International Phenomenological Society

An Essay on `Phenomenology' Author(s): R. K. Raval Reviewed work(s): Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Dec., 1972), pp. 216-226 Published by: International Phenomenological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2106461 . Accessed: 25/07/2012 01:39
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AN ESSAY ON 'PHENOMENOLOGY' "Phenomenology is the study of the way that consciousness perceives objects. Consciousness is a variable." -Colin Wilson in Beyond the Outsider.

Phenomenology, which is perhaps the least understood of modern philosophies, begins with Franz Brentano (1838-1917), the teacher of Meinong and Edward Husserl, who developed the basic philosophical tenets of Brentano into a ripened and fully matured system of philosophy, now known as pure phenomenology. Brentano was primarily a psychologist and as such interested in the problem of mental and physical phenomena. To distinguish the mental or the psychical phenomenon from the physical one, it was necessary for him to arrive at a definitive description of the same, and accordingly, a mental phenomenon was the one which was directed or intended towards an object. This directedness-to-an object becomes in the philosophy of Brentano a distinguishing quality of the mental, and for which he coined the word intentionalityy," or referring to an object intended. This focus of mental directedness envelopes the intended object completely within itself like "a fruit enclosing its stone."1 To this Brentano gave the name of "intentional inexistence" or intentional existence within the consciousness itself. It is consciousness which becomes supreme in Brentano's philosophy, for it is consciousness which does the work of intentionality or selection, i.e., focussing the attention on some objects or parts thereof out of the many that lie within its spotlight. Certain things are immediately recorded by the mind and the details forgotten. Why does the mind direct or intend itself only towards some objects, eliminating others? Colin Wilson puts it very aptly when he says, "The reasons are not important; what is important is that my consciousness selected its objects. This act of selection is a form of intentionality."2 This mental phenomenon "of 'intentionality' is the act of exI
2

Wilson, Colin, Beyond the Outsider. (Pan Books Ltd., London, 1965), p.86. Ibid., p.87.

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periencing and the thing towards which the attention is intended is the object experienced. In other words, it is the act that is mental and not the object that is given to be experienced. It was, however, Meinong (1853-1921), one of the disciples of Brentano, who went further and developed the whole theory of objects. It was he who arrived at a descriptive analysis of objects and classified them accordingly. If Brentano had declared a mental phenomenon as one which is object-oriented, Meinong declared the same thing in reverse by stating that anything intended by thought is an object. The objects are classified by Meinong in three different categories: (i) existent objects like tables, chairs, solid materials, sense-data etc.; (ii) subsistent or ideal objects like the universals, as e.g., the mathematical entities, Platonic ideas, etc.; and (iii) nonsubsistent or impossible objects which neither subsist nor exist, as e.g., round square. This is Meinong's theory of objects and he calls it a priori science wherein an object is apprehended by the mind without any judgment based on sense impressions, in a sort of direct mode of apprehension. By "a priori" we mean prior to all theorizing or any sort of anticipatory ideas about an object. The essence of a thing is to be intuitively realized, i.e., the wheelness of a wheel is given to certain direct modes of intuition or a priori apprehension. In other words, phenomenology can be regarded as a "process of intuiting essences."3 It is at this stage that the "act-element" or "the manner" in which a mental phenomenon is directed to its object that becomes important for Meinong. And it is here that the "content-element" or the essence is grasped by the mind in a prehensive sort of understanding that also forges ahead. The being or essence of an object is here regarded as intrinsic to and forming the part of the directly grasping states of mind. Thus it is the mode of consciousness which enables it to arrive at the universals or the essences of the objects. "In the theory of objects, the existence of objects is abstracted from (or as Husserl later said it may be 'bracketed') and their essence alone has to be considered."4 This study of the objects of reference or "intentional objects" comes to its fullest growth in Husserl who calls his theory "Transcendental Phenomenology." Husserl wanted to make philosophy an exact and autonomous discipline which might serve as a foundation for all types of knowledge. He wanted to make it absolutely free from
3 An Outline of Modern Knowledge, ed. by Rose William. (Victor Gollancz, London, 1935), p.573. 4 The Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. by Dagobert D. Runes. (Phil. Lib., N. Y.), p.195.

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all presuppositions and thus adopt a radical attitude, both towards the world of experience and the mind experiencing the world. What begins as a descriptive theory of objects in Brentano and Meinong, ends with a descriptive analysis of the essential structures (Eidos) on the one hand and a descriptive analysis of the subjective processes on the other, in Husserl. Thus, Husserl's phenomenology is a two-way process examining carefully not only the meaning side (the noetic), but the meant side (the noematic) as well. Thus the method is subjectivistic and the purpose is radical, which is quite different from the naive one which begins with all sorts of presuppositions or "prior" theories about an object perceived. In Husserl's phenomenology everything is to be properly analyzed, including the perceiving mind which does the work of experiencing the world. As Marvin Farber puts it, "Everything is to be questioned, including the phenomenological procedure itself. The science of the radical must also be radical in its procedure, in every respectt.5 Everything that is presupposed is questioned, analyzed and finally brushed aside as unessential or "suspended." If one wants to arrive at the essential structure or form of a thing, one first has to do away with the scum of details. This is what Husserl means when he states, "Back to the things themselves!" As he so explicity puts it: "Philosophy must take possession of the absolute fund of pre-conceptual experience and must create original concepts, adequately adjusted to this ground, and so generally utilize for its advance an absolutely transparent method."6 This whole process of phenomenological understanding advances along three stages of development.The very first stage which Husserl calls "the natural standpoint of the world about me" is the stage wherein the objects of the world are looked upon as they are without any reflection on our part, i.e., in their natural existence as they are found in "a space-time" bound world. It would be best here to quote Husserl himself: "I am aware of a world, spread out in space endlessly, and in time becoming and become, without end.... Corporeal things somehow spatially distributed are for me simply there . . . whether or not I pay them special attention by busying myself with them.... But it is not necessary that they and other objects likewise should be present in my field of perception . . . they are there and yonder in my immediate co-perceived surroundings . . . and my
5 Quoted in Twentieth Century Philosophy, ed. by Dagobert D. Runes (Littlefield, Adams and Co., Ames, Iowa, 1956), p.307. 6 Ibid. Husserl quoted by Marvin Farber.

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knowledge of them has nothing of conceptual thinking about it, and it first changes into clear intuiting with the bestowing of attention, and even then only partially and for the most part very imperfectly."' Thus, according to Husserl, there is a ring of copresent margin around the actual field of perception. What is actually perceived and what is copresent and determinate is surrounded by a "dimly apprehended depth or fringe of indeterminate reality."8 With the illuminating focus of attention trying to pierce further, "the circle of determinancy extends ever farther, and eventually so far that the connexion with the actual field of perception as the immediate environment is established."' But even then "empty mist of dim indeterminancy"10 is still there and the "zone of indeterminancy is infinite."" Just as the world is out there in space, so it is out there in time also. It has its temporal horizon as well, "infinite in both directions, its known and unknown, its intimately alive and its unalive past and future."' Thus everything is realized in a spatiotemporal world and phenomenology does not bother itself with the metaphysics of anything, existing supposedly or really, beyond the ordered world of space and time. What happens or what is rather necessary is merely a shift of stance, of attitude; looking at things from different standpoints, but even then all within the spatiotemporal horizon. Husserl comments, "I can shift my standpoint in space and time, look this way and that, turn temporally forwards and backwards; I can provide for myself constantly new and more or less clear and meaningful perceptions -and re-presentations, and images also more or less clear, in which I make intuitable to myself whatever can possibly exist really or supposedly in the steadfast order of space and time.""3 Now in this world as it exists "out there" in its natural order of space and time, when we look upon an object from a natural standpoint, we experience it as it appears to us without making any intentional effort -to reach its "eidos." When we look upon a table or a chair or a piece of chalk, we take it as it is and are also more or less conscious of so many other things that lie around the periphery of the object perceived. Nothing new is added at this stage to our power of perception; no new stance is adopted and no new angle revealed or
7 Quoted in The Age of Analysis, ed. by Morton White. (Mentor, N.Y., 1956), Chapter VII, p.105. 8 Ibid., p.106. 9 Ibid., p.106.

"? Ibid., 2 Ibid., 12 Ibid ., 13 Ibid.,

p.106. p.106. p.106. p.106.

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a new meaning conferred. The world simply stands "out there" and we simply look upon it in our most natural or naive attitude. This naive approach has to be abandoned and a radical attitude adopted. It is here that we come to Husserl's second stage of development in his searching analysis of phenomenological philosophy. This is the stage of eidetic reduction wherein an attempt is made to understand the basic essence, form or structure (Eidos) of the given thing in a reflective, selective manner, by not paying any attention to or taking any interest in the particular details of the thing under observation. It is not the cube, but the "cubeness" which is reflected upon by the grasping mind by holding in abeyance the material details of the perceived object or objects. It is here that the natural attitude is abandoned and the object viewed from as many angles and standpoints as possible to understand its different shapes, appearances and phenomena with a view 'to arrive at the very fountainhead of its essential structure. We step here up from the mere empirical to the eidetic level of perception. We cease to think upon external appearances of an object and begin to concentrate upon pure experiences or pure phenomena as grasped by a reflective mind which has been, by now, put out of its natural standpoint, for, in the words of Prof. A. W. Levi, "What is at stake here is not the individual experience in its particularity but the structure of experience, its logic, the essence which is objectively manifest when more subjective involvement is relaxed.""4Everything can thus be viewed in its essentiality, be it a sense-given natural object or the ideal objects of mathematics, because everything is ultimately referred to by the mind; is, in Husserl's terminology, 'constituted' in the mind. "As constituted in consciousness, the choir of heaven and the furniture of earth enter into the subject matter of phenomenology."15 Husserl goes a step further to declare that just as we can reflect on different experiences or appearances of an object, similarly we can concentrate on our different experiencings or acts of experience. We can remove ourselves from our natural standpoint view and shift the stance of the perceiving mind; the whole mode and manner of consciousness so shifted that it might enable one to perceive the objective world in a new light, a new perspective, as it were a new being, a new consciousness, a different person, an another self looking upon an already reduced or 'bracketed' world. I would
14 Levi, A. W. Philosophy and the Modern World. (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1959), p.393. 15 The Concise Encyclopaedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers, ed. by J. 0. Urmson. (Hutchinson: London, 1960), p.189.

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like to make this clearer by giving an illustration of the process of phenomenological reduction. A receives a present (say, a book) from B. A looks upon the book first as a receiver in his natural attitude. But the moment A tries to remove himself from his natural stance and begins to look upon the book as if he were not the recipient of the book, but the giver of the book, as if he were B, he blots out his natural self, assumes another, and a subjective "epoche" or reduction takes place. As soon as one tries to reduce or 'bracket' out the appearances or experiences of the things as they are and attempts to arrive at the eidos or the essential structure thereof, one achieves the eidetic reduction and it is this eidetic phenomenology which serves as the base for the ordinary psychological phenomenology. These structures or essential forms are said to "constrain psychical existence," i.e., their realization by the experiencing mind is said to do away with the existence of an object enabling the perceiver to arrive at its essence. Any physical existence might have this structure which does the work of constraining. Drawings with optical illusions, pieces of abstract art, readings of different meanings out of the clanging wheels of a running train, faces in the moon, formation of different images out of a gathering of clouds or from scratches on a wall, tricky photographs, etc., are some of the examples of this act of phenomenological reduction by means of selective attention or working of intentionality. I look at a printed advertisement of a shipping company. From left to right, it reads "P &O," while from right to left it reads like some letters of the Arabic script. But this would entail a process of selective attention on the one side and of a deliberate elimination of the natural standpoint on the other. This can be regarded as an ingeniously classic and original example of the process of phenomenological reduction in modern times. It is here that Husserl talks of the third and the final stage of transcendental reduction, the process of complete reduction, of uncovering all the layers of appearances and arriving at the pure consciousness of an individual knower or experiencer as the real starting point for philosophy. The process of "suspension" or "bracketing" is complete and one reaches "what is the stream of pure experiences of a single experiencing being."1 "The world has become . . . merely a phenomenon for my transcendentally reduced consciousness."17 Or as Morton White puts it, "It is the end product of the most stringent reduction of all."18
"6Twentieth Century Philosophy, ed. by Dagobert D. Runes, (Littlefield, Adams and Co., Ames, Iowa, 1956), p.308. Marvin Farber quoted. 17 Ibid. 18White, Morton, The Age of Analysis; p.104.

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What does exactly happen in this process of transcendental reduction? We do not deny the world as the sophists would; we do not doubt the world as the skeptics would; what we do is to modify or radically change our viewpoint of the world, which is still 'out there,' but in which we are no more interested as it appears to be, but as it essentially is. Our consciousness, when it grasps the eidos of an object, does not disbelieve in the existence of an object, but simply temporarily suspends it, to concentrate better on the essence thereof. It is the pure being of one's self focussing its light on the pure being of an object, and both stand revealed to each other in their essential nudity. When this happens, consciousness is already in charge of the essential structures of the objects, they being the part or construct thereof in their essentiality. "In the last resort, the 'essences' which the mind comes to know are really the forms of its own a priori activity.""' The world external is disconnected, but not disbelieved or denied. Consciousness itself remains undisturbed even though it takes a new stance by way of disconnection. Husserl states, "Consciousness in itself has a being of its own which in its absolute uniqueness of nature remains unaffected by the phenomenological disconnexion. It therefore remains over as a phenomenologicall residuum,' as a region of being which is in principle unique. ..."" This is an activity of pure reflection, which, in the words of Marvin Farber, "is one degree removed from the reflection normally illustrated in natural experience. The term 'pure' is understood to mean that the epochd has been performed."" We modify our judgment of the world both from the 'content' and the 'being' points of view. The world is accepted "only in the modified consciousness of judgment as it appears in disconnexion."22 Husserl states his case thus, "Let us consider what is essentially involved in an act of this kind. He who attempts to doubt is attempting to doubt 'being' of some form or other.... The attempt does not affect the form of being itself. He who doubts, does not doubt the being of an object, but the way in which the object is We cannot at once doubt and hold for certain one constituted.... and the same quality of being . . . the attempt to doubt any object of awareness in respect of its being actually there necessarily conditions a certain suspension of the thesis, and it is precisely this that interests us.... We do not abandon the thesis we have adopted, we make no change in our conviction.... And yet the thesis undergoes
19An Outline of Modern Knowledge, ed. by Rose William, p.573. Husserl, Edmund, Ideas, trans. by W. R. Boyce-Gibson. (Allen and Unwin, London, 1952), p.113. 21 Quoted in Twentieth Century Philosophy, pp.308-309. 22 Husserl quoted in The Age of Analysis, p.115.
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a modification, whilst remaining in itself what it is, we set it as it were 'out of action,' we disconnect it, 'bracket it.' It still remains there.... We are dealing with indicators that point to a definite but unique form of consciousness, which clamps on to the original simple 'thesis' of existence has simply been 'put out of play,' and the world is a concern of our full freedom, and is opposed to all cognitive attitudes."23 Or as Marvin Farber would have it, "The 'field' of transcendental consciousness that is opened up by the epoche can be described in familiar terms. The transformation that is carried through is a universal one, so that no special symbolism is desirable, other than, perhaps quotation marks. Thus, 'tree' would stand for the intended tree, which is-not posited or existent, but is merely the objectivity correlative to my awareness of it."24 The whole Husserlian thesis is further explained lucidly by the contributor to the "phenomenology" 'article in The Concise Encyclopaedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers as follows: "The 'thesis' of existence has simply been 'put out of play,' and the world must now be placed in quotation marks: it is the correlate of my meaningful experience, but it is no longer regarded as independently real. It is 'bracketed' world."25With this transcendental understanding of the Being of an experiencing event or an object, the naive attitude in which the world was taken as a pregiven realm is abandoned. All the factors or elements of the natural attitude are preserved, but in Husserlian terminology, "we are pleased to put them in brackets." To know the world transcendentally is to know it "as it was in the first place."26 This pure or transcendental phenomenology is the radical and thoroughgoing method for 'the analysis of the experience and the part played by the mind in grasping the process of experience. It is basic to all situations or events of life, real or ideal. A brief analogy of pure phenomenology with pure mathematics would not be out of way here. Pure mathematics precedes the applied one' as it is the theories of the former which are' finally applied to the real problems in mathematics. Pure mathematics reveals itself in the application of the concrete examples of mathematics. Similarly, it is the "eidos" or the essential structures of an object that are revealed in the real situations or events and which of necessity must precede these situations and events as pure mathematics precedes the applied mathematics.
Ibid., pp.111-112. Quoted in Twentieth Century Philosophy, ed. by Dagobert D. Runes. (Littlefield, Adams and Co., Ames, Iowa, 1956), p.311. 25 Urmson, J. O., Op. Cit., p.293. 26 Husserl quoted by Marvin Farber in Twentieth Century Philosophy, p.313.
23 24

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As Marvin Farber puts it so succinctly, "In short, geometry and phenomenology are sciences of pure essence, and not of real existence."27 Thus, in Husserl's view, "the science of pure possibilities must precede the science of real facts, and give it the guidance of its concrete logic."28 As Husserl further puts it, ". . . whereas the real world indeed exists, but in respect of essence is relative to transcendental subjectivity, and in such a way that it can have its meaning as existing reality only as the intentional meaning product of transcendental subjectivity."29 'Transcendental Intersubjectivity' This activity of the transcendental reduction is performed by the subject's deepest "I." This "I" is different from the psychological 'me' which works only on an empirical level. It is I who have been experiencing all the appearances of an object. Just as these appearances can be concentrated upon, similarly the experiencing "I" also can be reflected upon as a result of phenomenological reduction. It is simply a matter of shifting one's attention from the object to the subject. This concept of the deeper "I" or the transcendental subjectivity leads Husserl to the next one of transcendental intersubjectivity. The corroborating evidence of other minds having similar transcendental experiences has to be provided for to authenticate one's own transcendentally subjective experience. This is what is known by Husserl as transcendental intersubjectivity. As the contributor to the phenomenology article in The Concise Encyclopaedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers puts it, "Because one must begin with his own experiences, 'transcendental egology' is the first stage. The 'exhibiting' or evidence of other -minds must be provided for if solipsism is to be avoided. In the language of phenomenology, that is made possible by 'empathy,' 'appresentation,' and 'apperception by analogy' based upon the resemblance of other bodies to one's own body. The phenomenologist then speaks of 'transcendental intersubjectivity' . . ."'30 Thus it is the consciousness or the experiencing ego which holds the supreme sway in Husserl's phenomenological philosophy, from the first natural standpoint view of the world to the final transcendental one. For, in the words of Husserl, "It is the spirit which gives meaning to being."3" Every attempt to intend an object and to reduce it to its pure essence, is to do so, to give it a new meaning. From the
27Ibid., p.312. 28I bid ., p .312. 29 Ibid., p.319. 30 Urmson, J. O., Op. Cit., p.293. 31 Quoted in Urmson, J. O., Op. Cit., p.294.

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empirical to the transcendental, via the eidetic viewpoint of the world of objects, the whole process is a spiralling attempt to bestow a new meaning to the objects and events, viewed not only from different angles, but from different modes of consciousness as well. To Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the modern disciple of Husserl, man is condemned to meaning, just as to Sartre, Husserl's other disciple, he is "condemned to freedom." This simply means that man is involved with the world at all levels in the work of giving a meaning to it, ranging from the natural standpoint to the transcendental one. So, according -to Merleau-Ponty, even to declare a thing as meaningless would be tantamount to adding a dimension of meaning to it. And it is this relentless search of meaning on behalf of man down the ages to realize the essentiality of the final "Be," that has been and continues to be the crux of this brave but little known philosophy. In concluding our survey of this radical philosophy we can say that it has tried, if not to diminish the opposition between, at least to touch upon the divergent philosophies of idealism and realism at a time. To the extent to which it believes in the fact that all the things are given, that they are, "out there" in their concrete existence for our descriptive analysis, it is realistic; and to the extent to which it believes that all objects are endowed with essences which can be ultimately grasped by specially adjusted or reduced mode of consciousness, it is idealistic in its outlook and content. Secondly, in asserting itself to be a self-sufficient and autonomous science of being, critically subjecting to its scrutiny not only the world of objects, but the modes of consciousness also, it has turned the attention of all such similar disciplines to their own searching self-analysis. The focus without and the gaze within (the inward gaze) are simultaneously made the study of phenomenological analysis. It is like a technician checking his own tools before proceeding to work or finding fault with the objects under his charge. Thus, it has given to other disciplines the. sound steering of a searching self-analysis in an otherwise uneasy anchorage of life (of perception). It has equipped the man with the discipline of self-correction before correcting any discipline itself. Thus it has placed itself on the firm footing of an autonomous science like pure geometry. Its only flaw (from a purely scientific-cum-mechanical-cumempirical point of view) is that it tends to be mystical in its final stage of "pure" phenomenology, where it tries to grasp the essence or being of a thing in a transcendental mode of consciousness in an intuitional way. The terms "pure consciousness," "intuition," "transcendental reduction," etc., may be regarded as irrational or supra-

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rational by a man of science to whom all such things are not only a mystical nonsense, but anathema as well. We can only say here (quoting Pascal) that finally "'the Heart hath its reasoning that Reason doth not know." R. K. RAVAL. OFBARODA, UNIVERSITY INDIA.