Continental Philosophy Review 37: 2143, 2004.

C 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Affection and attention: On the phenomenology

of becoming aware
ANTHONY J. STEINBOCK
Department of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Carbondale,
IL 62901-4505, USA (e-mail: steinboc@siu.edu)

Abstract. Addressing the matter of attention from a phenomenological perspective as it bears on

the problem of becoming aware, I draw on Edmund Husserls analyses and distinctions that mark
his genetic phenomenology. I describe several experiential levels of affective force and modes
of attentiveness, ranging from what I call dispositional orientation and passive discernment
to so-called higher levels of attentiveness in cognitive interest, judicative objectivation, and
conceptualization. These modes of attentiveness can be understood as motivating a still more
active mode of reflective attention, i.e., philosophical attentiveness, and to this extent, even it
would be subject to varying influences of affection. What role, if any, does affection play in a
peculiar kind of reflective attention that is phenomenological? I conclude by briefly considering
phenomenological reflective attentiveness and its relation to affection.

1. Introduction
Addressing the matter of attention from a phenomenological perspective as it
bears on the problem of becoming aware, I draw on Edmund Husserls analyses
and distinctions that mark his genetic phenomenology. The contribution
that Edmund Husserl makes to a philosophy of attention can be seen on
at least three fronts. First, the problem of attention emerges and is traced
not only on the so-called active levels that concern egoic cognition, but
on the passive level, namely, where pre-egoic modes of consciousness are
concerned. Second, and related to the former, his phenomenology understands
the phenomenon of attention not simply as an initiatory subjective act, but as
correlated to the affective force exerted on the part of the matters themselves.
Things do not only come into prominence against a ground, but as such
they have an alluring quality, they emerge with and as an affective relief.
Third, it offers an account of the qualitative differences between normal and
abnormal perception and attention. It does this by describing both the relation
between attention and an affective allure, and the role of motivation (rather
than causality) in perceptual life, and by rooting the process of attentively
turning toward something in non-egoic laws of association.
Following out the contribution that Husserl makes, I describe several experiential levels of affective force and modes of attentiveness, ranging from

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ANTHONY J. STEINBOCK

what I call dispositional orientation and passive discernment to so-called

higher levels of attentiveness in cognitive interest, judicative objectivation,
and conceptualization. These modes of attentiveness can be understood as
motivating a still more active mode of reflective attention, i.e., philosophical
attentiveness, and to this extent, even it would be subject to varying influences
of affection.
Phenomenology, however, wants to break with such natural types of
cognition, especially those that claim to be philosophical. Hence a question:
In distinguishing itself from the natural attitude, is phenomenological attention free from the exercise of affective forces in its reflective attentiveness
to the things themselves? In what respect does it remain neutral or disinterested? While there can be little question that affective forces play their
role in attentiveness, I do have an underlying question that I turn to in my
conclusion, namely, what role, if any, does affection play in a peculiar kind of
reflective attention that is phenomenological? What is the relation between a
phenomenology of attention and phenomenological attention? I will respond
to these questions by (1) addressing the issue of passivity and its relation
to activity and considering a phenomenology of affective force and affectconsciousness, (2) offering descriptions of affection and modes of both passive and active attentiveness, and (3) briefly considering phenomenological
reflective attentiveness and its relation to affection.
2. Passivity, activity, and affect-consciousness
2.1. Passivity
It is a characteristic feature of Husserls phenomenology, especially where his
genetic phenomenology is concerned, to operate with a distinction between
passivity and activity. Husserl addresses the relation between these spheres of
experience, at least in his Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis,
in order to describe the very origin of truth, or 2 again, how there is an
object given as in-itself-for-me and later as in-itself-for-us, even more broadly
construed, how regional and formal ontologies are possible, and to discern
both the constitutive and eidetic presuppositions of logic in the development
of a transcendental logic.1 This distinction between the passive and the active
is one that he employs liberally when describing the phenomenon of attention
and its motivation by affective force. Because the phenomenon of passivity
is ambiguous in Husserls writings, and because passivity designates a sphere
of experience that bears a distinctive relation to a sphere that is called active,
I delineate several meanings of passivity, and then say a word about the
interrelation of passivity and activity.

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23

First, passivity indicates a lawful-fundamental regularity in the way sense

is constituted, particularly, as a mode of sense-genesis. Since there is also
a genesis peculiar to activity, Husserl will also refer to this genesis as primordial genesis and this constitution of sense as primordial constitution,
and sometimes pre-constitution.2 Second, and related to the former, passivity suggests a sphere of experience in which the ego is not active, i.e.,
does not creatively participate or actively orient itself in the constitution of
sense. Third, passivity is basically equivalent to perceptual, pre-predicative,
pre-reflective, and pre-linguistic experience, and thus as already teleologically
delimited by the sphere of activity.3 Fourth, passivity designates a sphere of
pre-givenness in distinction to givenness, and the level of experience in which
object-like formations (not objects as such) are constituted. Finally, passivity
is the basis for activity as the realm of logical validity and truth, making the
active levels of experience possible (ACPAS, pp. 163, 210, 390).
This enumeration of the features of passivity, and by implication, their
distinction from the active sphere remain helpful to the extent that we remember that we only gain this level of experience of passivity for reflection
when we abstract from the accomplishments of activity. It is this movement
within the concrete whole of experience that enables us to consider the genetic
transition from affection to (active) attention as originating in the sphere of
passivity.
2.2. Affection
Underlying Husserls investigation into affection is his attempt to describe
fundamental regularities in the constitution of sense through passive syntheses of association. Devoting much energy to a phenomenology of timeconsciousness, Husserl describes the most general and basic syntheses that
connect particular object-like structures in a lawfully regulated manner. These
syntheses give a necessary temporal unity to all potentially disparate objectlike formations according to the universal forms of connection: coexistence,
and succession.
We are all familiar with this basic structure of time-consciousness in one
shape or another, but what gets overlooked is the fact that the analyses of
time-consciousness in terms of the temporal styles of givenness of impression, retention, and protention are only concerned with the general form of
consciousness. Mere form, however, is an abstraction, and thus from the
very beginning the analysis of the intentionality of time-consciousness and
its accomplishment is an analysis that works on [the level of] abstractions
(ACPAS, p. 173). For this reason the analyses of time-consciousness must
yield to more concrete considerations.

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ANTHONY J. STEINBOCK

What is central to these new concrete investigations is the phenomenon of

affection or affective force. By affection, Husserl does not mean a causal stimulus, a contextless power, or a third person force; rather, Husserl understands
the exercise of an affective allure [Reiz] on us, an enticement to be on the part
of the object, a motivational (not causal) solicitation or pull to attentiveness,
eventually to respond egoically and epistemically, though the response does
not have to be egoic.
An actual formation of sense always and necessarily presupposes affective
force, and affective differentiation (ACPAS, pp. 213, 221, 224). Affection is an
essential condition for every kind of synthesis, and only by virtue of affection
is there any connection at all. In what follows, I would like to summarize the
significant features of the role of affection. They number five.
First, since affection lies at the heart of sense-constitution, the original,
more radical structure of intentionality comes to the fore: Intentionality is not
a one-sided structure that stems from consciousness; it is bilateral, as it were,
an active-active structure, a constitutive duet. Here the object itself, and
the system of its horizonal, referential implications elicits an orientation and
pattern of constitution from the subject, beckoning the subject to peruse it
more closely and participate in the formation of its sense (ACPAS, pp. 41, 43,
52, 82).
While there is indeed a kind of evocation on the part of the objects plus
ultra, this solicitation is only a later result of the affective allure eliciting our
approach to it as this specific configuration. That something is actually heard
or seen or smelled, etc., is due to affective rays radiating from the aspect
of the object that draw in their wake the horizonal referential implications.
So, from the very outset, from the side of the object to be given, there are
enticements to be, i.e., there is an affection that issues from the side of the
object, exerting a lure on the subject. Thus, while one can describe attention
as a shift between horizon and theme, as I will suggest below, this shift is not
the only way in which affective forces and attention relate (ACPAS, p. 82).
Second, prominence is always already an affective prominence. Gestalt
psychology has shown that something can only be perceived as a figure against
a background, and that this figure/ground organization is an irreducible perceptual structure. What marks Husserls observations as significant is not his
appeal to a perceptual Gestalt structure, which is presupposed throughout, but
his inquiry into whether the formation of sense-unities are given prior to or
only in and through affective force. Since the world in a genetic account is
not an already determined world, but one becoming meaningful in the very
genesis of sense or in the process of becoming determinate, we conclude with
Husserl that something coming into relief is always an affectively charged relief (ACPAS, p. 211, 216217, 221). This insight into the fact that something

AFFECTION AND ATTENTION

25

coming into relief is always already an affective relief suggests three things:
(a) there is never a pure nothing of affection, rather, we can meaningfully
only speak of a gradation of affection; (b) even if we do not explicitly notice
something being affective and have not turned to it attentively, we can still
have an affection exerting its pull on us; (c) just because the affective force
is no longer at its peak in the present and is not intuitively available, it does
not mean that there is nil of affective force. Even though the affection may
be slight, it can still reunite with a present sense and be reconstituted so as to
exert a new force on the perceiver.
Third, in the living present there is not just one single ray of affective
force on me; rather, there are many things exercising an affection, rivaling for
my attention to some degree or other. For example, a mural on the side of a
building may be particularly prominent, affecting us, and as we turn toward it
a train passes by, blowing its horn, and when starting to turn toward the train,
we smell the miasma of a broken sewer line. If we turn to the odor and look
around to examine it more fully, the other affective tendencies fade back. All
of them still exercise an allure, but they no longer make it through to us.
Fourth, as situated in a dynamic context, I encounter these rivaling
forces with a prereflective preferential directedness that is always selective/exclusive; in a field of affective tendencies that rival one another for
attention, some will be more or less significant than others, and these rivalries
can occur within the same sense field or across sense fields (ACPAS, 193
195). For example, while climbing a rock face certain grips for hands and feet
are perceived, tactilely and visually. Depending upon how fresh or fatigued,
how confident or intimidated I am, certain passages and certain contours will
lure the fingers this way or that, the feet left or right, as an invitation to climb.
In fact, the formations demand literally that one take a stand on them; depending upon the circumstances, some formations may not even stand out as such,
and the emergence of a figure may only be on the verge of becoming something determinate, i.e., this grip on the rock face as a possibility to climb
higher. If, say, I am particularly fatigued, a certain fortuitous rock formation
may become prominent with an inherent tension that I do not fully understand
or see. I reach for it and as it moves, the whole organization of my field is
recast both in a way that disappoints my bodily intentions and that satisfies
my vague and implicit visual anticipation of the moving spectacle.4 It is a
copperhead that slithers away. Only upon reflection do I parcel out the affective tendencies and keep them in their place as non-rivals, and confirm that it
was a copperhead there all the time as this determinate phenomenon.
Finally, a completely undifferentiated field of affective forces is only possible after once having been present in the living present; the zero of
affective force takes place in the retentional past that becomes completely

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ANTHONY J. STEINBOCK

undifferentiated. This undifferentiation and subsequent dormancy of affective force corresponds to a zero-point of awakening, qualifying it as a kind of
phenomenological unconscious.5
This is not to say that what does not lie in the field of the present cannot be
more affectively significant than the present. For example, something that is
affectively significant can become repressed and exert a stronger affective
force than a present event; an event that is in itself relatively insignificant
can unleash a tremendous affective force on the part of the repressed past,
overwhelming the instigating present. In this case, such a repression would
not be a nil of affective force and not deserve the title of the unconscious.
Just because we are not focused on something thematically does not mean
that it is unconscious or void of affective significance.
2.3. Affect-consciousness
It is beyond the scope of this paper to show how all modes of consciousness are implicitly or explicitly affect-consciousness [Gemutsbewutsein
pleasure-, displeasure-, joy-, disappointment-, feeling-consciousness, etc.]
This is a problematic issue for Husserl because within his static phenomenology, he views affect-consciousness as one-sidedly founded upon a layer of
consciousness that is neutrally epistemic, subsidiary to a founding objectivating consciousness. I have hinted above and shown elsewhere that this
characterization of the relation between the founding and the founded stems
from prejudices of methodological procedure prejudices that privilege the
putative simple over the complex. Still, by reinterpreting this procedure
(as Husserl himself does), the former is now regarded as abstract, and the
latter, the complex, are understood as concrete.6 Here are the reasons one
would have to revise the initial claim with respect to affect-consciousness
and pursue an analysis in which all consciousness is to some degree affectconsciousness.
First, because intentionality is a correlative structure, being able to be struck
by an affective prominence of any kind presupposes that consciousness is
in principle an affective openness. Here the affectively charged givenness
guides the (affectively significant) perception such that something can be
seen, or heard, epistemically or otherwise. We do not first have a quality,
then the substrate, confined, for example, to the eyes or ears; there is not
a disassociation of a so-called physical nature from affective or emotional
life. Like Scheler, Merleau-Ponty observes that before being seen, the color
betrays itself through the experience of a certain attentive bodily comportment
that is appropriate to that color such that I adopt an affective attitude, e.g.,
of blue.7 Thus, there is an order of affective perception that precedes or

AFFECTION AND ATTENTION

27

is coeval with the givenness of the object as object, such that the object is
perceived as enticing or disgusting, beautiful or ugly, etc.8
Second, one can show, as N. Depraz and F. Varela9 have done, that the
affective quality of perception is at the heart even of time-consciousness.
By focusing on the micro-futural dimension, or protention, it is possible to
describe the genesis of fulfillment as laden with emotional coloration. The
pro-tention/pro-tension is affectively charged: It is literally a pre-sentiment
of what is to come: with uncertainty, with hope, fear, surprise, etc. Whereas
Husserl does tend to view the protention as projected on the basis of a past
and present, the protention is actually more original; even if we were to ascribe to perception an impressional status, we would have a givenness with
a protentional orientation before it is retended, and such that the retention
would bear in its hold the emotional coloration of the protention-present.
Third, it is not insignificant that when Husserl describes the relation between intention and fulfillment, even on cognitive andjudicative levels, he
depicts the relation in the very terms of Gemutsbewutsein, namely, as a striving toward or desiring deeper epistemic content, and the attainment of the
aim as a relaxation. In terms of Husserls own descriptions (and not necessarily in terms of his assertions), we find that the higher the cognitive motivation, the less neutral is the cognitive activity, the more the affect-laden
is the consciousness that comes into play as an epistemic striving, a driving
at, a willing. No givenness is an entirely adequate givenness, but rather,
is expressive of a simultaneous tension/relaxation/tension structure imbued
with affective coloration. Consciousness has to be seen most fundamentally
as affect-consciousness (ACPAS, p. 275 f.).

3. Affective force and attention

Affection is fundamental for anything becoming prominent in the perceptual field, whether one becomes attentive to it or not. Let me emphasize that
although there is an attentiveness that culminates in the transition from the
passive to active spheres, we also have to recognize that the relation between affection and attention may play itself out in varying degrees within
passivity or within activity, and that active attentiveness like grasping, explication, cognitive position-taking, etc., are actually only special cases of
attentiveness.10
In this section, I enumerate seven ways of becoming attentive within perceptual and cognitive life (though some admit of further differentiation within
each), the first two within passivity, the third as a transition from passivity to
activity, and four subsequent ones within activity: (1) dispositional orientation,

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ANTHONY J. STEINBOCK

(2) passive discernment, (3) active turning-toward (including here a turningtoward in the present, a turning-toward in remembering, and an anticipatory
turning-toward as the constitution of an object), and gradations of active
objectivation, (4) from cognitive interest as the thematic investigation of an
object, (5) the examination and explication, (6) determinative identification
in judgments (propositions, states-of-affairs), and (7) judicative conceptualization in relations of comparison, the formation of a universal, and as-such
judgments. These modes of attentiveness take us to the emergence of philosophical attention in the ordinary sense. It is at this point that I take up one
further mode of reflective philosophical attentiveness, namely, phenomenological reflective attentiveness. Here I evaluate phenomenological reflective
attentiveness relation to affection, if and how it, of all the modes of attention,
is susceptible to affective allures.
When discussing the passive modes of attentiveness, it is important to
realize that they do not follow the notion of attentiveness that we usually have
in mind when we think of attention, namely, making the implicit, explicit,
making what is marginal, thematic.11 Although Husserl certainly had this
concept of attention in mind, and Gurwitsch after him, this is by no means the
most fundamental concept of attentiveness. This can be seen both in what I call
dispositional orientation and passive discernment, where there is no turning
toward a theme in any active sense, yet there is an attentiveness to affective
forces that are not nothing. Affection and attention are operative distinctive
spheres without requiring a margin/theme, background/foreground schematic
shift.
3.1. Dispositional orientation
I call this level of attentiveness dispositional orientation because there is an
affective emergence of the perceptual field that takes on a particular configuration only in relation to a perceiver who is solicited due to his or her presence
and style of comportment, and whose contribution is to be oriented to the affective field by virtue of implicit preferential structures (including emotional,
cognitive, instinctive or drive related preferences); these preferences allow
the phenomena to organize themselves according to primordial laws of association. In these cases, what we have are precisely the affective formation of
sense-unities. There are many ways that such affective formations can emerge,
among them, the propagation of sense through affective transference in the
living present (similarity, uniformity), some that are more explicitly retroactive, and some that are more explicitly protentional accomplishments. We see
in this first example that there is in passivity a phenomenological distinction
to be made between an awakening of one thing in relation to another by virtue

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29

of being in relation to me, and an awakening of me attentively in relation

to it.
Let me illustrate this with the example of the propagation of affection in
the cases of a present awakening, a retroactive awakening, and a futural awakening. While climbing on a rock face I have before me a rough, tan colored
surface organized willy-nilly all along the face of the cliff. Half way up the
rock face a protrusion suddenly distinguishes itself from the others because
it is white (someone had just chalked up her hands and left the white powder on the protrusion). Now it becomes especially affective for itself, but it
also pairs in a transference of sense with another white protrusion, and
then simultaneously calls forth a series of protrusions (some white, some not)
into its nexus; it illuminates an entire path of protrusions, precisely both as
grips and as etching a pathway. The entire path gets affectively articulated whereas prior to this it was affectively unarticulated. These previously
unawakened affections are still characterized as awakenings, but in such a
way that they do not exercise a sufficient draw.12
In this case, as the protrusion becomes prominent it emerges simultaneously
as affectively significant, enough so that it stands out for me; its whiteness
pairs with another white protrusion a small distance from it; they form a kind of
co-present whole.13 Here they, together, prefigure a pathway to the top of the
cliff, at least a potential passage, illuminating an entire string of both whitecolored and non-white-colored protrusions; they gain an affective priority.
Initially the other white patch and then the certain protrusions the unitarystring of protrusions qua pathway gain an affective strength that they did
not have before their affective articulation by virtue of the propagation of the
affective force to its members. Finally, even the initial white protrusion, and
then the others, gain a peculiar affective strength by now being articulations of
a pathway. The whole gives the instigating present a new affective efficacy
as a moment of the articulated whole pathway, an efficacy that was not
contained in it by itself.
Not being a climber, I might see a white mark or maybe two of them by
virtue of an affective pairing, but I may pay it no mind. Or as a climber, I may
be immediately drawn away by another possibility: I see/feel a better one; the
initial one is immediately perceived as too hard and I prefer another, thus,
directly and pre-reflectively dismiss it even as a possibility. Or, something can
obtrude so strongly, like a large overhang, that I am immediately drawn to it
or shun it such that rather than spreading to others in a series; it inhibits the
spread of affection to the would-be members.
We have a similar case of propagation, only now one that is retroactively
efficacious in a more prominent sense. Let me borrow one of Husserls examples. We hear a melody without it exercising any considerable affective

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ANTHONY J. STEINBOCK

force, since we are busy doing something else; it does not even register as a
disturbance. Now there is a phrase that arouses either a particular pleasure or
displeasure. The entire melody in the immediate present is accentuated, and
in one stroke (similar to the example of climbing given above), the affection
and the pleasure or displeasure radiates back into the past retentional phase,
affectively highlighting it as a unity.14 Again, it is not only the present that
gives the past an affective force that it never had before, but the whole melody
gives even the instigating present a new affective prominence as a part of the
whole melody.15
As in the case of a series of hammer blows, an affective awakening goes
back into senses that are uniform; the affective awakening need not bring the
single uniform sense to givenness, but it does elicit a kind of un-covering
in the sense that the reanimated past hammer blow has its own affective force
just like the new hammer blow. We experience it as a chain of hammer blows
extending relatively far back by virtue of the synthesis of awakening that
radiates back. Moreover, not only does this take place within one sense field
at a time, but there can be a transgressive awakening between the sense fields.
For example, one color can awaken a pronounced sound, and one rhythm,
say, knocking blows can awaken a similar rhythm, e.g., a string of flashing
lights.
Finally, there is a dispositional orientation seen in relation to the passive
propagation of affection in the protentional future. As noted above, on the
one hand, the motivation for a particular futural present is prefigured by the
present since when something is given, a world and its possibilities potentially
conforming to a style intimated by it are already sketched out. As this particular
givenness lingers,16 and the new affective force of the present reanimates the
retentional flow by virtue of a retroactive transference of sense, the call for this
particular futural course of things is intensified. To this extent, one could say
that the future does not fashion the unities of experience in the original sense,
but presupposes them, allowing something similar to be expected (ACPAS,
p. 204, 235).
But because the protention actually co-arises with the present, a constitutive
teleology is in play such that the affective force of a future occurrence confers
its force upon present possibilities allowing some to be given and allowing
others not to be able to be seen. The force radiates out from it in such a way
that it accentuates objects that will fulfill the conditions for forming a uniform
configuration. For example, on a baseball field, the teleology of ball guides
my perception of the object coming at me to be seen as ball, both when it is
a ball and when it is the ice from a snowcone. A perceptual crisis arises when
a current perception does not accord to this teleological orientation.17

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3.2. Passive discernment

Dispositional orientation and passive discernment are similar insofar as neither of them, taken by themselves, culminate in an active turning-toward or
cognitive interest (though they may lead to such active modes of attention).
However, I distinguish dispositional orientation from passive discernment by
the fact that the latter exhibits a slightly higher awareness of affective force,
which is more than being oriented toward or being oriented by; it is a distinctive discernment of and within the phenomenal field.18
We all have experiences of such passive discernment. For example, we
walk into a party and see a good friend, and we immediately discern a change
in his appearance. That this unfolds on the passive level and not an active
one becomes clear when we actually do try to fix the change we felt by
articulating it explicitly. We say you got new glasses, or you got your hair
cut, or you shaved your beard, when actually the friend grew a mustache.
In this case, there is certainly an affective detection as a mode of attention to
the whole scene elicited by the matter itself, but on the level of passivity. Of
course, we may never try to articulate the change explicitly and just live with
the perceived change.
There can be variations on this level of attention. For example, while reading
a newspaper, we may become irritated. Discerning something without ever
fixing on it, we live in this irritation for some time, without knowing at all that
we are irritated. This may go on indeterminately. The messages are tucked
away from the ego as such, but are affectively significant, and only potentially
at the egos disposal (ACPAS, p. 226 f.). (In fact, because we are able to discern
this level of passive detection, subliminal advertising has and does work so
well.)
Now, it may happen that I finally realize that I cannot concentrate on what
I am reading, and only now do I become aware that I am annoyed. But I may
still remain completely ignorant of why I am annoyed. Only when a certain
threshold is crossed, either, e.g., by a sound becoming progressively louder,
by a sudden loud bang, by the pattern of the noise changing, or by an drastic
absence of prominence altogether! (i.e., a noise has suddenly ceased)19 does
it dawn on me that there is an obnoxious buzzing from the fluorescent lights,
or a humming from a fan, or chirping of cicadas on a hot summer night, or a
distant honking of a cars horn that got under my skin. But again, this can
only happen at a certain point when it is made an explicit theme by turning
toward it attentively. Prior to this acknowledging attention, however, this kind
of grasping is not in play, and we remain in this passive, but powerfully
efficacious mode of discernment.

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3.3. Receptivity, turning-toward, and object-constitution

Attentive turning toward Husserl regards as the transition from passivity to
activity.20 While Husserl regards turning toward as a kind of proto-activity,
the status of activity must be qualified. It must be qualified because intrinsic
to the awakening is a submission that lies at the basis of an initiating egoic
movement of turning. Presupposed for this active turning toward is not only
the sphere of passively pre-constituted object-like structures, but the submission of the ego to the affective field. Husserl writes, for example, that [t]he
affections proceed to the ego from out of the passivity of the background; they
are what are presupposed [for the ego] to turn toward. Carrying out this turning toward, the ego complies with the affection; it directs itself toward what is
exercising the affection (ACPAS, p. 276, my emphasis). This compliance is
captured by Husserl under the rubric of receptivity. Although receptivity is
a receiving of a pre-constituted, pregiven sense, it is still regarded as a level of
activity, albeit the lowest one, for receptivity is a kind of actively self-giving
intuition; the ego pursues an affection, grasps it, even if momentarily, giving
rise to a new object-like formation. Still, it does not yet entail fixing it as
a theme, explicating it, judging it, or comparing it. Receptivity is still not a
cognitive interest, but it can motivate such an interest.
It is now precisely at this level of affection and attentiveness that attention
can be understood as a process of making thematic what was marginal. This
turning toward is also a turning to grasp more, even if in fact one is not able
to grasp more in the examples given above, the chirping of the cicadas, the
honking of the car racing by, the buzzing of florescent lights, the decoding
of subliminal messages, etc. Here we have the special sense of a specific
affection exercised on the ego, alluring it, meeting it and calling it to action
(ACPAS, p. 214 ff.).
This transition between passive affection and active attention is precisely
how Husserl distinguishes between pre-givenness and givenness: Something
is pre-given insofar as it exercises an affective allure on me, but not yet grasped
by me as such, responsively or egoically. It is given insofar as the ego carries
out a yielding to the allure, and has turned toward it attentively, laying hold
of it (ACPAS, p. 210). What is constituted qua given to consciousness exists
for the ego only insofar as it affects me, the ego.
These examples of awakening attention pertain primarily to the living
present; but there is another significant mode of awakening that pertains to
reproductive awakening, namely, remembering. Remembering is a reproductive awakening that turns backward and reanimates the affective force
that now lies sedimented in the retentional past in a kind of dormancy. Because the doctrine of the genesis of reproductions and the formations of

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33

reproductions is the doctrine of association in the first and most genuine sense
first in relation to expectations, and not in relation to passive associations
association is described as the process of something recalling something
else by awakening something that is past (ACPAS, pp. 163164, 168 ff.,
232).
For example, the thought of the boulders at Fountainbleau suddenly pops
into mind when I am talking to my friend about Hegel. She used a peculiar
expression that immediately recalled a similar expression used by my climbing
partner after we successfully made a particularly difficult climb. The thought
of Fountainbleau comes to the fore as affectively prominent; but even it does
not remain isolated since other pasts live off of its affective force; indeed a
whole scene of events spreading associatively into the retentional past, like the
pasta we had that night, the small windows in the stone houses in the village,
and then the painters of Barbizon all become prominent, and in some cases
rival for attention. Now the re-presented past exercises the strongest affective
force; it is brought out of the zero-affective horizon of the unconscious,
and by a striking reversal, drowns out my present conversation of the living
present which aroused the past in the first place, and which otherwise would
have exercised the stronger affective force!
These descriptions of remembering, while certainly within the sphere of
egoic activity, do not exhaust the level of active remembering; they only
pertain to remembering as turning toward. There is another level of egoic
remembering where one strives consciously to remember something: a word
on the tip of ones tongue, the name of a person with whom one is talking, a
dramatic scene or the characters in a movie, etc.
Not only is attention directed backward in remembering, but the ego is also
active in turning toward the future. In the case of protention, the directedness
is a basic living ahead of oneself, integrated into the structure of kinaesthetic
habituality and understood as a passive prefiguring of the future. For example,
the given sense of the door protends the back side of the door, and certain
specific possibilities of the presently unobserved hall on the other side of the
door.
In the case of expectation, which is a higher level of futural orientation,
what is expected gets expected according to a concordant style or type (the
taste of a particular wine, the sighting of a dog, though one has never seen
this particular dog before, etc. Although something is often expected in coexistence and in succession on the basis of the past, expectation is somewhat
freer from the past than protention: I can look forward to seeing someone
I have never seen before, I can expect someone to come through the door any
time now, either in hope or in trepidation; I can expect this particular cat to
eat that mouse in the field, etc.

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Expectation, however, can be differentiated from a higher degree of attentiveness, namely, anticipation: I can excitedly anticipate the announcement of
the final winner at a raffle, I can impatiently await a phone call; I can anxiously
anticipate the ball to drop in Times Square on New Years Eve.21
The first condition for something to become an object is that affective
unities be constituted. This is still prior to remembering, however, and we do
not yet have object constitution; we do have sense-unity formations, objectlike formations [Gegstandlichkeiten], but not objects [Gegenstande] as such. A
genuine object that is to be grasped and disclosed as identically the same again
and again, writes Husserl, is first constituted with the help of remembering;
even the retentional past, and the synthesis in the course of these pasts arising in
the small circle of the living present, does not yet yield the genuine constitution
of the object, but instead only a fundamental portion of its constitution.22 The
future plays its role by projecting a norm around which perceptual fulfillment
can be achieved. These norms become norms of verification that are originally
prefigured ways of possible verification that the active ego in its freedom can
discover and survey (ACPAS, pp. 263267).
But even though the constitution of an object can only be done with the
aid of remembering (and expectation), one does not remember in order to
constitute the object as a theme. An object is constituted in the process of
remembering and expectation, but it is not the theme of cognitive interest;
it is therefore not an object in the complete and genuine sense. What we
mean by object in the complete and genuine sense, according to Husserl,
is something that is constituted as identical with itself and that is originally
constituted as the thematic object for the ego in identifying activity (ACPAS,
p. 297 f.).
A consciousness of the object is genuinely carried out only first in egoic
acts, and is only there as object for the ego through activities of identification.
Since there are as many modes of identification that we have for a theme as
there are modes of objectivation, we can expect a spectrum of so-called intellectual or spiritual acts that differ in manners of generating the object.
Each level requires a new attitude and a corresponding alteration in thematization. And since each object exercises an affection in varying degrees, it
can motivate higher levels of objectivation: From cognitive interest, explication, determinative identification, conceptualization, to what Husserl refers
to as as-such judgments. Further, each stage or attitude can admit of further differentiation. For example, just within the level of conceptualization,
one would have to distinguish between concepts (operating apophantically
in meanings and judgments) and essences (operating ontologically in simple
and categorial objects), and further, between various levels of essences from
empirical universals, to morphological essences and types, to pure eide.

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35

To make all these differentiations explicit is far beyond the scope of this
paper, and accordingly I make no pretensions to exhaustiveness. My intent
is to suggest the motivations for various kinds of attentiveness within the socalled active domain and to point out their affective dimensions, and then to
consider phenomenological reflective attentiveness.
3.4. Cognitive interest as mere intuition
We have just seen that receptivity is the bridge, as it were, from passivity to
activity, and that this awakening initially entails a submission that motivates an
active turning toward. Cognitive interest goes beyond receptivity by not merely
focusing on a theme, but by taking it as an object that is in principle explicable
as object. Thus, cognitive interest need not be a full-fledged investigation into
the object; for cognitive interest is interest in an object where this object is
in principle repeatable, that is, is identical with itself, and stands there for
observation. For this reason cognitive interest is a mode of giving, a giving of
the Self of the object where the self-giving is creative (ACPAS, pp. 311316).
3.5. Examination and explication
An affection stemming from an object-like formation has lured us to it; we
fix it as a thematic object, as the one enduring tone, the thematic content,
the flowing What-content of the tone. We take a cognitive interest in it, for
example, when we ask what is it? when the ego as such is motivated to regard
it in its significance beyond merely turning toward it attentively. Cognitive
interest, however, naturally functions as a spur to processes of explication,
yielding an examination into the theme that a) delves into its content, and b)
extends beyond the theme to other objects (ACPAS, p. 338 ff.). Now, these
different objects or contents can be connected, and they can guide interest and
expand it into the unity of an overarching interest.
Examination is a special kind of attentiveness in which several things are
called to our attention in a unity; it entails explicating a substrate or a subject
in its properties such that one says S is determined by the partial selfidentification as , , , whereby the S remains one and the same S in
the unity of this activity, as it progresses to newer and newer concentrations.
What was merely a content of the theme (e.g., red), now becomes the thematic
object; but here, what has gradually become the special theme enters into the
partial identity with the S that is still retained. In this way, the interest in the
object that goes from to is fulfilled in the concentration of each moment or
special theme, and what we acquire is an enrichment of sense in this synthesis.
Even though the special themes of the object are actively made explicit as a

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ANTHONY J. STEINBOCK

way of clarifying S, the synthesis that determines their relation is not active,
rather, it is a result of a special passive synthesis (ACPAS, pp. 294 ff., 339 ff.).
Moreover, this passing from object to object that is held together by passive
syntheses are excitations for possible determinations, but it itself is not yet
the activity of determinative synthesis, it is not a judging.
3.6. Judgment: Propositions and state-of-affairs
We are able to judge, S is , S is , S is , but this can just be the identical
S, the , the , etc., as they are maintained in the cognitive, thematic regard;
they are not necessarily determined as S in the form of the subject, and the
in the form of determination, etc.
Judgment is a determining process that actively relates one theme to another.
If we focus on the S that is enriched in sense, S becomes an object of a
new apprehension; an active movement in the transition from, say, S to
is intent on generating the element accruing to S. Now we have the active
consciousness that the S undergoes determination by being expressed as S
is or S contains .
According to Husserl, the proposition is a correlate, the What of the judicative act, and in this regard is the judicative proposition, the proposition.
When we substantivize the proposition in the form of that statements (that
S is ), we have a new level of objectivation that fulfills the proposition,
the judgment maintained as valid, we have a state-of-affairs or Sachverhalt.
This is the foundation for other possible determinative judgments: the relation
between whole and parts, the combination of parts and their forms of connection, the relationships between the elements as connected in these forms,
etc.
In each case, it is an enrichment of sense that gives occasion to turn to
activities of determination that form relations. The new sense functions as an
allure on the ego and the ego responds to the allure as an attempt to realize
it. In the proposition, we have something offered for acceptance; something
() is put forth as affirmed or denied of something else (S). It is in this sense
of proposition that we have the significance of the proposition as an allure, a
sense that is certainly suggestive of Whiteheads treatment of propositions as
lures for feeling.23
3.7. Conceptualizing judgment and the transition to the philosophical
attentiveness
Conceptualizing judgment, like the other more active modes of attention, are not modes of attention like those that occur in the lower level of

AFFECTION AND ATTENTION

37

attentiveness, for the former introduce a reflective dimension into attention.

Dan Zahavi has argued that one cannot simply equate reflection with attention.24 While I think it incorrect to identify attention with a thematic change
(witness, for example, various modes of passive attentiveness), his observations on reflection and attention are compelling, for reflection is not merely
a thematic modification of a horizon since it introduces a kind of self-distance
or self-fission, not a horizontal variation, but a vertical alteration. When
we relate these observations to higher modes of attentiveness, we realize that
we do not only have the emergence of reflection into attention; with the mode
of reflective attention called conceptualizing judgment, we have the motivation for a special vertical alteration, a philosophical reflective attentiveness,
and its peculiar relation to affective tendencies.
What Husserl terms conceptualization is adumbrated in three stages: the
association of similarity and the direction of interest turned toward the universal, the constitution of the universal and its relation to particulars, and the
constitution of as-such judgments.
Relations of comparison have been prepared in the passive sphere through
associative syntheses of similarity and uniformity already prior to the active
process of relating. This associative connection is the source of the consciousness of the universal, of conceptualizing judgment in the full sense. The unity
that is formed is a unity of affection, and this coinciding in a unity gives an
increased force of affection, where the affection leads in the direction of interest in the universal. The direction of interest toward the universal, toward the
unity as opposed to the manifold, is not that of determining the one uniform
object in relation to the other as being uniform to it; rather, what awakens
interest is the One being actively constituted in the coinciding of individually grasped uniform objects; the One is the same, and is the same over and
over, no matter what direction we may pursue in passing from one to the next
(ACPAS, pp. 349350).
This grasping of the One has a different field of interest to move through,
different that is from the field of the sensible object. We do not merely attribute
similar features to different objects: The bookcase is brown, The desk is
brown, The cup is brown; rather, now we mean by brown the same color
in all instances, subsuming the individuals under the eidos, brown. For
now writes Husserl, the interest, the ray of attentiveness must pass clear
through the individual objects that are already constituted, and by traveling
along the path of uniformity and carrying out the coinciding, the One that is
constituted becomes thematic (ACPAS, p. 350).
After the constitution of the universal, we have a new active determination.
Focusing on the singularities, they will have a unique relationship to the
universal, as a particularization of the eidos. Here, the new judgment arises,

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ANTHONY J. STEINBOCK

This is an , i.e., it is a particular, an instance of . The universal of repetition

is the concrete eidos. Now, the field of openness that is constituted with
the universal (the universal of repetition with unending scope) unleashes the
whatsoever or Beliebigkeit. We can choose any this or that whatsoever
as the determinative theme; not only do new species emerge, but new thematic
formations. Even if this table stands before me in a field of interest as a
thematic focal point, it is something different to make a judgment about any
table whatsoever, regardless of which one, i.e., to make a judgment about
a table as such; here the whatsoever, the as such, occupies the thematic
center such that the table gets characterized as an example.
By making the as-such into a theme, we have a conceptualizing function
of universal and particular conceptual grasping. We can also operate in the
scope of pure concepts, in a manifold of possibility; here we gain pure as-such
judgments, like judgments of laws: a triangle as three angles or possibility,
a triangle can have a right angle. We can modify this in free variation and
find a lawful regularity that is possible for all possible object-like formations
(ACPAS, p. 354 f.).
It is at this juncture, the awakening of the universal, the particular, their
interrelation, and discerning essential lawful regularities, that we have the
advent of a philosophical attitude: It bears a reflection on the One and the
many, the inquiry into the being of beings (ontology), and the relation of
being to knowledge (epistemology). I will not pursue characteristics of such
a philosophical attention here. The question I want to consider in the next
section concerns the possible continuity or discontinuity of these active forms
of reflective attention and philosophical attentiveness in general, to a special
attitude called phenomenological attentiveness.

4. Phenomenological attention as active dis-position

I began this paper by discussing the role of affection and the role it plays in
attention, tracing it from passive modes of proto-attention like dispositional
orientation and passive discernment, to turning toward, cognitive interest,
active judication, and the constitution of essences. Each in their own ways,
they are dimensions of experience that are attentive to the world through an
interaction with solicitous affective forces.
Considered in terms of their attentive postures, however, these attitudes,
all the way up to conceptualizing reflection and eidetic variation remain what
phenomenology would call mundane because they are still tied to the what
of experience. Phenomenology, of course, will deem all these other modes
of attention, even the higher ones we dealt with here, to be naive (mundane)

AFFECTION AND ATTENTION

39

to the extent that they operate with presuppositions, pre-conceptions of the

world, taking the worlds validity for granted in everyday experiencing. The
investigations into the what, or into the being of things is not yet a critical
reflective attitude, like the one attributed to the phenomenological critical
attitude. The phenomenological attitude consists in a peculiar kind of reflective
attentiveness, one geared on how meanings take shape. To describe modes
of attentiveness in relation to affective forces is precisely to be reflectively
attentive to attention in a unique way, not merely as a meta-reflection on what
something is, but as an inquiry into how or the way in which things are given
and our openness to them.
The ego in the natural attitude is involved in the very course of livedexperiences and events such that it is engaged in the concordant and even
optimal courses of experiential flows. These concordant and optimal modes are
normal in the sense of being constitutive modalities of meaning. One lives
normally in the natural attitude, survives the disappointments of rupture, the
discordances, the a-typicalities and unfamiliar sensible and eidetic landscapes
of experience, and integrates them into an overarching concordance. Cognitive
reflection within these experiences poses no special difficulties because it, too,
is involved in the very movement of these events; it is affected by them, it
reflects on them, and it moves within them. In this sense, cognitive reflection
remains normal in this constitutive sense.
But phenomenological reflection is supposed to be a peculiar kind of attentiveness that radically distinguishes itself from the movement of the natural
attitude, whether on the level of passive habituality and anonymity, or on the
level of egoic judicative rationality. In one sense, this reflection becomes radically abnormal, i.e., it ruptures the concordance of everyday life; it not only
reflects on it, but in distinction from everyday, normal reflection, it abstains
from yielding to the positings of meaning, from the pre-sup-positions that
it carries out pre-reflectively and reflectively. Inquiring into how something
is given, it holds in abeyance assertions about being, and to this extent the
phenomenologist is said to be the disinterested observer or spectator.25
But phenomenological reflection is also normal, hyper-normal as
Husserl would say, in the sense that it is optimal, since it institutes a new
normal order of experience even though it is not concordant with the natural attitude, describing the very ways in which the natural attitude unfolds
and how objects and the world are there as in-themselves-for-us.
Phenomenology, then, is a peculiar kind of reflection that distances itself
from everyday life in order to get to the root of that life. Are we then justified
in calling phenomenological reflection a kind of attentiveness?
Where phenomenology is concerned, I think we have a special type of
reflection and attention due precisely to its shift of perspective: It is a reflection

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ANTHONY J. STEINBOCK

on the natural attitude as a shift from what something is plain and simple to
modes of givenness and pre-givenness. Phenomenology is a special kind of
reflective attentiveness.
The question I would like to pose now is the following: When the phenomenologist brackets presuppositions, is he or she free from affective forces? Is
the phenomenologist neutral in relation to the world? What kind of attentiveness is it that claims not to participate in the worlds validities? Finally, is
there a motivation for phenomenological reflective attentiveness like there is
in other cases of attentiveness?
Contrary to what might be thought to be the case for phenomenology, I suggest that phenomenological reflective attentiveness is an active dis-position,
and as such is the most receptive to affection of all the attentive attitudes.
Phenomenology is a type of reflective attentiveness that occurs within the
experiencing itself. As phenomenologists, we describe the experience of the
object only within the experiencing of the object, while simultaneously
glancing at a distance, as it were, out of the corner of one eye.26 It is only when
these putative descriptions of experience appear outside of the experiencing
altogether that they can be merely theoretical or constructed.
In order to reflect within the very experiencing itself, as phenomenology
does, and in order to describe the experiencing as it unfolds, we cannot arbitrarily limit the way in which phenomena appear. To accomplish this nonlimitation or openness on the part of the phenomenologist, one often appeals
to phenomenological reflective attention as neutral or as disinterested in order
to stave the tide of prejudices. But what we really mean by this is not that we
move from one theme to another or that we bracket the world altogether as an
object, but that we bracket a mundane attitude toward the world.
I suggest that by this we mean that the phenomenologist must actively
dis-position him- or herself in two ways: (1) dispose oneself toward the phenomena in an open disposition, and (2) disposition him- or herself from the
event, i.e., dispose of the self. The interest at stake in phenomenological disinterestedness, in other words, I maintain, is self-interest, the preconceptions
in question concern the pre-conceptions of the self with which one comes
to the phenomena, the selfs interest in the world that intrudes on the scene
and imposes its-self on the phenomena. What phenomenology really wants
to bracket, then, is a self-imposition so as to let the phenomena flash forth
as they give themselves; what we become dispassionate about is ourselves
through a literal dis-position of the self from the scene, and by so doing,
dispose ourselves to be struck in which ever way the phenomena give themselves. This is not idle or random curiosity in things that we generate from
ourselves, but an active remaining open while stepping back, a dis-position
that has a directedness because it is motivated by the self-givenness of the

AFFECTION AND ATTENTION

41

matters themselves. Thus, the conversion peculiar to phenomenology of which

Husserl speaks in the Crisis and elsewhere, is a conversion peculiar to the practice of phenomenology, it is the forgetfulness of the self as the openness to
the allure.27
Would we then have to characterize the phenomenological reflective attentiveness not in the egos freedom, as the early Husserl had done, or even in
thaumazein, as the latter Husserl had tried, but perhaps as the fundamental
mood of Scheu or awe to modify a contention that Heidegger makes in his
Beitrage28 in what Levinas described as the motivation for the phenomenological reduction in terms of the call or the saying prior to the said29
or again in what Scheler calls the Personal givenness of the good-in-itselffor-me, which comes to me uniquely30 ?
But no matter what we would want to name this, the motivation for phenomenological reflective attentiveness is best understood as a kind of submission, a submission already evident in passive modes of attentiveness
but now in an altered form. This submission might be undertaken consciously
and methodically; it might be motivated despite our efforts and anticipations
at the outset. But in any case, we become vulnerable to the givenness of the
matters self-givenness, and subject to the experience in the description: The
phenomenological subject is subject to the alluring self-giving. So, it may
happen that even if we try to describe the phenomena abstractly or theoretically, we open ourselves implicitly to the direct experience of them, and in
so doing, open ourselves to being struck by them, instigating a perceptual,
an epistemic, a moral, or even a religious insight and relation. In being true
to how the phenomena give themselves, they may demand a transformation
of our lives, a critique of our plans, our agenda, our theories or constructions.
Certainly, we cannot be pure in this non-intrusion of the self, though we do
want to get as much as we can; so, we are always failing to some extent because
we are finite in the face of inexhaustible presence. And if there is too much
self-interest, we can distort the descriptions/experiences to such an extent that
the whole process becomes compromised; no longer is there merely something
left out of account, but we become mere academics, mere professionals. But
once we do see phenomena (however broadly we want to take this term),
it is possible to track their self-disclosure or self-revelation. And this being
guided, being lured, being enticed by the phenomena is precisely the affective
force of the matter exercising its allure on us in the reflective attentiveness of
the phenomenological attitude.
The task in phenomenology, then, is not to become inured to the affective
forces of the phenomena, but literally to dispose ourselves to them, with
humility, since the self-givenness of the phenomena ultimately is not our
doing or not our doing alone. In this way, phenomenology, of all reflective

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ANTHONY J. STEINBOCK

postures, is the most attentive disposition, and in this sense the most yielding,
the most dis-positioned.
Notes
1. See Edmund Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic, trans., Anthony J. Steinbock (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
2001); hereafter, ACPAS. See Translators Introduction, xv1x.
2. See ACPAS, 115, and D manuscripts entitled Urkonstitution.
3. Because active linguistic constitution can become sedimented in the form of passive acquisitions, the prereflective sphere of experience does not necessarily preclude the linguistic,
though it can exclude the propositional.
4. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945),
p. 24; hereafter Phenomenologie.
5. See ACPAS, pp. 201, pp. 213 f., 216, 21822, 228 f. On the Unconscious in Husserl, see
esp., Rudolf Bernet, Unconscious Consciousness in Husserl and Freud, ed. Donn Welton, The New Husserl. A Critical Reader (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003),
pp. 199219.
6. Anthony J. Steinbock, Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl
(Northwestern University Press, 1995).
7. See Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenologie, pp. 244245.
8. See Max Scheler, Formalismus in der Ethik und die Materiale Wertethik, [Gesammelte
Werke Vol. 2], ed. Maria Scheler (Bern: Francke, 1966); Scheler, Formalismus, pp. 42, 159
f, 16466, 265; hereafter, Formalismus. See also Husserl, ACPAS, pp. 210, 214 ff.
9. See Lemotion au coeur du temps: lauto-antecedance, Intellektika 36/37, March 2004.
10. Accordingly, Husserl will hesitate in interpreting what does not grip my attention as something that does not exercise an affection at all. There are sense-unities that are not yet
themselves objects, primordial associations (or awakenings) where there is no question
of cognitive interest. See ACPAS, pp. 167168, 197 f., 206, 211.
11. See Dan Zahavi, Reflection and Attention ed. H. R. Sepp, Husserl Heute. Thesen
junger Forscher (Konigshausen & Neumann, forthcoming, 2004).
12. We are quite comfortable in characterizing such cases of unawakened affection as awakenings, if we characterize them as the zero-point of awakening, similar to the way in which
the arithmetician counts zero, the negation of number, among numbers (ACPAS, p. 201).
13. On Husserls concept of pairing, see ACPAS, pp. 178179.
14. Here we have a similar occurrence to what Husserl calls earlier in the Analyses a retroactive
crossing out. For example, we see a bird flapping its wings on a tree branch and move toward
it. It turns out that this spectacle is really leaves being blown by the wind. The former sense
bird flapping is retained (we do not forget we saw it as bird), but is crossed out such that
it is retained precisely as leaves being blown on a twig. The present perception radiates
back into the retentional past and is transformed; not deleted, but crossed out with the new
sense (see ACPAS, p. 68 ff.).
15. ACPAS, pp. 202204, 223230).
16. I take this term from N. Depraz, a term that has a much more dynamic sense than retention.
17. To illustrate this, one would need a description of the role of optimality. See my Phenomenological Concepts of Normality and Abnormality in Man and World, 28/3 (1995):
241260.

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43

18. Husserl accounts for this level of attention that I am calling passive discernment by
describing the case in which there is a pull proceeding from a noise that strikes me, but
only comes into relief in the antechamber of the ego. I may detect it in its particularity
even though I qua ego do not yet pay attention to it in a reflective manner. This already
detecting, he continues, suggests a positive tendency of an explicit turning-toward that is
not yet such an explicit turning toward (see ACPAS, pp. 214 ff.)
19. Here silence can exercise a profound affective force, making one uneasy, for example, as
John Cage has shown.
20. The investigation into the active accomplishments of the ego, through which the formations of the genuine logos come about, operate in the medium of an attentive turning toward
and its derivatives. Turing our attention toward is, as it were, the bridge to activity, or the
bridge is the beginning or mis en sc`ene of activity, and it is the constant way in which
consciousness is carried out for activity to progress: All genuine activity is carried out in
the scope of attentiveness (ACPAS, p. 276).
21. While I cannot take up this issue, none of the forms of remembering or anticipation are
entirely free from motivation.
22. ACPAS, 180 f.; cf. cf. Appendix 26: (To 45) <Repetition and Essential Identity of Rememberings>.
23. See my Whiteheads Theory of Propositions, Process Studies, 18, 1 (Spring 1989):
1929.
24. See Zahavi, Reflection and Attention.
25. der uninteressierte Betrachter. See Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europaschen
Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phanomenologie: Einleitung in die
phanomenologische Philosophie, ed. Walter Biemel, Husserliana VI (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1954), p. 178. English translation by David Carr, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: Introduction in Phenomenological
Philosophy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 174 f.).
26. See, for example, A. R. Luther, Persons in Love: A Study of Max Schelers Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972), p. 14. This is particularly evident
in experiences of the emotional life, for example; we can only describe love, for example,
within the experience of loving such that to understand loving phenomenologically one
has to be in a loving relationship.
27. On a similar notion of the forgetfulness of the self as the practice of the reduction, see
Michel Henry, Lessence de la manifestation; and see my The Problem of Forgetfulness
in Michel Henry, Continental Philosophy Review, special edition, The Philosophy of Michel
Henry, ed. Anthony J. Steinbock, Vol. 32, No. 3 (1999), pp. 271302.
28. See Martin Heidegger, Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) GA 65 (Frankfurt am
Main: Klostermann, 1989), 8, 14 ff., 396. See also Klaus Held, Fundamental Moods
and Heideggers Critique of Culture, trans., Anthony J. Steinbock in Reading Heidegger:
Commemorations, ed. John Sallis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 286
303.
29. See Emmanuel Levinas, Autrement quetre ou au-del`ade lessence (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1974), esp. chapters II and V.
30. Scheler, Formalismus, p. 482.