, seems to ignore Gurwitsch's insistence that the perceptual noema is the perceived object as perceived. DONN WELTON and MARY JEANNE LARRABEE argue instead that the two interpretations are each correct within a limited range of application- more specifically, that Gurwitsch's reading is appropriate for perceptual noemata while the Fregean account is appropriate for nonperceptual, e.g., judgmental, noemata.

JOHN DRUMMOND, on the other hand, insists on the irreconcilability ofthe two readings. He stresses the fact that Husserl 's development of the theory of the reduction brings about a new understanding ofthe notion of phenomenological contents, one that is not limited, as in the Untersuchungen, to the real contents of experience to which are opposed intentiona! contents. Rather, the phenomenological contents, to which phenomenological reflection is directed, are now understood to include both real and intentiona! contents. Thus the intended objectivity itself as intended, is now understood as a moment of the transcendental correlation between experience and its experienced world. Drummond also argues for a revised interpretation of the relation between the noema and the intended object itself; his interpretation, while maintaining Gurwitsch 's position that the noema is the intended objectivity itself as intended, differs from Gurwitsch in arguing that the

' relation between the noema (the intended abject as in-tended) and the intended object simpliciter is analyzed as an identity-in-manifold, rather than a whole-part, relation.

This survey of the history·of a "metaphenomenological" controversy cannot, of course, do full justice to the range of detail and the subtlety of argument in-

volved in the positions mentioned. The controversy, however, is important, since a proper understanding ofthe noema and its relation to the phenomenological reduction and phenomenological reflection points in three directions. First, in the Cartesianische Meditationen [1931] Husserl speaks ofthe object and, hence, transcendentally considered, of the noema, as a "transcendental clue" to the structures of intentiona! consciousness. The care fu! analyses of the noematic correlate of an experience, therefore, by presenting to us the structures and levels involved in the object's significance for us, points toward correlative structures and levels in the noesis intending that object in a determinate manner, with a determinate significance, and determinate thetic characteristics. We are thereby led into the proper domain ofphenomenological reflection, viz., intentionality, the noesis-noema correlation. Second, by virtue ofthe fact that the noesis-noema structure is universal, i.e., that every intentiona! experience has its noematic correlate, there are noematic analyses for every type of experience: PERCEPTION, MEMORY,

EXPECTATION, IMAGINATION, VALUING, etc. The analyses of the noemata of these various kinds of experiences reveal not only the necessary structures of each kind of experience, but also the interconnections among the various kinds, for example, between perception and memory, or memory and expectation, between perception and judgment, between imagining and idealizing, between idealization and scientific theorizing. Noematic analyses thereby lead as well to an understanding ofthe unity ofhuman experience and ofits single correlate, the WORLD. Third, a proper understanding ofthe doctrine of the noema and of intentionality clarifies Husserl 's relations to philosophers such as Descartes, Hume, KANT, and others in MODERN PHILOSOPHY, against the background of whose philosophies Husserl developed his own philosophy. Moreover, ifthe doctrines of the reduction and of intentionality, including that ofthe noema, involving as they do a correlational conception of consciousness and an overcoming of the sharp distinction between intending subject and intended object, signify that Husserl 's theory of cognition has broken from modern philosophy's epistemological paradigms, then an understanding of these notions also clarifies Husserl 's position in the controversies between modern thought and POSTMODERNISM.

NURSING 499

FOR FURTHER STUDY Welton, Donn. The Origins of Meaning: A Critica! Study of

Dreyfus, Hubert L. "The Perceptual Noema: Gurwitsch's Crucial Contribution." In Life-World and Consciousness: Essays for Aran Gurwitsch. Ed. Lester Embree. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1972, 135-70.

Drumrnond, John J. Husserlian Intentionality and NonFoundational Realism: Noema and Object. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990.

~, and Lester Embree, eds. The Phenomenology of the Noema. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992.

Follesdal, Dagfinn. "Husserl's Notion ofNoema." TheJournal of Philosophy 66 ( 1969), 680-87.

~. "Noema and Meaning in Husserl." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (Supplement, 1990), 263-71.

Gurwitsch, Aron. "Phănomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich. Studien liber die Beziehungen von Gestalttheorie und Phănomenologie." Psychologische Forschung 12 ( 1929), 279-381; "Phenomenology of Thematics and of the Pure Ego: Studies of the Relation between Gestalt Psychology and Phenomenology." In his Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology. Trans., Fred Kersten. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1966, 175-286.

~. The Field ofConsciousness. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964.

~. "Husserl's Theory of the Intentionality of Consciousness in Historical Perspective." In his Phenomenology and the Theory ofScience. Ed. Lester Embree. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1974, 210-40.

Holmes, Richard. "An Explication ofHusserl's Theory ofthe Noema." Research in Phenomenology 5 (1975), 143-53.

Husserl, Edmund. Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch ei ner Kritik der logischen Vernunft. Ed. Paul Janssen. Husserliana 17. The Hague:: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974; Formal and Transcendental Logic. Trans. Dorion Caims. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969.

Langsdorf, Lenore. "The Noema as Intentiona! Entity: A Critique ofFollesdal." The Review ofMetaphysics 37 (1984), 757-84.

Larrabee, Mary Jeanne. "The Noema in Husserl's Phenomenology." Husserl Studies 3 (1986), 209-30.

McKenna, William R. Husserl s "Introductions to Phenomenology." The Hague: Mantinus Nijhoff, 1980.

Mohanty, J. N. Husserl and Frege. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982.

~. "lntentionality and Noema." In his The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1985, 13-24.

Schuhmann, Karl. "Husserl's Concept of the Noema: A Daubertian Critique." Topai 8 ( 1989), 53-61.

Smith, David Woodruff, and Ronald Mclntyre. "Intentionality via Intensions." Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971), 541-61.

~. Husserl and Intentionality: A Study of Mind, Meaning, and Language. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1982.

Sokolowski, Robert. "Intentiona! Analysis and the Noema." Dialectica 38 (1984), 113-29.

the Thresholds of Husserlian Phenomenology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983.

JOHN J. DRUMMOND

Mount Saint Mary s College

NURSING Interest in phenomenology among

nursing scholars developed rapidly during the late

1980s and early 1990s. Illustrating this, the Cumu

lative Index to Nursing Literature lists 143 items con

cerning phenomenology and nursing that appeared be

tween 1991 and 1993. The degree to which phenomen

ology is involved in these articles and the quality of

phenomenological research varies greatly. Most ofthe

articles listed are attempts to describe the experiences

of clients that are of significance to nurses. The sec

ond most frequent theme concerns the experiences of

nurses in giving certain kinds of care. Some articles are

about theoretical issues in the study of nursing. Most

of these studies describe certain aspects of nursing in

which phenomenology is used as the method or as a

method in a qualitative or HUMAN sciENCE study. Few,

however, address the fundamental phenomenological

issue ofwhat constitutes nursing.

Although most phenomenological studies of nurs

ing do not directly describe the essence of nursing,

these studies usually grow out of an interest in artic

ulating the meaning of nursing from nursing practice

itself. This focus on nursing practice represents a rejec

tion of the attempt to establish the place of nursing in

academia by defining nursing as a science or an applied

science that occurred when nursing moved into aca

demic settings. Focusing on nursing practice itself led

some scholars, beginning with MADELEINE LEININGER,

who used ethnography to define nursing as caring. This

definition gained increasing acceptance in nursing dur

ing the 1980s and early 1990s. Some nursing schools

included caring in their curricula and some, especially

Florida Atlantic University, based their entire program

on caring. The dissatisfaction with defining nursing as

a science or applied science was amplified by FEMI

NISM. As nursing scholars attempted to articulate the

meaning of nursing from nursing practice, they fol

lowed qualitative and human science approaches and

especially phenomenological methodology.

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 K luwer Academic Publishers.


Most nursing scholars who follow EDMUND HUSSERL's dictum "back to the matters themselves,"

have articulated aspects of nursing practice. Some

nurses merely saw in phenomenology a way of artic

ulating nursing as practiced. Others were attracted, as well to phenomenology itself, as is evident in descrip

tive and eidetic studies of FRAN REEDER and MARILYN

D. RAY. At present, only PATRICIA BENNER, SALLY GADOW,

NANCY DIEKELMANN, ANNE BISHOP, JOHN SCUDDER, JEAN

WATSON, JOSEPHINE PATERSON, and LORETTA ZDERAD have

attempted to articulate the meaning of nursing itself.

Benner has described the essence of nursing in terms

of competencies and the movement from novice to ex

pert in nursing. Watson has developed a philosophical

science ofnursing as a moral ideal based on phenomen

ology and transpersonal pyschology. Gadow has inter

preted the nurse as an existential advocate. Diekelmann has described nursing education as dialogical, pheno

menological interpretation ofnursing practice. Bishop

and Scudder have articulated nursing as a caring prac

tice. Benner is a nurse who became interested in pheno

menology under the influence of HUBERT DREYFUS be

cause she saw in phenomenology a way ofarticulating

the meaning of nursing as practiced. Benner's study

of competency and expertness in nursing has proba

bly drawn more attention to phenomenology than any other work. Initially, she received a grant that made it

possible to assemble a team, send out questionnaires, and do extensive observation and interviewing. From

this study, she selected exemplars of nursing excel

lence that disclosed the meaning of competent nursing practice and through HERMENEUTICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

explored the meaning of nursing itself. She describes

thirty-one competencies, grouped in seven domains.

Rather than defining these competencies categorically,

she discloses their meaning through exemplars that

were interpreted phenomenologically. She further de

scribes the movement from novice to expert, drawing

on the work of Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus.

Novices follow rules, those moving from novice to ex

pert apply principles in situations, and experts respond

immediately to situations, drawing on experience and

understanding. Her work has much influenced nursing

practice and nursing education by describing compe

tencies and excellence in nursing in a way that makes

sense to those engaged in practice.

Sally Gadow, a nurse who holds a Ph.D. in philos

ophy, develops her conception of the nurse as an ex

istential advocate from the perspective of EXISTENTIAL

PHENOMENOLOGY. Rather than beginning with nursing

practice as Benner does, Gadow attempts to develop a

philosophy for contemporary nursing that is distinctly

different from traditional nursing. She claims that existential advocacy is, in fact, the essence ofnursing. She

describes existential advocacy as three ways of being with patients. The first is the nurse helping clients to

exercise their right of self-determination through deci

sions that fully express their values. Self-determination

is such a basic human right that Gadow believes that

it ought to be respected even if it goes counter to fos

tering good health. The second is that nurses should relate to patients with their whole selves, rather than

merely as professionals. The third is that nurses should

assist patients in unifying their experience of the or

ganic with that ofthe lived BODY, thereby not reducing

the patient to the moral status of an object.

Anne Bishop and John Scudder, a nurse-philosopher

team, have attempted to articulate the meaning ofnurs

ing by bringing together phenomenological philosophy

and nursing practice. They have drawn on Benner's

study, on their own studies, and on phenomenological

interpretations ofthe meaning ofhuman being that are

especially relevant for nursing practice. They contend

that Benner has articulated well the essential aspect of

nursing in which the nurse has the legitimate authority to act as a competent professional. In addition, they

have articulated the in-between stance of nursing in

which nurses act in-between the physician, patient, and

administrators to give everyday care to patients. They

contend that the in-between position is a privileged, though difficult, one from which to make moral deci

sions that involves bringing together MEDICINE, agency

resources, and patients' desires. They conducted a

phenomenological study of fulfillment in nursing that

indicated that practicing nurses overwhelmingly find

fulfillment through moral acts and personal relation

ships. This finding challenges the implication in much

of nursing litera ture that nursing primarily consists of

following the dictates of the nursing profession or ef

fectively using TECHNOLOGY.

Nursing, rather then being essentially a professional

or technological enterprise, is, according to Bishop

and Scudder, a practice in the sense of HANS-GEORG

NURSING 501

GAD AMER 's interpretation of practice. Nursing is a prac

tice in that it seeks to foster the good through his

torically developed ways of caring for patients. Thus

nursing is the practice of caring. Their interpretation of

caring is informed by Nell Noddings and Carol Gilli

gan, but they point out that an interpretation of care

suitable to nursing must extend beyond personal care

in a network ofrelationships to include the historically

developed ways of caring that are central to the practice

ofnursing. When nursing is interpreted as the practice

of care, then nursing ETHICS is primarily concemed with

fostering good care and only occasionally with making

judgments about exceptional cases such as when to ter

minate the technological means that may be the only

thing keeping a patient organically (though not exis

tentially) "alive." Bishop and Scudder have expanded

their interpretation of nursing by developing an ethic

of practice that begins with the moral sense of practice

and focuses on the fulfillment ofthat sense.

Much confusion in nursing comes from the fail

ure to distinguish between nursing as a practice and

the study of nursing - the term "nursing" refers to

both the practice and the discipline. The discipline of

nursing should articulate the practice ofnursing rather

than reducing nursing practice to an applied science.

The study of nursing is a practica! human science, as

interpreted by STEPHAN STRASSER, in that it not only

articulates the practice but seeks to improve it.

Phenomenological methodology is well-suited to

articulating nursing practice, but some nursing schol

ars have questioned its capacity for fostering needed

reform in nursing. Some critics ofthe work ofBishop

and Scudder ha ve challenged their belief that signifi

cant reform of nursing can come from discovering and

realizing the possibilities in nursing practice. These

critics contend that such reform will not foster the type

of autonomy needed by nurses individually and profes

sionally because their place in the health care system

has been limited to that of a helping role by those

who dominate health care. For example, JEAN WATSON,

a leader in nursing theory and an advocate of pheno

menological study ofnursing, has questioned its ability

to foster needed reform. DAVID ALLEN and JANICE THOMP

SON, along with many other feminists, have drawn on

CRITICAL THEORY to support reform ofhealth care.

Although phenomenology has been criticized as in

adequate to foster reform, it has, in part, spawned one

of the major reform movements in nursing education.

This movement, called the "new curriculum," is based

on the belief that nursing is basically care and that the

goal of education is to foster understanding of nurs

ing by interpretation of its meaning in clinica! situ

ations. NANCY DIEKELMANN, a leading advocate of the

new curriculum, contends that curriculum develops out

of dialogue between students, practitioner, and faculty

interpreting the meaning ofnursing care. She rejects at

tempts to teach nursing theoretically, claiming instead

that practice is theory-generating when interpreted di

alogically. The new curriculum has been strongly sup

ported by the National League for Nursing, the ac

crediting agency for programs in nursing education.

Perhaps the involvement of phenomenology in the re

form ofthe curriculum can show how phenomenology

can contribute to reform.

At present, however, one major problem facing the

phenomenological interpretation of nursing still con

cems the place of phenomenological interpretation of

nursing in the reform of health care. A second prob

lem is the relationship of the studies of the meaning

of nursing itself, such as those of Benner, Gadow, and

Scudder and Bishop, to the many phenomenological

studies ofthe various aspects ofnursing currently tak

ing place. The third is whether phenomenology will

play a major ro le in articulating the meaning of nurs

ing or will it be regarded merely as a methodological

option in the qualitative interpretati an of nursing. The

fourth concems the role phenomenology will play in

developing a philosophy of nursing.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Allen, David. "The social policy statement: A reappraisal." Advances in Nursing Science 10 (1987), 39-48.

Benner, Patricia. From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinica! Nursing Practice. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley, 1984.

-, and Judith Wrubel. The Primacy al Caring: Stress and Coping in Health and lllness. Menlo Park, CA: AddisonWes1ey, 1989.

Bishop, Anne H., and John R. Scudder Jr. The Practica!, Moral, and Personal Sense ofNursing: A Phenomenological Philosophy of Practice. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1990.

-. Nursing: The Practice of Caring. New York: National League for Nursing, 1991.

-. Nursing Ethics: Therapeutic Caring Presence. Boston: Jones & Bartlett, 1995.

Diekelmann, Nancy. "Curriculum revolution: A theoretical


and philosophical mandate for change." In Curriculum Revolution: Mandate for Change. Ed. National League of Nursing. New York: National League for Nursing, 1988, 137-57.

Gadow, Sally. "Existential advocacy: Philosophical foundation in nursing." In Nursing: Images and Ideals. Opening Dialogue with the Humanities. Ed. Stuart Spicker and Sally Gadow. New York: Springer, 1980, 79-1 O 1.

Leininger, Madeleine. Caring: An Essential Human Need. Thorofare, NJ: Charles B. Slack, 1981.

Paterson, Josephine and Loretta Zderad. Humanistic Nursing. New York: Wiley, 1976.

Ray, Marilyn. "Phenomenological method for nursing research." In The Nursing Profession: Turning Points. Ed. Norma Chaska. St. Louis, MO: C. V. Mosby, 1990.

Reeder, Fran. "The importance of knowing what to care about: a phenomenological inquiry using laughing at oneself as a clue." In Anthology on Caring. Ed. Peggy Chin. New York: National League ofNursing, 1992.

Thompson, Janice. "Critica! scholarship: The critique of domination in nursing." Advances in Nursing Science 10 ( 1987), 27-38.

Watson, Jean. Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1979.

JOHN R. SCUDDER JR. Lynchburg College

ANNE H. BISHOP Lynchburg College

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