EDMUND HUSSERL

COLLECTED WORKS

VOLUME III

V olum e I Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and

to a Phenomenological Philosophy
T h i r d B o o k : Phenomenology and the
Foundations of the Sciences
V olume II Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and
to a Phenomenological Philosophy
F i r s t B o o k : General Introduction to a Pure
Phenomenology
Volume Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and
to a Phenomenological Philosophy
S e c o n d B o o k : Studies in the Phenomenology of
Constitution

TRANSLATIONS
PREPARED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF
THE HUSSERL-ARCHIVES (LEUVEN)
 EDMUND HUSSERL
IDEAS PERTAINING TO A PURE
PHENOMENOLOGY AND TO A
PHENOMENOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY

Second B ook
STUDIES IN THE PHENOMENOLOGY
OF CONSTITUTION

TRANSLATED BY

RICHARD ROJCEWICZ and ANDRE SCHUWER

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS

DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON
ISBN 0-7923-0713-5 (paperback)

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 CONTENTS

T r a n s l a t o r s ’ In t r o d u c t io n XI
F orew ord XVII

SECOND BOOK
STUDIES IN THE PHENOMENOLOGY
OF CONSTITUTION

Section One
The Constitution of Material Nature
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e I d e a o f N a t u r e in G e n e r a l
§ 1. Preliminary delineation o f the concepts of nature and experience.
(Exclusion of meaning predicates) .................................................... 3
§ 2. The natural-scientific attitude as a theoretical a t t i t u d e ................. 4
§ 3. Analysis of the theoretical attitude, o f the theoretical interest . . 5
§ 4. Theoretical acts and “ pre-giving" intentional lived experiences................. 6
§5. Spontaneity and passivity; actuality and inactuality o f conscious­
ness ............................................................................................................ 13
§ 6. The distinction between the transition into the theoretical attitude
and the transition into r e f l e c t i o n .................................................... 15
§ 7. Objectivating and non-Objectivating acts and their correlates 17
§8. The sense-objects as primal constitutive o b j e c t s .............................. 19
§9. Categorial and aesthetic (“ sensuous ”) synthesis 19
§ 10. Things, spatial phantoms, and the data o f sensation ................. 23
§11. Nature as sphere o f mere t h i n g s ........................................................ 27
C h a p t e r T w o : T he O n t ic S e n s e -S t r a t a of th e T h in g
of I n t u it io n as S uch
§ 12. Material and animal nature ................................................................. 30
§13. The significance o f extension for the structure o f “ things” in
general and o f material things in particular .................................. 32
§ 14. The significance o f extension for the structure o f animalia 35
§ 15. The essence of materiality (s u b sta n c e )............................................... 36
a) Phenomenological analysis of the givenness o f the thing as a
way toward determining the essence, material thing. ” . . . 37
b) Mobility and alterability as constituents of the material thing;
the thing-schema .............................................................................. 39
c) Exhibition of the materiality o f the thing by way o f its depen­
dence on circumstances ................................................................. 44
d) The schema as real determinateness o f the material thing . . 46
e) More precise determination, redetermination, and cancellation
of the th ing-exp erien ce..................................................................... 48
§ 16. The constitution o f the properties o f the thing in multiple relations
o f d e p e n d e n c y ........................................................................................... 49
§ 17. Materiality and substantiality 58

C h a p t e r T h r e e : T h e A e st h e t a in T h e ir R e l a t io n
to t h e A e st h e t ic B o d y
§ 18. The subjectively conditioned factors of the constitution o f the
thing; the constitution of the Objective material t h i n g ................. 60
a) The intuitive qualities of the material thing in their dependencies
on the experiencing subject-Body ............................................... 60
b) The significance of normal perceptual conditions for the consti­
tution of the intuited thing and the significance o f abnormali­
ties ........................................................................................................ 63
c) The significance o f psychophysical conditionality for the various
levels o f c o n stitu tio n ......................................................................... 70
d) The physicalistic t h i n g ..................................................................... 80
e) Possibility of the constitution o f an “ Objective nature ” on the
solipsistic level .................................................................................. 82
0 Transition from solipsistic to intersubjective experience 83
g) More precise characterization o f the physicalistic thing . . . 89
h) The possibility o f the constitution of an “ Objective nature ” at
the level o f intersubjective experience ....................................... 94

S e c tio n T w o
T he C o n s titu tio n o f A n im a l N a tu r e

I n t r o d u c t io n
§ 19. Transition to the consideration o f the soul as a natural Object 96
§ 20. The sense of the ordinary talk about the “ psychic ” ................. ........97
§21. The concept o f “ I as m an” .........................................................................99
C hapter O n e : T he P u re E go
§ 22. The pure Ego as E g o - p o l e ..................................................................................103
§23. The possibility o f grasping the pure Ego (the Ego-pole) 107
§24. “ M utability ” o f the pure E g o .......................................... .............................. 110
§ 25. Polarity o f a c ts: Ego and Object 111
§26. Alert and dull c o n s c io u s n e s s ...................................................................... .......114
§27. “ I as m a n ” as part o f the content o f the environment o f the pure
Ego ............................................................................................................................115
§28. The real Ego constituted as transcendent Object; the pure Ego as
given in immanence .................................................................................... .......117
§ 29. Constitution o f unities wiihin the sphere o f immanence. Persistent
opinions as sedim entations in the pure Ego Habitus: Ego & empirical 118
self
C hapter T w o : P sychic R eality
§30. The real psychic s u b j e c t ...................................................................................... 128
§31. The formal-universal concept o f reality ......................................................133
§ 32. Fundamental differences between material and psychic reality 134
§ 33. M ore precise determination o f the concept o f reality ..........................144
§ 34. Necessity o f the distinction between the naturalistic and the person-
alistic a t t i t u d e s ............................ ............................ .......147

C hapter T h r e e : T he C onstitution of P sychic R eality

T hr o u g h the B ody
§ 35. Transition to the study o f the constitution o f “ man as nature”........... 151
§ 36. Constitution o f the Body as bearer o f localized sensations (sens­
ings) ............................................................................................................................152
§37. Differences between the visual and tactual r e a l m s ...................................155
§38. The Body as organ o f the will and as seat o f free movement . ........159
§ 39. Significance o f the Body for the constitution o f higher Objectivi­
ties ......................................................................................................................... .......160
§ 40. M ore precision concerning the localization o f the sensings and
concerning the non-thingly properties o f the Body ....................... .......161
§ 41. Constitution o f the Body as material thing in contrast to other
material t h i n g s .................................................................................................. .......165
a) The Body as center o f o r i e n t a t i o n ................................................... .......165
b) Peculiarity o f the m anifolds o f appearance o f the Body . . . 167
c) The Body as integral part o f the causal n e x u s ...................................167
§42. Character o f the Body as constituted solipsistically ....................... .......168

C hapter F o u r : T he C onstitution of P sychic R eality in E mpathy

§43. Givenness o f other a n i m a l i a ...................................................................... .......170
§44. Primal presence and appresence ....................................................................170
§45. Animalia as primally present Corporeal bodies with appresented
in t e r i o r i t y ...................................................................................................................171
§46. Significance o f empathy for the constitution o f the reality “ I as
m a n .” ................................................................................................................ .......175
§47. Empathy and the constitution o f n a t u r e ......................................................178
 S e c tio n T h r e e
T h e C o n s titu tio n o f t h e S p ir it u a l W o r ld

§48. Introduction 181

C hapter O n e : O pposition B etween the N a tur a listic a nd

P erso nalistic W orlds
§ 49. The personalistic attitude versus the naturalistic ............................ 183
a) Introjection o f the soul as presupposition even for the natural­
istic attitude ............................................................................................. 184
b) Localization o f the p s y c h i c ................................................................. 187
c) Tem poralization o f the psychic. (Immanent time and space­
time) ...................................................................... 188
d) Reflection on method ........................................................................... 189
e) The naturalistic attitude and the natural attitude 190
§ 50. The person as center o f a surrounding world ....................................... 194
§51. The person in personal a s s o c ia t io n s ........................................................ ...... 200
§52. Subjective m anifolds o f appearance and Objective things . . . . 211
§ 53. The relationship between the consideration o f nature and the
consideration o f the s p i r i t ....................... 219

C hapter T w o : M otivation as the F u n d a m e n t a l L aw

of the S piritual W orld
§ 54. The Ego in the inspectio s u i ...................................................................... 223
§ 55. The spiritual Ego in its com portm ent toward the surrounding
w o r l d ..................................................................................................................... 226
§56. M otivation as the fundamental lawfulness o f spiritual life 231
a) M otivation o f reason ........................................................................... 231
b) A ssociation as m otivation ................................................................. 233
c) A ssociation and experiential m otivation ..................................... 235
d) M otivation in its noetic and noematic a s p e c t s ............................ 238
e) Empathy toward other persons as an understanding o f their
m otivations ............................................................................................. 239
f) Natural causality and m otivation ................................................... 241
g) Relations between subjects and things from the viewpoint o f
causality and o f m o t i v a t io n ................................................................. 243
h) Body and spirit as comprehensive unity: “ spiritualized”
Objects ....................................................................................................... 248
§ 57. Pure Ego and personal Ego as Object o f reflexive self-appercep­
tion ............................................................................................................................259
§ 58. The constitution o f the personal Ego prior to reflection 263
§ 59. The Ego as subject o f f a c u l t i e s ................................................................. ...... 266
§60. The person as subject o f acts o f reason, as “ free E g o ” . . . . 269
a) The “ I can ” as practical possibility, as neutrality modification
o f practical acts, and as original consciousness o f abilities 270
 b) The “ I can ” motivated in the person’s knowledge o f himself.
Self-apperception and self-understanding .................................. ..... 277
c) The influence o f others and the freedom o f the person . . . 281
d) General type and individual type in understanding persons............282
§61. The spiritual Ego and its underlying b a s i s ............................................ 288

C h a p t e r T h r e e : T h e O n t o l o g ic a l P r io r it y
of the S p ir it u a l W o r l d o v e r t h e N a t u r a l is t ic
§62. The interlocking o f the personalistic attitude and the naturalistic
a t t it u d e ........................................................................................................ 294
§ 63. Psychophysical parallelism and in t e r a c tio n ....................................... 302
§ 64. Relativity o f nature, absoluteness o f s p i r i t ....................................... 311

Supplements
S upplem ent I: Attempt at a step-wise description o f constitution 319
S upplem ent I I : The Ego as pole and the Ego o f habitualities 324
S upplem ent III: The localization o f the ear noises in the ear . . . 324
S upplem ent IV: Sketch o f an introduction to “ The constitution o f
the spiritual world. ” .................................................... 325
S upplem ent V: The pregivennesses o f the spirit in spiritual life 328
S upplem ent VI: Inspectio sui (“ I d o ” and “ I have”) .............................329
S upplem ent VII: The Ego and its “ over-and-against. ” 330
S upplem ent VIII: On the unity o f “ B ody” and “ spirit” 333
S upplem ent IX : Spiritual p r o d u c t s ......................................................... ......333
S upplem ent X: Personal Ego a n d s u r r o u n d in g w o r ld (333)— The
le v e ls o f th e C o n stitu tio n o f Objective rea lity (336)—
Pure Ego and personal Ego ( 3 3 7 ) .......................... 333
S upplem ent X I: The human being apprehended in an inductive-
natural way and the free p e r s o n .............................. 340
S upplem ent X II: Supplements to Section T h r e e .................................. ......344
I. T h e P e r s o n — T h e S p i r i t a n d I t s P s y c h i c B a s i s
§ 1. The distinction between primal sensibility and intellectus
agens .................................................................................................344
§ 2. Sensibility as the psychic basis o f the s p i r i t ............................346
Excursus: impression and rep ro d u ctio n .............................. ......348
§3. Development o f the Ego— Ego-action and Ego-affection 349

II. S u b j e c t i v i t y a s S o u l a n d a s S p i r i t in t h e A t t i t u d e o f t h e
N atural S c ie n c e s a n d in the A t t it u d e o f t h e H um an
S c ie n c e s
§ 1. The reality o f the soul and of the human being 351
 §2. Psychophysical causality and the causal nexus o f things 354
§3. Possibility of the insertion o f the soul into nature 355
§4. The human being as spiritual s u b j e c t.................................. 357
§ 5. Empathy as spiritual (not naturalistic) relation between
subjects ...................................................................................... 358
§6. Spiritual Ego and psychological Ego. — Constitution o f the
Ego as self-apperception ........................................................ 358
§ 7. Subjects considered as nature and as spirit ..................... 362
§ 8. Distinction between a psychological and a psychophysical
analysis ...................................................................................... 366
§ 9. Stream of consciousness, lived experience, and intentional
correlates as nexuses o f psychic life .................................. 369
§ 10. The spiritual considered psychologically and the question
o f its “ explanation. ” — Two concepts o f nature . . . . 369
§11. The human sciences posit subjectivity as absolute.—
“ Inner” and “ outer” e x p e r ie n c e ....................................... 374
§ 12. Nature in the human-scientific attitude.— The human-
scientific and the phenomenological a t t it u d e ..................... 377

S upplem ent XIII: “ Personal subjectivity” as theoretical theme 382

Supplem en t X I V : Human-scientific attitude— Natural science incor­
porated into the human-scientific attitude. — Mere
nature as surrounding world (389)— The various
types o f intuitive causality (390)— Abstract-scientific
investigations (391)— Natural science within human
science (392)— The concept o f Objectivity (398) 386

E p il o g u e 405

In d e x ............................................... 433
 TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION

As is made plain in the critical apparatus and editorial matter

appended to the original German publication of Husserl’s Ideas
II, 1 this is a text with a history. It underwent revision after
revision, spanning almost 20 years in one of the most fertile
periods of the philosopher’s life. The book owes its form to the
work of many hands, and its unity is one that has been imposed
on it. Yet there is nothing here that cannot be traced back to
Husserl himself. Indeed, the final “ clean copy ” for publication,
prepared by an assistant, was completely reviewed by the master
three times and emended by him in detail on each occasion.
Nevertheless, in the end the work was in fact not submitted for
publication, and after Husserl’s pen last touched the manuscript
in 1928 it was set aside until posthumously edited and published
by the Husserl-Archives in 1952.
The story of the composition of Ideas II begins with the
“ pencil m anuscript” of 1912. This is the ultimate textual
source for both Ideas II and Ideas III. 2 It has been preserved as
a folio of 84 sheets in very dense shorthand of the Gabelsberger
system, written mostly with a pencil. It was composed by
Husserl “ in one stroke” immediately after the completion of

1 Edmund Husserl: Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen

Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phdnomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution.
Edited by Marly Biemel. The Hague: Martinus NijhofT, 1952 (Husserliana IV).
2 Edmund Husserl: Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen
Philosophie. Drittes Buch: Die Phanomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissen-
schaften. Edited by Marly Biemel. The Hague: Martinus NijhofT, 1952 (Husserliana
V). English translation by Ted E. Klein and William E. Pohl: Ideas pertaining to a
pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy. Third Book: Phenomeno­
logy and the foundations o f the sciences. The Hague: Martinus NijhofT, 1980 (Edmund
S Husserl: Collected Works, Vol. I).
the first Book of the Ideas. 1 The manuscript is divided into two
parts, corresponding perfectly to the plan for the second Book
as announced in the first. Eventually, however, the first part
(the constitutive analyses) was greatly expanded and became a
volume on its own, Ideas II, while the second part (studies in
scientific theory), became, without further revision, the text of
Ideas III, also published posthumously.
In 1915, Husserl elaborated and re-wrote, again in shorthand,
the first half of the pencil manuscript, approximately doubling it
in size. This folio bears a title page with the inscription “ Ideas
II ” and includes the remark, “ My revision and basis for Miss
Stein.” The first page mentions that the writings stem from
lecture courses of 1913 and 1915 (dealing with the problem of
constitution). In fact, the editor of the published version
indicates that already a conglomeration of diverse writings can
be seen in this folio, as it contains studies from various contexts,
some dating back as early as 1908.
In 1916, Edith Stein, as Husserl’s assistant, completed her
first redaction of the manuscript. For the most part this
consisted merely of transcribing into longhand the folio of 1915
and parts of the pencil manuscript. She transcribed the entire
second half of the latter, and this became the text of Ideas III.
The first redaction by Stein and the texts on which it was
based relate only to the first and second sections of Ideas II.
Section three, on the constitution of the world of spirit, has its
source in the so-called “ H-folio. ” This is a manuscript in
Husserl’s longhand, dating from 1913. In addition, the textual
sources of other parts of Ideas II, especially the second half of
the middle section, go back to numerous manuscripts written by
Husserl during the war years, up to the beginning of 1917.
In 1918, Stein completed her second redaction. This time her

1 Edmund Husserl: Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen

Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einfuhrung in die reine Phanomenologie. Edited
by Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950 {Husserliana III). English
translation by F. Kersten: Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a
phenomenological philosophy. First Book: General introduction to a pure phenomeno­
logy. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982 (Edmund Husserl: Collected Works,
Vol. II).
work involved much more than merely transcribing. By incor­
porating into the text writings from the H-folio and others from
the war years, the main text of Ideas II began to take its present
form.
In 1923, Ludwig Landgrebe became the assistant of Husserl
and worked for more than a year on preparing the text of Ideas
II for publication. Landgrebe’s main source was to be the
second redaction by Stein, but in the meantime Husserl had
revised the third section and had inserted numerous annotations
and other writings. These had to be incorporated into the text,
and, in addition, Husserl desired that many manuscripts from
the H-folio be included, ones that Stein had not used. In order
to preserve as much as possible a unity of exposition, Land­
grebe appended many of these writings as supplements to the
main text. In 1925 Landgrebe completed a “ clean copy,”
typewritten and ready for publication.
Husserl, however, continued to revise the manuscript. Three
series of annotations in shorthand can be distinguished, the last
dating from 1928. These annotations were transcribed after
Husserl’s death by Stephan Strasser, working at the newly-
established Husserl-Archives in Leuven. They were incorporated
by the editor of the present volume, Marly Biemel, into the
published version. Where possible the annotations were interpo­
lated directly into the text. Critical remarks and allusions to new
circles of problems were assigned to footnotes. The remaining
annotations were presented in the supplements.
The division of the text into three sections and into 64
paragraphs derives from the “ clean copy, ” only slightly altering
the organization found already in the second elaboration by
Stein. The division of the sections into chapters and the chapter
headings themselves were based on the Landgrebe d raft: for the
first section, the chapter divisions and headings were indicated
by Husserl explicitly. As regards the second section, Husserl
marked the divisions but only listed the key words for the
headings. For the last section, Husserl was more vague as to the
chapters, and their titles were supplied by the editor. Likewise,
the title of the book as a whole is attributable to her.
 The volume now in the reader’s hands is for all intents and
purposes a complete Husserliana edition in English. It contains
everything available to the German scholar except for the
text-critical apparatus which provides variant readings. In addi­
tion, the present volume includes the Epilogue to the .Ideas. This
text was composed to serve as a preface to the English
translation of the first Book and was published as such in 1931.
A slightly altered German version actually made it to print the
year before, in Volume 11 of Husserl’s Jahrbuch. It was later
appended as an actual Epilogue to the Ideas, that is, the last text
of the third Book. The translation included here is of this
published German version. It was considered too important to
be omitted from the “ Collected W orks.”
The Epilogue differs considerably in style from the other
writings presented herein. It is written in very polished German,
employs a broad vocabulary in highly idiomatic language, and
represents Husserl at his most literary. Standing in sharpest
contrast are the manuscripts included in the supplements, which
are sometimes rather inchoate and often quite cryptic. The main
text occupies something of a mean between these extremes, in
terms of style. It uses a restricted vocabulary, and this not only
as regards technical terms; it repeats many stereotypical
phrases; and the text is not without its grammatical peculiarities
and ambiguities. Our translation could not help but reflect these
three different styles of the respective parts of the book, and we
ask the reader’s indulgence for this unevenness.
We have observed, for the most part, what can now be
considered as established conventions in rendering Husserl into
English. We are proposing, however, one innovation. German
has two terms for what in English is designated by the single
word, “ body. ” The distinction made in German is that between
Korper, inanimate physical matter, and Leib, the animated flesh
of an animal or human being. Both these terms would ordi­
narily be best rendered simply as “ body” in English, the
context determining the proper sense. But Husserl often plays
on the distinction between the two, and so some sort of device
was called for to make these passages intelligible. We are
proposing, then, to translate Leib as “ Body” (with a capital)
and Korper as “ body, ” and the same applies to the derivative
words, “ bodily,” “ corporeal,” etc. Leibkorper thus becomes
“ Corporeal body. ” This stratagem was chosen as the most
simple and as having a precedent in the analogous (a limited
analogy, of course) distinction between Objekt (“ Object”) and
Gegenstand (“ object”). Just as, for Husserl, Gegenstand is the
more general term, encompassing anything at all that can be
intended in any way, a sensation, for example, and Objekte are
only certain kinds of Gegenstdnde, intersubjective ones, so
Korper is more general: i.e., every Object is an object, but not
vice versa, and in the same manner every Body is a body.
The reader should also be advised that Geisteswissenschaft is
being rendered here as “ human science,” “ geisteswissenschaft-
lich" as “ human-scientific,” etc. Thereby, unfortunately, the
connection with the word Geist (“ spirit” ) is lost. Where we
have thought it necessary to make the connection explicit we
have resorted to a parenthetical phrase or hendiadys.
Our translation was carried out under the direction of the
Husserl-Archives at Leuven, and we wish to acknowledge
especially the invaluable assistance provided by Ullrich Melle of
the Archives staff. We consulted him on various passages that
had become for us lites inter doctores, and we always found his
resolutions to stem from a profound grasp of Husserl and of the
German and English languages. There is no doubt that our
translation could have benefitted from his critique of it in its
entirety. Needless to say, we are alone responsible for defects.
We were also assisted by having available published transla­
tions of Ideas II in French1 and Italian,2 and they more than
once provided suggestions concerning the sense of a passage.
Naturally, it was our linguistic intuition of the original German
that was always our final recourse.
We believe there can be no question that Ideas II is an
important work and will repay a close reading. It is a book that
exercised an influence, even before it was published, on two of

1 Edmund Husserl: Idees directrices pour une phenomenologie et une philosophie

phenomenologique pures. Livre second: Recherches phenomenologiques pour la consti­
tution. Trans. Eliane Escoubas. Paris: PUF, 1982.
2 Edmund Husserl: Idee per una fenomenologia pur a e per una filosofia fenomeno-
logica. Libro secondo : Ricerche fenomenologiche sopra la costituzione. Trans. Enrico
Filippini. Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 1965.
the greatest phenomenologists of all, Heidegger and Merleau-
Ponty. Husserl sent Heidegger a copy of the manuscript early in
1925 (doubtlessly the draft prepared by Landgrebe) when Hei­
degger was lecturing at Marburg and was occupied precisely
with the distinction between the naturalistic and personalistic
attitude. As for Merleau-Ponty, he studied the manuscript after
Husserl’s death at the Archives in Leuven, and many precursors
of themes in Merleau-Ponty’s own work are visible in this text.
Merleau-Ponty was a very reserved man, but one of us can
remember clearly a conversation with him in which he, with
sudden animation, spoke so rapturously of the second Ideas and
described his study of it as “m e experience presque volup-
tueuse. ” Our hope is that this translation may contribute to a
rekindling somewhere of the same enthusiasm for the book.

R.R.
A.S.
Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center
Duquesne University
 FOREWORD

Ideas II presents some concrete examples of constitutive

analysis. In doing so, it executes at least one phase of the sort of
phenomenological philosophy introduced, methodologically and
systematically, in Book I. At the same time, it supplements the
overall picture of phenomenology portrayed, somewhat lop-
sidedly, in Book I.
Ideas I emphasized (perhaps even exaggerated) the absolute
character of pure consciousness to such an extent that phenom­
enology might readily be misinterpreted as an abstract idealism
that eschewed all concern with the real world of human life. The
method of attempting to doubt the existence of the world in
order to arrive at pure consciousness as a ‘‘residue,” and the
fantasy of a possible “ destruction of the w orld” which would
leave the essence of pure consciousness untouched, had their
legitimate rhetorical purpose. But they set a one-sided tone
needing a supplementation and a balance that Book II begins to
provide.
Further, the selected examples of introductory analyses of
constitution of Book I focussed upon the most elementary
instances of the constitution of perceptual objects. In the
process, the character of the experienceable world might seem to
have shrunk to features identifiable as visual spatial configura­
tions alone. The world of the natural attitude, preserved as
modified referent of a complex of noematic sense within the
reduction, might seem to have been attenuated to mere, theore­
tically conceived, nature; and mere nature, to spatial phantoms
alone.
Book II sets the record straight in some important respects.
The world of the natural attitude (“ the real w orld”) is seen to
be more comprehensive than what is accessible to any purely
 fo r ew o r d

theoretical attitude. The legitimate theoretical version of the

natural attitude is seen to be more comprehensive than its
naturalistic limitations. Nature as object of the theoretical
version of the natural attitude is seen to be much more intricate
than the sample analyses of Book I could indicate. And the
correlation of transcendental consciousness with the transcen­
dent world is displayed more concretely than was possible in the
introductory context of Book I.
The specific context within which Husserl presents these
analyses of constitution is that of the philosophy of science.
Husserl refers to this context of problems also as “ metaphysi­
cal. ” The full sense of the juxtaposition of those two terms here
needs to be worked out by carefully thinking through the
problems addressed by means of constitutive analyses. But from
the start, it is clear that the phenomenological approach to the
philosophy of science requires a replacement of the inherited
metaphysics of naturalism, to supplement the epistemological
refutation of naturalism introduced in Book I. A newly
fashioned approach to the manifest being of “ the real w orld” is
required also in order to provide a basis of clarification for the
domain of the human sciences [Geisteswissenschaften] as well as
the grounds for an intuitively adequate understanding of nature
as the domain of the natural sciences.
In the course of the analyses, by attempting a step by step
approach to the constitution of the world as nature (even in a
generously broadened sense), Husserl shows concretely that the
observer of nature can not encompass his or her own psychic
and spiritual life (nor those of necessarily participating others)
within the categories that do very well to portray intuited nature
apprehended as merely material (substantial-causal) in charac­
ter. The argument is intricate. And it proceeds by devoting
careful attention to the subtle interplay among observation,
categorization, and general theoretical attitudes of apprehen­
sion.
Husserl presents the results as having been made possible by
the pedagogical and liberating functions of the phenomenologi­
cal reduction. Once we have emancipated ourselves from the
previously unnoticed theoretical blinders of the naturalistic
version of the natural theoretical attitude, we learn of the power
of attitudes to disclose what they can and to cover over all else.
But we learn also of our own power, not only to shift back and
forth between the personalistic and the naturalistic theoretical
attitudes (and between practice-oriented, value-oriented, and
theory-oriented attitudes) but to do so in full consciousness of
our own involvement in such shifts and in their consequences.
Husserl the rigorous theorist sticks close to the themes at
hand. But Husserl the person has a keen sense of the fuller
human, cultural, significance of the issues with which he is
grappling. He writes, in a letter to Albrecht dated August 2,
1917, “ Duty demands that I bring to completion and to
publication my labors of many years, especially since they
provide the scientific foundations for a reconciliation between
the naturalistic world-view that dominated the epoch just
expired and the teleological world-view. But the teleological
world-view is the definitively true one. ” 1

John Scanlon
Philosophy Department
Duquesne University

1 Karl Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik: Denk- und Lebensweg Edmund Husserls. The

Hague: Nijhoff, 1977, pp. 212-213.
 SECOND BOOK
STUDIES IN THE PHENOMENOLOGY
OF CONSTITUTION
 Section One: The Constitution of Material Nature

C h a p ter O n e

THE IDEA OF NATURE IN GENERAL

§ 1. Preliminary delineation of the concepts of nature

5 and experience
(Exclusion of meaning-predicates)

We begin our new discussions with nature— specifically, with [1]

nature as the object o f natural science. Nature, one would say
first of all, is the total spatio-temporal “ universe,” the total
10 domain of possible experience: thus we are accustomed to take
the expressions “ natural science” and “ experiential science” as
synonyms.
The universe, the world-totality, includes, of course, every­
thing “ worldly ” but not everything in the full sense, not every
15 individual object whatever. Hence the question arises: precisely
how are nature and the perception of nature, the experience of
nature, to be determined? We said at the outset that nature is
the field o f transcendent— specifically, spatio-temporal— reali­
ties. But the concept of real spatio-temporal objectivity, as will
20 soon appear, is insufficient. It will immediately be evident that
not all predicates which are, in truth, to be ascribed to
spatio-temporal realities, and are actually so ascribed by us, do
for all that belong to the essence of the nature-Object which is [2]
the correlate of the idea of natural science. Our consideration,
25 however, is supposed to aim at nature in the sense of that
correlation. Now, it is in no way the character of this science to
restrict itself arbitrarily in the choice of its Objects or in the
choice of the predicates referring to its Objects. Rather, what
underlies natural science is always an idea o f the essence o f
30 nature, if only an implicit one. Correlatively, the consciousness
which functions as natural-scientific experience, and thus also as
 the thinking pertaining to natural-scientific experience, has its
essential phenomenological unity, and this consciousness has its
essential correlate in nature. A ruling “ apperception” deter­
mines in advance what is or is not a natural-scientific Object,
5 hence what is or is not nature in the natural-scientific sense. The
task is to bring that to clarity. In which respect it is evident
from the outset that all the predicates we ascribe to things under
the headings of pleasantness, beauty, utility, practical suitabil­
ity, or perfection remain completely out of consideration (val-
10 ues, goods, ends, instruments, means, etc.). These do not at all
concern the natural scientist; they do not belong to nature in his
sense.

§ 2. The natural-scientific attitude as a theoretical attitude

That will be understood if we examine more closely the

15 character of the attitude of the subject who intuits and thinks in
the natural-scientific way. Through the phenomenological
description of that attitude, we will learn that what is termed
“ nature ” is precisely the intentional correlate of experience as
carried out in this attitude. Our approach at first will be as
20 follows: the thematic attitude o f the natural scientist's experience
o f nature and experiential research is the doxic-theoretic. Over
against it are other attitudes: namely, the valuing (in the
broadest sense, valuing the beautiful and the good) and the
practical attitude. This talk about attitudes obviously refers
25 back to the respective subject, and accordingly we speak of the
theoretical or the cognitive subject, of the valuing and the
practical subject.
Nature is there for the theoretical subject; it belongs to his [3]
correlative sphere. Of course, that does not mean simply that
30 nature is already completely determined considered as the corre­
late of a possible theoretical, cognitive, subject. Nature is an
object of possible knowledge, but it does not exhaust the total
realm of such objects. Nature, as mere nature, contains no values,
no works o f art, etc., though these are indeed objects of possible
35 knowledge and science. But at first our consideration will be
general.
 § 3. Analysis of the theoretical attitude,
of the theoretical interest

The theoretical attitude: what does that mean? It is not

determined merely through the conscious lived experiences we
5 designate as doxic (Objectifying), as representing, judging,
thinking acts (whereby we now always want to have in view
non-neutralized1 acts), for doxic lived experiences also occur in
the valuing and practical attitude. On the contrary, what is
characteristic of it lies in the manner in which such lived
10 experiences are performed or carried out in the function of
knowledge. In general it happens not only that the focus of the
subject passes through the lived experiences to that which is
represented, perceived, remembered, thought about; rather, the
subject lives in these acts and does so in a phenomenologically
15 eminent way. It is one thing to see, i.e., to live through at all, to
experience, to have something in the perceptual field, and it is
another thing altogether to perform attentively an act of seeing
in the specific sense, to “ live” in the seeing in a pre-eminent
way, to take an active part oneself in a “ believing” and a
20 judging, as an Ego in the specific sence, to perform an act of
judging as a cogito, to be directed with an active focus to what
is objective, to be directed in a specifically intentional way.
Again, it is one thing to be conscious at all that the sky is blue,
and it is another thing to live in the performance of the
25 judgment (that the sky is now blue) in an attentive, explicitly
grasping, specifically intentional way. Doxic lived experiences in
this attitude, in this manner of explicit performance (I think, I
perform an act in the specific sense, I posit the subject and [4]
thereupon posit the predicate, etc.) we term theoretical acts. In

1 On the concept o f neutralization, cf. Ideen I, pp. 264 ff. [Trans: I.e., Edmund
Husserl: Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen Philosophie.
Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einfuhrung in die reine Phanomenologie. Edited by Karl
Schuhmann. The Hague: Martinus NijhofT, 1976 (Husserliana III/1). English transla­
tion by F. Kersten: Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenolog­
ical philosophy. First book: General introduction to a pure phenomenology. The Hague:
Martinus NijhofT, 1982 (Edmund Husserl: Collected Works, Vol. II). References to
this work will cite the Husserliana pagination, indicated in the margins o f the
Collected Works edition.]
 them, not only is an object simply there for the Ego, but rather
the Ego is, as Ego, thereupon directed attentively (and then
comes thinking, active positing), and thus it is at once directed
to the object in a grasping way: as “ theoretical,” it is, in an
5 actual sense, Objectifying.1

§4. Theoretical acts and “ pre-giving” intentional

lived experiences

Let us suppose that the subject (always understood here as

the ego belonging inseparably to every cogito, as pure subject) is
10 the theoretical subject in the aforementioned sense, something it
is only intermittently. It would thus be “ Objectifying” in the
specific sense of the term, grasping and positing as a being (in
the validity-mode of the doxic intention of Being) an objectivity
of the respective sense and furthermore determining it in
15 explicative syntheses, perhaps in predicative-judgmental ones.
But then the objectivity in question is already consciously
constituted prior to these theoretical acts, through certain
intentional lived experiences, but yet by no means through all of
those which can be distinguished in the pure subject as related
20 to this objectivity. In other words, to say that they are related to
it does not mean that the focus of the specific intention, ruling
in all theoretical acts, goes right through them, as it were;
rather, it goes through only those lived experiences which are
sense-giving or determining for the theoretically grasped object
25 as such. The remaining lived experiences, e.g. feeling-experi-
ences, lived experiences of this or that special kind, are indeed
lived; as intentional lived experiences they also are constituting;
they constitute new objective strata for the object in question,
but ones in relation to which the subject is not in the theoretical
30 attitude, and thus they do not constitute the respective theore­
tically meant and judgmentally determined object as such (or
help determine this object in a theoretical function). It is only by
means of a shift of the theoretical regard, a change of theoreti-

1 C f p. 10.
 cal interest, that they emerge out of the phase of />re-theoretical [5]
constitution into the theoretical; the new strata of sense enter
into the framework of theoretical sense, and a new object, i.e.,
one intended in a new and more proper sense, is the Object of
5 the grasping and theoretical determination in new theoretical
acts. The total intention of consciousness is therewith an
essentially changed one, and the acts responsible for the giving
of other meanings have also experienced a phenomenological
modification. To what extent this is a necessary state of affairs
10 is evident from the fact that even the theoretical acts, by means
of which the pure subject relates to a given Object delimited by
a constitutive sense (e.g., an Object of nature), no matter how
they occur as subjectivating, attributing, collecting, relativizing,
and other acts, at once also exercise a constituting function.
15 “Categorial" objectivities thus are constituted (in a quite
definite sense: objectivities of thought), which, however, for their
part, first become theoretical Objects precisely when the theore­
tical subject intentionally focuses on these new objectivities (i.e.,
above all, on states of affairs, collections, etc.) and so performs
20 new acts which grasp them in their being and determine them
theoretically; thus these acts are subject-acts, predicate-acts,
etc., of a higher level.
With reference to these acts of a higher level— always
initiated by shifts of focus of the specific intending and which
25 could be called a special kind of “ reflection” 1— the categorial
objectivities constituted in the precedent theoretical acts are
pre-givennesses. (A state of affairs which holds analogously in
other cases, ones in which feeling-acts function as pre-constitu­
tion.) If a shift of focus takes place, then the pre-giving
30 acts— in our case, the categorial — have already run their
course in the modality of their original performance. They are
now no longer active steps of the spontaneous intending and [6]

1 “ Reflection ” is taken here in an enlarged sense and includes not only the
grasping of acts but also every “ turning back,” i.e., every turning away from the
natural attitude’s directedness toward the Object. Included would also be, for
example, the turning to the noemata, the manifold o f which brings into appearance
the one identical thing.
 theoretical determining, of subject-positing and predicate-posit-
ing, of step-wise collecting, etc. They are alive only in an other,
essentially modified, form as the “ still ” having in consciousness
of what has been constituted and the retaining of it (this also
5 takes place already in the progressive development of the
categorial acts with regard to those that occur earlier in the
chain) and, furthermore, precisely as the reflecting of an inten­
tional ray upon its synthetic “ results. ”
These complex relationships really need to be heeded and
10 understood. At the same time, one must make clear to oneself
that it belongs to the peculiar character of the theoretical
attitude and its theoretical acts (the performance of which
makes the subject the theoretical subject) that, in them, objects
which for the first time will become theoretical are already, in a
15 certain manner, laid out there in advance. Thus objects are
already constituted pre-theoretically; it is only that they are not
appropriated theoretically and are not Objects intended in the
pre-eminent sense, and much less are they Objects of theoreti­
cally determining acts.
20 As can be seen from what has been said, "pre-given " Objects
can themselves “spring " originally out o f theoretical acts, and so
in this regard they can already be theoretical Objects. This can
happen in various ways: first of all in the manner in which such
theoretical Objects have been constituted just now originally in
25 “ properly ” (i.e., spontaneously) performed theoretical acts and,
subsequently, in the manner in which the theoretical subject
directs its grasping intentional regard toward what has been
constituted. That becomes possible in this way: the different
spontaneous stages of the act are retained in consciousness after
30 their execution and specifically in the modified form of passive
states, and finally, at the end of the whole process of thought,
consciousness stands as a unified state, which, in analogy with
simple representation, can function as a pre-giving conscious­
ness and can take up a new theoretical direction of focus on the
35 Object it is conscious of as a unity.
But obviously there are also other cases possible. Thus, for
example, a state of affairs constituted earlier in spontaneous [7]
and articulated thinking can “ emerge again ” in the form of a
memory that suddenly occurs. It does so through the medium of
 a reproductive modification of the ensuing final result of the
earlier thinking, and this modification functions now as pre­
giving consciousness for the acts of the new theoretical attitude.
Again, this holds also for theoretical “ sudden ideas” in which
5 new— i.e., not merely presentified once more as memories —
states of affairs surge up as certainties, possibilities, or proba­
bilities and function as the “ stimulus” for the thinking related
to them. Obviously the pre-givennesses of no matter which acts
of a theoretical attitude (in other words, the categorial acts
10 performed in the original spontaneity of thinking) cannot
always refer back to theoretical acts whence they spring. Thus
we arrive in each case at pre-given objectivities which do not
spring from theoretical acts but are constituted in intentional
lived experiences imparting to them nothing of logico-categorial
15 formations.
We have invariably been speaking here about pre-givennesses
of theoretical acts. But the same holds with respect to other
spontaneous acts and their pre-givennesses; thus here the dis­
cussion requires supplementation. As possibilities running
20 parallel to the theoretical attitude, there are the axiological and
practical attitudes. In this respect, analogous results are to be
established. Valuing acts (taken in the widest possible sense as
any kind of act of pleasing or displeasing, as acts performed by
every kind of position-taking in the affective sphere and every
25 act performed in the unity of one affective consciousness in
syntheses essentially proper to it) can relate to pre-given objec­
tivities, and their intentionality proves itself immediately
thereby as constitutive for objectivities of a higher level, analo­
gues of the categorial objectivities of the logical sphere. We have
30 thus to do with a class of objectivities constituted as sponta­
neous products, as polythetic formations of the polythetically
unified acts (joined in the unity of one constitutive act) which
produce them. These are not simply objectivities founded in
general and in this sense objectivities of a higher level, but they [8]
35 are precisely objectivities originally constituted as spontaneous
products and which only as such come to possible originary
givenness.
Let us clarify this with an example. We had earlier drawn a
contrast between just being conscious, by way of seeing, of the
 blue sky and the theoretical performance of this a c t.1 But we
are no longer performing the seeing in this eminent sense when
we, seeing the radiant blue sky, live in the rapture of it. If we do
that, then we are not in the theoretical or cognitive attitude but
5 in the affective. On the other hand, though we have adopted the
theoretical attitude, the pleasure may very well be present still,
as, for example, in the observing physicist who is directing
himself to the radiant blue sky, but then we are not living in the
pleasure. There is an essential phenomenological modification
10 of the pleasure, and of the seeing and judging, according as we
pass over from the one attitude to the other. This characteristic
change o f attitude belongs, as an ideal possibility, to all acts, and
accompanying it is always the corresponding phenomenological
modification. That is, all acts which are not already theoretical
15 from the outset allow of being converted into such acts by
means of a change in attitude. We can look at a picture “ with
delight.” Then we are living in the performance of aesthetic
pleasure, in the pleasure attitude, which is precisely one of
“ delight. ” Then again, we can judge the picture, with the eyes
20 of the art critic or art historian, as “ beautiful. ” Now we are
living in the performance of the theoretical or judgmental
attitude and no longer in the appreciating or pleasure-taking. If
by “ valuing” or “ appreciating” we understand an act of
feeling and precisely one in which we live, then it is not a
25 theoretical act. But if we understand these terms, as so often
happens by equivocation, as an evaluation in the form of a
judgment, possibly even predicating about value, then we would
be expressing a theoretical act and not an act of feeling. In that
case, in the judging in terms of value, such as it emerges out of
30 the attitude of a purely delighting abandon or surrender, the
work of art is objective in quite a different manner. It is
intuited, however not only with sense intuition (we are not [9]
living in the performance of perception) but with axiological
intuition. In the active abandon of the “ being-occupied-with-
35 it-in-aesthetic-pleasure, ” in the aesthetic enjoyment, understood
as act, the Object is, as we said, the Object of the delight. On

1 C f p. 6.
 the other hand, in aesthetic judging and appraising, it is no
longer an Object in mere delighting abandon but is an object in
the special doxothetic sense: the intuited is given with the
character of aesthetic enjoyableness, which is its proper attri-
5 bute (which constitutes its “ what ”). This is a new “ theoretical ”
Objectivity and, specifically, a characteristic Objectivity of a
higher level. Living in simple sense intuition, the one on the
lowest level, and performing it theoretically, we have theoreti­
cally grasped a mere thing in the most straightforward manner.
10 When we pass over to the aesthetic grasping and judging of
value, we then have more than a mere thing, we have the thing
with the “ what ” character (with the expressed predicate) of the
value; we have a value-thing. This value-Object, which, in its
objective sense, likewise includes the “ w hat” character of the
15 value, is the correlate of the theoretical grasping of value. Thus
it is an Object of a higher level. We observe that the universal-
original judgment of value or, generally speaking, each con­
sciousness which originally constitutes a value-Object as such,
necessarily has in itself a component belonging to the sphere o f
20 feelings. The most original constitution of value is performed in
feelings as that pre-theoretical (in a broad sense) delighting
abandon on the part of the feeling Ego-subject for which I used
the term “ value-reception ” already several decades ago in my
lectures. The term is meant to indicate, in the sphere of feelings,
25 an analogon of per-ception, one which, in the doxic sphere,
signifies the Ego’s original (self-grasping) being in the presence
of the object itself. Thus in the sphere of feelings what is meant
by this talk of delighting is precisely that feeling in which the
Ego lives with the consciousness of being in the presence of the
30 Object “ itself” in the manner of feelings. Just as there is,
however, a sort of representing from afar, an empty representa­
tional intending which is not a being in the presence of the
object, so there is a feeling which relates to the object emptily;
and as the former is fulfilled in intuitive representing, so is the
35 empty feeling fulfilled by way of the delighting. On each side [10]
there are intentions which strive in parallel: a representing
(cognitive, tending toward knowledge) striving versus an eva­
luating one which tends toward expectations, toward the
delighting enjoyment. The similarity here is what is supposed to
 be expressed in the parallel terms “ per-ception/value-recep-
tion.” 1 “ Value-feeling” remains the more general term for
value-consciousness, and, as feeling, it lies in every mode of
such consciousness, the non-originary included.
5 It is also to be noticed here that even in a consciousness
which is receptive of values (converted doxically, is intuitive of
values), there can be “ inadequate ” intuition: that is, an antici­
patory one, endowed, accordingly, with emptily anticipating
horizons of feeling, just as is the case with outer perception. In a
10 glance, I take in the beauty of an old Gothic building, some­
thing I only grasp fully in sustained value-reception, and that
provides, with the corresponding doxic conversion, a fuller
value-intuition. The fleeting glance can finally be anticipating
quite emptily, pre-grasping the beauty, as it were, following
15 certain indications, but without actually grasping anything at
all. Furthermore, this feeling-anticipation already suffices for a
doxic turn and predication. Everywhere this is the same, even in
the sphere of willing. Actively willing, living in the attitude of
willing, can be distinguished from positing and judging, in the
20 theoretical attitude, that which is willed as practically
demanded, required, etc. We can live in willful self-resolve or
else in the activity of actually carrying out that resolve. Then,
what is presupposed are certain representing acts, perhaps
thinking acts of various levels, and valuing acts. But these acts,
25 all of them, are not ones performed in the eminent sense of the
word. The true and proper performance lies in the willing and
the doing. The attitude changes and becomes theoretical if we
look at the resolution and the action, etc., in a way that grasps
them theoretically and, possibly, if we form a judgment on the
30 basis of this theoretically intuiting or representing behavior.
What is in question here, in fact, are the universal essential
properties which belong to all acts built up on a foundation. The
subject that lives through can first live altogether in the
performance of an act; then, in an equivalent expression, the
35 Ego is, in an eminent sense, directed toward the objectively [11]
given, is abandoned to what is objective. Thereby what is

1 [ W a h rn eh m en / Wertnehmen: lit., “ truth-taking/value-taking;” the former is the

ordinary German word for “ perception/’ the latter is a coinage. — Trans.]
 objective is always characterized in consciousness in various
ways depending on the basic character of the act: object o f
judgment, object o f valuing, object o f will. To this state of affairs,
however, there belongs apriori the “ possibility ” of an alteration
5 in the subject’s attitude, by virtue of which it can always pass
into the theoretical attitude— unless it was already theoretical
from the start — in which, therefore, what is objective becomes a
theoretical object, an object, that is, of an actively performed
positing o f being in which the Ego lives and grasps what is
10 objective, seizes and posits it as a being.

§5. Spontaneity and passivity; actuality and inactuality

of consciousness

This faculty, this I-can of the subject, can always be made

thematic and, in its own appropriate way, envisaged. Thus what
15 was “ pre-theoretically” conscious and objective comes “ prop­
erly” to consciousness in its own objectivity in the subsequent
“ unveiling” reflective theoretical grasp. It is also to be noted
here that, by the manifold interweaving of theoretical and other
acts, essential phenomenological distinctions arise which can be
20 seen more easily than they can be clearly marked off. Above all,
it is with regard to them that we speak of the theoretical,
axiological, and practical attitudes, thereby indicating also that
“ to have intentional lived experiences in the nexus of conscious­
ness” and “ to perform by oneself acts as spontaneities” do not
25 yet mean taking up an attitude directed to their objects and do
not mean, more specifically, being in the theoretical attitude or
being focused on values or on acts in general, on the practical
in no matter how broad a sense. We are in such an attitude only
when we live in the acts in question in a privileged sense: that is,
30 are directed to their objects in a privileged way. Distinctions of
two kinds intersect here. 1) First, the distinction between the act
performed quite spontaneously (with many-leveled acts, there
would be articulated steps) over against the consciousness in
which the objectivity that must be constituted through this act
35 is “passively ” there in consciousness in a confused state. Every
spontaneous act, after being performed, necessarily passes over
 into a confused state; the spontaneity, or if you will, the
activity, to speak of it more properly, passes into a passivity,
although of such a kind that — as has already been said — it
refers back to the originally spontaneous and articulated perfor-
5 mance. This reference back is characterized as such by the I-can
or the faculty, which evidently belongs to it, to “ reactivate”
this state, i.e., to convert it into the production, which comes to
consciousness as a “ repetition, ” of that producing out of which
it previously came forth and in which it “ again ” finally, as the
10 same state, comes forth, and it lets come forth, in itself, the
same result as the same final sense with the same validity. As we
saw, however, such a state can in a similar manner become
present to consciousness without having arisen in this way, as a
secondary passivity, out of a spontaneity which has just now run
15 its course. 2) If we remain now in the sphere of spontaneous
performances of acts, then, according to the previous clarifica­
tion, different spontaneities, which overlap each other, can arise
with different phenomenological dignity: on the one hand, as
the so-to-say dominating spontaneity, the one in which we prefer
20 to live, and on the other hand, as the supporting or collateral
spontaneity, the one which remains in the background, the one,
therefore, in which we do not prefer to live (acts characterized
as acts o f (<interest, ” regardless of their further specific inten­
tional properties). For instance, we receive some joyful tiding
25 and live in the joy. It is a theoretical act when we perform the
acts of thought in which the tiding itself is constituted for us;
but this act serves only as a foundation for the act of feeling in
which, by preference, we are living. Within the joy, we are
“ intentionally” (with feeling intentions) turned toward the
30 joy-Object as such in the mode of affective “ interest. ” Here the
act of turning to the joy has the higher dignity; it is the principal
act. But the reverse is also possible: that is, there can take place
a change of attitude, from the one of joy to the theoretical.
Then we are living in theoretical consciousness (we are “ theo-
35 retically interested”), and the theoretical act gives the “ main
thing. ” We can still take joy in it, but the joy remains in the
background, and that is how it is in all theoretical research.
There we embrace the theoretical attitude, even if at the same
time there may also be performed spontaneous and lively
 turnings that yield joy, as e.g., a lively feeling for the beauty of
the appearances which occur in physical-optical research. In the
back of one’s mind a decision might thereby be made to show
the beautiful phenomena to a friend, though we are still not in
5 the practical attitude but instead stay continuously with the
“ them e” of the theoretical attitude (in brief, the theoretical
theme). Again, it can be reversed, and then the practical attitude
is what we are in, and we remain in it, staying continuously with
the "practical theme ” while some appearance which is close to
10 our former theoretical concerns incidentally raises our interest.
But it does not, for all that, become a theoretical theme for u s;
it remains in a supporting role within the context of the
praxis — unless we do in fact exchange the practical attitude for
the theoretical, let the practical theme go in order to assume the
15 theoretical. Perhaps this incomplete description will suffice to
give the reader a clear enough notion of the phenomenological
distinctions that I here have in mind.
Now, in such thematic interweavings, new objectivities are
thus always being constituted, possibly with constitutive strata
20 which are ever higher according to whether they arise out of
theoretical, evaluating, or practical acts and which have a
thematic significance whose sense is different, depending on the
attitude. Specifically, through a transition to the theoretical
attitude, they can again and again become theoretical themes.
25 They then become objective in a special sense: they are grasped
and become subjects of predicates which determine them theo­
retically, etc.
Naturally, in a corresponding way, we encounter in the
extra-thematic sphere, in the sphere o f passivity, various objectiv-
30 ities which consciously (hence by means of the intentionality, be
it ever so “ confused,” in which they are conscious) refer back
to such connections.

§ 6. The distinction between the transition into the

theoretical attitude and the transition into reflection

35 We need to pay close attention to the distinction between the

transition into the theoretical attitude, which is what we have
 been focusing on, and the transition, which any act, in prin­
ciple, admits o f— namely, the transition to an immanent per­
ception directed at the act or to an immanent retention once
that act has fleetingly passed by. This, too, is a theoretical
5 attitu d e; perception, like retention, is a general Objectivation,
and in the so-called immanent reflection on the act we live
in that Objectivation, performing it. Hence we are dwelling
in the theoretical attitude. But this theoretical attitude is
a different one; it is much more remarkable and belongs, in
10 principle, to all acts. In aesthetic pleasure we are conscious
of something as aestheticallly pleasing, as beautiful. Let our
point of departure be the fact that we live in the aesthetic
pleasure, thus that we are pleasurably surrendered to the
appearing Object. We can then reflect on the pleasure which
15 occurs, as when we declare, “ I take pleasure in i t .” The
judgment in this case is indeed a judgment about my act of
pleasure. But it is something quite different to direct one’s
regard to the object and its beauty.
I intuit the beauty in the object, though, to be sure, not
20 by way of the straightforward sensory perception which
gives color or shape. Yet it is in the object itself that I fin d
the beauty. Here “ the beautiful” means anything but a
predicate o f reflection, as, e.g., if I say, “ It is pleasing
to m e .” The “ pleasant,” the “ enjoyable,” the “ sa d ,”
25 and all similar predicates of objects are, as to their Objec­
tive sense, not relation-predicates referring to the acts. They
arise through the change in attitude we have described;
the acts in question are thereby presupposed with it. I
continue to be pleased, I still feel joy or sadness, etc., but
30 instead of simply being joyful or sad — i.e., carrying out
these acts of feeling — I bring them into another mode
by means of the change in attitude. They are still lived
experiences, but I do not live in them in the eminent sense.
I look to the Object and find in it, in my changed, at
35 present theoretical, attitude, the correlates of these acts of [15]
feeling, namely: an Objective stratum superposed on the
stratum of the sensuous predicates, the stratum , that is,
of the “ enjoyable,” of an Object th at is objectively “ sa d ,”
of the “ beautiful,” the “ ugly,” etc. In the theoretical atti­
 tude of reflection, however, I cannot find Objective predicates
but only ones relative to consciousness.1
It is clear now that all talk about objects, their predicates,
properties, relations, or the states of affairs pertaining to them,
5 such as their laws, refers back to theoretical acts in which objects
are (or can be) given, perceived or in some other way envisaged,
theoretically explained, thought, etc. If we attribute objectivities
to all intentional lived experiences, including affective lived
experiences, objectivities toward which these lived experiences
10 take a position in the mode of feelings, i.e., objects under the
headings of value-objects, practical objects, etc., then we do so
obviously with reference to the fact that in principle belonging to
the essence o f each act are possibilities o f various theoretical
directions o f focus, in which such objects are graspable as
15 so-to-say implicitly contained already in the feeling-attitude, and
among these objects are the ones belonging properly to every
basic kind of act, e.g., the values belonging to the valuing,
etc.2

§ 7. Objectivating and non-Objectivating acts

20 and their correlates

To this we immediately join a further distinction. Every basic

kind o f act is characterized by its own basic kind o f “act- [16]
quality. " Thus the objectivating acts are characterized by the
quality of the doxa, of “ believing” in its various modifications;

1 Yet it would still be necessary to articulate the fact and the reason why such
predicates o f feeling are indeed, in a special sense, merely subjective and refer to
valuing subjects and consequently to these subjects’ acts in which they are constituted
for them but not for everyone.
2 It must be added here immediately, however, that the term “ predicates of
feeling" has been referring to determining predicates o f objects but precisely only
such as are constituted in feelings in the way indicated. To that extent they are called
objective predicates and even, in a general sense. Objective ones. On the other hand,
they are also called, quite legitimately and in a proper sense, “ subjective,” as being
predicates which in their very sense refer back to valuing subjects and their evaluating
acts. This is in opposition to the merely natural, purely objective predicates, which in
their own proper sense do not intimate anything of the subject and the subject’s
acts.
 the basic kind of act that in a broad sense we designate as
valuing, precisely by the quality of the act o f valuing, etc.
Theoretical acts are the ones that are properly or explicitly
Objectivating; to have Objects in the proper sense, or to have
5 objects, the characteristic grasping and positing attitude of the
theoretical subject is required. Every non-Objectivating act
allows objectivities to be drawn from itself by means o f a shift, a
change in attitude. Essentially, therefore, every act is implicitly
Objectivating at the same time. By essence, it is not only built, as
10 a higher level, upon Objectivating acts but is also Objectivating
itself according to what it adds as something new. Thus it
becomes possible to immerse oneself in this Objectivation, and
in that way not only the object of the underlying Objectivation
but also the newly Objectivated in the new stratum of feelings
15 comes to theoretical givenness.1 If the pleasure is founded on a
simple Objectivating perception, then I am able to grasp
theoretically not only the perceived but also what has been
newly Objectivated by means of the pleasure. For instance, I
can grasp beauty as a theoretical predicate of the perceived, as
20 has been worked out above. Now there are obviously two
possibilities here: 1) Either an act is from the outset only
Objectivating (if that is at all possible), or if it does indeed have
a stratum of a different quality, even though essentially inter­
woven with a new Objectivation, we are leaving it out of play
25 and are not living in it, and so we are then grasping mere things
and merely logical characters of things. The characters of the
object corresponding to the new acts or to the new qualities are
either, from the outset, not there whatsoever (again, if that is at
all possible), or they remain out o f action, out of consideration.
30 In either case, there would then be no beautiful or ugly, no
enjoyable or disagreeable, no useful or good, no things to use,
no cups, spoons, forks, etc. All such terms already include, in
conformity with their sense, predicates derived from non-
Objectivating acts. 2) Or, we move about in the domain of the
35 new, founded, qualities. We draw into the sphere o f theoretical
interest, into the compass of the theoretical attitude, the predi­

1 On this point, cf. the treatment in Book I, pp. 81 fT., 237 ff., 283 ff.
 cates correlative to these acts, too. And then we have not just
mere things but precisely values, goods, etc.

§ 8. The sense-objects as primal constitutive objects

Obviously, in all these forms of the constitution of objects we

5 are led back to objects which no longer refer to pre-given
objects of the kind that originally arose from whatever sort of
theoretical, valuing, or practical spontaneities. In other words, if
we pursue the intentional structure of no matter which given
objects and also the retrospective indications of which we are
10 conscious in the form of secondary receptivities, and if we
produce spontaneities which bring the objectivities at stake here
into a fully authentic originary givenness, then we come back,
perhaps by means of a series of steps, to founding objectivities,
noemata, which no longer contain anything of such retrospec-
15 tive indications and which are originally grasped or graspable in
the most direct theses and refer back to no antecedent theses
contributing to the constitutive content of the object, theses
which only have to be reactivated. The objects phenomenologi-
cally characterized by this property — the primal objects, as it
20 were, ones to which all possible objects, in conformity with their
phenomenological constitution, refer back— are the sense-
objects.
The characterization we have presented so far, however, is by
no means full and perfect. Matters are, in fact, more difficult
25 than at first appears. Connected with this is the fact that the
concept of a “ sense-thing ” is not univocal, just as, correlatively,
the concept of representation in the pregnant sense is not — I
mean sensuous representation {sensuous perception, sensuous
remembering, etc.).

30 § 9. Categorial and aesthetic (“ sensuous ”) synthesis

Let our point of departure be the distinction between catego­

rial (formal and, in a certain sense, analytic) synthesis and
aesthetic (sensuous) synthesis. We know that objects, no matter
 how constituted (objects of any region whatever, objects of any
species and genus) can be substrates for certain categorial
syntheses and can, as constitutive elements, enter into the
“categorial "formations o f objects o f a higher level. To the latter
5 belong collectives, disjunctives, and states of affairs of every
kind, such as the relations between any A and any B or
relations of attribution, that A is a, and the like. We find such
formations in the doxic sphere where doxic theses are built one
upon the other, subject-positings functioning as foundations for
10 predicate-positings, etc., and also in the sphere of feeling and
will where positings by the will are performed on the basis of
other positings of the will (end and means), etc.1 Thereby we
touch upon unities of conduct of feeling and will, as well as
upon formations which are essentially part of them, in which
15 states of affairs come to explicit, although not to intuitive,
givenness, and so do, in general, logical formations which are
all, in accordance with their essence, states of affairs or possible
parts or moments of states of affairs.
Now it is possible that objects are not only constituted
20 categorially2 by means of a plurality of theses, thus that these
theses are in their constitutive operation categorially united; it is
also possible that a plurality o f theses may contribute to the
constitution of objects in another way as well. The originary
constitution o f one object is obviously always carried out by
25 means of one thetic consciousness, and what functions as “mat­
ter ” for the unitary thesis and furnishes the objective “content, "
the objective sense, can, for its part, refer back to a plurality o f
theses. But the unity of the object need not in every case
presuppose a categorial synthesis and in that way include it in
30 its sense. Thus every straightforward thing-perception (that is, a
consciousness giving the present existence of a thing in an
originary manner) leads us intentionally back; it demands of us
separate considerations, special traversings, and transitions to
series o f perceptions which are indeed encompassed by the unity

1 C f Ideen I, p. 293.
2 By “ categorial” we understand here not merely the formal-logical but also the
formal of all regions o f objects in the sense of the theory of categories drafted in the
first chapter of Ideen /.
 of a continuous thesis but obviously in such a way that the
many single theses are not at all united in the form of a
categorial synthesis. What confers unity on these single theses is
a synthesis of a totally different kind; we suggest calling it the
5 aesthetic synthesis. If we seek to delimit both of these in their
peculiarity, one against the other, then we find, as a first
distinguishing feature, that the categorial synthesis is, as a
synthesis, a spontaneous act, whereas the sensuous synthesis, on
the contrary, is not. The synthetic connection is itself, in the first
10 case, a spontaneous doing and performing, a veritable activity ;
in the second case it is not. The objective sense of a pure
sense-object (a pure something) is a synthesis of elements, ones
which are not for their part products of an aesthetic synthesis.
They are the ultimate sensuous features.1
15 To characterize the aesthetic synthesis it can be mentioned
besides that the single apprehension of a thing — or of its
properly essential parts and sides — contains in itself partial
meanings in the form of “ secondary passivities ” 2 which as such
are determinative of sense and motivate the further course of
20 perception. It is thus that in the apprehension of the form of a
thing from one side continuous courses of apprehendings of the
other sides of the same form are intentionally included.
These indications, of course, are not sufficient for an exhaus­
tive description of the aesthetic synthesis; for that, a special [20]
25 investigation on a large scale would be required. Here it need
only be emphasized that the function of the aesthetic synthesis
should be pursued in several different strata. When we consider
a thing we necessarily consider it in some respect or other; that
is, we are thereby focused on a “ feature” which comes espe-
30 daily into our grasp as a distinct moment of the pure aesthetic
sense. In the example cited, that was the form. Furthermore, we
can limit ourselves to purely visual grasping and then within

1 Regarding the aesthetic synthesis: must one not introduce a fundamental

distinction between 1) synthesis as connection or binding in the proper sense, terms
that imply a synthesis o f what is separated, and 2) continuous synthesis as continuous
fusion? Every aesthetic synthesis of the first kind leads to ultimate elements. The
thing as a product of an aesthetic connection is constructed out of sensuous features
which for their part stem from a continuous synthesis.
2 On the concept of “ secondary passivity,” cf. p. 14.
 that region find synthetically unified partial meanings. But it is
not thereby necessary that these partial meanings always have
the form of “ secondary passivity, ” thus that they refer back in
themselves to acts which bring into prominence something that
5 had already been apprehended for itself. So, in the apprehension
of a unitary surface are potentially included acts which would
bring to experience the individual partial surfaces, although
these were not previously given there as separate. Something
analogous can be shown for every “ sphere of sense. ”
10 Another function of the aesthetic synthesis is to unify with
one another the objectivities that are constituted in the various
single spheres of sense: e.g., the visual stratum of a thing with
the tactile.
Finally, we have to indicate the syntheses which produce the
15 relation between the moments of the “ thing-appearance, ”
through which the apprehending ray passes, and the correlative
“ perceptual circumstances ” (for instance, the positioning of the
eyes in seeing, of arms, hands, and fingers in touching, etc.)
which, in the natural attitude, occupied as it is with the Object
20 of the perception, are not grasped or properly co-intended.1
Thereby the thing presents itself persistently as something
which is such-and-such, even if no concepts, no judgments in
the predicative sense, are mediating. We always pay attention to
“ features, ” no matter which, and while we are considering the
25 thing from the viewpoint of one “ feature, ” at the same time it
stands intentionally there as endowed with others. In part, they
are determined features already present in the perceptual field, [21]
though un-grasped; we need only bring to bear on them our
grasping regard in order to fulfill the intentions or else to
30 transform them into intentions which, in a determinate or
indeterminate manner, do indeed grasp, although they do not
present intuitively. This is something that is obviously valid
concerning what remains unseen in the thing. In part, these are
indeterminate features. In that case, horizons and possibly rays

1 That the aesthetic synthesis — as aesthetic-causal — is operative as well in the

higher strata o f the constitution o f a thing (the only ones Kant has in mind when he
speaks o f synthesis) will be shown as soon as we have progressed that far in our study
of thing-constitution (cf. pp. 44 ff.).
 of intention which have a determined direction are reactivated;
in the form of non-activated “ confusions ” they contributed to
the sense of the apprehension. But, as has already been men­
tioned, the analysis does not need to be a reactivation. To be
5 sure, one can always say that no analysis could bring out
anything that was not latently already implicated in a certain
way in an implicit synthesis and that we can only bring parts out
where we have, with a change of apprehension, intended them
in, even if only in the form of confused co-intentionalities. Thus
10 our apprehension of a thing is constantly shifting; it appro­
priates moments of the apprehension into the framework of the
unitary style prescribed by thing-consciousness. Hence succes­
sive explication transforms the confused co-apprehendings, per­
haps into a thematic thesis, a theoretical grasp, with which are
15 generally coupled more precise determinations and, in unity
with the kinesthetic processes, more precise intuitive presenta­
tions. Yet in so far as such changes of apprehension are possible
in advance in accord with the essence of thing-apprehension
(and such possibilities are not empty ones but are, instead,
20 motivated), we have at hand “ implicit ” partial apprehendings
which, however, were not really [reelI] portrayed in the original
apprehension.

§ 10. Things, spatial phantoms, and the data of sensation

The objects which served us up to now as representatives of

25 sense objects were real things, such as they are given in
“ sensory perception” prior to all thinking (all operation of
synthetic-categorial acts). They are not spontaneous products
(not products in the proper sense, something which presupposes
genuine activity, an operation), but still they are “ synthetic”
30 unities of components (ones like these do not necessarily have to
be synthetically connected). The unity of the visual sense-thing
does not necessarily require connection with the unity of the
tactual sense-thing. And that is not all. Already in the constitu­
tion of a sensed spatial something as such, even if it be only a
35 pure visual spatial phantom (a form fulfilled purely by color,
not only without relation to the tactual and the other data of
 the other senses, but also without any relation to the moments
of “ m ateriality” and thereby to any real-causal determina­
tions), we have a formation of a hidden, analytically exhibita-
ble, constitutive synthesis; it is indeed an “ appearance” which
5 refers back to the kinesthetic “ circumstances” to which it
appertains. We are always led back further analytically and
arrive finally at sense-objects in a different sense, ones which lie
at the ground (constitutively understood) of all spatial objects1
and, consequently, of all thing-objects of material reality, too,
10 and which lead us back again to certain ultimate syntheses, but
to syntheses which precede every thesis. Let us consider, as the
most convenient example, a tone played on a violin. It can be
apprehended as a real violin-tone and hence as a real occurrence
in space. It then remains the same no matter whether I move
15 away from it or approach it, or whether the door of the
adjacent room, in which it is being played, is open or closed. By
abstracting from material reality, I can still be left with a tonal
spatial phantom, appearing with a determinate orientation,
proceeding from a certain position in space, resounding through
20 the space, etc. Finally, the spatial apprehension can also be
suspended, and then it becomes a mere “ sense datum ” instead
of a spatially sounding tone. In place of that consciousness of
the tone which, out there in space, remains unchanged regard­
less of whether it moves closer or further away, the tone now
25 appears, in the shifting of the focus onto the sense datum, as
something which is changing continuously.
It is to be understood that such a tonal datum could be
constituted without there being carried out any spatial appre­
hension at all, an apprehension which, in our example, was only
30 abstractly put aside or, to correct this misleading expression,
was suspended but is still, in the changed mode, a lived
experience, the lived experience, to be precise, which pre-gives
the spatial tone. We should mention, however, that this is not a
necessary pre-givenness. A tone would be thinkable which
35 dispensed with every spatial apprehension. Here, with the pure

1 An example o f a spatial object that is not a “ thing” is the just-mentioned

1phantom. ”
 datum of sensation, we encounter a pregivenness which yet [23]
precedes the constitution of the object as object.
We can describe this by juxtaposing two possible cases: the
first possibility consists in this, that in the background of
5 consciousness a tone may sound which is indeed apprehended as
an object but is not grasped; the Ego is turned toward
something else. In the case of the second possibility, talk about
a sounding tone denotes a state of sensation which in relation to
the Ego does indeed function as a stimulus but which does not
10 possess the property of an object-consciousness, in which a
sounding tone comes to consciousness as an object, A genetic
example might serve here to make this clear. A conscious
subject that had never yet “ perceived ” a tone, thus had never
yet grasped a tone as an object for itself— to such a subject no
15 object-tone could impose itself as object. Once this grasp is
accomplished (the original object-consciousness), it can lead to
object-apprehendings without an intentional advertence,
whether in the form of a remembrance of similar tones or in the
form of a background consciousness of a newly sounding tone
20 (it is this latter case that we have been using). Obviously not
every advertence to a tone can refer back genetically to an
advertence toward a constituted object-tone; there must be a
tonal sensation which is neither an apprehension of objects nor
a grasping of objects. There must be an original constitution of
25 the object-tone which, as a pre-giving consciousness, is prior; in
the most proper sense it is not actually pre-giving but is a
consciousness which apprehends precisely already in terms of
objects. If we leave aside the genetic considerations (which for
all that do not have to be empirical-psychological), then two
30 phenomenologically possible cases distinguish themselves: first,
precisely the one of a merely objective apprehension which is an
Objectifying consciousness but is a modified one in relation to
the consciousness which gains distinction as advertence and
grasp, and, secondly, the case of a state of sensation which is
35 still not an apprehension in terms of objects. Mere apprehension
[AUF-fassung] shows itself here, consequently, to be an inten­
tional derivation from grasping [ER-fassung] somewhat analo­
gous to the way reproductive remembering is a derivation from
perception.
 An object is constituted originally through spontaneity. The [24]
spontaneity of the lowest level is the one of grasping. Grasping,
however, can be a kind of reactivating; to wit, a reactivating of
a modified grasping which brings to the regard of the grasping
5 Ego something that is already present to consciousness as an
object.
Or, it can be a more original act, constituting the object in a
most original way.
Thus we see that all Objectivation of spatial things ultimately
10 leads back to sensation. With all objectivities, we are led back
from the categorial objectivities to the sensuous. As such are to
be considered, on the one hand, sensuous objectivities which in
a certain sense are a ia 0 T |T d i'8ia, i.e., ones containing only
representatives of a single sense sphere and doing so specifically
15 in such a way that they contain no implicit distinct apprehen­
sions and so do not refer back intentionally to hidden theses
which could be made explicitly distinct by reactivation.
An example is the tone already apprehended as spatial, insofar
as it is correct, as we in fact believe, that there is to be ascribed
20 to such objectivities no intentional references back to perceptual
circumstances, ones which would be brought to fulfillment
through proper intentions.
But from such objects we are led, ultimately, to sense data
constituted in the most primitive way, constituted as unities in
25 original time-consciousness.
All primitive objects, be they objects of sensation or unities
already constituted as things in a sphere of sense (even if they
are not real objects in the full sense) are originally given as
objects through mere single-rayed “ reception.” In a broader
30 sense, those thing-objects constituted through the participation
of several sense spheres are also received, but they still need, in
order to be properly given, as results from what we have already
worked out, articulated processes, chains of receptions. We can
also say that the former objects were merely accepted; the latter,
35 at once received and accepted — received, insofar as they con­
tain intentional components that refer to non-active acceptings
as implicit constituents.
 §11. Nature as sphere of mere things

Let us now go back again to the idea of nature as the

correlate of modern natural science, the radical phenomenolog- [25]
ical delineation of which has been the aim of our investigation
5 hitherto. It is clear that, in this sense, “ nature” is a sphere of
“ mere things,” a sphere of objectivities which distinguishes
itself, by means of a demarcation traced out apriori in the
essence of constituting consciousness, from all other spheres of
objects that may be treated theoretically. We can and we could
10 already easily say that natural science knows no value-
predicates and no practical predicates. Concepts such as the
valuable, the beautiful, the amiable, the attractive, the perfect,
the good, the useful, act, work, etc., as well as, similarly,
concepts like state, church, right, religion, and other concepts,
15 that is, objectivities to whose constitution valuing or practical
acts have essentially contributed — all these have no place in
natural science, they are not concepts pertaining to nature. But
it must be understood from within, from phenomenological
sources, that this abstraction from predicates belonging to the
20 spheres of value and practice is not a matter of an arbitrary
abstraction, left to one’s own discretion, for, as such, it would in
fact produce no radically self-enclosed idea of a scientific
domain and thus also no idea of a science self-contained apriori.
Yet we do gain such an apriori closed idea of nature— as the
25 idea of a world of mere things— provided we become purely
theoretical subjects, subjects of a purely theoretical interest, and
then proceed purely to satisfy that interest. This is to be
understood, however, in the sense previously described. Thereby
we are performing a sort of “ reduction. ” We are putting in
30 brackets, as it were, all our feeling-intentions and all the
apperceptions deriving from the intentionality of the feelings by
virtue of which there constantly appear to us, prior to all
thinking, spatio-temporal objectivities in immediate “ in s ta b il­
ity, ” charged with certain characters of value and practice —
35 characters that altogether transcend the stratum of the mere
thing. Thus, in this “ p u re” or purified theoretical attitude, we
no longer experience houses, tables, streets, or works of art;
instead, we experience merely material things. Of those value-
 charged things, we experience only their stratum of spatio-
temporal materiality; and similarly, of men and human socie­
ties, only that stratum of this psychic “ n atu re” which is bound
to the spatio-temporal “ Bodies. ”
5 There is still a certain restriction to be made here, however. It
would not be correct to say that the correlate of mere nature is
a purely “ Objectivating Ego-subject ” that in no way performs
any valuing. To be sure, it is a subject that is indifferent to its
Object, indifferent to the actuality constituted in appearances;
10 that is, this subject does not value such being for its own sake
and thus has no practical interest in the transformations such
being might undergo and so no interest in fashioning them, etc.
On the other hand, this subject does value the knowledge o f
appearing being and the determination of that being by means of
15 logical judgments, theory, science. Thus it values the “ It is so, ”
the “ How is it? ” Furthermore, it does attach value to matters
of practice, too; it is indeed interested in transformations, and
this subject will produce them in practice by means of experi­
ments. But it does not do so for their own sake but produces
20 them only in order to make visible thereby the connections
which might advance the knowledge of appearing being. The
correlate of nature is thus not a subject that in no way strives,
wills, or evaluates. That is unthinkable. Knowledge of nature
abstracts only from all other values besides the cognitive values:
25 “ I want nothing other than to experience nature more richly by
means of ‘ theoretical experience ’ and to know, in a theoretical
knowledge on the basis of experience, just what that which
appears is, what nature is. ”
Every pure theory, every purely scientific attitude, arises from
30 a theoretical interest in an objectivity, or a class of objectivities,
that can be constituted originally. With respect to natural
science, this objectivity to be constituted originally is nature, the
real unity of all natural objectivities. The term “ natural objec­
tivity ” thereby denotes a class of objects which, as regards their
35 coexisting exemplars, join together, by essential necessity, to
form a really connected unity, whereby at the same time it is
characteristic of these objects that a valuing consciousness, as
“ constituting, ” has contributed nothing to their essential com­
position, that is, to the content of their sense. The acts of
 valuing performed by the subject that is experiencing nature, the
subject pursuing natural science — performed by this subject as
such — are not constitutive of the Objects with which it has to
do, and that is precisely why it can be said with justice that
5 there are no value-Objects or the like within its compass. But
one point must be noted in this regard. The acts of valuing and
of willing— feeling, willing, deciding, acting— are not excluded
from the sphere of things that matter here; on the contrary,
they thoroughly belong to that sphere, even if they do not
10 present themselves as carriers of value-predicates or of other
analogous ones. We bear with us the whole of consciousness as
an object, but we allow ourselves to “ constitute objects” only
through the doxic Objectivating consciousness and not through
the valuing one. The sphere of things experienceable by us in
15 this way is what should now determine for us the sphere of
natural science. From then on we remain purely in the natural-
scientific attitude, and it is thereby clear to us that in doing so
we are performing a sort of disengaging, a sort o f tnoxi)- In
ordinary life, we have nothing whatever to do with nature-
20 Objects. What we take as things are pictures, statues, gardens,
houses, tables, clothes, tools, etc. These are all value-Objects of
various kinds, use-Objects, practical Objects. They are not
Objects which can be found in natural science.
 THE ONTIC SENSE-STRATA OF THE THING
OF INTUITION AS SUCH

§ 12. Material and animal nature

5 We are directing our attention to the totality of “ real”

things, to the entire world of things, the “ universe,” nature,
which, in its forms of space and time, encompasses all factual
realities but also includes, obviously on essential grounds, all
apriori possible realities as well.
10 Already at first glance what is striking here is the essentially
grounded difference between nature in a more strict sense, the
lowest and first sense, i.e., material nature, and nature in a
second, broadened sense, i.e., things that have a soul, in the
genuine sense of “ living,” animal nature. Everything that we
15 take as existing in the ordinary sense (thus in a naturalistic
attitude), including therefore, sensations, representations, feel­
ings, and psychic acts and states of every kind, belongs precisely
in this attitude to living nature; these are “ real” acts or states,
ontologically characterized precisely in that they are activities or
20 states of animals or humans and as such are part of the [28]
spatio-temporal world. Consequently, they are subject to the
determinations which befall “ every individual objectivity what­
ever.”
Every thingly being is temporally extended; it has its dura-
25 tion, and with its duration it is fit within Objective time in a
strict manner. Thus with its duration it has a fixed place in the
one world-time, which is a universal form of existence for all
thinghood. Everything else that a thing “ is,” according to every
other essential determination which belongs to it, it is that in its
30 duration, with the more precise determination of its “ when.”
 We distinguish therefore appropriately between temporal deter­
mination (the duration of a thing) and real feature, which, as
such, fills the duration, spreads itself over the duration. Pre­
cisely thereby it is apriori necessary that every feature of a
5 thing, throughout its duration, either changes in a continuous
manner as regards its content or else does not change at all, and
in the former case single discrete leaps are admissable. If the
temporal filling of its duration changes either continuously or
by leaps, then the thing “ alters; ” if that is not the case, then the
10 thing remains unaltered.1
Furthermore, every thingly being has its place in world-space,
relative to every other thingly being and alterable in principle.
The thing is moveable in space, in virtue of the corporeal
extension which belongs to it by essence and is exclusively
15 proper to it, and which can constantly alter its location in space.
These propositions can be understood so universally that they
hold in fact and apriori for every thingly being whatever.
Now, however, a distinction arises, precisely with respect to
corporeal extension, between material thinghood and thinghood
20 in the sense of animal nature. It was not without reason that
Descartes designated extensio as the essential attribute o f the
material thing, which, therefore, is also called, simply, corpor- [29]
eal — over against psychic or spiritual being, which, in its
spirituality as such, has no extensio but, rather, essentially
25 excludes it. In fact, what, above all, must be brought to insight
is that extensio, rightly understood, distinguishes nature in the
first sense from nature in the second sense, although the fully
comprehensive essential attribute of material being is not mere
extension but is, instead, materiality, so far as this latter in itself
30 requires temporal as well as spatial extension. But what matters

1 It should be discussed expressly whether the duration of a thing has to be filled

by thingly determinations without a hiatus or whether it is possible for things to
disappear and then come into existence anew— with the same determinations or with
ones that have altered in that segment of the duration. This would mean that one and
the same thing could have several separate durations, and the question would be
whether such a thing, extending over two separate durations, could be distinguished
from two things existing one after the other. But for our present context the
consideration of these questions is not required unconditionally.
 most here is to know the distinctive manner in which everything
else that belongs to a material thing is yet related apriori (that
always means essentially) to its extension. Spiritual nature,
understood as animal nature, is a complex composed of a lower
5 stratum of material nature, whose essential feature is extensio,
and an inseparable upper stratum which is of a fundamentally
different essence and which, above all, excludes extension. Thus
even if the comprehensive essential feature of the material thing
is materiality, yet it is at once understandable how extension
10 can be taken as the essential distinguishing feature differentiat­
ing the material from the psychic or spiritual.

§ 13. The significance of extension for the structure of

“ things” in general and of material things in particular

What is now of utmost importance is to make clear the

15 singular manner in which everything that a thing is in other
respects and by essence is related to the extension which neces­
sarily belongs to it, and, furthermore, how, quite differently, the
psychical determinations belonging to animal realities acquire, by
means o f the foundedness o f the psychic in the material, the
20 spatial determination which also is necessary to them. By the
term spatial (better: corporeal) extension of a thing we under­
stand the spatial corporeality pertaining to its concrete essential
content exactly the way it belongs to this content in full
determinateness. Accordingly, it is not only that every alteration
25 in magnitude, with a conservation of the same spatial form,
implies an alteration of extension, and that the same is true for
every alteration of the form with a conservation of the magni­
tude and for every deformation in whatever sense, but also [30]
every alteration of position is an alteration of the extension.
30 Extension is thus not a mere piece of space, although it
coincides with such at every temporal point of the duration of
the thing. It follows from its essence that neither space itself nor
any one whatever of its pieces can move; space itself can never
have a hole, i.e., a place empty of spatiality and somehow only
35 afterwards filled up by a supplement. It is absolutely “ fixed;”
its parts are not “ extensions” in the sense we have delimited,
 not “ bodies” — for instance, absolutely fixed bodies in the
sense of physics.
Now I am saying that this determination as alterable (spatial
extension or corporeality) has a fully proper place amidst the
5 constitutive properties of a material thing. There belongs to the
essence of extension the ideal possibility of fragmentation. It is
then evident that every fragmentation of the extension frag­
ments the thing itself— i.e., splits it into pieces, each of which
once again has the full thingly character, that of material
10 thingness. Conversely, every partition of the thing into things,
every fragmentation, as such, of the thing, also fragments the
extension of the thing. In other words, the thing is not only
extended in the sense that it is in general endowed, amidst its
other determinations, with a determination called corporeal
15 extension. Rather, as regards whatever it is contentwise, both as
a whole and in its particulars, and as regards, specifically,
whatever it is in itself (according to its full time-filling essence,
according to its proper features), the thing is extended, is
something that fills corporeal space. There is a distinction in
20 principle between the corporeal extension-determinations of a
thing, magnitude, form, figure and the like (ideally speaking:
the geometrical determinations), and its real qualities, i.e., the
modes pertaining to them in the current circumstances— better:
in the current phases of time.
25 Every corporeal quality of a thing “ fills the spatial body; ”
the thing spreads itself out in the quality; in every one the thing
fills its corporeality (its extension), and the same is true, at the
same point in time, for all real qualities. And, naturally, what
holds for the totality holds for every piece. In particular, each
30 thing is different, each may have its different spatial extension
and fill it qualitatively in a very different manner. The manner
of the filling of the body, the qualification of the body, the [31]
filling of space 1 (if we would still use this not quite correct,
though customary, phrase) may be different, according to the

1 Filling of space has two senses. Qualification of a body produces the concept of
the corporeal quality, the “ secondary” quality. The body itself as a determination
(“ quality”) of the thing is not a part of space but instead “ fills” space itself together
with the secondary qualities that fill and qualify it.
 kind of features and according as we take into consideration
enduring qualities or merely real states (in the alteration of
which, identical qualities manifest themselves): but the universal
type is always and necessarily the same. It must be said of every
5 kind of quality that it may have its own special ways of filling
spatial corporeality, covering it, extending itself over it. Yet it is
necessarily a quality that fills. The thing knows no other
extensive determinations besides pure corporeality (the primary
quality) and the modifying sensuous qualities, the “ qualifying”
10 secondary qualities. The momentary coloration of a thing (i.e.,
its momentary optical state out of the possible multiplicity of
optical states in which the unity of the identical optical proper­
ties of the thing manifests itself while changing) covers the entire
outer surface of the corporeal thing in a determined way.
15 Obviously, it is in quite a different manner that warmth fills the
warm body or that the property of odor fills what smells. It is in
a still different manner as regards weight and similar real
determinations. Weight has its extension, to the degree that
every fragmentation of a thing, no matter how thorough,
20 fragments the very weight of the thing as well. The thing may,
in the alteration of the circumstances of its existence, take on
and then lose again some or other of the filling properties.
Without corporeal extension no weight is there whatsoever. Yet,
to be sure, never can extension be there by itself; its special
25 position is not that of one real property amidst others. The
thing is what it is in its real properties, but each one, taken
separately, is not necessary in the same sense. Each is a ray of
the thing’s being. But corporeal extension is not a ray of real
being in that same sense; it is not in the same way (properly
30 speaking, “ in no w ay”) a real property. Rather, it is an
essential form of all real properties. That is why an empty
corporeal space is, realiter, nothing; it exists only to the degree
that a thing, with its thingly properties, is extended therein.
Better: body is a real determination, but it is a fundamental
35 determination (an essential foundation) and form for all other
determinations.
In this sense, extension is thus the essential characteristic of
materiality, although it is — indeed, precisely because it is, in a
wholly different manner— a “ real property;” it is the essential
 attribute, provided the term is used in this way. It expresses the
characteristic essential form of existence for material or physical
being (the essential form for all real determinations in which
thingly existence is explicated), and, therefore, for the mere
5 physical thing, although not for the full thing altogether, since
to the essence of thingly being as a whole there also belongs
temporality. Men and animals have their position in space and
move in space as sheer physical things. It will be said that it is
obvious that they do so “ by virtue o f” their corporeal Bodies.
10 It would be bizarre, however, to say that only the man’s Body
moved but not the man, that the man’s Body walked down the
street, drove in a car, dwelled in the country or town, but not
the man. Thus it appears from the first that in this respect too
there are differences among the properties of the Body. One
15 could say that the Body has properties such as weight, size, etc.
which we attribute to others and to ourselves as well, though we
do so in full awareness that they properly belong only to the
material Body. It is obviously only insofar as I have a Body that
I have size and weight. If I attribute to myself a locus, then it is
20 the locus of my Body, too. But do we not sense from the outset
a certain difference, by virtue of which locality belongs to me
somewhat more essentially? But let us consider this matter
systematically.

§ 14. The significance of extension for the structure

25 of animalia

The objects of nature in the second, enlarged, sense are, taken

in full concretion, animal realities, characterized as Bodies with
a soul. They are founded realities, which presuppose in them­
selves, as their lower stratum, material realities, so-called mate-
30 rial Bodies. Furthermore, they have, and this is what is new
about them, besides their specifically material determinations,
still new systems of properties, the psychic ones, in regard to
which we leave it open whether or not a distinction into two,
properly speaking, should be made under this heading: a
35 sensuous (aesthetic) stratum and a properly psychic one. In
experience, these new properties we speak of are given as
 belonging to the Body in question, and it is precisely because of
them that it is called Body or organism, i.e., an “ organ ”fo r a
soul or for a spirit. On the other hand, we have to say that these
properties are precisely not material properties, and that means
5 that by essence they have no extension, that they are not given
in the way in which all properties are given which fill Bodily
extension. But whether properties are extended or not, hence
whether the objects which have these properties are material or
not — these are not accidental matters but essential ones. People
10 and animals have material Bodies, and to that degree they have
spatiality and materiality. According to what is specifically
human and animal, that is, according to what is psychic, they
are, however, not material, and, consequently, taken also as
concrete totalities, they are not material realities in the proper
15 sense. Material things are open to fragmentation, something
which accompanies the extension that belongs to their essence.
But men and animals cannot be fragmented. Men and animals
are spatially localized; and even what is psychic about them, at
least in virtue of its essential foundedness in the Bodily,
20 partakes of the spatial order. We will even say that much of
what is included under the broad — and, at first, unclarified —
heading of the psychic has something like spread (although not
extension in space). In principle, however, nothing on this side is
extended in the proper sense, in the specific sense of the
25 extension we described.

§ 15. The essence of materiality (substance)

Before we investigate further the distinctions, open to greater

clarification, between localization and extension, and so before
we explore the mode of connection in general between material
30 Body and that which gives animality fullness, i.e., the psychic,
we want first of all to consider somewhat more closely the
respective terms of the connection.
The physical or material thing is res extensa. We have already
exposed the sense of its “ essential attribute,” extensio. Well,
35 now, what makes up the concept of this res, what is meant by [34]
extended reality, by reality at alll One also speaks of extended
 substance. But just what, we now ask, is meant by this substan­
tiality, considered in its fullest possible universality?
The material thing fits under the logical category, pure and
simple individuum (“ absolute” object). To it are referred the
5 logical (formal-ontological) modifications: individual property
(here, the quality of being a thing), state, process, relation,
complexion, etc. In every domain of being we find analogous
variations, and so the goal of phenomenological clarity requires
us to go back to the individuum as the primordial objectivity. It
10 is from it that all logical modifications acquire their sense-
determination.

a) Phenomenological analysis of the givenness of the thing

as a way toward determining the essence, “ material thing”
If we would touch on the thing itself, then it is required of us,
15 assuming we wanted to grasp the essence of the thing and
determine it conceptually, that we not be content with vague
locutions and traditional philosophical preconceptions but instead
draw from the very source of clear givenness. Thus we have to
go back, as exemplary, to the consciousness in which things are
20 given to us originarily and so perfectly that we can be lacking
nothing for grasping the universal essential form which pres­
cribes the apriori rule for such objects. To bring things in this
way to exemplary givenness calls not simply for a mere percep­
tion or for a distinct phantasizing of oneself into an act of
25 perception. That is not sufficient at all. It is not enough to see
this table and to cast on it a perceiving regard, or even to take
together several perceptions of the table and, in addition,
perceptions of other things. Rather, it is necessary to “follow
up ” the perceptually meant in a perceiving and experiencing, be
30 it actually experiencing or just phantasizing. The task is to
presentify to oneself (if need be, by free fiction) series of
perceptions connecting up together in a continuous way, in
which the perceived object is one and the same and thereby
shows, in the progression of the perceptions, in an ever more
35 perfect way, what lies in it, what belongs to its essence.1

1 Cf pp. 96 f.
 In the noema of the act of perception, i.e., in the perceived,
taken precisely as characterized phenomenologically, as it is
therein an intentional Object, there is included a determinate
directive for all further experiences of the object in question.
5 The table is indeed now given in the perceiving act, but it is
given each time in a determinate way. Perception has its
perceptual sense, its meant, just as it is meant, and lying in that
sense are directives, unfulfilled anticipatory and retrospective
indications, which we only have to follow up. The table-
10 appearance is a table appearing from the front side with a
front-side color, front-side shape, etc. It belongs to the sense of
this meant that the meant shape or meant color points on to
ever new appearances of the form or of the color in a
determinate progression, by means of which not only does what
15 has already actually appeared achieve a better appearance, but
the sides which did not appear (though they are indeed sides
which were co-meant in a more or less indeterminate way)
attain a givenness which does exhibit them. All the different
directions o f determination which lie in the meant thing as such
20 are thereby traced out in advance, and that holds for each of the
possible motivated courses of perception belonging to it, to
which I can give myself over in freely forming phantasy, and to
which I must give myself over— at least if I want to bring to
clarity the sense of the modes of determinateness in question
25 and, therewith, the full content of the essence of the thing. It is
only if one interrogates the thing-noema itself, the so-to-say
thing-meaning, by bringing it to a givenness which unfolds itself
in all directions, and, further, only if one lets the answer come
from it itself in the actual carrying out of its directives, only
30 then does one actually gain the essential components of thing­
ness and the necessary essential interweavings, without which
what is meant by a thing at all cannot be thought.
This method, supposing we wanted to pursue it in extenso,
would result in very many foundational constatations with
35 respect to the essence of the thing. We shall have to content
ourselves with a few especially remarkable ones.
 b) Mobility and alterability as constituents of the
material thing; the thing-schema
To begin, we can easily convince ourselves of the fact that the
possibilities of motion and rest, of qualitative change and
5 qualitative permanence, are based in principle on the essence of
the material thing in general. A thing can, e.g., be unmoved and
unchanged de facto, but it would be countersensical to claim that
it is unmovable and unchangeable in principle. On the other
hand, it can be absolutely unchanged; in intuition we can grasp,
10 by means of fitting examples, the idea of a thing which is
unchanged in all respects (even if only as an ideal limit-case). If
we take this idea as our point of departure and hold fast to the
thing in itself, disregarding the nexus in which it is a thing, then
it strikes us that we would henceforth have at our disposal no
15 means at all for distinguishing the essence of the thing from the
essence o f an empty phantom, and that by which the thing
exceeds the phantom would then not be given to us in actual,
exhibiting, givenness in the sense we have specified. For exam­
ple, it is a mere phantom that faces us when we learn, in a
20 stereoscope, to bring fitting organizations into corporeal fusion.
We are then seeing a spatial body, regarding which meaningful
questions can be raised about its form, its color, and even about
its smoothness, roughness, and other, similarly classified, deter­
minations, questions which can therefore be answered in confor-
25 mity with the truth, by saying, perhaps, this is a red, rough
pyramid. On the other hand, what appears can be given in such
a way that questions of whether it is heavy or light, elastic,
magnetic, etc. do not make any sense, or, better, do not find
any support within the perceptual sense. What we are seeing is
30 precisely not a material thing. The entire class of material
determinations is missing from the sense-content of the apper­
ception we performed in the example above. It is not just that
they are undetermined and left open, as is indeed the case in
every perception of a thing, where, by virtue of the components
35 of indeterminateness in the apprehension, much is left open. For
example, concerning the determinate color of the invisible
backside, already somehow apperceived as red, is it completely,
uniformly, red, or does it contain stains and streaks? Or again,
 concerning the form of the thing, apprehended only as some­
how consistent, what is it really like where it passes into
invisibility? Or, is the body solid or soft, metallic or non-
metallic, etc? It is rather the case that, without detriment to the
5 otherwise indeterminate elements which still remain open, essen­
tial groups o f features are not represented in the apprehension at
all, namely, those o f materiality as we have specified it. This is
the way in which we also see a rainbow, the blue sky, the sun,
etc. We therefore draw the conclusion that a fulfilled spatial
10 body (a qualified body), fulfilled through the extended qualita­
tive filling, is not yet so much as a thing, a thing in the usual
sense as material-real It is equally clear that every sensuous
thing, in its givenness, requires as a basic piece of its essence
(hence, forever, irremovably) this kind of fulfilled spatial body.
15 Thus it is always necessarily given as a fulfilled spatial exten­
sion, but it is still given as more. We say that a sensuous schema
belongs to the essence of a thing, and we understand by that
this groundwork, this corporeal (“ spatial”) shape, along with
the filling which extends over it. The thing which appears at rest
20 and unchanged qualitatively “ shows” us no more than its
schema or, rather, than the apparent, whereas it is nevertheless
apprehended at the same time as something material. But in this
respect is does not “ show ” itself, it does not properly come to
view, to originary givenness. If the whole stratum of materiality
25 were stricken from the apperception, it would change nothing as
regards what is “ properly” given. In fact, that is thinkable. In
original experience, perception, “ body” is unthinkable without
sensuous qualification; the phantom, however, is originally
given, and thereby thinkable as well, without the components of
30 materiality, whereas these latter for their part are unable to
stand alone (unilateral detachment). If we take into consider­
ation the different alterations, the extensive (change of place,
deformation) and the qualitative, then we again observe the
same thing: what comes to actual perceptio for us in the
35 perception of thingly alterations and, specifically, of alterations
in the proper content of the appearing thing, are only contin­
uous courses of sensuous schemata, or, as we can also say, the
sensuous schema o f the thing undergoes continuous alteration. But
once again it is clear that nothing is given here which could not
 also be given as pure “ phantom. ” Phantoms, too, (in the sense
specified of pure spatial givenness without the stratum of any
apprehension of materiality) can move, deform themselves, and
change qualitatively in color, brightness, sound, etc. Again, [38]
5 therefore, materiality can, from the outset, be co-apprehended
and yet not co-given.
It should now be emphasized at once that the concept of
schema (the concept of phantom) is by no means restricted
merely to a single sense-sphere. A perceived thing also has its
10 tactual schema, which comes to light in tactual grasping. In
general, there are precisely as many strata there to be distin­
guished in the fu ll schema as there are to be found classes o f
sensuous data which are spread over the spatial extension
(appearing as something identical) of the thing. Yet the schema
15 does not become multiple on account of this manifold filling.
The sensuous qualities fill the one, absolutely identical, spatial
corporeality and do so on several strata which, because of this
identity and because of their essential inseparability from exten­
sion, cannot, in principle, disperse into further distinct sche-
20 mata.
Let us consider this still a little more closely: let there be
given one and the same body, the form of which is one and the
extension of which is one, but which presents itself in a two-fold
way, as a corporeality that is both seen and touched. The body
25 is colorful; that is, it is colored in all its parts and in its total
extension, either in a uniform way or with different colors for
the different parts of its extension (its surface). Nevertheless, the
body is colorful only in its “ optical appearance. ” In “ tactual
space, ” in the tactually appearing (tactually given) corporeality,
30 no color is given.1 On the other hand, smoothness is given
tactually; just as brightness is visually. Wetness cannot be
seen— only touched. It can at best be “ co-seen,” just as the
apprehension of silky tactuality co-presentifies a dull lustre.
Roughness can be touched and “ seen” as well; and so can a

1 To be sure, the expressions “ visual space” and “ tactual space” are quite
problematic, however common they might be. The space, the one space, presents itself
and appears both visually and tactually. The question is how we are to understand
the identity and to what extent we can speak o f strata here.
 ribbed surface. There is an exact analogy between the mode or
form of the visual filling of corporeality and the tactual; i.e.,
each has the form of a lived experience of transition within a
continuous apprehension; the form is the same. Likewise, for
5 the thing-structure itself, for the pure spatial corporeality, there [39]
exists, it seems, this analogy in complexion-form, despite the
different mode of sensuous givenness.
Here, however, we want to speak not of analogy but of
identity. How does one arrive at a positing of identity? It is the
10 same Objective property which announces itself in the brightness
and in the smoothness. In any case, I take the body as the same.
The body has but one structure, one extension, or, better: the
thing of perception has but one spatial corporeality (spatial
structure). In addition, the thing has its color, its brightness
15 (grasped in seeing), its smoothness (grasped tactually), etc.
Furthermore, now it sounds, radiates warmth or coldness, etc.
The body’s motion, too, can be grasped by means of several
different senses, as a change in place of thingly spatial corpor­
eality.
20 Impact and pressure cannot properly be seen; one can only
see what results from them as regards space and form. Nor is it
by pure and simple touch that pressure, pull, and resistance are
to be perceived. One has to “ exert the muscles,” “ brace oneself
against,” etc. But I do grasp visually all sorts of occurrences
25 when one body presses on another: e.g., I see that a body
having an impact on another is pushing it aside, that the motion
of a body, owing to an impact, is accelerating or decelerating
accordingly, etc. I grasp something similar, even if it is not so
easy, by means of touch and the muscle sense. A distinction
30 arises here between geometrical and mechanical movements,
and the mechanical is not judgeable exclusively by one sense.
Moreover, we find a parallelism between sensuous qualities and
extensional events: warmth and coldness occur together with
expansion and contraction in a regulated way. Everywhere,
35 apprehension includes in itself, by the mediation of a “ sense, ”
empty horizons of “ possible perceptions;” thus I can, at any
given time, enter into a system of possible and, if I follow them
up, actual, perceptual nexuses. We can say that the spatial body
is a synthetic unity of a manifold of strata of “ sensuous
 appearances” of different senses. Each stratum is in itself
homogeneous, pertaining to one sense; it is a matter of one [40]
apperceptive perception or a perceptual manifold which homo­
geneously runs its course and continues. Every perception (and
5 series of perceptions) of that kind has its complements of
parallel apperceptions of other strata, which constitute a “co-
givenness " (not an actual givenness) making possible a subse­
quent fulfilling in actual perception. The given optical fulfill­
ment of the visual schema refers to the tactual side of the
10 schema and perhaps to the determined fulfillment of it. “ Asso-
ciatively,” the one recalls the other. Experience teaches me to
recognize new fulfillments, which are apprehended not as newly
arisen but as having been there already and as continuing to
belong to it. This is already the case for a single stratum by
15 itself. I see the front side of the schema, and much remains
indeterminate in the back. But a back side it certainly does
have. In a like manner, the body also has a tactual side (or
stratum); it is just that it is still undetermined. The body is a
unity of experience, and it lies in the sense of this unity to be an
20 index for a manifold of possible experiences in which the body
can come to givenness in ever new ways. Therewith, we have
first taken the body as independent of all causal conditioning,
i.e., merely as a unity which presents itself visually or tactually,
through multiplicities of sensations, as endowed with an inner
25 content of characteristic features. Some of the examples chosen
(the apperception of the mechanical qualities) have, however,
already gone beyond this restriction.
But, in what we have said, it is also implied that under the
presupposition referred to (namely, that we take the thing
30 outside of the nexuses in which it is a thing) we do not find, as
we carry out experiences, any possibility for deciding, in a way
that exhibits, whether the experienced material thing is actual or
whether we are subject to a mere illusion and are experiencing a
mere phantom. To appeal to the existing coordination of
35 different senses would come down to a misunderstanding of our
problem. The thing-positing (the doxa) which lies in perception
is obviously motivated by what is at present actually given,
hence by the apparent schema, and it is also obvious that a
schema which appears under more aspects must have more
 motivating power. Yet were the materiality of the thing not to
be given actually and properly from elsewhere (genetically [41]
speaking: if in similar cases the content of determination of
what is specifically material had never been given to us), then
5 indeed there would be there nothing in reference to which the
intuition of the schema could have a motivating function.

c) Exhibition of the materiality of the thing by way of

its dependence on circumstances
It is now the time to repair a deficiency, i.e., to take up the
10 presupposition we have been allowing. Up to now we have
taken the thing in isolation. But it is in relation to “ circum­
stances ” that the thing is what it is. If we juxtapose the change
of a phantom and the change of a thing, then we see clearly that
these two are not the same and that they are not to be
15 distinguished from each other by means of sheer content, which,
under the title, materiality, in the one case would belong and in
the other would be lacking. It is obvious that changes in a thing
can occur while the sensuous schema does not change at all, and
conversely, the thing can remain unchanged while the schema
20 changes. An example of the latter obtains if the same
unchanged thing is perceived under a changing daylight or
under a chromatic illumination which is in the process of
changing, etc.
Reality in the proper sense, here called “ materiality,” does
25 not lie in the mere sensuous schema and could not be attributed
to the perceived, if something like a relation to “ circumstances ”
did not apply to the perceived and had no sense for it; rather, it
lies precisely in this relation and in the corresponding mode of
apprehension. In a changing illumination, hence in relation to
30 something else that is illuminating, the thing looks constantly
different and does so not in just any way but in a determinate
way. Here there are evidently functional connections which
relate the schematic modifications of the one aspect to those of
the other aspects. It pertains to the sense of the apprehension of
35 a thing as thing (but not of a mere phantom) that such
schemata, ones which run their course in determined series of
modifications, and which, in a determinate way, now change
 and now do not, are experienced as intimations of one and the
same thing. But such is how we experience them insofar as they
run their course as “ dependent” on the “ real circumstances”
which pertain to them. Thus in our example we experience one
5 and the same thing with respect to its optical properties, which
maintain their unity and determinateness throughout the change [42]
of illumination produced by the corresponding sources of the
light. Insofar as the schemata are fulfilled by color, this unity
permeates them. What is constituted therewith is the “ Objec-
10 tive” color, the one had by the thing no matter whether it is in
sunlight or in dim daylight or in the darkness of a cupboard,
and this is the case for any of the lighting conditions, to which
belong, thereby, in a functional way, quite definite schemata,
including the complete filling of a visual schema.
15 So long as the circumstances remain unchanged, the schema
remains unchanged as well. A continuous change of the circum­
stances entails continuous alteration of the schema; and, like­
wise, continuous non-change, invariability in the behavior of
the appearances which are functioning as circumstances, entails,
20 in the same span of time, continuous non-change of the schema
dependent on them.
In this way, absence of change is the limit-case of change; it
conforms to the rule decreeing that to similar circumstances
belong similar functional dependencies. Let us take another
25 example. A steel spring, once struck, executes certain oscilla­
tions and runs through certain successions of states of relative
change of place and deformation: the spring has the real
property of “ elasticity.” As soon as a certain impetus is given,
there occurs a corresponding deviation from the state of rest
30 and a certain corresponding mode of oscillation. As soon as a
certain other impetus acts, there occurs a corresponding other
change in the spring, though one of a similar intuitive type.
Failing any impetus, other circumstances can yet undergo a
change and work in a way that is similar to the action of an
35 impetus. If the circumstances (all the ones that are “ circum­
stances” precisely with respect to elasticity) remain unchanged
throughout, then the spring remains in a state of non-change.
Under similar circumstances, similar consequences: so with
similar changes of circumstances, similar modes of oscillation.
 The general rule, to which absence of change conforms as the
limit-case of change, does not, as such, come to consciousness;
here it expresses a form intrinsic to the apperception of the real
property. The apperception of the real property includes this
5 articulation in circumstances and includes the functionally
dependent changes of the schemata in such a way that there is
this dependency in any given case, and it is not merely
something abstract, either. On the other hand, however, thing
and property are grasped in an Objectifying way, but schema [43]
10 and circumstances (taken likewise as schematic) are not.
It is precisely in this way that every “ Objective,” “ real”
property of the phenomenal thing is constituted. What is real of
the thing itself is as multiple as it has, in this sense, real
properties, ones which are, throughout, unities with respect to
15 manifolds of schematic regulations in relation to corresponding
circumstances.

d) The schema as real determinateness of the material thing

By virtue of this realizing apprehension (i.e., as constitutive of
the real thing as substrate of real properties), the current
20 schema acquires the character of a real determinateness of a
particular sense. Over against the real unitary property, in our
example the unchanged Objective color, there stands the
momentary real state, which corresponds to the “ circum­
stances” and which changes according to rules. The state
25 coincides with the schema; yet it is not a mere schema (the thing
is indeed not a mere phantom). Corresponding to the changed
apprehension is a changed correlate. That is to say, in the
thing-apprehension the schema is not perceived as an extension
filled merely sensuously but is perceived precisely as primal
30 manifestation or “ documentation ” (originary manifestation) of
a real property and, precisely thereby, as a state of the real
substance at the point in time involved. The property itself
comes to actually filling— i.e., originary — givenness only if an
originary unfolding is achieved by the functional series in which
35 the dependencies on the corresponding circumstances (i.e., the
causal dependencies) come to originary givenness. In this case,
the causalities are not merely supposed but are “s e e n “per-
 ceived. ” It is thereby obvious that the direction of the regard in
the intentional grasp of the real property and the one in the
intentional grasp of the causal dependency of its current states
on the respective circumstances (which themselves then attain to
5 an objectifying grasp) are different ones, although in both cases
the regard, in a certain way, traverses the schema or, rather,
traverses the corresponding stratum of its fullness. Even if it is
the one same state of the concrete situation, pre-given for these
various graspings, yet there is again a change in the direction of [44]
10 the regard on the thing itself as the identical substrate of this or
that self-manifesting property or as the substrate of the states
currently related to these or those circumstances. There are as
many directions of unity prefigured in the causal apprehension
of the schema (i.e., directions for possible series of perceptions
15 in functional relation to series of perceptible circumstances) as
there is multiplicity in the way in which the reality-thing, the
unitary material “ substance, is determinable according to
properties corresponding to the apprehended sense itself. And
the thing has these properties {real, substantial properties) in
20 actuality if the fulfilling experience exhibits them originarily in
the thingly states (or relational modes) dependent on the
circumstances. Moreover, the thing-apprehension, such as it is
established already with every individual perception and series
of perceptions, bears in itself different modes of determinateness
25 and indeterminateness. To be sure, the perceived enters con­
sciousness as what is real of the given states but only as what
is more or less determined. Yet the manner in which the
indeterminateness can be determined more precisely is predeli­
neated by the formal essence of thing-apprehension as such and,
30 for the rest, by the particularity of the particular apprehension
then current, i.e., precisely by that which the thing-apprehension
leaves open in this particularity.

1 Substance signifies here nothing more than the material thing as such, considered
to the extent that it is the identical something o f real properties, that which actualizes
itself temporally in regulated manifolds o f states in regulated dependency on
concomitant circumstances.
 e) More precise determination, redetermination, and
cancellation of the thing-experience
It pertains further to the universal essence of thing-apprehen-
sion that, in the progression of the experiences in which the
5 current thing is primordially manifest in a more and more rich
manner, there also arise ever richer directions of determination,
and in them ever new empty points of determinability can
establish themselves. Apriori only in the progression of ongoing
experiences which are primordially manifesting can it be exhi-
10 bited what the current thing is. Hereby (according to what we
have already indicated previously) there continually stand side
by side, as possibilities in principle: 1) the possibility of
thoroughly concordant experiences, ones which do nothing [45]
except determine more precisely; 2) the possibility of partly
15 concordant, partly discordant, experiences: i.e., experiences
which go to determine the same thing but in new and different
ways; 3) the possibility, finally, of irreconcilable discrepancies,
by means of which is exhibited the non-being of the thing which
was experienced in erstwhile concordance or the non-being of
20 the thing which was determined as “ new and different” in its
particulars. But if the thing is, then it is as the identical real
something of its real properties, and these are, so-to-say, mere
rays of its unitary being. It is as such an identity that the thing
is posited, in a motivated way, by every experience, be it ever so
25 imperfect and leaving so much still open, and the legitimating
power of the motivation grows along with the richness of the
primordial manifestations which show up in the progression of
the experience. The thing is constant in that it comports itself in
such and such a way under the circumstances which pertain to
30 i t : reality (or, what is here the same, substantiality) and causality
belong together inseparably. Real properties are eo ipso causal
ones. To know a thing therefore means to know from experi­
ence how it behaves under pressure and impact, in being bent
and being broken, when heated and when cooled, etc., i.e., to
35 know its behavior in the nexus of its causalities: which states
does the thing actually attain and how does it remain the same
throughout these states.
To pursue these nexuses and to determine the real properties
 in scientific thinking, on the basis of progressive experience, that
is the task of physics (in a broad sense), which, led in this way
from the most immediate unities in the hierarchical sequence of
experiences and of what is primordially manifest in these
5 experiences, goes on to ever higher unities.

§ 16. The constitution of the properties of the thing in

multiple relations of dependency

A unity, as we have seen, traverses all changes of state with

reference to the real circumstances, both the actual and the
10 possible, in such a way that, as far as the apprehension is
concerned, every change of state, pertaining either to the same
property as unchanged or to properties which have changed
either continuously or intermittently, takes place or can take
place as imi vocal in the given real nexus. The thing as the unity
15 of its properties can, therefore, in the alteration of any of its
states or modes of comportment, change “ itself” or remain
unchanged. Every real property is, as real, changeable. Hence,
the unities of primordial manifestations, in their temporal
continuity, are apprehended, in their dependence on unities of
20 circumstances, as phases of a unity of duration which persists in
them. Iron melts and changes its state of aggregation, which, for
its part, obviously has the character of a real property in our
sense. While a material body is moving towards one of the poles
of the earth, its weight changes continuously, etc. Considered
25 more precisely, the formation of unity as the formation of an
identity in the stream of temporal change is nothing specifically
proper to a thing. To the essence of each unity, including each
non-substantial unity as mere unity of duration, pertain,
apriori, possibilities that the very duration is endowed with a
30 temporal fullness which is either the same throughout or,
abstraction made from isolated leaps, is changing continuously.
And to this there belongs everywhere the consciousness of unity,
which, in such temporal continuities, is consciousness of the
identical as something individual and which, if possible, inten-
35 tionally grasps the identical which endures there and changes.
For example, the tone, the pure datum of sensation, which is
 indeed not something substantially real, changes “ itself” with
respect to its intensity, yet in doing so it remains unchanged as
regards pitch, etc. Now it must be noted that the constitution of
real properties can also be accomplished at higher levels,
5 meaning, therefore, that hierarchical formations are possible,
according to which still higher unities, in turn, make themselves
manifest in unities of primordial manifestation and, if need be,
are determined therefrom by means of the thinking grounded in
experience. And this is valid universally.
10 Previously we had arrived at the principle of the co­
ordination of whatever is given schematically, namely that in
the apperception of the real what is formally determinate is:
similar circumstances — similar consequences. But this principle
requires a certain modification of the sense which was first
15 accorded to it up to now — where the circumstances were
schematic givens and so were the consequences.
There is no problem if we are only dealing with properties of
the lowest level and are experiencing the real as an enduring
unity of one and the same unchanged property.
20 But in the essence of any thing (as we grasp it in the essence
of experience, thus in ideally possible experience) there lies the [47]
ideal possibility of its (the real’s) changing. E.g., the spring is
elastic. Under similar schematic circumstances we experience
(or, ideally speaking, can experience) how there occur similar
25 schematic series of change or of permanence: the same modes
of oscillation invariably occur under impacts of the same vector
and the same force, passing gradually into the limit-case in
which the impact is O and henceforth the oscillation is O.
The impact can be so strong, however, that the “ limit of
30 elasticity ” is exceeded. Then the spring breaks and falls apart in
a heap of disconnected pieces. No longer do we have there the
unity of one real thing with the one elastic quality. Or, to take
another example, the spring is made red hot and thereby loses
its elasticity; or at least the elasticity is changed, insofar as it
35 does still remain.
These are property-changes, and the changed property once
again obeys, with respect to its schemata, the formal ru le: under
similar circumstances, similar consequences. But now the fac­
tual functional connection, the coordination between the sche­
 mata and the circumstances, is, despite a sameness in form,
different. And should the piece of steel be heated until it melts,
the elasticity would quite vanish. It is a changed thing, whether
it preserves its properties, though they have altered, or whether
5 it loses properties and acquires new ones of a different type,
perhaps exhibiting changes also in the properties of the type
which still subsists after the loss of the former properties, etc.
Thus we not only have unity in the changes o f properties and
in the individual changing property, as, in general, we have
10 unity in series of changes, but a new unity traverses the
property-changes; that is to say, the thing is of such a kind
that, under wholly determined changes of the real circum­
stances, it changes precisely its real properties in a determined
way. The series of changes of the real properties, in their
15 dependence on the changes of the real circumstances, once again
manifest £ unity. For all property-changes we have correspon­
ding changes in the circumstances. In all its modes of behavior
the thing is dependent on circumstances, and it is in relation to
circumstances that the thing is what it is. And in these modes of [48]
20 behavior there lies a unity, as a unitary property, insofar as
there occurs such a relation to circumstances that the thing is
seized in states which are dependent on the states of the
circumstances in such a way that motivated changes of circum­
stances are possible with which go hand in hand regulated
25 changes of the states of the thing. And this happens precisely in
such a way that similar series of changes of circumstances of
one and the same kind induce “ again and again,” within the
respective span of the duration of the thing, similar series of
changes of state of a corresponding kind. “ Again and again: ”
30 i.e., again and again I can bring the thing, which has its
identical unchanged optical character, under different illumina­
tions and series of illuminations. Again and again I can strike
the thing, which is elastic and which has its unchanged elastic
character, in different ways, etc.
35 Thus I have a segment in the duration of the thing, in which
the thing has precisely the unity of a real, and unchanged,
property. If the spring is made red hot, then a new segment of
thingly being begins; now it is inelastic and once more has a
corresponding, though new, property “ in place o f” elasticity.
 The same holds if the thing has lost its chromatic coloring by
becoming completely faded.
In this way the duration o f the being o f the thing, with respect
to any property, disperses itself into segments. But the overriding
5 unity o f the thing is still there; each first-degree property is
changeable, yet the changes o f the properties are again subject to
rules o f dependence in regard to circumstances.
Dependencies and constitutions of properties of a first degree
distinguish themselves everywhere from those of a higher
10 degree, and the formation of unity of higher degree is once
more a formation of real properties, since, precisely in the nexus
of experience, the changes of property of the lower degree are
not unmotivated but, for their part, again present themselves as
dependencies on real circumstances. Iron does not, of its own
15 accord, become red hot and change thereby certain complexes
of its real circumstances given in experience; instead this
happens under real circumstances, ones which can themselves be
experienced and which can be known, and originally experi­
enced, in their correspondence to rules. In the duration of a
20 thing ever new properties or changes of a property emerge, and
at times they are discontinuous as far as appearances are
concerned; yet a unity of reality traverses the totality of
changes, a unity of thoroughly regulated relations to real
circumstances, a unity of such a kind that each change which
25 already belongs on the level of reality is itself once more
causally regulated.
The intuitable thing is not apprehended just in the full rigor
of this idea of reality, although this idea, as one can see, is
already contained in the very formation of unity given in the
30 apprehension of it without further ado. It was the new science
of nature which first grasped this idea of a strict identity in the
absolutely determined and unequivocal dependencies of causal­
ity (an idea that has to be set off from any empirical apprehen­
sion) and which developed the demands implied in this idea,
35 demands which determine essentially the course of the scientific
research into nature. Connected to this is the fact that natural
science, in strict universality, seizes on the principle already
contained in the original apprehension of the thing, namely,
under similar circumstances, similar consequences, precisely as
 the correlate of the strict idea of the thing (the real). Likewise, it
holds to the principle: no change without cause, no alteration
without an identical thing altering. Accordingly, therefore, a
miracle, in the form of a metamorphosis of a thing into a
5 second thing, is, in truth, out of the question. All there can be,
in the best of cases, is a leap (perhaps proving to be only
apparently discrete) from main groups of properties into others,
but even this would only be in relation to circumstances and
according to fixed causal laws.1 Yet these are certainly not
10 matters of apriori necessity. It is indeed quite thinkable apriori
that a thing would change of its own accord, that it would
transform itself as to its real properties. Let us look a little more
closely. Would it be thinkable, for instance, that a thing lose its
elasticity of its own accord, that a coloration fade on its own,
15 that water dry up by itself?
In the apprehension of a thing— e.g. of a thing as colored,
elastic, etc. — there lies precisely that apprehension of property
of which we spoke, with its relation to circumstances. Included [50]
therein is the ideal possibility that, related to certain circum-
20 stances, the property remains unchanged. Certain properties can
change, without it having any influence on the thing at all. This
then means that much can be occurring in the surrounding
world while the given thing (insofar as we have it in intuition)
manifests no change whatsoever. These circumstances are not
25 ones with a real influence; they do not belong to the causal
nexus which is constitutive for the reality of the thing according
to any at all of its aspects. Once again, it may be that certain
dependencies subsist, that certain changes of circumstances have
consequences with regard to the thing, i.e., the corresponding
30 changes of state unfold in the thing in such a way that one and
the same unchanged real property announces itself. And if the
same series of circumstances unfold, the same series of states

1 Certainly no special discussion is needed concerning the formation o f a complex

of real properties of such a kind that through a casual relation to complex
circumstances unitary characters o f a thing come to the fore in experience, characters
which, meanwhile, in a more precise causal analysis, are dissolved into partial
properties.
 unfold as well, and thereby the property remains unchanged. A
special case is the one in which there takes place in the causal
circumstances a lapse of non-change (unchanged duration)
instead of a process of change; “ nothing is changing.” Cau-
5 sally, then, nothing can change, if it is a case of the conse­
quences depending simply on such circumstances.
Yet the naive understanding believes that a thing could change
on its own. Every apprehension of a thing takes place in the
midst of a co-apprehension of circumstances as conditioning.
10 But the thing never achieves a perfect givenness. And as to the
assertions we make about the thing, by no means do they follow
from what is actually given at that time. For, what the
apprehension of a thing requires, concerning the thing in
general and according to its concrete content, is not exhibited,
15 and the assertion is not governed merely by what is exhibited,
by the fulfilling givenness. That is, perception is not an experi­
ence which provides a full report about the thing. What arises
for reflection thereby is that we have to distinguish, regarding a
thing, between external and internal circumstances, between
20 externally caused and internally caused changes, processes,
etc.
Consideration must be taken of the fact that what natural
science claims about a thing, namely that it is constructed out o f
molecules and atoms, is already predelineated as a possibility in
25 the intuited thing, at any rate in the way in which a thing is
possible as a thing-aggregate with causal connections.
The theme o f division is one o f foremost importance; I refer to [51]
the apprehension of a thing as a thing-system, its construction
out of molecules, etc., where it is precisely this constructing that
30 is the problem. The idea of a real totality of real pieces, which
pieces, for their part, again function as things— how is that to
be grasped apriori? Which apriori possibilities do in fact exist
here? W hat about the apriori possibility of the “ continuous”
filling of space, and precisely as a real filling; and so what about
35 the possibility of an apprehension of the totality of natural
Objects as one continuous thing and the possibility of a
multiplicity of natural Objects which are spatially separated, but
each is, in itself, continuous? And, consequently, what about
the possibility of an apprehension of a continuous thing as a
 continuum of things? In the ideal division of one continuous
thing, can each part be grasped as a continuous unity of things?
What constitutes the unity of such a real continuum? Or is the
real fragmentation required apriori, according to which each
5 thing by necessity is really simple in itself or is composed out of
real pieces which are simple? And in such a way that what is
really simple indeed fills space continuously but does so in such
a manner that the ideal geometrical division does not, and
cannot, lead to a division in the real? What would bonding or
10 composition mean in that case? Here everything seems to be
easier than it is under the aspect of continuity. W hat distin­
guishes physical from chemical division? One could speak in this
way: a thing is in itself really [reell] composed if it is an
aggregate of things which stand in certain relations of reciprocal
15 action and, to be precise, in such a way that, over against
external causalities, they exhibit a unity of lawful relations and
have a total state which leads back to the elements’ singular
states, ones ruled by laws, and which does so, in general, in such
wise that the “ totality” behaves formaliter like a thing, with
20 reference to certain encompassing classes of “ circumstances.”
But then, in other appropriate circumstances, the totality does
“ break dow n” into its parts, ones which can again be for
themselves just as they are in the totality. On the other hand,
there is no need for a totality to contain its parts as separate,
25 which would be evident in the apprehension of continuity as
well, though under certain circumstances there does result a
thing-plurality of separate things which previously, in the
“ totality,” did not exist for themselves (Chemistry). A process
initiated by means of an external causal action, at first directly [52]
30 exerting itself on one “ molecule,” propagates itself in the
aggregate by virtue of the real-causal connections there. And
thus all sorts of things are still occurring in the aggregate after
all the external processes have ceased exercising their power. To
be sure, the external circumstances are still there, and they still
35 are circumstances. But such as they now are, and perhaps they
have not changed at all, they are irrelevant with regard to the
changes in the interior of the thing. Yet here, too, nothing
occurs “ of its own acccord.” Whatever occurs does so as a
consequence of prior external processes and by virtue of the full
 lawfulness of causality, which holds sway throughout both the
external and the internal.1
Nevertheless, can one really say it is excluded that a thing
change o f its own accord, “ transform ” itself by itself regarding
5 its properties, and on its own “disappear ” from the world? And
all this obviously on the basis of the essence of thing-appercep-
tion. Whatever can be seen and found in scientific experience is
already prescribed by universal thing-experience. Only what
remains open idealiter can exhibit itself in the course of
10 experience and in more precise determinations. Idealiter, a
disappearing of things, a self-modification that has no grounds,
could be possible, and yet we would have a right to reject it.
Indeed the course of actual experience can raise a protest
against such claims as: that is excluded by the character of
15 natural-scientific experience, countless apparent transformations
have been sufficiently explained, etc.
The preceding suffices for an understanding of the universal
type o f the constitutive thing-construction in the sphere of
intuition, in its remarkable stratification which, as can be seen
20 after all, is only a sort of continuation of an other, though
analogous, stratification, one in which the sensuous schema, the
lowest level of the formation of unity now considered by us, is
already constituted, for its part, as a unity.

Appendix
25 It will be observed that in our analyses we have limited
ourselves to a determinate type of material thinghood: namely,
that of the solid body. This restriction is not an arbitrary one;
on the contrary it can be shown that here is where we have to

1 In this connection is also to be considered the problem o f inertia and o f uniform

motion. Then are these somehow equivalent: qualitative unchange and uniform
qualitative change, and, accordingly, rest and uniform motion? What sort of
lawfulness is that, the one o f inertia? It does not say that uniform motion and
qualitative change are without cause, but it does say that once they have begun (even
if the cause “ disappears,” which is possible) they continue (or that the motion or
change, which was non-uniform as long as there was a cause, is transformed into a
uniform o n e ): a law o f the change o f effects.
 see the foundation of the constitution of material nature. Solid
bodies are constituted as things with a rigid spatial figure which,
in movement, is transported. There can be things in a medium
which also is thingly, like frogs in water, which, as lake or
5 stream or pond, is a thing and bears things in itself.1 All the
things of the original “ world ” are, hence, in the medium of air,
which, however, for the most part is not noticed and which is
first grasped as a medium by means of voluntary and vigorous
movements of the hand, etc., or by means of some other body’s
10 rapid motion making one feel the “ breeze.” A medium can be
“ thicker” or “ thinner” and so allow motion more grudgingly
or more easily. The resistance can be so slight that it becomes
unnoticeable. Media can be transparent and visible, or transpar­
ent and invisible, or, finally, even non-transparent.
15 While the solid body which was given as first is constituted as
something identical throughout motion and rest, in qualitative
change and permanence, as something which is identifiable as
being for itself in relation to the normal case of kinematic and
qualitative permanence, and is constituted from the start, by
20 means of the sense of sight and touch, in two strata which are
relatively closed and which offer the qualitatively filled Gestalt
“ completely” — on the other hand, with the media, things are
quite different. They, too, are constituted for us as bodies (fluid
or gaseous ones) in the sense of material things, but they present
25 themselves as a filling of space or as filled spatialities which
contain in themselves or can contain, as moveable therein
against greater or lesser resistance, material things of the first
and originally constituted kind, viz., solid bodies. Media are not
constituted as bodies having a fixed shape but, instead, only
30 have shape when another body is there either serving as a
“ container” or exercising in some different way an influence
which can determine a shape for them.
If we take into consideration the possibility of a fluid body,
then we have to say that such a thing cannot be perceived
35 originally but can only be acquired by means of indirect
processes of experiencing and thinking. But it is important here

1 On the concept o f a medium, c f also p. 65.

 to follow up the sequence of the levels of constitution and to do
so by beginning with the things which are given primordially
and which exhibit themselves primordially, and these are the
solid bodies.
5 Transparent solid bodies themselves already represent a
deviation from the normal case of original constitution. E.g., in
a certain orientation, a flat, colorless, glass plate, large enough
to fill the entire visual field, is not visible. It has no surface
colors, and it presents no visual aspect whatsoever. But with
10 changes in the orientation, “ edges” emerge, by virtue of its
relation to other bodies, and thereby visual appearances emerge
as well, which, yet, do not deliver up the total Object as a visual
schema, because brightness (which can even conceal the color of
non-transparent bodies), reflections, and images of the things
15 seen through it stand in the way. Thus it is touch which gives [54]
these bodies as normal bodies, though to “ norm al” constitu­
tion there belongs precisely a parallel givenness for sight and
touch.

§ 17. Materiality and substantiality

20 In our considerations we have purposely allowed the univer­

sal of thinghood, i.e., “ reality,” to come to the fore with more
strength versus what belongs to materiality as such as the
specific character of extensive reality. This universal — for
which, surely, “ reality” would be the best term — is called
25 substance. (Unfortunately, all these philosophical expressions
are laden with equivocation and lack any clarification in
depth.). On the contrary, we have here obtained, out of
intuition, a firm essential content, whose fundamental meaning
is evident. In order to distinguish these genuine “ realities” from
30 the common, widest sense of the word, where every individual
(or temporal) being would be included, we will speak of
substantial reality; and this is precisely what is to be understood
from now on whenever we speak simply of substantiality or
substance or thing. Accordingly, extensive substance is to count
35 for us only as a particular type of substance. We have already
spoken above of the role of extension (corporeality). From that,
 it is clear that determinations such as site, figure, etc., as
pertaining to extension, are not substantial properties. Instead,
they are causal properties through and through. As to their
mode of givenness, they are not unities of primordial manifes-
5 tation; rather, they belong already to the schema. This does not
prevent these, too, i.e., the figure and site of a thing, from being
dependent on circumstances, as regards change and perma­
nence, or from being experienceable in this causal dependency.
Related to this, the specific determinations of extension become
10 primordial manifestations of the real properties characteristic of
a thing, on which, for their part, the properties which primor-
dially manifest themselves in the fullness of the schema are
functionally dependent. In this way we experience, in the thing,
solidity and fluidity, elasticity, etc. E.g., to react to an impact by
15 way of vibrations, and, according to the circumstances, by way
of vibrations of a certain kind and frequency, is a primordial
manifestation of elasticity and, in fact, of a definite and
particular elasticity, that, say, of a watch spring. These then are
substantial properties as are the others; they belong to the
20 material thing, which is extended in space with them as with all
its substantial properties and which has its spatial form and its [55]
site, these latter for their part not being material properties.
 THE AESTHETA IN THEIR RELATION
TO THE AESTHETIC BO DY 1

§ 18. The subjectively conditioned factors

5 of the constitution of the thing;
the constitution of the Objective material thing2

Our entire analysis has been moving in a determinate narrow

frame, the limits of which we must fix. The real unity, which
was constituted for us in levels, has nevertheless, with all these
10 levels, not reached the ultimate one, the level on which the
Objective material thing is actually constituted. What it is that
we have described is the thing constituted in the continuous-
unitary manifold of the sense intuitions of an experiencing Ego
or in the manifold of “ sense-things” of various levels: multipli-
15 cities of schematic unities, of real states and real unities on
various levels. It is the thing fo r the solitary subject, the subject
thought of ideally as isolated, except that this subject in a
certain sense remains forgotten to itself and equally forgotten
by the one who is doing the analysis.

20 a) The intuitive qualities of the material thing in

their dependencies on the experiencing subject-Body
Nevertheless, this self-forgetfulness is hardly appropriate for
the restoration of the full givenness of a thing, a givenness in

1 Aestheta refers here, as it does in the previous chapter, to material things as such
in their aesthetic structure.
2 Concerning this paragraph, see also the third chapter o f Section Two.
 which the thing exhibits its actual reality. We need only consider
how a thing exhibits itself as such, according to its essence, in
order to recognize that such an apprehension must contain, at
the very outset, components which refer back to the subject,
5 specifically the human (or, better: animal) subject in a fixed
sense.
The qualities of material things as aestheta, such as they [56]
present themselves to me intuitively, prove to be dependent on
my qualities, the make-up o f the experiencing subject, and to be
10 related to my Body and my “normal sensibility. ”
The Body is, in the first place, the medium o f all perception; it
is the organ o f perception and is necessarily involved in all
perception.1 In seeing, the eyes are directed upon the seen and
run over its edges, surfaces, etc. When it touches objects, the
15 hand slides over them. Moving myself, I bring my ear closer in
order to hear. Perceptual apprehension presupposes sensation-
contents, which play their necessary role for the constitution of
the schemata and, so, for the constitution of the appearances of
the real things themselves. To the possibility o f experience there
20 pertains, however, the spontaneity o f the courses of presenting
acts of sensation, which are accompanied by series of kinesthetic
sensations and are dependent on them as motivated: given with
the localization o f the kinesthetic series in the relevant moving
member o f the Body is the fact that in all perception and
25 perceptual exhibition (experience) the Body is involved as freely
moved sense organ, as freely moved totality o f sense organs, and
hence there is also given the fact that, on this original founda­
tion, all that is thingly-real in the surrounding world of the Ego
has its relation to the Body.
30 Furthermore, obviously connected with this is the distinction
the Body acquires as the bearer of the zero point of orientation,
the bearer of the here and the now, out of which the pure Ego
intuits space and the whole world of the senses. Thus each thing
that appears has eo ipso an orienting relation to the Body, and
35 this refers not only to what actually appears but to each thing
that is supposed to be able to appear. If I am imagining a

1 On this point, cf. also pp. 135 ft.

 centaur I cannot help but imagine it as in a certain orientation
and in a particular relation to my sense organs: it is “ to the
right” of me; it is “ approaching” me or “ moving aw ay;” it is
“ revolving,” turning toward or away from “ m e” — from me,
5 i.e., from my Body, from my eye, which is directed at it. In
phantasy, I do look at the centaur; i.e., my eye, freely moved, [57]
goes back and forth, accommodating itself in this or that way,
and the visual “ appearances,” the schemata, succeed one
another in motivated “ appropriate ” order, whereby they pro-
10 duce the consciousness of an experience of an existing centaur-
object viewed in various ways.
Besides its distinction as a center of orientation, the Body, in
virtue of the constitutive role of the sensations, is of significance
for the construction o f the spatial world. In all constitution of
15 spatial thinghood, two kinds of sensations, with totally different
constituting functions, are involved, and necessarily so, if
representations of the spatial are to be possible. The first kind
are the sensations which constitute, by means of the apprehen­
sions allotted to them, corresponding features o f the thing as
20 such by way of adumbration. For example, the sensation-colors
with their sensation-expansions: it is in the apprehension of
these that the corporeal colorations appear together with the
corporeal extension of these colorations. Likewise, in the tactual
sphere, thingly roughness appears in the apprehension of the
25 roughness-sensations, and corporeal warmth appears in relation
to the sensation of warmth, etc.
The second kind are the “ sensations ” which do not undergo
such apprehensions but which, on the other hand, are neces­
sarily involved in all those apprehensions of the sensations of
30 the first kind, insofar as, in a certain way, they motivate those
apprehensions and thereby themselves undergo an apprehension
of a completely different type, an apprehension which thus
belongs correlatively to every constituting apprehension. In all
constitution and on all levels, we have, by necessity, “ circum-
35 stances,” related one to the other, and “ that which is depend­
ent o n ” all the circumstances: everywhere, we find the “ if-
then” or the “ because-therefore. ” Those sensations which
undergo extensional apprehension (leading to the extended
features of the thing) are motivated as regards the courses they
 take either actually or possibly and are apperceptively related to
motivating series, to systems, o f kinesthetic sensations, which
freely unfold in the nexus of their familiar order in such a way
that if a free unfolding of one series of this system occurs (e.g., [58]
5 any movement of the eyes or fingers), then from the interwoven
manifold as motive, the corresponding series must unfold as
motivated. In this way, from the ordered system of sensations in
eye movement, in head movement freely moved, etc., there
unfold such and such series in vision. That is, while this is
10 happening, there unfold, in motivated order, “ images” of the
thing that was perceptually apprehended to begin the eye
movement and, likewise, the visual sensations pertaining to the
thing in each case. An apprehension of a thing as situated at
such a distance, as oriented in such a way, as having such a
15 color, etc., is unthinkable, as can be seen, without these sorts of
relations of motivation. In the essence of the apprehension itself
there resides the possibility of letting the perception disperse
into “possible ” series of perceptions, all of which are of the
following type: if the eye turns in a certain way, then so does the
20 “ image; ” if it turns differently in some definite fashion, then so
does the image alter differently, in correspondence. We con­
stantly find here this two-fold articulation: kinesthetic sensations
on the one side, the motivating; and the sensations of features on
the other, the motivated. The like holds, obviously, for touch
25 and, similarly, everywhere. Perception is without exception a
unitary accomplishment which arises essentially out of the play­
ing together of two correlatively related functions. At the same
time, it follows that functions o f spontaneity belong to every
perception. The processes of the kinesthetic sensations are free
30 processes here, and this freedom in the consciousness of their
unfolding is an essential part of the constitution of spatiality.

b) The significance of normal perceptual conditions for

the constitution of the intuited thing and the significance
of abnormalities (change of the Body, change in the thing)
35 Now the processes of perception, in virtue of which one and
the same external world is present to me, do not always exhibit
the same style; instead, there are distinctions which make
 themselves noticeable. At first, the same unchanged Objects
appear, according to the changing circumstances, now this way,
now in another way. The same unchanged form has a changing
appearance, according to its position in relation to my Body; [59]
5 the form appears in changing aspects, which present “it itself”
more or less “advantageously. ” If we disregard this and instead
consider real properties, then we find that one and the same
Object, maintaining one identical form, does have different
color appearances (the form as filled), according to its position
10 relative to an illuminating body; furthermore, the color appear­
ances are different when it stands under different illuminating
bodies, but all this happens in an ordered fashion, one which
may be determined more precisely in regard to appearances. At
the same time, certain conditions prove to be the “ normal ”
15 ones: seeing in sunlight, on a clear day, without the influence of
other bodies which might affect the color-appearance. The
“ optimum ” which is thereby attained then counts as the color
itself, in opposition, for example, to the red light of the sunset
which “ outshines ” all proper colors. All other color properties
20 are “aspects o f,” “ appearances o f,” this pre-eminent color-
appearance (which latter is called “ appearance” only in an
other sense: namely, with respect to a higher level, the physical-
istic thing, still to be discussed). Yet it is inherent in the thing
that its normal color keeps changing, precisely in dependence on
25 whatever illuminating bodies are involved, whether the day is
one of clear light or is hazy, etc., and it is only with the return
of the normal circumstances that the normal color re-appears.
“ In itself” there belongs to a body a color as being in itself, and
this color is grasped in seeing, but it ever appears differently,
30 and the aspect it presents depends thoroughly on the Objective
circumstances, and it can be distinguished there either more or
less easily (with the limit case of complete invisibility). And the
degree of visibility affects the form, too.
It should also be examined whether from the very start all
35 Objective circumstances are apperceived as causal, as emanating
from things. Certain circumstances exhibit periodic changes—
e.g., the relations of night and day— and correspondingly the
things which otherwise are experienced as unchanged, for
instance things given as unchanged for the sense of touch,
 undergo periodic changes in the unfolding of their visual
characters. With regard to the visual mode of givenness, which
brings out the color characteristics as well as the form charac­
teristics that become visible along with them, a privilege
5 attaches to clear daylight, such that there not only does the form [60]
become visible in a particularly favorable way up to its finer
details, but also in this light such global characteristics are
visible through which properties of other sense spheres are
co-announced at the same time, properties given in the nexus of
10 these experiences as not affected by the change of color (e.g.,
the material attributes, which are disclosed when the surface
structure become visible). Therefore in the series of possible
appearances a certain givenness of the thing is privileged in that
with it is given, o f the thing as a whole, what is relatively the best,
15 and this acquires the character of what is especially intended: it
is the predominating focus of the “ interest, ” what the experi­
ence is tending toward, terminates in, is fulfilled in; and the other
modes of givenness become intentionally related to this “ opti­
m al” one.
20 Included in the normal experience, in which the world is
originally constituted as world, " the way it is, ” are still other
conditions o f normal experience: e.g., seeing in air — which
counts as immediate seeing, seeing without any mediating
things — touching by immediate contact, etc. If I interpose a
25 foreign medium1 between my eye and the things seen, then all
things undergo a change in appearance; more precisely, all
phantom-unities undergo a change. It will be said: the same
thing is seen, but through different media. The thing has no
dependency on such changes; it remains the same. Only the
30 “ mode of appearance” of the thing (in this case, the appear­
ance of the phantom) depends on whether this or that medium
is mediating between the eye and the thing. Transparent glass is
indeed a medium that can be seen through, but it changes the
images of things in different ways according to its different
35 curvatures, and, if it is colored, it transmits its color to
them — all that belongs in the realm of experience. Finally, if I

1 C f above, p. 57.
 put on colored lenses, then everything looks changed in color. If
I knew nothing of this medium, then for me all things would be
colored. Insofar as I have experiential knowledge of it, this
judgment does not arise. The givenness of sense-things counts, [61]
5 with regard to the color, as seemingly given, and semblance
again means a mode of givenness which could possibly also
occur in this way within the system of normal givenness, under
the appropriate circumstances, and which would induce an
Objectively false apprehension where there are motives prompt-
10 ing a mixup, something those circumstances are very likely to
bring about. The “false ” lies in the contradiction with the
normal system o f experience. (The change of appearance is a
uniform one for all the things, recognizable as a uniform change
according to type.)
15 The case is the same if we take, instead of an interposition of
a medium between organ and thing, an abnormal change o f an
organ itself If I am touching something with a blister on my
finger, or if my hand has been abraded, then all the tactual
properties of the thing are given differently. If I cross my eyes,
20 or if I cross my fingers, then I have two “ things of sight” or
two “ things of touch,” though I maintain that only one actual
thing is present. This belongs to the general question of the
constitution of a thingly unity as an apperceptive unity o f a
manifold o f different levels which themselves are already apper-
25 ceived as unities of multiplicities. The apperception acquired in
relation to usual perceptual conditions obtains a new appercep­
tive stratum by taking into consideration the new “ experience”
of the dispersion of the one thing of sight into a pair and of the
fusion of the pair in the form of a continuous overlapping and
30 convergence in the regular return to the former perceptual
conditions. The doubled things of sight are indeed completely
analogous with the other things of sight, but only the latter have
the additional meaning of “ things;” and the lived experience
has the meaning of a lived experience o f perception only as
35 related to a certain "position o f the two eyes," the homologous
one or one from the system of normal eye positions. If a
heterology now occurs, then I indeed have analogous images,
but they mean things only in contradiction to all normal
motivations. The images now once again obtain the apprehen­
 sion, “ actual thing,” precisely through the constitutive nexus,
i.e., the motivation which puts them in a concordant relation to [62]
the system o f motivated perceptual manifolds. If I take my eyes
out of a normal position into a disparate crossed position, then
5 two semblant images arise; “ semblant im ages:” i.e., images
which would, each for itself, present “ the thing” only if I lent
them normal motivations.
A further important consideration deals with other groups of
abnormalities. If I ingest santonin, then the whole world
10 “ seems” to change; e.g., it “ alters” its color. The “ alteration”
is a “ seeming. ” Afterwards, as is the case with every change of
colored lighting, etc., I once again have a world which matches
the norm al: everything is then concordant and changes or does
not change, moves or is at rest, as usual, and it displays the
15 same systems of aspects as before.
But here it must be observed that rest and motion, change
and permanence, get their sense by means of the constitution of
thinghood as reality, in which such occurrences, especially the
limit cases of rest and permanence, play an essential role.
20 Therefore the global coloring of all seen things can easily
“ change,” for example when a body emits rays of light which
“ cast their shine” over all things. There is more to the
constitution of the “ change of things according to color” than
just a change of the filled schemata with respect to color:
25 change o f things is, from the very outset, constituted as causal
change in relation to causal circumstances, as, for example, each
advent of an illuminating body. I can apprehend the change
without seeing such an illuminating body, but in that case the
causal circumstance is, in an indeterminate way, co-apperceived.
30 These causal circumstances, however, are of the order of things.
The relativity o f the spatial things with reference to other ones
determines the sense o f the change in things. But the psycho­
physical conditionalities do not belong here in the least. This must
be kept in mind. It goes without saying, however, that my Body
35 is indeed involved in the causal nexuses: if it is apprehended as
a thing in space, it is certainly not apprehended as mere schema [63]
but instead as the point of intersection of real causalities in the
real (exclusively spatio-thingly) nexus. Belonging to this sphere
is, for example, the fact that a stroke of my hand (considered
 purely as the striking of a corporeal thing, i.e., excluding the
lived experience of the “ I strike” ) acts exactly the same as a
stroke of any other material thing, and, similarly, the fall of my
Corporeal body is like any other fall, etc.1
5 Now concerning the intake of santonin, this too is therefore,
abstracting from all “ concomitant psychic facts,” a material
process, one which could very well, if required by the constitu­
tion of the world of experience, or by the further elaboration of
the constitution of the experience of this world in the course of
10 new experiences, enter into a real relation with the optical
change of the rest of the material world. In itself it is thus
thinkable that I would find experiential motives for seeing a
general change in the color of the entire visible world and for
regarding the change, in this apprehension, as a real-causal
15 consequence of the material process of ingesting santonin (with
its Bodily-material consequences). It would be a normal percep­
tion just like any other. As long as, and whenever, I experience
the change of all visible colors as an optical change of the
things, I must assume a causal relation between whatever
20 causing thinghoods there might be; it is only in the causal nexus
that a change is precisely a change of a thing. As soon as
experiential motives arise in opposition, then there must neces­
sarily take place a transformation in the apprehension, in virtue
of which the “ change ” that is seen loses the sense of a change
25 and forthwith acquires the character o f “seeming. ” A semblant
change is a schematic transformation apprehended as a change
under normal conditions, thus in relation to experiences consti­
tutive of causality. But now it is given in a way which cancels
the causal apprehension. The causal apprehension is suggested
30 by the given schematic transformation: it is as if it would
present a change, but this is, under the given circumstances,
excluded. The intake of santonin is not, with respect to the [64]
general “ change in color, ” a process which is or which could be
apprehended as a cause. The shift in color of all seen things is

1 To be sure, it still remains to be discussed to what extent the solitary subject has
the possibility o f apprehending his Body as a material body like any other. Cf.
pp. 165 ff.
 such that there is not even an incentive to regard it at all as a
real change of the illumination (e.g., in the manner of a light
source emitting colored rays). It is therefore that it presents
itself as a semblant change; everything looks “ as though ” there
5 were a new source of light shining, or “ as if, ” in some other
way, real causes were there effecting a general optical change
(even if these causes were undetermined, unknown). But such
causes may not now be presupposed; they are, given the total
experiential situation, excluded.
10 We have to ask: what can, on the basis o f a transformation in
the sense-thing, totally cancel the apperception o f real change in
this way, in opposition to the cases in which such an appercep­
tion, already accomplished, merely undergoes a modification
(by the fact that a different causal nexus is substituted for the
15 one that had been supposed, that is, the assumed cause aban­
doned but another cause accepted)? The answer is a modifica­
tion in the sphere of psychophysical "causality ” or, rather,
"conditionality, ” to say it better. (For a causa in the proper
sense is precisely a real cause. The subjective, however, is, in
20 opposition to reality, an irreality. Reality and irreality belong
together essentially in the form of reality and subjectivity, which
on the one hand mutually exclude one another and on the other
hand, as is said, essentially require one another). Besides the
relations of the real to the real, which belong to the essence of
25 everything real as spatial, temporal, and causal relations, there
also belong to this essence relations of psychophysical condi­
tionality in possible experience. Things are “ experienced,” are
“ intuitively given” to the subject, necessarily as unities of a
spatio-temporal-causal nexus, and necessarily pertaining to this
30 nexus is a pre-eminent thing, “ my Body, ” as the place where,
and always by essential necessity, a system of subjective condi­
tionality is interwoven with this system of causality and indeed
in such a way that in the transition from the natural attitude
(the regard directed in experience to nature and life) to the
35 subjective attitude (the regard directed to the subject and to
moments of the subjective sphere), real existence, and manifold [65]
real changes as well, are given as in conditional connection with
subjective being, with a state of being in the subjective sphere.
Something thingly is experienced (perceptually apperceived, to
 give privilege to the originary experience) in such a way that,
through a mere shift of focus, there emerge relations of depen­
dency of the apperceived state of the thing on the sphere of
sensation and on the rest of the subjective sphere. Here we have
5 the primordial state o f psychophysical conditionality (under this
heading are included all conditional relations which run back
and forth between thingly and subjective being). To every
psychophysical conditionality there necessarily appertains soma-
tological causality, which immediately always concerns the
10 relations of the irreal, of an event in the subjective sphere, with
something real, the Body: then mediately the relations with an
external real thing which is in a real, hence causal, connection
with the Body.

c) The significance of psychophysical conditionality

15 for the various levels of constitution
The real world is originally constituted in levels, in such a
way that the manifold of sense-things (the manifold of the full
schemata) is erected as substratum in the unity of the spatial
form. The sense-things are thereby constituted in the subjective
20 way of “ orientation ” and are constituted for us (whether or not
this is a matter of necessity is a special problem) such that a
distinctive sense-thing, the “ Body,” is given as the constant
bearer of the center of orientation. The realizing is then
completed in such a way that the sense-things become states of
25 real things; the system of real qualities is constituted, a system
of regulated reciprocal relations of the sense-things under the
heading, causality.
It is the constitution of the substratum which bestows on all
things in experience, i.e., insofar as they are, in their momentary
30 states, sense-things, the most original psychophysical condition­
ality. The sense-things are what they are as unities “ in ” a
manifold of perceptions and kinesthetic constellations of subjec- [66]
tivity, and they are thereby always in consciousness as motivat­
ing with regard to the corresponding aspects as motivated. Only
35 in this nexus are the aspects aspects o f sense-things. There is
involved here essentially a possible change o f attitude by means
of which the sense-thing, in its givenness, is made conditionally
 dependent on Corporeality, on my opening my eyes to look, on
my eye movements, on my running my hands, hands moved by
subjectivity, over things in order to feel them, etc. This total
system of conditionality, which connects sense-things and sub-
5 jective occurrences in a regulated way, is what underlies the
higher stratum of apperception and then becomes the psycho­
physical conditionality between, on the one side, my Body and
its causal interweavings in extra-Bodily nature, and, on the
other side, the subjective courses of sensation, courses of
10 changing aspects, etc. To this primordial state of psychophysical
conditionalities, new conditionalities are then added, ones which
already presuppose their constitution, i.e., ones arising from
abnormalities o f the Body.
In the system of normal — “ orthoaesthetic ” — appear-
15 ances, which coalesce into the unity of one concordant experi­
ence, occasionally breaks occur. All things suddenly appear
changed, the Body as well. The system of the orthoaesthetic
appearances of the same thing falls apart in groups, and
discordant appearances can arise by groups. If we limit our-
20 selves to these groups, in which the thing already appears fo r
itself as concordantly identical, then, with the transition from
the earlier nexuses in the same group to the new ones, the thing
presents itself as “ suddenly changed,” whereas it is given as
unchanged in the other groups. By itself each partial system, as
25 a perceptual system, has equal rights. Thus we get discordance,
and at first it means nothing to say summarily that perceptions
of the one sense could be “ rectified” by those of the other
senses. Supplemented perhaps, insofar as they all contribute
constitutively to the givenness of the thing. The appearing thing
30 thus refers back to all of them and leaves open much, as
momentary appearance, in the various sense spheres, which can
be determined more precisely, hence supplemented, by means of
new perceptions and by recourse to perceptions of a sense
sphere which was not involved but to which we were referred
35 indeterminately.
To begin, let us take the case in which only one sense is
impaired, one sense organ happens into an abnormal state,
while the other senses continue to function normally. The
impaired sense being excluded, we have a world-apprehension
 that is concordant throughout, and up to the moment of the
impairment, we have the same for that sense too.
The sense organ in question can be experienced by the other,
normally functioning, ones, and so can the particular thingly
5 causal circumstances to which it is subject. I see, for example,
how my hand is burnt, or I see that my hand is swollen, etc.
Moreover, abnormal sensations within the field o f sensation o f the
organ in question will arise, thus ones issuing from the side of
aesthesiological Corporeality. The changed data of the field of
10 touch are indeed still apperceived according to appearances
but precisely as anomalies, versus the concordant appearances
of normally functioning sensibility, in which the same things are
given in relation to the equally concordant and normally
appearing parts of the Body and in relation to the whole Body.
15 The change of the sense organ in question conditions, in this
relation, a group of anomalous givennesses of the thing.
Thereby I experience: it is the same thing which is given— in a
modified way by the injured hand, in a normal way by the
sound. Concordance is not cancelled altogether; something not
20 unlike is appearing, just “ colored” differently for the hand
which seems to be such and such, i.e., which is given by the
other senses as such and such. In short, for sense organs
changed in a certain way all things appear in a corresponding
way, and this modified givenness refers back to the normal.
25 Within the domain of the subjective perceptual conditions as
well, there thus results an " optimum ” of appearance (which
m ay— with the healing of the originally injured organ or by the
use of artificial aids— only appear subsequently in opposition
to the former “ norm al” perception).
30 The constitution of nature by the subject must of course be
accomplished in such a way that at first is constituted normally
precisely a nature with a Body, within an open horizon of [68]
possible experience of further properties of things and of the
Body. The normal constitution is the one which constitutes the
35 first reality of the world and of the Body, the reality which has
to be constituted to make possible thereby the constitution of
apperceptive transformations precisely as transformations, as
incorporating "anomalous ” experiential circumstances, taking
into account the reality of higher strata as the new relations of
40 dependence.
 The system of causality into which the Body is interwoven in
normal apperception is of such a kind that the Body, throughout
all the changes it undergoes, still remains within the compass o f
an identity o f type. The changes of the Body, as a system of
5 perceptual organs, are free movements of this Body, and the
organs can, without compulsion, return again to the same base
position. They do not thereby change in a way that would
modify the type of the sensibility; they can always accomplish
the same thing and always in the same way: namely, for the
10 constitution of outer experiences. (Likewise, there is a normal
praxis of voluntary getting hold of, and working upon, the
sensible world.) “ Sensibility” here refers to what is Objective:
in a normal way I have to be able to grasp rest precisely as rest,
non-change as non-change, and therein all senses must
15 accord.
Anomalies emerge when real-causal changes of the Body first
disturb the normal function of individual organs as perceptual
organs. E.g., the finger is burnt, and this change of the physical
Body (of the finger as material) has the psychophysical conse-
20 quence that the touched body in its thingly content as touched
appears to be endowed with quite different properties than
before, and this applies to every body touched by this finger. In
our example— the injury of a hand— the possibility of thing-
constitution is preserved. But we have two hands, and the entire
25 surface of the Body serves as a touch surface, and the Body
itself as a system of touch organs. All these furnish the touch
properties, only in different degrees of perfection and also, I
might say, with different “ colorings.” At least the two hands
can take each other’s place and give essentially similar [69]
30 “ images.” But in any case the same thing-property is consti­
tuted versus the differences in the tactile images.
But what if the sense of touch were completely impaired or
underwent a total pathological change? Then again, what if
both eyes were diseased and yielded images changed in an
35 essential way, images in which things would appear as changed,
with changed sense qualities? With the other organs, of course,
I do not see and I have no grasp of colors, the specifically visual
qualities.
Yet the identity of the thing endures— in the sense of touch —
 and, furthermore, so does the relation of the visual “ images”
to this same thing. The coordination of the senses, even if in a
changed way, remains preserved (otherwise I would, e.g., have
colored spots in the field of sensation but no appearances of
5 things). It is still the same thing which I touch and which I see.
The fact that the spatial forms have not changed and that the
haziness is a mere subjective modification of the appearances,
similar to a normal seeing, but without the proper accommoda­
tion, is due to the sense of touch and to the earlier stretches of
10 visual perception, prior to the pathological change. It is not that
the sense of touch as such has a priority. But there belongs to
the thing its optimal constitutive content, to which all other data
intentionally refer back; and if the sense of sight from the very
outset yielded only hazy contours, while the sense of touch
15 provided sharp and more subtle differentiations, then the seen
form would indeed “ coincide” with the touched, but the form
as touched would acquire a priority. To speak more accurately:
the thing itself does not have two forms which are superimposed
but instead one form (and likewise one surface) which can be
20 both touched and seen. Ideally, every sense can yield the same
data and do so equally well, but de facto one sense often
provides more than another, and a good pair of spectacles can
transform my chronic and accustomed blurry vision into one so
good that the sense of sight achieves a priority.
25 To be sure, color is not a quality that is given as the same by
means of several senses in different modes of appearance. If the
normal lighting circumstances (daylight, etc.) are absent, or if I
am completely blind, then for me it becomes night. I do not see
anything, all I have in my visual field is darkness. The same is
30 true if I shut my eyes or cover them. It will be said that the [70]
objects still have their color, but I do not see them. I do not
have them in sight, but they do not cease to be, and I can
indeed perceive them by touch. By means of the sense of touch,
I am always in the world perceptually, I am able to find my way
35 around in it, and I can grasp and get to know whatever I want.
But I can also see (visually, the world is not continually given;
that is rather a privilege of the sense of touch), and it is the
same things which have color, even if I do not exactly see them,
for, unless I am hindered, I can easily go there until I see, or
 perhaps just raise my eyelids, turn my head, focus my gaze, etc.
In this, the sense of touch always plays its part, as it is indeed
obviously privileged amongst the contributors to the constitu­
tion of a thing.
5 It has become night, all things retain their color, but it is
permanently night, light is now no m ore— could such a con­
sciousness arise for me, as solipsistic subject, if I became blind,
for instance by being struck on the eyes? Or is this the
consciousness that is more likely to be motivated: there is day
10 and night as before, but I do not see any longer? It depends on
the apperception of the respective Objective and subjective
perceptual circumstances as such. In any case one fact remains:
I still have eyes, which touching tells me, but I do not see with
them any more. For normal persons, things are not constituted
15 as things by building them out of seen things and touched
things. There is but one and the same thing, along with its
properties, some of which are predominately or exclusively (as,
e.g., colors and their distinctions) grasped by vision, others by
touch. The thing is not split apart by the two groups of
20 appearances; on the contrary, it is constituted in unitary
apperception. The visualness does not offer any property-
complexes which could be taken away, as if the thing itself had
in itself a visual element as something it could gain or lose. It
makes no sense to assign to each sense its property-complexes
25 as separate components of the thing any more than it makes
sense to claim that the “ prim ary” properties are somehow
doubled when grasped by the different senses. But the color,
which does indeed present itself as something of the thing itself,
as constitutive property, is given perceptually precisely only in
30 seeing. It is unthinkable that it would appear, as color, by
means of touch. To be a mirroring surface, to shine, these also [71]
are visible properties. But to brightness as seen property corre­
sponds smoothness as touched, and are these not, in the thing
itself, one and the same? Thus color could have a parallel in the
35 sphere of tactile appearances, could have exactly parallel series
of distinctions, corresponding to parallel series of changes under
similar circumstances. In that case the same would obtain here
as occurs with the primary properties. We would then say,
“ What appears in a certain way only to the sense of vision
 would appear, in a parallel way, to the sense of touch as well, in
the way appropriate to touch.” But as a matter of fact, this
does not obtain for the constitutive appearances of sense-things
(including perception-things). Color is seen and nothing but
5 seen, and yet it belongs to the thing; it should hence be
thinkable that any sense which in general lets the thing appear
originarily would also do so for every property of this thing. The
color is the color of the spatial form, just as the smoothness is
the smoothness of the spatial form; the color is precisely there
10 where the smoothness is. One could thus declare it to be an
ideal requirement for each and every sense: insofar as it claims
to give the thing in the original, there must exist an ideal
possibility of series of appearances of this sense, in which every
constitutive property of the thing would come to originary
15 givenness.
On the other hand, we need to consider whether, where this
ideally possible correction by means of the other senses does not
exist, the apperception is possible: things “ lose their color.” It
is said, indeed with a certain justification, “ The color changes
20 along with the illumination and disappears when night comes. ”
Color disappears in twilight, passes into “ colorlessness,” but
then it is not only the color of the things that disappears, but
the things too become more and more indistinct until finally
they are no longer visible at all. Obviously, we must hereby
25 distinguish sensation-color (in a generalized sense), which flows
over into blackness, and the thing’s own color, which actually
disappears for us.
As long as the thing “ is constituted for me, ” as long as the
possibility (the faculty) remains open to me of experiencing the
30 properties of a thing and specifically of experiencing colors
under the experiential circumstances which belong to the con­
tent of the constitutive apperception, then I legitimately judge
that things are colored and do so determined by motives which
either lie in the apperception of the thing itself or lie mediately [72]
35 in the apperceived nexuses which are attached to other experi­
enced things. In that case I do not for the moment need to see
the color of the thing or to see anything at all. (What is essential
is that the Body is co-experienced as functioning in the percep­
tion. That the things, in their “ w hat,” work causally, in percep-
 tion, on the Body and its affected organs, and that the
sensation, etc., is tied up with them in psychophysical condition­
ality— all this also belongs here constitutively, hence quite
obviously. Yet anomalies occur.) Anomalies as such can there-
5 fore occur only in this form, namely that the normal world
remains constitutively preserved, i.e., experienced, by the rest of
the perceptual organs, the ones which, functioning reciprocally
for each other as such organs, continue to give us experiences in
the normal way. On the other hand, the abnormal organ and
10 the causation which has altered it also belong, by virtue of these
other senses, to the normally given world. But the abnormal
organ loses, together with its normal form, its normal psycho­
physical conditionality, and a new one is substituted. All things
perceived by such an organ appear in other aspects, not the
15 normal ones. The “ injured” or diseased organ, in its function­
ing in. perception, occasions changed appearances of things. Or,
rather, the things are not such as they then seem; they appear
perhaps as changed things would normally appear, but this is
mere semblance. It is a regular psychophysical-conditional con-
20 sequence of the disease of the organ. Thus what does the world
gain thanks to such experiences? The material world remains an
experienced world. It presents itself as it is, if the Corporeality is
normal; but if the Corporeality is abnormal, then it is given in
anomalous appearances (yet these are normal sense-things or,
25 more clearly expressed, phantoms). Hence this is the case if the
experiencing subject, within the persistent system of normal, or
what is the same, continuous, world-constituting experiences,
discovers an abnormal part of the Body and thereby encounters
its “ unfitness,” “ uselessness,” or reduced usefulness, for
30 “ rightful” experiential functions, or if the subject experiences
therein its own anomalous type of psychophysical conditionali­
ties. There can then also be the experience of the “ return to
health,” of the abnormality as temporary (as is the case when
one is struck sharply), etc. If the function of the organ is
35 disturbed, or if it has, on its own, changed abnormally, let us
say “ pathologically,” without the subject’s knowing anything
about it, then the subject will obviously experience, in the
“ experience by means of this organ,” changed thinghoods,
provided the new sense data can be apprehended as phenomenal
 sense-things, wholly analogous to normally motivated ones, and
are in fact apprehended accordingly. The healthy sense organs
in that case present contradictory “ reports. ” The senses conflict
with one another, but this conflict can be resolved in view of the
5 fact that precisely afterwards an organ must be rejected as
abnormal. All the other senses together furnish a world prog­
ressing harmoniously, whereas the rejected sense, the one which
does not concord with the course of the earlier experience,
demands a general and unmotivated world-change, something
10 avoided in the case of the reports of the rest of the senses, if
they have normal validity. Obviously, the conflict can remain
completely unresolved, because it is possible that no experiential
preference goes to one side (N.B.: as long as we take the
experiencing subject as solipsistic).
15 It is a matter of experience, already for the solipsistic subject
too, that eating also has effects on the Body and specifically of a
kind as to influence the sensibility of the senses and the
perceptual function of the parts of the Body. E.g., santonin has
effects just like spectacles with yellow lenses do, and its other
20 effects are to provoke paralyses, make the Body partially or
totally anesthetic, etc.
The only thing important is that I have experience of these
effects, that, in perceiving, I know at once that my Body is in an
abnormal state, and that then in a corresponding one, to be
25 determined further in the course of experience, there occur, as
consequences of the abnormal modification of the Body,
changed modes of sensation or the loss of certain groups of
sensation, and thereby also changed modes of givenness of
things. The inclusion of the abnormalities therefore enlarges the
30 original system of psychophysical conditionalities which, along
with the normal constitution, is detectable through a mere
change of attitude. There is the one normally constituted world as
the true world, as “ n orm ” of truth, and there are multiple
semblances, deviations of the modes of givenness, which find [74]
35 their “ explanation” in the experience of the psychophysical
conditionality. Thereby we see that anomalies cannot contribute
anything toward the constitution of things, and neither can
psychophysical conditionalities. What they do contribute is only
the rule of my subjectivity, which precisely resides in this, that
 things for subjects are experienceable things and that condi­
tioned rules of the series of sensations are conjoined with
Corporeal-thingly causalities.
The result of this is that perceptual activities, considered
5 purely as relations of physical causality (the purely physical
aspect of touching, smelling, seeing, etc.) are not just any causal
relations between the Body and the things to be perceived; what
we have here are, rather, causalities o f a typical kind. The Body,
as a thing like any other, admits, still beyond these, an infinity
10 of causalities, namely every kind of causalities whatsoever which
belong at all to things with such physical qualities. If, hence, the
typical is transgressed, the psychophysical consequences which
deviate from the typical remain possible. But the typical here is
the conjunction of regulated groups of sensation, apprehensible
15 and actually apprehended as normal appearances of things,
though of such a kind that they interrupt the harmonious
experience of nature. There also remains open, however, the
possibility of such a change of the relevant parts of the Body
that no sensations whatsoever occur or only ones which can no
20 longer be apprehended as appearances of things. All such
groups of appearances and sensations stand out as ruptures
from the system of “ orthoaesthetic” perceptions in which one
and the same reality is experienced harmoniously. The Body is
said to be functioning throughout orthoaesthetically or “ nor-
25 mally” as long as the psychophysically dependent perceptions
or appearances are orthoaesthetic. For a solipsistic subject to
speak of a pathological, abnormally functioning, Corporeality
only makes sense if this subject has its system of orthoaesthetic
experiences and has thereby, continuously over against itself,
30 the one spatio-temporal-causal nature. This again presupposes
that its Body is constituted in systems of orthoaesthetic percep­
tions: thus the Body cannot be pathological throughout but
must be “ norm al” at least to this extent, that some of its
organs are functioning normally, by virtue of which the patho-
35 logical organs and parts can be given as they Objectively
actually are.
Hand in hand with the changes of the Body which condition
modifications in the appearances of things go other modifica­
tions which pertain to the subject according to its psychic life.
 Also dependent on Bodies are the reproductions and therewith
the apperceptions. The reproductions stand within the associa­
tive nexus of subjectivity. The apperceptions are determined
through them, and that is again significant for the things which
5 stand over and against the subject. It depends on the Body and
on what is proper to the psyche, what it is that, as world, stands
over and against the subject. Even abstracting from reproduc­
tive elements which enter into the apperception of a thing, the
psychic gains significance for the givenness of the external
10 world, in virtue of the relations of dependence which exist
between the Bodily and the psychic. The use of stimulants, as
well as corporeal diseases, affect the occurrence of sensations,
sensuous feelings, tendencies, etc. Conversely, a psychic state
such as cheerfulness or sadness exercises an influence on Bodily
15 processes. And thanks to these connections, the appearing
external world shows itself as relative not only to the Body but
also to the psychophysical subject as a whole. Hence a distinction
is made here between the identical thing itself and its subjec­
tively conditioned modes o f appearance, i.e., its subjectively
20 conditioned features which persist in relation to me, my Body,
and my soul.
In the sphere of intuition, there stands out from the series of
multiplicities of appearances the “ optimal givenness ” in which
the thing comes to the fore along with the properties that “ befit
25 it itself.” Yet even this givenness is givenness under certain
Objective and subjective circumstances, though it is still “ the
same” thing which under these or under other circumstances
presents itself in a more or less “ favorable ” way.

d) The physicalistic thing

30 The Objectification accomplished in these relativisms o f expe­
rience within the experiential nexus posits the thing as the
identical substrate of identical properties. Of course, the thing [76]
appears differently depending on whether or not I press the eye
(double images), whether or not I take santonin, etc. But for
35 consciousness it is the same, and the alteration of the coloring
does not count as an alteration, or, rather, a change, of the
property which is announced by the color, which is given in it.
 And this holds universally. The thing is what it is in its thingly
nexus and “ in reference” to the experiencing subject, but it is
still the same in all changes of state and of appearance it
undergoes as a consequence of the altering circumstances. And
5 as the same thing it has a stock of “ lasting ” properties. This
reminds us of the formal logic which treats of objects in general
and formulates conditions of possibility for any objectivity
whatsoever to be able to count as identical, i.e. as maintaining
its identity harmoniously throughout. Every object is what it is;
10 in other words, it has its own proper qualities, properties, in
which it displays its identical being, and with these properties,
which are its permanent ones and which belong to its identity, it
enters into relations, etc.
If the thing is (and concordance in the positing of being
15 within the nexus of experience is an original ground of reason
for the assertion, “ It is” ), then it must be determinable in a
way which determines what is non-relative from among the
relativities and, on the other hand, determines it out of that
which contains all grounds of right, out of the data of experi-
20 ence, thus out of the sensuous relativities. O f course, experience
does not exclude the possibility that it be annulled by future
experience or even that the real not be at all, though it had been
given in a concordant way. But now there are rightful grounds
for positing being and consequently for the possibility and neces-
25 sity of positing the goal of logico-mathematical determination.
As we work these matters out, notice should be taken of the
different role given to the geometrical determinations of a thing
versus the “ sensuous qualities;” this comes to be expressed, at
the beginning of the modern age, in the distinction between the
30 primary and secondary qualities. In the constitution of a thing,
which is accomplished for the solitary subject with reference to
a relative constancy of Corporeality, we must first of all
distinguish as a lower level:
1) The thing itself (as it itself is) with its constitutive features
35 as they themselves are, versus the different modes of givenness,
more perfect or less perfect as the case may be. The features [77]
which pertain to the thing “ itself” are then the “ optim al”
ones. This applies to all features, to the geometrical as well as to
the sensuous qualities.
 2) Now once the “ sense-thing” is itself constituted, and so is,
founded with it, the real-causal thing at the level of genuine
experience, sense experience, then a new constitution of a higher
level results in regard to the relativity of this “ thing” with
5 respect to the Corporeality constituted in a similar fashion. It is
this relativity which demands the constitution of a physicalistic
thing manifesting itself in the intuitively given thing. But in this
relativity the geometrical determinations and the specifically
“ sensuous qualities” play quite different roles (both taken, in
10 their own constitutive sphere, as “ themselves, ” as optimal). The
geometrical determinations pertain to the physicalistic Object
itself; what is geometrical belongs to physicalistic nature in
itself. But this is not true of the sensuous qualities, which
thoroughly belong in the sphere of the appearances of nature.
15 Hence it must be shown presently that and why, particularly for
this relativism, they and they alone come into consideration.1

e) Possibility of the constitution of

an “ Objective nature” on the solipsistic level
We have pursued the constitution of material nature through
20 various strata and have seen that already for the “ solipsistic”
subject— the subject in isolation— there exist motives for the
distinction between an “ appearing” thing, whose qualitative
content is relative to my subjectivity, and the “ Objective”
thing, which remains what it is even if changes occur in my
25 subjectivity and, dependent on it, in the “ appearances” of the
thing. Thereby we have to understand under the heading
“ tru e ” or “ Objective” thing still something double:
1) the thing as it presents itself to me under “ normal”
conditions, in opposition to all other thing-like unities which,
30 constituted under “ abnorm al” conditions, are degraded to
“ mere semblance.”
2) the identical content of qualities which, abstraction made
from all relativity, can be worked out and fixed logico-
mathematically: i.e., the physicalistic thing. Once this is known

1 For a more precise treatment o f the physicalistic thing, see below, pp. 89 ff.
 and once we have, in addition, Objective knowledge of the
psychophysical character of experiencing subjects, as well as of
the existing conditionalities between thing and subject, then
from that it can be determined Objectively how the thing in
5 question must be intuitively characterized for the respective
subjectivity— the normal or the abnorm al.1
The question now, however, is whether or not the motives for
the necessary distinction between the subjectively conditioned
thing and the Objective thing, motives which do present them-
10 selves in solipsistic experience, are sufficient or have to be there
at all. As long as we take cases in which changes of the external
world, feigned for us by an abnormal perceptual organ, are
shown up as “ semblances” by the testimony of the other
organs, to that extent the distinction between “ seeming” and what
15 actually is is always given, even if it may remain undecided in
particular cases what is semblant and what is actual. But if we
assume fbr once that a subject would always have only normal
perceptions and would never undergo a modification of any of
its organs, or on the other hand would undergo a modification,
20 but one that allowed for no possibility of correction (loss of the
entire field of touch, or mental diseases which alter the entire
typical character of perception), then the motives of the distinc­
tion between “ semblance” and “ actuality,” assumed up to
now, would be eliminated, and the level of “ Objective nature ”
25 could not be attained by such a subject. But the danger, that
under the assumed conditions the constitution of Objective
nature could not be attained, is removed as soon as we lift the
abstraction we have maintained up to now and take into
account the conditions under which constitution takes place de
30 fa c to : namely, that the experiencing subject is, in truth, not a
solipsistic subject but is instead one among many.

f) Transition from solipsistic to intersubjective experience [79]

Let us consider a little more closely the possibility of a
solipsistic world, something we have assumed up to now. I

1 Thus are determined, as will later be shown in full, the tasks of physics,
psychophysics, and psychology.
 (everybody should substitute here his own “ I ”) would experi­
ence a world, and it would be exactly the same as the one I
actually do experience; everything would be the same, with the
only exception that in my field of experience there would be no
5 Bodies I could apprehend as Bodies of other psychic subjects. If
this apperceptive domain is lacking, then it neither determines
my apprehensions of things, and insofar as it does usually
determine these apprehensions in my actual experience, then its
influence would be absent from my world-image as now modi-
10 fled. Moreover, I now have the same manifolds of sensation;
and the “ same ” real things, with the same properties, appear to
me and, if everything is in harmony, exhibit themselves as
“ actually being,” or otherwise, if discrepancies of a known
kind occur as exceptional, the things show themselves as being
15 “ different” or as not being at all. Seemingly, nothing essential
has changed; seemingly, only a fragment of my world of
experience is missing, the world of animalia, as well as the
group of causalities precisely involved with it in a world-nexus.
Let us then imagine, however, that at a point of time within the
20 time co-constituted along with the solipsistic world, suddenly in
my domain of experience Bodies show up, things understandable
as, and understood as, human Bodies. Now all of a sudden and
for the first time human beings are there for me, with whom I
can come to an understanding. And I come to an understanding
25 with them about the things which are there for us in common in
this new segment of time. Something very remarkable now
comes out: extensive complexes of assertions about things,
which / made in earlier periods of time on the ground of earlier
experiences, experiences which were perfectly concordant
30 throughout, are not corroborated by my current companions,
and this not because these experiences are simply lacking to
them (after all, one does not need to have seen everything others
have seen, and vice versa) but because they thoroughly conflict1 [80]
with what the others experience in experiences, we may suppose,

1 O f course, this conflict should not be considered total. For a basic store of
communal experiences is presupposed in order for mutual understanding to take place
at all.
 that necessarily are harmonious and that go on being progres­
sively confirmed. Then what about the actuality exhibited in the
first period of time? And what about myself, the empirical
subject of this actuality? The answer is clear. As I communicate
5 to my companions my earlier lived experiences and they become
aware of how much these conflict with their world, constituted
intersubjectively and continuously exhibited by means of a
harmonious exchange of experiences, then I become for them an
interesting pathological Object, and they call my actuality, so
10 beautifully manifest to me, the hallucination of someone who
up to this point in time has been mentally ill. One may imagine
perfection in the exhibition of my solipsistic world and raise
that perfection to any height, still the described state of affairs
as an apriori one, the ideal possibility of which is beyond
15 question, would not change at all.
Light must now be shed on a certain problem : the relation to
a multiplicity of people who have dealings with one another —
how does that enter into the apprehension of a thing and come
to be constitutive for the apprehension of a thing as “ Objective
20 and actual” ? This “ how ” is at first very puzzling, because
when we carry out an apprehension of a thing we do not, it
seems, always co-posit a number of fellow men and, specifically,
co-posit them as ones who are to be, as it were, invoked. One
might also wonder if we are not entangled here in a circle, for
25 surely the apprehension of one’s fellow man presupposes the
apprehension of the Body and consequently also presupposes
thing-apprehension. There is only one way to solve this problem,
the way prescribed for us by phenomenology. We must interro­
gate the thing-apprehension itself, there where it is an experi-
30 ence of an “ Objectively actual ” thing, and we must interrogate
the experience which is not yet exhibiting, but is in want of
exhibition, as to what, inherent in it, is in need of exhibition,
what components of unfulfilled intentions it harbors. (In this
regard it must be observed that we have in fact described the
35 constitution of the thing incompletely by investigating only the
manifolds of sensation, the adumbrations, schemata, and, in
general, visual things in all their levels. We must overcome in a
decisive point the Ego’s self-forgetfulness we touched upon
previously.) Each thing of my experience belongs to my “ envi-
 ronment, ” and that means first of all that my Body is part of it
precisely as Body. It is not that we have here a matter of
essential necessity in any sense. That is precisely what our
solipsistic thought-experiment has taught us. Strictly speaking,
5 the solus ipse is unaware of the Objective Body in the full and
proper sense,1 even if the solus ipse might possess the phenome­
non of its Body and the corresponding system of experiential
manifolds and know them in just as perfect a way as the social
man. In other words, the solus ipse does not truly merit its
10 name. The abstraction we carried out, for justifiable theoretical
reasons, does not yield the isolated man, the isolated human
person. This abstraction does obviously not consist in our
arranging for a mass murder of the people and animals of our
surrounding world, sparing one human subject alone. For in
15 that case the remaining subject, though one and unique, would
still be a human subject, i.e., still an intersubjective object, still
apprehending and positing himself as such. But, on the con­
trary, the subject we constructed knows nothing of a human
environment, knows nothing of the reality or even just the real
20 possibility of “ other” Bodies, understood in the sense of an
apprehension of the human, and thus knows nothing of his own
Body as understandable by others. This subject does not know
that others can gaze upon the same world, one that simply
appears differently to different subjects, such that the appear-
25 ances are always relative to “ their” Bodies, etc. It is clear that
the apprehension o f the Body plays a special role for the
intersubjectivity in which all objects are apprehended “ Objec­
tively” as things in the one Objective time and one Objective
space of the one Objective world. (In every case the exhibition
30 of any apprehended Objectivity whatsoever requires a relation
to the apprehension of a multiplicity of subjects sharing a
mutual understanding.) The thing which is constituted for the
individual subject in regulated manifolds of harmonious experi­
ences and which, as one for sense intuition, stands continuously [82]
35 over and against the Ego in the course of perception, obtains in

1 On this point, cf. the segments on the constitution o f the Body, pp. 165 ff.
 that way the character of a merely subjective “ appearance ” of
the “ Objectively real” thing. Each of the subjects who are
intersubjectively related in mutual understanding in regard to
the same world and, within that, in regard to the same things,
5 has his own perceptions of them, i.e., his own perceptual
appearances, and in them he finds a unity in the appearances,
which itself is only an appearance in a higher sense, with
predicates of appearance that may not, without any further ado,
count as predicates of the appearing “ true thing. ”
10 Thus we come here, in considering mutual understanding, to
the same distinction we already demonstrated as possible on the
solipsistic level. The “ true thing” is then the Object that
maintains its identity within the manifolds of appearances
belonging to a multiplicity of subjects, and specifically, again, it
15 is the intuited Object, related to a community of normal
subjects, or, abstraction made from this relativity, it is the
physicalistic thing, determined logico-mathematically. This phy­
sicalistic thing is obviously the same, whether it is constituted
solipsistically or intersubjectively. For logical Objectivity is eo
20 ipso Objectivity in the intersubjective sense as well. What a
cognizing subject comes to know in logical Objectivity (hence in
such a way that this presents no index of a dependency of its
truth-content upon the subject or upon anything subjective) can
be similarly known by any cognizing subject as long as he
25 fulfills the conditions any subject must satisfy to know such
Objects. That is, he must experience the things and the very
same things, and he must, if he is also to know this identity,
stand in a relation of empathy to the other cognizing subjects,
and for that he must have Corporeality and belong to the same
30 world, etc.
It pertains to perception’s very sense, as well as to that of
experience in general, that things come to presence there which
are to be determined in themselves and distinguished from all
other things. And it pertains to the sense of experiential
35 judgment to make a claim to Objective validity. If a thing is
determined in itself and distinct from every other, then it has to
allow for judgmental, therefore predicative, determination in
such a way that its distinctiveness as regards all other things
stands out.
 The thing given in perception and experience is, in accordance
with perception’s very sense, something spatio-temporal from
the first, having form and duration and also having a position [83]
in space and time. So we have to distinguish between the
5 appearing form and the form itself, between the appearing
spatial magnitude, the appearing location, and the magnitude
and location themselves. Everything that we experience of the
thing, even the form, has reference to the experiencing subject.
All these appear in changing aspects, in the change of which the
10 things are present as sensibly changed also. In addition, the
space between things and the form of this space appear under
different aspects according to the subjective circumstances.
Always and necessarily, however, the one and the same space
“ appears ” as the form of all possible things, a form that cannot
15 be multiplied or altered. Every subject has his “ space of
orientation,” his “ here” and his possible “ there,” this “ there”
being determined according to the directional system of right-
left, above-below, front-back. But the basic form of all identifi­
cation of the intersubjective givennesses of a sensuous content is
20 of such a kind that they necessarily belong to one and the same
system o f location, whose Objectivity is manifest in that every
“ here” is identifiable with every relative “ there” as regards
every new “ here” resulting from the subject’s “ moving o n ”
and so also as regards every “ here” from the viewpoint of
25 another subject. This is an ideal necessity and constitutes an
Objective system of location, one that does not allow of being
grasped by the vision of the eyes but only by the understanding;
that is, it is “ visible,” in a higher kind of intuition, founded on
change of location and on empathy. In this way is solved the
30 problem of the “ form of intuition ” and of spatial intuition. It is
not a matter of the senses, although in another respect it is. The
primary intuitive space is sensuously given though this is not yet
space itself. Objective space is not sensuous, although it is still
intuited on a higher level, and it comes to givenness by means of
35 an identification within a change of orientation, but exclusively
one the subject itself carries out freely. Oriented space (and
along with it, eo ipso Objective space) and all appearing spatial
forms already admit of idealization; they are to be grasped in
geometrical purity and determined “ exactly. ”
 The Objective form is Objective as ordered within Objective
space. Everything else about a thing that is Objective (detached [84]
from all relativisms) is so through a connection with what is
fundamentally Objective, viz., space, time, motion. Real proper-
5 ties manifest themselves as real substantial-causal unities in the
motion and deformation of the spatial form. These are the
mechanical properties which express the causal-lawful dependen­
cies of the spatial determinations of bodies. The thing is always
form in a situation. The form is, however, in every situation a
10 qualified one. Qualities are what fills, they extend over the
surface and through the corporeality of the form. Qualifications,
however, extend from the things into empty space: rays o f light,
radiations o f heat, etc. That means that thingly qualities condi­
tion qualities and qualitative changes in other things and indeed
15 do so in such a way that the effect is a constant function of the
situation: to every change of situation there corresponds a
change of effect. In virtue of such a subordination to spatial
relations which may be determined with exactitude, even the
sense qualities become amenable to exact determination. Thus
20 we come to an understanding of the physicalistic world-view or
world-structure, i.e., to an understanding of the method of
physics as a method which pursues the sense of an intersubjec-
tively-Objectively (i.e., non-relative and thereby at once inter­
subjective) determinable sensible world.

25 g) More precise characterization of the physicalistic thing

“ Physicalistic nature,” to which we have now advanced,
presents itself in the following way in accord with our
expositions: the thing itself in itself consists of a continuously or
discretely filled space in states of motion, states which are called
30 energy forms. That which fills space lends itself to certain
groups of differential equations and corresponds to certain
fundamental laws of physics. But there are no sense qualities
here. And that means there are no qualities here whatever. For
the quality of what fills space is sense quality. But, now, filled
35 space without quality, how is that thinkable?
To attribute actuality to appearing things with their sense
qualities in themselves is out of the question, as the natural
 scientists quite rightly say. For the sense qualities change [85]
according to the kind and the disposition of the sense organs;
they are dependent on the sense organs and, more generally,
dependent on the Body and the total condition of the experienc-
5 ing subject. And it turns out that the true physical facts which
correspond to the qualitative distinctions of red and green,
warm and cold, are produced without qualitative transition as
mere quantitative distinctions of one and the same domain, for
example, temperature, waves in the ether, etc.
10 Shall we say that God sees the things as they are in
themselves while we see them through our sense organs, which
are a kind of distorting eyeglasses? That things are filled space
with absolute quality and it is only that we know nothing of it?
But should the things which appear to us as they appear to us
15 be the same as the things which appear to God as they appear
to God, then a unity of mutual understanding would have to be
possible between God and us, just as, between different men,
only through mutual understanding is there the possibility of
knowing that the things seen by the one are the same as those
20 seen by the other. But how would the identification be thinkable
if not in the sense that the supposed absolute spirit sees the
things precisely also through sensuous appearances, which,
likewise, have to be exchangeable in an understanding that is
reciprocal — or, at least, unilateral — as is the case with the
25 appearances we share among us men? And if not in that case,
then God would be blind to colors, etc., and men blind to his
qualities. Is there any sense, however, to arguing about which
are the true qualities? The new qualities would again be
secondary and would be eliminated once more by physics,
30 which has to be the same for all, if the things are the same.
Obviously, the absolute spirit would also have to have a Body
for there to be mutual understanding, and thus the dependency
on sense organs would have to be there as well. The result is
that we must understand the sense o f the distinction between
35 secondary and primary qualities correctly and that we are
permitted to understand the non-Objectivity of the former only
in the sense that in no way do they escape the relativity of
appearances, not even in the way we easily overlook insofar as
we spontaneously think of ourselves as normally sensing in a
 world of beings of normal sensibility. A main feature of the
relativity consists in the dependence upon the subject. To be
sure, an important distinction is to be found here: subjects who [86]
in general share a common world of things, to which they
5 actually relate, hence to which they can relate through appear­
ances, as is required by thingly being, can in principle be
relatively “ blind” as regards color, sound, etc., i.e., as regards
individual senses which provide their own particular sorts of
sense qualities. The senses can also be completely different,
10 provided they make possible a common understanding and
constitute a common nature as an appearing one. But in
principle subjects cannot be blind as regards all the senses and
consequently at once blind to space, to motion, to energy.
Otherwise there would be no world of things there for them; in
15 any case it would not be the same as ours, precisely the spatial
world, the world of nature.
Natuire is an intersubjective reality and a reality not just for
me and my companions of the moment but for us and for
everyone who can have dealings with us and can come to a
20 mutual understanding with us about things and about other
people. There is always the possibility that new spirits enter into
this nexus; but they must do so by means of their Bodies, which
are represented through possible appearances in our conscious­
ness and through corresponding ones in theirs.
25 The thing is a rule of possible appearances. That means that
the thing is a reality as a unity of a manifold of appearances
connected according to rules. Moreover, this unity is an inter­
subjective one. It is a unity of states; the thing has its real
properties, and to each moment there corresponds an active
30 state (for the properties express faculties; they are causal
properties, related to an “ if-then ”). Whereas, however, for the
former consideration, supported by direct experience, the state is
identical with the space that is filled with sensuous qualities
(schema), a space which can be an intersubjective unity only as
35 related to a totality of normal “ like-sensing” subjects, on the
other hand the real possibility and actuality of subjects endowed
with different sense faculties and the knowledge of the depen­
dence, present in each individual, of the sense qualities on
physiological processes lead to a consideration of this depen­
 dence precisely as a new dimension o f relativities and lead to the [87]
construction, in thought, of the purely physicalistic thing. Then
to the same Objective-physicalistic state of the thing pertain
multiple “ filled spaces” related to various sense faculties and
5 individual sense aberrations. The physicalistic thing is intersub-
jectively common in that it has validity for all individuals who
stand in possible communion with us. The Objective determina­
tion determines the thing through that which belongs to it and
must belong to it if it is going to be able to appear to me or to
10 anyone else in communion with me and if it is going to be able
to count as the same for every member of the communicating
society— even for me throughout all possible modifications of
my sensibility. The determinations of space and time are
common, as is common a lawfulness which, in virtue of its
15 concepts related to the “ physicalistic thing,” is a unitary rule
for all the appearances, of the intersubjective community, which
constitute the same thing and which must constitute it in
rational mutual understanding. It is only from the appearances
(and the intersubjective nexus) that we can draw the sense of
20 what a thing is in “ Objective actuality,” i.e., in the actuality
which appears, and which appears to all communicating sub­
jects, and which is identifiable by means of intersubjective
identification.
The Objectively real is not in my “ space,” or in anyone
25 else’s, as “ phenomenon” (“ phenomenal space”) but exists in
Objective space, which is a formal unity of identification in the
midst of the changing qualities. Whereas it holds for my
space-phenomena that they can only be given with sensuous
qualities, it holds for Objective space that it cannot be given
30 with sensuous qualities but can appear only within subjective
spaces that have sensuous qualities. This is valid for the solus
ipse as well and for the space already being constituted therein
as Objective, though still not as intersubjective. (Thus the
intersubjective thing is the “ Objective” spatial form with
35 “ Objective” qualities, the physicalistic ones.) Pure space (the
purely Objective spatial form) arises out of my appearing space
not through abstraction but through an Objectification which
takes as “ appearance” any sensuously appearing spatial form
endowed with sensuous qualities and posits it in manifolds of [88]
 appearances which do not belong to an individual consciousness
but to a societal consciousness as a total group of possible
appearances that is constructed out of individual groups. Each
subject has the totality of space and has particular spatial
5 forms, but in intersubjectivity these are appearances.
In principle, the thing is given and is to be given only through
appearances, whose appearing content can vary with the sub­
jects. This content (the appearing thing just as it appears, as red,
as warm, etc.) is what it is as appearance to an actual subject or
10 to a possible subject in actual connection with the former. We
find ourselves led back to a multiplicity of actual subjects and,
in connection with them, still possible subjects who intuit a
thing, accomplish an experience, etc., in which, as correlate,
something appearing as such comes to consciousness in a
15 varying mode with moments of appearance such as red, warm,
sweet, round, etc. These subjects stand in a relationship of
empathy and, in spite of the variation in the givennesses of
appearances, can intersubjectively assure themselves of the
identity of what appears therein.
20 Thus in principle the thing is something intersubjectively
identical yet is such that it has no sensuous-intuitive content
whatsoever that could be given as identical intersubjectively.
Instead, it is only an empty identical something as a correlate of
the identification possible according to experiential-logical rules
25 and grounded through them, the identification of what appears
in the changing “ appearances ” with their various contents, the
identification carried out by the subjects that stand in the
intersubjective nexus along with their corresponding acts appro­
priate to appearance and to experiential-logical thinking. In
30 physics as the mere natural study of the intersubjective-
Objective thing existing “ in itself,” the thing is Objectively
determined as an empty something, determined through the
intersubjectively constituted forms of space and time and
through the “ primary qualities ” related to space and time. All
35 secondary qualities, indeed precisely everything that can be
given intuitively, including all intuitive spatial and temporal
forms which are quite unthinkable without secondary filling, all
differences in orientation, etc. — these do not belong there.
 h) The possibility of the constitution of
an “ Objective nature” at the level of
intersubjective experience
Let us now examine analogously, for the intersubjective level
5 of experience as we have done for the solipsistic, which condi­
tions have to be fulfilled so that the constitution of an “ Objec­
tive” nature can arise, and indeed must arise. We began with
relationships as they are present de facto: we found that
individual differences stand out from a fundamental set of
10 common experiences and lead to the distinction between deter­
minations which belong to the thing “ itself” versus ones that
are merely subjectively conditioned. Now other conditions,
as well, are to be constructed apriori. We can imagine a human
world in which there would be no illness, in which there would
15 occur no illusions, hallucinations, or the like. We can further­
more assume that all the persons who have commerce with one
another apprehend the world completely alike (abstraction
made from the always necessary differences in orientation). In
that case would the things with their secondary qualities simply
20 count as the ultimate Objectivity? Or would it be recognized
that this state of affairs is contingent and not necessary? It is to
be noted in this regard that the constitution of the sensible world
is obviously to be distinguished from the constitution of the
“true ” world, the world for the scientific subject, whose activity
25 is a spontaneous “ free” thinking and, in general, researching.
That is to say: if we live passively, in the manner of animals,
“ in the world ” and in commerce with others who are like us,
who are as “ norm al” as we are, then a world of experience is
constituted common to us all. Now, we are, however, free
30 intelligent beings. Even if we encounter no abnormalities, we can
still perform gratuitous operations on our Bodies or on others’,
and then “anomalies” do appear. We pursue, in thought, the
causal nexuses and form for ourselves the “ physicalistic world-
image. ”
35 In any case, we see that on the one hand there exists already
on the solipsistic level the possibility o f advancing to the consti­
tution o f the “Objective ” (physicalistic) thing. On the other
hand, there does not exist, even on the intersubjective level, the
 unconditioned necessity to reach that far. But there is—
abstracting from the circumstance that de facto constitution is
accomplished intersubjectively— a distinction in principle
between these two possible ways of constructing an “ Objective
5 nature. ” The solipsistic subject could indeed have over against
itself an Objective nature, however this subject could not
apprehend itself as a member o f nature, could not apperceive
itself as psychophysical subject, as animal, the way this does
happen on the intersubjective level of experience.1 Obviously,
10 this can become evident only if the constitution of animal
nature is examined. As has indeed been shown in general by the
exhibition of the relations of dependency between experienced
nature and experiencing subject, the study of subjectivity is
unconditionally required for a full clarification of the sense and
15 structure of physical nature.
 Section Two: The Constitution of Animal Nature

INTRODUCTION

§ 19. Transition to the consideration of the soul

as a natural Object

5 Let us now proceed to investigate the essence of the soul, the

human or animal soul, as it is, in its connection with the
material Body, an Object of natural-scientific research. Here
also, as is required by a rigorous phenomenological method, we
want to keep to what originary experience teaches us. We leave
10 aside all vague experiential lore and all unclarified interpreta­
tions of what is given as psychic; these may have arisen from
experience, but in themselves they are confused, whether they
can be corrected or instead prove to be inappropriate and full of
contradiction. We renounce all erudition, in a lower or higher
15 sense, from which we are, rather, led back as from a mediate
cognitive function precisely to these original experiences. Conse­
quently, we also keep our distance from all convictions prevail­
ing in the science of psychology, without, however, disputing
their rights. What we are seeking does not lie in the conse-
20 quences of theoretical, mediate thinking but in its beginnings; we
are looking for its most original presuppositions. No theory can [91]
overthrow the meaning of the soul prescribed to us by the
perfect intuition of the psychical. This meaning lays down an
absolutely binding rule for all theoretical research. Any devia-
25 tion from it results in absurdity. This is indeed intelligible on
absolutely universal grounds. Legitimate theory cannot accom­
plish anything other than the predicative determination, in
mediate thinking, of that which was first posited by originary
presenting intuition (in our case, experience) in a straightfor-
30 ward way as a being and thereby as a being of determinate
 “ content” or sense. There what the “ analysis of origin” has
drawn from originary intuition as the originary sense of the
object cannot be annulled by any theory. It is the norm which
must be presupposed and to which all possible theoretical
5 cognition is rationally bound. Hereby is designated a universal
rule for the fundamental clarification of all regional concepts—
thus all concepts which delimit the domain of objects of a
regional ontology (and therewith of all special and empirical
disciplines of the regional sphere in question)—just as of the
10 concept of the soul. Hence the task is “ to draw out of
experience” the authentic concept of the psychic. But obviously
here, as elsewhere in phenomenology, this does not mean to
engage straightforwardly in actual experiences, i.e., to proceed
empirically, as if the empirical thesis, which binds itself to
15 contingent facts, would be pertinent. The task is rather to
examine, in eidetic intuition, the essence o f the experienced in
general and as such, precisely as it is made explicit1 in any
experience, whether carried out actually or imaginatively (by
means of a fictional transfer of oneself into a possible experi-
20 ence) in order then to grasp intuitively, in the unfolding of the
intentions essentially involved in such an experience, the sense
of the experienced as such — the sense of the relevant class of
regional objectivities— and to express this sense in rigorous
analysis and description.

25 § 20. The sense of the ordinary talk about the “ psychic ”

Let us begin our analyses. It is in connection with what is

material that the psychic is given to us. Among material things
there are certain ones, or from an eidetic standpoint there are [92]
certain ones apriori possible, which are soulless, “ merely”
30 material. On the other hand, there also are certain ones which
have the rank of “ Bodies” and as such display a connection
with a new stratum of being, the psychic stratum, as it is called
here. What is included under this heading? What experience

1 Cf. p. 38.
 first discloses to us here is a stream, with no beginning or end, o f
“lived experiences, ” of which manifold types are well known to
us from inner perception, “ introspection,” in which each of us
grasps his “ ow n” lived experiences in their originality. And
5 when these are no longer originary and “ actual,” we can still
grasp them intuitively in inner remembrance, inner free phantasy,
inner imaginary representation. Similar lived experiences are
further given, with more or less clear intuitiveness, in the form
of an interpreting grasp of others’ psychic lives as present
10 actualities.
As the image, stream o f lived experience (or stream of
consciousness), already indicates, the lived experiences, i.e., the
sensations, perceptions, rememberings, feelings, affects, etc., are
not given to us in experience as annexes, lacking internal connec-
15 tion, o f material Bodies, as if they were unified with one another
only through the common phenomenal link to the Body.
Instead, they are one by means o f their very essence; they are
bound and interwoven together, they flow into one another in
layers and are possible only in this unity of a stream. Nothing
20 can be tom away from this stream; nothing can be separated off
as, so to say, a thing for itself.
But in a certain way this unitary stream contains in itself still
further unities, and is interwoven with unities, which can
equally be grasped in intuition, given the appropriate viewpoint,
25 and which must no less be taken into consideration if we wish
to bring clarity to the phenomenologically original field of the
psychic. To this field refer indeed the Ego concepts, to be
grasped in a different sense, as well as the proper concept of the
soul, which of course in no way coincides with the concept of
30 lived experience and stream of lived experience. For us the first
question to be raised here concerns the unity o f the pure [93]
(transcendental) Ego and then that of the real psychic Ego,
hence of the empirical subject affiliated with the soul, whereby
the soul is constituted as a reality bound together with Bodily
35 reality or interwoven in it. The Body will here require special
study, and so will the question of whether its essential determi­
nations are only those of a peculiar material thing or whether it
is the bearer of a new, extra-material, constitutive stratum
which is to be designated as a psychic stratum in the pregnant
 sense. Under the heading, “ empirical Ego,” which still needs
clarification, we find furthermore also the unity “ I as man,”
hence the Ego which not only ascribes to itself its lived
experiences as its psychic states and likewise ascribes to itself its
5 cognitions, its properties of character, and similar permanent
qualities manifest in its lived experiences, but which also
designates its Bodily qualities as its “ own” and thereby assigns
them to the sphere of the Ego.

§21. The concept of “ I as m a n ”

10 Let us immediately proceed from this last Ego-concept, the

ordinary one, which is especially rich in content. Everyone
grasps, in “ self-perception,” precisely himself, and likewise, in
the experiential knowledge of another, precisely this other.
When anyone uses the first person, he speaks o f his acts and
15 states in the form, “ I perceive, I judge, I feel, I will.” Similarly,
with the expression, “ I am of such a kind,” one speaks of his
personal qualities, of his innate or acquired traits of character,
abilities, and of his transient and only relatively permanent
dispositions. Likewise for others. We say that so-and-so is a man
20 of character, virtuous, cheerful or melancholic; we say that he
has a choleric temperament, is in love, etc. However, in saying
that he dances, is a gymnast, eats, writes letters, etc., one is at
the same time saying that he has psychophysical capacities, is a
good dancer, a mediocre gymnast, etc. Similarly, someone will
25 say that he has been beaten, stabbed, or burnt when it is his
Body that has undergone the corresponding actions, when it, as
we also say, has been beaten, stabbed or burnt. We say of
someone that he is dirty when it is his finger that is covered with
dirt. Furthermore we also say he is anemic or full-blooded, he is
30 weak in the heart or sick in the stomach, etc. Hence in the
normal saying of “ I ” (or in the normal use of personal
pronouns in general), the expression “ I ” encompasses the
“ whole” man, Body and soul. It can therefore very well be
said: I am not my Body, but I have my Body; I am not a soul,
35 but I have a soul.
Now, if it is correct that the unity of man encompasses these
 two components not as two realities externally linked with one
another but instead as most intimately interwoven and in a
certain way mutually penetrating (as is in fact established), then
one can understand that states and properties of either of these
5 components count as ones of the whole, of the “ I as m an ”
itself.
On the other hand, it is easy to see that the psychic has a
priority and that it is what determines the concept o f the Ego
essentially. When the soul departs, then what remains is dead
10 matter, a sheer material thing, which no longer possesses in
itself anything of the I as man. The Body, on the contrary,
cannot depart. Even the ghost necessarily has its ghostly Body.
To be sure, this Body is not an actual material thing — the
appearing materiality is an illusion— but thereby so is the
15 affiliated soul and thus the entire ghost.
Considered more closely, we have here various possibilities.
Either this Body is given perceptually to us as a material reality,
without any consciousness of an illusion, and in that case what
we are seeing is not a “ ghost” but a real man. Or, on the other
20 hand, if there is consciousness of an illusion with respect to
materiality, then we will also give up the man as an illusion,
though we still do not speak of a ghost. I say “ as an illusion,”
because experience teaches us that real spirituality is connected
up with material Bodies only and not somehow with mere
25 subjective or intersubjective spatial phantoms (pure spatial
schemata). And according to experience the material Body and
the soul necessarily belong together in the idea of an actual
man. But this necessity is only an empirical one. In itself the
case would be thinkable (and an actual ghost would result) that [95]
30 a psychic being would appear and be actual while lacking a
material Body, a normal thing of nature as underlying the
psychic determinations. But this still does not imply that a Body
in every sense is lacking or could be lacking. We have indeed
recognized that the specifically material determinations are
35 founded in those that are included under the heading “ pure
schema” and are at the same time unilaterally separable from
them. A ghost is characterized by the fact that its Body is a pure
“ spatial phantom ” with no material properties at all, which,
instead, insofar as they do somehow co-appear, are consciously
 stricken out and are characterized as unrealities.1 In itself, then,
it would be thinkable that ghosts appear not only to one subject
but also intersubjectively— i.e., manifest themselves as consis­
tent in an intersubjective experience on the basis of mere
5 phantom Bodies, possibly even purely visual ones. If thereby the
apriori (although entirely empty) possibility of actual ghosts is
granted, then the immediate consequence is that a psychic
subject without a material Body is indeed thinkable, i.e., as a
ghost instead of a natural animal being, but in no way without
10 a Body of some kind. For a psychic being to be, to have
Objective existence, the conditions o f possibility o f intersubjective
givenness must be fulfilled. Such an intersubjective experience-
ability, however, is thinkable only through “ empathy,” which for
its part presupposes an intersubjectively experienceable Body
15 that can be understood by the one who just enacted the
empathy as the Body of the corresponding psychic being.
Moreover, this Body, in its givenness, requires a comprehension
of the psychic and can then be exhibited in further experience. It
is purely as a consequence of this that there arises a priority of
20 the psychic or, if you will, of the spiritual over against the Body,
namely due to the fact that the Body will not withstand [96]
separation. In order to be experienceable Objectively, the spirit
must be animating an Objective Body (though apriori precisely
not just a material Body), whereas, conversely, the Objective
25 experienceability of a spatial phantom or of a material thing
requires no animation. Thus if we consider more closely what
the anima and animation are and also what is presupposed for
the possibility of an Objective knowledge of them, we are struck
by the fact that no mere simple connection and perhaps no

1 To distinguish between a ghost and the real incarnation o f a subjectivity with its
Ego, it is not altogether correct to refer back simply to the phantom. And no
consideration has been taken o f the fundamentally essential role of the vocalization of
one’s own self-produced voice, related to one’s own, originally given kinestheses of
the vocal muscles. This was also missing in the original sketch o f the theory of
empathy, which had to be presented first. It seems, from my observation, that in the
child the self-produced voice, and then, analogously, the heard voice, serves as the
first bridge for the Objectification o f the Ego or for the formation of the “ a l t e r i.e.,
before the child already has or can have a sensory analogy between his visual Body
and that of the “ other ” and, afortiori, before he can acknowledge to the other a
tactual Body and a Body incarnating the will.
 absolutely simultaneous connection can exist here, and in fact
there is none. The Body is not only in general a thing but is
indeed expression of the spirit and is at once organ o f the spirit.
And before we engage ourselves here in deeper expositions,
5 we already recognize that everything properly “ subjective”
and Ego-like lies on the side of the spirit (this side comes to
expression in the Body), whereas the Body is called “ Ego-like”
only in virtue of this animation, and its states and qualities are
only thereby called “ m y” qualities, subjective, of the Ego. It is
10 the special quality of the animation which accounts for the fact
that what is Bodily and ultimately everything Bodily from no
matter what point of view can assume psychic significance,
therefore even where at the outset it is not phenomenally the
bearer of a soul.
15 Now, since, in the unity of the total apperception, “ man,”
the psychic, which is attributed to the Body “ in empathy,” is
apprehended as really united with this Body, then it is under­
standable that the Bodily events are apprehended as properly
belonging to this human subject, i.e., are apprehended as
20 “ mine.”
The situation is somewhat different as regards extra-Bodily
things which through their relation to man have likewise
assumed Ego-meanings, e.g., words, goods, aesthetic values,
Objects to be used, etc. They have indeed a “ meaning,” but
25 they have no soul, no meaning which points to a psychic subject
really connected to them, connected into a single founded
reality. This is expressed by the fact that they are indeed called
my work, my dress, my possession, my darling, etc., but their
properties are not likewise called mine and are instead at most
30 apprehended as indications, reflections of my properties. All
this would still require closer scrutiny and deeper foundation. In
our further analyses, these same issues will come up often.1 [97]
The Ego-concept we have discussed up to now, Ego, the man,
leads us back, according to all that has preceded, to a purely
35 psychic Ego. In this respect, however, we have to draw still
further distinctions.

1 Cf. pp. 248 fT.

 THE PURE EGO

§ 22. The pure Ego as Ego-pole

Let us think of a self-perception as accomplished, but this

5 time in such a way that we abstract from the Body. What we
find then is ourselves as the spiritual Ego related to the stream
of lived experiences— “ spiritual ” here is used in a mere general
sense, referring to the Ego that has its place precisely not in
Corporeality; e.g., I “ think "(cogito), i.e., I perceive, I represent
10 in whatever mode, I judge, I feel, I will, etc., and I find myself
thereby as that which is one and the same in the changing of
these lived experiences, as “ subject” of the acts and states.
(This subject has absolute individuation as the Ego of the current
cogitatio, which is itself absolutely individual in itself.) Here,
15 however, we can draw various lines and do so at first in such a
way that we arrive at the Ego as pure Ego, precisely the one we
spoke of at such length in Book One. With this aim in view, we
limit ourselves therefore to intentional lived experiences which
“ we ” have in each case “ accomplished ” and throughout which
20 we, or, let us say more clearly, I, the Ego that in each case
“ thinks,” have directed the ray of the Ego onto what is
objective in the act. We now focus on the Ego in which the “ I
think ” reigns, and purely as what reigns therein, hence on the
Ego given in absolute indubitability as the “sum cogitans. ” As
25 what is absolutely given, or what can be brought to givenness in
the apriori possible view of fixating reflection, it is by no means
whatsoever something mysterious or mystical. I take myself as
the pure Ego insofar as I take myself purely as that which, in
perception, is directed to the perceived, in knowing to the
30 known, in phantasizing to the phantasized, in logical thinking
 to the thought, in valuing to the valued, in willing to the willed.
In the accomplishment of each act there lies a ray of directed-
ness I cannot describe otherwise than by saying it takes its point
of departure in the “ E go,” which evidently thereby remains
5 undivided and numerically identical while it lives in these
manifold acts, spontaneously takes an active part in them, and
by means of ever new rays goes through these acts toward what
is objective in their sense. To speak more precisely, the pure Ego
is further related to Objects in very different modes, according
10 to the type of the act accomplished. In a certain sense, in its
directedness to one same thing the Ego is ever a free Ego; on
the other hand, the image of “ directing oneself t o ” the
appearance can only be used imperfectly. Of course, in a certain
general sense, the Ego directs itself in every case to the Object,
15 but in a more particular sense at times an Ego-ray, launched
from the pure Ego, goes out toward the Object, and, as it were,
counter-rays issue from the Object and come back to the Ego.
This is how it is that in desire I find myself attracted by the
desired Object; I am directed to it, but in such a way that I
20 reach out toward it, without, however, attaining it in mere
desire. In love I find myself inclined to the beloved, attracted by
the one I love, perhaps wholly surrendered to and lost in the
beloved. In hate, on the contrary, I am indeed equally directed
to the hated; however, in this case it is a matter of repulsion.
25 Accordingly, I behave either by following up the attraction or
repulsion, yielding to it, or by resisting it; at times I am in my
act of behavior “ moved, ” at times unmoved; at times I am one
who actively moves “ himself; ” at times one who does not move
at all. Thus I am, e.g., “ sunk” in passive mourning, in a dumb,
30 motionless sadness, in a pure passivity. Or, I am filled by a
passionate sadness, as an “ e-motion,” though still passive; or
again I am moved while holding myself occupied in a controlled
sadness, etc. Versus this, in activity, I am “ into ” the thing in a
pratical way; in the “fiat MI am first of all engaged in setting
35 the scene; the action which now unfolds is constituted as having
happened according to my will, as happening through my
agency as a freely willing being; I am constantly there as
bringing about the strived for, as aiming in will. And every
phase of the aiming itself is such that in it the pure willing
 subject “ attains” the willed as such. The pure Ego not only
lives in singular acts as accomplishing, as active, and as passive.
Free and yet attracted by the Object, it goes forth from act to
act, and it experiences excitations from the Objects constituted [99]
5 in the “ background;” without immediately giving in to them, it
allows them to intensify, to knock at the door of consciousness;
and then it surrenders, perhaps even “ completely,” turning
from the one Object to the other. In doing so, in the change of
its acts, it accomplishes particular turns and freely builds up for
10 itself these or those many-layered act-unities. Thus, as theoreti­
cal subject in the unity of a thematic nexus, it holds sway by
relating and connecting, by positing subjects and predicates, by
presupposing and drawing conclusions. Within the unity of a
theoretical interest it carries on the theme; occasionally, how-
15 ever, it lets itself be diverted and then picks up again the
thematic thread, etc. Thus we find in fact, by studying the
manifold acts in which the pure Ego lives, all sorts of structures,
ones which are to be described in each realm of acts, structures
which concern the proper modes of subject participation and of
20 the ways of the correlative Object participation and in this latter
respect the ways in which the Object comes to meet the pure
subject related to it, for example by attracting the subject or by
repelling, by eliciting or by hindering, by stimulating or by
“ determining” in some other way.
25 The pure Ego exercises its pure “ functions” in the acts of
the multiformed cogito, discrete ones or ones connected by this
cogito, and to that extent we could call the acts themselves, by
transferring over the sense of the word, functions. On the one
hand, we must definitely here distinguish the pure Ego from the
30 acts themselves, as that which functions in them and which,
through them, relates to Objects; on the other hand, this
distinction can only be an abstract one. It is abstract to the
extent that the Ego cannot be thought of as something sepa­
rated from these lived experiences, from its “ life,” just as,
35 conversely, the lived experiences are not thinkable except as the
medium of the life of the Ego. In this connection it is important
to notice that the pure Ego is not only an accomplishing one,
such as we up to now have considered it exclusively: that is, in
acts in the specific sense, those of the form, “ cogito.” Just as
 the cogito of the moment sinks down into inactuality, in a
certain sense the pure Ego also sinks down into inactuality. It
withdraws from the act in question, it is no longer in this act as
an accomplishing Ego, and perhaps it is not carrying out any
5 act at all. But in that case it is not something separate from all
lived experience, as if now the consciousness that is not
accomplishing any act and the pure Ego would be without any
connection between themselves. Rather, the distinction between
actuality and inactuality points to a distinction in the essential
10 structure of intentional lived experiences and consequently at
once to a distinction, inseparable from them, in the “ how, ” in
the manner in which the Ego has lived experiences. The Ego can
never disappear, it is always present in its acts but in different
ways, depending: if they are or if they become acts in actu, then
15 the Ego steps forth, as it were, in them; it comes to the light of
day, it exercises an active living function, it directs itself, in an
active ray, toward what is objective. But if it is, so to say, a
latent Ego, then it does not cast an active regard onto some­
thing; it does not actively experience or have an effect on, or
20 undergo, anything. Of course, there can be no question here of
arbitrary possibilities of sudden coming into existence and
stepping forth out of nowhere in the accomplishment of an act;
instead it is a matter of a phenomenological alteration of the
pure Ego-relatedness that is always extant. To be sure, some-
25 thing new arises thereby, a changed phenomenon, which here
could be called an active self-directing of the Ego, e.g., casting a
glance of focused notice onto something, etc., but in such a way
that already in the former phenomenon, in the one of latency,
an Ego-structure is extant. This Ego-structure precisely allows us
30 and requires us to say that the Ego in the stage of the
specifically “ unconscious, ” of latency, is not a nothing or the
empty potentiality of the alteration of the phenomena into ones
of Ego-actuality but instead is a moment of their structure.
Thus the images of the stepping forth of the Ego, of the being
35 actively directed onto something, and of the stepping back or
sinking back into latency have a real [reell\ meaning. We know
all this, however, in reflection, in which we grasp in retrospec­
tion precisely not only individual background lived experiences
but also whole stretches of the stream of consciousness which
 would lack all Ego-activity. In spite of all the obscurity and all
the confusion which adheres to the proper character of such
stretches, we can grasp insightfully the most general essential
properties which have been indicated.
5 But we still have to add more to the characterization of the
pure Ego. In addition, it is necessary to clarify more precisely
the points we have already made. We can at once attach
ourselves to the possibility of “ reflection” we used just now.

§ 23. The possibility of grasping the pure Ego [101]

10 (the Ego-pole)

It pertains in general to the essence of every cogito that a new

cogito of the kind called by us “ Ego-reflection ” is in principle
possible, one that grasps, on the basis of the earlier cogito
(which itself is thereby phenomenlogically altered), the pure
15 subject of that earlier cogito. It consequently pertains, as we can
also say (since the same obviously applies to this reflective cogito
as well) to the essence of the pure Ego that it be able to grasp
itself as what it is and in the way it functions, and thus make
itself into an object. Therefore it is in no way correct to assert
20 that the pure Ego is a subject that can never become an Object,
as long as we do not limit the concept of Object at the very
outset and in particular do not limit it to “ natural ” Objects, to
mundane “ real” Objects, for if we do, the assertion would
indeed hold in a good and valid sense. Now it is certainly very
25 significant that the pure Ego occupies a completely isolated
position as opposed to all that is real and in general to all other
things which can be designated as “ being. ” We can in fact say :
everything that is objective, in the broadest sense of the word, is
thinkable only as correlate of a possible consciousness or, more
30 precisely, as correlate of a possible “ I think ” and consequently
as referable to a pure Ego. This holds for the pure Ego itself as
well. The pure Ego can be posited as an object by the pure Ego
which is identically one with it.
The essence o f the pure Ego thereby includes the possibility o f
35 an originary self-grasp, a “self-perception, ” and in that case also
the possibility of the corresponding modifications of self-grasp-
 ing: i.e., self-remembrance, self-phantasy, etc. The essence of
self-remembrance obviously includes the fact that the pure Ego,
remembering itself, is conscious of itself as bygone, and the fact
that, on the other hand, a shift of focus is possible in virtue of
5 which the pure Ego can grasp itself as the pure Ego of the act of
remembering and consequently as self-perceived actual pre­
sence, and, similarly, the fact that it grasps itself as something
temporally enduring from the past now to the actual flowing
now of the present.
10 Obviously, something similar, but with the corresponding
modifications, holds for the other parallel acts. It is to be noted
that everywhere the distinction must certainly be made between
the objectified and the “ originally” not objectified pure Ego,
e.g., between the perceived and the perceiving pure Ego. But no
15 matter how much a phenomenological transformation is [102]
expressed hereby with regard to the cogito — which at one time
is the unreflected, original cogito, the cogito of the originally
accomplishing pure Ego, and at other times is a reflected cogito,
hence an essentially transformed, intentional Object or medium
20 of a new act, by means of which the accomplishing Ego grasps
the accomplishing of the earlier act — yet it is evident, in virtue
of further reflections at a higher level, that this and the other
pure Ego are in truth one and the same. It is just that at one time
it is given, at other times not given; or, in a higher reflection, in
25 the one case it is straightforwardly given, in the other it is given
through a further mediating stage. Similarly, the original cogito
itself and the reflectively grasped cogito are one and the same
and can be grasped mediately, in a reflection on a higher level,
as indubitably absolutely the same. In the transition from the
30 original act to the reflection on it, the whole lived experience is
certainly changed; the earlier cogito is certainly no longer, in
the reflection, really [reell] present, i.e., present as it was lived
unreflectively. But the reflection does not grasp and does not
posit as being that which, in the present lived experience is a
35 real [reell] constituent as a modification of the cogito. What it
posits (as is grasped with evidence precisely by a reflection on a
higher level) is the identical, which at one time is given
objectively, at another time not. Now, afortiori, the pure Ego is
indeed something which comes to be grasped in the cogito in
 question, but not somehow as a real [reell] moment of it. When
the Ego is objective or again not objective, what changes
phenomenologically is not the Ego itself, which we grasp and
have given in reflection as absolutely identical, but the lived
5 experience.
It is to be noted, furthermore, that the unities we are
considering here throughout, as, e.g., the identical cogito, are
precisely themselves already unities constituted in consciousness
as unities of a duration in which they change in this or that way.
10 In other words, they are constituted in a more profound,
correspondingly manifold “ consciousness” taken in another
sense, in which all that we have up to now called “ conscious­
ness” or “ lived experience” does not occur really [reell] but
only as a unity of the “ immanent tim e” which is that of its
15 constitution. We have deliberately left out of consideration in
our treatise this most profound element, immanent time and all
the unities of lived experience which partake of it, including
every consciousness that constitutes a cogito, and our investiga- [103]
tion has remained completely within immanent temporality.
20 And to this sphere there belongs also the identical pure Ego. Its
identity is an identity throughout this immanent time. I am and
I was the same, I who endure and “ hold sway” in this or that
conscious act, although, on the other hand, I am no real [reell]
moment of it in the manner of a constituent. No real [reell]
25 moment — that is especially to be considered. Each and every
cogito, along with all its constituents, arises or vanishes in the flu x
o f lived experiences. But the pure subject does not arise or vanish,
although in its own way it does “ step fo rth ” and once again
“ step back.” It enters into action and then again retires from
30 action. What it is, and what it in itself is and does in general, is
grasped by us, or, rather, is grapsed by it itself in the self­
perception which is one of its own actions, such a one that
grounds the absolute indubitability of the grasp of being. In
fact, the pure Ego is indeed nothing other than what Descartes,
35 in his marvelous Meditations, grasped with the insight of genius
and established as such once and for all, the being of which it is
not possible to doubt and which in any doubt would itself
necessarily be found again as the subject of the doubt. If there
were a sense to saying that this Ego is subject to generation
 and perishing, then we would precisely have to establish this
possibility in pure givenness; we would have to be able to grasp,
in pure intuition, the essential possibility of generation and
perishing. But as soon as we set out to do so, the absurdity of it
5 becomes plain. The pure Ego itself of such intuition, namely the
regarding, focusing Ego, on the one hand would be living in the
continuity of this regarding as what is identical in the corre­
sponding duration, and yet it would have to find at once,
precisely in this duration, a time-span in which it itself was not
10 and a beginning point in which it first of all entered into being.
We would have the absurdity that the absolutely existing Ego,
in the duration of its being, would encounter itself as not being,
whereas it is evident that the only way that it is possible for the
pure Ego not to encounter itself is for it not to reflect on
15 itself.
Thus, instead of generatio and corruptio, to the pure Ego
there pertains only the essential property that it has its stepping
forth and its receding, that it begins to function and hold sway
actively and that it ceases to do so. The phrases “ it steps forth ”
20 and “ acts in the specific sense of the cogito become an event in [104]
the stream of consciousness” mean the same, since the essence
of such acts consists precisely in their being intentional lived
experiences “ carried o u t” by the pure Ego.

§ 24. “ Mutability ” of the pure Ego

25 We can discern with evidence the sense in which the pure

Ego changes in the changing of its acts. It is changeable in its
practices, in its activities and passivities, in its being attracted
and being repulsed, etc. But these changes do not change it
itself. On the contrary, in itself the pure Ego is immutable. It is
30 not the kind of identical something that would first have to
manifest and prove itself as identical by means of properties
remaining permanent throughout manifold states as these are
determined by the changing circumstances. Therefore it is not to
be confused with the Ego as the real person, with the real
35 subject of the real human being. It has no innate or acquired
traits of character, no capacities, no dispositions, etc. It is not
 changeably related, in real properties and states, to changing
real circumstances, and thus it is not given in appearance with
reference to appearing circumstances. In order to know what a
human being is or what I myself am as a human personality, I
5 have to enter into the infinity of experience in which I come to
know myself under ever new aspects, according to ever new
properties, and in an ever more perfect way. Only this experi­
ence can exhibit (or perhaps repudiate) what I am and even that
I am. In principle it is always possible that I, this person, am
10 not at all; similarly, it is possible that my material Body, or
some other material thing, is not, in spite of its givenness in
experience; it could turn out, in future experience, not to be. On
the other hand, in order to know that the pure Ego is and what
it is, no ever so great accumulation of self-experiences can profit
15 me more than the single experience of one sole and simple
cogito. It would be countersensical to claim that I, the pure
Ego, adtually am not or am something altogether different from
the Ego functioning in this cogito. Everything which “ appears,”
everything which, in whatever way, presents and manifests itself
20 can also not be; I can be deceived by these things. The Ego,
however, does not appear, does not present itself merely from a
side, does not manifest itself merely according to discrete [105]
determinations, aspects, and moments, which, moreover, for
their part merely appear. Instead, the pure Ego is given in
25 absolute selfhood and in a unity which does not present itself by
way of adumbrations; it can be grasped adequately in the
reflexive shift of focus that goes back to it as a center of
functioning. As pure Ego it does not harbor any hidden inner
richness; it is absolutely simple and it lies there absolutely clear.
30 All richness lies in the cogito and in the mode of the function
which can be adequately grasped therein.

§ 25. Polarity of acts: Ego and Object

Insofar as every cogito calls for a cogitatum and insofar as

this latter is related to the pure Ego in the accomplishment of
35 an act, we find a remarkable polarity in every act: on the one
side, the Ego-pole; on the other, the Object as counter-pole. Each
 an identity, but one of a radically different kind and proven­
ance.
The Ego is the identical subject functioning in all acts of the
same stream of consciousness; it is the center whence all
5 conscious life emits rays and receives them ; it is the center of all
affects and actions, of all attention, grasping, relating, and
connecting, of all theoretical, valuing, and practical position-
taking, of all enjoyment and distress, of all hope and fear, of all
doing and suffering, etc. In other words, all the multi-formed
10 particularities of intentional relatedness to Objects, which here
are called acts, have their necessary terminus a quo, the Ego-
point, from which they irradiate. Often, if not always, we find
here, properly spoken, two-fold radiations, running ahead and
running back: from the center outward, through the acts
15 toward their Objects, and again returning rays, coming from the
Objects back toward the center in manifold changing phenome­
nological characters. Thus in theoretically interested experience
there is the working toward the Object, appropriating it,
penetrating into it; but there is also here constantly the being
20 incited by the Object, being captivated, thrilled, determined.
The coincidence of all acts in the numerically identical Ego-
center lies on the noetic side.
The structure of the acts which radiate out from the Ego-
Center, or, the Ego itself, is a form which has an analogon in
25 the centralizing of all sense-phenomena in reference to the
Body. In absolute consciousness there is always a “ field” of
intentionality, and the spiritual “ focus” of the attention
“ directs” itself now onto this, now onto that. The question is
whether these images have an original meaning and are express-
30 ing a primordial analogy. That is to say, does there lie in the act
of attention, abstraction made from the spatial, whence the
image is derived, something like a directing that emanates from
a point? Certainly there is a multiplicity of interconnected lived
experiences and of intentional givennesses, and consequently a
35 “ field,” to which changing attentional modifications are joined.
Each attention-series is, as a series, something like a ray, and in
each series “ the same thing” is intentionally grasped. It is a
series grasping one and the same thing ever more richly and
more perfectly, analogously to the way in which I, by coming
 closer to an Object, hence in the corresponding series of
orientations, gain an ever more rich knowledge of the Object
and grasp it always better and more fully. Thus the m etaphor: I
bring the matter (even if it is non-spatial) closer to me. If we
5 abstract from this analogy, then what is given is a progressive
series in which the grasp of an Object approaches the ideal, and
this takes place in each process of an attentive grasp of an
Object. And all these rays emanate in lived experience from the
one single point of departure, the identical E go.1
10 If we now turn our focus to a unity of a wholly different
kind, that of the Object (we are assuming that this Object is not
itself a subject), then it also refers us back to manifolds acts,
and in a determinate sense it gives them their unity, though in a
totally different sense than occurs in the relation of the act to
15 the centralizing subject.
First of all not just any act, and certainly not all acts, are [107]
unified in the relation to the Object but precisely only those acts
which, even if in different ways, are “ conscious o f” the same
Object. If we say of these acts that they also are “ directed” to
20 their Object, then it means (to the extent that what we have in
mind is not rather the Ego directing itself in these acts to the
Object) something fundamentally different instead. This can be
seen in the fundamentally different manner of the “ coinci­
dence” of the acts in relation to the same Object, which here,
25 without prejudice to the unity of coincidence binding all acts,
actual or potential, in the Ego-center, does not concern the

1 A more precise clarification of the analogy we formed would require proper

systematic considerations. Here we can only point in their direction. If we take the
field o f thing-objects which appear to the senses, and which are given in an
orientation, then the coincidence with the “ Ego-orientation ” becomes understanda­
ble: the processes o f adaptation (my movements) pertain to the constitution o f the
thing, and, parallel with them, I always grasp more of the thing. And this grasping is
originally a process of paying attention. Thus here there seems to be a way o f
grasping the centrality of the Ego as an analogon of the parallel orientation and of
what is intertwined with it. Now, however, spiritual objectivities are intertwined with
the sensuous; e.g., thoughts are intertwined with verbal signs that are apprehended in
a certain orientation. The attention passes right through the verbal signs. Or, if I look
at sense data, then they are presentative of Objective things, hence they are already
intertwined with an orientation. A question for further consideration would be how
far one could progress along this path.
 noetic but, rather, the noematic “ side” of the acts, a coinci­
dence of what, in the acts (through the Ego) is “ meant as
such.” For the rest, Ego, act, and object belong together by
essence; in idea they are inseparable.

5 § 26. Alert and dull consciousness

The pure Ego, as we said above, steps forth and then steps
back again. That is, the essence of consciousness in the unity of
the flux is of such a kind that the pure Ego cannot illuminate
everything in it but, instead, shines its light on individual acts,
10 and only on individual acts. For it pertains irrevocably to the
essence of consciousness that every act have its horizon of
obscurity, that every act-performance, in the shift of the Ego
onto new lines of cogitation (action) sink down into obscurity.
As soon as the focus of the Ego is withdrawn from it, it changes
15 and is received into the vague horizon. There is nothing in the
essence of consciousness, however, that would require, in some
necessary fashion, that in it an active cogito must be being
accomplished. Our “ alert consciousness ” can be interrupted for
a period by a sleepy, completely dull one, in which there is no
20 distinction to be made between an active field of focus and an
obscure background. Everything then is background, everything
obscurity. Waking from dull sleep, we can bend backward the
reflexive gaze and grasp what has just past by in its dullness and
Egolessness, in its loss of the active Ego, the one which grasps,
25 thinks, undergoes while awake, etc. There is room to doubt
whether we should say that in the place of this actively
accomplishing Ego what we have here is a dull one as an other
Ego-mode, or whether such a mode always exists as a mode
surrounding the active Ego (corresponding to the obscure
30 background). For it is difficult to send rays of reflection into the
realm of obscurities and gain certitude in this sphere of givens. [108]
That which comes into our grasp as pure Ego in absolute clarity
and indubitability is not a matter of this postulated mode.
Hence if we take the pure Ego as we have it before us in this full
35 clarity, then we are certain at all events of this, that it can step
forth and can also not step forth. Thereby nothing prevents us
 from thinking that what is familiar to us as an interruption of
alert consciousness would be extended to infinity. No essential
necessity interdicts us from thinking that a consciousness might
be dull throughout. On the other hand, however, it still
5 includes, as does any consciousness whatsoever, the uncondi­
tional essential possibility that it can become an alert conscious­
ness, that an active focus of the Ego may establish itself at any
given place in it in the form of a cogito inserting itself into it or,
rather, springing forth from it, and that this occurrence can
10 then be repeated, etc. Or, to speak like Leibniz, that the monad
can pass from the stage of evolution into the one of involution
and become, in higher acts, self-conscious “ spirit.” The Ego
which becomes active here is not something introduced from the
outside or added on, not something which comes into being for
15 the first time at the moment of active stepping forth, only to
vanish again into nothingness. The pure Ego must be able to
accompany all my representations. This Kantian proposition
makes good sense if we include here under representations all
obscure consciousness. In principle the pure Ego can enter into
20 any unaccomplished (in a determinate sense: unconscious,
un-alert) intentional lived experience, it can bring the light of
alert consciousness to those lived experiences that have receded
into the background and are no longer being performed; but
the Ego holds sway only in the performance, in the cogitations
25 proper. Yet it can cast its gaze into precisely everything that can
receive this ray of Ego-function. It can look into everything
intentionally constituted in the flux of consciousness, it can
grasp it, take a position regarding it, etc.

§ 27. “ I as man ” as part of the content of the

30 environment of the pure Ego

Connected with this is still something else. In virtue o f the

polarity belonging to the essence o f the cogito, the alert Ego is
intentionally related to what is objective in the accomplished [109]
cogitations. They are its objects and indeed precisely as the very
35 noematic objects (either posited or quasi-posited, as the case
may be) of these cogitations. This holds potentially, however,
 for the objects of the unaccomplished noeses dormant in the
background and which, as it were, make up the field of the
Ego’s freedom. Their objects form the field of the spiritual
regard, the Ego’s field of activity. But if we look into the matter
5 more closely, then what comes into consideration for this field of
regard are not only the objects of the dormant noeses (it is for
the Ego as alert that they first become ob-jects in the proper
sense) but also the objects of the possible noeses to which the
motivations of consciousness belonging to the content of con-
10 sciousness lead over. If we proceed from actually experienced
real objects, then it is not only the environing things, the ones
actually constituted as background, the ones actually appearing
or the ones only presentified, that are mine, but what is mine,
what is the pure Ego’s, is the whole “ world,” the surrounding
15 world, the whole world with all it contains that is still unknown
to me but is experienceable by me: i.e., things, fellow men,
animals, and including that man whom I also designate as I, as
Ego, namely I, the man called so and so and characterized as
such and such. I as a man am a part of the content of the real
20 surrounding world of the pure Ego, which, as the center of all
intentionality, also accomplishes that intentionality by which is
constituted precisely I, the man, and I, the person.
Primordially and most basically, each thing I experience is
constituted for me, precisely through what is lived in the
25 experience, as a thing in the spatio-temporal world; and as
undetermined as this positing is, and no matter how infinite the
manifolds it leaves open, still it leaves them open in accordance
with the sense of this apperception. What is grasped in the
course of continuous experience presents itself as fulfillment of
30 already extant motivations which are enriched and limited only
within the unity of that sense. And what holds for the constitu­
tion of any thing whatever, also holds apriori, corresponding to
the ontic structure of the thing-nexuses which coalesce into the
unity of the universe, for the constitution precisely of this
35 universe. The latter is constituted necessarily, as a closer
consideration shows, in such a way that, notwithstanding the
circumstance that the pure Ego is the center of all intentionality
whatsoever, the empirical Ego in the form, I as man, functions [110]
as the phenomenal-real central member for the constitution, in
 appearances, of the entire spatio-temporal world. In all experi­
ence of spatio-temporal Objectivity, the co-appearance of the
experiencing man is presupposed, and so is, to be sure, the
apperceptive relation to his actual or possible companions (men
5 or animals).
The pure Ego is, to emphasize it expressly, numerically one
and unique with respect to “ its ” stream of consciousness. If it
posits in its cogito, in its experiences, a man, and in him a
human personality, then it posits implicitly, as pertaining to
10 him, a pure Ego with its stream of consciousness. That is to say,
the intentional lived experiences it posits in the empathizing
presentification require, for their part, a pure Ego as subject of
the function, even if the pure Ego may, in the apperception of
man, become the core-content of an encompassing appercep-
15 tion. In principle, the empathized pure Ego (and, along with it,
the empirical as well) is an “ other;” consequently if I posit
many human beings then I also posit many pure Egos, separate
in principle, and that many streams of consciousness. There are
the same number of pure Egos as there are real Egos, while at
20 the same time these real Egos are constituted in the pure
streams of consciousness, are posited by the pure Egos or are
positable in motivated possibilities. Every real Ego belongs, as
does the entire real world, to the “ environment,” to the “ field
of vision,” of my— and every— pure Ego, as is shown with
25 apriori necessity by a closer study of the intentional constitution
of the Objective (intersubjective) world. And so, as has been
said, every pure Ego that accomplishes the apperception, “ I, the
human being,” has the human Ego, the person, as an Object in
its environment. On the other hand, the pure Ego encounters
30 itself again as pure Ego in the human being and in the person,
insofar as these objects are posited with an apprehension-sense
according to which the real Ego includes the pure Ego as its
apperceptive nuclear content.

§28. The real Ego constituted as transcendent Object;

35 the pure Ego as given in immanence

Moreover, real Egos, as well as realities in general, are mere

 intentional unities. Whereas the pure Egos must be drawn, [111]
originarily and in absolute selfhood, out of the originary
givenness of each cogito in which they function and conse­
quently are, just like the data of pure consciousness itself in the
5 sphere of immanent phenomenological time, incapable o f and in
no need o f constitution through ‘‘manifolds," the converse holds
for real Egos and for all realities. These latter are constituted
unities not only in relation to a pure Ego and a stream of
consciousness with its manifolds of appearances but also in
10 relation to an intersubjective consciousness, that is, in relation
to an open manifold of pure Egos separated from one another
like monads or in relation to an open manifold of their streams
of consciousness which, by reciprocal empathy, are unified into
a nexus which constitutes intersubjective objectivities.

15 §29. Constitution of unities within the sphere of immanence.

Persistent opinions as sedimentations in the pure Ego

All data o f consciousness, levels o f consciousness, and noetic

form s which ‘‘can be accompanied” by the identical Ego o f an
20 actual or possible “ / think ” belong to a monad. Now within the
absolute stream of consciousness of a monad, certain forma­
tions of unity occur, but ones which are thoroughly different
from the intentional unity of the real Ego and its properties.1
To those formations belong unities such as the persistent
25 “ opinions ” of one and the same subject. They can, in a certain
sense, be called “ habitual,” though there is no question here of
a habitus as what has become customary, the way the empirical
subject might acquire real dispositions which would then be
called customary. The habitus that we are concerned with
30 pertains not to the empirical, but to the pure, Ego. The identity
of the pure Ego does not only reside in the fact that I (.sc. the

1 If we say that these unities too are constituted, since they are objectivities of a
higher level, built upon more primitive ones, still that does not mean they are
constituted the way transcendent Objects are. Concerning the constitution o f lived
experiences, cf. above, pp. 108 f. and also Supplement II, pp. 324 f.
 pure Ego), with regard to each and every cogito, can grasp
myself as the identical Ego of the cogito; rather, I am even [112]
therein and apriori the same Ego, insofar as I, in taking a
position, necessarily exercise consistency in a determinate sense:
5 each “ new ” position-taking institutes a persistent “ opinion ” or
a thema (a thema of experience, of judgment, of enjoyment, of
will, etc.) so that, from now on, as often as I grasp myself as the
same as I used to be or as the same as I now am and earlier was,
I also retain my themata, assume them as active themata, just as
10 I had posited them previously. And that means that themata are
posited originally, either on their own or from motives (absence
of motives taken as the null-point of motivation), and on the
basis of the same motives I, the Ego that takes a position,
cannot behave differently. My thesis, my position-taking, my
15 deciding from motives (the null-point included) is something I
have a stake in. As long as I am the one I am, then the
position-taking cannot but “ persist,” and I cannot but persist in
it; I can carry out a change only if the motives become
different. As long as and as far as I am an actually rational Ego
20 that takes a position on the basis of insight, I can decide only
one way, the rational way, and in that case my decision is
identical with the one that would be made by any rational
subject whatsoever that shared the same insight. Or, if an other
cannot have the same motives, he can at least understand mine
25 and can, in a rationally insightful way, approve of my decision.
I can (allowing, once again, the specific case of reason to be
universalized) become “ unfaithful” to myself in my position-
taking, can become “ inconsistent,” only in this, that I have
become precisely an other inasmuch as I have succumbed to
30 other motivations. In truth, however, I am not unfaithful to
myself, I am constantly the same, though in a changing stream
of lived experience, in which new motives are often consti­
tuted.
Thus here I see a law of essence of the pure Ego. As this
35 identical, numerically one, Ego, it itself belongs to “ its own ”
stream of lived experience, which is constituted as a unity of
endless immanent time. The one pure Ego is constituted as a
unity in relation to this unity of the stream, and that means that
it can, in the course it takes, discover itself as identical. It can
 therefore, in retrospective remembering, look back on earlier
cogitations and become conscious of itself as the subject of these [113]
remembered cogitations. Already herein there lies a kind of
consistency in the Ego. For a “ steadfast and persistent” Ego
5 could not be constituted if a steadfast and persistent stream of
lived experience were not constituted, thus if the originarily
constituted unities of lived experience were not assumable once
more, were not capable of emerging anew in re-remembering,
and did not appear in the assuming of their being-quality (as
10 being in immanent time), and if there were no possibility of
bringing clarity to the obscure, of exploiting, according to its
immanent reality, what maintains itself consistently, and, there­
fore, if there were no possibility of having recourse to rational
consistency. At all events, this too is certainly an essential law of
15 the identity of the same Ego and consequently is co-given in the
cognition of the identity, namely the law that I can retain an
inner active position-taking and acknowledge and assume it as
mine in repeated acts. Hence this also is a law : each “ opinion ”
is an instauration which remains a possession of the subject as
20 long as motivations do not arise which require the position-
taking to be “ varied” and the former opinion abandoned or
require, with respect to its components, a partial abandonment,
and with respect to the whole, a variation. As long as there are
no motives for striking it out, each opinion of one and the same
25 Ego remains necessarily within the chain of rememorations.
We still need to examine more closely how the persistence of
“ th e ” lived experience is to be understood. I have a lasting
conviction, or I “ nurse a grudge.” At different times I do have
different lived experiences of the grudge (or of the judgment),
30 yet it is only “ th e ” grudge coming again to givenness; it is a
lasting grudge (or a lasting conviction). The judgment of
determinate content as lived experience lasts a while (immanent
duration) and then is irretrievably gone. A new lived experience
of the same content can subsequently emerge— but not the
35 same lived experience. It may emerge in such a way, however,
that I have the consciousness that it is only the former
conviction returning again, the former conviction which had
been carried out earlier and is now again being carried out, but
it is the one lasting conviction, the one I call mine. The various
 enduring lived experiences, belonging to spans of duration
which are discrete within phenomenological time, have a rela­
tion to one another and constitute something that lasts and
endures (the conviction, the grudge), which once, at such and [114]
5 such a point in time, and from these or those motives, origi­
nated. From then on it has been a lasting property of the Ego,
existing also in those intervals of phenomenological duration in
which it was not being constituted as a lived experience. The
same applies to the unity of a decision, a desire, an enthusiasm,
10 a love, a hate, etc.1
For a more precise clarification of these formations of unity,
the distinctions between noesis and noema must be introduced.
If I now execute a judgment “ originarily,” e.g., in describing a
landscape, and subsequently once again execute “ the sam e”
15 judgment in originary description, then the judgment is, in the
logical sense, the same. This holds equally if I execute, with
insight, a mathematical judgment at various different times.
Nevertheless, the unity of the conviction we have been speaking
of is not like that; we therefore have here two different things.
20 If I “ acquire anew” an old conviction, while executing the
appropriate judgment, then the acquired conviction (a “ lasting
acquisition”) “ remains” with me as long as I can assume it
“ again,” can bring it again to givenness for me (in a new
execution). I may also abandon the conviction, now rejecting
25 the reasons for it, etc. Then again, I can turn back to “ the
sam e” conviction, but in truth the conviction had not been
persistent throughout. Instead, I have two convictions, the
second of which restores the first after it has broken down. The
relations obtaining here can be studied already in the simple
30 case of straightforward perception. I experience something, I
perceive. The perception extends itself originarily over a dura­
tion (immanently speaking). I then have an objectivity which
appears, is intended, is appearing in a certain aspect, under the
given circumstances, with such and such an objective content,
35 and is apprehended, as motivated, in this or that way. This is
then made explicit in a determinate manner and perhaps

1 Such unities can also be constituted intersubjectively, but in the present context
this can be disregarded.
 grasped conceptually and asserted. I have originarily “ my
judgment ” about it. In remembering, we look back once again
on these matters that once were. Perhaps what was is taken as
enduring. From the outset it had a future horizon in the
5 perception, over which it extends as enduring, and it is appre­
hended as an enduring being at rest or as a periodical move­
ment which endures by recurring (e.g., the turning of a mill
wheel). The matter is now there not merely in general as past
(and perhaps as enduring) but as remembered. I can remember it
10 as often as I like, and in these new memories what is past and
remembered stands over and against me as the same again and
again. Thereby I can at the same time have memories of the
earlier memories, and a unity persists with regard to the chain
of lived experiences of memory: the unity of the same thing
15 remembered as such, the same memory. What is it here that is
preserved as lasting? In each memory, I have the same aspect of
that which was, the same “ previous perception ” with the same
meant as such, with the same previous appearance and thesis of
being. The memory-" content ” is the same. Thereby the unity is
20 not intended in such a way that it allows for differentiation with
respect to the clarity or unclarity of the given. It is the correlate
of the memory’s positing, the “ memory thesis,” that which was,
but in the mode of memory, in which it presents itself to me as
identical in repeated possible memories. In repeated memories,
25 this unity reaches coincidence; it stands out as something
Objective. If I relate this unity in memory to the phenomeno­
logical time in which all individual lived experiences of memory
are integrated, in which they exist as a multiplicity, as a
succession of lived experiences, fulfilling spans of time, then this
30 unity extends itself in time and permeates time in a characteris­
tic manner. There is a first lived experience in which “ th e ”
memory is established, and throughout the time-spans in which
it is absent it remains as something, as one and the same in the
subsequent actual and possible lived experiences of memory. If I
35 now take it up, then it is in itself motivated, and at each place in
time the repetition of this memory would be something moti­
vated. The memory “ persists” the whole time, as long as
motives do not arise which annul it and thereby invalidate the
original memory. The cancelling crosses out every future
 remembering of this content and every past memory back
through to the originary perception (which is preserved in each [116]
memory as motivating). The content of the memory as matter
for the memory thesis in that case remains indeed as something
5 identical, but the thesis is no longer there.
The unity we are discussing here is not a mere abstraction, an
idea, but a concrete unity of lived experience. The idea of
memory A is not “ the ” memory A, which I might possess as a
unity that is constantly valid (even if for all that it is not yet
10 Objectively valid). The same applies here just as in the case of
“ th e ” predicative conviction, which is my lasting sustained
conviction, my possession, and which I can grasp in repeated
acts, and in acts repeatable as often as I like, as the one and the
same conviction, as the one that I constantly have. I arrive at
15 the conviction on the basis of a deliberation and through certain
motives; here it is instaurated as my lasting conviction. Later, I
return to it as to a familiar conviction of mine; a memory
arises, clearly or unclearly, the motives, the reasons for the
judgment, perhaps completely obscure; my old conviction,
20 established I no longer know when, has its reasons, and perhaps
I am seeking them, which is not the same as seeking new
reasons for it. It is not a question here of the conviction’s
content, everywhere identical, as an ideal unity, but of the
content as identical for the subject, as proper to the subject, as
25 acquired by him in earlier acts, and which does not pass away
along with the acts but instead belongs to the enduring subject
as something which remains lastingly his. The conviction
remains the same if the testimony remains the same. It is a
judgment; more precisely, it is judgment-material with a con-
30 comitant thesis and related to certain reasons. In the course of
time, however, the reasons can change. Possibly new reasons
become attached; or, by repetition, reinforcement can increase:
“ For a long time I have had the conviction, and in the course
of time it has always been reinforced and confirm ed...” The
35 relation to the motives of the judgment can thereby be very
unclear, and so can the relation to the various cases of renewal
and reinforcement of the conviction. Yet it is clear that the
unity constituted here is not the unity of the lived experience of
the one who is judging, but it is the unity of “ th e” judgment,
 which persists for the judging subject who grasps it as the same
in relation to various cases of remembering again and renewing
again— as something proper to this subject, but precisely only [117]
as something re-assumed and re-grasped. The thesis o f belief
5 must here once more (as is the case with the memory of
something perceived) be “ taken u p ;” otherwise it would mean
that it was my conviction but is not any longer. Hence these
unities, which we are calling convictions, have their duration-,
they can cease to be and then perhaps be instaurated anew. If I
10 acquire a conviction and if I represent to myself thereby a
future in which I would come back to this conviction, then I am
representing myself immediately as “ taking u p ” or “ taking
part in ” the conviction and not merely as remembering again
the lived experience of it. In order to relinquish the old
15 conviction, annulling reasons are needed. To be sure, one will
ask what is included in this “ are needed.” What we have here is
no empirical-psychological factum; instead it is indeed a matter
of pure consciousness prior to the constitution of the real
psychic subject. The earlier conviction (experience, etc.) remains
20 valid for me, and this says nothing other than that I “ assume ”
it; by reproducing it, I participate in the belief. It is not an
approving or an affirming of the kind that occurs in a question,
a doubt, or a simple presumption. And yet I have to do
something like give approval, insofar as we can indeed distin-
25 guish the two strata: the memory connected with the earlier
subject, the earlier belief, conviction, experience, etc., with the
present subject not taking part in them. And, on the other hand,
the same things, but now with participation, whereby, to be
sure, the participation is not a proper separate step, not an
30 affirmation in the proper sense, but instead, in a homogenous
unity of the memory, the remembered is there for me and the
quality of the present positing enters into the remembered. The
same applies to acts of every class, to lived experiences qualified
in all sorts of ways.
35 Nevertheless, in all these cases memory seems to play its role
and everywhere in the same way. In the case of lasting memory,
that S was p, memory plays a double role. This lasting memory
is constituted in distinct experiential acts, at the head of which
stands the act of the earlier perception as primordial instaura-
 tion. At the least, I see in a chain of such acts that the memory
is actually one. (The unity o f “experience ” is almost the sam e: I
see now that A is, and thereby the experience is “ instaurated.”
From then on it is my experiential possession, my experience, [118]
5 that A was at this particular point in time.)
If now, for example, we have the unity of a lasting mathema­
tical conviction, then what institutes the unity is not a percep­
tion as an act that posits a temporally fixed being. To be sure,
every act is an “ impression,” is itself a being in inner time, is
10 something constituted in the consciousness that constitutes time
originally. We can reflect on each act and in so doing turn it
into an object of an act of immanent “ perception.” Prior to this
perception (to which belongs the form of the cogito), we have
the “ inner consciousness” which lacks this form, and to this
15 consciousness there corresponds, as ideal possibility, the inner
reproduction in which the earlier act again comes to conscious­
ness in a reproductive way and consequently can become the
object of a reflective memory. Hence given therewith is the
possibility of reflecting, in the reproduction, on the earlier
20 having-perceived, even if it was not one in the proper sense,
thus on the having-originarily-lived-through as having-had-
an-impression.
Therefore in the case of a mathematical conviction, the
originating act is the relevant judging (in inner consciousness it
25 is an act constituted originarily, as an impression, and is of such
and such a duration in immanent time). It is judgment-material
along with a positing of being. This material contains nothing
of temporality. A non-temporal state of affairs is posited as
being. In repeated emergence o f the judgment we may have
30 chains of reproductions of the original judgment-impression.
The regard can be focused on them and can penetrate into
them. In that case I have possibilities for memories of various
levels. I recall my earlier memory; I now have a reproduction of
a second level and can focus on it; in that case I have a memory
35 of a memory. Or my regard can penetrate into it; I focus on the
state of affairs which was intended in the reproduced reproduc­
tion, on the earlier judgment. The same occurs in each case in
which I look back, in a reproductively repeated series of acts, on
the noematic content of the original act. (It should be noted
 here that it is one thing to conceive, and indeed originarily, the
mathematical conviction in several temporally distinct acts, and [119]
it is another thing to come back to the old conviction. And I
can simultaneously conceive the conviction anew and be con-
5 scious of the fact that I had already once, or perhaps more than
once, formed it.) The lasting conviction is persistent and
remains one and the same, extending itself throughout, not in
reference to a new conception that may arise, but in reference to
the mere assumption of the old one, already instituted and
10 accepted again as valid.
Hence this is valid for all acts, and, in addition, in the acts of
perception we find this peculiarity that in them there takes place
the following doubling: 1) they are themselves perceptions, they
constitute a temporal being and in this regard are originarily
15 giving; 2) as acts of inner consciousness they are impressions, in
inner consciousness they are originarily given. Inner conscious­
ness is, for them, originarily giving. Consequently, in them a
double memory occurs:
1) The memory of what was in transcendent time;
20 2) the memory of what was given in immanent time, the
memory of the earlier perception and of that which was
perceived in it as such, or the reproduction of the earlier
perception and of its perceptual theme.
In all cases, the constitution of the unity of the lasting theme
25 relates to this second memory. That which is posited by an act
of the cogito, the theme, is, with reference to repeated reproduc­
tions and repositings, which extend “ throughout” the chain of
reproductions, of the original theme reproduced in them, some­
thing lasting, at least as long as the reproduction is precisely not
30 merely just any reproduction but is a “ repositing” or, better, an
actual taking part in the positing, an assumption of what was
posited “ earlier.”
All the unities we have discussed are unities in reference to a
pure Ego, whose stream of consciousness they belong to and as
35 whose “ possessions” they are constituted. And the stream of
consciousness, as a totality, builds itself up as a phenomenal
unity. All my lived experiences, the successive and the co­
existing, on which I focus, have the unity of a flux of time. That
 which belongs immanently to a flux of time possesses a
perceivable, adequately graspable, unity. The unity of imma­
nence is the unity of a constant flux, in the nexus of which all [120]
immanent duration and change are constituted. All unities of
5 duration which are built up in the continuous flux of immanent
time merge into the unity of the monadic stream of conscious­
ness which is constantly becoming and changing, together with
the concomitant pure Ego. Thereby, this pure Ego is established
by means of a cogito determined in any way whatsoever. It
10 extends itself therein onto the total sphere of what is, in the
sense of ideal possibility, absolutely immanently experienceable
by it, rememberable, expectable, and indeed even phantasizable,
according to all temporal modes. If, for example, I yield to the
phantasy that I undertook a trip to Mars and had there lived
15 experiences similar to Gulliver’s, then these fictional lived
experiences of consciousness would belong to me, though as
empty phantasies. The fictional world is a correlate of a
fictional Ego, which, however, is phantasized as the same as my
actual Ego. Consequently, the idea, not only of the actual world
20 posited by me but also of each and every possible and phanta­
sizable world, as a world for this pure Ego, has, precisely
through the relation to the actual pure Ego, fixed bounds.
 PSYCHIC REALITY

§30. The real psychic subject

We distinguish, ever faithful to what is given intuitively,

5 between the pure or transcendental Ego and the real psychic
subject, the psyche or soul, the identical psychic being which,
connected in a real way with the respective human or animal
Body, makes up the substantial-real double being: the animal,
man or brute. We will only later be able to consider to what
10 extent soul and psychic subject are to be distinguished, for
example in this way, that the psychic subject is inherent in the
soul but is not simply to be identified with it. Provisionally, we
are not taking this distinction into account. By emphasizing the
substantial reality of the soul, we mean that the soul is, in a
15 sense similar to that of the material Body-thing, a substantial-
real unity, versus the pure Ego, which, according to our
exposition, is not such a unity. The task is now to seek for
greater clarity than has been achieved hitherto. The psychic [121]
Ego, or the soul, is a unity quite different from the pure Ego,
20 though in principle similarly related to a monadic nexus of
consciousness. We come to know what is essential in it if we
proceed from the psychological Ego-idea. from speaking about
human or, in general, animal subjects and go on to clarify, in
conformity with our method, the sense of such talk by means of
25 a return to actually exhibiting experience. By doing so, it
becomes evident that what is meant by this psychic Ego, e.g.,
the human (but excluding all Corporeality), is not the monadic
flux belonging to this Body experientially, nor is it something
that occurs as a real [reell] moment of this flux, but rather is a
30 unity indeed essentially related to the flux, though in a certain
 sense transcending it. The subject is now a substrate of proper­
ties (personal properties in a determinate, very broad sense),
analogous to the way a material thing is a substrate of
thingly-real properties. Just as not everything a material thing
5 has, e.g., its extension or its schema, is a real property in the
specific sense, so it is the same as regards the psychic subject. It
is related to the lived experiences of consciousness in such a way
that it has them, lives them, and lives in them; however, these
lived experiences are not its properties but merely its modes of
10 comportment, its mere “ psychic states.” The subject also “ h a s”
his Body, and, as it is said, his psychic lived experiences are
“ bound” to the Body. Yet it is clear that the psychic subject is
not primarily related to his Corporeal body as a material thing
and is only mediately related to the lived experiences connected
15 up to it, but, rather, the reverse: the psychic subject has a
material thing as his Body because it is animated, i.e., because
he has psychic lived experiences which, in the sense of the
apperception of the human, are one with the Body in a
singularly intimate way. The analogy between the psychic unity
20 and the unity of the material thing extends so far that we can
say there exists a full analogy, according to form, between
material properties, manifested in the changing physical behav­
ior of the thing, and psychic properties, manifested in corre­
sponding lived experiences as psychic modes of behavior. Psy-
25 chic properties therefore are “ unities of manifestation.” Among
the psychic properties, in the sense being elaborated here, are [122]
included every personal property, the intellectual character of
the man and the totality of his intellectual dispositions, his
affective character, his practical character, every one of his
30 spiritual capacities and aptitudes, his mathematical talent, his
logical acumen, his magnanimity, amiability, self-abnegation,
etc. In addition, his senses and the dispositions of sense
behavior which are properly his own, which are characteristic
of him, his phantasy disposition, and so on, are psychic
35 properties. Every psychic property, in accordance with the sense
just exemplified, has a relation to determined groups of actual
and possible lived experiences. These groups belong together
and relate to the psychic property in the same way that every
material property is related to the actual and possible schematic
 “ appearances” in which it manifests itself or would manifest
itself. In both cases, consequently, the way is predelineated in
which the respective properties would come to an intuitive
givenness of their essence and being, i.e., to an actually exhibit-
5 ing intuition and experience. Simply to look at a thing, i.e., to
bring to givenness its extension and the concomitant sensuous
fullness (thus the momentary schema of it) is not yet the same
as having actually experienced the thing as a material thing.
One needs to follow exactly the nexus predelineated in the
10 present thing-apprehension, in which a schematic multiplicity
unfolds in a unity-consciousness in which the property in
question is not merely manifest but is primordially manifest by
way of a constant fulfillment of the apprehending intentions.
The psychic properties in like manner refer back to multiplici-
15 ties of psychic experience, to lived experiences which correspond
to them and belong to them and which, in the apprehension, are
connected in one consciousness of unity. These lived experi­
ences, in the way they run their course, flow into one another,
and are connected, manifest the relevant character-properties,
20 and they do not merely manifest them in a vague manner but do
so in a fulfilling manner, and in an originary way they
primordially manifest them, or, in other words, bring them to
an experience that exhibits them. In both cases, the material and
the psychic, there is a certain fixed regulation in the relation
25 between properties and an infinity of actual and possible states,
something we learn about obviously only in reflection upon the
foundation of the experiential nexus which constitutes both the
properties and the states inseparably, whereas, unreflectively [123]
living in the relevant experiential consciousness (or putting
30 ourselves into such a consciousness by means of phantasy) we
get sight of the relevant lasting property in the unfolding of
states, and we experience the property in the full sense and with
the appropriate form of evidence in the unfolding of a primor­
dially manifesting series of states. In each case, the unities are
35 ones of multiple levels. In the psychic sphere, we find groups of
dispositions as properties of an inferior level and, built on them,
though not in the manner of mere “ summation ” but instead in
that of a “ constitution,” we find unities of property of a higher
level as ones which consequently manifest themselves, as uni­
 tary, in the properties of the inferior level and in their experien­
tial changes. This is how, to borrow an example from the sphere
of sense, the unitary, variable property, “ visual acuity” mani­
fests itself in the visual faculty which alters according to
5 circumstances. Thereby, just as is the case with the thing itself,
so the soul itself is nothing more than the unity of its proper­
ties; in its states it “ behaves” in such and such a way, in its
properties it “ is,” and each of its properties is a sheer ray of its
being. This can also be expressed as follows: the soul is the
10 unity of the “ spiritual faculties;” these are built upon the
inferior ones of sense (and they have once again, amongst
themselves, levels), and the soul is nothing more than that.
When the old psychology was a theory o f faculties, then it was,
as a theory o f the soul, precisely what it purely and simply could
15 be and had to be. If it failed, its failure was not due to its being
an alleged “ false faculty-psychology” but was due to its
breaking down methodologically; i.e., it did not develop the
method predelineated to it as a theory of the soul, as a doctrine
of faculties rightly understood. It failed, speaking generally,
20 especially in that it neglected, or took too lightly, the systematic
study of the psychic states, hence, at bottom, the “ states of
consciousness,” whereas these, in fact, as the material for the
primordial manifestation of everything psychic, should have
called for the most radical study.1
25 The main point sustaining the analogy must yet be expressly [124]
noted. The modes of behavior, as real modes in the material
sphere, refer back to “ real circumstances,” and it is only in the
reciprocal play between modes of behavior and circumstances of
behavior that the substantial-real property manifests itself pri-
30 mordially in the framework of originarily giving experience. The
same holds for the soul as the real something primordially
manifesting itself in the lived experiences of a monadic nexus
(lived experiences which obviously have thereby undergone a

1 For our present purposes it does not have to be shown how it failed in another
respect too, i.e., insofar as it did not realize that a distinction has to be made between
psychology as a natural science and psychology as a human science. Inclined, as it
was in general, toward the human sciences, it did not grasp the tasks and methods of
a natural science of the soul. (For modern psychology the situation is exactly the
reverse.)
 corresponding apperception). The soul (or the psychic subject)
behaves as it does under the pertinent circumstances and in a
regulated way. Here, as everywhere in analogous cases, this is
not merely an Objective fact but is included in the experiential
5 apprehensions; hence it can be drawn from them phenomeno-
logically. In the modes of behavior apprehended in reference
to the circumstances which pertain phenomenally, the psychic
property in question manifests itself or primordially manifests
itself in originary experience. Here, too, the apprehension of the
10 psychic lived experiences, as modes of behavior of something
real, is a phenomenologically peculiar one. The rule of the
belonging together is, in phenomenological thinking, a second­
ary recognition, since the type of the experience is already given.
For only from the essence of the type of experience, and not
15 inductively-empirically, can one gain knowledge of the regula­
tion constitutive for that type of unity of reality.
If we now look back on the pure Ego, then, in comparison
with the psychic, it is to be noted that as regards the pure Ego
too, insofar as it is active in its acts, passive in them, etc., it is
20 said then to “ behave” in them in such and such a way. In
addition, as regards the pure Ego too, and in a broader or
stricter sense, one speaks of states (as occurs, e.g., when one
opposes states as passivities to activities). But it is clear that this
concept of modes of behavior and of states is totally different
25 than the one which applies to the sphere of reality, where all
modes of behavior or states are, in conformity with the consti­
tuting apprehension, causally related to “ circumstances.” This
is a radical distinction in sense, for causality and substantiality
are by no means extrinsic annexes but point instead to funda-
30 mental types of apperception. According to the case, the
grasping regard can be directed differently, onto the state, onto
the causal dependence, etc., and all the acts which take form
thereby we call acts of real experience.
Finally, it must be said that just as, with the material thing,
35 nothing of what is distinguishable in the schema of the moment
escapes regulation from the point of view of reality, so likewise
nothing escapes in the sphere of lived experience. At least, the
empirical apprehension of the soul is such that eventually
everything apprehendable as real state in the relevant sphere is
 actually apprehended by it that way. Thereby it is a matter for
the experience which determines more precisely to construct the
series of experiences in which the property, perhaps only
vaguely postulated, would manifest itself primordially. The term
5 experience is ordinarily employed in the limited sense of experi­
ence of the real (briefly, in the sense of “ real experience ” ). Thus
what is designated thereby is the self-giving (and, at bottom,
originarily giving) act, in which a reality is given as mere
substrate of real properties primordially manifested in real
10 states and in causal relation to circumstances.
According to our considerations, two types o f real experience
rightfully stand side by side: “external" experience, physical
experience, as experience of material things, and psychic experi­
ence, as experience of psychic realities. Each o f these experiences
15 is foundational fo r corresponding experiential sciences: the one
for the sciences of material nature and the other for psychology
as science of the soul.

§31. The formal-universal concept of reality

The analogies that we have established between matter and

20 soul, and that no doubt could be pursued further, are grounded
in a commonality of ontological form, which, in our analyses,
came markedly to the fore and through which is determined out
of originary sources a formal-universal, and obviously extremely
important, concept of reality, namely, substantial reality.
25 Accordingly, if we speak in one breath of material and of [126]
psychic reality, then the common word expresses a common
sense or a common form in the two different concepts. On the
level of formal universality the concepts real substance (con­
cretely understood as a thing in a very broad sense), real
30 property, real state (real behavior) and real causality are con­
cepts which belong together essentially. I say real causalities
because with the states we are referred back to real circum­
stances in the form of the dependence of one real on another
real. Realities are what they are only in reference to other actual
35 and possible realities in the interweavings of substantial “ cau­
sality.” These dependencies are dependencies o f change (of which
 unchange is a mere limit-case and plays, furthermore, as a mode
of change in a broad sense, the same role that every other mode
plays) and specifically are dependencies of the change of the
real, in its properties, on the change of other real things in their
5 properties. In the relation between real properties and modes of
behavior these dependencies imply functional dependencies, in
the exchange of the corresponding multiplicities on both sides,
on possible modes of behavior in such a way that a thorough
reciprocal regulation takes place as to change and unchange,
10 according to everything these realities are as well as according
to everything they have.

§ 32. Fundamental differences between material

and psychic reality 1

The question now arises concerning the extent to which one

15 can speak of reality, in the sense we have indicated, in the same
way as regards material and as regards psychic nature. As to
causality, it is a constitutive idea for material nature, for the
idea of the physical thing. That is, all “ inner” features of the
thing as a lasting being, a duration, are themselves persistent,
20 and each such feature expresses a persistent behavior (a persis­
tent lawfulness in behavior) in the causal nexus of change.
But now, what about the reality of the soul? It, too, is a [127]
persistent being versus changing circumstances, but a more
precise examination is required to know what kind of “ circum-
25 stances” these are and what kind of “ persisting” this is. The
soul is the bearer of a psychic life together with the subjective
possessions of that life, and as such it is a unity extending
through time (the same time in which the Body endures). It
“ acts” upon physis, and it undergoes actions coming from
30 there. It exhibits an identity in that, on the whole, it “ behaves”
in a regulated way in its reactions under given physical circum­
stances, e.g., it senses and perceives in such and such a manner,
etc. Owing to these regulated modes of behavior, psychophysical

1 Cf. also § 3 of Supplement XII, pp. 355 fT.

 properties1 are attributed to it. These, however, are not the
same kind of persistent properties as the thingly ones. To make
this clearer, we have to recall how thingly properties are
constituted and how the psychic are. The thing is constituted as
5 a unity of schemata or, more precisely, as a unity of a causal
necessity within the nexus of dependencies which present them­
selves in manifolds of schemata. The soul, on the other hand,
does not allow of schematization. To speak with more precision,
the manifold, which, for what is material, functions as state, is
10 of the type: schema (sensuously fulfilled corporeal extension).
The schema is itself already a unity of manifestation. More
precisely, it is a unity in the manifolds of adumbrations. The
pure spatial schema is the mere corporeal form (the extension
without sensuous filling) which is necessarily given, in empirical
15 intuition, merely from one side and ever and again only from
one side. In originary primordial manifestation the form is
presented in a multiplicity of originarily given sides, in a
manifold of aspects, which we can grasp, at any time, with the
appropriate shift of focus (which, as a turning of the spiritual
20 regard away from the normal attitude occupied with the thing
itself, is directed upon the form, i.e., upon aspects of the thing,
its modes of appearance, its appearing sides). The aspect of the
moment is necessarily related to the zero-point of orientation, to
the absolute “ here,” and to the concomitant system of the [128]
25 depth dimension (fore-back), and of the breadth and height
dimensions (right-left, above-below). Thereby indeed a universal
form is designated in which all that appears as spatial-thingly
and, in the first place, all extension of it, must be given. We note
also that the aspects themselves are already constituted unities
30 and that they, corresponding to the essence of their appercep­
tive constitution, harbor unities in various directions and on
different levels, in a certain sense implicitly co-constituting
them. These unities still precede the appearing corporeal form
and in relation to them are likewise designated as aspects. If we
35 hold fast to the visual sphere pure and simple and to the

1 For a fuller treatment of the “ psychic properties” mentioned on pp. 129 f. but
left out of consideration here, i.e., the so-called character-properties, ones that are not
psychophysical, cf. below pp. 147 fT.
 constitutive unities existing in it alone, then to each position of
the eyes (to indicate it in an Objective expression), the body and
head remaining fixed, corresponds a new aspect of the thing
seen and especially of its extension. And the same applies to
5 each change of the position of the head which affects the
phenomenal orientation (in particular, the one concerning “ dis­
tances”). Each of these aspects and the unfolding of the
continuously changing aspects are thereby phenomenologically
related to corresponding “ circumstances” and are shown (as
10 becomes evident in new reflective directions of the grasping
“ spiritual regard”) to be related to concomitant complexes of
kinetic sensations. And this concomitance itself is something
constituted by consciousness and is graspable in reflection. The
originary or, in every case, fully intuitive consciousness of the
15 identity of the form within the continuous change of its modes
of givenness, which we are calling here its aspects, essentially
presupposes the continuous unfolding, played out in the back­
ground of attention, of the concomitant kinesthetic sensation-
complexes or of the corresponding transitional phenomena
20 (“ kinetic phenomena”) of the sensation-complexes which, for
example, are different according to whether, Objectively spoken,
the eyes move from their position at the start to this or that
other position. Thereby, in the consciousness of the concomit-
tance and in an apperceptively regulated way, the aspects (in a
25 certain sense, the appearances) related to these circumstances of
appearance change, and during this unfolding we see, in the
normal attitude, “ in ” these aspects (without their becoming
objects) continuously the one and the same thing or, in terms of [129]
our foregoing abstractive consideration, the one and the same
30 form.
It is now clear, however, that the apperceptive constitution of
the aspects is of such a kind that aspects of a higher level, in
suitably distinguished continua of their transformations, are
constituted as “ unities,” with regard to which the aspects in the
35 preceding sense function as “ manifolds.” E.g., to designate it
once again with an Objective expression, if we, at will, move
merely our eyes while the rest of the perceptual circumstances
remain fixed (fixed position of the body, of the head, etc.) then
not only the form but also the appearance of the form are given
 to us as one and the same aspect. We can be in such an attitude
that we are focused not on the thing but on the “ thing from the
side,” or we can be focused on the side, on the mode of
appearance of the thing, and, without paying attention to the
5 changing movement of the eyes and the corresponding modifi­
cations of appearance, we see the “ appearance ” as one and the
same. The like occurs if we, keeping all other circumstances
fixed, desire to intuit the object merely phenomenally as “ reced­
ing” or as “ coming close,” in which case we care only for the
10 change in the depth-order, whereas it is a matter of indifference
to us whether, in an Objective respect, owing to corresponding
apperceptive distinctions, we are conscious that it is the object
that is receding from us or that it is we who are moving away
from it.
15 Again, we have an aspect of a higher level if we both move
the eyes— and thereby allow the dimensions of height and
breadth to alter— and at the same time allow a receding into
the depth. And there always remain transformations of the
aspect-unity constituted here, which make evident the phenom-
20 enal difference as regards the form itself. The form is still always
given in “ o n e” sheer mode of appearance, alongside which
others are possible; it can turn, gradually rotate, etc.
Of course, intertwined with all this are still other modifica­
tions, ones constitutive of formations of unity. For example,
25 those that find their Objective expression (so to say) in the
“ change of the accommodation.” For if we again fix all the
other circumstances of the appearance and allow only the
accommodation to change, then “ th e” appearance, determined
as a phase within the continuum of the distinctions previously
30 indicated, has its changing modes of givenness. There are [130]
obviously great tasks here awaiting the phenomenological anal­
ysis of the thing. All “ strata” of the constitution of the thing
would need to be examined; what has been indicated here for
the visual layer would have to be pursued, in systematic
35 completeness and precision, not only for that layer itself but
also for all other layers and all constitutive directions in which
unities distinguish themselves over and against manifolds and are
constituted in them in terms of appearance. If we go back step
by step from the present unities to the manifolds constituting
 them, and from these (insofar as they themselves are again
unities of manifolds) to the manifolds constituting them in turn,
then in all cases we arrive finally at the data of the lowest level,
the sensory data of sensation in immanent time, the sensory
5 “ representatives” for the “ apprehensions” of the lowest
level.
Thus we see that the expression “ adumbration ” is equivocal.
It can be said of every aspect that the thing is adumbrated in it.
At bottom, however, it is the manifold data of sensation that
10 are called adumbrations, for they are the most primitive mate­
rials in which thingly determinations are “ adumbrated.”
Though at the outset we attached our considerations only to
the form (the extensio) of the material thing, still what we said
already had a universal significance. What has been worked out
15 obviously applies to the concretely full schema, or to it accord­
ing to all its components that can be abstracted out, thus also to
the sensuous qualities which “ manifest” and “ fill” the form.
These qualities are constituted as unities in parallel with the
form and utterly inseparable from i t : e.g., the body-colors, the
20 body-coloration that belongs in a unitary fashion to the body,
to the appearing extension, including the total coloration
belonging unitarily, as “ the surface coloration,” to the surface
of the body. Moreover, this total coloration, in accord with the
essence of extension, is “ divided ” among all the distinguishable
25 parts of the surface so that to each fragmentation of the
extension corresponds a fragmentation of the coloring, or,
speaking universally, to each fragmentation of the schema
correspond parts that have the full character of a schema. The
coloration and, thus, in general, the filling “ sensuous quality ”
30 are adumbrated in their own way exactly parallel to the visual [131]
extension. What they “ a re ” is primordially manifest percep­
tually exclusively in determinate, essentially concomitant, con-
tinua of adumbrations, so that, e.g., “ coloring ” without exten­
sion is unthinkable, just as is extension without coloring. If
35 corporeal extension or coloring is to appear visually, then that
is possible apriori only in manifolds of adumbration, in aspects
of a concomitant sort, and it is only possible if extension and
coloring are adumbrated in parallel to each other. They cannot
appear without each other.
 This primordial manifestation through adumbrations is, how­
ever, despite all the formal mutuality common to all constitu­
tion of “ transcendent” unities in manifolds, something in
principle quite different than the manifestation o f real properties
5 through states, as we have already expounded earlier. On the
level of the schema, there can be no question of substantial
reality and causality. Whereas we then stand, with respect to
material states, in the sphere of transcendence, this manifesta­
tion of the unity of the soul, of the psychological Ego, leads us,
10 it would seem, immediately into the sphere of immanence.
Psychic states are, abstraction made from higher apprehension,
no longer transcendent unities but instead are nothing else than
the immanently perceivable lived experiences of the immanent
flux of lived experience, of that flux in which all “ transcendent”
15 being is manifest, ultimately through primordial manifesta­
tion.
Hence, opposed to one another are the immanently given
psychic state and, constituted as transcendent unities, the
momentary states, the manifestations of persistent real proper-
20 ties, the identical of which is the thing. In the progression from
the perceptual to the higher constitution of the thing, the
intuitive thing— as has been dealt with earlier— displays, in its
optimal givenness, its relativity to normal subjectivity. The
identity of the thing then requires, if it is to be not only
25 intersubjective-normal but " thing in itself” as correlate of any
rational subject (any logical subject), a thing-determination of
logical form, which is an index of nexuses of sense experience
or, better, an index of thing-qualities of the lower level, given in
sense intuition. This higher thing-constitution assigns to the [132]
30 thing a persistent being, a stock of persistent mathematical
properties, in such a way, however, that the universal structure
of things, the form of reality-causality, remains preserved. The
states, too, are mathematized and become indexes of sensuous
states. The mathematical causality-in-itself is an index of the
35 manifold of sensuous causalities. If we, on the contrary, take
the soul and borrow (as Kant did) the idea of substance from
the mathematical thing, then we must undoubtedly say there is
no soul-substance: the soul has no “ in itself” the way “ nat­
u re” has, nor does it have a mathematical nature as has the
 thing of physics, nor a nature like that of the thing of intuition
(since it is not a schematized unity). And as far as causality is
concerned, we have to say that if we call causality that
functional or lawful relation of dependence which is the corre-
5 late of the constitution of persistent properties of a persistent
real something of the type, nature, then as regards the soul we
cannot speak o f causality at all. Not every lawfully regulated
functionality in the factual sphere is causality. The flux of
psychic life has its unity in itself, and if the “ soul,” concomitant
10 to a Body, stands toward this thingly Body in a functional
connection of reciprocal dependence, then the soul surely has its
lasting psychic properties, which are expressions for certain
regulated dependencies o f the psychic on the Bodily. It is a being
that is conditionally related to Bodily circumstances, to circum-
15 stances in physical nature. And, similarly, the soul is character­
ized by the fact that psychic events, in regulated fashion, have
consequences in physical nature. On the other hand, the Body
itself, too, is characterized by this psychophysical nexus and its
regulation. But neither Body nor soul thereby acquire “ nature-
20 properties ” in the sense of logico-mathematical nature.

Further, the material thing can, as a possibility in principle,

be completely unchanged, i.e., unchanged with respect to its
properties and unchanged with respect to its states as well. In
that case, the schematic manifold fills the duration with contin-
25 uously unchanged sameness. The psychic “ thing, ” however, in
principle cannot remain unchanged; least of all can it abide in
an unchanged psychic state. By essential necessity, psychic life is
a flux; obviously, therefore, it lacks everything analogous to a
spatial form as a form making unchange possible for existing
30 realities. Along with the necessity of the changing of the states,
what is then given as regards the soul is the necessity o f the
above-mentioned change o f psychic properties through a new
formation of dispositions. Every lived experience leaves behind
itself a wake of dispositions and creates something new as
35 regards psychic reality. Hence this reality itself is something
constantly changing. This is not to say that it would not
similarly, together with all other souls, lend itself to a form of
constancy, just as the material thing does in the spatial form.
 This form o f psychic existence, which belongs to the psychic
essence and its constitution just like the spatial form in the
parallel case, consists in the form of the social community,
founded on the (proper and still to be exposed) form of
5 Corporeality (which means much more than materiality), as a
community of existence unified by means of the bond of
reciprocal understanding. Moreover, it has to be noted in this
connection that what belongs to the fu ll psychic unity as
manifold (in analogy with the schema of the material thing) is
10 the current total state o f consciousness, whereas the singular,
abstracted out, lived experiences are, in this respect, “ states ” of
the soul in its fullness only insofar as they fit within the total
consciousness and are, in their total nexus, transitional points
for particular avenues of manifestation.
15 We have still to emphasize a difference: the material thing as
res extensa is fragmentable in principle, corresponding to the
extension with which it coincides throughout, and it can break
down into real parts. In relation to such possibilities of breaking
down into extended parts, it is evident that in this or that place
20 and in this or that piece the thing has these or those qualities,
and elsewhere it has others. The soul, on the other hand, has no
places, no pieces. It is absolutely not a fragmentable unity,
understood in the genuine and strict sense of a soul in which
souls, as parts, would be distinguishable and, furthermore,
25 separable into pieces. This does not exclude the possibility that [134]
the psychic Ego, manifested in the continuity of the nexus of
consciousness, might transform, either in a rapid gradual tran­
sition or all of a sudden, some of its dispositions, even entire
groups and their nexuses, its whole “ character,” and so become
30 “ a totally different ” Ego. O f course, one can ask whether the
continuity in reality could be broken by itself, just as, in the
parallel domain, the possibility can be considered as to whether
in the continuity of the schematic changes the thing could
transform itself suddenly into an other thing. As we know,
35 science holds fast to the idea of a reality persisting throughout,
even in such cases (which actually present themselves in the
experience of a lower level). Science refers the transformation of
reality to unknown and still to be sought causal circumstances,
but in doing so grasps it as semblant transformation, to the
 extent that a unity of a higher level manifests itself in what at
first counts as the real itself; and all real qualities of the lower
level, with all its discontinuities, are then reduced to relative
states of that unity.
5 Notwithstanding the undoubtedly essential unfragmentability
(connected to the essential unfragmentability of the flux o f
consciousness into a plurality of monadic nexuses) there exists,
on the other hand, a certain partition of the soul, namely, a
distinction between strata in the soul, corresponding to strata of
10 consciousness. Higher levels can be missing, and then the
stratification of the soul is quite different, as occurs, for
example, in the case of the soul which is constantly sleeping and
in which no cogito is accomplished. Another example is the soul
of the brute animal, in which the stratum of theoretical thought
15 in the pregnant sense is lacking, etc. Phenomenology convinces
us that the ancient doctrines of the “ parts of the soul ” and the
kinds of the soul actually contain meaningful problems and,
what is more, phenomenological problems, insofar as here in
intuition essential possibilities can be examined.
20 At all events, the most important stratification is indicated by
the distinction between the soul and the psychic subject, the
latter understood as a reality, but a reality nested in the soul.
Without the soul, it is unable to stand alone; and yet again, it is
a unity which in a certain sense encompasses the soul and which
25 is at the same time so prominent that it dominates the general
way of speaking about human and animal subjects. At present, [135]
however, we have not yet come so far that we can approach the
difficult problems the psychic Ego entails. For the moment, we
leave their delineation somewhat indeterminate and tarry with
30 the soul in its generality.
We have not yet considered closely its dependence on “circum­
stances." In this regard as well, there arises a certain stratifica­
tion, in accordance with which we can distinguish: 1) the
psychophysical (or, better, physiopsychic) side, 2) the idiopsy-
35 chic side, and 3) the intersubjective relations of dependence of
psychic reality. As to the first, it is well known that the psyche
depends on the Body and thereby on physical nature and its
many relationships. First of all, this dependency exists through­
out with regard to the totality of sensations (including the
 sensuous sensations of feeling and instinct) and further also
with regard to their concomitant reproductions, and thereby the
whole life o f consciousness is already affected by this dependency,
since sensations and reproductions of sensations (phantasms)
5 play their role everywhere. It does not have to be discussed here
how far the dependency extends with regard to the manifold
phenomena of consciousness, over and beyond this mediation;
at any rate, with regard to the life of the oul there exist
“ physiological ” dependencies that are very far-reaching, indeed
10 in a certain way penetrating all conscious processes. Correspon­
ding to them, there is a physiopsychic side to psychic reality.
Obviously, nothing else is meant by this than that the apprehen­
sion constituting psychic reality assigns to it real properties
which find their “ circumstances” in the Body and in the Bodily
15 causalities.
As to the second, consciousness presents itself (if we at first
let speak the apprehension already there rather than outside
theories that would interpret it away) as, so-to-say, dependent on
itself Within one and the same soul, the present stock o f lived
20 experiences, as a totality, is dependent on earlier stocks o f lived
experiences. Or again, if, under given inner circumstances, that
is, within the present total state of consciousness, a change [136]
supervenes in the form of a newly emerging state, then that too
depends on what had been an earlier state of the same soul. But
25 this dependency is certainly not simply the one mentioned as
regards the first case, for even where a sensation occurs as an
“ effect of external stimulation,” the mode of its “ acceptance
into consciousness” is co-determined by this new regulation.
The earlier lived experiences did not vanish without a trace;
30 each one has its after-effect. To the essence of the soul pertains
a continuous new formation or re-formation of disposnvictions,
of orientatiar titles: association, habit, memory, and also moti­
vated change in sense, motivated change of convictions, of
orientations of feeling (dispositions toward taking positions as
35 regards feelings or toward the corresponding abstentions), and
of orientations of will, which certainly, in accord with the sense
of the apprehension, are not reducible to mere association. Thus
the soul has complexes of dispositions and, thereby, real
qualities, which manifest themselves in it as having originated
 from it itself out of its own influence rather than out of a
relation to something external. It is clear that this type of
dependency is still less to be considered an analogon of physical
causality than is the conditionality through external circum-
5 stances. We can not yettain, that even the states of the soul
whichs certain, that even the states of the soul which are so
named by us (and the soul encompasses indeed the whole course
of lived experiences) are dependent from both points of view:
i.e., either merely through the sensuous substrate or as a
10 totality.

§ 33. More precise determination of the concept of reality

After our expositions of the differences between material

nature and what is psychic, the idea of reality consequently
needs a more exact delimitation. Both material nature and the
15 psychic are included under the formal idea, “ unity of lasting
properties in relation to pertinent circumstances.” But a differ­
entiation must be made as to the special kind of “ properties”
and “ circumstances.” The “ circumstances,” as we saw, can be
either outer or inner or again partly the one, partly the other.
20 Inner circumstances obviously are not states of something real
itself in the given span of time to which the consideration
relates. Rather, we take the total state, hence the real as it is in a [1371
given point of time, and inquire into that on which it, as real
state, depends. And now something remarkable shows itself,
25 namely the fact that material things are conditioned exclusively
from the outside and are not conditioned by their own past;
they are history-less realities. This results from the fact (and at
the same time it clearly determines the sense of our exposition)
that the possibility of material identity throughout all the
30 sequences of changes is inherent in the essence of material
reality and is so in such a way that thereby no augmentation or
fragmentation of materiality takes place (both of which indeed
equally belong as ideal possibility to the essence of such a
reality). Similarly, in this essence inheres the ideal possibility
35 that the material thing might come back in cyclical processes to
 identically the same external circumstances under which it had
already stood, even if something like that in any given case be
most improbable. But material reality is so constituted that in
such a cyclical return it would have to have identically the same
5 total state. On the other hand, it pertains to the essence of
psychic reality that as a matter of principle it cannot return to
the same total state: psychic realities have precisely a history.
Two temporally contiguous cycles of external circumstances
would affect the same soul in similar fashions, but within the
10 soul itself the psychic unfolding of states could not be the
same, for the earlier state functionally determines the following
one.
Hence it appears, speaking in principle and formally, that
realities are to be divided into mere natural realities, supematu-
15 ral realities (not of nature, having no natural sides, no natural
determinations), and mixed realities, ones which, like the soul,
have a natural side and an idiopsychic side. The second
possibility is for us an empty possibility, and it is problematic
whether it can be demonstrated at all. Such realities cannot be
20 in the “ Objective” spatio-temporal world.
Accordingly, we have, on the one hand, a set of lasting
properties which are, as to their “ in itself,” determinable
logico-mathematically and, on the other hand, “ properties ” of [138]
a completely different kind, unities which, by their very essence,
25 are involved in a constantly flowing reformation and develop­
ment, and in principle admit of no mathematization.
If we take the essence of the material thing as our point of
orientation for the concepts “ nature” and “ reality,” then we
have to say accordingly that these concepts do not appertain to
30 the psychic as such. But through its connection with the
corporeal, the psychic is linked to nature and “existence ’’ in a
second sense, existence in space, existence in space-time. And
thus it also has, we can say, a quasi-nature and a quasi­
causality, to the extent that we broaden precisely the concepts
35 nature, or substance and causality, and designate everything
existing, related to conditional circumstances of existence and
standing under laws of existence, as substance (thingly, real
existence) and designate as a causal property every property
constituted here as conditionally determined. The above-men-
 tioned “ link” to the Corporeal body, however, procures for this
“ quasi-nature” an insertion into the nexus of nature in the
strict sense. I grasp the “ human being” as a concrete unity in
“ outer experience.” In this apperception there is a system of
5 experiential indications by virtue of which an Ego-life with
partially determined content and with a horizon of indetermi­
nateness, of unknownness, is given as one with the Body and is
“ there” bound with it. And it resides in the character of this
apperception that from the start relations of dependence
10 between the psychic and the Bodily are apprehended in con­
sciousness and enter into the thematic focus by means of the
corresponding attention. The Bodily itself is again given as
interwoven in the causal nexus of physical nature. Here the
human being is a human being in nature and is in nature only
15 because, first and foremost, the Body is a material thing in
spatial nature. Psychic reality is constituted as reality only
through psychophysical dependencies. It has its unity in itself,
but here it is considered as a unity in a nexus. To be sure, in a
psychophysical consideration I observe one single sensation, one
20 perception, one nexus of memory, etc. But these are moments of
the subjective stream of consciousness and are states of the
“ soul,” which, as unity, is a seat of causalities (in an enlarged [139$
sense). It is in just this way that I isolate the individual physical
state, e.g., of the optic nerve, and follow it up to the process in
25 the brain. But it is precisely a brain process; the nerve is an
organ in the nervous system, and the nervous system is that of a
Body closed on itself, which, as Body, is a bearer of relations of
psychophysical dependence. All this inheres in the essence of the
dominant, sense-determining, apperception. The unity of the
30 soul is a real unity in that, as unity o f psychic life, it is joined
with the Body as unity of the Bodily stream of being, which for
its part is a member of nature.
The result of the consideration which was to enlighten us on
the sense of what is meant in speaking of the “ soul” and
35 “ psychic nature” leads us back accordingly to the point of
departure of our entire discussion: what we have to oppose to
material nature as a second kind of reality is not the “ soul ” but
the concrete unity of Body and soul, the human (or animal)
subject.
 § 34. Necessity of the distinction between the naturalistic
and the personalistic attitudes

Before we can enter into a more precise treatment of the

constitution of this reality, we must, in order to dispel obvious
5 objections, insert a brief remark. In relation to the psychic Ego,
taken as the unity that we have thought as constituted by
physiopsychic1 and idiopsychic dependencies, the following
difficulties arise:
That which is given to us, as human subject, one with the
10 human Body, in immediate experiential apprehension, is the
human person, who has his spiritual individuality, his intellec­
tual and practical abilities and skills, his character, his sensibil­
ity. This Ego is certainly apprehended as dependent on its Body
and thereby on the rest of physical nature, and likewise it is [140]
15 apprehended as dependent on its own past. But one thing is
striking: the apprehension in which the human being is given to
us in the human Body, the apprehension in which the human
being is given as a person who lives, acts, and undergoes, and of
whom we are conscious as a real person who behaves under the
20 circumstances of his personal life now in this way and now in
that way, seems to contain a surplus which does not present itself
as a mere complex of constitutive moments of apprehension of
the type we have described.
Let us consider: the human subject, e.g. I myself, a person,
25 live in the world and find myself dependent on it. I find myself
in an environment of things. The things there are dependent on
each other, and I on them. From this we take account of the
fact that my Body stands precisely within a thingly nexus and
that certain of its material changes have, in a determinate
30 fashion, psychophysical correlates. This state of affairs enters
into the apprehension insofar as I can at any time say meaning­
fully : my hand has been struck by a stick and that is why I sense

1 As the following considerations will show, the physiopsychic dependencies are

not sufficient for the constitution o f the psychic subject and its properties, as we
grasped them at the outset (pp. 129 f.) On the contrary, the concept o f “ external
circumstances” has to be extended to the Objects that motivate the behavior o f the
subject.
 a contact, pressure, light pain. On the other hand, however, it is
remarkable that I find myself determined by things in so many
ways without such psychophysical dependencies seeming to play
a role, i.e., in the apprehension itself. Among the things of my
5 environment, that one there steers my regard onto itself; its
special form “ strikes me. ” I choose the fabric for the sake o f its
beautiful color or its smoothness. The noise in the street
“ irritates” me; it makes me close the window. In short, in my
theoretical, emotional, and practical behavior— in my theoreti-
10 cal experience and thinking, in my position-taking as to pleas­
ure, enjoyment, hoping, wishing, desiring, wanting — I feel
m yself conditioned by the matter in question, though this
obviously does not mean psychophysically conditioned. Just as
in my own case, so I apprehend everyone else as directly
15 dependent, in such relations, on the matters in the same way
(though by no means psychophysically conditioned). If I know
the person, then I know, on the whole, how he will behave. For
this realizing apprehension, the psychophysical relations do not [141]
play, obviously, any actual essential role, even if they may be
20 included in this apprehension of the man. Even the idiopsychic
apprehensions, although they are co-functioning, cannot emerge
as constitutive for such realization. I apprehend myself as
dependent in my behavior, in my acts, on the things themselves,
on their beautiful color, on their special form, on their pleasant
25 or dangerous properties. I do not therein apprehend myself as
dependent on my Body or on my history. The same applies in
an even more striking way to the dependencies in which persons
know themselves as dependent on others, and not merely on
individual persons but on communities of persons, social
30 institutions, the state, morals, the law, the church, etc. The
apprehension of the man as a real personality is determined
throughout by such dependencies. A man is what he is as a being
who maintains himself in his commerce with the things of his
thingly, and with the persons of his personal, surrounding world
35 and who, in doing so, maintains his individuality throughout.
And furthermore, he maintains himself over against the powers
o f the Objective spirit, which, like legal institutions, morals, and
religious prescriptions, stand over against him precisely as
Objectivities. In these relations a man now finds himself bound
 and constricted, now unbound and free; also, he feels himself
now receptive, now creatively active. But in any event, he finds
himself really related to his thingly and spiritual surrounding
worlds. How a man behaves there is not a matter of mere
5 chance; someone who knows him can predict his behavior. His
reality as a person consists precisely in having real properties (as
personal properties) which possess relations, under rules, to this
surrounding world. On the one hand now it is certainly clear
that in the apprehension of the subject, with respect to all states
10 of acts, the physiopsychic and idiopsychic dependency is some­
how assumed, but that, on the other hand, in all specifically
personal contexts in which the personality manifests its personal
properties, they, properly speaking, play no role. What is
remarkable thereby is that we say the psychic Ego and the
15 personal Ego are, in their underlying basis, the same. The whole
consciousness of the personal Ego, together with all its acts and
the rest of its psychic basis, is precisely nothing other than the [142]
psychic Ego’s consciousness. We are even inclined to say that it
is the same Ego. And yet the same state of consciousness is
20 standing under two totally different apperceptions. In the one
case the system of real circumstances provides the “surrounding
world," in the other case, it is provided by the mere Body and
the elapsed nexus of consciousness.
A puzzling situation indeed. One who is wont to think in the
25 way of natural science will immediately say here that “ in
Objective truth ” the individuality in the nexus of individualities
dissolves into a nexus of Bodies in physical nature, with which
is linked a system of psychic correlates to which idiopsychic
regulations belong (to the extent that these latter cannot just be
30 reduced to psychophysical regulations). Thereby, in a way to be
explained by “ natural science ” (physical and psychological), it
happens that, in the psychic unities, Ego-subjects are constituted
and therewith acquire representations of other people and of a
surrounding world in the widest sense and work out modes of
35 representation in which they see themselves as directly related to
this surrounding world.
The question will be whether this answer suffices. At any
event, if we, in the way indicated, let the psychic*1Ego be
constituted by physiopsychic and idiopsychic components of
 apprehension alone, we are still not making a decision in favor
of this answer. To describe faithfully we must instead recognize
here two modes of apprehension (not only as facts given in
experience but also in phenomenological ideation) as essentially
5 different modes of apprehension still to be clarified by a proper
penetrating analysis.
In what follows we remain at first in the attitude in which we
think of the psychic Ego as constituted exclusively through its
dependencies; we are powerless against the fact that the per-
10 sonal Ego, which functions so-to-say as the ruler of the soul, is
co-present; but it is now for us dissolved, according to all its
acts and states, into the psychic. We are and we remain in the
attitude in which material nature is precisely actually there. The
Bodies are actually there, and, psychophysically one with them,
15 so are the psychic data that belong, as correlates, to the central
physiological processes, and causally interwoven with these data [1431
are dispositional after-effects of the earlier lived experiences of
the same soul.
Later, we will examine extensively each of the attitudes, or
20 apprehensions, in their mutual relations and in their significance
for the constitution of different worlds and sciences. Termino-
logically, we distinguish psychological apprehension and experi­
ence from human-scientific (personal) apprehension and experi­
ence. The Ego that is apprehended “ psychologically” is the
25 psychic Ego; the one apprehended in the way of the human
sciences, the spiritual sciences, is the personal Ego or the
spiritual individuum. Psychological experience fits within natu-
ral-scientific experience in a broad sense, i.e., within the science
of physical nature and of the Bodily-psychic nature founded in
30 the physical. Parallel with this, talk about man can have two
meanings: man in the sense of nature (as Object of zoology and
natural-scientific anthropology) and man as spiritually real and
as member of the spiritual world (as Object of the human
sciences).
 THE CONSTITUTION OF PSYCHIC REALITY
THROUGH THE BODY

§35. Transition to the study of the

5 constitution of 46man as nature ”

Now, the theme of the following considerations is to be the

constitution of the natural reality, man (or animal being), i.e.,
the constitution of man as he presents himself to a naturalistic
point of view: as material body upon which are constructed new
10 strata of being, the Bodily-psychic. It is possible that in this
constitutive consideration much will have to be included that
subsequent investigation will show as belonging to the personal
or spiritual Ego. It will be possible to provide the ultimate
distinction between “ man as natu re” and “ man as spirit,” as
15 well as the establishment of their reciprocal relations, only when
both these Objectivities have been subject to constitutive
study.
If we now look for a point of departure for our constitutive [144]
analysis, then we must take into account what came to light for
20 us as regards the constitution of material nature, namely, that
it, with its entire intuitive content, is related to animal subjects.
Hence when we approach the constitution of the natural Object,
“ man,” we may not already presuppose his Body as a fully
constituted material thing but instead must at first pursue what
25 is already constituted prior to, or correlative with, material
nature, as regards the psychophysical subject. And here, as
before, let us first try to see how far we can advance in a
solipsistic consideration.
 § 36. Constitution of the Body as bearer of
localized sensations (sensings)

We have seen that in all experience of spatio-thingly Objects,

the Body “ is involved” 1 as the perceptual organ of the exper-
5 iencing subject, and now we must investigate the constitution of
this Corporeality. We can thereby choose immediately the
special case in which the spatially experienced body, perceived
by means of the Body, is the Corporeal body itself. For this too
is perceived from the outside, although within certain limits,
10 preventing it from being considered, without qualification, as a
thing like any other in a thingly nexus. Thus there are parts of
this body which can indeed be perceived by touch but cannot be
seen.2 At first, however, we may disregard these and begin
instead with parts that we can both touch and see. I can look at
15 them and feel them, just like other things, and in this respect the
appearances have entirely the same nexus as do other appear­
ances of things. But now there is a distinction between the visual
appearances and the tactual regarding, e.g., a hand. Touching
my left hand, I have touch-appearances, that is to say, I do
20 not just sense, but I perceive and have appearances of a soft,
smooth hand, with such a form. The indicational sensations of
movement and the representational sensations of touch, which [145]
are Objectified as features of the thing, “ left hand, ” belong in
fact to my right hand. But when I touch the left hand I also find
25 in it, too, series of touch-sensations, which are " localized " in it,
though these are not constitutive of properties (such as rough­
ness or smoothness of the hand, of this physical thing). If I
speak of the physical thing, “ left hand,” then I am abstracting
from these sensations (a ball of lead has nothing like them and
30 likewise for every “ merely” physical thing, every thing that is
not my Body). If I do include them, then it is not that the
physical thing is now richer, but instead it becomes Body, it
senses. “ Touch ’’-sensations belong to every appearing Objec­
tive spatial position on the touched hand, when it is touched
35 precisely at those places. The hand that is touching, which for
its part again appears as a thing, likewise has its touch-
1 C/. pp. 60 ft*. and pp. 134 ft*.
2 As to the constitution of the Body as a thing, cf. pp. 165 ft*.
 sensations at the place on its corporeal surface where it touches
(or is touched by the other). Similarly, if the hand is pinched,
pressed, pushed, stung, etc., touched by external bodies or
touching them, then it has its sensations of contact, of being
5 stung, of pain, etc. And if this happens by means of some other
part of one’s Body, then the sensation is doubled in the two
parts of the Body, since each is then precisely for the other an
external thing that is touching and acting upon it, and each is at
the same time Body. All the sensations thus produced have their
10 localization, i.e., they are distinguished by means of their place
on the appearing Corporeality, and they belong phenomenally
to it. Hence the Body is originally constituted in a double way:
first, it is a physical thing, matter; it has its extension, in which
are included its real properties, its color, smoothness, hardness,
15 warmth, and whatever other material qualities of that kind
there are. Secondly, I find on it, and I sense “ o n ” it and “ in ”
it: warmth on the back of the hand, coldness in the feet,
sensations of touch in the fingertips. I sense, extended over
larger Bodily areas, the pressure and pull of my clothes. Moving
20 my fingers, I have motion sensations, whereby a sensation in an
ever changing way extends itself over and traverses the surface
of the fingers, but within this sensation-complex there is at the
same time a content having its localization in the interior of the
digital space. My hand is lying on the table. I experience the [146]
25 table as something solid, cold, and smooth. Moving my hand
over the table, I get an experience of it and its thingly
determinations. At the same time, I can at any moment pay
attention to my hand and find on it touch-sensations, sensations
of smoothness and coldness, etc. In the interior of the hand,
30 running parallel to the experienced movement, I find motion-
sensations, etc. Lifting a thing, I experience its weight, but at
the same time I have weight-sensations localized in my Body.
And thus, my Body’s entering into physical relations (by
striking, pressing, pushing, etc.) with other material things
35 provides in general not only the experience of physical occur­
rences, related to the Body and to things, but also the experi­
ence of specifically Bodily occurrences of the type we call
sensings. Such occurrences are missing in “ merely” material
things.
40 The localized sensations are not properties of the Body as a
 physical thing, but on the other hand, they are properties of the
thing, Body, and indeed they are effect-properties. They arise
when the Body is touched, pressed, stung, etc., and they arise
there where it is touched and at the time when it is touched: only
5 under certain circumstances do they still endure after the
touching takes place. Touching refers here to a physical event.
Even two lifeless things can touch one another, but the touching
of the Body provides sensations on it or in it.
We must now give heed to the following: in order to bring to
10 perception here the tactual thing, paperweight, I touch it, with
my fingers, for example. I then experience tactually the smooth
surface of the glass and the delicate crystal edges. But if I attend
to the hand and finger, then they have touch sensations which
still linger when the hand is withdrawn. Likewise, my finger and
15 hand have kinesthetic sensations, and precisely the same sensa­
tions which function as indicational or presentational with
respect to the thing, paperweight, function as touch-effects of
the paperweight on the hand and as sensings produced in it. In
the case of the hand lying on the table, the same sensation of
20 pressure is apprehended at one time as perception of the table’s
surface (of a small part of it, properly speaking) and at another
time produces, with a “ different direction of attention,” in the
actualization of an other stratum of apprehension, sensations of [147}
digital pressure. In the same way are related the coldness of the
25 surface of a thing and the sensation of cold in the finger. In the
case of one hand touching the other, it is again the same, only
more complicated, for we have then two sensations, and each is
apprehendable or experienceable in a double way.
Necessarily bound to the tactual perception of the table (this
30 perceptual apprehension) is a perception of the Body, along
with its concomitant sensation of touch. This nexus is a neces­
sary connection between two possible apprehensions: pertaining
correlatively to that, however, is a connection between two
thinghoods that are being constituted. It is shown empirically
35 by the possibility of a representation of the world in those blind
from birth that everything can come into play in the extra-visual
sphere and that here the apperceptions have to be ordered in
such a way that these correlations can be constituted.
 § 37. Differences between the visual and tactual realms

We find now a striking difference between the sphere of the

visual and that of the tactual. In the tactual realm we have the
external Object, tactually constituted, and a second Object, the
5 Body, likewise tactually constituted, e.g., the touching finger,
and, in addition, there are fingers touching fingers. So here we
have that double apprehension: the same touch-sensation is
apprehended as a feature of the “ external” Object and is
apprehended as a sensation of the Body as Object. And in the
10 case in which a part of the Body becomes equally an external
Object of an other part, we have the double sensation (each part
has its own sensations) and the double apprehension as feature
of the one or of the other Bodily part as a physical object. But
in the case of an Object constituted purely visually we have
15 nothing comparable. To be sure, sometimes it is said that the eye
is, as it were, in touch with the Object by casting its glance over
it. But we immediately sense the difference. An eye does not
appear to one’s own vision, and it is not the case that the colors
which would appear visually on the eye as localized sensations
20 (and indeed visually localized corresponding to the various parts
of its visual appearance) would be the same as those attributed
to the object in the apprehension of the seen external thing and [148]
Objectified in it as features. And similarly, we do not have a
kind of extended occularity such that, by moving, one eye could
25 rub past the other and produce the phenomenon of double
sensation. Neither can we see the seen thing as gliding over the
seeing eye, continually in contact with it, as we can, in the case
of a real organ of touch, e.g., the palm of the hand, glide over
the object or have the object slip past the hand. I do not see
30 myself, my Body, the way I touch myself. What I call the seen
Body is not something seeing which is seen, the way my Body as
touched Body is something touching which is touched . 1 A
visual appearance of an object that sees, i.e., one in which the
sensation of light could be intuited just as it is in it— that is

1 Obviously, it cannot be said that I see my eye in the mirror, for my eye, that
which sees qua seeing, I do not perceive. I see something, o f which I judge indirectly,
by way o f “ empathy,” that it is identical with my eye as a thing (the one constituted
by touch, for example) in the same way that I see the eye o f an other.
 denied us. Thus what we are denied is an analogon to the touch
sensation, which is actually grasped along with the touching
hand. The role of the visual sensations in the correlative
constitution of the Body and external things is thus different
5 from that of the sensations of touch. All that we can say here is
that if no eye is open there are no visual appearances, etc. If,
ultimately, the eye as organ and, along with it, the visual
sensations are in fact attributed to the Body, then that happens
indirectly by means of the properly localized sensations.
10 Actually, the eye, too, is a field of localization but only fo r
touch sensations, and, like every organ “ freely moved ” by the
subject, it is a field of localized muscle sensations. It is an
Object of touch for the h and; it belongs originally to the merely
touched, and not seen, Objects. “ Originally” is not used here in
15 a temporal-causal sense; it has to do with a primal group of
Objects constituted directly in intuition. The eye can be
touched, and it itself provides touch and kinetic sensations; that
is why it is necessarily apperceived as belonging to the Body. All
this is said from the standpoint of straightforward empirical
20 intuition. The relation of the seen color of the thing to the
seeing eye, the eye “ with which” we see, the “ being directed”
of the open eye onto the seen thing, the reference back to this [1491
direction of the eye which is part of having visual appearances,
and, furthermore, growing out of this, the relation of the color
25 sensations to the eye— all that will not be confused with the
givenness of these sensations in the manner of localized “ sens­
ings. ”
The same applies to hearing. The ear is “ involved,” but the
sensed tone is not localized in the ear. (I would not even say
30 that the case of the “ buzzing” in the ears and similar tones
subjectively sensed in the ear are exceptions. They are in the ear
just as tones of a violin are outside in space, but, for all that,
they do not yet have the proper character of sensings and the
localization proper to them .1) It would be an important task to
35 thoroughly examine in this regard the groups of sensations of
the various senses. However important that would be for a
completely elaborated theory of the phenomenological constitu­

1 Cf. Supplement III, p. 324.

 tion of material thinghood, on the one hand, and of the Body,
on the other hand, for us now the broad distinctions will suffice.
To make ourselves sure of them, we must be perfectly clear on
the fact that localization o f sensings is in fact something in
5 principle different from the extension o f all material determina­
tions o f a thing. The sensings do indeed spread out in space,
cover, in their way, spatial surfaces, run through them, etc. But
this spreading out and spreading into are precisely something
that differs essentially from extension in the sense of all the
10 determinations that characterize the res extensa. The sensing
which spreads over the surface of the hand and extends into it is
not a real quality of a thing (speaking always within the frame
of intuitions and their givenness) such as, for example, the
roughness of the hand, its color, etc. These real properties of a
15 thing are constituted through a sensuous schema and manifolds
of adumbrations. To speak in a similar way of sensings would
be quite absurd. If I turn my hand, bring it closer or take it
away, then, for one, the unchanged color of the hand is given to
me as constantly different. Yet the color itself presents itself,
20 and the color constituted first (that of the sensuous schema)
manifests a real optical property of the hand. Roughness, too, [150]
presents itself and does so tactually in manifolds of touch
sensations which constantly flow into one another and to each
of which a spreading-out belongs. The touch-sensings, however,
25 the sensations which, constantly varying, lie on the surface of
the touching finger, are, such as they are lying there spread out
over the surface, nothing given through adumbration and
schematization. They have nothing at all to do with the
sensuous schema. The touch-sensing is not a state of the
30 material thing, hand, but is precisely the hand itself\ which for
us is more than a material thing, and the way in which it is mine
entails that I, the “ subject of the Body,” can say that what
belongs to the material thing is its, not mine. All sensings
pertain to my soul; everything extended to the material thing.
35 On this surface of the hand I sense the sensations of touch, etc.
And it is precisely thereby that this surface manifests itself
immediately as my Body. One can add here as well: if I convince
myself that a perceived thing does not exist, that I am subject to
an illusion, then, along with the thing, everything extended in its
 extension is stricken out too. But the sensings do not disappear.
Only what is real vanishes from being.
Connected to the privilege of the localization of the touch
sensations are differences in the complexion of the visual-tactual
5 apprehensions. Each thing that we see is touchable and, as such,
points to an immediate relation to the Body, though it does not
do so in virtue of its visibility. A subject whose only sense was the
sense o f vision could not at all have an appearing Body; in the
play of kinesthetic motivations (which he could not apprehend
10 Bodily) this subject would have appearances of things, he would
see real things. It cannot be said that this subject who only sees
sees his Body, for its specific distinctive feature as Body would
be lacking him, and even the free movement of this “ Body,”
which goes hand in hand with the freedom of the kinesthetic
15 processes, would not make it a Body. In that case, it would only
be as if the Ego, in unity with this freedom in the kinesthetic,
could immediately and freely move the material thing, Body.
The Body as such can be constituted originarily only in
tactuality and in everything that is localized with the sensations
20 of touch: for example, warmth, coldness, pain, etc. Further­
more, the kinetic sensations play an important role. I see how
my hand moves, and without it touching anything while mov­
ing, I sense kinetic sensations, though as one with sensations of
tension and sensations of touch, and I localize them in the
25 moving hand. And the same holds for all the members of the
Body. If, while moving, I do touch something, then the touch
sensation immediately acquires localization in the touching
surface of the hand. At bottom, it is owing only to their
constant interlacing with these primarily localized sensations
30 that the kinetic sensations receive localization. But because
there obtains here no parallelism which is exactly stratified as
there is between temperature sensations and touch sensations,
so the kinesthetic sensations do not spread out in a stratified
way over the appearing extension, and they receive only a rather
35 indeterminate localization. Yet this is indeed not without signif­
icance; it makes the unity between the Body and the freely
moveable thing more intimate.
Obviously, the Body is also to be seen just like any other
thing, but it becomes a Body only by incorporating tactile
 sensations, pain sensations, etc.— in short, by the localization
of the sensations as sensations. In that case the visual Body also
participates in the localization, because it coincides with the
tactual Body, just as other things (or phantoms) coincide, ones
5 which are constituted both visually and tactually, and thus there
arises the idea of a sensing thing which “ h a s” and which can
have, under certain circumstances, certain sensations (sensations
of touch, pressure, warmth, coldness, pain, etc.) and, in partic­
ular, have them as localized in itself primarily and properly.
10 This is then a precondition for the existence of all sensa­
tions (and appearances) whatsoever, the visual and acoustic
included, though these do not have a primary localization in the
Body.

§ 38. The Body as organ of the will and

15 as seat of free movement

The distinctive feature of the Body as a field of localization is

the presupposition for its further distinctive features setting it
off from all material things. In particular, it is the precondition
for the fact that it, already taken as Body (namely, as the thing
20 that has a stratum of localized sensations) is an organ o f the will, [152]
the one and only Object which, for the will of my pure Ego, is
moveable immediately and spontaneously and is a means for
producing a mediate spontaneous movement in other things, in,
e.g., things struck by my immediately spontaneously moved
25 hand, grasped by it, lifted, etc. Sheer material things are only
moveable mechanically and only partake o f spontaneous move­
ment in a mediate way. Only Bodies are immediately sponta­
neously (“ freely”) moveable, and they are so, specifically, by
means of the free Ego and its will which belong to them. It is in
30 virtue of these free acts that, as we saw earlier, there can be
constituted for this Ego, in manifold series of perceptions, an
Object-world, a world of spatial-corporeal things (the Body as
thing included). The subject, constituted as counter-member of
material nature, is (as far as we have seen up to now) an Ego, to
35 which a Body belongs as field of localization of its sensations.
The Ego has the “ faculty” (the “ I can ”) to freely move this
 Body — i.e., the organ in which it is articulated — and to
perceive an external world by means of it.

§ 39. Significance of the Body for the constitution

of higher Objectivities

5 Now, besides this, the Body is involved in all other “ con­

scious functions,” and that has its various sources. Not only the
sensations which exercise a constitutive function as regards the
constitution of sense-things, appearing spatial Objects, not only
these sensations have a localization given in immediate intuition
10 along with the relation to a Body grounded therein, but that is
also true of sensations belonging to totally different groups, e.g.,
the “ sensuous” feelings, the sensations of pleasure and pain,
the sense of well-being that permeates and fills the whole Body,
the general malaise of “ corporeal indisposition,” etc. Thus here
15 belong groups of sensations which, for the acts o f valuing, i.e.,
for intentional lived experiences in the sphere of feeling, or for
the constitution o f values as their intentional correlates, play a
role, as matter, analogous to that played by the primary sensa­
tions for what is intentionally lived in the sphere o f experience, or
20 for the constitution of Objects as spatial things. Moreover, all [153|
kinds of sensations, difficult to analyze and discuss, belong here
as well, ones that form the material substrate for the life of
desire and will, sensations of energetic tension and relaxation,
sensations of inner restraint, paralysis, liberation, etc. All these
25 groups of sensations, as sensings, have an immediate Bodily
localization. Thus, for every human being, they belong, in a way
that is immediately intuitable, to the Body as to his particular
Body, i.e., as a subjective objectivity distinguished from the
Body as a mere material thing by means of this whole stratum
30 of localized sensations. The intentional functions, however, are
bound to this stratum; the matter receives a spiritual forming,
just as, discussed above, the primary sensations undergo appre­
hension, are taken up in perceptions, upon which, then, percep­
tual judgments are built, etc. Hence in this way a human being1s
35 total consciousness is in a certain sense, by means o f its hyletic
substrate, bound to the Body, though, to be sure, the intentional
 lived experiences themselves are no longer directly and properly
localized; they no longer form a stratum on the Body. Percep­
tion, as the touching apprehension of form, does not have its
seat in the touching finger in which the touch sensation is
5 localized; thinking is not actually localized intuitively in the
head, the way the impressions of tension are, etc. That we very
often speak as if it were so is no proof that we actually
apprehend it that way in intuition. The co-intertwined contents
of sensation have a localization which is actually intuitively
10 given, but the intentionalities do not, and only metaphorically
are they said to be related to the Body or to be in the Body.

§ 40. More precision concerning the localization

of the sensings and concerning
the non-thingly properties of the Body

15 Now, if all that belongs to the matter is Bodily localized or is,

by means of localization, related to the Body and is constitutive,
therewith, for the Body in the Objectivity proper to it, then we
need to ask how this constitution is to be understood and what
it is that institutes unity here. The physical Body is, of course, a [154]
20 constituted unity, and only to it does the stratum of the sensings
belong. How is the content of the sensation connected to what
is constituted, and how does the Body, which is equally a
material thing, have in itself and on itself the contents of
sensation? It is certainly not in the way in which the sensation-
25 content, tone quality, and the sensation-content, intensity, have
an essential unity, nor is it the way in which the sensation-
content, color, is unified with the moment of spread (we do not
mean here spatial extension, talk of which makes no sense with
regard to sensation-contents). Here we have on the one side not
30 sensation-contents but constituted real unities instead, and is it
really the case that we have mere sensation-contents on the
other side? Let us reflect. If an object moves mechanically over
the surface of my skin, touching it, then I obviously have a
succession of sensings ordered in a determinate way. If it always
35 moves in the same way, with the same pressure, touching the
same parts of the Body at the same pace, then the result is
 obviously always the same. All this is “ obvious,” it is there in
the apprehension; precisely under such circumstances this Cor­
poreal body behaves in such a way that it is not to be stimulated
in just any way but is stimulatable in a definite way under
5 definite circumstances, and such that all effects of stimulation
have their system, and to the system of thingly bodies appearing
in it there correspond distinctions as to place, whereby, how­
ever, to each such place pertains a definite, dependent on the
type of the stimulation-effect, further dimension of possible
10 distinctions. To the place in the extension corresponds a place-
moment in the sensation, and to the degrees of stimulation and
kinds of stimulation correspond definite moments which render
the sensation concrete and modifiable according to more or less
known ways. Thus there lies in the sensations an order which
15 “ coincides” with the appearing extension; but that is already
implicit in the apprehension from the outset, in such a way that
the stimulation-effects do not appear as something alien and as
just an effect, but rather as something pertaining to the appear­
ing Corporeal body and to the extensive order, and as some-
20 thing ordered in a coincident order. In each Bodily sensation,
the mere sensation is not grasped, but it is apprehended as
belonging to a system of possible functional consequences which
corresponds exactly to the extensive order, consequences that
the material real must undergo in consistent parallels with [1 5 |
25 possible material effects. We must also note that the fields of
sensation in question here are always completely filled, and each
new stimulation does not provoke a sensation as if for the first
time, but rather, it provokes in the sensation-field a correspon­
ding change in the sensation. Hence the field undergoes an
30 apprehension as something changeable in manifold ways and as
dependent on extension in the type of its changeableness. The
field receives localization, and in the field each new change
receives localization as a consequence of the particular stimulat­
ing circumstances. The new stratum the thing has received by
35 means of the localization of the field acquires, with respect to
the constancy of the field, the character of a kind of real
property. The Body, we can say, always has states of sensation,
and which particular ones it has depends on the concomitant
system of real circumstances under which it senses. Under the
 real circumstances of the “ sting” in this or that part of the
Body, there emerges in the sensation field (as a field of states)
the state of sensation, “ sting-sensation. ” Under the real cir­
cumstances we call entrance into a hot room, a change occurs in
5 the total localized field with respect to its total stratum of
warmth sensation in the sense of rising temperature, etc. The
sensitiveness of the Body thus is constituted throughout as a
“ conditional” or psychophysical property. And that enters into
the apprehension of the Body, as it is perceived “ externally. ”
10 To the apprehension of Corporeality as such belongs not only
the apprehension of a thing but also the co-apprehension of the
sensation fields, and indeed these are given as belonging, in the
mode of localization, to the appearing Corporeal body.
“ Belonging:” phenomenologically, this term expresses relations
15 of the phenomenal “ if-then” : if my hand is touched or struck,
then I sense it. We do not here have the hand as physical body
and, connected with it, an extra-physical consequence. From the
very outset it is apperceptively characterized as a hand with its
field of sensation, with its constantly co-apprehended state of
20 sensation which changes in consequence of the external actions
on it, i.e., as a physical-aesthesiological unity. In the abstract, I
can separate the physical and aesthesiological strata but can do [156]
so precisely only in the abstract. In the concrete perception, the
Body is there as a new sort of unity of apprehension. It is
25 constituted as an Objectivity in its own right, which fits under
the formal-universal concept of reality, as a thing that preserves
its identical properties over against changing external circum­
stances. The relations of dependency under which it stands
toward external nature are thereby, however, other than the
30 ones material things have amongst themselves. (It has already
been mentioned, and it will be discussed with more precision in
what follows, that the Body, in addition, as a material thing like
all others, is fit within the nexus of reality in a more strict sense,
namely, the one of causal regulation.)
It pertains in general to the intuition of something real to
leave open, in this intuition’s apprehension, further real depen­
dencies which do not yet belong to the content of the executed
apprehension in a determinate way (although they may be
determinate in their specific nature). The real can therefore be
 related, in new apprehensions and in extensions of old ones, to
new circumstances as something dependent on them, whereby
real properties of the same real object are constituted. The sense
of the expanded apprehension then prescribes the type which
5 the course of experience has to bear out and determine more
precisely. With this more precise determination the apprehen­
sion itself then necessarily takes on fuller form.
In this way, even the Body is apprehended not only as
dependent with respect to the primary stratum of sensation, its
10 properly localized one, but also with respect to the fields of
sensation and groups of sensation that pertain to it mediately
and are not properly localized, thus, e.g., with respect to the
field of vision. How the visual field of sensation is filled, which
motivations can occur therein, and consequently what in the
15 visual field can be experienced by the subject, and in which
modes of appearance it must be exhibited, this all depends on
certain qualities of the Body, especially on those of the eye, and,
furthermore, on the eye’s Bodily connections, especially its
connections with the central nervous system, and even more
20 particularly it depends on this system itself and, on the other
hand, on the concomitant external stimulations. Along with
that, hence, are constituted new real properties of the Body,
which, thereby, is obviously involved as already constituted ri51
from elsewhere. So the capacity to be stimulated in general
25 becomes a universal title for a class of real properties which
have quite another source than the properly extensive (and
therewith material) properties of the thing and which in fact
pertain to a quite different dimension. For through this stratum,
through this new group of real properties which display them-
30 selves as real insofar as they are constituted through a relation
to real circumstances within the real, the material Body is
intertwined with the soul. What can be apprehended as localized
stratum of the Body as well as what can be apprehended as
dependent on the Body (in the full sense of Body, including this
35 stratum already) and on the “ sense organs,” all this forms,
under the heading of the matter of consciousness, an underlying
basis of consciousness and undergoes its realizing apprehension
in unity with this consciousness as soul and psychic Ego. To say
that this Ego, or the soul, “ has ” a Body does not merely mean
 that there exists a physical-material thing which would, through
its material processes, present real preconditions for " conscious
events” or even, conversely, that in its processes there occur
dependencies on conscious events within a “ stream of con-
5 sciousness. ” Causality belongs, if the word is to retain its
pregnant sense, to reality, and conscious events participate in
reality only as psychic states or as states of a psychic Ego. Soul
and psychic Ego “ have” a Body; there exists a material thing,
of a certain nature, which is not merely a material thing but is a
10 Body, i.e., a material thing which, as localization field for
sensations and for stirrings of feelings, as complex of sense
organs, and as phenomenal partner and counter-part of all
perceptions of things (along with whatever else could be said
about it, based on the above), makes up a fundamental
15 component of the real givenness of the soul and the Ego.

§41. Constitution of the Body as material thing

in contrast to other material things 1

We have seen how, correlative to the material world, a subject

of Bodily-psychic faculties (sense faculties, faculties of free [158]
20 movement, of apperception, etc.) is constituted, whereby the
Body comes to light, at one and the same time, as Body and as
material thing. In this regard, however, we made the restriction
that the Body emerges as a thing of a particular type, so that
one cannot, without qualification, assign it to nature as a part
25 just like any other part. This is what we must discuss somewhat
more precisely.

a) The Body as center of orientation

If we consider the characteristic way in which the Body
presents itself and do the same for things, then we find the
30 following situation: each Ego has its own domain of perceptual
things and necessarily perceives the things in a certain orienta­
tion. The things appear and do so from this or that side, and in

1 C f pp. 152 f.
 this mode of appearing is included irrevocably a relation to a
here and its basic directions. All spatial being necessarily
appears in such a way that it appears either nearer or farther,
above or below, right or left. This holds with regard to all
5 points of the appearing corporeality, which then have their
differences in relation to one another as regards this nearness,
this above and below, etc., among which there are hereby
peculiar qualities of appearance, stratified like dimensions. The
Body then has, for its particular Ego, the unique distinction of
10 bearing in itself the zero point of all these orientations. One of
its spatial points, even if not an actually seen one, is always
characterized in the mode of the ultimate central here: that is, a
here which has no other here outside of itself, in relation to
which it would be a “ there.” It is thus that all things of the
15 surrounding world possess an orientation to the Body, just as,
accordingly, all expressions of orientation imply this relation.
The “ fa r” is far from me, from my Body; the “ to the rig h t”
refers back to the right side of my Body, e.g., to my right hand.
In virtue of its faculty of free mobility, the subject can now
20 induce the flow of the system of its appearances and, along with
that, the orientations. These changes do not have the signifi­
cance of changes of the things of the environment themselves,
and specifically, they do not signify a movement of the things.
The Body of the subject “ alters its position” in space; the
25 things appearing in the environment are constantly oriented
thereby; all appearances of things preserve their fixed system
according to form. The form of intuition, the lawful character [159}
of the adumbrations, and, therewith, the form of the order of
orientation around a center, all this is necessarily preserved. But
30 whereas the subject is always, at every now, in the center, in the
here, whence it sees the things and penetrates into the world by
vision, on the other hand the Objective place, the spatial
position, of the Ego, or of its Body, is a changing one.
Nevertheless, at the present stage of our investigation we are
35 not at all so advanced that we could assign to the Ego such an
“ Objective place.” Provisionally, we must say: I have all things
over and against me; they are all “ there” — with the exception
of one and only one, namely the Body, which is always
“ here.”
 b) Peculiarity of the manifolds of appearance of the Body
Other peculiar properties of the Body are conjoined with its
distinctive character as we have described it. Whereas, with
regard to all other things, I have the freedom to change at will
5 my position in relation to them and thereby at the same time
vary at will the manifolds of appearance in which they come to
givenness for me, on the other hand I do not have the
possibility of distancing myself from my Body, or my Body
from me, and accordingly the manifolds of appearance of the
10 Body are restricted in a definite way: certain of my corporeal
parts can be seen by me only in a peculiar perspectival
foreshortening, and others (e.g., the head) are altogether invisi­
ble to me. The same Body which serves me as means for all my
perception obstructs me in the perception of it itself and is a
15 remarkably imperfectly constituted thing.

c) The Body as integral part of the causal nexus

If, despite all this, we apprehend the Body as a real thing, it is
because we find it integrated into the causal nexus of material
nature. We spoke of the peculiarity the Body has (as Body) of
20 being moved “ spontaneously” or “ freely” by the will of the
Ego. Besides these free kinesthetic processes, others emerge
which, instead of being “ done by,” are characterized as being
“ done to,” i.e., as passive processes in which spontaneity plays
no part. In that case, we have at the same time an experiencing
25 of the mechanical process of the movement of the Body and a [160]
givenness of this process with the “ psychic” character of
enduring something— not as if it were something painful or
repugnant but simply in the sense that “ my hand is moved, my
foot is struck, pushed,” etc. Similarly, I experience the mechan-
30 ical movement of the Body as the movement of a material thing
like any other thing even in the case of spontaneity, and I find it
characterized at the same time as a spontaneous movement in
the sense, “ I move my hand,” etc.
Thus movements of my Body are apprehended as mechanical
35 processes like those of external things, and the Body itself is
apprehended as a thing which affects others and upon which the
 others have effects. All the cases mentioned earlier of condi­
tional relations between things and the Body also admit of
changes in apprehension, thanks to which the processes in
question appear as merely physical ones. If a heavy body is
5 resting on my hand (or perhaps the one hand on the other) then
I have, abstracting from the resultant sensation of pressure or
pain, the physical phenomenon of one body pressing on
another, perhaps deforming it by its pressure. If I cut my finger
with a knife, then a physical body is split by the driving into it
10 of a wedge, the fluid contained in it trickles out, etc. Likewise,
the physical thing, “ my Body,” is heated or cooled through
contact with hot or cold bodies; it can become electrically
charged through contact with an electric current; it assumes
different colors under changing illumination; and one can elicit
15 noises from it by striking it. The last two cases, however, are
different from the earlier ones where there was a psychophysical
process that could be split apart abstractively into a physical
process and its “ psychical” consequence (or vice versa). But the
physical process, “ red illumination of my hand,” is not fol-
20 lowed by the sensation of red in the same way that the sensation
of warmth follows the heating of my hand, and the physical
process to which the sensation of the color is linked — red light
rays striking my eyes — is not given to me at all. The “ turning
point,” which lies in the Body, the point of the transformation
25 from causal to conditional process, is hidden from me.

§ 42. Character of the Body as constituted solipsistically

If we now try, in a short summary, to characterize the way a

Body is constituted for the solipsistic subject, then we find
that:
30 1) viewed from “ w ithin” — in the “ inner attitude” — it
appears as a freely moving organ (or system of such organs) by
means of which the subject experiences the external world.
Furthermore, the Body appears as a bearer of sensations, and,
thanks to their intertwining with the rest of psychic life in its
35 totality, it appears as forming, with the soul, a concrete unity.
2) Approached from the outside — in the “ outer attitude” —
 it presents itself as a reality sui generis. That is: on the one
hand, as a material thing of special modes of appearance, a
thing “ inserted ” between the rest of the material world and the
“ subjective” sphere (the subject together with what was just
5 mentioned in 1), as a center around which the rest of the spatial
world is arranged, and as being in causal relationship with the
real external world. On the other hand, the Body appears here
at the same time as a “ turning p o in t” where the causal
relations are transformed into conditional relations between the
10 external world and the Bodily-psychic subject. And in virtue of
that, the Body appears as pertaining integrally to this subject
and its properties, both the specifically Corporeal and the
psychic ones bound up with them. That which is constituted in
the outer attitude is there co-present together with what is
15 constituted in the inner attitude.
In solipsistic experience, however, we do not attain the
givenness of our self as a spatial thing like all others (a
givenness which certainly is manifest in our factual experience)
nor that of the natural Object, “ man ” (animal being), which we
20 came to know as correlate of the “ naturalistic attitude,” a
material thing upon which the higher strata of what is specifi­
cally animal are built and into which they are, in a certain way,
inserted, “ introjected.” In order to attain that, a different path
has to be followed; one must go beyond his own subjectivity
25 and turn to the animalia encountered in the external world.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF PSYCHIC
REALITY IN EMPATHY

§43. Givenness of other animalia

5 In experience, in the sphere of original constitution, what is

originally given is a multiplicity of things in space and time, in
manifolds of appearances, but also originally given are £a>a,
including men (“ rational ” living beings), not as amalgamations
of what is given separately, but as two-fold unities, unities
10 which allow two strata to be distinguished therein, unities of
things and subjects, along with the subjects’ psychic life. Given
eo ipso with the act of apperceiving something as human is also
the possibility of mutual relations, communication, between
man and man. Then also the identity of nature for all men and
15 animals. Given furthermore are the more simple and more
complex social connections, friendships, marriages, unions;
these are connections instituted between men (on the lowest
level, already between animals).
If we unfold what lies in the unitary act of apperceiving a
20 man, as we have described it, then we have at the lowest level
the material Corporeal body, which, as a material thing like all
others, has its position in space and is given to me in manifold
appearances, variable at will, and in constantly changing orien­
tations: it is perceived originally.

25 §44. Primal presence and appresence

If we give the name original perception to the lived experience

in which a subject has the perceived object given in original
 presence, then that means the object is there “ actually,” “ in the
original,” and is not merely “ co-presented.” Hence there is a
fundamental difference between primal presence and appresence.
The latter refers back to the former. It is to be noted that primal
5 presence of an object does not mean primal presence of all its
inner determinations or proper attributes; some are enough, as
with all physical things. Yet there exists for the Ego the [163]
possibility of bringing the object, in continuous original percep­
tions, to primal presence as regards each of the properties which
10 belong to it, whereby in this perceptual continuum there is a
constant consciousness of the object itself in primal presence.
In that case, perceptual objects (thus, individual objects,
objects that have a temporal presence and a temporal duration)
break down into:
15 1) objects which can be primally present not just to one
subject, but, if they are primally present to one, can be given
identically as primally present idealiter to all other subjects (as
soon as these are constituted). The totality of objects that can
be given as primally present and that make up a domain of
20 common primal presence for all communicating subjects is
nature in the first and original sense. It is spatial-temporal-
material nature: the one space, the one time, the one world of
things for all: the one that can be given as primally present to
all.
25 2) what is subjective over against the Objective. And the
subjective is the individual-unique, the temporal, the total
content of original presence which can be given to only one
subject in primal presence. Each subject belongs here itself
along with all its acts, states, noematic correlates, and, further-
30 more, with the Corporeality and the properties, or faculties,
constituted in it in the inner attitude.

§45. Animalia as primally present Corporeal

bodies with appresented interiority

We now have to note, however, that what is experienceable in

35 the original sense, being which can be primally present, is not all
of being, is not even all experienceable being. There are realities
 that cannot be given to several subjects in primal presence,
namely, animalia, for subjectivities are included in them. They
are Objectivities of a particular kind, given originally in such a
way that they presuppose primal presences, whereas they them-
5 selves cannot be given in primal presence. Human beings as
components of the external world are originally given insofar as
they are apprehended as unities of corporeal Bodies and souls.
The Bodies which are externally standing over against me are
experienced by me in primal presence just like other things, [1 6 |
10 whereas the interiority of the psychic is experienced in appre-
sence.
In my physical surrounding world I encounter Bodies, i.e.,
material things of the same type as the material thing consti­
tuted in solipsistic experience, “ my Body,” and I apprehend
15 them as Bodies, that is, I feel by empathy that in them there is
an Ego-subject, along with everything that pertains to it and
with the particular content demanded from case to case. Trans­
ferred over to the other Bodies thereby is first of all that
“ localization” I accomplish in various sense-fields (field of
20 touch, warmth, coldness, smell, taste, pain, sensuous pleasure)
and sense-regions (sensations of movement), and then in a
similar way there is a transfer of my indirect localization of
spiritual activities.
In conformity with the experienced localization, there then
25 also takes place a continual coordination of the physical and the
psychical, and rightly so. For the dependencies, accompanying
the localization, of what is localized, i.e., dependencies upon the
physical substrata, give rise, where similar dependencies occur,
to an accomplishment of a coordination: e.g., localization of
30 psychic processes in the brain, in the frontal lobes, etc. To be
sure, this is not an experienced localization, which would be a
proper apperception. My hand and other parts of my Body are
appearing ones, and they appear as really connected with sense
data. But the lobes of my brain do not appear to me. The
35 functional coordination between the hand and the hand’s field
of touch is such that whenever I experience contact (as a
physical process) with the hand, “ contact sensations ” emerge in
my field of touch, or, in case it is someone else’s hand making
contact with something, sensations are co-given to me in the
 mode of appresence. But my frontal lobe is not the bearer of a
field of touch and is for me not at all something appearing. And
even as regards the other’s brain, I cannot “ intuit” in imme­
diate appresence the psychic processes which pertain to it.
5 But the Body as physical Object is subject to physical
influences to which psychic “ consequences ” are linked without
my knowing precisely how they are connected. And finally I
arrive at the brain, its structures and the physical processes
occurring therein which are in correspondence with the psychi-
10 cal processes, a correspondence that includes in itself functional [165]
alterations and dependencies. If a process in the brain alters,
then there occurs an alteration of the corresponding set of lived
experiences, the set of psychical events, and perhaps the con­
verse also holds. In the case of the hand, at first I find only that
15 contact conditions the alteration of the field of touch in a
corresponding way. But subsequently I discover a determinate
structure of the hand, sensory nerves, and finally the corpuscles
of touch and the physical processes there, and I will say
naturally that the field of touch “ pertains” especially to these
20 nerve-ends. But I cannot “ see” that this is the case, and, should
I excise these nerve ends, I will not be able to feel that it is the
case either. Hence this is originally an empirical coordination
which belongs to appearances, and then it is an empirical
coordination that belongs to what has been worked out theore-
25 tically.
What requires a closer examination is the system of appresen-
tations, which, on the one hand, in the case of the solipsistic
subject, has its original basis in original connections of regular
co-existence in such a way that the connected members and
30 series of members in their co-presence are not just there together
but refer to one another. And, on the other hand, this system
develops as a system of ordered indications only by means of
continuous experience of other people, who are already consti­
tuted by empathy. In the case of the solipsistic subject we have
35 the distinctive field of touch in co-presence with the appearing
Bodily surface and, in union with that, the field of warmth; in
second place we have the indeterminate localization of the
common feelings (the spiritual ones as well) and, further, the
localization of the interior of the Body, mediated by the
 localization of the field of touch. For example, I “ feel my
heart.” When I press the surface of the Body “ around the
heart,” I discover, so to say, this “ heart sensation,” and it may
become stronger and somewhat modified. It does not itself
5 belong to the touched surface, but it is connected with it.
Likewise, if I not only simply contact the surface of my Body
but press on it more strongly, press into the flesh, i.e., with my
touching finger “ feel through” to my bones or inner organs
(just as, similarly, with other bodies I feel through to their inner
10 parts), then particular new sensations, which are attributed to
the relevant felt-through Bodily parts, join to the general
sensations of pressure and touch. Besides, solipsistically there [ i 4
belongs to every position of my eyes an “ image ’’-aspect of the
seen object and thus an image of the oriented environment. But
15 also in the case of touching an object, there belongs to every
position of my hand and finger a corresponding touch-aspect of
the object, just as, on the other side, there is a touch-sensation
in the finger, etc., and obviously there is visually a certain image
of my touching hand and its touching movements. All this is
20 given to me myself as belonging together in co-presence and is
then transferred over in empathy: the other’s touching hand,
which I see, appresents to me his solipsistic view of this hand
and then also everything that must belong to it in presentified
co-presence.
25 Yet to the appearance of the other person there also belongs,
in addition to what has been mentioned, the interiority of
psychic acts. In this connection it should be noted that the point
of departure is here, too, a transferred co-presence: to the seen
Body there belongs a psychic life, just as there does to my Body.
30 If, however, a point of departure for understanding the other’s
psychic life is given, then various appresented indications, in
themselves undetermined, work together. What is then under­
stood is psychic being, which is co-given to the spectator along
with Bodily movements in co-presence, and indeed as conform-
35 ing to rules, movements which now for their part frequently
become new signs, that is, for the psychic lived experiences
which were indicated or surmised earlier and as well in cases
where these were not indicated in another fashion. Gradually, in
this way, a system of indications is formed, and there is finally
 in actuality an analogy between this system of signs “ express­
ing ” psychic events, both the active and passive, and the system
of signs of language for the expression of thoughts, abstracting
from the fact that language itself, as actually spoken, also
5 belongs to the former system. Precisely from here one could
embark upon a systematic study of the “ expression ” of psychic
life (and this has in fact already been attempted) and elaborate,
as it were, the grammar of this expression. Since here this
manifold expression appresents psychic existence in Corporeal-
10 ity, thus there is constituted with all that an objectivity which is
precisely double and unitary: the m an— without “ introjec-
tion.”

§ 46. Significance of empathy for the constitution [167]

of the reality “ I as man ”

15 Therefore, under the title “ the other man,” we have a Body,

and we have this Body in union with sensorial fields and, as it
were, psychic fields, i.e., in union with a subject of acts. This
appurtenance or conjunction obviously exists also for me
myself. Parts of these appurtenances were certainly given to me
20 originarily as regards myself (and could only be given as regards
myself); the rest is then empirical extension, transfer in thinking
based on experience. But now it would not occur to me at all in
the attitude of “ self-experience ” to take all that is psychic in me,
my Ego, my acts, my appearances as well, with their sense data,
25 etc. and seriously place, i.e., “ introject,” all this into my Body.
It is also out of the question that in solipsistic self-experience I
encounter all that is subjective about me, along with my
perceptually given Body, as a reality, i.e., in the form of a
perception, although my Body has such a multifarious unity
30 with what is subjective. It is only with empathy and the constant
orientation of empirical reflection onto the psychic life which is
appresented along with the other’s Body and which is contin­
ually taken Objectively, together with the Body, that the closed
unity, man, is constituted, and I transfer this unity subsequently
35 to myself.
Concerning the experience of others, every person, in virtue
 of his Body, stands within a spatial nexus, among things, and to
each Body for itself there pertains the person’s entire psychic
life, grasped in empathy in a determinate way, so that therefore
if the Body moves and occupies ever new places, the soul, too,
5 as it were, co-moves. The soul is indeed ever one with the
Body.
Moves “ as it w ere:” “ If something is bound to something
else that moves, then it is co-moved by that movement, and,
likewise, the whole formed by those two moves.” 1 This applies,
10 however, only if the connection is that of a physical whole. But
the soul is nowhere, and its connection with the Body is
founded only on functional nexuses: the Body is “ organ” of
the subject, and all appearances are related to Corporeality, [168J
through the connections the sensations have with the Body, etc.
15 The “ being-somewhere ” of a person certainly has a valid
meaning, but it is one thing “ to be regularly integrated with
something else and thereby localized,” and it is another thing
“ to be in space on one’s own.” In order to establish a mutual
relationship between myself and an other, in order to commu-
20 nicate something to him, a Bodily relation, a Bodily connection
by means of physical occurrences, must be instituted. I have to
go over and speak to him. Thus space plays a major role here
and so does time, but this role must always be understood
according to its sense and its function. The legitimate “ natural-
25 ization” of consciousness consists in the fact that Body and
soul form a genuine experiential unity and that, in virtue of this
unity, the psychic obtains its position in space and time. It is as
localized and temporalized in this way that the other subjects
are there for us. To the compass of that which is appresented
30 with the seen Body pertain also the systems of appearances in
which an external world is given to these subjects. Because we
grasp them in empathy as analogons of ourselves, their place is
given to us as a “ here,” in opposition to which everything else is
“ there.” But with this analogizing, which does not result in
35 anything new over against the Ego, we have at the same time
the other Body as “ there” and as identified with the Body-
as-here phenomenon. I then have Objective movement in space,

1 Aristotle, De anima, A 3.
 the other Body is moved just like any body whatsoever, and, in
union with it, the man “ himself” with his psychic life moves. So
I have an Objective reality as the conjunction of two sides, i.e.,
the man as inserted into Objective space, into the Objective
5 world. I then posit with this reality an analogon of my Ego and
of my surrounding world, thus a second Ego with its “ subjec­
tivities,” its sense data, changing appearances, and things
appearing therein. The things posited by others are also mine:
in empathy I participate in the other’s positing. E.g., I identify
10 the thing I have over and against me in the mode of appearance
a with the thing posited by the other in the mode of appearance
p. To this belongs the possibility of substitution by means of
trading places. Each person has, at the same place in space,
“ the sam e” appearances of the same things— if, as we might
15 suppose, all have the same sensibility. And on this account, even [169]
the “ view ” of a thing is Objectified. Each person has, from the
same place in space and with the same lighting, the same view
of, for example, a landscape. But never can the other, at exactly
the same time as me (in the originary content of lived
20 experience attributed to him) have the exact same appearance as
I have. My appearances belong to me, his to him. Only in the
manner of appresence can I have, co-given with his Body, his
appearances and his “ here,” to which they are related. But from
that “ here” I can then consider even my own Body as a natural
25 Object, i.e., from that “ here” my Body is “ there,” just as the
other’s Body is “ there” from my “ here.” is there at a point in
Objective space, and I consider it like any other thing that is
identical not only for me but for every other, and I represent it,
the Body, in just the way that it is given to any person who
30 encounters a man as one with it. I place myself at the
standpoint of the other, any other whatever, and I acknowledge
that each encounters every other as the natural being, man, and
that I then have to identify myself with the man seen from the
standpoint of external intuition. Man as Object is thus a
35 transcendent external Object, an Object of an external intuition;
that is, we have here an experience of two strata: interwoven
with external primally presenting perception is appresenting (or
introjecting into the exterior) empathy, in an apperception,
specifically, which realizes the entire psychic life and psychic
 being in a certain sort of unity of appearance, namely that of an
identity of manifold appearances and states localized therein,
which are united in the form of dispositions.

§ 47. Empathy and the constitution of nature

5 Empathy then leads, as we saw earlier, to the constitution of

the intersubjective Objectivity of the thing and consequently
also that of man, since now the physical Body is a natural-
scientific Object. The natural-scientific Object is the x of
“ mathematical” qualities, toward the substruction of which
10 causal analysis and the thinking based on it impel. The things
that are seen, actually experienced, as well as the actually
experienced causalities prove to be, as to their intuitive qualities,
subjectively conditioned. Consequently, man acquires, as a [170J
natural-scientific Object, a particular structure. The physical
15 Body is a mathematical (“ theoretical ”) substruction which refers
back to “ merely subjective” appearances (originally these are
called “ things”). The higher stratum is subjectivity, localized
in the substructed mathematical spatial bodies, the soul with its
conscious lived experiences, but also what is intentionally meant
20 in them, including the Objects of original experience as they are
experienced by this subject. The Objects of my experience, just
as I experience them, are now incorporated in me, the man, as
“ appearances” belonging to me and as being in the mode of
“ appearances.” If I posit, in my experiential research, a thing as
25 Objectively actual, then I am thereby also positing, for every
posited subject, existing unities of appearance, i.e., unities of
validity which are indices for rules of lived experiences of
perception and of possible perception that are intentionally
related to these “ appearances.” All these “ phenomenal” things
30 are what they are only as noematic correlates of the perceptual
lived experiences of the man in question. They are merely
“ subjective,” they have a “ merely subjective tru th ” (merely
subjective “ being”). In the apprehension of nature, physical
nature is posited absolutely, and so is the aesthesiological, just
35 as are, likewise, all lived experiences. Furthermore, the things
that are experienced by the subject in question, and that have
 their true correlates in the mathematical world, are posited as
unities of appearance. They are not posited as mere noemata
but as relative existences, and the truths pertaining to them have
their relative and subjective truth. They exist relatively: that is,
5 only if the subject (the man) exists and actually has the kind of
Body that corresponds and actually has the concomitant psy­
chic life in the concomitant relation to the thing itself “ existing
in itself” (the physicalistic thing).
There are as many such subjective worlds as there are human
10 individuals in “ nature,” which is for them the corresponding
truth in itself. The strata of the constitution of nature which
have been exhibited teach us how this apprehension is to be
evaluated: at the lowest level there is constituted, in the manner
previously described, the intuitive material world and, correla-
15 tive to that, the experiencing subject, one that has Body and
soul but is not yet the real unity “ man, ” is not yet an Object in [171]
nature. Then there are constituted the other subjects, apperceived
as analogons of oneself and, at the same time, as natural
Objects; nature is constituted as intersubjectively common and
20 as determinable Objectively (exactly), and oneself as subject is
constituted as member of this “ Objective nature.” The relativity
of the things of experience in relation to individual men is thus
incontrovertible, and it is also beyond doubt that the positing,
accomplished in empathy, of an intersubjective world in the
25 form of natural science allows that which is intersubjectively
posited to be determined “ theoretically ” in such a way that the
content of the determination becomes independent of the indi­
vidual subjects, i.e., in such a way that this content consists
exclusively of determinations any subject can acquire, out of
30 what is given to him in appearances, by means of the methodo­
logical procedure of natural science and with a sense that is
identically the same for every subject involved in natural-
scientific research. And the determination is such that each
subject can refer the determinations back to himself, to his
35 appearances in their dependency on him as subject. Hence it is
doubtlessly correct to say that the experienced things, with their
sensuous-intuitive experiential properties and experiential
dependencies, exist relatively only. They are dependent on one
another for the content of their being, and they are co­
 dependent on the Bodies, and on the souls, of those who
experience them. And in all this there is documented an
“ Objective ” nature which is determinable as the intersubjective
that belongs to all subjective existences (unities of appearance),
5 as what “ appears” there in a higher sense. As such, and
according to this sense, it can also be seen as an index of the
intersubjective regulation of the unities of appearance in rela­
tion to their subjects. This whole apprehension presupposes,
however, that which can never be transformed into an “ index: ”
10 the absolute subject with its lived experiences, its intentionally
meant, its acts of reason, etc., the subject for which is consti­
tuted the totality of nature, physical as well as animal. Nature is
a unity of appearance posited by subjects and to be posited by
them, to be posited, specifically, in acts of reason. But these
15 absolutely presupposed subjects are not subjects as nature, men,
for the latter are themselves intersubjective Objectivities. The
Bodies are the identical x’s as indices of lawful regulations of [17J
Bodily appearances of subjects in the nexus of the whole of
physical nature. The souls bound with these Objectively deter-
20 minate x’s, in substantial-real unity with them, are also Objec­
tively determinable: they are unities which are dependent on the
natural Objects, “ physical Bodies,” and which are bound to
them in an Objectively real way as realities in space and time.
The analysis of nature in our consideration of nature thus
25 proves to be in need of supplementation. It harbors presuppo­
sitions and consequently points beyond to another realm of
being and of research, i.e., the field of subjectivity, which no
longer is nature.
 Section Three: The Constitution of the Spiritual World

§48. Introduction 1

The following investigations are dedicated to the clarification

of a group of interconnected distinctions in metaphysics and
5 scientific theory, all of which have their source in the difficult
distinction between soul and spirit, which, thus, is the funda­
mental one in this entire group. On it obviously are dependent
the oppositions between nature and the world o f the spirit,
between the natural sciences and the human sciences, the
10 sciences of the spirit, between a natural-scientific theory of the
soul on the one hand and theory of the person (theory of the
Ego, Egology) as well as the theory of society (theory of
community) on the other hand. Our entire world-view is
determined, essentially and fundamentally, by the clarity of
15 these distinctions. To them corresponds within phenomenology
vast domains of research. Already decades ago, reactions
asserted themselves against the naturalistic interpretation, self-
evident in the age of natural science, of the human sciences as
mere descriptive natural sciences. In the first rank Dilthey has
20 here earned for himself everlasting merit. It was he who for the
first time recognized the essential distinction here and first [173]
reached a lively awareness of the fact that modern psychology,
being a natural science of the psychic, is incapable of providing
for the concrete human sciences the scientific foundation they
25 require according to their specific essence. What is needed is a
new “ psychology” of an essentially different type, a universal
science of the spirit that is neither “ psychophysical” nor
natural-scientific. Dilthey, a man gifted with the intuition of
genius, though not a man of rigorous scientific theorizing, saw,
30 to be sure, the problems leading to the goal and the directions
of the work to be done, but he did not penetrate through to the
decisive formulations of the problems and to the methodologi­
cally certain solutions, no matter how great was the progress he

1 For another draft of the introduction, see Supplement IV, pp. 325 ff.
 made here especially in the years of his wise old age. The power
of his thought is demonstrated by the fact that Hermann
Ebbinghaus’s elegant critique, one which, however, undermined
only the inadequate scientific elaboration of the ideas of Dil-
5 they, could not, in spite of the universal approval of the natural
scientists, arrest the course of development of those ideas. Ever
new significant investigations joined up with Dilthey’s research.
Windelband, Rickert, Simmel, Miinsterberg, and others tried
their utmost to do justice, from new sides, to the opposition in
10 question. Yet following them we do not penetrate to the
actually decisive clarifications and rigorously scientific concep­
tions and foundations. Only a radical investigation, directed to
the phenomenological sources of the constitution of the ideas of
nature, Body, and soul, and of the various ideas of Ego and
15 person can here deliver decisive elucidations and at the same
time further the rights of the valid motives of all such investi­
gations.
 OPPOSITION BETWEEN THE NATURALISTIC
AND PERSONALISTIC WORLDS

§ 49. The personalistic attitude versus the naturalistic

5 We link our considerations to what has been established in

carrying out the pure phenomenological analyses of the preced- [174]
ing sections. In those sections our investigations were related to
the naturalistic attitude. It was in that attitude that we carried
out our analyses. It is easy to understand, however, that all the
10 investigations will assume the character of pure phenomenology
simply by our performing, in the appropriate way, the phenom­
enological reductions. As long as we live in the naturalistic
attitude, it itself is not given in our field of research; what is
grasped there is only what is experienced in it, what is thought in
15 it, etc. But if we carry out phenomenological reflection and the
phenomenological reduction, make the attitude itself thematic,
relate to it what is investigated in it, and lastly carry out an
eidetic reduction and purification of all transcending appercep­
tions, then all our investigations are transformed into purely
20 phenomenological ones. As subject of the naturalistic attitude
we have then the pure Ego. To be sure, we will at first find
ourselves in reflection as empirical Ego; we perform the
reflection at first precisely as a new naturalistic attitude, which
thus, in the phenomenological reduction, belongs in brackets.
25 The ultimate subject, the phenomenological one, which can
never be bracketed and is the very subject doing all eidetic
phenomenological research, is the pure Ego. For the rest, all
that has been “ put out of p lay” remains for us, here as
elsewhere, preserved in the bracketing-modification: i.e., the
30 whole world of the naturalistic attitude, “ nature” in the
broadest sense of the term.
 As we know, it pertains to the essence of this nature— which
consequently emerges here as the pure sense of the acts that
make up the natural attitude, as their constitutive correlate—
that a thorough grounding is accomplished as the positing of
5 nature in the first sense, that of physical nature, in which
everything else that is called nature has the source of its sense,
as something founded therein. Thus were built on one another,
with respect to the constituting basic characters o f the apprehen­
sion : the experience of the physical as foundational and, resting
10 on it and enveloping it, the experience of the Body, which is
constitutive of man and animal; based on the latter, as consti­
tutive stratum, is the experience of the soul. The total system of
naturalistic experiences encompasses the whole of nature as the
total domain of the natural sciences in the stricter and in the
15 broader sense. Belonging here, therefore, is psychology, too, as
the natural science of the psychic being of animalia (humans
and animals) which thus fits within anthropology and so within
general zoology as natural sciences. Psychic being includes the
psychic Ego-subject, the Ego-subject as nature. We recall, how-
20 ever, that there are difficulties and objections related to this
Ego, namely ones regarding a distinction which obtrudes but
which yet does not impose itself as it should, i.e., a distinction
between this Ego and the Ego as person or as member o f a social
world. It is this distinction we want to investigate, and specifi-
25 cally by research in constitutive phenomenology.

a) Introjection of the soul as presupposition

even for the naturalistic attitude
Let us begin with the soul. For natural science, it is nothing
per se; it is merely a stratum of real occurrences in the Body. In
30 material nature — obviously this is the Objectively true nature,
with respect to which appearing nature (the thing-world with
“ secondary ” qualities), appearing to me and to everyone else, is
precisely mere appearance — there occur, as we all agree, within
the naturalistic attitude, certain pre-eminent things, ones distin-
35 guished by means of a stratum of real qualities that are not
specifically physical, not “ m aterial” or “ extensive;” I refer, of
course, to the properties of stimulatability or sensitivity. These
 new properties are constituted in the form of " localization " and
are, in conformity with their sense, dependent on physical
Corporeality and, through that, dependent on physical nature in
general. The higher stratum, the specifically psychic, is likewise
5 experienced in a way which is, to this extent, similar to the
experience of the aesthesiological, that is, precisely as a stratum
o f the Body as thing, insofar as this stratum, too, is, in a certain
manner, “ localized.” The soul animates or be-souls the Body,
and the animated Body is a natural Object within the unity of
10 the spatio-temporal world.
I see a playing cat and I regard it now as something of
nature, just as is done in zoology. I see it as a physical organism
but also as a sensing and animated Body, i.e., I see it precisely
as a cat. I “ see” it in the general sense ordinarily meant when [176]
15 speaking of seeing. A stone is seen in any at all of its perceptual
appearances, in which, strictly, only very little “ of i t ” is
presented in “ actual, ” “ proper, ” perception. If, on account of
the one-sidedness and other multifarious imperfections, we were
not to allow this seeing to count as a “ seeing,” as a “ perceiv-
20 ing, ” then talk about seeing would lose its essential sense
forthwith. There is indeed no seeing of a physical thing that
would not be “ imperfect” in this manner. Perception of
something physical, in conformity with its essence, includes
indeterminations — but includes them as determinable. In its
25 own way, the cat also is seen, and, in the seeing, its existence as
this animal, cat, is experienced. This experience has the kind of
imperfections corresponding to the fundamental character of
experience of animals. But, as always, the cat is present there in
the flesh— specifically, as a physical thing with sensing surfaces,
30 sense organs, etc. The stratum of sensation is not there as
something beside the physical thing; what is there is a Body, a
Body which has physical and aesthesiological qualities as one.
Likewise, the Body is also experienced as Body of a soul, and
the word “ soul ” indicates again a founded stratum of qualities,
35 and of course one that is still higher. The soul is not there as
extended over the Body in the manner of being “ localized ” in
the proper sense; it does not offer itself as something like a
complex of “ psychic fields” — thought in analogy with sense
fields— which would come, immediately or mediately, to phe­
 nomenal coincidence with the extensional components of the
Body, or which would come to a determinate correspondence
with them, either point for point or part for part. In spite of
that, the psychic is, in experience, one— that is, realiter one—
5 with the Body; to that extent it is something at the Body or in
it, lacking only distinguishable separate location. One could
employ the expression, misleading to be sure, of introjection; it
would then express precisely this state of affairs. In the Objec­
tive world, in the Objective world-space, there appears here and
10 now this Objectively real cat; it is something physical and
moves physically just like other things, except that beyond the
merely physical qualities it constantly has aesthesiological and
psychic ones. The excess of reality beyond the mere physical
thing is not something that can be separated off by itself, not
15 something juxtaposed, but something in the physical thing; thus
it moves “ along w ith” the thing and acquires its spatial
determination by its being in something which is itself spatial.
As we can direct our analyzing regard onto other properties, [171
so we can also turn to these psychic ones; they then stand out as
20 a “ stratum,” as a really inseparable annex, of the physical Body
as a thing (which for its part would be thinkable without such
strata, though, of course, only with the corresponding transfor­
mation, which is termed decomposition of the organism,
organic death). All these are not arbitrary inventions but are
25 pure unfoldings of what lies in the very sense of the naturalistic
apprehension, “ animal-real,” an apprehension which is determi­
nate apriori for the sense of all zoological judgments and
cognitions, insofar as they indeed originally draw the meaning-
content of their concepts from such an apprehension. That
30 which is included apriori in the sense of zoological experience,
in the sense content of this essential type of experience, “ makes
possible ” zoological science in precisely that sense, just as the
content (with its eidetic laws) enclosed in the essential type
“ physical experience” makes possible the science of physical
35 nature. If we think the one or the other type of experience as
cancelled out, then the concomitant experiential concepts, judg­
ments, and sciences vanish eo ipso.
 b) Localization of the psychic
Still the following is striking here. Every stratum is a consti­
tuted unity. We can consider, in conformity with its essence, the
“ m atter” of the constitution and abstract from the (“ form-
5 ing ”) realizing apprehension. We can direct our regard onto the
sensation-material and leave aside what is contributed by the
apprehension as the Body’s sensing. Similarly, we can direct
the regard to the unity of the stream of lived experience and
leave aside the apprehension in which the stream exists as the
10 lived state of an animal-thing that has lived experiences. We can
then also find, in the manifold currently presenting itself, unities
that are henceforth no longer unities of nature. In particular, it
is to be seen that with such a change of attitude, with such a
separation from the physical Body of what previously had been
15 apprehended as psychic, all integration into the Objective world,
into the world-space and world-time, gets lost. The soul is in the
Body and is there where the Body presently happens to be.
What also is there are such and such groups of states of
consciousness, such and such representations, stirrings of [178]
20 thought, judgments, etc. As acts and states of, e.g., this cat,
which has, by means of its Body, its position in Objective space,
everything that is really one with the cat has position, even
though it may have per se nothing to do with extension. Just as
consciousness loses the apperceptive apprehension as psychic
25 state, as stratum in the Body, and just as it is purely posited as
itself in the phenomenological (even if not at the same time an
eidetic) reduction, so it loses its empirical insertion in Objective
space. Which can also be expressed in this way: consciousness
in itself, for example this individual cogitatio in its nexus, is
30 thinkable without a nature, and the apperception of nature itself
can be posited in itself as “ That there!” ; however, it is
thinkable that it, or more precisely that the positing of nature
implicit in it, may not be able to be demonstrated at all, that
there is no nature at all. Then, in that case, there is also no
35 Objective space, and consciousness is not positable as something
of nature (as state of an animal); it is absolutely non-spatial.
 c) Temporalization of the psychic.
(Immanent time and space-time)
The same holds for time. Pure consciousness is a genuine
temporal field, a field of “ phenomenological ” time. This must
5 not be confused with “ Objective” time, which is constituted,
along with nature, by consciousness. It is through the psychic
apprehension that the conscious lived experiences obtain the
sense of psychophysical states and consequently their insertion
into Objective time, the form of Objective nature; to localiza-
10 tion corresponds temporalization. Since phenomenological time,
immanent in the stream of consciousness, is a uni-dimensional
“ constant ” manifold of properties that are exactly analogous to
the properties of the time which presents itself (“ appears ”) in
the lived experiences of the perception of something physical
15 and “ corresponds” to the latter point for point, and since in
this appearing time in the ultimate Objectivation the “ abso­
lute” world-time manifests itself, so the temporalization of the
time of consciousness is an especially deep one, insofar as the
latter perfectly coincides, in a certain way, with absolute time.
20 The coincidence is even more perfect than is the case with the
localization of the field of touch, for that lacks three-dimension­
ality, precisely what would be needed for an equal perfection in
the coincidence with the appearing Objective extension of the [179f
Body; thus what is lacking is the regulated coincidence of three
25 dimensional constancy with three dimensional constancy. As
regards time there is now transferred to consciousness the
Objective physicalistic time-measurement and time-determina-
tion which belongs exclusively to the material world. The states
of consciousness then have, in conformity with the constitutive
30 sense of the coincidence of their time with the time of physical
nature, a time that is measurable through primordial manifesta­
tion by the use of instruments. This is a confirmation which
certainly must be interpreted precisely in the sense prescribed by
this state of affairs, and one would be subject to a psychological
35 falsity if one did not make this sense perfectly clear. It is not our
task here to carry out this explication completely.
 d) Reflection on method
In these considerations we have been exercising the right of
phenomenological reduction, and the redeeming quality of this
doubtlessly valid fundamental method of the most original
5 determination of sense is that it frees us from the sense-
restrictions of the natural attitude and of every relative attitude.
Natural man, and especially the researcher into nature, is not
aware of these restrictions; he does not see that to all his results
adheres a determinate index, one which manifests their merely
10 relative sense. He does not realize that the natural attitude is
not the only possible one, that it allows for shifts of focus
whereby there emerges the absolute, nature-constituting, con­
sciousness, in relation to which, in virtue of the essential
correlation between the constituting and the constituted, all
15 nature must be relative. What is educational in the phenomeno­
logical reduction, however, is also this: it henceforth makes us
in general sensitive toward grasping other attitudes, whose rank
is equal to that of the natural attitude (or, as we can now say
more clearly, the nature-attitude) and which therefore, just like
20 the latter, constitute only relative and restricted correlates of
being and sense. The new correlates thus refer back similarly to
absolute consciousness in the phenomenological sense. They
require, for their full clarification, a return to the originary and
full nexus of the essence of this absolute consciousness. By [180]
25 means of the reduction to this nexus, we are capable at any time
of putting in their correct relation, and of exploiting absolutely,
the givennesses of the various attitudes (or the fundamentally
different modes of apperception pertaining to them).
It is such a new attitude that we are now intent on; in a
30 certain sense it is very natural, but it is not a nature-attitude.
“ Not a nature-attitude: ” that means that what is experienced
in it is not nature in the sense o f all the natural sciences but is, so
to say, something contrary to nature. Obviously, the quite
exceptional difficulty here lies not only in grasping this opposi-
35 tion but in understanding it from within, though not by actually
adopting the attitudes. For if we abstract from the attitude,
surely artificial, toward pure consciousness, toward this resi­
duum of the various reductions, then we constantly slip, quite
 effortlessly, from one attitude into another, from the naturalistic
into the personalistic, and as to the respective sciences, from the
natural sciences into the human sciences. The difficulties lie in
the reflection and in the phenomenological understanding of the
5 transformation of apprehension and experience and in the
understanding of the correlates constituted by them. Only in the
framework of phenomenology, through the relation of the
ontological distinctions of the constituted objects to the correla­
tive essential nexuses of the corresponding constituting mani-
10 folds, is it possible to preserve these distinctions without
confusion, in absolutely certain distinctness, free from all
misunderstandings which have their source in the involuntary
changes in attitude, ones which, from want of pure reflection,
pass unnoticed. By means of a return to absolute consciousness
15 and to the totality of nexuses of essence to be pursued in it, it is
first possible to understand the meaningful relativities of the
relevant objectivities of the one and the other attitude together
with their reciprocal essential relations.

e) The naturalistic attitude and the natural attitude

20 Let us now proceed with the investigation.
What it means to speak of a human being and a human soul as
nature (the human may suffice for us as a representative of
animality in general) we hold as firmly established. It then
presents no difficulties to say that the human soul has, among
25 other psychic states, so-to-say I-states, occurrences of the type,
cogito. They, like the psychic in general, are, in naturalistic
experience, added on to or “ inserted in to ” the physically
appearing Body and are localized and temporalized with it in
the familiar manner. They belong within the constellation of
30 real (substantial-causal) nature. This concerns also the empirical
Ego that lives in these states. That man there sees and hears,
and on the basis of his perceptions he executes such and such
judgments, such and such evaluations and acts of will, in their
multi-formed vicissitudes. That an “ I think” emerges “ in ”
35 him, in the man there, is a fact of nature, founded in the Body
and in Bodily occurrences, determined by the substantial-causal
nexus of nature, which is precisely not mere physical nature,
 whereas, of course, the physical is founding and co-determining
for all the rest of nature. The man there succumbs to a
dreamless sleep or faints; that has certain physical reasons. The
“ I think” disappears from the stream of his psychic occur-
5 rences. In the course of these lived experiences, which are his
natural states and which, as such, have a real relation to
determining real circumstances, dispositions, qualities of charac­
ter, cognitions, etc. manifest themselves and are, for their part,
natural-real “ properties,” to be investigated “ natural-scientifi-
10 cally, inductively,” in analogy with physical properties.
Pertaining to the psychic states are also the acts in which the
man has a consciousness of himself and of his fellows and of the
rest of the surrounding real actuality, sees them in front of
himself, takes cognizance of them, is related to them in a more
15 or less lofty way of thinking, and perhaps is also related to them
in the modes of affectivity and will. Here belong, e.g., the acts in
which he pursues physical natural science, psychology, history,
etc., or again, works as a man active in the practical life, utilizes
the things of his environment, transforming them according to
20 his purposes, and evaluates them from aesthetic, ethical, and
utilitarian points of view. Here also are the acts in which he [182]
places himself in a communicative relation toward his fellow
men, speaks with them, writes them, reads about them in the
papers, associates with them in communal activities, makes
25 promises to them, etc. A countless number of remarkable
relations between the subject and his “ surrounding world ” also
have a place here, all of them grounded in the fact that the man
“knows " about himself and his fellows and about a surround­
ing world common to them all. This surrounding world is
30 comprised not of mere things but of use-Objects (clothes,
utensils, guns, tools), works of art, literary products, instru­
ments for religious and judicial activities (seals, official orna­
ments, coronation insignia, ecclesiastical symbols, etc.). And it
is comprised not only of individual persons, but the persons are
35 instead members of communities, members of personal unities
of a higher order, which, as totalities, have their own lives,
preserve themselves by lasting through time despite the joining
or leaving of individuals, have their qualities as communities,
their moral and juridical regulations, their modes of functioning
 in collaboration with other communities and with individual
persons, their dependencies on circumstances, their regulated
changes and their own way of developing or maintaining
themselves invariant over time, according to the determining
5 circumstances. The members of the community, of marriage and
of the family, of the social class, of the union, of the borough,
of the state, of the church, etc., “ know ” themselves as their
members, consciously realize that they are dependent on them,
and perhaps consciously react back on them.
10 As soon as we presentify to ourselves in a lively way any of
these personal relations and, as it were, immerse ourselves in the
life of the person as bearer of these relations, and as soon as we
then, in reflection, peer at their modes of givenness through the
phenomenological magnifying glass, we notice that we are
15 thereby in an attitude that is essentially different as opposed to
the naturalistic attitude which was ours previously. In the latter,
the totality of “ Objective ” physical nature was, or is, there for
us, founding, scattered therein, Bodies, sensitivenesses, and
psychic lives. All men and animals we consider in this attitude
20 are, if we pursue theoretical interests, anthropological or, more
generally, zoological Objects. We could also say physio-psychic [183)
Objects, whereby the inversion of the usual “ psychophysical”
indicates quite appropriately the order of the founding. What
has been said concerns all our fellow men as well as ourselves,
25 to the extent that we consider ourselves theoretically precisely in
this attitude: we then are animated Bodies, Objects of nature,
themes of the relevant natural sciences. But it is quite otherwise
as regards the personalistic attitude, the attitude we are always
in when we live with one another, talk to one another, shake
30 hands with one another in greeting, or are related to one
another in love and aversion, in disposition and action, in
discourse and discussion. Likewise we are in this attitude when
we consider the things surrounding us precisely as our sur­
roundings and not as “ Objective” nature, the way it is for
35 natural science. We thus have to do here with an entirely
natural and not an artificial attitude, which would have to be
achieved and preserved only by special means. In the natural life
of the Ego we do not always — indeed not even predomi­
nately— consider the world in a naturalistic way, as if we were
 doing physics and zoology, as if our theoretical and extra-
theoretical interest would have to be directed inevitably to the
psychic only as founded in the Body, as really dependent on the
Body, as intertwined with it in a real-causal way. That is not
5 always the case even for the zoologist and naturalistic psycho­
logist; it is only that such a one has assumed the rigid habit, the
restrictions of which he normally can no longer break through,
that as soon as he takes up a scientific attitude at all, he does so
inevitably in the form of the naturalistic attitude (or, equiva-
10 lently, in an attitude directed to “ Objective” reality). He wears
the blinders of habit. As a researcher all he sees is “ nature.” As
a person, however, he lives like any other person and “ knows ”
that he is always the subject of his surrounding world. To live as
a person is to posit oneself as a person, to find oneself in, and to
15 bring oneself into, conscious relations with a “ surrounding
world.”
Upon closer scrutiny, it will even appear that there are not
here two attitudes with equal rights and of the same order, or
two perfectly equal apperceptions which at once penetrate one
20 another, but that the naturalistic attitude is in fact subordinated
to the personalistic, and that the former only acquires by means
of an abstraction or, rather, by means of a kind of self-
forgetfulness of the personal Ego, a certain autonom y— [184]
whereby it proceeds illegitimately to absolutize its world, i.e.,
25 nature.
Let us try to gain some clarity here.
We had previously first introduced the person and his per­
sonal modes of behavior as component parts of nature as
human. In fact, naturalistically considered, all consciousness,
30 and, in general, all lived experience, is founded Bodily, and
hence, in addition, so is the total content of that which, in the
persons, intentionally constitutes the world and all its proper­
ties. The person sees things round and about himself, and all the
thing-apprehensions and thing-positings with their contents of
35 noetic matter and form are psychical (physio-psychic). Likewise,
the person evaluates the thing, apprehends it as beautiful or
useful, as a garment or as a drinking cup, etc., and as such the
thing is perceptually present to him. The apperceptions which
 refer back to the spheres of affect and will and everything that
belongs to them, the sensuous feelings and drives, the modes of
evaluating and practical consciousness related to things, all this
pertains phenomenally, in the consideration of nature, to man
5 as animated Body. The same holds with respect to all social
acts. Sociality in its entirety is of interest to the psychologist
and, more generally, to the natural scientist, but is so only as
the sum total of physical bodies with concomitant psychic
foundations, whereby are also produced, in the mediate way
10 prescribed by such foundations, interhuman causalities. The
inter-physical causal relations also render possible, by means of
the provoked excitations distributed among individual Bodies
and by means of the aesthesiological-psychic occurrences imme­
diately connected to them in a functional way, the real emer-
15 gence of psychic lived experiences of “ mutual understanding ”
and, as a further consequence, the emergence of the lived
experiences of social consciousness. All these are here thus
particular facts of nature, not different than other facts of
perception and cognition which occur in unity with the Body
20 and as having such a content that the concomitant Ego has a
consciousness of these or those things as oriented to it in such
and such a way and as appearing to it with such and such
sensuous qualities. Hence all the facts concerning the person
appear in this naturalistic way of consideration precisely as facts
25 of nature and, as such, require a natural-scientific treatment. [185}
Obviously this ultimately leads into the domains of physical
nature and therefore is a psycho-physical treatment in the
correct original sense. The personal psychic data only form a
part of the psychic data and of the data of nature in general.
30 From the standpoint of nature, everything personal is subordi­
nate.

§ 50. The person as center of a surrounding world

On the other hand, if we now examine more closely the

essence of personal subjectivity, bring it to intuitive givenness,
35 and wholly immerse ourselves in it, then, as has been indicated
already, it will be manifest of itself that the attitude in which we
 live in the personal world, as subjects in the world of subjects, is
in fact essentially different from the naturalistic attitude and
that therefore in fact an apperceptive shift is needed first, in
order to thematize the personal naturally. Let us therefore seek
5 out the phenomena of the person and try to describe them.
As person, I am what I am (and each other person is what he
is) as subject o f a surrounding world. The concepts of Ego and
surrounding world are related to one another inseparably.
Thereby to each person belongs his surrounding world, while at
10 the same time a plurality of persons in communication with one
another has a common surrounding world. The surrounding
world is the world that is perceived by the person in his acts, is
remembered, grasped in thought, surmised or revealed as such
and such; it is the world of which this personal Ego is
15 conscious, the world which is there for it, to which it relates in
this or that way, e.g. by way of thematically experiencing and
theorizing as regards the appearing things or by way of feeling,
evaluating, acting, shaping technically, etc. And the personal
Ego “ relates” to this world in acts upon which it can reflect,
20 as is the case, for example, when it takes notice of itself as
personal Ego, just as any other person can reflect on these same
acts, even if in a correspondingly modified way (reflection in
empathy), when the other grasps these acts as acts of the person
in question, for instance whenever the other speaks, with clear
25 understanding, of that person precisely as a person. And a
person is precisely a person who represents, feels, evaluates,
strives, and acts and who, in every such personal act, stands in [186]
relation to something, to objects in his surrounding world.
Thus the actual surrounding world of any person whatsoever
30 is not physical reality pure and simple and without qualifica­
tion, but instead it is the surrounding world only to the extent
he “ know s” of it, insofar as he grasps it by apperception and
positing or is conscious of it in the horizon of his existence as
co-given and offered to his grasp— clearly or unclearly, deter-
35 minately or indeterminately— precisely in accordance with the
way it happens to be posited by consciousness. If the person
knows nothing of the discoveries of physics, then the world with
the sense-content of physics does not belong to his actual
 surrounding world. (Obviously, the same holds for the sphere of
psychological being as regards the discoveries of psychology.)
Speaking quite universally, the surrounding world is not a
world “ in itself” but is rather a world “ for me,” precisely the
5 surrounding world of its Ego-subject, a world experienced by
the subject or grasped consciously in some other way and
posited by the subject in his intentional lived experiences with
the sense-content of the moment. As such, the surrounding
world is in a certain way always in the process of becoming,
10 constantly producing itself by means of transformations of
sense and ever new formations of sense along with the concom­
itant positings and annullings.
To begin with, the world is, in its core, a world appearing to
the senses and characterized as “ on hand,” a world given in
15 straightforward empirical intuitions and perhaps grasped
actively. The Ego then finds itself related to this empirical world
in new acts, e.g., in acts of valuing or in acts of pleasure and
displeasure. In these acts, the object is brought to consciousness
as valuable, pleasant, beautiful, etc., and indeed this happens in
20 various ways, e.g., in original givenness. In that case, there is
built, upon the substratum of mere intuitive representing, an
evaluating which, if we presuppose it, plays, in the immediacy of
its lively motivation, the role of a value-“ perception ” (in our
terms, a value-reception) in which the value character itself is
25 given in original intuition. When I hear the tone of a violin, the
pleasantness and beauty are given originarily if the tone moves
my feelings originally and in a lively manner, and the beauty as
such is given originally precisely within the medium of this
pleasure, and similarly is given the mediate value of the violin as
30 producing such a tone, insofar as we see it itself being played
and grasp intuitively the causal relation which is founding here.
Likewise, the beauty of the violin’s external structure, its elegant
form, is given immediately and originally, whereby the particu­
larities and connections motivating the pleasure come actually
35 to the fore in the unity of the constituting intuition and exercise
their motivating power. The consciousness of value, however,
can also arise in the mode of non-originary pleasure and in the
mode of the evaluation of the pleasurable as such without the
feelings being moved “ originally” and in a lively way; that
 would be the analogon, in the sphere of feelings, of obscure
representations as opposed to the clear. For example, if at a
first glance, I find the violin “ beautiful ” and a “ work of art,”
the pleasure is then incomplete, if the beauty itself is present at
5 all. I can see the violin and find it to be beautiful, without my
feelings being aroused in any “ genuine” way.
The same holds for the objects of desiring and practical acts.
The experienced objects, as objects of this empirical sense, excite
my desire or perhaps fill needs in relation to certain circum-
10 stances constituted in consciousness, e.g., in relation to the need
for food which makes itself felt very frequently. Afterwards, the
objects become apprehendable as in the service of the satisfac­
tion of such needs according to this or that property, and in
that case they offer themselves to the apprehension as a means
15 for nutrition, or as use-Objects of various sorts: heating mate­
rial, choppers, hammers, etc. For instance, I see coal as heating
material; I recognize it and recognize it as useful and as used for
heating, as appropriate for and as destined to produce warmth.
I see that something is burning or is glowing; I approach it and
20 heat radiates out from it. I also know that from experience, and
now the object is “ h o t” even if I do not feel any degree of
warmth. To be hot is an Objective property, manifesting itself in
act in the sensation of warmth and in the apprehensions of the
heat radiating out from the object. The object suffuses heat, and
25 as its Objective property it is perhaps one unchanging, ever the
same, heat, whereas I, in approaching and stepping back, have
dissimilar sensations of it. Experience teaches me, further, that
an object itself starts to glow by being rubbed or by being
ignited by a body that is itself already burning or glowing. This
30 object is “ combustible” material (at first without any practical [188]
bearing). Henceforth I can use it as fuel; it has value for me as a
possible source of heat. That is, it has value for me with
reference to the fact that with it I can produce the heating of a
room and thereby pleasant sensations of warmth for myself and
35 others. I apprehend it from this point of view: I “ can use it for
that,” it is useful to me for that. Others also apprehend it in the
same way, and it acquires an intersubjective use-value and in a
social context is appreciated and is valuable as serving such and
such a purpose, as useful to man, etc. That is how it is first
 “ looked upon ” in its immediacy: subsequently it is further seen
as a “ commodity” sold for that purpose, etc.
All these are founded Objects, which, in apprehension, have
been constituted for the Ego, in the way described, by means of
5 founded acts, and again, they are constituted in either an
originarily giving consciousness by means of such acts or in a
consciousness which is not giving in that way, in acts which are
fully developed or authentic, or in unauthentic acts.
If, however, these sorts of founded acts are accomplished at
10 all, in whatever mode, then the relevant objects, endowed with
value characteristics, desirable and practical ones, are again for
the Ego objects of its surrounding world, and it can relate to
them in new personal acts. It evaluates them as to the degree of
their being good or bad, appropriate or counter-productive. The
15 Ego transforms them, and they then become its “ products,” its
“ fabrications,” and as such they enter once more into its
surrounding world. For instance, they are given the value of
works; at the same time they may be recognized as beautiful,
and perhaps they serve as work-tools for new productions,
20 which then, for their part, function in position-takings and
found new strata of apprehension, new Objectivations, etc.
Consequently, the subject is always carrying out multi-layered
acts of every possible kind, out of which can arise, by means of
the appropriate shifts, ever new Objectivations of ever higher
25 levels. Living in these acts, the subject has the objects constituted
at present precisely as its “ objects,” which will then determine
its further behavior and which the subject will thereby recognize
as determining itself.
It is evident what foundational new sense there is to the
30 relation between man as personal subject and the objects of his
surrounding world versus the natural relation between the
naturally understood man (as psychophysical reality) and other
realities. “ Stimuli” are said to be emitted especially by the
physical Objects of nature, and the sensitive nerves are said to
35 be stimulated by physical excitations. Perhaps then even the
soul will be said to be stimulated: the excitations propagated in
the nervous system terminate in a final excitation within the
central nervous system, which excitation then for its part
functions as “ stimulus” for the soul and brings about its
 reaction, the sensation. But if we place ourselves on the terrain
of the intentional relation between subject and Object, the
relation between person and surrounding world, then the con­
cept of stimulus acquires a fundamentally new sense. Instead of
5 the causal relation between things and men as natural realities,
there is substituted the relation o f motivation between persons
and things, and these things are not the things of nature,
existing in themselves— i.e., the things of exact natural science
with the determinations claimed there to be the only Objectively
10 true ones— but are the experienced, thought, or in some other
way intended and posited things as such, intentional objects of
personal consciousness. Thus it is from the things which, in
terms of the consciousness of the personal Ego, are “ m eant” as
actually existing that “ stimuli ” arise. Phenomenologically, the
15 unities of things (the noematic unities) are points of departure
for more or less “ strong ” tendencies. Already as conscious but
not yet grasped (hovering in the background of consciousness),
they draw the subject to themselves, and if the “ stimulating
power” is sufficient, the Ego “ follows” the stimulus, “ gives
20 in ” and turns in that direction. Then the Ego exercises on these
things explicating, conceiving, theoretically judging, evaluating,
and practical activities. They now engage its interest in their
being and their attributes, in their beauty, agreeableness, and
usefulness; they stimulate its desire to delight in them, play with
25 them, use them as a means, transform them according to its
purposes, etc. They then function in ever new strata as stimuli
for its being active (and also, not to neglect the negative, for its
being passive). Besides, the subject of the motivation can at one
time yield to the stimuli and at another time resist them. All
30 these are phenomenological relations which can be found and
described only in the purely intentional sphere. In a very broad
sense, we can also denote the personal or motivational attitude [190]
as the practical attitude: that is, what we have here always is
the active or passive Ego and indeed in the proper intrinsic
35 sense.
 §51. The person in personal associations 1

The subject finds consciously in his surrounding world not

only things, however, but also other subjects. He sees them as
persons who are engaged in their own surrounding world,
5 determined by their objects, and ever determinable anew. In this
attitude, it never occurs to him to “ insert” the spirit into the
Body, i.e., to consider the spirit as something in the Body, as
something founded in it, as something belonging, with the
Body, to a reality; thus it never occurs to him to carry out the
10 corresponding real apperception (the natural one). If it were
carried out, then humans would themselves be posited as things.
And in that case the spirit as person, coordinated with our
person as a member of a personal association, is not given its
rights. For here the spirit is functioning only as a psychic being
15 in the sense of a natural consideration, as something causally
dependent on the Body, upon which it seems to be grafted.
To treat humans and animals “ as mere things” has, to be
sure, various senses, a juridical and moral sense and, on the
other hand, a scientific sense. But both have something in
20 common. From a moral-practical standpoint, I am treating a
human being as a mere thing if I do not take him as a person
related to the moral, as a member of a moral association of
persons in which the world of morals is constituted. Likewise, I
am not treating a human being as a subject of rights if I do not
25 take him as a member of a community founded on law, to
which we both belong, but instead view him as mere matter, as
without rights just like a mere thing. Again, analogously, I treat
a human theoretically as a thing if I do not insert him in the
association of persons with reference to which we are subjects of
30 a common surrounding world but instead take him as a mere
annex of natural Objects which are mere things and conse­
quently take him as a mere thing himself. Now, within certain
limits, this is legitimate, and it becomes an injustice only if we
do not acknowledge at all that the naturizing of persons and
35 souls can allow us to recognize only certain relations of [191’
dependency of Objective existence and continuity which obtain

1 Cf. pp. 301 f. and the footnote there.

 precisely between the natural world of things and the personal
world of spirits, insofar as both belong to the unity of the
Objective spatio-temporal world of realities. Further, it is an
injustice if we do not acknowledge that nevertheless spirits make
5 possible and require still an other and more significant mode of
research precisely in this respect, that they have, as Ego-
subjects, a being properly their own, that, as such, they are
required for all matters and all research into these matters
as the subjective counter-parts, and that they thus, in their
10 intentional life, relate to the world in the form of their
surrounding world. He who sees everywhere only nature, nature
in the sense of, and, as it were, through the eyes of, natural
science, is precisely blind to the spiritual sphere, the special
domain of the human sciences. Such a one does not see persons
15 and does not see the Objects which depend for their sense on
personal accomplishments, i.e., Objects of “ culture.” Properly
speaking, he sees no person at all, even though he has to do
with persons in his attitude as a naturalistic psychologist. But
this needs a more thoroughly grounded exposition.
20 In the comprehensive experience o f the existence o f the other,
we thus understand him, without further ado, as a personal
subject and thereby as related to Objectivities, ones to which we
too are related: the earth and sky, the fields and the woods, the
room in which “ w e” dwell communally, the picture we see, etc.
25 We are in a relation to a common surrounding world— we are
in a personal association: these belong together. We could not
be persons for others if a common surrounding world did not
stand there for us in a community, in an intentional linkage of
our lives. Correlatively spoken, the one is constituted essentially
30 with the other. Each Ego can, for himself and for the others,
become a person in the normal sense, a person in a personal
association, only if comprehension brings about the relation to
a common surrounding world.
The common surrounding world acquires communal charac-
35 teristics of a new sense and at a higher level by means of acts of
personal mutual determination which arise on the basis of
mutual comprehension. This results in possibilities not only for
a parallel and mutually understood comportment to objects as
the ones of the community’s surrounding world but also for a [192]
 joint-unitary comportment of persons to such objects, a com­
portment in which they participate communally as members of
a whole that binds them together. Persons apprehend them­
selves comprehensively not only in the certainly first and
5 fundamental way, namely that the one understands, as Body,
the Corporeality of the other belonging to his surrounding
world and its spiritual sense, thereby interpreting the facial
expressions, gestures, and spoken words as intimations of
personal life, but also in such a way that they “ determine one
10 another” and are active not just as individuals but communally,
i.e., as personally united.
Just as, in accordance with our previous elaboration, mere
physical things “ motivate,” i.e., stimulate the subject of experi­
ence as appearing things, as experienced actuality, and are the
15 “ occasion” of his behavior (phenomenally this is an immediate
experiential relation between a worldly Object as object of
experience and a subject of that experience), so do human
beings exercise on one another, in a similar general sense,
“ immediate” personal effects that can be intuited. They have
20 “ motivating pow er” for each other. But they do not have
effects in the mere way of the things of physical experience, in
the mere form of stimuli, although occasionally they also do
(e.g., I see an insufferable man and keep out of his way just as I
would avoid a repulsive thing). But there is still another form in
25 which persons influence persons: in their spiritual activity they
direct themselves toward one another (the Ego toward the other
and vice versa), they perform acts with the intention of being
understood by the other and of determining the other, in his
understanding grasp of these acts (insofar as they are extemal-
30 ized in this intention), to certain personal modes of behavior.
On the other side, it is possible that the one who is determined
in such a way yields willingly to this influence or that he, being
unwilling, refuses it, and in turn, by the fact that he not only
acts accordingly but also makes it be known that he is willing or
35 unwilling by communicating it, he determines reactions again in
the one that was determining him. In this way relations o f
mutual understanding are formed: speaking elicits response; the
theoretical, valuing, or practical appeal, addressed by the one to
the other, elicits, as it were, a response coming back, assent [19|
 (agreement) or refusal (disagreement) and perhaps a counter­
proposal, etc. In these relations of mutual understanding, there
is produced a conscious mutual relation of persons and at the
same time a unitary relation of them to a common surrounding
5 world. Furthermore, this might be not merely a physical and
animal (or personal) surrounding world but also an ideal one,
e.g., the “ w orld” of mathematics. The surrounding world of
the moment encompasses indeed the totality of “ Objectivi­
ties” — the ideal as well— which “ confront” the person (each
10 of the persons communicating with the others) as the same
Objectivities in terms of consciousness and upon which he reacts
in his intentional modes of behavior.
The surrounding world constituted in experiencing others, in
mutual understanding and mutual agreement, is designated as
15 the communicative one. It is, by essence, relative to persons, who
find themselves in it and find it as what is over and against
them. That applies to it, therefore, as well as to the “ egoistic
surrounding w orld” of the person thought as solitary, i.e., it
applies to the person who, in his relatedness to the surrounding
20 world is thought abstractively in such a way that he enjoys no
relations of understanding with other persons (no social bond).
Each person has, ideally speaking, within his communicative
surrounding world his egoistic one insofar as he can “ abstract ”
from all relations of mutual understanding and from the
25 apperception founded therein, or, rather, insofar as he can think
them as separated. In this sense there exists, therefore, “ one­
sided separability” of the one surrounding world in relation to
the other, and the egoistic surrounding world forms an essential
nucleus for the communicative one in such a way that if the
30 former is ever to be separated off, the processes of abstraction
needed for it have to come from the latter.
If, by abstracting them out, we think of a sheer solitary
subject and therefore also of his purely egoistic surrounding
world, then the latter gains afterwards, when the abstraction is
35 lifted and relations of mutual understanding emerge, new
intentional strata, and thereby is constituted the association of
persons and the communicative world relative to this associa­
tion, its surrounding world, which is not only surrounding,
external, but embraces the association itself. It is to be noted [194]
 here that just as persons may already belong to an egoistic
surrounding world, so persons living outside of communication
(persons outside the relevant social association) may belong to a
communicative surrounding world. The persons who belong to
5 the social association are given to each other as “companions
not as opposed objects but as counter-subjects wh<3 live “ w ith”
one another, who converse and are related to one another,
actually or potentially, in acts of love and counter-love, of hate
and counter-hate, of confidence and reciprocated confidence,
10 etc.
The acts of mutual relation in society are, according to the
above presentation, especially pre-eminent amid the acts of
one-sided empathetic understanding of the life of the other Ego.
It is not sufficient that the others are understood as persons and
15 that the one who understands comports himself unilaterally
toward the others in such and such a way and takes his
direction from them; mutuality of understanding would not be
needed for that. But this is precisely what is at stake here.
Sociality is constituted by specifically social, communicative acts,
20 acts in which the Ego turns to others and in which the Ego is
conscious of these others as ones toward which it is turning, and
ones which, furthermore, understand this turning, perhaps
adjust their behavior to it and reciprocate by turning toward
that Ego in acts of agreement or disagreement, etc. It is these
25 acts, between persons who already “ know ” each other, which
foster a higher unity of consciousness and which include in this
unity the surrounding world of things as the surrounding world
common to the persons who take a position in regard to it. And
even the physical world has a social character in this appercep-
30 tive inclusion; it is a world that has a spiritual significance.
Up to now we have taken the concept of surrounding world
very narrowly, as the world of what confronts a personal Ego
(i.e., an Ego within a communicative association), a world that
encompasses all objectivities and that is constituted for the Ego
35 through its “experiences, ” through its experiences of things and
its axiological and practical experiences (into which therefore
axiological and practical apprehensions also enter). This sur­
rounding world is, as was said earlier, (pp. 194 f.) a world that
constantly changes in the course of active experience, in the
 subject’s actively occupying himself in natural experience, in [195]
theoretical thinking, in valuing, willing, creating, and in forming
ever new Objects, etc.
For each personal individual, however, there is constituted
5 one surrounding world with an open horizon encompassing the
Objectivities which could subsequently present themselves, or
which, under given circumstances would present themselves, in
connection with the course of his active constitution of sur­
rounding Objects (things, objects of value, etc.). The experiences
10 actively performed motivate possibilities for new experiences;
the objects for the subject are experienced by it as ones which
have their existence, their ontological orders, and their depen­
dencies, all of which can be investigated. The subjects commu­
nicating with one another belong mutually, for one another, to
15 the surrounding world which is relative to the Ego that at any
given time is outwardly circumspecting and is constituting its
surrounding world. And this Ego itself belongs to its own
surrounding world in virtue of self-consciousness and in virtue
of the possibility of all sorts of self-directed comportment; the
20 subject is “ subject-Object.” On the other hand, it is a sole and
unique world that is constituted in the intersubjective associa­
tion, a world in which there are levels. The subjects in commu­
nication with one another constitute personal unities of a higher
level, the sum total of which, extending as far as actual and
25 possible personal ties do, makes up the world of social subjec­
tivities. To be distinguished from this world of social subjectiv­
ities is the world correlative to it and inseparable from it, the
world for these subjectivities, the world o f social Objectivities, as
one might say.
30 Therefore various concept-formations are required here. We
distinguished above, first of all, a subject and its surrounding
world. We then had to distinguish in addition an association o f
persons and its surrounding world. But the subject, as Objecti-
vatable and as Objectivated for itself, is included at the same
35 time in the surrounding world. Thus the former distinction is
not sufficient, however necessary it may be. For a circle of
friends, for a union, its “ external w orld” is all the rest of the
world, thus the remaining spirits, spiritual communities, and the
physical things, as well as the cultural Objects, the sciences, and [196]
 the arts insofar as they are precisely objects of its interests and
concerns, etc. Included in the surrounding world of such a
circle, or, in general, of a social subjectivity (an association of
subjects, constituted through communication), is, once again,
5 this very subjectivity itself insofar as it too can become an
Object for itself, when the association relates back to itself, just
as each individual subject in it can also become an Object.
Consequently it is useful to distinguish, in the case of the
individual subject as well as in the case of an association of
10 subjects (as a social subjectivity), between surrounding world in
the full sense and surrounding world in the sense of external
world, which latter then excludes the Objectivated subject.
Now, however, the task is to gather up into unity all the
social Objectivities (with the limit case of the ideally possible
15 isolated individual) that are in communication with one
another. It should be noted here that the idea o f communication
obviously extends from the single personal subject even to the
social associations of subjects, which, for their part, present
personal unities of a higher level. All such unities, as far as their
20 communication extends, a communication produced factually
or one yet to be produced in accord with their own indetermi­
nate open horizon, do not constitute merely a collection of
social subjectivities, but instead they coalesce into a social
subjectivity inwardly organized to a greater or lesser degree,
25 which has its common opposite pole in a surrounding world, or
an external world, i.e., in a world which is for it. If the
surrounding world is one that no longer contains subjects (thus
no subjects standing in a practically possible domain of still to
be produced communication: e.g., the possible people on Mars,
30 subjects whose actuality, like that of these latter, remains open)
but only mere Objects, then these Objects are nevertheless still
Objects for the associated persons and for higher personal
unities, Objects which can be encountered as such by any
subjectivity of this kind in its surrounding world, and which
35 every “ com panion” could find in his own. This possibility, as
hypothetically ideal potentiality, is an essential component of
the sense of the surrounding world. At the same time, there is
constituted the idea of a world as world o f spirit in the form of a
sum total of social subjects of lower or higher levels (and we [197]
 include here the isolated person as zero limit-case of social
subjectivity) which are in communication with each other,
actually or in part actually in part potentially, together with the
sum total of the social Objectivities pertaining to it. For every
5 subject that in this way is a member of a social association as a
totality, there is constituted one and the same world of spirit,
although from the “ standpoint” of this or that subject it is
apprehended and posited with a corresponding (hence different
from subject to subject) apprehended sense. An associated
10 plurality of subjects, of individual spirits and spiritual commu­
nities, related to a world of things, a world of “ Objects,” i.e., an
actuality which is not spirit but which is actuality fo r the spirit,
is nevertheless, on the other hand, precisely as actuality for the
spirit, always spiritualized, spiritually significant, bearing in
15 itself spiritual sense and ever receptive to new sense of that
kind . 1

This world of things is, at its lowest level, intersubjective

material nature as common field of actual and possible experi­
ence of individual spirits, solitary ones and ones in a community
20 of experience. All individual Bodies have their place on this
level. And the sensuous feelings and drives arrange themselves
under sense experience. At a higher level this nature is consid­
ered as a field of theoretical, axiological, and practical actions,
activities of spirits on various social levels. Nature becomes the
25 domain of the natural sciences, the field of aesthetic evaluations
or of actual and possible practical work, work which, for its
part, can have scientific, aesthetic, ethical, or other aims. These
aims are set by the individual or social subjectivity (social on
whatever level). It is this subjectivity that also orders the ways
30 and means to the ends, in which case, the ends and the ways
and means, products of individual and social evaluation, can in
turn be substrata, can elicit new spiritual reactions, can deter­
mine new settings of goals, etc. Apperceptions of various levels
arise, whereby it should especially be noticed that the objects
35 present at any moment can be apperceived as objects of possible
or probable evaluations and settings of ends and means.

1 On the following passage, cf. Supplement V, p. 328.

 If we look more closely, then we find that we still need to [198]
distinguish:
1) The surrounding world or external world o f the communal
spirit. This is the world of intersubjectively constituted objectiv-
5 ities, i.e., spirits, spiritual communities, spiritualized states of
affairs and mere natural factualities, objectivities each subject
belonging to the community can bring to givenness in his own
way and from his own standpoint. And each subject can at the
same time recognize, in virtue of mutual understanding, that
10 what is given to him and what is given to his companions is one
and the same.
2) The merely subjective sphere o f the solitary subject. This
subject has an environment which, in its original mode, is
merely his own, which therefore can be given originarily to no
15 other subject. In the communicative society, each member sees
what I see and hears what I hear, or at least he can do so. We
experience the same things and events, we experience the
animals and people there facing us, and we see in them the same
inner life, etc. Yet each has appearances which are exclusively
20 his own, and each has lived experiences which are exclusively his
own. Only he experiences these in their very flesh, utterly
originarily. In a certain way, I also experience (and there is a
self-givenness here) the other’s lived experiences; i.e., to the
extent that the empathy (comprehensio) accomplished as one
25 with the originary experience of the Body is indeed a kind of
presentification, one that nevertheless serves to ground the
character of co-existence in the flesh. To that extent, what we
have here is thus experience, perception. But this co-existence
(“ appresence” in the previously fixed sense1) does not, in
30 principle, allow itself to be transformed into immediate origi­
nary existence (primal presence). It is characteristic of empathy
that it refers to an originary Body-spirit-consciousness but one I
cannot myself accomplish originarily, I who am not the other
and who only function, in regard to him, as a comprehending
35 analogon.
As a consequence, we come up against a distinction in idea,
which is obviously significant from the point of view of consti-

1 C f pp. 170 f. (§44).

 tutive genesis as well, i.e., the distinction between the “ idea”
1) of pre-social subjectivity, of the subjectivity which does not
yet presuppose empathy. This subjectivity knows only: a) inner
experience, which is absolutely originary and contains no ele-
5 ments of presentification; it is thoroughly a grasping in the
flesh, without any co-grasping, even in the form of “ horizons,”
and b) external experience, which throughout is only experience
of such co-positing (“ apprehensio" or “ appresentation”), but
which can be converted in transitions to experiences which do
10 give in the flesh.
2) and that of social subjectivity, of the world of the commu­
nal spirit. Here we have experience of other subjects as well as
of their inner life, an experience in which their character and
their properties come to givenness for us, an experience of other
15 subjects as well as of their inner life, an experience of forms of
community, community affairs, Objects of the spirit. Every­
where in this kind of experience, a moment of presentification
through empathy is involved which can never be converted into
immediate presentation. Also pertaining to this world of social
20 subjects are the subjects, as objects, and, in addition, the acts
(lived experiences) of those subjects, their appearances, etc. But
these are given in originary perceptio (presentation) only for the
subjects that they belong to. They are given in purely originary
perceptio, but only as “ immanent ” data and not as components
25 of the intersubjective world with intersubjective time and inter­
subjective realization: i.e., not as belonging to spatial Corpor­
eality and thereby to the spatiality of nature. Nevertheless, what
is Objective (i.e., intersubjective) separates into two groups
according to the mode of givenness:
30 1) that which the personal subject (the member of the
communicative world) can experience immediately and origi­
narily in terms o f his own content even if a form of inclusion, or
form of reality, to put it better, still pertains to him and which
belongs to his intersubjective Objectivity. Here also is the place
35 for all lived experiences of the subject and even the subject for
himself, as “ inwardly” perceptible and as really apperceived
object, as subject-Object.
2) that which the personal subject experiences, to be sure, but
experiences only mediately, insofar as the subject experiences a
 co-presence on the basis of what is actually perceptively experi­
enced or what may be perceived in the course of experience, a
co-presence that is not perceptible itself and which cannot be
converted into the subject’s perceptions, i.e., in terms of his own
5 content of being. I can have a “ direct” experience of myself,
and it is only my intersubjective form o f reality that I cannot, in
principle, experience. For that I need the mediation of empathy.
I can experience others, but only through empathy. Their own
content can be experienced only by themselves in originary
10 perceptio. Likewise, my lived experiences are given to me
directly, i.e., the lived experiences in their own content. But
others’ lived experiences can be experienced by me only
mediately, in empathy. And not even each of my lived experi­
ences, as components of the “ w orld” (of the Objective spatio-
15 temporal sphere of reality) is experienceable directly, for the
form of reality (that of intersubjective Objectivity) is not an
immanent form.

Addendum

Social objectivities are given to us in “ social experience.”

20 What is this social experience? I can “ understand” what a
marriage is insofar as I can, in full clarity, put myself into a
marriage by empathy, if I have myself entered the married state,
have lived it through, and can now grasp its essence. (This
would be “ perception.” ) What is thus “ given” I can represent
25 intuitively modified, I can produce intuitive variation-forms of
marriage and consequently can grasp various essential differen­
tiations of “ marriage,” and in that way, I have, e.g., material
for comparative evaluations. Another example: friendship. I
stand toward others in relations of friendship. The friendship
30 may not be an “ ideal” one; however, I can modify the intuitive
representation, which requires me to be able to intuitively bring
to validity modes of motivation that are not in any given case
the effective ones or the predominating and regularly effective
ones, and, in order to do that, I have to, e.g., eliminate these or
35 those egoistic motivations or represent them as eliminated and
then examine the modifications essential to the ideal social
 structure. In the same way I can clarify for myself the essence of
a union. I begin, for example, with a union of students in which
I participated in a lively way and of which I played an inner and
active role as a member. Similarly for a borough. I gain the
5 fullest understanding as an actively participating citizen, by
living through all the civil activities which pertain to the life of
the borough, by coming to know the constitution of the
borough, and this not only in words, i.e., in that I have read the
borough’s statutes and read about the customs and mores
10 belonging to this area or have been instructed by others’ stories,
but rather in that I make clear to myself the “ sense” of all that
and make intuitive to myself the laws in their application to
praxis and according to their function for the regulation of that
praxis and consequently bring their “ essence” to full clarity. If
15 I cannot do it exhaustively, then it suffices, if need be, that I
employ examples.

§52. Subjective manifolds of appearance and Objective things [201]

Belonging to the second class of Objects is the entire infinity

of appearances of things, of the things of intersubjectively
20 constituted physical nature. This nature appears to everyone,
but, as has already been mentioned, it appears to each in a
different way as a matter of principle. Each has his appearances
of things; at most, by exchanging the subjective circumstances
of the experiencing, the one can have appearances comparable
25 to those the other had previously. But it would never be
possible for different subjects to have the same appearances at
the same temporal point of intersubjective (“ Objective” ) time.
To the extent that the one subject is part of the surrounding
world of the other, then, to be sure, the store of actual
30 appearances of the one is part of the surrounding world of the
other as well. But only to that extent. Such is the case with every
manifold of constituting phenomena in which is constituted, for
each subject, an identical reality — constituted as identical, as
intersubjective Object of a communal world, owing to the
35 mutual understandings that unify it and that make possible acts
of intersubjective identification (moreover, the mutual under­
 standings may be actual or potential). Thus here belong all the
sensuous schemata, adumbrations, and sensuous matter that we
discussed when we treated the constitution of a thing. They are
specifically '' subjective. ’’
5 One could here continue along this line and say that the same
would apply obviously and afortiori as regards the apperceptive
character of the apprehension and, finally, as regards the whole
stream of consciousness. Meanwhile we must not overlook the
essential distinction. In the stream of subjective lived experi-
10 ences the subject manifests himself as a real person, and the
lived experiences are at the same time his states. On the other
hand, the subject does not manifest himself in the sensory
schemata, in the subjective appearances of things; instead, what
is manifested there are the things of his surrounding world. The
15 appearances, of course, are not states of the things themselves,
for in fact it is in appearances that states of things first manifest
themselves. That the appearances are not states of the subject is
clear from the fact that they are transcendent with regard to his
actual states, his lived experiences. This is, for us, nothing new;
20 it shows precisely the fundamental difference in the way the real [202]
subject is constituted and the way real Objects are constituted.
This holds as much for the personal subject as for the psychic,
which will be perfectly clear once we have determined the
relationship between the two.
25 If we turn back to what we established above (pp. 159 f.)
concerning the subject and the Object-world given him, then we
see that the person’s surrounding world of things, presently
intuited or intuitable, coincides with the world as it appeared to
the solipsistic subject. I.e., we have here things appearing in
30 manifolds of adumbrations, spatially arranging themselves
around a central “ here.”
Other subjects, who stand there confronting me and who I
am able to apprehend as such in understanding them, can have
given the same things with the same determinations; but their
35 actual manifolds of appearance are, as a matter of principle, not
the same. Each of them has his “ here,” and that is, in the
selfsame phenomenal now, different from mine. Every subject
has his phenomenal Body and his subjective Bodily movements.
Every subject can indeed make the same places in intersubjec-
 tively identifiable space (the common surrounding space) his
here, the same places I, in succession, have just now made my
here. But for each point of time intersubjectively grasped as
identical, my here and the other’s here are separate.
5 We have still to demonstrate that it is justified to speak here
of “ intersubjective space” and “ intersubjective time.” We have
seen previously that what is psychic undergoes temporalization
and localization and thereby becomes nature in an enlarged
sense. But even as spirit, apprehending and positing myself and
10 others precisely not as nature, I find myself and others in the
spatial and temporal world.
I am now, was previously, and will be later. Others are
contemporary, in the same time (indeed in Objective time); their
acts and my acts have temporal position in relation to each
15 other as being contemporaneous or earlier or later, and this
time is the same as the time of our surrounding world.
The same applies with respect to space. Everything is related
to the here which is my here. I, the person, am in space at this
place. Others are over there, where their Bodies are. They go for [203]
20 a walk, they pay a visit, etc., whereby indeed their spirits, along
with their Bodies, change their place in space, in the space of the
one Objective surrounding world. The local positions are mea­
sured and determined just like any other spatial position. And
as for temporal positions, they are measured by means of clocks
25 and chronometers of every kind, instruments that do have a
significance in terms of natural science. And all such measure­
ments refer back to certain spatial measurements to be carried
out in physical nature, in connection with periodic spatial
occurrences in the physical world.
30 Consequently it does seem that there is no essential distinc­
tion between the natural-scientific conception of the spiritual
and the conception of it in the human sciences.
The response to this is that every person as such (essentially)
has his surrounding world, first of all his subjective world of
35 appearances and then, by means of a relation to a nexus of
persons, at the same time a relation to the common Objective
surrounding world, in reference to which the subjective sur­
rounding world is mere appearance. To each personal Ego is
given a physical surrounding world with its definite orientation,
 and each personal Ego has his center, whence he perceives
things; he has his Body as the central thing, around which,
insofar as it encloses the center, all other things appearing to it
are arranged and present themselves as oriented. Thereby, the
5 world, along with the Body, is given as over and against the
Ego, as the environment of the Ego, and is given every moment
in a mode of appearance relative specifically to this Ego. “ I am
here,” which does not mean I am an Object of nature.
I, a man taken as an Object of nature, am a Corporeal body,
10 and this is — considered egoistically-subjectively — the Object
of my environment in the “ here,” and it is, considered Objec­
tively, in the place of Objective space which presents itself in the
subjective “ here.” Furthermore, this Body is actually, first and
foremost, an Object of my environment and, secondly, in view
15 of everything it is in “ Objective truth,” a thing in Objective
nature (in natural science). This Objective Corporeal body is not
yet the human being but is still only the bearer of an aesthesio­
logical and Corporeal-psychic ontological stratum; and this
totality is then an Object of the common surrounding world fo r
20 all subjects related to it in their pursuit of natural science. Every [2041
other man is grasped as nature in a still more direct way in the
attitude of natural science adopted by me and all subjects doing
research on nature, in which attitude nature belongs to my
spiritual environment— but, for all that, I am still here not in
25 the attitude of the sciences proper to the spirit (the personal
attitude), for I precisely do not thereby have the person and his
surrounding world in my thematic sphere. In this attitude the
other man is constituted as a founded being, one that owes its
spatiality and temporality to the Body as founding.
30 But if I am in the attitude of the human sciences, the sciences
devoted to the spirit, in which the other spirit is thematically
posited as spirit and not as founded in the physical Body (not as
founding reality of the total reality, man in natural history, man
as zoological being), then this Corporeal body, like everything
35 which is not spirit, belongs to the surrounding world of things;
it is a thing, one that has spiritual significance, that serves as
expression, organ, etc., for a spiritual being, for a person and his
spiritual activity. Although the spirit is not apprehended here as
nature, nevertheless it still is assigned to a Body and thereby to
 an Objective part of space. The space of the environing world,
together with the things belonging to it, is always Objectifiable
as natural-scientific space, as the space of natural-scientific
nature. The essence of this state of affairs does indeed include
5 the possibility of the nature-attitude and the natural-scientific
attitude as well as the possibility of research into nature. In this
way, therefore, the spirit, too, which is naturalizable in the
determinate way that has been indicated, has “ its” place
assigned to it, its distance from other things of the environment,
10 etc. The spirit, the human being as a member of the personal
human world, does not have a place the way things do (nor in
the secondary sense in which a Body founded in thinghood and
a man founded in natural history have a place). Yet it does have
a place; that is, it stands constantly in a functional relationship
15 to a Body, which for its part has its place in the environing
world and in the scientific determination of this latter as a
physicalistic world, perhaps one determinable by the instru­
ments of physics.
The same holds from a temporal point of view. Different
20 persons have their different subjective time, insofar as isolated
subjects (so long as no empathy has been accomplished thema­
tically, and a personal association, in which the person as such [205]
is constituted, has not yet been produced thematically) for their
part have their temporality in the course of their consciousness.
25 Every stepping forth of the pure Ego has its position in this
time, and every act of the Ego has its temporal extension in it.
But all constituted unities have their time as well, and it pertains
to the essence of the constitution of unities of appearance that
they are constituted temporally in such a way that the consti-
30 tuted egoistic-transcendent time (essentially) stands in relation
to the time of the constituting lived experiences and at once in
such a way that relations of simultaneity, of before, and of
after, run back and forth in a determinate fashion. The thing of
appearances constituted primally, a unity of sense intuition, is
35 there, with regard to its duration, as simultaneous with the
continuity of perception and its noetic duration.
This carries over to all unities constituted intersubjectively to
this extent that, apriori, Objective time and subjective time (my
immanent time and my space-time) are a single order of time. In
 the subjective space-times, as “ appearances,” Objective time
presents itself in a certain way and “ appears,” provided appear­
ance is, in this regard, valid appearance. This temporalization
and localization of the spirit differ essentially from those of
5 “ introjection.” (See pp. 200 f.)
Hence in a now which, as intersubjective presence, is identical
for the different subjects who mutually understand one another,
these subjects cannot have the same “ here ” (the same intersub­
jective spatial presence) nor the same appearances. The index of
10 this phenomenological state of affairs is the impenetrability of
the different contemporaneous Bodies as such. Two Bodies can
be Objectively bound into one thing, can “ grow together ” into
one, but the concrescence into one thing does not create a Body
filling the same temporal duration, does not create a here, a
15 space with phenomenal orientation, and an identity of the
appearances of things with respect to the world of things
surrounding both subjects. The appearances two subjects have
cannot fuse together into identical appearances as do the optical
appearances provided by one’s two eyes. Therefore different
20 subjects have phenomenal Objectivities that in phenomenal
intersubjective time are distinct of necessity and in principle are
not even of the same essential content. The same things can, of
course, actually appear to them, but the appearances, the things
“ in their fleeting mode of appearance,” in their subjective
25 qualities of standing in relief, of being oriented, of presenting
just these colors, etc., are different. It is only that there exist
relations of interchangeability, whereby the same thing, a
moment ago given to me in a certain mode of appearance, can
also, with the lapse of intersubjective time, be given subsequently
30 to the other as well (in totally the same mode), and the reverse.
To be sure, in another respect interchangeability is essentially
excluded; the central here, to which the modes of appearance
are related and which confers individuation on their concrete
essential contents in the respective now, is not interchangeable,
35 nor are the individual phenomena, nor, in general, is anything
subjective interchangeable in its individuality. Thus, for exam­
ple, even the “ I move” is proper to me, this Ego, and as such
can never be “ comprehended in em pathy” by another Ego.
What can be comprehended by that Ego is not my Ego but
 precisely his Ego, not mine but his subjectivities in lived
experiences, in “ subjective” modes of appearance, etc.
Different subjects describe the objects of their surrounding
world on the basis of their own respective appearances. To the
5 extent that the subjects standing in possible communication
have in fact the same groups of appearances (i.e., actual or, as
motivated, possible appearances in perception) even if not
actually the same appearances themselves, in such a way that
with the simple exchange of their positions in space the appear-
10 ances of the one subject would have to become the same
appearances of the other, to that extent the appearing things
would also be the same for the different subjects and would be
described by them in the same way. We already know that a
certain sameness in the totality of the manifolds of appearance
15 is a condition for the possibility of mutual understanding and
that consequently differences are possible in certain directions
only. Such differences come to the fore in the exchange of
descriptions; on the basis of the intersubjective harmony of
experience discordance stands out, and only in that way can it
20 be manifest.
Thence proceed the guidelines for the possible and familiar [207]
distinctions between “ normal” human persons versus the abnor­
mal. This normality is related to a multiplicity of persons in a
communicating association, persons who, on the whole, in
25 conformity with a predominating regularity, agree with one
another in their experiences and consequently in their assertions
about experience, versus other persons of the same association
who make deviant assertions about the surrounding world in
some of their descriptions and who thus are apprehended in the
30 comprehension of the former as persons who experience the
same things in another way, a way not empirically realizable, by
the one who understands them, in the framework of the
motivation then current. Furthermore, from here proceed the
guidelines for the constitution of physicalistic thing-Objectivity
35 in intersubjective research into nature. The Objectivity which is
intuitively constituted for individual subjects and which comes
to expression in their descriptive statements, as well as the
Objectivity constituted as correlate of a community of persons
 who mutually assess each other as normal, itself now has the
status of mere “ appearance ” of a “ true ” Objectivity. And the
common nature given in intuitive experience has the status of
mere “ appearance” of a nature in itself, unintuitable by
5 essence, of a nature that can indeed be determined intersubjec­
tively in theory but cannot be experienced directly. Hence this
nature is not, strictly speaking, describable, and no concepts of
immediate experience can go to determine it. In Cartesian
terms: we distinguish between nature as given in imagination
10 and nature in pure intellection, and in doing so we abstract
from the fact that since Kant this nature attained in natural-
scientific theory is itself, in turn, ordinarily taken as appearance
of an unknowable, problematic, metaphysical “ in itself.” (But
all these modes of expression harbor very dangerous anticipa-
15 tions which ought not, at the outset, be taken for granted.)
Every consensus of the subjects of a community with respect to
the predicates describing the appearance of Objects which
appear either to an individual or interindividually now counts
as accidental factum, versus their consensus with respect to all
20 Objective (physicalistic) determinations produced in rational
thought of experience, which counts as necessary. There belongs
here, furthermore, the fact that, by means of these Objective
theoretical cognitions of nature, all actual and possible differ­
ences and agreements of subjects as to their phenomena (their [20|
25 immediately experienced contents in regard to things) are
“ explainable,” hence themselves cognizable as necessary, by
taking into consideration their Bodily and psychic organization,
which is itself open to Objective research.
So again, happily, we have landed in natural science, first of
30 all in physics and then in natural science in general. The
differences in “ world pictures,” i.e., in empirically intuited
worlds of things, which come to the fore within intersubjective
consensus and which, despite their discrepancies as to content,
nevertheless manifest themselves in intersubjective understand-
35 ing as experiences of the world, of the one and the same world,
together with the impossibility, which results, of arriving on the
basis of actual experience at unconditionally valid judgments
about this world, necessitate theoretical research in the form of
natural science. Natural science brings to cognition “ Objective”
 nature, which henceforth belongs for its part to the surrounding
world of the communal spirit.

§ 53. The relationship between the consideration of nature

and the consideration of the spirit

5 The time has come to recollect. For we sense an uncomfort­

able difficulty here, a certain tension between the nature which
stood at the beginning and the nature which has now arisen for
us out of the context of the community. Our point of departure
was the naturalistic (natural-scientific) attitude, in which nature
10 comes to givenness and to theoretical cognition as physical,
Bodily, and psychic nature. This naturalistically considered
world is of course not the world. Rather, given prior is the world
as the everyday world, and within this arise man’s theoretical
interest and the sciences related to the world, among which is
15 natural science under the ideal of truths in themselves. This
pregiven world is investigated first with respect to nature. Then
animalia have their turn, human beings before all others. And
this is precisely the first task: to investigate them as Ego-
subjects. We are led back to their life. This is— as individual
20 factical life, like the person himself— inductively determinable,
in terms of its place in the spatial world, only in a psychophy­
sical fashion. In any case, we have here a series of psychophy- [209]
sical investigations. And that is precisely not everything. What
we have here is the one “ Objective ” world, with the one space
25 and the one time, in which “ everything” is ordered— persons
as well, who, in union with their Bodies, lead their personal
lives. To engage in considerations in this attitude, to reflect, to
give an account of the world, means to accomplish in advance
precisely the theoretical positing of “ nature,” and anything
30 given acquires, by being approached in this way, insertion into
nature. E.g., the person is eo ipso apprehended as a being of
nature, as something annexed to a Body.
We then delved into the essence of personal being as being of
persons and for persons. We carried out a segment of actual
35 personal life or we phantasized ourselves into such a segment in
a full and lively way, and we also, by empathy, entered into the
 personal life of an other. And then, in a few steps, we described
the correlation between personal subject and personal surround­
ing world. We observed how persons established personal
relationships, how personal associations were constituted as
5 particular objectivities of a higher level, how a spiritual world
arose as a world of intersubjective community, and how a
special world for each personal subject stood out against this,
that is, how each subject encounters, as his own, endless
manifolds of appearances and thus, in general, endless objectiv-
10 ities belonging exclusively to him alone. Hence each subject
finds himself, or, with the appropriate focus, at any time can
find himself, as subject, i.e., as bearer o f a merely subjective
world which, for reasons of principle, cannot be the same for
any other subject, or rather, he finds himself as bearer of a
15 subjective mode of appearance of the world or as bearer of an
appearance of the world, in which precisely the selfsame world
does actually appear. And in this contrast, with regard to the
relation between appearance and appearing Objectivity, we
again encountered nature and natural science: nature now as an
20 Objectivity constituted in the context of the personal world, that
is, harmoniously experienced in communal experience as being
identically the same, experienced as such by all rational mem­
bers of the community, the actual ones or those who may
possibly still enter in. This understanding of nature is to be
25 worked out on a higher level in activities of empirical science, in
predicative products known as truth and science. It seems that
here we got into a vicious circle. For, when, at the beginning, we
posited nature straightforwardly, in the way done by every
natural scientist and by everyone else sharing the naturalistic
30 attitude, and when we took human beings as realities, ones that
have a plus above and beyond their physical Corporeality, then
persons turned out to be subordinated natural Objects, compo­
nent parts of nature. On the other hand, when we inquired into
the essence of the person, then nature presented itself as
35 something constituted in an intersubjective association of per­
sons, hence presupposing it.
How are we to find our way here? I said above that
consideration in depth of the person and his surrounding world
would by itself bring us into a new attitude, one differing
 essentially from the naturalistic attitude, e.g., that of the natural
scientist. Let us try to clarify for ourselves the opposition
between these attitudes.
A change in attitude means nothing else but a thematic
5 transition from one direction of apprehension to another, to
which correspond, correlatively, different objectivities. We are
dealing here with radical changes of such a kind, with transi­
tions to apprehensions of fundamentally different phenomeno­
logical types. Hence our question is whether the distinctions in
10 apprehension and, accordingly, in “ experience ” are here of such
a kind that, corresponding to them, the noemata and their
noematic objectivities (the experienced “ as such ”) differ funda­
mentally. That is, whether, with regard to the interrelations
between possible empirical demonstration and the empirical
15 knowledge based on it, the objects on the two different sides
belong to fundamentally different “ regions.” Is it really a
matter of two different worlds, “ nature” on the one side, the
world of the spirit on the other, separated by cardinal ontolog­
ical distinctions? This does not have to mean, and should not
20 mean, that these two worlds have nothing to do with each
other, that there are no essential relations between the sense of
the one and the sense of the other. We know indeed of other
cardinal distinctions between “ worlds” which nevertheless are
mediated by relations of sense and of essence. We could refer to
25 the relation between the world of ideas and the world of
experience, or to the relation of the “ w orld” of pure, phenom- [211 ]
enologically reduced consciousness to the world of transcendent
unities constituted in it, or to the relation between the world of
things as appearances (the world of the “ secondary” qualities
30 of things) and the world of physicalistic things. All such
distinctions are connected to cardinal distinctions in “ attitude,”
to fundamentally different types of apprehension and experi­
ence, and the correlative objectivities, no matter how fundamen­
tally different they might be, are nevertheless mediated by
35 relations of sense, which already comes out in the designations:
things as appearances are precisely appearances of the things of
physics, pure consciousness is constitutive of such and such
constituted unities, etc.
As for the attitude whose correlate is nature (the world of
 realities in Objective space-time, the world whose causality rules
the changes occurring therein), we have studied it sufficiently at
depth and need only now remind ourselves of it. At the lowest
level, what is to be experienced here is material (physical)
5 nature, and founded on it is the experience of Bodily and
psychic being. The aesthesiological and the psychic are an
“ annex” 1 of the physical Body, localized in it in a broad sense
and obtaining by means of it Objective spatial position and
insertion into the time of nature. In this way, therefore, we may
10 apprehend every man as “ nature,” positing in his Body psychic
properties, psychophysically dependent ones. And we can do the
same as regards ourselves, if that is what we want, although it
would involve remarkable difficulties. What kind of difficulties
these are will become clear by itself as we now pass over to the
15 personalistic attitude and personalistic experience.

] Annex means regulated coexistence, and what regulates the change is “ causal­
ity,” an inductive causality.
 § 54. The Ego in the inspectio su i 1

5 In this attitude I take myself simply as I ordinarily take [212]

myself when I say “ I ” and as the I in any kind of “ I think ” (I
am convinced, I doubt, I hold to be possible, I love, I enjoy, I
want, etc.). It is absolutely out of the question that I am here
intending or encountering myself and my cogito as something in
10 the Body, as founded in it, and as a localized annex of it. It is
rather the reverse: the Body is my Body, and it is mine in the
first place as my “ over and against,” my ob-ject, just as the
house is my object, something I see or can see, something I
touch or can touch, etc. These things are “ mine,” but not as
15 component pieces of the Ego; hence they are given to me
through manifold harmonious synthetic perceptions, which I as
subject carry out, and what I do not perceive of them is
“ co-given ” to me precisely through those perceptions: possible
perceptions are motivated by actual perceptions in a regular
20 fashion. To be sure, I find the stratum of sensation to be
localized in the Body, including therefore physical pleasure and
physical pain; but that only shows that this stratum does not
belong to the realm of what properly pertains to the Ego. Just
as the Body in general is over and against the Ego, so is
25 everything “not-I ” which makes it an object, and only in the
mode of the “ over and against ” does it appertain to the Ego,
precisely as existing object of the Ego’s experiences. Each
1 Cf. Supplement VI, pp. 329 f. On this § and the following, see also §§4-11 of
Section One.
 thingly objectivity of my experience partakes of the Ego in this
way, and to that extent each has a subjective character as
experienced by the Ego and consequently as existing for it in the
manner of a goal of its attention, a substrate of its theoretical,
5 affective, and practical acts, etc.
Furthermore, the Ego can, of course, also reflect on its
experiences, on its focusings, on its acts of evaluating or willing,
and then these too become objects and stand over and against
it. But the difference is obvious: these are not alien to the Ego
10 but are indeed of the Ego; they are operations (acts), states o f
the Ego itself They do not merely appertain to the Ego in the
manner of what is experienced and what is thought; they are
not mere identity-correlates of that which is Ego-like and
subjective primarily and originally.
15 To be sure, the Body has it special virtues compared with
other things, and as a result it is “ subjective ” in a pre-eminent
sense, i.e., as bearer of fields of sense, as organ of free [21 $
movements, and so as organ of the will, as bearer of the center
and as seat of the fundamental directions of spatial orientation.
20 But all these are Ego-like by the grace o f what is originally
Ego-like. Just as Objects are Objects fo r the Ego, are its worldly
surroundings, in virtue of its apprehendings, positings in expe­
rience, etc. (i.e., as unities given therein in the mode, “ exist­
ing”), so also this Body is my Body, and indeed mine in the
25 palpable special sense, because I already am and in a certain
sense bestow on it its special virtues. E.g., the center of
orientation belongs to the noematic content of my perception of
the thingly Body as such, and in experiential positing it belongs
to the Body as an intuitively constituted Objectivity; thus it
30 belongs to a level of appearances that already is a constituted
appearance. Consequently the special status of the Body is by
grace of the Ego (or of Ego-like originary intuition), which
obviously does not mean by the haphazard arbitrariness of the
Ego . 1
35 Therefore we find, as the originally and specifically subjective,
the Ego in the proper sense, the Ego of “ freedom,” the
attending, considering, comparing, distinguishing, judging, valu-
 ing, attracted, repulsed, inclined, disinclined, desiring, and will­
ing Ego: the Ego that in any sense is “ active” and takes a
position. This, however, is only one side. Opposed to the active
Ego stands the passive, and the Ego is always passive at the
5 same time whenever it is active, in the sense of being affected as
well as being receptive, which of course does not exclude the
possibility of its being sheer passivity. To be sure, the very sense
of the expression, “ receptivity,” includes a lowest level o f
activity even if not the genuine freedom of active position-
10 taking. The “ passive” Ego (in a second sense) is then also
subjective in the original sense as the Ego o f “te n d e n c ie s the
Ego that experiences stimulation from things and appearances,
is attracted, and simply yields to the attractive force. In
addition, the “states ” of the Ego are subjective as well, states of
15 mourning, of cheerfulness, of passive desire, and of renouncing
as a state. “ Being touched” as originating in a tiding is [214]
something subjective whose source is the Object; to “ react”
against, to revolt against, or to pull oneself together is some­
thing subjective whose source is the subject.
20 From the properly subjective (the Ego itself and its comport­
m ent— both the active as well as the passive) we must now
distinguish, on the one hand, the objective, that over and against
which the Ego comports itself actively or passively, and, on the
other hand, the material substratum o f “s tu ff” upon which this
25 comportment is built. For in any life of consciousness what­
soever the stratum of position-taking, of acts in general, is built
upon substrata. Here we rejoin what we said earlier (§§4-10).
The Objects of the surrounding world, over and against which
the Ego is active in its position-taking, and by which it is
30 motivated, are, all of them, originally constituted in acts of this
Ego. Goods, works, use-objects, etc. refer back to valuing and
practical acts, in which the “ mere things” acquired this new
ontological stratum. When we abstract from these ontological
strata, we are led back to “ nature” as the domain of mere
35 things and then back further to the syntheses of various levels in
which the Ego is active as constituting nature. Running
backwards through the strata of the constitution of the thing,
we arrive finally at the data of sensation as the ultimate,
primitive, primal objects, no longer constituted by any kind of
 Ego-activity whatsoever but, in the most pregnant sense of the
term, pregivennesses for all of the Ego’s operations. They are
“ subjective,” but they are not states or acts o f the Ego; rather,
they are what is had by the Ego, the Ego’s first “ subjective
5 possession.” We saw earlier, however, that everything consti­
tuted in the spontaneous acts of the Ego becomes, as consti­
tuted, a “ possession” of the Ego and a pregivenness for new
acts of the Ego. For example, the “ sense-things ” of various
levels become pregivenness for the relevant higher syntheses;
10 and so do the fully constituted intuitive Objects of nature for
theoretical-scientific activity, for valuing and practical behavior,
etc.
Therefore we need to distinguish:
1) subjective being as being and comportment of the Ego:
15 the subject and its acts, or states; activities and passivities,
and
2) subjective being as being fo r the subject: what the Ego has,
consisting of the material of sensation and the totality of
Objects constituted for the subject in the course of its genesis.
20 Here belong also the properly human Ego, which appears as a
part of nature, but also already the solipsistically constituted
Bodily-psychic unity presupposed for that, and also even the
somatic Corporeality insofar as it is constituted in the inner
attitude, although it, like the sensation material, has a special
25 appurtenance to the Ego and is not “ over and against” the Ego
in the same manner as the constituted external world and its
appearances. Thus what remains of that which is given in the
inner attitude is only the subject o f the intentionality, the subject
of the acts, as what is subjective in the original and proper
30 sense.

§ 55. The spiritual Ego in its comportment toward

the surrounding world

This Ego of intentionality is related in the cogito to its

surrounding world and especially to its real surrounding world,
35 e.g., to the things and the people it experiences. This relation is
 not immediately a real relation but an intentional relation to
something real. Therefore there is a distinction between:
1) the intentional relation: I have the Object given. I have it
given as appearing in this or that way, and with the required
5 direction of focus I have the appearance of the Object given. I
have the appearance, but I may be focusing my attention on the
Object; or else I can attend to the appearance itself.
2) the real relation: the Object T stands in a real-causal
relationship to me, to me as a human being, thus first of all to
10 that Body which is called mine, etc. The real relation collapses if
the thing does not exist; the intentional relation, however,
remains. That each time the Object does exist a real relation
runs “ parallel” to the intentional relation, namely that in such
a case waves are propagated in space from the Object (the real
15 actuality), strike my sense organs, etc., and that my experience
is connected to these processes, all this is a psychophysical fact.
But nothing of the kind holds for the intentional relation itself, [216]
which suffers nothing through the non-actuality of the Object
but, at most, is modified through its consciousness of the
20 non-actuality.
If we now consider the comportment of the subject towards
its surrounding world, as the world posited by it, which includes
not merely realities but also, for example, ghosts, and if we take
the subject at first again as the one and only subject, as
25 solipsistic, then we find a plethora of relations between the
posited Objects and the “spiritual ” subject, as we are now
calling the subject of intentionality, relations which, in the sense
indicated, are relations between what is posited as reality and
the positing Ego, which are not real relations, however, but
30 subject-Object relations. Here belong relations of subjective-
Objective " c a u s a li ty a causality which is not real causality but
which has a fully proper sense: namely, the sense of motiva­
tional causality. Objects experienced in the surrounding world
are at one time attended to, at another time not; and if they are,
35 they exercise a greater or lesser “ stimulation.” They “ arouse”
an interest and, in virtue of this interest, a tendency to turn
towards them. This tendency then freely unfolds in the turning,
or else it unfolds only after counter-tendencies weaken or are
 overcome, etc. All this is played out between the Ego and the
intentional Object. The Object exercises stimulation, perhaps by
virtue of its pleasing appearance. The “ sam e” Object can be
given to me in an unpleasing mode of appearance, and then I
5 experience a stimulus to change my position appropriately, to
move my eyes, etc. Presently, a pleasing appearance is given
once again, and the telos of the movement has been reached.
Here, once more, movements of the body and of the eyes do not
enter into the picture as real processes of nature, but instead a
10 domain of possibilities of free movement is most properly
present to me, and an “ I d o ” succeeds the “ / can ’’ according
to the reigning stimuli and tendencies. Correlatively, the end of
the process has the character of a goal. The Object stimulates
me in virtue of its experienced properties and not its physicalistic
15 ones, of which I need know nothing, and if I am acquainted
with them, in truth that did not have to be. This Object
stimulates me (within the intentionality of experience or of an
indirect experiential knowledge in virtue of properties ascribed
to it correlatively) to eat it. It is one of the goods belonging to
20 the class, nutrients. I reach for it so I can eat it. This is a new
kind of subject-Object “ effect.” The Object has value qualities
and is “ experienced” as having them, is apperceived as a
value-Object. I am occupied with it, it stimulates me to occupy
myself with it; I observe it, observe how it behaves as such an
25 Object, how these new properties, which are not properties of
nature, show themselves, are determined more precisely, etc. Yet
I am not only a subject that values but also one that wants, and
I prove to be such and not just a subject of value-experiences
and a subject of the thinking which judges in this regard, etc.
30 For I can also creatively transform these objects as well as
actually use them for the ends they are designed to serve, etc. In
this way, too, they exhibit their existence as nature on a certain,
very low, intuitive level. In the opposite case, they are nothing,
they no longer determine or motivate me in this relation.
35 Perhaps, however, the illusory Objects as such, the cancelled
noemata, affect me in their own way, just as previously, in a
different way, the noemata affected me in their proto-doxic
ontological character.
We have here the behavior o f reacting to something, by which
 stimuli are experienced and by which there is motivation in a
determinate sense. I experience the stimulus of the beautiful,
and I am motivated to turn to it, to pay attention to it, to take
pleasure in regarding it. Something reminds me of something
5 else that is similar, and the similarity prods me to compare and
distinguish them. Something seen very obscurely determines me
to get up and approach. The room’s stale air (which I experi­
ence as such) stimulates me to open the window. In each case,
we have here an ‘‘undergoing o f something,” a being passively
10 determined by something, and an active reaction to it, a
transition into action. And this action has a goal. Here belong
all forming and transforming of physical Objects but also every
“ I move ” (I move my hand, my foot, etc.) and similarly every
“ I strike,” I push, I pull, I offer resistance to a thing, etc. To be
15 sure, the occurrence of the mechanical movement of my hand
and its mechanical effect on the “ struck ” ball is a physical-real
process. Likewise, the Object, “ this man,” “ this animal,” [218]
partakes of this event in virtue of his “ soul,” and his “ I move
my hand, I move my foot ” is a process that is psychophysically
20 intertwined, a process that is to be explained in a real-causal
manner within the nexus of psychophysical reality. Here, how­
ever, we are not concerned with this real psychophysical process
but with the intentional relation. I, the subject, move my hand,
and what this is in the subjective mode of consideration
25 excludes all recourse to brain processes, nerve processes, etc.,
and the same holds for the “ I hit the stone.” The Bodily
member, the hand, appearing to consciousness in this or that
way, is as such a substrate of the “ I move,” is an Object for the
subject and is, as it were, a theme of his freedom, of his free
30 action; in the act of striking it is the means “ by which” the
thing, likewise intentionally given to me, can become and does
become the “ them e” of the striking (of the “ I strike”).
Obviously, therefore, the cogito essentially pertains to the
intentional relation between the subject and the thematic
35 Object, the cogito, that is, which defines the thematic Object
(Object for me, for this Ego) or the thematic relation. It is
therein, in the cogito, that the Object appears, is perceived,
remembered, emptily represented, conceptually thought, etc.
The thesis of being (that of experience, of thinking, etc.) can be
 erroneous— the thing does not exist— and in that case it will be
said in my subsequent critical judgment, or in someone else’s,
that in actuality I did not strike, dance, or jump. But the
evidence (the evident lived experience) of the “ I undergo ” or “ I
5 do,” of the “ I move,” is not affected thereby, is not annulled.
(One can say that even the “ I strike” or the “ I dance” is a
cogito, but such a one as to co-include in itself a thesis of
transcendence, and in this mixed form it harbors in itself the ego
sum as well.) The world is my surrounding world. That is to say,
10 it is not the physicalistic world but the thematic world of my,
and our, intentional life (including what is given to conscious­
ness as extra-thematic, co-affecting, and accessible to my the­
matic positings: my thematic horizon).
This surrounding world is perhaps, or it harbors in itself, my
15 theoretical surrounding world. More clearly put, this surrounding
world can present to me, the actual subject (not me, the man),
all sorts of theoretical themes, and I can even become a
practitioner of natural science by theoretically investigating the
nexuses of reality. In setting after the real or in elaborating real
20 actuality, I arrive at “ true nature,” which manifests itself in the
given things of the surrounding world as appearances of it. Here
also belongs the fact that I can make myself and my psychic life
into Objects, can pursue the Bodily-psychic nexuses, and can
investigate myself, the man, as a reality amid realities. In that
25 case, however, natural science and true being according to
natural science are a determination pertaining to my surrounding
world and one that itself occurs within its broad circumference.
The surrounding world can then be for me the theme o f the
technique o f natural science or, in general, the theme of practical
30 formations in relation to valuations and settings of goals. In that
case, I am pursuing technique, art, etc. I can thereby posit
values and accept values; and on that basis I can see and find
derived values and mediate values. I can regard goals as final
goals, can deliberate about them in hypothetical-practical con-
35 sciousness, can choose and then take them in actual praxis, and
can order to these goals possible means. Yet I can also judge
about values and in the end raise ultimate questions concerning
values and goals and in that way pursue the theory o f values, the
theory of rational praxis, the theory of reason.
 That is an overview of the field of proper Egological facts.
The Ego is always a subject o f intentionalities, and that means
that a noema and a noematic Object are immanently constituted
(“ apperception”); consciousness of an Object is produced. In
5 particular, an Object posited as existing, which is present to
consciousness in its “ how,” enters into an “ intentional” rela­
tion with the subject in a new sense: the subject comports itself
toward the Object, and the Object stimulates or motivates the
subject. The subject is subject of an undergoing or of a
10 being-active, is passive or active in relation to the Objects
present to it noematically, and correlatively we have “effects ”
on the subject emanating from the Objects. The Object “ intrudes
on the subject” and exercises stimulation on it (theoretical,
aesthetic, practical stimulation). The Object, as it were, wants to
15 be an Object of advertence, it knocks at the door of conscious- [220]
ness taken in a specific sense (namely, in the sense of adver­
tence), it attracts, and the subject is summoned until finally the
Object is noticed. Or else it attracts on the practical level; it, as
it were, wants to be taken up, it is an invitation to pleasure, etc.
20 There are countless relations of this kind and innumerable
noematic strata which the Object assumes with these adver­
tences and which are built upon the original noema, or in the
case of things, on the pure thing-noema.

§ 56. Motivation as the fundamental lawfulness

25 of spiritual life

Thus we see that when we speak of the spiritual or personal

Ego, that is to be understood as the subject of intentionality,
and we see that motivation is the lawfulness o f the life o f the
spirit. Just what motivation is still requires, of course, closer
30 investigation.

a) Motivation of reason
Let us first of all fix our sight on the way perceptions and the
like, for example, motivate judgments, the way judgments are
justified and verified in experience, thus how the attribution of a
 predicate is confirmed by the concordant experience of it, how
being in contradiction with experience motivates a cancelling
negation, or how a judgment is motivated by another judgment
in drawing a conclusion, but also how, in quite a different way,
5 judgments are motivated by affects and affects by judgments,
how surmises or questions are motivated, how feelings, desir-
ings, willings are motivated, and so on. In short, the issue is the
motivation of position-takings by position-takings (for which
certain “ absolute motivations ” are always presupposed: some-
10 thing pleases me in itself, “ for its own sake,” etc., it being of no
consequence whether or not reason reigns within these motiva­
tions).
Nor should reason be excluded here, insofar as there exists
precisely the pre-eminent case of the motivation of reason,
15 motivations within the framework of evidence, which, if they
are reigning in purity, produce constitutive unities of conscious­
ness of a higher level along with correlates of the region “ true
being” in the broadest sense. Here belongs especially every [22|
instance of logical grounding. So we have to distinguish: 1)
20 motivations of effective acts by effective acts in the sphere that
stands under norms of reason. Here the distinction is that
between the motivation of the Ego and the motivation of the
acts. 2) Motivations of other kinds.
Motivation can exist here in the most authentic sense,
25 whereby it is the Ego that is the motivated: I confer my thesis
onto the conclusion because I judged such and such in the
premises, because I have given my thesis to the premises. The
same occurs in the sphere of valuing; there is a valuing that I do
for having valued something else, and there is a derived willing
30 as a deciding for having decided something else. In each case
here I am accomplishing a cogito and am determined in doing so
by the fact that I have accomplished another cogito. Obviously,
the thesis of the conclusion is related thereby to the thesis of the
premises. These are Ego-theses, yet on the other hand they are
35 not themselves the Ego, and so we also have as motivation a
particular relationship among the theses. But the theses as
theses have their “ material,” and that produces lines of depen­
dencies as well: the full assertions and, correlatively, the full
lived experiences have a “ connection of motivation.”
 One can speak of motivations o f pure reason in a two-fold
sense: it can refer to mere relations and connections of require­
ment between “acts "properly so called. The subject here is the
“ active” one; in a certain sense the subject is always “ doing
5 something” here, even in purely logical thinking. Reason can
then be called pure reason if, and insofar as, it is motivated with
insight and is thoroughly so motivated. Yet this condition does
not have to be met. Even invalid conclusions belong under the
heading of motivation of reason. Their “ material ” is perhaps a
10 sediment of previous acts of reason, but one which now comes
forth in a confused unity and in that state maintains the thesis.
Reason is a “ relative ” one here. He who lets himself be drawn
by inclinations and drives (which are blind since they do not
emanate from the sense of the matters currently functioning as
15 stimuli, i.e., they do not have their source in this sense) is driven
irrationally. But if I take something to be true or take a demand
to be a moral one, thus having a source in the corresponding
values, and if I freely pursue the reputed truth or the reputed
moral good, then I am being reasonable— yet only relatively so,
20 for I may indeed be mistaken there. I am projecting a theory in [222]
relative rationality insofar as I fulfill the intentions predeli­
neated to me by my presuppositions. But I may have over­
looked the fact that of one of my presuppositions was wrong.
Perhaps I am following a blind tendency here. I believed I could
25 remember that the proposition was demonstrated; the tendency
is not completely blind insofar as the memory has its reason.
Finally we reach in this way the fundamental questions of ethics
in the widest sense, which has as its object the rational behavior
of the subject.
30 The doctrine of the affects in Spinoza and Hobbes deals, by
and large, with immanent motivations.

b) Association as motivation
Furthermore, the entire realm of associations and habits fits in
here. They are relations established between an earlier and later
35 segment of consciousness within one Ego-consciousness. But
motivation occurs in the “ present” consciousness, namely in
 the unity of the conscious stream, characterized as time-
consciousness (originary consciousness) in act. Here it is not a
matter of a motivation of position-takings by other position-
takings (active theses by active theses) but of lived experiences
5 of any sort whatsoever. These are, specifically, ejther “ sedi­
m ents” of earlier acts and accomplishments of reason, or ones
which emerge, in “ analogy” with the former, as apperceptive
unities without actually being formed out of acts of reason, or
else they are completely a-rational: sensibility, what imposes
10 itself, the pre-given, the driven in the sphere of passivity. What
is specific therein is motivated in the obscure background and
has its “ psychic grounds, ” 1 about which it can be asked: how did
I get there, what brought me to it? That questions like these can
be raised characterizes all motivation in general. The “ motives”
15 are often deeply buried but can be brought to light by “ psy­
choanalysis.” A thought “ reminds” me of other thoughts and
calls back into memory a past lived experience, etc. In some
cases it can be perceived. In most cases, however, the motiva­
tion is indeed actually present in consciousness, but it does not
20 stand out; it is unnoticed or unnoticeable (“ unconscious”).
The contrast between associative motivations and motiva­
tions in the pregnant sense of Ego-motivation (motivation of
reason), which we are dealing with here, can be brought into
relief in the following w ay: What is meant by the universal fact
25 of “ passive motivation” ? Once a connection is formed in a
stream of consciousness, there then exists in this stream the
tendency for a newly emerging connection, similar to a portion
of the earlier one, to continue in the direction of the similarity
and to strive to complete itself in a total nexus similar to the
30 previous total nexus. We thus put the question: how is it that
this is known? Now, when I reflect on an earlier connection and
then on a second one, related to the first in the way indicated, I
expect the initial part to be followed by a similar part, in
rational motivation, and I then actually find it. Here for us who
35 question and expect and who establish the fact of association,
something new emerges: the existence of the similar part

1 Here in the "Ego-less" sphere we speak o f the Ego that is motivated. Is the Ego
then the stream itself?
 demands the existence of a similar part complementing it. This
is a law o f motivation; it concerns the existential positings. The
demand is an “ original ” one, a demand of reason. Hence there
are rational motivations for existential positings as well as for
5 judgments and for taking up positions of belief in general
(formal-logical position-takings belong here too ) .1 Likewise
there are rational motivations for position-taking as regards
feeling and will.
Obviously, belief, and any position-taking, is an event in the
10 stream of consciousness and therefore is subject to the first law,
that of “ habit.” Having once believed M, with this sense and in
a certain mode of representation, there then exists the associative
tendency to believe M again in a new case. If I ask whether A is
and proceed to affirm that A is, then in a new case there may be
15 joined “ by habit” to the question whether A' is (thought as
similar to A with respect to its matter) the affirmation that it is. [224]
This is no different: if I have once apprehended a content of
sensation and have posited it objectively as A, then I may again,
on another occasion, apprehend and posit as A' a similar
20 content of sensation (along with its concomitant similar rela­
tions and circumstances). And in that case we again have in the
stream forms of processes. It is clear, however, that I must not
confuse the occurrence of habit with the occurrence of motiva­
tion in the sphere of position-taking, which, of course, is alone
25 called motivation in ordinary language.
To be sure, the one and the other kind of motivation
intertwine, the “ causality” in the deep grounds of association
and apperception and the “ causality” of reason, the passive
and the active or free. The free one is purely and completely free
30 where passivity plays a role only for the delivering of the primal
material which no longer contains any implicit theses.

c) Association and experiential motivation

We have been speaking of unnoticed, “ hidden ” motivations,

1 This would be the place to consider the correlative existential motivations in

what is constituted: for example, the “ under similar objective relations (in nature)
the similar is to be expected,” etc.
 which are to be found in habit, in the events of the stream of
consciousness. In inner consciousness, every lived experience is
itself doxically “ characterized as existing.” But a great difficulty
lies here. Is it actually characterized as existing, or is there only,
5 by essence, the possibility of a reflection which in the process of
objectification necessarily confers on the lived experience this
ontological character? And even that is not yet clear enough.
Reflection on a lived experience is originally a positing con­
sciousness. But is the lived experience itself something given or
10 constituted in a positing consciousness? If that were the case,
then could we not always go back a step in reflection, and
would we not then fall into an infinite regress?
For now, however, we can put this aside. By all means, there
are hidden motivations. Even without our performing acts of
15 belief, they enter into motivations. Examples of it are provided
by the realm of experience, the infinite field of motivations
included in every outer perception, in memory, and (modified,
however) in every phantasizing of a thing. Apprehensions of
things and of thingly nexuses are “ webs of m otivation:” they
20 are built through and through from intentional rays, which, [231
with their sense-content and their filled content, refer back and
forth, and they let themselves be explicated in that the accom­
plishing subject can enter into these nexuses. I have the unitary
intentionality in which a thing is given to me in one stroke.
25 Then from every way of running through it, there results a
series of continuous acts unfolding in the first-posited sense and
in a harmonious sense conforming to every further givenness.
That is to say, everything here is “ motivated,” including every
new positing and every phase of the unitary total positing as
30 well as every new partial positing which may perhaps come to
the foreground but does not have to. And this applies, in like
manner, to every new content; what is motivated is precisely the
positing with its content, its quality, and its matter, though each
one of them supervenes here in a different way. In every
35 moment, I have a “ divisible” matter and a unitary quality
extending over the matter, hence there are also elements of
motivation and webs of motivation in co-existence, unities of
“ mutual belongingness” to “ one affair.” On the other hand,
“ the similar motivates the similar under similar circumstances.”
 B e tte r : th e g iv e n n e s s of th e s im ila r (in p o s it in g c o n s c io u s n e s s )
of w h a t is sim ila r .
m o t iv a te s th e g iv e n n e s s
Now, how are they both connected? On the one hand, in
the unity of a lived experience, or perhaps in the unity of a
5 nexus of lived experiences, I have, under the heading of
“ motivations,” “ intentional” connections, tendencies which
run back and forth, which are fulfilled or remain open. They
come to the fore and they sustain themselves, and here, too, we
have motivations of reason: existence motivates co-existence,
10 etc. It is so everywhere that a “ unity of consciousness” is
related to a transcendent unity of an object within a grasping of
something given. (One could also ask whether there is not also,
in the mere unity of the stream of consciousness, a unity in
which every part motivates the contiguous one.)
15 On the other hand, we have motivations extending beyond
the continuity of the contiguous and inner nexus and, likewise,
beyond the continuity of what is given unitarily on the side of
the constituted. Here, too, the accomplishing Ego does not have
to live in the motivations. The similar reminds me of the similar,
20 and by analogy with what was given with the similar on the one
side, I expect something similar on the other side. It is asso- [226]
ciated with it and “ reminds ” me of it, though as analogon of
something remembered in the usual narrow sense.
Now, however, the question could be raised: is the one kind
25 of motivation actually different from the other? Where I have
the lived experience of the unity of co-appurtenance, where
motivations run back and forth continually, there the true state
of affairs is, one could say, that A refers to B as belonging to it
because previously, in analogous cases, A occurred intertwined
30 with B. Hence all thingly apperception and all apperception of
unities of the nexus of several things and thingly processes
would have their source in associative motivations. We come
back to an original togetherness and an original consequence,
where there is yet nothing of motivation. But to what extent
35 that would be thinkable, and to what extent the unity of a
stream of consciousness could be precisely a unity if it is
without any motivation— that is the question.
Furthermore, a distinction needs to be made here. In the
unity of the consciousness of a thing, as a consciousness of
 co-appurtenance, we have to explicate “ conditionalities,” a
“ because-thus” according to various directions: If I turn my
eyes in such a way, if I produce a series of optical experiences in
a certain way, then I must see such and such, etc. And what I
5 see presents itself as the unity of a thing with these or those
parts, and the mode of givenness of one part supports that of
the other. If they are to be together Objectively as such and
such, and if the one appears in a certain way, then so must the
other, in correlation, under the given experiential circumstances.
10 On the other hand, if we take this case: under the previous
circumstances, and in the previous nexuses Z, A had occurred,
and in the present similar circumstances Z', A' is to be expected
or has already been given as a consequence, then we also speak
here of the “ being-co-given ” and the being-motivated of A by
15 Z, of the A-positing by the Z-positing. But the being-motivated
certainly has a different sense here.

d) Motivation in its noetic and noematic aspects

If we examine the structure of the consciousness that consti­
tutes a thing, then we see that all of nature, with space, time,
20 causality, etc., is completely dissolved into a web of immanent
motivations. In the unity of the total lived experience, which
comprises consciousness of a thing there and of an Ego here [2|
with its Body, we find distinguishable objectivities of many
kinds, and we also find functional dependencies which are not
25 dependencies of an actual thing on the actual Body and the
actual Ego in the world, which, in short, are not natural-
scientific psychic and psychophysical dependencies. But then
neither are they dependencies of subjective appearances (as
possessed by the subject of lived experience) on real Objectivi-
30 ties that are posited or received as real. We can now consider
the noetic lived experiences according to their relations of
motivation, relations of nexuses of belonging together, by which
occurs a procession from positing to positing, i.e., positing “ in
consequence of,” with this special character. Or, we can con-
35 sider the thetic correlates, the themata, in their noematic
co-appurtenance, whereby again, under this aspect, there occurs
the correlative “ in consequence of.”
 We have static and dynamic co-appurtenances, and the static
pass over into dynamic ones in virtue of a change of the lived
experiences (and these changes have the character of “ subjec­
tive” processes of the “ I change,” perhaps of the “ I go through
5 arbitrarily”). But here we touch upon the main difficulty. We
do not say that in the unity of the stream of my lived
experiences each lived experience is necessary, necessarily condi­
tioned by the lived experiences which precede it and are
co-lived. If we say that every lived experience of an act is
10 motivated, that relations of motivation are intertwined in it, this
is not to imply that every meaning-intending is one “ in
consequence of.” When I become aware of a thing, the thesis
contained in the perception is not always a thesis “ in conse­
quence o f ” : e.g., when I see the night sky lit up by a meteor
15 shower or hear quite unexpectedly the crack of a whip. Still,
even here a kind of motivation can be exhibited, included in the
form o f inner time-consciousness. This form is something abso­
lutely fixed: the subjective form of the now, of the earlier, etc. I
can change nothing of it. Nevertheless, there exists here a unity
20 of co-appurtenance, in virtue of which the judgmental positing
“ Now this is ” conditions the futural positing “ Something will
be,” or again, “ Now I have a lived experience” conditions “ It
was a lived experience previously.” Here we have a judgment
motivated by another judgment, but prior to the judgment the
25 temporal forms themselves motivate each other. In this sense we [228]
can say that even the pervasive unity of the stream of conscious­
ness is a unity of motivation. In the personal attitude this means
that every act of the Ego is subject to the constant apprehension
characterizing it as an act “ o f ” the Ego, as “ m y” lived
30 experience.

e) Empathy toward other persons as an understanding

of their motivations
This apprehension as “ mine” is obviously also included in
cases of empathy. Here it is an other Ego, a certain one I at first
35 do not know, but one I nevertheless do know in terms of
universal Ego-being. I know, in general, what “ a person,” a
man, is, and it is a matter for the experience of empathy, in its
 unfolding, to instruct me about the man’s character, about his
knowledge and abilities, etc. This is analogous to the case of the
apperception of physical things. In one stroke, I perceive a thing
having these visible properties. It is “ a ” thing. What it is
5 besides, that experience must teach. The extent the perceptual
apprehension reaches can be different: I can (in the dark)
recognize the thing as a spatial thing, then, under better
illumination, it is made more precise as a tree, then as an oak,
and finally as the well-known oak that I saw yesterday in a
10 more definite way. Yet there still always remains much that is
unknown or imperfectly known. So also in the apprehension of
a man very much is already included. From self-experience we
know already that implied here is the possibility of a double
apprehension: as Object in nature and as person. This holds as
15 well when we consider other subjects. On both sides what is
common is the givenness of the fellow-man by means of
comprehension, though it functions differently in the two cases.
In the first case, what is comprehended is nature; in the other,
spirit. In the first case, what is introjectively posited is the other
20 Ego, lived experience, and consciousness, built upon the funda­
mental apprehension and positing of material nature and appre­
hended as being functionally dependent on it, as an appendix of
it. In the other case, the Ego is posited as person “ purely and
simply” and posited, consequently, as subject of its personal
25 and thingly surroundings, as related to other persons by means
of understanding and mutual understanding, as member of a
social nexus to which corresponds a unitary social surrounding
world, while at the same time each individual member has his [22^
own environment bearing the stamp of his subjectivity.
30 This means that others are apprehended in analogy with one’s
own Ego as subjects of a surrounding world of persons and
things to which they comport themselves in their acts. They are
“ determined” by this surrounding world, or by the spiritual
world that surrounds them and encompasses them, and, in turn,
35 they exercise “ determination” on it: they are subject to the
laws of motivation.
 f) N atural causality and motivation
The “ because-so ” of motivation has a totally different sense
than causality in the sense of nature. No causal research, no
matter how far-reaching, can improve the understanding which
5 is ours when we have understood the motivation of a person.
The unity of motivation is a nexus founded in the relevant acts
themselves, and when we inquire into the “ because,” into the
grounds of a personal behavior, we seek to know nothing but
precisely this nexus. The causality of nature in the natural
10 sciences has its correlate in laws of nature, according to which it
can be determined without equivocation (at least in the domain
of physical nature) what it is that has to follow under univocally
determining circumstances. In the sphere of the human sciences,
on the contrary, to say that historians, sociologists, or cultural
15 anthropologists “ explain” human-scientific facts means that
they want to clarify motivations, to make intelligible how the
people in question “ came to do it,” came to behave in such and
such a way, which influences they underwent and which ones
they themselves exercised, what it was that determined them in
20 and toward the community of action, etc. If the human scientist
speaks of “ rules ” and “ laws,” to which are subject such modes
of behavior or modes of formation of cultural structures, still
the “ causalities” in question, which find their general expres­
sion in the laws, are anything but natural causalities. The
25 historian asks what the members of the society in their commu­
nal life represented, thought, valued, desired, etc. How have
these people “ determined” themselves reciprocally, how have
they allowed themselves to be determined by the surrounding
world of things, how have they, for their part, shaped the world
30 in turn, etc.?
All spiritual modes of behavior are “ causally” linked [230]
together through relations of motivation. E.g., I surmise that A
is because I know that B, C... are. I hear that a lion has broken
loose, and I know a lion is a bloodthirsty animal, and therefore I
35 am afraid to go out in the street. The servant meets his master,
and because he acknowledges him as master, he greets him with
deference. We make a note for ourselves on a memo pad about
tomorrow’s schedule; the consciousness of the schedule in
 connection with the knowledge of our forgetfulness motivates
the making of the note. In all these examples, the “ motivational
because” appears. There is no question here of a judgmental
orientation to something real as such. The “ because” expresses
5 here anything but a causality of nature (a real causality). I, as
subject of the “ premises of the action,” do not grasp myself in
an inductive-real way as the cause of the Ego as subject of the
“ conclusion of the action.” In other words, I who conclude and
decide on the basis of these or those motives grasp neither the
10 conclusion as a natural effect of the motives or of the lived
experiences of the motives nor myself as subject of a conclusion
effected by the Ego as the subject of the motivating lived
experiences. It is similar as regards every logical conclusion (it
should not be overlooked that the practical conclusion is
15 essentially analogous to the logical one, but they are not the
same) and thus everywhere that I give expression in the
egological attitude to a motivational situation. If I am able, by
means of empathy, to ascertain this situation in an other, then I
say " / understand why he decided in that way, I understand why
20 he came to that judgm ent” (in view of what). All these
“ causalities” are exhibitable quite intuitively, since they are
precisely motivations.
Thingly (nature-real, natural) causalities are given intuitively
as well. We see how the hammer forges the iron, how the drill
25 bores the hole. But the seen causalities are here mere appear­
ances of the “ tru e” natural causalities, just as the thing seen is
a mere appearance of the true thing, the physicalistic thing. The
true nature, the physicist’s, is a methodologically necessary
substruction o f thinking and only as such can it be constituted,
30 only as “mathematical" does it have its truth. Versus this, it
makes no sense as regards motivation, which is to be grasped [23,|
originarily-intuitively, to base it, by means of substructions in
thought, on something non-intuitive as a mathematical index of
an infinite manifold of intuitive appearances, of which the
35 presently given is only one. If I take the spirit, in unity with the
Body, as a natural Object, then even the spirit is entwined in
natural causality, which itself is given as mere appearance: for
the simple reason that one member of the relation of depen­
dency, the physical member, can only be determined as appear­
 ance and only by means of substruction. Sensations, sensuous
feelings, reproductions, associations, apperceptions, and the
whole course of psychic life in general that is grounded there,
even as regards its position-takings, are Objectively (naturally-
5 inductively) dependent on the physical Body with its physiolog­
ical processes and its physiological organization; consequently,
they are dependent on real physical nature. But the physiologi­
cal processes in the sense organs, in the nerve cells and in the
ganglia, do not motivate me even if they condition, in my
10 consciousness, psychophysically, the appearance of sense data,
apprehensions, and psychic lived experiences. What I do not
“ know,” what does not stand over against me in my lived
experiences, in my representing, thinking and acting, as the
represented, perceived, remembered, thought, etc., does not
15 “ determine” me as a spirit. And what is not intentionally
included in my lived experiences, even if unattended or implicit,
does not motivate me, not even unconsciously.

g) Relations between subjects and things from the

viewpoint of causality and motivation
20 Now what do we have if we consider subjects as subjects of
intersubjective motivations and establish that thereby they deter­
mine others and are determined by them? Is this not a matter of
causality? The first thing to say is that if I do something
because I hear that someone else acted in such and such a way,
25 then my action is motivated by my hearing and my knowing,
and this is not natural causality. Yet I apprehend myself here as
determined by the other man, by the other real Ego. We speak
indeed of people as reciprocally “ acting” on one another. It is
similar to the case of an “ abom inable” din in the street
30 disturbing me in my work and my finding it precisely abomin- [232]
able, vexatious, etc. In that case my state of mind is conditioned
by the hearing of the noise with this determinate acoustic
content and this sensuous feeling, etc. We say the din vexes me,
brings about displeasure in me, just as, on the contrary, the
35 tones of magnificent music bring about joy, admiration, etc. Are
these not causal relations? Does anyone doubt that air waves
are propagated up to my ear, etc.? On the other hand, however,
 we do also say that since M and N are, I conclude that S is; my
lived experience is related to M and N, to these facts which
perhaps are geometrical-ideal, and to which, of course, I can
ascribe no action on me.
5 If we consider the relations more precisely, then we observe
(as we have already done previously) that the relations of
motivation have various facets. On the one hand, the drawing
of a conclusion is noetically motivated by the judging in the
premises, the willing by a seeing, hearing, evaluating, etc. On
10 the other hand, it pertains to the essence of these motivations o f
acts that there also exist relations between the correlates o f the
acts and the acts on the one side and between the correlates
themselves on the other side, which also have their “ because”
and “ therefore.” These correlates might eventually be charac-
15 terized as actual, and we might thereby have the protodoxically
positing consciousness of actual things and states of affairs. But
they enter into these because-relations as these correlates
“ residing in ” consciousness itself, the intuited as intuited, the
fictional as fictionalized, the judged as judged, etc. Precisely for
20 that reason it makes no essential difference whether or not the
correlates correspond to actualities, whether or not they have in
general the “ sense” of actualities. I am afraid of the ghost,
perhaps it makes me quiver, although I know that what is seen
is nothing actual. The dramatic action in the theater moves me
25 deeply, although it is not something real, as I very well know.
Whatever changes may manifest themselves in feelings and
conscious acts in general, it makes no matter for our question
whether I am determined in them by actual things or by the
mere phantasy-things of art.
30 Accordingly it is clear that a fundamental distinction is to be
made here, namely:
1. between relations of the real subject to real objects (things,
persons, etc.), which are actually real effects, hence real-causal
effects. The objects and persons are thereby posited as nature,
35 as real, as dependent on one another for their real existence and
for their being what they are.
2 . relations between subjects (not posited as causal-real
objects) and the intuited, judged, etc., things “as such/* i.e.,
between subjects and noemata-things, which relations neces-
 sarily have their reverse side in relations among certain acts of
the subjects, acts of intuition, of thinking, etc. And likewise
here are relations between subjects and other people and their
acts, which are not actually causal relations but relations,
5 produced by empathy, between the acts and motivations of the
one subject and those of the other. Thereby, the subject in
question, who undergoes the “ influences,” is motivated by his
own lived experiences or only by the correlates of these lived
experiences, that is, by the correlates of empathy as such.
10 Here the subject may, as indeed he normally does (when he
does not empathize with imagined subjects and the like), posit
the empathized subject, the fellow man and his lived experi­
ences, as actualities and as natural realities, just as he can posit
himself as such a reality, and in that case, to be sure, the
15 relation of motivation can be transformed into a real-causal
relation, and the motivational “ because ” into a real “ because.”
The din there, outside, vexes me — the apprehension can be
exactly the same as when I am vexed by the popular song
haunting me in phantasy. In the case of the first, the correlate is
20 posited as actual; with the latter, not. And when it is posited as
actual, I can understand the state of affairs as causal, the
transformation of the attitude being scarcely noticeable,
although it is an essential change. The real process outside acts
causally on me as a reality: the falling of the hammer disturbs
25 the air, the disturbances stimulate my organs of hearing, etc.,
with the consequence that there is produced in me, as real Ego,
the noise.
The same holds by analogy in the case of the intersubjective
relations of dependency. To be sure, the other person is given to
30 us in comprehension as related to a Body and as present there, [234]
one with the Body. Is this unity not therefore a real, psychophy­
sical unity, a causal unity? But upon closer scrutiny, we do not
find, living in the comprehension-consciousness (e.g., when we
converse with other persons, when they address themselves to us
35 in speaking and we address them, when we receive instructions
from them and carry them out, etc.), a naturalistic unity
between Body and soul, 1 any more than the things we see there
 as things of the environment are things of nature. The things
surrounding us are what we have over against us in intuition;
they have their colors, odors, etc. They are precisely the things
that our experience at present shows us, although they are given
5 in it imperfectly, of course. But we only need step up closer,
look at them “ from all sides,” in order to know them “ per­
fectly” (i.e., perfectly for our aims). The qualities of the thing
(the “ sensuous,” “ secondary” qualities) which in this way
appear ever better are the qualities that are constitutive of the
10 surrounding things; they are the only ones proper to these
things, and no extension of experience goes beyond such
qualities. Hence according to the naively personal and interper­
sonal experiential apprehension, there are not “ physicalistic”
things somehow behind the actually intuited things, or non-
15 intuitive (“ prim ary”) qualities behind the intuited qualities,
which would be mere “ signs,” mere “ subjective appearances”
of them. The things of our socially common world, the things of
the world of our dialogue and praxis, have precisely those
qualities we actually (optimally) see them as having. Everything
20 is here intuited thinghood, and no one apprehends the seeing
and hearing of them as real-causal processes, neither his own
such processes nor those of an other. Here one looks precisely
upon the things, and this looking is an act of the subject but is
not a natural-causal relation. The subject is not an Object of
25 natural science; the subject acts, but that is not the theme.
Now, as to the persons we encounter in society, their Bodies
are naturally given to us in intuition just like the other Objects
of our environment, and consequently so are they as persons,
unified with the Bodies. But we do not find there two things,
30 entwined with one another in an external way; Bodies and
persons. We find unitary human beings, who have dealings with [234
us; and their Bodies participate in the human unity. In their
intuitive content — in what is typical of Corporeality in general,
and in the many particularities which vary from case to
35 case— ones of facial expression, of gestures, of the spoken
“ word,” of the individual’s intonation, etc. — is expressed the
spiritual life of persons, their thinking, feeling, desiring, what
they do and what they omit to do. And so is also already their
individual spiritual character, which, to be sure, comes to
 givenness in an ever more perfect way in the unfolding of the
states which become understandable to us in their nexus as well.
Everything is here of an intuitive character; as are external
world and Body, so is the Bodily-spiritual unity of the man
5 there before me.
I hear the other speaking, see his facial expressions, attribute
to him such and such conscious lived experiences and acts, and
let myself be determined by them in this or that way. The facial
expressions are seen facial expressions, and they are imme-
10 diately bearers of sense indicating the other’s consciousness,
e.g., his will, which, in empathy, is characterized as the actual
will of this person and as a will which addresses me in
communication. The will characterized in this way, i.e., the
empathetic consciousness of this will and consequently the
15 consciousness that posits in the mode of empathy, then moti­
vates my counter-willing or my submission, etc. There is no
question here of a causal relation (as, e.g., between the optically
active thing, the “ head ” of the other, his face, and his face as it
appears to me, between his sound production and the stimula-
20 tion of my ear) and equally no question of any other psycho­
physical relation. The mien of the other determines me (this is
already a kind of motivation) to join to it a sense within the
other’s consciousness. And the mien is precisely the one I see,
and in seeing it, I just as little take it as causally related to my
25 sight, my sensations, appearances, etc., as 1 do with any other
straightforward sense perception. It is not at all that we are just
grasping the causality deficiently, superficially. Rather, we are
altogether outside the attitude required fo r grasping natural
causality. In empathy, consciousness is posited in relation to
30 consciousness, and my will and that of the other are posited in a
determinate milieu of consciousness, and in a somewhat modi­
fied way here one act motivates the other, as occurs in the [236]
individual consciousness. “ In a modified w ay” because at first
my will and the empathy of the other’s will are in a “ because”
35 relation, but in that case so are my will and the other’s will
itself. This motivation has its necessary presuppositions as
motivation (not real presuppositions as real conscious states),
familiar ones such as “ I see the facial expression of the other.”
To introduce natural causality here would be to abandon the
40 personal attitude.
 h) Body and spirit as comprehensive unity:
“ spiritualized” Objects
The thoroughly intuitive unity presenting itself when we grasp
a person as such (e.g., when we, as persons, speak to them as
5 persons, or when we hear them speak, or work together with
them, or watch their actions) is the unity of the " expression ”
and the “expressed" that belongs to the essence of all compre­
hensive unities .1 This Body-spirit unity is not the only one of
this kind. When I read the “ lines and pages ” of a book or when
10 I read in the “ book” and grasp the words and sentences, then
we are dealing with physical matters. The book is a body, the
pages are sheets of paper, the lines are black marks and physical
imprints at certain spots of these papers, etc. Is that what I
grasp when I “ see” the book, when I “ read ” the book, when I
15 “ see” that what is written is written, what is said is said? It is
obvious that my attitude is here quite different. I do indeed
have certain “ appearances;” the physical thing and the physical
occurrences appearing in it are there in space with a determinate
orientation to “ my ” center of apprehension, hence they are in
20 front of me, to the right or to the left, etc. exactly as if I were, in
my experience, focused on the corporeal. But that is precisely
what I am not focused on. I see what is thingly about it insofar
as it appears to me, but I “ live in the sense, comprehending it.”
And while I do so, the spiritual unity o f the sentence and that of
25 the sentence-nexuses are there before me, and these in turn have
their character, e.g., the determinate peculiar style impressing
itself on me, a style which distinguishes this book, as a literary
product, from any other of the same genre.
Now one could say that there is bound to what physically [23?
30 appears, as a first Objectivity, a second one which is precisely
the sense “ animating” the physical. But in this regard I
wonder: am I focused on a second Objectivity only externally
linked to the first? Is not rather that upon which I am focused a
unity that is fused together throughout and not something that
35 just stands there next to the physical? It is surely the case that
this is not a connection in which the parts are “ outside one
 another,” a connection in which each part could also exist for
itself in abstraction from the form which binds them.
Let us take another example, changed in a fitting way. I have
here before me a piece of jewelry, and what interests me
5 exclusively is the beautiful sapphire mounted in it. That is what
I consider, that is what I am focused on in an experience
oriented towards it. The rest of the piece of jewelry appears but
does not fall within the compass of my observing perception.
Or, as a natural scientist, I look at an organ that I have to
10 dissect as an organ for itself; the rest of the physical Body,
whence I excised it, is something I see but do not observe, and
so on. In the case of the attitude directed to the spiritual, do we
have the same situation or perhaps an analogous one? Is the
spiritual a part connected to the appearing Body in a way
15 similar to the manner in which one physical part is connected
with another? Do I pay attention to that part and simply not
observe the Bodily? No, it is obvious that the state of affairs as
regards the spiritual is totally different.
Certainly I can say that the physical is animated and is so in
20 various, yet related, senses. The word, the sentence, the whole
text (the drama, the essay) have their spiritual content, their
spiritual “ sense.” And thereby a nexus of physical nature
appears. I can at any time attend to this nexus, I can assume my
attitude in such a way that the observing, experiencing, noticing
25 regard (the thematic intention) enters into these appearances
and intends the appearing spatial existence. Then it is precisely
“ there.” Furthermore, I can again turn back from there into the
attitude in which the drama, the essay, or the individual
sentences it contains are my Object. But then I have an Object
30 which no longer exists there in space, at this place, and such talk
makes no sense in that case.
Further, while reflecting and juxtaposing the one Object as [238]
Object of the one attitude with the other as Object of the other
attitude, I can say that the existing book, the existing sheet of
35 paper, have a special sense, they are animated by an intention.
The book with its paper pages, its cover, etc. is a thing. To this
book there does not append a second thing, the sense; but
instead the latter, in " animating, ” penetrates the physical whole
in a certain way: namely, insofar as it animates every word,
 though, again, not each word taken for itself, but rather the
word-nexuses, which are bound together by the sense into
meaningful forms, and these later bound into higher formations,
etc. The spiritual sense is, by animating the sensuous appear-
5 ances, fused with them in a certain way instead of just being
bound with them side by side.
It is clear that this analysis, even if still insufficient, applies in
the first place to all works o f the spirit, to all works of art and
to all things that have a comprehensive spiritual sense, a
10 spiritual significance. O f course it therefore applies, mutatis
mutandis, to all things of ordinary life within the sphere of
culture, the sphere of actual life. A drinking glass, a house, a
spoon, theater, temple, etc. mean something. And there is
always a difference between seeing something as a thing and
15 seeing it as a useful object, as a theater, temple, etc. Thereby the
spiritual sense at one time belongs to a purely ideal sphere, and
has no relation to existence, and at another time does have such
a relation to existence, although it is never some sort of real
thing in the proper sense, conjoined as a second existence to a
20 physically existing thing. It is a question everywhere of a
fundamental mode o f apperception, a particular experiential
attitude, in which what appears (is pregiven) to the senses does
not become sense datum, perception, experience, but helps to
constitute, in its “ psychic fluidum,” in the very unity of the
25 different kind of apprehension, an Objectivity of a proper sort . 1
Obviously this apprehension thereby has another “ subjective
function,” another subjective mode than in the case of thematic
external experience.
More precisely, we should have said the cases are different.
30 For example, the case of the use-Object and the case of
sculpture, the literary work, etc. As regards the latter, the
written signs are inessential but not so the associated word-
sounds, which, for their part, are not posited as memory, as
existing, or even as “ appearing.” As regards the Object of use,
35 certain sensuous determinations of its existence enter into the
total apprehension; I look at the form of the spoon, etc., for

1 The attitude does not itself constitute the spiritual product; the physical-spiritual
is already pre-constituted, pre-thematized, pre-given.
 that belongs to the essence of a spoon. Here one will say that
the perception together with its existential thesis is sheer sub­
stratum for the grasping of what is spiritual. But even here it
holds that the spiritual is not a second something, is not an
5 appendix, but is precisely animating; and the unity is not a
connection of two, but, on the contrary, one and only one is
there. Physical being can be grasped for itself (carrying out the
existential thesis), by means of a natural attitude, as natural
being, as thingly being; and to the extent one can assume this
10 attitude, it was “ included” therein. But what we have here is
not a surplus which would be posited on top of the physical, but
rather this is spiritual being which essentially includes the
sensuous but which, once again, does not include it as a part,
the way one physical thing is part of another. In many cases, we
15 do have a real nature, an existence, as substratum ; and in many
cases— as already indicated above — the substratum is physi­
cally unreal and has no existence. The harmony of the rhythms
of a closet drama cannot be posited as a real existence; just as
little as the drama is somewhere existing in space is the harmony
20 somewhere. To the ideal spiritual unity belongs the ideal
harmony . 1
Let us now leave the region of these partially real, partially
ideal “ spiritual Objects,” formations of the “ Objective spirit,”
and consider again spiritual living beings, those beings animated
25 in a special sense, i.e., human beings (but of course all animals
are included). The question above w as: is a man a unification of [240]
two realities, is that how I see him ? If I do, then I am grasping

1 In this presentation (totally insufficient, by the way) these two must be kept
distinct:
1. i f l do not accept the idea o f a bond here in the manner of an appendix, that can
be taken to mean there are not two things, external to one another, which are
connected up and which are joined precisely in conformity with the sense o f the total
apprehension and which, in the movement o f the focus from one to the other, would
appear as parts on an equal level, and thus would form an external unity o f parts o f
the same level.
2. the sensible acquires, as it were, an inner life in virtue o f its being a sensuous
substratum given a spiritual sense (which does not at all imply an external connection
as in 1.), and as is the case with a literary work (drama), the physical substratum is a
manifold o f sensuous members which are, as manifold, unitarily animated, so that
even taken this way the spiritual sense is not simply beside the physical. (C f also
P. 255).
 a corporeal existence. But that is not the attitude I am in when I
see a man. I see the man, and in seeing him I also see his Body.
In a certain way, the apprehension of a man as such goes
through the appearance of the body which here is a Body. In a
5 certain sense, the apprehension does not stop at the body, its
dart is not aimed at that, but it goes through it. Yet neither does
the apprehension aim at the spirit joined to the Body; instead, it
aims precisely at the man. And the apprehension of the human,
the apprehension of that person there, who dances, laughs when
10 amused, and chatters, or who discusses something with me in
science, etc., is not the apprehension of a spirit fastened to a
Body. Instead it is the apprehension, accomplished through the
medium of an appearance of a body, of something that
essentially includes in itself the appearance of a body and that
15 constitutes an Object, of which I can say: it has a Corporeality,
it has a body which is a physical thing with such and such
qualities, and it has lived experiences and lived dispositions.
And this Object has characteristics both sides possess at once: a
way of walking, a way of dancing, a way of speaking, etc. Man,
20 in his movements, in his action, in his speaking and writing,
etc., is not a mere connection or linking up of one thing, called
a soul, with another thing, the Body. The Body is, as Body,
filled with the soul through and through. Each movement of the
Body is full of soul, the coming and going, the standing and
25 sitting, the walking and dancing, etc. Likewise, so is every
human performance, every human production . 1
The apprehension of the man is such that, as “ sense,” it
completely penetrates the apprehension of the body. But this
should not be understood as if there were any question here of a
30 temporal sequence: first the apprehension of the body and then
the man. On the contrary, it is an apprehension which has the
apprehension of the body, constituting the Body, as founding
substratum for the apprehension of the comprehensive sense.
Basically and in the main, this is just the way the word-sound is
35 “ Body ” for the animating “ sense.” Furthermore, the imprinted
page or the spoken lecture is not a connected duality of
word-sound and sense, but, rather, each word has its sense, and
 perhaps parts of words already have the character of a word, as
already, in anticipation, sense refers to a new sense and to new
words, the way words are joined into word-formations, into
sentences, and sentences into nexuses of sentences, which hap-
5 pens because of the fact that animating sense has such a
rhythm, such a texture of sense, such a unity, a unity which yet
has its support, or, better, its Corporeality, in verbal substrata,
so that the whole lecture is through and through a unity of
Body and spirit, is, in its articulations, always a unity of Body
10 and spirit, a unity which is a part of a unity of a higher level, so
that finally the lecture itself is present as the unity of the highest
level.
Exactly the same holds for the unity, man. It is not that the
Body is an undifferentiated physical unity, undifferentiated
15 from the standpoint of its “ sense,” from the standpoint of the
spirit. Rather, the physical unity of the Body there, which
changes in such and such a way or is at rest, is articulated in
multiple ways, in ways that are more determinate or less
determinate, according to the circumstances. And the articula-
20 tion is one of sense, which means it is not of a kind that is to be
found within the physical attitude as if every physical partition,
every distinction of physical properties, would receive “ signifi­
cance,” i.e., significance as Body, or would receive a sense of its
own, its own “ spirit.” Rather, the apprehension of a thing as a
25 man (and, to be more exact, as a man who speaks, reads,
dances, is vexed and rages, defends himself or attacks, etc.) is
precisely such as to animate multiple, though distinguishable,
moments of the appearing corporeal objectivity and to give to
the individual sense a psychic content, and again it is such as to
30 unify the already animated individualities into a higher unity
according to the demands present in the sense and finally unify
them into the unity of a human being. We have just still to note
that only very little of the Bodily actually comes to appearance
at any given time and only very little appears in direct anima-
35 tion, whereas very much can be “ supposed,” co-apprehended,
and co-posited in a more or less indeterminate-vague way, and
this is co-posited Corporeality and has a co-posited sense. A
large part can remain completely undetermined and yet still
contain so much determination: a certain Corporeality with a [242]
 certain spirituality— a certain one, which, as horizon of experi­
ence, is to be determined further by experience.
This apperception of spirit is transferred to one’s own Ego,
which, in apperceiving other spirits, obviously does not have to
5 be apperceived for itself in this way (as comprehensive unity, as
spirit), and if it is not apperceived that way, then it functions as
non-Objectivated pure Ego. In my own case, I arrive at the
apprehension of man (in the sense of spirit) by way of a
comprehension of others, i.e., insofar as I comprehend them as
10 centers not only for the rest of the surrounding world but also
for my Body, which is for them an Object of the surrounding
world. It is precisely thereby that I comprehend them as
apprehending me similar to the way I apprehend them, thus as
apprehending me as a social man, as a comprehensive unity of
15 Body and spirit. Therein is rooted an identification between the
Ego I encounter in direct inspection (as Ego which has its Body
over and against it) and the Ego of the other’s representation of
me, the Ego the others can understand and posit, one with my
Body, as, for him, an “ external” representation, in acts which I
20 for my part attribute to him. The comprehensive representation
others have, or can have, of me is of service to me as regards the
apprehension of myself as a social “ man,” hence the apprehen­
sion of myself totally different from the way I grasp myself in
direct inspection. By means of this apprehension, with its
25 complicated structure, I fit myself into the family o f man, or,
rather, I create the constitutive possibility for the unity of this
“ family.” It is only now that I am, in the proper sense, an Ego
over against an other and can then say “ we.” And then for the
first time do I become “ Ego,” and the other precisely an other.
30 “ W e” are all human beings, similar to each other, capable as
such of entering into commerce with each other and establishing
human relations. All this is accomplished in the spiritual
attitude, without any “ naturalizing.” But we know already that
we can turn every man as comprehensive unity into a unity o f
35 nature, a biological and psychophysical Objectivity, in which
pure spirit no longer functions as member of a comprehensive
unity, but instead a new phenomenal unity, an Objective
thinghood, is constituted. This is transferred to me myself as an
Object of nature, in a very mediate way of representation, as
40 one can see. By means of the change of attitude, the spiritual
 Ego is transformed in my own case, even if in a more mediate
way than in the case of others, into the psychic Ego of the
natural-scientific treatment of the soul.
We have here a fundamental analysis embracing all spiritual
5 Objects, all unities o f Body and sense, hence not only individual
humans but also human communities, all cultural formations,
all individual and social works, institutions, etc.
Now if we have not been permitted to let the relation between
Body and spirit, wherever it occurs, pass as a junction of two
10 things, still nothing prevents us, on the other hand, from
ascribing to the Body a Bodily unity and to the sense a
sense-unity in such a way that we then acknowledge that the
Bodily-spiritual unity we call man, state, or church harbors
two-fold unities, namely: Bodily unities as material-corporeal
15 unities (the ultimate in all cases in which corporeal existence
enters into the whole of the “ spiritualized” Object) and spiri­
tual unities. Consequently a distinction has to be drawn and we
have to maintain that the individual man is :
1) unitary Body, i.e., a body which is animated and which
20 bears sense, and
2) unitary spirit. In the case of a state, a people, a union, etc.,
there is a plurality of Bodies, standing in physical relationships,
something required for intercommerce, either direct or indirect.
What pertains here has sense. Each Body has its spirit, but they
25 all are bound together by the overarching communal spirit which
is not something beside them but is an encompassing “ sense”
or “ spirit.” This is an Objectivity of a higher level.
In the case of other spiritual Objects, namely the ideal ones,
such as drama, literature in general, music, and in a certain
30 sense also in the case of every other work of art, the situation is
different, so much so that the sensuous Body is not an existing
one. (The sensuous Body of a picture is not the picture hanging
on the wall. It would not be difficult to elaborate this. But it
would take us too far afield.)
35 At all events, with respect to the unity of the spirit, which [244]
makes up the “ sense” of the Body, we have to note the
following, as regards the individual m an :
Empathy into persons is nothing else than precisely that
apprehension which understands the sense, i.e., which grasps the
 Body in its sense and in the unity of the sense it has to bear. To
perform an act of empathy means to grasp an Objective spirit,
to see a human being, to see a crowd of people, etc. Here we do
not have an apprehension of the Body as bearer of something
5 psychic in the sense that the Body is posited (experienced) as a
physical Object and then something else is added on to it, as if it
was apprehended just as something in relation to, or in conjunc­
tion with, something else. What we have here rather is precisely
an Objectivation of a higher level superposed on that of the
10 other stratum of apprehension in such a way that what is
constituted is the unity of an Object, one which in turn (without
any kind of binding of parts that would presuppose a prior
separation) involves Objective strata of lower and higher levels,
distinguishable only after the fact.
15 The unity given in the apprehension of spiritual being allows
for differentiation into Body and sense by means of a change in
the apprehending attitude. The human Body is given in percep­
tual appearance; as the correlate of perception it presents itself
as an actuality, and as such it fits within the surrounding
20 actuality of the one who understands and who, in seeing this
Body, grasps the human person as a companion. More precisely
formulated, he does not posit or grasp in the proper sense (in
the sense of an actively performed thesis) the actuality of the
Body when he grasps the person expressed therein, no more
25 than we posit, in reading, the written marks on the paper in an
active thesis of experience, make it into the "th em e” of
theoretical or even practical position-taking. The written mark
“ appears,” but we “ live” in the performance of the sense.
Likewise, the Body appears, but what we perform are the acts
30 of comprehension, and what we grasp are the persons and the
personal states “ expressed” in the appearing content of the
Body. As expressed, they appertain only to the appearing Body
of my environment; but this appertaining signifies here a special
relation having anything but the sense of the founded natural
35 unity, man as an animal being, as zoological Object. On the [24|
contrary, it precedes the constitution of any such unity.
In comparison with the unities of word-sound and sense
brought up earlier, it must be noted that we were dealing there
with irreal unities. The unity of Body and spirit, however, is
 constituted as a higher unity of two real unities. It requires
proper constitutive manifolds, something which obviously is
shown in the exhibition of this unity in the consciousness of its
explicit givenness.
5 If a real objectivity of experience is to come to givenness, it is
necessary to take together the two real unities of Body and soul
and pursue in experience, in a unitary fashion, their relations of
dependency on real circumstances and on one another. Instead
of paying heed merely to the Body and, again, instead of simply
10 living the understanding and paying heed to the person, we first
of all have to take the connection produced between expression
and expressed as a totality and see how it behaves in concordant
experience. We will have to say, of course, that already prior to
the turn and grasp of experience this unity of expression and
15 expressed comes to consciousness, as a unique reality, in the
unfolding of the concomitant perceptual apprehensions and that
it is perceptually present as a formation of two levels, in such a
way that the total formation’s dependency on circumstances
essentially includes the dependency of the events of the higher
20 level on those of the lower.
In fact, a unity of realizing apperception is constantly a lived
experience, on which the regard of the pure Ego can focus and
can grasp therein the founded reality as well as its current states
and circumstances. It must be noticed, however, that the unity
25 o f expression is a presupposition for the constitution of the
founded reality as one which encloses levels, but that it is not
already in itself this reality. We could formulate it in this w ay: it
is only by means of expression that the person of the other is
there at all for the experiencing subject, and the person must
30 necessarily be there first in order for him to be able to enter,
precisely as a level, into a real unity of a higher level and indeed
to do so together with that which serves as expression.
In itself it is indeed thinkable that the totality of real relations [246]
between Body and spirit would be reducible to the unity of
35 expression. Spiritual being would be expressed in the Bodily to
such an extent that the spirit would be graspable; but psycho­
physical unity would be lacking, and Body and soul would not
appear in real connection. Perhaps it will be objected that the
bond between expression and expressed is itself already appre-
 hendable as real. If the Body has the peculiarity that personal
states, as co-posited, are tied in empirical regularity to its
general type and especially to certain occurrences in it, e.g., the
play of facial features, the spoken word, etc., then these
5 occurrences have precisely real spiritual consequences. Con­
versely, if certain spiritual states unfold and if, in parallel,
certain miens, gestures, etc. appear on the Body, then in that
case the spiritual has real consequences in the Body and,
accordingly, is experienced as a cause. In the meantime, such
10 statements have only to be pronounced in order to see that this
view cannot be sustained. A parallel bond of this kind does not
create any reality of a higher level. We would have in such a
case two realities, each of them having its states and its real
properties. Within certain limits there would exist a correspon-
15 dence, and conclusions could be drawn from the parallel states
on the one side to those on the other; the ones could be used as
intimations of the others. But not a single new real property
would arise, and neither could there be any question of a
causality joining Body and spirit, for that presupposes both
20 realities would assume for one another the function of circum­
stances with respect to their real states. But as we have
presupposed the state of affairs here, the cancelling of the one
reality would not change anything as regards the other, and the
total manifold of its states would be the same.
25 The truth is, however, that with the appropriate attitude a
man stands there confronting us as a real unity with real
properties, ones we call psychophysical and which presuppose
causality in the relations between Body and soul. It is precisely
through such a causality that a proper founded unity is made
30 possible. There is in the sense of the natural apperception of a
man something like health and sickness in their countless forms,
whereby sickness of the Body results in psychic disturbances
and, more generally, in various experienceable consequences for
the soul. Even inverse causalities are given in experience; e.g.,
35 the will, in that it has the Body as the field of its freedom, leaves
a wake of Bodily occurrences. Yet it is not necessary to list
individually all the forms of psychophysical causality which,
even if they are always retracted in subsequent philosophical
argumentation, nevertheless command the straightforward
 experiential apprehension of animal being. What matters here is
that by means of them something enters into the experiential
apprehension which is not simply contained in the unity of
“ expression” and “ expressed.” 1
5 The Body, which we apprehend as expression of spiritual life,
is at the same time a part of nature, inserted into the universal
nexus of causality, and the spiritual life, which we grasp
through the Bodily expression and understand in its nexus of
motivation, appears, in virtue of its connection with the Body,
10 to be conditioned itself by natural processes and to be apper-
ceived as something of nature. The unity of Body and spirit is a
two-fold one, and, correlatively, a two-fold apprehension (the
personalistic and the naturalistic) is included in the unitary
apperception of the human.

15 § 57. Pure Ego and personal Ego as Object of

reflexive self-apperception 2

If we take the personal Ego just as we encountered it in the

inspectio (thus without regard to its unity with the expressing
Body, the Body given to us in empathy), then it does not at first
20 seem to be distinct from the pure Ego. The Body is in that case
something I have, hence in the broadest sense something over
against me just like everything pregiven, foreign to the Ego, in
analogy with the things of my environment. To be sure, the
Body has here (as we already saw earlier) a particular subjectiv-
25 ity; it is proper to me in a special sense: it is the organ and
system of organs of the Ego, the organ of perception, the organ
of my effects on the “ outside,” on the extra-Bodily environ­
ment, etc. I myself, however, am the subject of the actual “ I
live” : I undergo and I do, I am affected, I have my own “ over
30 and against” and am affected by it, attracted, repulsed, and [248]
motivated in various ways. Or, more clearly: self-perception is a
reflection (self-reflection of the pure Ego) and presupposes
according to its essence an unreflected consciousness. The unre-

1 C f Supplement X, pp. 333 ff.

2 C f the § with the same title in Supplement X, pp. 337 ff.
 fleeted life of the Ego in relation to all sorts of pregivennesses,
in relation to a surrounding world of things, a world of goods,
etc., alien to the Ego, takes on a distinctive form, precisely that
of self-reflection or self-perception, which is thus a special mode
5 of the “ I live” in the universal nexus of Ego-life. To expound it
more precisely, it takes on the form: I perceive that I have
perceived this or that and that I still continue to perceive, I
perceive that this or that affected me previously, though was
unperceived, that it has attracted my attention, that I still
10 remain fixed on it, that something joyful moved me and still
does, that I made a decision and stuck to it, etc. By way of such
reflections I know about my unreflected Ego-life; they bring
structures of it into the focus of my attention.
Reflection can be a protracted and continous unity of reflec-
15 tions. In reflection, I pass from one cogito, which has become a
grasped object, to another and again to others; and in so doing
the Ego, the subject in each cogito, grasps its identity according
to its essence. The manifold activities and passivities of the Ego
are given originally as those of one identical Ego; and correla-
20 tively, the manifold possessions, that which affects, that which is
pregiven, belonging to the immanent or transcendent sphere, is
given originally as the possessions of one and the same Ego. All
these are descriptions which are pertinent to the pure Ego.
Now, while I move thus in the fields of reflection (in the
25 Objectivated subjectivities), in living, unreflected acts of
reflection, I experience thereby how I “ comport ” myself under
different subjective circumstances, i.e., in relation to my sphere
of current pregivennesses (my surrounding world in a very
broad sense). And if I enter into the intertwining of the
30 motivations of my cogito, into the patent and latent intention-
alities of motivation, then I experience how I am motivated by
them, how I am wont to be motivated by them, and what sort o f
general character I possess, in terms o f experience, as the
motivational subject of these motivating circumstances 1: i.e.,

1 Here we must distinguish between habits which I have but which I did not have
in various periods o f my past, possessing others instead. And, on the other hand, the
habitual style. But is “ habit” the right word here? As Ego, do I not have my
position-taking and my way of position-taking not out of mere habit but from
freedom and faculties of various kinds?
 what sort of personal subject I am . 1 I experience all this at first
without an accompanying conceptual fixation and without
thinking about it (without “ reflecting,” if the word is taken in
quite a different sense, namely, precisely in the sense of the
5 comportment of thinking and asserting). So we distinguish
between pure-Ego-reflection, i.e., reflection on the pure Ego that
belongs essentially to every cogito, and reflective thematic
experience built on the basis of the accrued experiential apper­
ception, the intentional object of which is this empirical Ego,
10 the Ego of empirical intentionality, as self-experience of the
personal Ego in relation to the experiential nexuses in which this
personal Ego (hence in relation to the acts it carries out under
the pertinent motivating circumstances) shows itself according
to its "personal features " or properties o f character.
15 To complete this exposition it should be noted that the inner
reflection I am carrying out here does not exclude, but rather
includes, the fact that I apprehend myself thereby as a human
Ego also in the relations I maintain with others. It is indeed as
personal Ego that I comport myself in relation to others as ones
20 who also belong to my surrounding world. But if I keep within
the content offered by pure and proper self-perception and limit
myself to the self-preservation of my person under the circum­
stances of my comportment in the surrounding world, then it is
clear that I can disregard the stratum of apprehension that arises
25 from the fact that I represent myself at the same time as the
same one who is apprehended by others externally through
empathy. And finally, even if I eliminate every apperception [250]
bearing on others and consequently all the contributions this
apperception makes towards the rest of the apperception of the
30 surrounding world and of myself, then obviously what remains

1 Is this to mean that merely through repeated reflection on the motivations o f my

affections and actions there arises an experiential apperception o f the Ego as an Ego
o f affection and action? As personal Ego, however, I am a man among other men.
What is prior here, the formation of the inductive apperception o f the personal style
of others or of my own style? And is it merely a question o f inductive-associative
apperception? The person is the subject of faculties. A person’s faculty is not
constituted merely as a product of association, and I come to know his formation and
growth according to the style o f experience properly his own, in which free
association always plays a role. Much is still to be clarified here.
 is my Ego, which comports itself in a regulated way in my pure
(natural, thingly) surrounding world, and a limited personal
apperception. In self-intuition in the proper sense (self-percep­
tion, self-memory) there enters at the outset nothing of the
5 representation of the way in which I would appear from a there,
from an other’s point of view. 1
I, the personal Ego, am something pre-given to myself, after
the development of the empirical apperception of the Ego, just
as well as the thing is pre-given to me after the thing-
10 apperception has developed. Just as “ experience,” in the sense
of deliberate observation executed according to developed
thing-apperception, and in the sense of willfully ordered satis­
faction of the interest in things, allows me to come to know the
thing better through series of experiences— which leads to
15 observational science— so it is with regard to the empirical Ego.
I purposely enter “ into the experience” and come to know
myself “ more clearly,” possibly with a purely observational
interest. Self-perception as personal self-perception and the
nexus of reflective self-experiences “ teaches” me that my pure
20 Ego-acts unfold in a regulated way under their subjective [25|

1 The personal Ego is the human Ego. I experience the comportment o f others
within the circumstances o f their surrounding world, and out of repeated reflection
on their similar behavior under similar circumstances an inductive apperception
arises. Insofar as I apperceive myself as a human being in a human nexus and thus
find occasion enough to observe my own behavior and find it to be regulated (i.e., I
find habits, active regularities in my behavior), I come to know myself as a personal
“ reality.” The personal reflection which I exercise in this way is therefore a very
mediated one in its intentionality.
Yet many questions still remain.
First, a part o f inductive apperception, concerning myself, arises as somatological
prior to the experience o f others. Here it must be seriously considered how the Ego,
in all this, plays its role as a pole and how an enduring ability is constituted (I can
move my hand in a certain direction, I can touch things, etc.): my Body as substrate
of various Corporeal 44faculties.” And then multiple habits in my subjective sphere,
whether or not others come into consideration for me. Interplay between the
observation o f others and self-observation, with a continued extension o f inductive
apperception as a consequence.
With that, however, always and from the very outset there comes into consider­
ation the faculties proper to the Ego and the somatological faculties o f the lower
stratum. An active faculty is indeed not a habit, not an inductively constituted
property, not a mere product o f association, if we take the latter in the customary
sense. The analysis o f the person is therefore very incomplete here.
 circumstances. I recognize eidetically, or can recognize, that
according to these regulated processes the “ representation,”
Ego-person, the empirical Ego-apperception, must necessarily
develop and must incessantly develop further, and that hence, if
5 I reflect on a series of lived experiences, a course of various
cogitationes, I must encounter myself constituted as personal
Ego. The course of the lived experience of pure consciousness is
necessarily a process of development in which the pure Ego
must assume the apperceptive form of the personal Ego, hence
10 must become the nucleus of all sorts of intentions which would
find their demonstration or their fulfillment in series of experi­
ences of the type just mentioned.

§ 58. The constitution of the personal Ego prior to

reflection 1

15 In reflection I therefore always find myself as a personal Ego.

But originally this Ego is constituted in the genesis pervading
the flux of lived experiences. The crucial question here is th is: is
the personal Ego constituted on the basis of Ego-reflections,
hence completely originally on the basis of pure self-perception
20 and self-experience? We have lawfulnesses, such as those which
stand under the heading “ association,” that belong to the
stream of lived experience with its total content, thus likewise to
the cogitationes emerging therein as well as to the other lived
experiences. So the question is whether, merely in virtue of such
25 lawfulnesses, apperception in general can develop and, in partic­
ular, those of the personal Ego in its regulated comportment
relative to subjective circumstances, in such a way that reflec­
tions on cogitationes play no privileged role there, or whether
precisely the reflections have here a special and altogether
30 essential constitutive function. Is it necessary that I, in reflective
experience, run through my modes of comportment in order for
the personal Ego to be able to come to consciousness as the
unity of these modes, or can it already be “ conscious” in
pre-givenness, before it was given originally through such series
 of identifying and realizing experiences, which, as reflections on
the cogitationes, focus on the comportment in relation to [252]
circumstances? But in that case what is it which is organized in
the pre-reflective sphere? Surely, “ associations” are formed,
5 references back and forth develop, just as they do with the
unnoticed sensuous and thingly “ backgrounds.” Thus a content
is already there, and in the subsequent reflection, in the
remembering, I can and I must encounter something already
formed. This is the presupposition for the “ explication,” for the
10 “ fully conscious” exhibition, of the “ if ” and “ then,” and for
that identification of the Ego in relation to the pertinent
circumstances, in which the Ego is “ properly” constituted as
personal-real unity. (The question arises as to whether some­
thing similar does not take place regarding the constitution of
15 the thing, which I have in fact shown in my Transcendental
Logic.)
But even abstracting from the associative nexuses, the Ego
constituted in reflection refers back to another one. Properly
spoken, I am originally not a unity composed of associative and
20 active experience (if experience means the same as it does in the
case of the thing). I am the subject of my life, and the subject
develops by living; what it primarily experiences is not itself,
but instead it constitutes objects of nature, goods, instruments,
etc. W hat it primarily forms and structures as active is not itself
25 but things for work. The Ego does not originally arise out of
experience— in the sense of an associative apperception in
which are constituted unities of manifolds of a nexus— but out
of life (it is what it is not for the Ego, but it is itself the
Ego).
30 The Ego can be more and can be other than the Ego as
apperceptive unity. It can have latent capacities (dispositions)
which have not yet appeared, have not yet been apperceptively
Objectified, just as a thing has properties that have not yet been
drawn into the thing-apperception. We make all these distinc-
35 tions even in the ordinary, personal way of considering a man
and consequently they are there in the human-scientific (e.g.,
historical) approach, in ordinary experience. No one “ knows”
himself or has “ knowledge” of what he is, without learning to
know himself. Self-experience, self-apperception, is constantly
 expanding. The “ learning to know oneself” is one with the
development of self-apperception, with the constitution of the
“ self,” and this development is carried out in unity with the
development of the subject itself.
5 But what about a supposed beginning? In the beginning of [253]
experience, no constituted “ self” is pre-given yet and present as
an object. It is completely latent for itself and for others, at least
in terms of intuition. Yet the others can already, in empathy,
comprehend more of it insofar as the form of subjectivity is
10 experientially predelineated to them as a form constituted in
development. The peculiarity o f the spiritual subject is that in it
there arises the apperception, “ Ego,” an apperception in which
this “ subject” is the “ object” (even if it is not always the
thematic Object). The apperception, “ thing,” does not arise in a
15 thing; only subjects have such apperceptions. Therefore we have
to distinguish between the “ I that I am ” on the subject side and
the “ I that I am ” as Object for myself, an Object which is, in
the existing “ I am,” represented, constituted, and perhaps
intended in the specific sense: the me. W hat is intended here is
20 “ the person ” constituted for me, the Ego which has conscious­
ness as a self.
Furthermore, must we not say that, in contrast to the waking
Ego, the sleeping is complete immersion in Ego-matter, in the
hyle, is undifferentiated Ego-being, is Ego-sunkenness, whereas
25 the awake Ego opposes itself to the matter and then is affected,
acts, undergoes, etc.? The Ego posits the non-Ego and comports
itself towards it; the Ego unceasingly constitutes its “ over and
against,” and in this process it is motivated and always moti­
vated anew, and not arbitrarily but as exercising " self-preserva-
30 tion. ” If we disregard a lower level in which “ sensuous objec­
tivity” arises as a unity “ without acts,” then the Ego develops
unceasingly, what it does and what it undergoes always having
their after-effects. The Ego exercises itself, it habituates itself, it
is determined in its later behavior by its earlier behavior, the
35 power of certain motives increases, etc. The Ego “ acquires”
capacities, posits goals, and, in attaining these goals acquires
practical skills. It not only acts, but activities themselves become
goals, and likewise so do systems of activities (e.g., I want to be
able to play a piece on the piano with ease) and the correspon-
40 ding skills and faculties.
 § 59. The Ego as subject of faculties

The Ego, as unity, is a system of the “ / can. ” In this regard a

distinction is to be made between the physical “ I c a n ” (the
Bodily and the one mediated by the Body) and the spiritual. I [254
5 have power over my Body, I am the one who moves this hand
and who can move it, etc. I can play the piano. But this does
not last forever. I can forget how, I can fall out of practice. I
exercise my Body. In the case of the most common activities, I
do not generally lose my skill. But if I have been laid up sick for
10 a long while, then I have to learn how to walk again, though it
comes back quickly. However, I can also have a nervous
disorder and lose the mastery of my limbs; “ I can’t do it.” In
that respect I have become an other.
“ I am normal as to the Bodily and the practical ” — that is, I
15 have the ability, as a permanent normal substratum, to move
my organs in a “ natural and free” way as perceptual organs
and as practical organs of sensory life. I am spiritually normal
in my representing if I can freely carry out my spatial experi­
ences and form my imaginations and can freely run through my
20 memories; this, however, has a typical natural compass and is
not unlimited in extent. I have a normal memory, a normal
phantasy, and likewise a normal activity o f thinking: that is, I
can draw conclusions, compare, distinguish, connect, count,
calculate; also, I can evaluate and weigh values, etc. — all this in
25 the normal way as a “ mature man.” On the other hand, I do
have my peculiarities, my way of moving, of doing things, my
individual evaluations, my own way of preferring, my tempta­
tions, and my power of conquering certain kinds of tempta­
tions, against which I am invulnerable. The next person is
30 different, he has different pet motives, other temptations are
dangerous for him, he has other spheres in which he exercises
his individual powers of action, etc., but within the bounds of
the normal, specifically within what is normal for youth, for
age, etc. Within this typicality there are, of course, idiosyncratic
35 developments: conscious self-education, inner conversion, trans­
formation through the setting of ethical goals, through exercise,
etc.
In this way the spiritual Ego can be apprehended as an
 organism, an organism o f faculties and of the development of
these faculties in a normal typical style following the stages of
infancy, youth, maturity, old age. The subject “ can ” do many
things and, according to its abilities, is determined to act by
5 means of stimuli, by means of effective motives. The subject is
ever and again active according to its faculties and, in turn,
constantly transforms them, enriches, strengthens, or weakens
them by means of its own action. A faculty is not an empty [255]
ability but is a positive potentiality, which may now happen to be
10 actualized but which is always in readiness to pass into activity,
into an activity that, as it is lived, refers back to the correspon­
ding subjective ability, the faculty. The motivation, however, is,
for consciousness, something open, understandable; the “ moti­
vated” decision as such is clear in view of the kind and the
15 power of the motives. Finally, everything refers back, in an
understandable manner, to primal faculties o f the subject and
from there to acquired faculties having their source in earlier
lived actuality . 1
In original genesis, the personal Ego is constituted not only as
20 a person determined by drives, from the very outset and
incessantly driven by original “ instincts ” and passively submit­
ting to them, but also as a higher, autonomous, freely acting Ego,
in particular one guided by rational motives, and not one that is
merely dragged along and unfree. Habits are necessarily formed,
25 just as much with regard to originally instinctive behavior (in
such a way that the power of the force of habit is connected
with the instinctive drives) as with regard to free behavior. To
yield to a drive establishes the drive to yield: habitually.
Likewise, to let oneself be determined by a value-motive and to
30 resist a drive establishes a tendency (a “ drive”) to let oneself be
determined once again by such a value-motive (and perhaps by
value-motives in general) and to resist these drives. Here habit
and free motivation intertwine. Now, if I act freely, then I am

1 Should we say “ original character” is nothing else than this, that there is a
determinate motivation in the beginning and that in the development o f the Ego
every motivation is co-conditioned by the previous ones already carried out de fa c to ?
But did we not indeed have to speak o f a determinate type o f motivation and this
only with regard to the beginning? But “ beginning” should not be understood here
only in a temporal sense.
 indeed obeying habit too, but I am free insofar as it is the
motive, the reason, that I am obeying in a free decision . 1
But all this has to be kept distinct from the efficacy of the
“ association” in which the personal empirical subject is consti-
5 tuted. If the personal subject signifies, for the stream of lived
experience, a certain rule of development and specifically one
for the types of Ego-behavior under subjective circumstances,
i.e., if it signifies a certain rule stipulating the way to behave in
activities and in passivities, then there corresponds to this rule a
10 certain doxic habit, as it were, a certain familiarity in the
present behavior of the Ego, certain tendencies of expectation
or possible tendencies of expectation related to the occurrence
of the present behavior in the stream of consciousness. Now,
this behavior is, in the background consciousness, not an
15 expecting in the proper sense but a protention directed toward
the future occurrence, a protention which can become an
expectation with a shift of the attention of the Ego. But not
only that; an objectivity is constituted, precisely the subject of
the modes of behavior. The system of such protentions and
20 intertwinings, which could be transformed into an actual “ if-
then,” into actual, hypothetical, and causal motivations, creates
a new intentional unity or, correlatively, a new apperception.
Thus on the one side we have tendencies ruling the “ I d o ”
and the “ I undergo ” and powers providing rules for it. On the
25 other side there are tendencies of consciousness which subse­
quently characterize these acts and the Ego and invest it with an
apprehension.
In our entire consideration up to now, we have been speaking
of the unity of the Ego that is constituted in the stream of life.
30 In the first place, this is the Ego that develops, is co-formed,
and is constituted together with all other apperceptions, above
all in unity with the thing-apperceptions that are formed. But
1 From a phenomenological standpoint, the “ habitually” or the “ experientially”
has its intentional relation to circumstances. If these circumstances become real, then
the experiential steps forth as something belonging to them, as something expected.
An instinctual drive would also have to be related to circumstances, and to that
extent we have there an experiential expectation, but this expectation has, in the case
o f genuine habit, an implicit horizon o f similar memories. There still remains a
question concerning the expectation o f the yielding, with its increasing power and
with the growing tendency o f the yielding itself.
 there is more to it. I am of course not only the subject, the Ego,
that can consider a thing in a certain freedom, can freely move
the eyes while looking, etc. I am also the subject that is used to
being pleased by such and such matters, that habitually desires
5 this or that, goes to eat when the time comes, etc., i.e., the
subject of certain feelings and of certain habits of feeling, desire,
and will, sometimes passive, as I said, sometimes active. It is
clear that certain strata are constituted there in subjectivity, [257]
insofar as certain groups of Ego-affections, or passive Ego-acts,
10 are organized for themselves in a relative way and coalesce
constitutively into an empirical unity. A closer investigation
would be needed to bring out these strata.

§ 60. The person as subject of acts of reason, as “ free Ego ”

Above all, however, it is versus the empirical subject, in its

15 generality and its unity, that the “person ” is to be delimited in
the specific sense: the subject of acts which are to be judged
from the standpoint of reason, the subject that is “self-
responsible,” the subject that is free or in bondage, unfree
(taking “ freedom ” here in a particular sense, indeed the proper
20 sense). A passive compliancy in the “ I move,” etc. is a
subjective “ pro-cedure,” and it can be called free only insofar
as it “ pertains to my freedom,” i.e., insofar as it, just like any
subjective pro-cedure, can be, by the centralized Ego, reined in
or given its freedom again. That is to say, the subject “ con-
25 sents,” says “ yes” to the invitation of the stimulus precisely as
an invitation to yield to it, and gives its fia t in practice. With
regard to my centralized Ego-acts, I have consciousness of the /
can. They are indeed activities, and in their entire course we
have precisely not a mere lapse of events but, instead, the course
30 they take continuously proceeds out from the Ego as center,
and as long as that is the case, there reigns the consciousness, “ I
do,” “ I act.” On the other hand, if the Ego is, by some
affection, “ carried o ff” elsewhere, “ captured,” then the
genuine “ I do ” is interrupted, and the Ego is checked as active
35 Ego, it is unfree, “ moved rather than moving.” In the case of
freedom, there exists for the future phases which lie within the
 immediate horizon, for the future phases of the action in
relation to the horizon of unfulfilled practical intentions, the
consciousness of the free “ I can ” and not the mere conscious­
ness that “ it will come,” “ it will happen.”

5 a) The “ I can ” as logical possibility, as practical possibility

and impossibility, as neutrality modification of practical
acts, and as original consciousness of abilities (subjective
power, faculty, resistance) .1
Now what does all that mean? What I can do, what is in my
10 power, what I know myself capable of and am conscious of as
such, that is what a practical possibility is. It is only between
practical possibilities that I can “ decide,” and only a practical
possibility can (this is an other, theoretical “ can ”) be a theme
of my will. I cannot will anything that I do not have consciously
15 in view, that does not lie in my power, in my competence. “ I
cannot will anything th a t...” — here the “ c a n ” itself may be
meant as practical, viz., insofar as the will itself is able to be an
Object of will, and it could only be so to the extent that it is
within my “ pow er” (the scope of my power), i.e., to the extent
20 that the performance of the thesis itself is for me something
practically possible. Prior to the will with its active thesis of the
“fia t ” lies the action as instinctive action, e.g., the involuntary
“ I move,” the involuntary “ I reach” for my cigar; I desire it
and do it “ without any further ado,” something which, to be
25 sure, is not easily distinguished from a case of voluntary willing
in the narrower sense.
Then just what sort of modification is the “ I can,” “ I have
the power to,” “ I am capable o f” ?
In experience, the “ I c a n ” is distinct from the “ I cannot”
30 according to their phenomenological characters. There is a
resistanceless doing of things, i.e., a consciousness of an ability
that meets no resistance, and there is a doing as an overcoming
of resistance, a doing that has its “ against which,” and a
' Lipps (Psychologie, 2 ed. p. 24 ff.) presents the first fundamental discussion o f
these. He points out that the most original concept o f possession, o f the “ I have,”
arises here: I have my Bodily parts, I have power over them. Cf. p. 266 above and
also § 3 o f Supplement XII, pp. 349 ff.
 corresponding consciousness of an ability to overcome the
resistance. There is (always speaking phenomenologically) a
gradient in the resistance and in the power of overcoming it, a
continuum in “ active pow er” versus the “ inertia” of the
5 resistance. The resistance can become insurmountable; in that
case we come up against the “ it won’t budge,” “ I cannot,” “ I
do not have the power.” Obviously, connected to this is the
transferred apprehension of action and counter-action outside [259]
the sphere of my doings and my abilities. After all, things are
10 “ active” in relation to one another, have “ powers and counter­
powers” in relation to one another, resist one another, and
perhaps the resistance one thing exercises is insurmountable, the
other “ cannot surmount it.”
The genuine apperception of resistance presupposes that we
15 are not dealing here with something merely thingly, but with
something of the sort that falls within the sphere of my “ will,”
within the sphere of that which I perhaps already have come to
know as something that is in my power. In the physical sphere,
all my abilities are mediated by the “ operation of my Body,” by
20 my Bodily abilities and faculties. I know through experience
that the parts of my Body move in that special way which
distinguishes them from all other things and motions of things
(physical, mechanical motions); i.e., they have the character of
subjective movement, of the “ I move.” And from the very
25 outset this can be apprehended as something practically possi­
ble. Indeed, we have to say in general that only what has this
subjective character admits apriori of such an apprehension.
Originally, it is only here that the “ I will ” emerges. Originally,
it is here and only here that an imagined will can be affirmed
30 and can become an actual willing. But here I can also come up
against resistance. My hand is “ asleep; ” I cannot move it, it is
momentarily paralyzed, etc. I can also experience resistance in
the area of the external “ consequences” of my Bodily move­
ments. The hand pushes aside what stands in its way, it “ gets
35 there.” At times it gets there “ with difficulty,” “ with not much
difficulty,” or “ with no resistance.” At times it does not succeed
at all, the resistance being insurmountable despite all the
pushing force.
How does my will take hold when I perform a Bodily activity,
 what does it do immediately ? Do I need to have a knowledge of
physiology? From an Objective-physical standpoint, obviously
a material state comes first, although I know nothing about it
and do not have to. “ But how in the world I can do it,” one is
5 wont to say, “ is a mystery.” “ Physical causality is a fact, but an
incomprehensible o ne” — that is the opinion one forms, or else
it is all explained as mere semblance. To be sure, physiopsychic
causality is also said to be a mystery. But does this “ mystery”
not belong to the essence of all causation? But that would mean
10 that it is not a mystery. “ Causality” belongs to the essence of
the constitution of the thing, and the special character of this
causality resides precisely in the experiential apperception. Thus
it is necessary to experience the thing as a thing and to
determine phenomenologically the causal apperception more
15 exactly in examples from actual experience. To demand any­
thing else makes no sense here.
The same holds in the realm of the causality of the will and
the apperception of the Body, the apperception of a thing with
“ members” which not only are moved but which I move and
20 which consequently can be moved in the “ I will.” What is first
for the will? A presupposition is the apperception of the hand
together with its phenomenal position, etc. Research in physio­
logy and knowledge of physiology are not presupposed. Physi­
calistic and physiological comprehension is something quite
25 different from the practical. In the one case, it is a matter of
knowledge and, more exactly, scientific knowledge of the thing
as a natural Object in physical (substantial-causal) nature. In
the other case, we have practical understanding, understanding
of what happens practically rather than of the process in terms
30 of its physical causality. It is a matter of the practical ground
(the “ psychic cause”) of the process, its motive. The thing
moves because “ I ” have struck it, because I extended my hand
and struck it. But if I move my hand involuntary? Why does it
move? Because the position of the hand is uncomfortable. Or
35 else “ I do not exactly know why,” I was not paying attention to
it, though the reason does lie in the psychic and its obscure
stimulations and motivations.
To be sure, my hand is a thing too, and if I execute a
subjective “ I m ove” and am not dreaming or deceiving myself,
 then there is also executed a physical process in nature. Cer­
tainly, in the perception of the “ I move,” the perception of the
physical movement in space is also included, and consequently
the question of physical causality can be raised here as well. Yet
5 it does not have to be raised, and it cannot possibly come up in
the personal attitude, in which alone is posited the active and
passive person as the motivational subject and the subject of its
surrounding world . 1
Originally, the “ I move,” “ I do,” precedes the “ I can do.” [261]
10 But there is also a lived “ I can,” detached from the actual
doing. I can “ represent ” to myself that I am moving my hand
which is now at rest, moving it voluntarily or involuntarily. Can
I also imagine that I am moving (though not “ through” the
movement of my hand, not by its means) this table? I can, of
15 course, imagine that the table is moving “ mechanically.” But its
movement can never be my moving of it, if not “ through ” the
motion of my Body, by striking it, etc. I have power over my
Body, and I have power in the physical world only on account
of my power over my Body. If I represent to myself the
20 movement of my hand in the form, “ I move my hand,” then I
am representing an “ I d o ” and not a merely mechanical
motion. But such a representation is not yet an “ I can.” In the
“ I c a n ” there obviously resides not merely a representation but,
beyond that, a thesis, one which thereby concerns not only
25 myself but also the “ doing,” not the actual doing but precisely
the being able to do.
It is of importance that we elaborate in an exemplary fashion
the contrast emerging here between possibility in the sense of
merely "logical” possibility, mere possibility on the basis of
30 intuitive representation, and practical possibility as the to-
be-able-to.

1 One could here have recourse as well to the fact that physical nature and its
causality dissolve into motivations of consciousness. But these form a closed group,
the indices o f which are the things that are posited and theoretically determined, laws
of nature, etc. Nor can one say that we have the psychical together with its psychic
causation ” in the excess beyond the physical. That would be false, for we have here
quite different attitudes: in the one case nature is posited purely and simply and is a
theoretical theme. In the other case, nature is posited as correlate o f the motivations
constituting it. And in the third case, appearing nature is posited but is posited as a
field for praxis.
 If in phantasy I imagine a mechanical motion or some other
natural process, or a thing, or whatever, then I can always
modify my consciousness of this free fiction in such a way that a
thesis of possibility, related to what has been imagined, arises
5 from it. What can be represented, or, in the first place, what has
been represented, is possible; the “ object” as such is, as
intuitive, a floating substrate of the possibility-predicate; i.e.,
the intended object is a possible one insofar as it can be intuited.
Thus here again we have a “ can.” A centaur is a possible
10 object. “ I t ” is intuited, it is what is identical in these and in [26$
other quasi-perceptions that I can freely carry out. It must
indeed be maintained that all intuition allows of being turned
into an act which posits the intuited “ object,” the intended
“ what,” as possible, and which “ experiences” it in originary
15 givenness. And a positing of possibility without intuition is an
intention which, according to its very sense, finds fulfillment in
an intuition or in a variation of the intuition which supplies the
possibility-thesis in its “ genuine” form.
This possibility is doxical-logical possibility (not formal-
20 logical). Included under this “ it is possible” is obviously also
the “ it is possible that I move my hand,” if I represent the
movement o f the hand and derive from this representation (a
neutrality modification) the sense of the thesis of possibility. But
I do not thereby have the practical “ I can,” although it is
25 legitimate to speak of the “ to be able to ” as regards that
general class as well. A centaur can exist; the motion of a body
is possible: i.e., it can move; the “ I move my hand ” is possible:
i.e., it can be that I move my hand. And so in general: it is
possible that A is = it can be that A is. Being possible is being
30 able to be. But that I move my hand, that I do something, is not
a matter of the doxical-logical possibility of being. Certainly,
that I move the table by acting “ immediately” cannot be; that I
move my hand “ immediately ” can be. That is, the one “ I can ”
may be made intuitive, the other not.
35 But is that all? Does not speaking about the possibility of
intuition already point to another region? A movement of my
hand is not only an ontological possibility.
Here various kinds o f neutrality modifications come into
consideration. The neutrality modification of a doxic conscious­
 ness (consciousness of objective being) is a " mere representa­
tion.” In the case of a perception or a memory (originary
consciousness of present being or of remembered being), the
neutralization results in a neutrally modified intuition. And
5 from every neutralized intuition can be derived originally a
theoretical (doxic) possibility, a fee/ng-possible, which presents
itself as a modification of being-certain, of being pure and
simple, therefore of that which may be derived from a non- [263]
neutralized intuition and, most originally, from a “ perception ”
10 (present being). In a broader sense, every neutrality modifica­
tion of the doxic sphere admits of being turned into a doxic
consciousness of possibility, even if the possibility (the being-
possible) no longer has the mode of “ evidence,” self-given-
ness.
15 Likewise, from every "practical ” neutrality modification one
can derive— and perhaps derive originally— a practical possi­
bility. Hence there stand over against one another as correla­
tives: representing (intuition — neutralized intuition) and being
(being-representable, being-possible). Similarly, doing and
20 quasi-doing are correlates, and so are action and possible
action, just as are fact, the term of the action (as its result), and
“ possible” fact, possible practical result, practical possibility.
On the side of the subject, to the “ I do ” corresponds the “ I can
d o ;” just as in the parallel case to the “ I believe,” “ I hold to be
25 true, to exist” corresponds the “ I hold to be possible.” On both
sides, I place myself in the neutrality modification and derive
possible being and possible action . 1
The intuitive representation, hence the quasi-perception, that /
want something, do something, decide in such a way in the

1 Obviously, these parallels must permeate all basic categories. J o y : to be joyful. I

enjoy myself. Quasi-joy: it could be enjoyable, a possible joy, it would be able to
bring me joy. Whether, in a given case, I “ actually enjoy” myself is not being
asserted thereby but only that it could certainly be enjoyable. Or more simply: I take
pleasure in something— I place myself, or think myself, into a pleasure. If it is
actually a quasi-pleasure, then I can infer from it a possible pleasurableness, a
potential pleasure. From a quasi-value I derive a possible value, etc. To actually
accomplish a quasi-pleasure is the analogon o f an actual intuitive phantasizing
(representing to oneself). Empty representation does not include the ability to
represent the same “ actually.” Likewise for the parallels. Thereby, however, the
practical ability (e.g., as ability to intuit, etc.) also plays its role everywhere.
 given situation, choose such a possibility rather than another,
obviously presupposes not only the intuitive representation of
the current external processes but also the intuitive representa­
tion of the relevant value characters and practical characters.
5 Furthermore, it presupposes the originality of these characters
and hence, in the case of actual intuition, the neutrality
modification of the pertinent acts of feeling and will: it is
necessary, therefore, that in the modification I evaluate, desire,
will, etc. in this or that way.
10 So we see that a great deal depends on the distinction treated
in the Logical Investigations as the distinction between authen­
ticity and unauthenticity in doxic position-takings. I cannot
intuitively represent that 2 x 2 = 5; i.e., I cannot intuitively
represent that I judge, authentically, intuitively, thus with
15 evidence, that 2 x 2 = 5. I can, however, represent to myself
that I judge that 2 x 2 = 5, that is, by accomplishing the
thema unauthentically, “ unclearly,” “ confusedly.” In particu­
lar, in the case of material for propositions which is still
unfamiliar to us, which is not graspable as false in immediate
20 insight or in an insight that is easily attainable, or which reveals
its falsehood only after a long process of demonstration, it
becomes clear to me that such material, in the mode of
unauthentic givenness, is compatible with any thesis.
This holds, by analogy, for the entire sphere of the acts of
25 reason (the active acts, properly so called) and of their synthetic
formations in all spheres, even those of feeling and will. I can
conceive that I would value something, desire it, want it as an
end or as a means, something which I, upon closer scrutiny,
could not value. I can imagine that I could, and that I would,
30 strive for something as an appropriate means, which, upon
scrutiny, I would not and could not strive for. In the one case
the “ I can ” is there, in the other it is not. The “ I could ” means
here that I put myself into it in phantasy, hence carry out the
neutrality modification of the doxic and valuing acts, and find
35 the relevant thesis of pleasure, of desire, and of will to be
compatible with their substratum.
Two kinds of motivations result here. In the case of unau­
thenticity, I do indeed have compatibility of sense in the mode
of “ unclarity,” hence compatibility o f unauthentically accom-
 plished sense (which, however, can be intuitive as to its parts),
compatibility with any position-taking whatever, with the thesis
and the thetic modifications. On the other hand, the relevant act
(the concrete act) does emerge in the nexus of consciousness as
5 “ motivated ” in some way or other. And that also holds for the
neutrality modification. I.e., if I step out of my actual life in a
certain way and settle into a “ phantasy” life (which comes
down to saying that in my actual life is inserted a flight of
“ phantasy” in which I accomplish a quasi-life), then this [265]
10 phantasy life is precisely unity of life, and it is unity there
through motivation. And the problem is to clarify what is
specific to this motivation; for it is not just any motivation.
We see, however, that we cannot be satisfied with this
consideration: I can represent to myself that I would commit a
15 murder, a theft, etc., and yet I cannot represent to myself that I
would do so. I could have the representation that I would judge
that the sum of the angles in a triangle equals three right angles,
and yet I could not judge it so. What sort of antinomy is
this?
20 “ I could do i t ” — that is the neutrality modification of the
action and the practical possibility derived from it. “ Yet I could
not do i t ” — I am lacking the original consciousness of being
able to do this action or of having the power for this action
(which, even in the case of a fictional action, is an originary,
25 non-neutralized consciousness); this action contradicts the kind
of person I am, my way of letting myself be motivated . 1

b) The “ I can ” motivated in the person’s knowledge

of himself.
Self-apperception and self-understanding
30 I know myself from experience, I know what my own
character is like: I have an Ego-apperception, an empirical
“ self-consciousness.” Each developed subject is not just a
stream of consciousness with a pure Ego, but each has accom­
plished a centralization in the form, “ Ego.” Further, the

1 Cf. on this point, and on the entire following sub-paragraph b), Supplement XI,
PP. 340 f t
 cogitationes are acts of an Ego-subject, the Ego is constituted
out of one’s own (active) position-taking, and out of one’s own
habits and faculties, and consequently is an externally appercep­
tive unity, the kernel o f which is the pure Ego. Whence the
5 evidence, “ I am.” I can certainly delude myself as to my
character, but I do have to posit myself with some character or
other, and I posit myself as Ego with a determinate character
(abstraction made from the horizons of indeterminateness). If I
now phantasize, if I settle myself (as the one I am) into a
10 phantasized actuality or into the world given in the neutrality
modification, into the familiar world transformed in phantasy
some way or other, then I am judging how such and such [26<|
motives (more precisely: the quasi-motives of this phantasized
environment) would affect me, how I, as the one I am, would act
15 and could act, how I could, and how I could not, judge, value,
and will. In that way I judge, or I can judge, empirically, on the
basis of my experiential knowledge of myself, with respect to
myself, with respect to the Ego constituted for me in empirical
apperception as experiential Ego. In analogy with the previous
20 modes o f comportment and the previous position-takings as
regards their underlying grounds and their motives, I anticipate
subsequent modes of comportment. These are not just expecta­
tions as conclusions, but instead intentional characters arise
here: just as the apperception of a thing arises out of experien-
25 tial systems of “ possible ” expectations which nevertheless form
a unity apperceptively. In any event, each feature of the
intentional object refers back to earlier similar experiences; in
the apprehension of a thing there is nothing that, in principle, is
new. If there were, then it would already be the start of the
30 constitution of a new stratum of unity.
Nevertheless, can I not think myself into motivational situa­
tions in which I have never yet been and the likes of which I have
never yet experienced? And can I not see, or discover in a
quasi-seeing, how I would then behave, although I might
35 behave differently, i.e., although it would be thinkable that I
would decide differently, and this in clear representation,
whereas in fact, as this personal Ego, I could not behave that
way? This is the decisive point. Furthermore, I may already
have been repeatedly in similar motivational situations. Yet I
40 am precisely not a thing, a thing that always reacts the same
 way in the same circumstances; in view of which it becomes
obvious to me that, in principle, things in the same causal
circumstances can have the same effects. Earlier I was motivated
in this way, now in a different way, and that is precisely because
5 I have become an other in the meantime. The motivation, the
effective motives, might be the same, but the power of the
various motives is different. For example, in each person the
strength of sensuality is quite different in youth than in age. The
sensuous substrate, especially that of the sensuous drives, is
10 different. Age becomes circumspect and self-centered; youth is
precipitous, easily disposed to yield to noble transports. Old age
(having learned through many experiences) is wont to hold
back, to ponder consequences. The life tempo of youth is a [267]
quicker one, the phantasy more mobile, while on the other hand
15 experience is slight. Youth has not come to know evil conse­
quences, is not acquainted with danger, still takes fresh original
joy in the new, in impressions, lived experiences, and adventures
that have not yet been tasted.
Thus the substrata of motivation, the orientations and the
20 powers of the motives are different. How do I come to know
them? I do so as the one I am, by means of phantasizing
presentifications of possible situations, in which I “ reflect ” on
what kind of sensuous or spiritual stimuli would affect me, what
power they would have, how I would therefore decide in such a
25 case, in which direction the pull would be greater, which power
would prevail, assuming the situation remains the same. It may
very well be that in any given case still other motives will
emerge and be operative, that I could feel obscure motives
without clarifying them, as I am doing now in the reflection of
30 phantasy. It can be that I am actually “ indisposed” toward
action, having slept poorly, and thus am feeling listless and
weak, whereas I now phantasize myself into a freshness to
which would correspond an actual freshness as my present
habitus, and vice versa. But these are precisely possibilities with
35 equal rights. I, as spiritual Ego, can also become stronger in the
course of my development; the weak will can gain strength.
Upon reflection, I could then say that I, as I used to be, would
not have been able to resist this temptation or would not have
been able to do something or other. But at present I can act in
 that way and would do so. When I say this I am not basing
myself on experience but on the fact that I can test my motives
at the very outset and do in fact test them. I can also strengthen
the power of my freedom by making it perfectly clear to myself
5 that if I yield, then I would have to despise myself, the subject
of the yielding, and this would give such strength and impact to
the moment of non-value I was tending toward that I could not
do it, could not give in to it. My power of resistance thereby
increases.
10 The judgment of experience and the judgment on the basis of
the understanding of the person as the subject of motivation
(the subject of actual and possible motivations), i.e., on the
basis of the understanding of the possibilities of motivation
proper to him, are, however, often connected with one another
15 in form as well, so that experience teaches me which motivating [268J
“ grounds” are operative in his prevailing orientation of
thought, in his well-known forgetfulness, in his habit of indulg­
ing in unintuitive representations, and the like. “ He would
never have acted this way if the true state of affairs was clear to
20 him. He would have been charitable (basically he has a good
heart) if he clearly understood the need of the one who
appealed to him for help.” But he was too much in a hurry, too
busy, as I know from experience. That which is operative as a
motive harbors in itself all sorts of intentional implications; this
25 itself is a source of important new motivations: to examine the
proper sense of the justification of the discovery of the “ truth
itself” and to let oneself be determined by it in genuine reason.
Here reside the pre-eminent values, upon which depends ulti­
mately the value of all motivations and of actual deeds. Here
30 reside also sources for fundamental formal laws, which, as is the
case with all noetic norms, are laws o f the validity of the
motivation, and to these belong, furthermore, laws o f the power
o f motivation and of personal values. The highest value is
represented by the person who habitually bestows the highest
35 motivational power on the genuine, true, valid, and free deci­
sions.
 c) The influence of others and the freedom of the person
The development of a person is determined by the influence
of others, by the influence of their thoughts, their feelings (as
suggested to me), their commandments. This influence deter-
5 mines personal development, whether or not the person himself
subsequently realizes it, remembers it, or is capable of determin­
ing the degree of the influence and its character. Others’
thoughts penetrate into my soul; they can exercise various
influences, either enormous or small, under changing circum-
10 stances, according to my psychic situation, the stage of my
development, the formation of my dispositions, etc. The same
idea has a different effect on different persons in the “ sam e”
circumstances. Opposed to one another are my own thoughts,
ones that “ arise originarily” in my mind or that are gained by
15 me myself out of premises (which might perhaps be based on
the influence of others), and thoughts that are simply appro­
priated. The same is true of my own feelings, ones that have [269]
their originary source in me, and the feelings o f others, ones I
have assimilated and adopted, but which are not authentic.
20 What comes from others and is “ taken over” by me, and is
more external or less so, can be characterized as issuing from
the other subject, first of all as a tendency proceeding from him
and addressed to me, as a demand, to which I perhaps yield
passively, perhaps reluctantly, but by which I am still overpow-
25 ered. Alternatively, I might annex it on my own accord, and
then it becomes part of me. In that case it no longer has the
character of a mere demand to which I yield and which
determines me from the outside; it has become a position-taking
that issues from my own Ego and is not merely a stimulus
30 coming from the outside and retaining the character of a
borrowing of something that came forth from another Ego, of
something that has its primal instauration in him. This case is
similar to what occurs in my egoistic sphere: instauration and
subsequent reproduction as one’s own actualized habitus.
35 Besides the tendencies which proceed from other individual
persons, there are demands which arise in the intentional form
of indeterminate generality, the demands of morality, of cus­
tom, of tradition, of the spiritual milieu: “ one ” judges in this
 way, “ one ” has to hold his fork like this, and so o n — i.e.,
demands of the social group, of the class, etc. They can be
followed quite passively, or one can also actively take a position
with regard to them and make a free decision in favor of
5 them.
Therefore the autonomy o f reason, the “ freedom” of the
personal subject, consists in the fact that I do not yield passively
to the influence of others but instead decide for myself. Or
again, it consists in this, that I do not let myself be “ drawn ” by
10 any other inclinations and drives but instead act freely and do
so in the mode of reason.
Thus we have to distinguish between the human person, the
apperceptive unity, that we grasp in self-perception and in the
perception of others, and the person as the subject o f acts o f
15 reason, whose motivations and motivating powers come to
givenness in our own original lived experience as well as in the
lived experience, available to us in empathy, of others. Thereby
the focus is being directed to what is specifically spiritual, the
life of free acts.

20 d) General type and individual type in understanding persons [27QJ

The first question here is what is typical in general with
regard to the Ego in affection and in action. But after that
comes the further question of what is typical in particular and
for the individual: what is typical for this human Ego or, more
25 clearly, what is typical in the comportment of this Ego,
belonging to this Body, in the actions and affections of its life, a
life we are to comprehend.
I can comprehend in a particular case how this Ego is
m otivated: e.g., this man is now reaching for a cup because he
30 wants to drink, and he wants to drink because he is thirsty. But
in its generality, this has nothing to do with his person: it is
something universally human. On the other hand, that he, for
example, suddenly lowers the cup, without drinking, because he
notices a poor child nearby who is hungry and thirsty, and that
35 he hands the cup to the child, this manifests his “ good heart ”
and does pertain to his person. The latter is built up, in
conformity with its essence, out of special characters within the
 universal type or character, “ human subject,” and indeed out of
such characters which, as the specificities of the lowest level,
make up the individual type of this human subject. Every man
has his character, we can say, his style of life in affection and
5 action, with regard to the way he has of being motivated by
such and such circumstances. And it is not that he merely had
this up to now; the style is rather something permanent, at least
relatively so in the various stages of life, and then, when it
changes, it does so again, in general, in a characteristic way,
10 such that, consequent upon these changes, a unitary style
manifests itself once more.
As a result, one can to a certain extent expect how a man will
behave in a given case if one has correctly apperceived him in
his person, in his style. The expectation is generally not plain
15 and clear; it has its apperceptive horizon of indeterminate
determinability within an intentional framework that circum­
scribes it, and it concerns precisely one of the modes of behavior
which corresponds to the style. For example, an “ endearing”
man will, in certain cases, utter empty endearments, and his
20 ways of talking bear all the while the stamp of his style; but that
does not mean that we could guess his precise wording with the
quite definite nuances he has in mind. If we are able to do that, [271]
then we say the man is a stereotype; once we know him, we
soon know the whole arsenal of his endearments (or his witty
25 remarks, if he styles himself a wit), among which we have a
choice, unless there are grounds, from association, to prefer
definite individual ones.
In sum, a person has, in the broadest sense, a typical
character and properties of character. Everything a person lives
30 through enlarges the framework of his pregivennesses, can
emerge again in memory whether clearly or obscurely, can affect
the Ego and motivate actions. But even without memory, it
determines the future content of lived experience according to
laws of the new formation of apperceptions and associations.
35 The person is formed through “ experience.”
The concept o f experience here is certainly different than the
one in which, in nexuses of validity, the question at issue is the
foundation of cognition through experience, where the term
“ experience” serves as a title for acts that are theoretically
 founding (Ego-acts of the perceptual grasping of existing objects
or of grasping in memory, etc.) or that provide a justification
for theoretical acts. Obviously, every such experience has its
effects: every active perception, remembering, etc. No less,
5 however, has every inactive one, and the same holds for every
judging, valuing, willing. Everything has its effects, though not
in all respects, but only within the limitation of its type.
Personal life manifests a typicality, and each personal life
manifests a different one . 1 For certain periods, this typicality
10 remains identical, even if the “ experiences” (the realm of the
experiential apperceptions constantly being newly formed) of the
person grow, and the domain of his pregivennesses changes as a
consequence. Everything indeed has its effects, though not in all
respects. On the street, people meet me, cars pass, etc. This has
15 its apperceptive type, within which the bustle of the street is
contained, whereas the individual event, instead of occurring in
this way, can always also occur differently. All these singulari­
ties, which I hardly notice but which predelineate the horizon of
my lived experience, do not in the least alter my moral character [27J
20 or my aesthetic character. As regards these spheres, no motiva­
tions flow from there. (On the other hand, if motivations arise
which do operate in the sense of transforming the “ character,”
there nevertheless prevails a typicality in the succession of the
phases of life: the typicality of the ages of life. And in
25 conformity with this typicality, if I have sorted in out intuitively,
I can say that if this person finds himself in these circumstances
he will behave according to type and that if the circumstances
change he will still observe the type.)
That is an experiential apperception, but it presupposes
30 understanding as well. The Ego, the subject of affections and
actions, is thereby related to its pregivennesses and is not merely
taken as subject of individual affections and actions. Indeed,
here the universal human (or personal) apperception collabo­
rates essentially. The universal typicality of Corporeality is a
35 presupposition for empathy, and by empathy an Ego-analogon
is apprehended. This is already a typicality: the universal

1 Association and apperception are principles o f the typology of the totality of

psychic acts.
 structure “ Ego, pregivenness, affection, etc.” , the Ego of a life
together with its total living.
It belongs also to what is universally typical that people in
general are determined in their comportment by their previous
5 experience. Being disappointed in others makes one suspicious.
Repeated disappointment of fine hopes makes one bitter, etc.
Just as different kinds of things in experience generally
change in a familiar way and are judged accordingly in the
future, the same is true of people. We learn to know Objects
10 according to their kind, and in any given case the behavior of
an Object is understandable to us if it follows the general rule of
its kind. Therefore we are moving in the domain of intuitive
experience when we are seeking to understand. We capture the
development of a person if we reconstruct the course of his life
15 and make it intuitive in such a way that the entirety of his
development as a man becomes comprehensible in an experien­
tial way, especially with regard to his manner of letting himself
be motivated as a subject, together with all the definite actions
and passions proper to him. “ In an experiential w ay” means
20 that it occurs there, as it does in human life in general, that the
acts of the subject and their motivations present themselves so
as to be empirically understandable. That is “ knowing a
person,” “ science of the soul,” “ psycho-logy.”
I enter into relationships with various Ego-subjects and come [273]
25 to know the typical moments of their pregivennesses, of their
actions, etc., and I apprehend the latter according to these types,
but it is not as though I first had the types in abstracto (just as I
do not first have in abstracto the type, tree, when I apprehend a
tree as a tree); instead, the type becomes pronounced and gets
30 impressed on us in multiple experiences, and it determines an
apperceptive form and then a layer in actual apprehension that
can be abstracted out. An individual conducts himself in a
different way all the time, his actual surrounding world is
constantly different, and so is his field of living and latent
35 pregivennesses. Yet he is the same not merely as Bodily type but
as spiritual type. He has his empirical peculiarities, and, as
spiritual type, he is a comprehensible unity.
I understand the thought and action of an other according to
my habitual modes of behavior and motivations, but not every
 judgment about the other is based solely on the, as it were,
external style of his life, abstracted out of experience, for which
I would not have to penetrate into the interior of his motiva­
tions or even represent them in a lively way. But I do learn to
5 peer into the interior of the other and to come to know
inwardly the person himself, the motivational subject, which is
precisely what bursts into view when I represent the other Ego
in the way it is motivated.
What is happening when the character-type of a person
10 suddenly lights up for us through some one or other of his
glances, positions, or expressions; when we, so to say, “ gaze
into an abyss;” when the “ soul” of the person suddenly
“ opens itself u p ;” when we “ fathom wondrous depths;” etc.?
What sort of “ understanding” is that? The answer is certainly
15 the following:
First of all, it would be going too far to claim that empirical
understanding is the equivalent of achieving full intuition of the
nexuses of experience. Even nexuses of external nature light up
very suddenly, before the relations there are analyzed properly,
20 i.e., plainly and clearly in intuition. That only comes afterwards.
Similarly, historical nexuses, which may light up in a flash, or
even logical nexuses, all manifest themselves prior to explica­
tion, prior to the actual subsequent establishment of the nex­
uses. One speaks here of intuitive “ flair,” a term which very
25 often signifies just the opposite of intuition, i.e., insight, and is
instead a presentiment, a pre-seeing without seeing, an obscure,
specifically symbolic, often ungraspably empty, premonition.
The actual nexus is then but a goal grasped in anticipation, an
empty intention, one which is so determined, however, that we
30 follow the tendency, with its determinate direction, and in the
fulfillment of it can acquire a chain of actual intuitions
(straightforward experiential intuitions or logical evidence, etc.).
To see a man does not mean to already know him. To see a
man is — as we have found — different from seeing a material
35 thing. Each thing is of a certain kind. If one knows the kind, the
rest can be dispensed with. A man, however, has an individual
kind, and each man has a different one. According to the
universal, he is a man, but his kind as his character, his person,
is a unity, constituted in his course of life, as a subject of
 position-takings, i.e., a unity of multifarious motivations based
upon multifarious presuppositions. And insofar as one knows
from experience analogous traits in different people, one can
grasp “ with intuitive flair” the particular and peculiar complex
5 in question here and the unity constituted, and therein one can
have a guiding line for fulfilling the intentions in insightful
intuition, by means of an analysis of the actual nexuses. So, in
my opinion, this “ intuition” as premonition ought not to be
confused with actual intuition. What we have here is the success
10 of a more precisely determining apperception, which, like any
apperception, offers a guiding line for the confirmation, in the
course of experience, of the intentional nexuses, often extremely
complex.
But the subject is not a mere unity of experience, although
15 experience and universal type play an essential role, and it is
important that this be brought out and clarified. I put myself in
the place of the other subject, and by empathy I grasp what
motivates him and how strongly it does so, with what power.
And I learn to understand inwardly how he behaves, and how
20 he would behave, under the influence of such and such motives,
determining him with such and such force, i.e., I grasp what he
is capable o f and what is beyond him. I can understand many
inner correlations, having fathomed him so. It is in this way
that I grasp his Ego, for it is precisely the identical Ego of these
25 motivations, ones that have this direction and this power.
I secure these motivations by placing myself in his situation, [275]
his level of education, his development as a youth, etc., and to
do so I must needs share in that situation; I not only empathize
with his thinking, his feeling, and his action, but I must also
30 follow him in them, his motives becoming my quasi-motives,
ones which, however, motivate with insight in the mode of
intuitively fulfilling empathy. I co-share in his temptations, I
co-participate in his fallacies; in the “ co-” there lies an inner
co-living of motivating factors, ones which carry their necessity
35 with them. Admittedly, there are still unsolved and unsolvable
remainders here: e.g., the original dispositions of character,
which, however, I can indeed also, by analogy, make clear to
myself and understandable. I am phlegmatic for the most part,
but occasionally I am incited to vivacity and m irth; they spring
 up after indulging in stimulants, for example; they have physi­
cal grounds in a modification of my Corporeality. Analogously,
someone else is constantly and predominantly disposed toward
m irth: he is habitually, and from the first, similar to me after I
5 have had a glass of wine. It is in this sense that I also
understand other things. Occasionally I have “ brilliant ideas,”
occasionally scientific thinking progresses easily in me, and
broad horizons open up to m e— at least I imagine they do.
According to this analogy, I represent genius, for instance, by
10 means of quantitative, perhaps even qualitative, augmentation
(for which I might again have intuitive grounds).

§61. The spiritual Ego and its underlying b asis 1

The underlying bases upon which is built the comprehensively

motivated spiritual life of the other, and in conformity to which
15 that life runs its course in an individually typical way, present
themselves therefore as “ variations” of my own. I come across
these bases also when I want to understand someone’s develop­
ment. I have then to describe, going from stage to stage, the
surrounding world in which he grew up and how he was
20 motivated by the things and people of his environment just as
they appeared to him and as he saw them. Here we touch upon [27f
facticity, in itself beyond our comprehension. This child takes
an original joy in sounds, that child does not. The one is
inclined toward temper, the other toward patience. Natural
25 causality enters in as well. Because of a serious fall, someone
might become a cripple, and that has consequences for his
spiritual life: certain groups of motivations are defunct from
then on. We are not interested here in a real-causal analysis of
these consequences. But medical knowledge can be of service
30 toward an integration, in the correct way, of the psychic effects
that are relevant for subjective development and consequently
toward giving an account of them in the attempt to clarify
subjective motivations and subjective development. Here the
physical is serving as an indication of what is to be inte-
35 grated.
 Hence if we take the personal Ego in its developmental nexus,
then we find two layers, which perhaps are separable (e.g., the
lower level as “ pure ” animality), we find a two-fold “ subjectiv­
ity ” : the higher one is the specifically spiritual, the stratum of
5 the intellectus agens, of the free Ego as Ego of free acts,
including all proper acts of reason, the positive ones and the
negative as well. The unfree Ego also belongs here, “ unfree”
taken precisely in the sense in which it applies to an actual E g o :
I allow myself to be dragged down by the sensual. The
10 specifically spiritual Ego, the subject of spiritual acts, the
person, finds itself dependent on an obscure underlying basis of
traits of character, original and latent dispositions, and thereby
dependent on nature.
We rejoin here the ancient distinction, which imposed itself so
15 early, between reason and sensibility. The latter also has its
rules, and indeed its intelligible rules of harmony and discord; it
is a stratum of hidden reason, which first of all at least extends
as far as the constitution of n atu re: since indeed all complicated
relations of the “ if-then,” all causalities, can become guiding
20 lines for theoretical, thus spiritual, explications, for clarifica­
tions in the form : “ In the harmony of experience the doxa of
perception is confirmed; in discordance, the posited existence or
quiddity is annulled,” etc.
In the sphere of the senses, in the sphere of the basis, grasped
25 as extensively as possible, we have associations, perserverances, [277]
determining tendencies, etc. These “ m ake” the constitution of
nature, but they even extend further, since this constitution is
also there for spirits: all life of the spirit is permeated by the
“ blind” operation of associations, drives, feelings which are
30 stimuli for drives and determining grounds for drives, tenden­
cies which emerge in obscurity, etc., all of which determine the
subsequent course of consciousness according to “ blind ”
rules.
To these laws correspond habitual modes o f behavior on the
35 part of the subject, acquired peculiarities (e.g., the habit of
drinking a glass of wine in the evening). The question can be
asked whether these are properties of the person’s “ individu-
ality,” or whether they do not rather belong on the side of
genuine activities. To be sure, it makes sense to speak of
 individuality as the total style and habitus o f the subject,
pervading, as a concordant unity, all his modes of behavior, all
his activities and passivities, and to which the entire psychic
basis constantly contributes.
5 The nexus of lived experiences of a person is not a mere
bundle of lived experiences or a mere “ stream ” of conscious­
ness in which the lived experiences flow away. Instead, every
lived experience is a lived experience of an Ego, of an Ego that
does not itself flow away in a stream as its lived experiences do.
10 And there is constantly present an underlying basis which is
pre-given to it, to which it is related, or by which it is driven, in
various ways. There is also an accomplishment of specific acts
and, in unity with that, a constant enrichment of the stream of
lived experiences, an enrichment supplied by the Ego itself: its
15 reigning as Ego becomes eo ipso a lived experience. This basis of
pregivenness refers back, however, to the other one, the one we
call the psychic basis of habitus with fixed rules.
But at the same time the Ego is an actually unitary person still
in a higher sense if it possesses a certain pervasive unitary style
20 in the way it decides by judgment and will, in the way it values
things aesthetically, but also in the way “ sudden ideas” or
“ inspirations” surge up in the person (e.g., this man has clever
inspirations when he is doing mathematics), in the way meta­
phors come to him and his involuntary phantasy reigns, and also
25 in the way he apperceives in perception, or in the specific way [278J
his memory “ operates” (he has a good memory). Distinctions
come to him easily or with difficulty, he reacts with automatic
associations either more quickly or more slowly than another
person does, etc. In all this the man has a general type,
30 determinate in manifold ways, and each particular man has his
particular individual type. We are dealing here, on the one
hand, with the coming and going of lived experiences in general
and, on the other hand, with the fact that the Ego is a
“ position-taking” subject: a subject of willing, of acting, and
35 also of thinking. Should we include in addition: a subject that
represents, perceives, remembers, phantasizes? In a certain
sense, yes. The subject has objects over against itself; it is a
“ representing” subject, and that is the foundation for its
“ com portm ent” toward the objects.
 We have to distinguish intentionality as that according to
which we become conscious of objects, i.e., mere consciousness,
representing, and intentionality as that which makes up the
comportment of the acts toward the represented, “position-
5 taking." Therefore we distinguish between consciousness o f
objects and position-taking, comportment toward the objects.
Subjectivity manifests its individual character in its way of being
conscious of objects as well as in its way of taking positions. As
to the former, we have to distinguish:
10 1) the object is there, it is an object of attention (with the
various levels of attention)
2 ) the object is there, one is conscious of it “ for itself,” it
stands out, it is delimited and apperceived, but it is not attended
to.
15 The turning of the attention is also a “ comportment,” but it
is not a position-taking; instead, it is a presupposition for
position-taking. Here, too, the subject displays his “ peculiar­
ity,” i.e., in what it is that rivets his attention and how it does
so. One subject jumps easily from object to object, from theme
20 to theme; another one remains attached for a long time to the
same object, etc.
On the other hand, concerning the constitution in conscious­
ness of the object prior to the turning of the attention and the
taking of a specific position regarding it, we are referred back to
25 the constitution in consciousness o f previous objects, to pre­
vious acts of attention, and perhaps to previous position-
takings; we are referred back to the data of sensation, to the [279]
references back and forth which depend on them, etc. Ulti­
mately we arrive at the “ obscure,” “ hidden,” representations
30 and representational complexes. Insofar as attention plays a
role for this constitution of transcendent unities and multiplici­
ties, we have there implicitly an Ego that is accomplishing some
kind of comportment. The ultimate, however, is a background
that is prior to all comportment and is instead presupposed by all
35 comportment.
Following what we have just said, there is a distinction
between the individual character of the Ego-subject as a habi­
tual individual way of self-comportment and the individual
character to be found in the interweaving of the backgrounds.
 In a certain sense there is, in the obscure depths, a root soil.
The world of things in which spirits live is an Objective world
constituted out of subjective surrounding worlds and is the
Objectively determinable surrounding world of the spirits. As an
5 intersubjectively persisting rule of possible appearances and,
prior to that, of possible complexes of sensation of the individ­
ual spirits, this world refers back to a lower level of all spiritual
existence. Every spirit has a “ natural side.” This is precisely the
underlying basis of subjectivity: its being conscious of sensa-
10 tions, its having reproductions of sensations, its associations, its
formation of apperceptions, and, in fact, its apperceptions at
the lowest level, where unities of experience are constituted. To
the natural side there belongs immediately the lower life of
feelings, the instinctual life, and indeed the function of attention
15 as well, which is a specifically Egological function, just as is the
general function of turning toward. These form the bridge to
Ego-being and Ego-life in the specific sense. The lower level is
the place of the constitution of a world of appearances, or of
appearing Objects, the world of the mechanical, the world of
20 lifeless conformity to laws: all these being mere pre-data.
Spirits are the subjects that accomplish cogitationes, they
stand upon this basis, and they are interwoven in more encom­
passing nexuses where motivations in a higher sense rule, i.e.,
motivations o f position-taking by position-taking, genuine moti-
25 vations o f reason. In the lived experiences of the lower level a
sensitive “ soul” manifests itself, i.e., insofar as representational
dispositions and habitual properties manifest themselves
therein, ones which have nothing to do with the attentive,
grasping, position-taking Ego itself (with respect to its position-
30 takings). This is the field o f association psychology. The sensory
soul, the soul of the lower level, is one with the subject of the
position-taking; the two form a single empirical unity, from
which only the unity o f the personal subject (the position-taking
Ego) is set off. This soul is “ mine,” it “ belongs” to my
35 Ego-subject and is inseparably one with it. There is no doubt,
then, that it belongs to the person as founding basis.
The soul is here not an Objective (natural) reality but instead
is “spirit-soul; ” i.e., soul in this sense is not defined as a real
unity in relation to circumstances of Objective nature, thus
 psychophysically, or at least does not have to be defined in that
way. There is an immanent lawfulness to the formation of
dispositions as substratum for the position-taking subject. On
the other hand, this regularity is tied up with the psychophysical
5 one, i.e., it can be apperceived as natural, and so both of these
are treated in psychology.
Spirit is not an abstract Ego of the position-taking acts but is
the fullness of the person, the Ego as human, the “ I take a
position,” the I think, I value, I act, I complete works, etc. Then
10 there also belongs to me a basis o f lived experiences and a basis
o f nature (“ my nature”) which is manifest in the play of lived
experiences. This nature is the lower psychic layer, but it
extends even into the sphere of position-taking: the position-
taking Ego is dependent on its substratum insofar as I, in order
15 to be motivated in my position-taking, must have precisely the
motivating lived experiences, and these latter stand in an
associative nexus and under rules of associative dispositions.
But even the position-takings themselves are subject to inductive
rules: with each position-taking, there develop “ tendencies ” to
20 take up the same position under similar circumstances, etc.
 THE ONTOLOGICAL PRIORITY
OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD
OVER THE NATURALISTIC 1

5 § 62. The interlocking of the personalistic attitude

and the naturalistic attitude

In apperceiving the “ underlying basis” of the spirit as a

“ natural side,” we come to a point where the two attitudes we
have kept distinct from one another, namely the naturalistic and
10 the personalistic, or the attitude of the natural sciences and the
attitude of the human sciences, or their correlates, the two types
of reality, nature and spirit, enter into relation with each
other.
The flux of the stream of lived experience is subject to the law
15 which has its index in the reality of the soul, as dependent on
the Body in nature. The reality, Corporeal body, expresses an
intersubjective regulation, one that extends beyond all con­
sciousness of the union of Body and soul. The reality, soul,
expresses a second regulation, one that is determinate and is
20 related to the first: the soul is dependent on the Body. Insofar
as the spirit is a unity that is related to its surrounding world,
and insofar as the surrounding world, at the lowest level,
consists in appearances each person first constitutes for himself
and then constitutes in a community as communal, components
25 of the regulations of the somatic, soul and nature, enter into the
regulation whose index is the spirit. But here an other cut, as it
were, is performed by the absolute consciousness, and a partic­
ular regulation running through is indicated in it. In its spiritual

1 On this chapter, cf. also Supplements XIII and XIV, pp. 382 ff. and 386 ff.
 acts, the spirit is dependent on the soul, insofar as the stream of
lived experience lets the acts spring forth from itself (that is, the
Ego accomplishes them on the basis of the rest of the stream of
lived experience). Thus the spiritual Ego is dependent on the
5 soul, and the soul on the Body. Consequently the spirit is
conditioned by nature, though it does not for all that stand
toward nature in a relationship of causality. Spirit has an
underlying basis, on which it has the dependence of condition­
ality; as spirit, it has a soul, a complex of natural dispositions
10 which, as such, are conditioned by physical nature and are
dependent on it.
The spirit in its freedom moves the Body and thereby can [282]
perform a work in the spiritual world. The works, however, as
factual matters, are at once things in the natural world, just as
15 the Body is at once Object of the spiritual world (it already is so
by the fact that it is a bearer of sense for comprehension) as well
as external thing in nature. My Body is not only an appearance
for me but it is “ anim ated” for me: in terms of consciousness,
it is the organ of my original free movements. From it as given
20 there proceed at any time movement tendencies, to which I can
yield or which I can resist, and in yielding I move my hand, my
foot, etc., or the whole Body. And all tendencies proceeding
from external things, wherever external things become percep­
tual stimuli (I refer to things as appearances, which alone are
25 stimuli in the phenomenological sense), are mediated by the
Body and by Bodily tendencies or by tendencies toward move­
ments which are apperceived as eye movements and thus as
movements o f “accommodation ” in the broadest sense. Wherever
external things in my sphere of apppearances function as
30 practical stimuli, wherever tendencies arise— directed to m e—
to move things, work with them, change them, etc., there my
Body is mediating and so are the tendencies related to it,
tendencies to grasp, lift, push, resist, strike, etc. Here mere
tendencies to movement (or free movements as performances)
35 are connected together, and going hand in hand with them, as a
new dimension, are performances o f power, exertions o f power,
etc.
For phenomenology, therefore, the Body plays an expansive
role in the realm of the spirit. What is purely spiritual can be
 found in all effective acts, which are partially actions, partially
passions. W hat is Ego-like, what is subjective-spiritual1 has a
special “ connection” with its own Body. To be sure, this
connection exists primarily with respect to particular data
5 (sensations of movement, tendencies, radiating out from Bodily
sensations, toward courses of sensations of movement), which,
by being apperceived Bodily, enter into everything related to the
Body. Allied with this is also the fact of “ expression,” which
allows us to interpret, on a broad scale, the other’s Body as a
10 Body for a spiritual life. The Body, as my Body, is something
particularly subjective, inasmuch as it mediates my perceptions
and my actions which extend into the world of things; but it is
not only for me that it is such. Also as apprehended by the
other it acquires a significance, a spiritual significance, inasmuch
15 as it expresses the spiritual (and does not simply intimate the
presence of sensibility).
It must always be remembered that every Ego is precisely an
Ego in itself, a point of identity, on which “ stimuli” operate,
from which acts issue forth, which is active or which is passive,
20 which turns to or turns away from, which follows tendencies or
resists them; i.e., it is the Ego of the intentionalities, which, even
if these intentionalities are not executed, still has a direction,
one that proceeds from the Ego and into which then the Ego
perhaps enters actively in the mode of the executing Ego.
25 Furthermore, it is to be noted that by essence there belong to
the Ego the subjective “ domains ” to which it is related.
As joined to its Body, the spirit “ belongs ” to nature. In spite
of this association, however, this linkage, it is not itself nature.
The spirit has “ effects ” in nature, and yet it does not exercise
30 there any causality in the sense o f nature. Causality is a relation
between one reality and its correlative surrounding realities. But
the reality of the spirit is not related to real circumstances
residing within nature; rather, it is related to real circumstances
that exist in the “ surrounding w orld” and in other spirits: this,
35 however, is not nature. Something similar occurs in the case of
physical things, only it is reversed: they have their real circum-
1 It should be remembered that what one has, e.g., appearances, are also
subjective, though they are neither passion nor action and do not belong to the Ego
as its life but belong to it as field, as medium, as possession.
 stances in one another and, furthermore, in Bodies and in souls,
though not in spirits.
Thus we have to establish a peculiar relationship between
spirit and physical nature, a relation between two sorts of
5 realities, a relation of conditionality yet not of causality in the
genuine sense. The same holds for the relation between spirit
and soul or between spirit and Body as aesthesiological unity
rather than as physicalistic thing. The Body in this aesthesiolog­
ical sense belongs to the presupposed surrounding world of
10 every personal subject and is the field of his free will. This is a
spiritual and a causal relation. I execute my “fia t,” and my
hand moves “ because” I will it. As freely moved by me, the
Body is a spiritual reality, and to the idea of its reality there
pertains the relation to the Ego as a subject of free movement. [284]
15 And vice versa. The Ego is an individuality, and as such it
carries out acts upon acts and brings about Bodily accomplish­
ments and then further ones. Similarly, however, my represent­
ing, my phantasizing, my remembering, etc. pertain to my
spiritual field, and thereby so does the formation of new
20 apprehensions, etc. The soul is presupposed (as is the Body),
but it is at once surrounding world, determining the spirit.
We must indeed say here that the Body is a two-sided reality
precisely insofar as it is a Body, i.e., abstracting from the fact
that it is a thing and consequently is determinable as physical-
25 istic nature. There is constituted then:
1. the aesthesiological Body. As sensing, it is dependent on
the material Body; but here we once more have to distinguish
from the physicalistic Body the material Body as appearance
and as part of the personal surrounding world.
30 2. the Body for the will, the freely moving Body. It is
something identical, even in relation to the various possible
movements the freely active spirit performs with it. There thus
results a stratum of reality that is its own.
Consequently the Body as Body presents, like Janus, two
35 faces, and first of all within intuition. It is a reality with respect
to nature as the world of things given in intuition and is at once
a reality with respect to the spirit. Thus it is a double reality, to
which pertain two lines of real circumstances. Thereby the
aesthesiological stratum is the substrate for the stratum, “ free
 movement” and is always a presupposition for it, whereas the
lower stratum, the aesthesiological, can be separate from motil­
ity. An immotile Body, one that only senses, is thinkable as a
limit-case, but the question is then whether immotility does not
5 signify the null-point of movement as paralyzed Body— and
that is indeed the case.
Similarly, the soul also has two faces:
1. as Bodily conditioned it is physically conditioned, depend­
ent on the physicalistic Body. As identical reality, it has its real
10 circumstances in physis;
2 . as spiritually conditioned it stands, with the spirit, in a
reality-nexus.
Thus we have two poles: physical nature and spirit and, in
between them, Body and soul. As a consequence, Body and soul
15 are “ nature in the second sense ” properly speaking only accord­
ing to the side turned toward physical nature. As appearing,
they belong to the spiritual surrounding w orld; but appearance
denotes precisely appearance of physicalistic nature, and that
establishes a relation to the physicalistic world. At first, this is
20 valid only for the physical substrate, but as soon as it becomes
taken physicalistically, the Body, and the soul, also receive a
physicalistically determined transcendence.
On the other hand, the appearing Body (and the stratum
determined by sensation there, the stratum of the sense quali-
25 ties) and the soul belong to the spiritual surrounding world and
receive in it such a relation to the Body and to other things that
they assume the character of spiritual realities: the person has
an effect on the Body in that he moves it, and the Body affects
other things of the surrounding world; thereby the person, by
30 way of the Body, acts on these things as things of the
surrounding world. The free movement of my Body and the
mediate moving of other things is an acting upon nature insofar
as the Body-thing of the surrounding world is at the same time
determinable as thing of natural science. The effect of the spirit
35 on the Body and of the Body on other things is accomplished as
a spiritual effect in the spiritual surrounding world. But, in
virtue of the correspondence that holds here, changes in nature
in the physicalistic sense are accomplished as well.
We speak of two “ faces,” two sides of reality, as regards the
 Body and the soul, but we must take notice of the correct way
to understand that. The Body as something in the surrounding
world is the experienced, intuited Corporeal body, and that is
precisely an appearance of the physicalistic Body. The latter,
5 and physicalistic nature in its entirety, has nothing to do with
the surrounding world, the primary surrounding world at least.
That is, we can say as well that it is a secondary surrounding
world. Just as the evaluated thing becomes a value-Object and
then is, as an Objective value, for a second time an Object of the
10 surrounding world, so physicalistic nature, theoretically deter­
mined on the basis of the “ appearances,” is a secondary Object
of the surrounding world, the primary Object of which is
precisely the appearance. The Body as a thing is substrate for
the aesthesiological Body, and with that we have the substrate
15 for the Body to which the will relates, the freely moving Body,
and thus the Body stands to the spirit in a relation of causality.
Here we are in one homogeneous sphere.
On the other hand, because the Body in the surrounding [286]
world is at the same time an appearance of nature in the
20 physicalistic sense, the Body has a second face; it is the point of
conversion from spiritual causality to natural causality.
The same holds for the soul, which has its share of nature
insofar as it is related to the Body. Physical (material) thing,
Body, and soul are constituted in intuition, hence on the one
25 hand as unspiritual, though on the other hand as something
which is there for the spirit; or again, on the one hand as
“ m atter” of the lowest level for the constitution of merely
physicalistic thinghood, and further, on the other hand, as
“ spirit-soul,” spiritual substrate for the constitution of the soul.
30 These intuitively constituted unities have, for the spirit, a reality
side; they are circumstances of the real unity, spirit, and the
spirit, in turn, is circumstance for these unities.
It is, of course, not the identity of the thing as reality (of
appearance) that is related to the spirit as real circumstance.
35 Instead it is the identity of the Body, which, as freely moving,
receives a proper stratum of reality in terms of the will. And
likewise it is the soul as dependent on the Body but also as
integrating psychic events related to the voluntary movement of
the Body or influenced directly by the spirit in some other
40 way.
 If we then pass over to “ Objective nature,” which excludes
the spirit as circumstance (since we are abandoning altogether
the attitude of the human sciences), nothing is left of the
behavior of the subject and we have mere things, aesthesiologi-
5 cal dependencies, psychological dependencies, and concomitant
Objective realities.
But if we in turn proceed from this attitude to the former,
then the spirit, within its own attitude, may produce something,
and, in virtue of the parallelism here, dependent changes in the
10 Objective world correspond to it. That they are dependent,
however, has to be established Objectively; I can, and I must,
come to a conviction about whether or not “ in actuality” there
corresponds to the movement of the Body an actual movement
in nature, etc. From the standpoint of the Objective knowledge
15 of nature, an act (whenever it is said in the human-scientific
attitude that “ the person is moving his Body”) of the “f i a t ”
and indeed as a conscious state, together with the concomitant
appearances, etc., enters into the Bodily-psychic nexus. And all
this is a state in Bodily-psychic reality. Spirit is not a reality [2
20 here, however, and it does not at all exist here as spirit; what
exists in this case is only the cogito as state, the Ego of it,
etc.
The distinction between this conception and the spiritual
attitude stands out clearly if we now posit theoretically the
25 Ego-side itself (the person and what he has), whereby once
again positing Ego-subjects are indeed present, versus the
subjects that had become theoretical Objects. We posit other
subjects (and ourselves in reflection) in a theoretical way by
positing them and ourselves, precisely to the exclusion of all
30 else, as subjects of lived experiences that are states of our
subjectivity or theirs, and as subjects of a surrounding world of
persons and things, taken here exactly in the way they present
themselves to the subject, i.e., precisely as “ environing.” So
these things are not Objects as in natural science— disregarding
35 the case in which the theoretically posited subjects are natural
scientists and therefore thought as related to the nature “ inves­
tigated” by them, which they “ determine,” whose Objective
predicates they seek, etc. But if the subjects investigating nature
are themselves Objects, then the nature they investigate is put in
 brackets. Aside from this case, the things are correlates of the
respective lived experiences; they are the things we see, grasp,
and touch, just as we, and other people, see them, grasp them,
etc. If others see them differently, then what is seen differently is
5 precisely, as seen by them, their things as correlates, and if they
see ghosts, then their correlates are precisely ghosts. If the
theoretically posited subjects are posited as investigators of
physical and psychophysical nature (to say something about the
case we excluded), then, obviously, it comes to be posited that
10 they carry out acts of investigation into nature, that their
appearances are, in a certain way, constitutive of “ Objective
nature,” and that they recognize dependencies between what
they possess as Objective, their sensations, their acts, etc. and
the things of nature. But then Objective nature is bracketed. It
15 is now not posited theoretically itself, but is so only by the
theoretically posited Ego. Thereby the theoretical Object, human
being (the zoological, physiological, psychological Object),
which is included in the theoretical positing of nature, is
specifically something other than the theoretical Object, human
20 person. The human being as an Object of nature is not a subject,
a person, though to every such Object a person corresponds; so [288]
we can also say that every one of them “ involves ” a person, an
Ego-subject, which, however, is never a component part o f nature,
contained as a reality in nature, but instead is something that is
25 expressed in the environing Object, “ human Body.” Here the
human Body is a mere correlate of the positing of the subject,
taken purely as such, something of which we know that it
manifests a nature open to Objective research, but which is not
now undergoing this theoretical positing. The apprehension may
30 very well be there, but it is not a point through which a
theoretical positing travels. Likewise, the subject can simulta­
neously be apprehended as nature, but this apprehension, which
refers back to an apprehending subject, not itself apprehended
as nature, is not a point that a theoretical positing passes
35 through; what is so posited is the subject quite simply, which
has behind it only the pure subject. 1
1 According to our presentation, the concepts I and we are relative: the I requires
the thou, the we, and the “ other.” And, furthermore, the Ego (the Ego as person)
requires a relation to a world which engages it. Therefore, I, we and world belong
 § 63. Psychophysical parallelism and interaction

We now take into consideration that which we are calling

physicalistic nature, or, more broadly, Objective nature in
general, the correlate of natural science. The latter, for its part,
5 is an interpersonal, cultural accomplishment in an association of
persons and thus presupposes this association, just as the human
sciences are such cultural accomplishments. The one absolute
consciousness, a multiplicity of communicating monads and
pure Egos, is then essentially of such a kind that it has a parallel
10 unity o f regulation, not a mere two-fold regulation but precisely
a parallel one, one which ordains the same for two, without
altering anything in the matters at issue there.
The one regulation has to do with the natural sciences, the
other with the human sciences. They complement and penetrate
15 one another. But they would just be two sides of something one
and the same, and would express something one and the
same in the two sides, if all the nexuses that present themselves
as facts in the human sciences also emerged in natural science,

together; the world, as communal environing world, thereby bears the stamp of
subjectivity.
In addition, all science belongs within this nexus; science is an intersubjective
activity, a pursuit in the attitude, “ Us and what is actual.” Science seeks Objective
validity; as Objective science it makes assertions about the world straightforwardly,
i.e., assertions in which nothing of the “ u s” is to be found. What is spoken o f is only
what is Objective: first and foremost, physical nature.
Thereby, however, we constantly find ourselves as persons living in the personal
world, in the life-world, and so do the natural scientists, even in the very activity of
natural science: it is just that their focus is directed exclusively to physical or
zoological nature, etc. The apprehension of the world as nature thus fits within
personal apprehension (the personal attitude). In research I can be focused on mere
things, but I can also focus on persons in their comportment to them; specifically:
a. persons as spiritually determined by these things, as motivated by them,
experiencing them, evaluating them, etc.
b. on the other hand, persons with respect to their real dependence on these things
as natural ones, which are apprehended thereby in a two-fold way: 1) as conscious
correlates o f the comportment of the subject, and 2) as correlates of the natural
scientific cognition that determines them Objectively.
In the one case, persons are posited theoretically as they are given, as persons in an
association o f persons. In the other case, they are posited as belonging to nature, as
dependent on the nature of the Body.
 simply within a different apprehension. But that is not the
case.
The appearing thing is a unity of spatio-temporal causality.
One could say it is what it brings about in space. States here are
5 states of force.
The personal individual likewise is a unity: the human being
is one and the same in relation to the various circumstances in
compliance with which his states change. “ Considered abso­
lutely,” this means that dependencies exist between the human
10 Body and other things (both leading, considered intersubjec­
tively, to certain nexuses of appearance) that are not physicalis­
tic. That is, if in a consciousness that finds itself in a nexus of
intersubjective understanding things are to be able to appear as
concordant actualities, then sense data must belong to the
15 appearances, and if these sense data are to be able to be there,
then Bodies, too, have to be able to appear and have to have
their physicalistic actuality. Therefore, this regulation concerns
groups of appearances and is an intersubjective one. Sense data
can present themselves only if there exist “ in Objective actual-
20 ity ” sense organs, nervous systems, etc. To these correspond
possible apprehensions of sensuous data and concomitant inter­
subjective regulations. Can it now make sense to assume that
even the possibility of any apprehension whatever and of all
consciousness in general is dependent on the Body and its
25 Bodily-Objective events, or that apperceptions, position-takings [290]
of belief, of will, etc. are dependent on the Body in the same
sense as the data of sensation are? If we think of monadic
subjects and their streams of consciousness or, rather, if we
think the thinkable minimum of self-consciousness, then a
30 monadic consciousness, one that would have no “ w orld” at all
given to it, could indeed be thought— thus a monadic con­
sciousness without regularities in the course of sensations,
without motivated possibilities in the apprehension of things. In
that case, what is necessary for the emergence of an Ego-
35 consciousness in the ordinary sense? Obviously, human con­
sciousness requires an appearing Body and an intersubjective
Body — an intersubjective understanding.
Let us already presuppose a plurality of subjects in mutual
intersubjective understanding, thus a certain “ Objectively”
 constituted world with “ Objective” things, Bodies, and real and
Objective spirits. A certain relation of the sensations to the
respective Objective Body is thereby already presupposed. And
let us assume, as it does actually happen, that my Body is a
5 system of sense organs, related to the central organ B. It is on
this that the emergence of sensory phantasms and sensations is
dependent.
The question is then whether not only these sensuous con­
tents but also, in the same or in a similar sense, all apprehen-
10 sions and higher conscious functions can be said to be depend­
ent on B, and whether and to what extent such a dependence
would be thinkable. As regards sensations, the dependence
means that a certain Bodily state (or, rather, a certain form of
Bodily states, admitting the process of metabolism, which
15 removes the individual identity of the elements of one and the
same organ, of the same nerves, ganglia, etc., though it main­
tains the same particular form) has, as its univocal and Objec­
tive consequence, a certain sensation in a determinate stream of
consciousness bound to its respective Body. Can the same be
20 true regarding all the component parts and moments emerging
in the stream of consciousness?
Consciousness of the world is constituted in appearances:
more exactly, in Bodily appearances. Sensations occur in certain
apprehensions, in certain intersubjective regulations, and here [2911
25 belongs especially the regulation that corresponds to the Objec­
tive actuality of those hidden organs of the Body we call the
central organ B, the nerve chords, the sensory nerves, etc. And
now the occurrence of any sensation S in my consciousness Cm,
or in a definite individual’s consciousness Cm (that of man M) is
30 to be dependent on the part of that regulation which is here
called the determinate state B” of my (the respective individual
M) Bm. To the extent that sensations enter into other conscious
lived experiences as constitutive moments, all these would be
dependent on Bm and its states.
35 The same holds for phantasms. If now all sensations and
phantasms within Cm are dependent in this way on the above-
mentioned rule concerning apprehended and apprehendable
sensations and in addition on this intersubjective group of
possible perceptions (thus of possible theoretical judgments as
 well), then why should not all conscious lived experiences within
a monadic consciousness Cm, and likewise for every Q„ C" etc.,
be able to depend on precisely such a group Bm that is
intersubjective and is taken collectively? Why should that
5 present a difficulty if precisely the psychophysical causation is
merely grasped as a certain relation of functional regulations, as
we have done here and as we must do?
The main point to be examined here is the question of
whether or not the essence of consciousness, which expresses
10 itself apriori in essential laws, resists such a universal regulation.
The essence of consciousness in general does raise claims and
demands. For example, is it possible, we are asking, for the
matter here at issue to be understood in such a way that the
cerebral states (states of the B) precede, in an Objectively
15 temporal sense, the corresponding conscious lived experiences,
or must not, for reasons of principle, the brain state and its
conscious accompaniment be simultaneous, in conformity with
the absolute sense of simultaneity? Thereby is not a parallelism
given eo ipso? Namely, in this way: to every conscious lived
20 experience in my consciousness Cm there corresponds a certain
state in my B, a certain organic state. On the other hand, to
everything without exception that comprises the B there corre­
spond real events of a certain kind in every subject, and
consequently also in me: certain real perceptual possibilities,
25 which, if not corresponding to this state of the brain B, then to
another state in connection with it in a natural-scientific
nexus.
The opposite conception would be that such a universal [292]
regulation does not exist, or cannot exist, but that, instead,
30 determinate states of Bm pertain only to the sense data in Cm
but not to consciousness’ noetic aspect, taken in a broad sense,
whether entirely or within certain limits. And that can again
mean that this noetic element is either accidental, occurring
without laws, not determined apriori in a univocal way; or it is
35 indeed determined univocally, though it does not stand in
functional dependence or in a relation of parallelism to the
physical Body and thereby to physical being in general. If a
univocity exists, then the consciousness in question (abstraction
made from its hyletic content) can be determined by rules of
 inner dependence, rules which prescribe what else must be there
in consciousness and must occur in it if certain states are
already given and if in them sense data present themselves in
such and such psychophysical dependencies.
5 Here we should also introduce empathy, in virtue of which, in
the individual consciousness Cm, with its psychophysically
determined content of sensations, there results a simple under­
standing, one that is not predelineated by psychophysical laws,
of the psychic life of the other, which life is then given as
10 existing and determines, by way of motivation, the rest of the
psychic life Cm. This is an “ encroachment ” of one subjectivity
on another, mediated by comprehension. A direct encroachment
would be excluded. All encroachment, as we are now employing
the word, presupposes that the Cm contains in itself conscious-
15 ness of the other’s psychic life Q ,, and this consciousness is,
within Cm, what is immediately “ operative” in the encroach­
ment. Thereby, however, this action of soul upon soul, of
subject upon subject, is always psychophysically mediated, but
in quite a different manner. Psychophysical causality is con-
20 stantly in play, though with the support of peculiar natural laws
that are purely psychic. They would be knowable only in
intersubjective experience (including self-experience), i.e., by
means of knowledge of the general way in which conscious lived
experiences constitute individualities in the “ monads.” These
25 universal empirical cognitions would have their connection with
eidetic universal laws pertaining to consciousness in general and
to the constitution in consciousness of any individuality what­
ever.
These are possibilities considered universally. Within the [293}
30 framework of such considerations, the following important
problem also arises: de facto there occur Bodies scattered here
and there in nature, and that is how we do indeed look at
nature. But it would still remain to think through the possibility
of what might be involved in that, i.e., whether and to what
35 extent it would be possible for every physical thing in nature to
be a Body.
The decisive question is now the extent to which what is
essential about consciousness assigns limits to the conceivable
possibilities. That there are essential laws o f consciousness is
 indeed an absolutely indubitable truth. Is a thorough psycho­
physical parallelism compatible with them, one that would
predelineate for every conscious state Cm a dependency, in a
lawful way, on Bm or a parallel in Bm?
5 The following reservations impose themselves, and we need to
examine their pertinence. The changes of Bm are contingent
changes, subject to natural laws which could just as well be
different ones. Let us assume that all conscious lived experi­
ences, just as they are, may be dependent on Bm for their entire
10 content with its parts and moments and may exist as long as Bm
exists. If now, as belonging to the apriori essence of conscious­
ness, there exist certain necessities in the course of its succes­
sion— the way, e.g., the modes of retention within the constitu­
tion of time are linked (apriori), as succeeding one another
15 necessarily, to various impressions— then these nexuses of the
sequence could not be conditioned by Bm and by the sequence
of its Objective states. Only that which the essential nexuses
leave open can be empirically conditioned. For instance, only
the sensation could be conditioned, but not what is necessarily
20 linked to it in terms of the retentions. Or perhaps, more
precisely, what is conditioned would only be the content of the
sensation and likewise, within the predelineated form of the
retentional sequence, a content left open by it, that is, differ­
ences in clarity and distinctness, etc.; in which respect it is
25 problematic, and to be determined in experience, to what extent
the content is conditioned psychophysically. In any case we can
say that if a modification of consciousness is excluded apriori,
if there exists apriori a law of incompatibility, in virtue of which
C' and C" are altogether incompatible in one consciousness,
30 then what is bound up with C', which we think as dependent on [294]
B', is no longer determined purely by a B" bound up with B' or,
in general, by an interplay of B-states. Instead, there is an
absolutely fixed lawfulness that does not have any parallel in
the empirical lawfulness of B.
35 We also have to note the following: every lived experience
has its background, its environment in the order of coexistence
as well as its environment in the sinking down into the past
(through which it is constituted as a unity of the living past
precisely in the sinking down). These are apriori relations; it is
 this way and cannot be otherwise. Accordingly, we have all
sorts of phenomena, the reduction of which to a causal depen­
dence on B-states would be nonsense. 1
On such grounds, it seems to me, one can radically refute
5 parallelism, and the refutation thereby has a completely differ­
ent style compared to the usual ones which operate with
distorted concepts of causality and substance and with tradi­
tional prejudices of many kinds, refutations that head directly
for interactionism, as if the question of parallelism versus
10 interaction were a radical and exhaustive one. In point of fact,
with the rejection of parallelism nothing at all is decided in
favor of interaction.
Besides, this is not what comes next. Instead, there has first to
be determined how far the dependence of C on B extends.
15 Doubtlessly as far as the sensuous substrate of consciousness.
Surely the higher consciousness, the properly noetic, becomes
co-dependent on B, to the extent that it is founded in the
hyletic. Surely not only are the sensuous sensations in the
stricter sense determined by the Body, but so are the sensuous
20 feelings as well, and the lived experiences of instincts. Surely a
good part of individuality also belongs here, namely the sen­
suous dispositions with their individual habitus.
Obviously, how far all this extends can only be decided
empirically and if possible by means of experimental psycho-
25 logy. In particular, whether and to what extent the proper
character, the rhythm, of the higher consciousness is determined
by means of its own empirical-psychological rules as well as
according to what is universally human, though not by essential

1 Furthermore, the following should be brought to validity: it is thinkable that

there would be no Bodies at all and no dependence o f consciousness on material
events in constituted nature, thus no empirical souls, whereas absolute consciousness
would remain over as something that cannot simply be cancelled out. Absolute
consciousness would thus have in itself, in that case, a principle of factual unity, its
own rule, according to which it would unfold with its own content, all the while there
being indeed no Body. If we join it to a Body, then perhaps it becomes dependent,
though in the first place it still retains its principle o f unity and does so not just
through apriori laws of consciousness in general. Thus it becomes dependent in this,
that it is dependent in its own apriori and individual essence, which means that what
is in it is indeed conditioned and can in truth not be a mere epiphenomenon of
something else. But all this is quite problematic.
 laws, i.e., according to what unfolds within the human type (the
type of the human species) and within the individual type, or
whether these regularities in the type and in the individual are
sufficiently grounded in the physical organization by the mere
5 introduction of essential laws: this can by no means be estab­
lished apriori.
Now we come to the question o f interaction and especially to
the question of the action, the effects, of consciousness, or
rather, of the soul, on the Body. Obviously, one may not
10 operate here with mythical concepts of affecting. What “ affect­
ing ” means in the physical world is sufficiently clear. We are led
back to lawfully regulated nexuses of dependence between
physical events, and since physical things are what they are as
unities of appearances, we are led back to interdependencies of
15 certain intersubjective regulations of consciousness of one and
the same type. If we speak of “ effects” with regard to the
dependencies of sensation, sensuous feelings, etc., this is a type
of dependence of an entirely different kind. The occurrence of
sensations in a monad is dependent on a physical Body in its
20 environment of nature, thus dependent on a certain subjective
and, further, intersubjective regulation of appearances and not
merely of sensations. It is doubtless that the existence of
sensations in each case refers back to the Body, and since
sensations and lived experiences in general have no Objective
25 temporal existence, if not through a relation to the intersubjec­
tive Body, so then we are already led to the position that the
relation between sensation and Corporeality must be thought of
as simultaneous, i.e., that to the sensation must be attributed
the Objective time of the corresponding Objective cerebral
30 process.
To speak of a reverse dependency makes no sense unless we [296]
assume that the soul has its own causality, an inner empirical
lawfulness, in the production of sensations, i.e., a causality that
can first of all unfold in itself and can lead to a sensation, to
35 which the state of the B would then be linked as dependent on
it. Examples: the voluntary production of hallucinations, or,
just as well, the voluntary production of sensations coordinated
to certain appearances of things: namely the sensations brought
about by the voluntary movement of the parts of the Body. It is
40 problematic that it can ever be decided empirically whether or
 not there is an empirical succession in time here, i.e., whether or
not the Objective temporal point of the cerebral stimulation,
corresponding to the movement of the hand, must be taken as
the same identical temporal point of the sensation. Everything
5 depends here on the way of defining the temporal point of a
determinate state of consciousness, hence on the question of the
sense of a temporal determination of a conscious lived experi­
ence.
For the rest, there comes into consideration what was already
10 expounded elsewhere1: if I am able to comprehend another
individual, look into his depths, then I know how he will allow
himself to be motivated; but that is no different from the way I
know it as regards myself. Naturally, I say all sorts of things
about what I would do in a certain case; that is because I have
15 not become perfectly clear on the circumstances and so always
leave many things out of account. For that reason I cannot say,
in an entirely definite way, what I would do in the future under
circumstances of this or that kind. For until then much will
have elapsed in my consciousness, and what has elapsed will
20 extend itself, as motivating, into the time that follows and hence
will be co-operative. Needless to say, the future cannot be
predicted with certainty, but only hypothetically, by supplying
the intermediate parts. On the other hand, the past can be
encompassed in the understanding by means of clear memory,
25 and each motivational nexus it had can be comprehended.
There pertains to every course of consciousness an individuality
that can be understood and “ re-felt” as one to which belong
precisely these modes of motivation and no others. In this,
everyone is distinct from everyone else. Yet that does not
30 amount to univocal necessity in the consequences. Everywhere
natural causality, what is Bodily, and what is determined in [297J
consciousness by the Bodily play their roles together. In no way
do these determinations need to be universal. The B can indeed
be a necessary though not sufficient condition. If the latter is
35 also accepted, then the nexus can indeed be spoken of as a
necessary one.
 § 64. Relativity of nature, absoluteness of spirit

From the foregoing considerations, there results a limit to

possible naturalizing: the spirit can be grasped as dependent on
nature and can itself be naturalized, but only to a certain
5 degree. A univocal determination of spirit through merely
natural dependencies is unthinkable, i.e., as reduction to some­
thing like physical nature, to something, in the entire type of
determination, analogous to the goal of univocal determination
in natural science. Subjects cannot be dissolved into nature, for
10 in that case what gives nature its sense would be missing.
Nature is a field of relativities throughout, and it can be so
because these are always in fact relative to an absolute, the
spirit, which consequently is what sustains all the relativities.
The spirit is determined through its surrounding world, and it
15 even has a natural regulation insofar as it manifests dependen­
cies of various kinds once it is placed in relation to the nature
constituted with reference to the personal world. But this does
not prevent its being absolute, irrelative. That is to say, if we
could eliminate all spirits from the world, then that is the end of
20 nature. But if we eliminate nature, “ true,” Objective-intersub-
jective existence, there always still remains something: the spirit
as individual spirit. It only loses the possibility of sociality, the
possibility of comprehension, for that presupposes a certain
Bodily intersubjectivity. We would then no longer have the
25 individual spirit as a person in the stricter, social sense, a person
related to a material and, consequently, to a personal world as
well. Nevertheless we still have, notwithstanding the enormous
impoverishment of “ personal” life, precisely an Ego with its
conscious life, and it even has therein its individuality, its way of
30 judging, of valuing, of letting itself be motivated in its position-
takings.
It is in the spirit’s course of consciousness, however, that in
every case is manifested the spirit’s unity and individuality. If I [298]
want to understand these, then I have to investigate this course,
35 reconstruct it. If I want to understand it according to some
definite aspect, then I have to extrapolate intuitively the corre­
sponding nexus in the course of consciousness. The understand­
ing is intuitive throughout; the Objectivity that is this “ individ­
ual ” hereby comes to givenness in its own proper being.
 I relive the other’s spiritual life and, with that, the other’s
spiritual world, his spiritual Objectivity, and I understand them
in their individual significance, their spiritual significance: in
terms of the political situation, the spiritual epoch, contempo-
5 rary literature, etc.
It must not be forgotten here that individuality in the spiritual
sense is something quite different from individuality in nature. A
thing has its individual essence as that which is here and now.
But this “ w hat” is itself a “ universal.” That means that each
10 thing is an example of a universality; this is already the case as
regards the thing on the level of mere “ sense” experience
thought as concordant. Any thing can be thought of as repeat-
able at will. Likewise, physicalistic Objectivity is what it is, and
according to each of its determinations, as being subject to laws
15 and determinations, both of which can be formulated mathe­
matically.
The thing as real is dependent on real circumstances; it is
what it is in the nexus of real nature, which in itself is
constituted as homogeneous throughout.
20 The purely Objective consideration, which investigates the
Objective sense of thingness, requires that things be dependent
on one another as regards their states and that they, in their real
existence, mutuallly prescribe something to one another, regard­
ing, specifically, their ontological content, their causal states.
25 The question now is whether a thing, which indeed remains
one thing under all circumstances, is the identical something of
properties and is actually in itself solid and fixed with respect to
its real properties; that is, is a thing an identity, an identical
subject of identical properties, the changing element being only
30 its states and circumstances? Would this not then mean that
according to the various circumstances into which it can be
brought, or into which it can be thought to be introduced, the
thing has different actual states, but that in advance—
apriori— how it can behave, and, further, how it will behave, is
35 predelineated by its own essence? But does each thing (or, what
is equivalent here: does any thing at all) have such an essence o f
its own in the first place? Or is the thing, as it were, always
underway, not at all graspable therefore in pure Objectivity, but
rather, in virtue of its relation to subjectivity, in principle only a
 relatively identical something, which does not have its essence in
advance or graspable once and for all, but instead has an open
essence, one that can always take on new properties according
to the constitutive circumstances of givenness? But this is
5 precisely the problem, to determine more exactly the sense o f
this openness, as regards, specifically, the “ Objectivity” of
natural science.
Does the “ infinity” of the world, instead of referring to a
transfinite endlessness (as if the world were something finished
10 in itself, an all-encompassing thing or a self-enclosed collectivity
of things, which would nevertheless contain in itself an infinity
of things), not rather mean an “ openness” ? But what is the
sense of that?
If, as we may do, we think of nature changed in all sorts of
15 ways, then a nature is always also thinkable in which there
would be many of the same things, and indeed things of any
content whatsoever as long as it is representable. It is thinkable
that there are many things completely the same as to properties
and causal states, in coexistence as well as in succession. The
20 one is here, the other there; the one is now, the other then. It is
also thinkable that one thing return periodically to the same
identical state. What distinguishes two things that are alike is
the real-causal nexus, which presupposes the here and the now.
And with that we are led back necessarily to an individual
25 subjectivity, whether a solitary or an intersubjective one, with
respect to which alone determinateness is constituted in the
positing of location and of time. No thing has its individuality in
itself:
On the other hand, the spirit lives through, takes a position,
30 is motivated. Each spirit has its way of motivation, and, unlike
a thing, it has its motivation in itself It does not have individu­
ality only by being in a determinate place in the world. The pure
Ego of any given cogitatio already has absolute individuation,
and the cogitatio itself is something absolutely individual in [300]
35 itself. The Ego, however, is not an empty pole but is the bearer
of its habituality, and that implies that it has its individual
history.
The lived experiences in the flux of consciousness have an
essence that is absolutely their own; they bear their individua-
 tion in themselves. Can more than one lived experience be the
same, can they be absolutely the same in one flux of conscious­
ness? Are they distinguishable merely by this-ness? And can
two lived experiences be distinct merely by the fact that the one
5 belongs to this and the other to that consciousness (monad)? A
lived experience now and “ the sam e” lived experience later,
“ simply repeated,” can these be the same in their total essential
content? In the now, consciousness has a content of originary
lived experiences and a horizon of past ones which is repre-
10 sented in the now in the form of a lived horizon of “ primary
memory,” of retention, and the originary and the horizonal are
continuously transformed into one another. Does this medium
of lived experience make no difference for a lived experience
that is originarily making its entrance, e.g., that of a new sense
15 datum? If it is not a matter of indifference, then the lived
experiences are already distinct. For in the “ afterwards” this
medium is a different one. But, one could object, does the fact
not remain that every lived experience, together with its horizon,
in its full concretion, is thinkable as repeated? Certainly, we
20 answer, I think it as repeated; but I still think it necessarily as
an individual lived experience that is the same, as unique, as one
and self-same.
The problem can also be stated as follows: is there a
distinction somehow to be made between full, concrete essence
25 and individual existence? Or, conversely: is not this distinction
to be made apriori and everywhere by necessity and must it not
be said that, in principle, complete sameness of individuals in
the sphere of lived experience is indeed possible, that every lived
experience is “idealiter” an essential content that has its
30 this-ness, which is not a quality. But is not even this haecceitas a
universal, inasmuch as every lived experience in itself has its
haecceitas? One cannot at all ask, however, what distinguishes
one this from another this purely as this-es, nor, further, what
they both have in “ common.” That would already be confusing
35 the quality and the this. So would speaking of the “ essence of
this-ness.” This-ness is a form. What distinguishes this “ some­
thing” from another “ something” precisely as “ something” ?
“ Nothing,” insofar as there are no qualities, no substantial
contents, which would allow a distinction. The form of the this
 is not a what-ness, and in that sense is not an essence. It is
universal in the sense of the form.
Consciousness has its own essence, one in flux and not
determinable exactly; but to it as an idea an “ exact” essence
5 can be attributed, and with this positing it receives its determi­
nate this.
Objective thinghood is determined physicalistically but is
determined as a this only in relation to consciousness and the
conscious subject. All determination refers back to a here and
10 now and consequently to some subject or nexus of subjects.
What is uniquely and originally individual is consciousness,
taken concretely with its Ego. All other individuality is appear­
ance and has the principle of its individuation in actual and
possible appearing, which, in turn, refers back to an individual
15 consciousness.
Absolute individuation enters into the personal Ego. The
surrounding world of the Ego acquires its individuation essen­
tially by way of its relation to the Ego that has experience of it
and that exchanges its experience with other individuals. For
20 each Ego, any thing has the here and the now as a correlate of
intuition. An Ego, or an intersubjectivity fo r itself, constitutes
the surrounding world, and if it allows itself to be determined
by its “ over and against” in the surrounding world, or itself
determines this latter actively and perhaps formatively, then this
25 latter has the secondary individuation o f the "over and against,”
whereas the originary individuation, the absolute one, resides in
the Ego itself. The same spirit cannot be twice, nor can it return
to the same total state, nor does it manifest its individuation
merely by standing in different nexuses with the same con-
30 tent.
Spirits are precisely not unities o f appearances but are instead
unities of absolute nexuses of consciousness; more exactly, they
are Ego-unities. And appearances are correlates of nexuses of
consciousness which themselves have their absolute being. And
35 if appearances are constituted intersubjectively, then we are led
back precisely to a plurality of persons who can comprehend [302]
one another. A correlate as such has its support in persons and
in their lived experiences, and their absolute being precedes the
relative being of the appearances. All individuation of the latter
 depends on the absolute individuation of the former, and all
natural existence depends on the existence of absolute spirits.
But then how is it with the soul and with man as nature? Are
these also merely examples of universals? The answer to that
5 has surely to be: no, insofar as the soul is naturalized spirit, and
individuality in the specific sense pertains to the spirit. On the
other hand, we must indeed say that everything by means of
which the soul is determined as a natural reality is exemplary
and universal. Individuality does not reside in that which is
10 nature here. Nature is the X and in principle nothing but the X
which is determined through universal determinations. The
spirit, however, is no X but is that which is itself given in
spiritual experience.
SUPPLEMENTS
 S u p p l e m e n t I (to Sections One and Two): Attempt at a step-wise
description of the constitution of the merely m aterial thing, the Body, the
animate thing or the living being, and then the personal subject, etc.

5 If we investigate the constitution o f the realities nature and spirit, in their

interrelatedness, then we can distinguish idealiter the following strata.
Complying with the order o f constitution, we have to begin with the
constitution o f the sphere o f the mere thing, the sphere o f material nature.
On the lowest level, we can segregate out there sensuous things as correlates
10 of the Ego that has not yet been realized and that is thought of as solitary.
It has its sense perceptions together with the concordant perceptual multi­
plicities belonging ideally to them, in which, by steps (the order of these
steps is not a present concern), real things are constituted by means of
presentation, things which have to be characterized, given the presupposed
15 lack of higher strata of apperception, as individual-subjective . In the case of
these merely m aterial things it is precisely these things which function as real
circumstances, and on this lowest level, for which no dependence on the
Body has yet been taken into account, it is only such things: a m aterial
thing is thinkable only as causally related to m aterial things and hence as a
20 member o f a m aterial environment. This statement remains valid even later
on, after further realizations have been added, ones which count for us,
moreover, only as ideal possibilities and not as ideal necessities.
The next step consists in the introduction of the Body of the solitary
Ego-subject and of the relations of dependency which hold between it and
25 these realities.1 Among the individual-subjective things that are constituted
first, one is pre-eminent as the su bject's Body, constituted as an aesthesio­
logical unity, etc. The things which are thought as constituted without
reference to the Body as such (but instead only in reference to the Body as
one material thing among others), acquire, according to the new sort o f
30 phenomenal dependencies the Body introduces, a new stratum of apprehen- [306 ]
si on (a stratum belonging essentially to all constituted things) and thereby
acquire the rank o f mere “ appearances” of the true things presenting
themselves in them. The sensuously appearing thing as such, the sense-thing
1 Cf. pp. 63 fT.
 (any possible sense-thing), which previously was the thing pure and simple,
changes its sensuous quality, its color for example, when I put on blue
spectacles; yet the true thing, which here is but presenting itself, does not
change its “ true ” quality. The sensuous quality is not illusion but is that
5 appearance of the true, non-sensuous quality demanded by the given
circumstances. The putting on of the blue spectacles changes the “ normal ”
sense-thing; the circumstances o f the seeing deviate from the ordinary rule.
The normal thing counts as the thing pure and simple; i.e., its relation to
the given circumstances (within the doxic characterization of “ being ”) does
10 not come to the fore as long as these circumstances remain precisely
constant in their ordinary constellation. This normality and abnormality
are interchangeable with each other, insofar as the characters of what is
ordinary and what is out of the ordinary can exchange roles and the
extraordinary become ordinary. In the latter case no privilege of true
15 objectivity is constituted; instead, in the thorough functional dependence of
the changes of the sense-things on concomitant changeable circumstances
which now happen to be determined as such and such, something identical
shows itself and “ appears ” according to these circumstances as sensually
qualified now this way now that w ay.
20 Here also belongs the complex of dependencies of sense-things included
under the heading health and sickness o f the Body. Here, too, there is a kind
of norm ality and abnormality, by means of which the manifold of appear­
ances in its entirety, in which a sense-thing appears as unitary, is brought
into dependency on the Body, which itself appears as a sense-thing. Hence
25 in regulated ways all sense-things, together with their sensuous properties, and
all their sensuous parts and moments, “ involve ” the sense-thing, Body. To
the Body correspond apprehensions of a higher level, which at the very
outset apprehend in a unitary way what appears here and there (the unity
of any given group of sense-things), as the following expressions illustrate:
30 if my eye is in a “ normal ” state, and if the circumstances are normal — i.e.,
seeing in “ broad daylight” without the interference of any colored
medium, etc. — then the object appears to me in the corresponding way; if
my eye is in an abnormal state then the object again appears in a different
corresponding way, in a way more or less familiar, and, insofar as the latter
35 is the case, in a way which must be further determined in perception,
though it is always a regulated way. None of the “ sensuous qualities,” e.g.,
the colors, with which “ the ” object 44appears,” pertain to it “ in itself,” but
instead each quality pertains to the object “ itself” only in relation to
certain circumstances. These components of indetermination in the appre-
40 hension indicate ways of experiental determination which in actual
experience, insofar as it runs its course harmoniously, entail, along with the
further determination, also a validation of the apprehension or of the
positing of the being of the object of the sense constituted through it. If the
object is, then it has, over and against all phenomenal colorations, the
45 “ Objective” color proper to it. That means it is in this relativism that it is
determined how it will (or would) comport itself in experience (as object of
its sense). This Objective color is not a sensuous color but is a nonsensuous
 unity “ presenting” itself as an intentional unity in the manifold of
sensuous data related to the respective circumstances. It is only sensuous
insofar as it is precisely something intentionally unitary that can essentially
be given originarily only as such a unity of sense qualities. The apprehen-
5 sion of the higher level inserts into the sensuous (itself already a “ unity ”
over against a “ multiplicity”) the nonsensuous, which is to a certain extent
an index fo r a relativism o f dependencies o f a higher level or, put noetically,
an index for possible, determinately structured, lived experiences which in
their actual unfolding were pervaded by consciousness of the ever richer
10 originary givenness of the identical Objective thing. Its theoretical determi­
nation would take us, of course, in a different direction and would require
essentially new series of acts founded in such experiences. The Objectivity
of this thing is still essentially related to the individually solitary subject
and to the Body constituted for it.
15 I f we bring comprehension and its constitutive accomplishments into the
compass o f our considerations, then the Ego previously thought of as
solitary now grasps certain of “ its” Objects as "other Bodies ” and in unity
with them, other Egos, which, however, are not y e t thereby constituted as
real subjects . At first new “ Objective” physical things in the pregnant
20 sense, i.e., intersubjective things, can be constituted, and subsequently can
be constituted Bodies as intersubjectively identifiable unities.
We assume first of all a " n o rm a l” Ego-community and Bodies of
“ normal,” i.e., typically “ standard,” structure; we assume them in general
in such a way that for all Ego-subjects the same sense-things and
25 subjective-Objective things are constituted, differing only in the way they
are given — by way of an orientation that necessarily changes from one
subject to another. Now, subjects can exchange their “ positions.” If we
think such exchanges as having taken place, then their actual appearances
(the actual things in the how of the modes of their sensuous appearance) [308]
30 are exchanged also, always presupposing the same “ adaption” — taken
here in an enlarged sense that is easily understood. In this exchangeability ,
resting on comprehension, is founded the possibility o f the identification o f
Objects originally relative to isolated subjects: we see the “ same” Object,
each of us from his own position, but also with the mode of appearance
35 which would be ours if we were, instead of here, there in the other’s place.
We then add to that the dependencies manifested by the totality of the
multiplicities of perceptual appearances which show no concordance from
one subject to another, due to abnormal Bodily structuration (e.g., color
blindness, congenital deafness, etc.).
40 Thus the essence of empathetic apprehension includes the sense that my
physical surrounding world is the same as the one of my fellow man, that
we all have the “ sam e” multiplicities of appearance, with the “ same”
stock of unities of appearance, with the same regulated modes of givenness
according to possible orientations. The only difference is that each subject
45 has a Body which is exclusively his own, with the effect that the orientation
which is exclusively his own, along with the corresponding actual appear­
ances, are in principle different than those of the other subject.
 To the possibility of intersubjective apprehension (or its noematic
content) belongs the characteristic distribution of the ideal multiplicities of
appearances of the things of my physical environing world (for the solitary
subject) which are required constitutively by it as a spatial w orld: whereby
5 to each appearing spatial point there corresponds, by means of a free “ I
move in that direction and make the there into a here, into a center of
orientation,” the ideal possibility of transforming actual appearances into
potential ones in a regulated and motivated way. Thereby I can imagine,
for every appearing point in space, how from that standpoint “ the ” world
10 would look, whereas my Body is always limited in its modes of appearing
and in the case of a transposition remains at every point in space bound to
this restricted framework. This is expressed by saying: at each point of
space I make into a central point, my Body looks similar from a similar
position.
15 On the other hand, the Body is a physical thing and it is imaginable how
it, or a body which is physically similar, would look as a center of
orientation from any point in space whatever. If to me, being now here, is
given in the there a body which from here looks like my Body would look
(at least according to the general type, as regarded from here) then it is
20 “ seen ” as a Body, and the potential appearances, which I would have if I
were transposed to the there, are attributed to it as actual; i.e., an Ego as
subject is empatheticallly apprehended with the Body, along with those
appearances and the rest of the things that pertain to the Ego, its lived
experiences, acts, etc. It is an other Ego since those potential appearances [309]
25 remain for me potential and can never be actual in the unity of the stream
of my lived experiences; they are incompatible with the actual appearances
of things contained in this stream. My Body cannot at one and the same
time be both here and there: the appearances which belong to the there can
be mine only by means of a change of position, thus only in a possible
30 future.
In the essence of empathetic apprehension is thus included the sense that
my physical surrounding world is the same as that of my fellows, that we
all have the “ same ’ manifolds of appearance, the only difference being
that each subject has his own Body which is exclusively his own and
35 consequently has an orientation which is exclusively his, along with the
corresponding actual appearances of the physical surrounding world as a
selection out of the common system of possible appearances.
Accordingly each subject has his position in the one same space, and
each subject, as subject of a freely moving Body, can move in this common
40 space, can exchange his position with that of his congener, and so can
exchange his orientations and series of appearances with another’s. They
are exchanged as the similar is with the similar, not as the identical is with
the identical; they are exchanged out of a similar system organized
according to a typical content, while each subject yet remains ineluctably
45 distinct from every other by means of an abyss, and no one can acquire
identically the same appearances as those of another. Each subject has his
stream of consciousness displaying a regularity that encompasses precisely
 all streams of consciousness, all animal subjects. The sense-things and the
subjective-Objective thing-unities which were previously related exclusively
to a single subject now become intersubjective — i.e., intersubjectively
identifiable— unities, and the lived experiences of the appearances obtain a
5 new sense-content. That is, the things as correlates of the solitary subject
obtain a sense which becomes common for the whole group of communi­
cating subjects: it is the same thing that I see and that the other sees, it is
just that we see this same thing “ from out o f” different points of space.
The properties of what is seen are the same, though they present themselves
10 to each one in a correspondingly different way; and so are even the
secondary qualities, provided we are all normal perceivers, perceiving under
normal circumstances. Moreover, for all subjects, primary qualities are
manifest in the secondary, and of course those are Objectively identical.
Indeed it lies in the nature of this constitutive state of affairs that
15 communicating subjects, as long as the exchange of descriptive information
is not opposed, apprehend the sense-things themselves as intersubjective
identities, that they then further apprehend intersubjectively the already
higher senses of subjective-Objective thing-unities, and finally, that the
supplementation of the interchangeable experiences of these things with
20 similar content by other experiences which are not present as the same in
all subjects, and which hence are intersubjectively contradictory with regard
to the phenomenal dependence of these differences on a different psycho­
physical character of the subjects, makes possible a far-reaching constitu- [310]
tion of a concordant intersubjective Objectivity, which now at the same
25 time becomes the one valid for any single subject.
Continuing along this path we come then to the totality of relations
between Body and soul. Constituted together are the physical thing as
nature, the Body as aesthesiological unity, and the soul as a founded
reality, thus a non-selfsufficient one, with the Body as its substrate (the
30 Body always thought constitutively only as an aesthesiological unity). In
this series we do not come across the personal Ego, although each founded
psychic subject is a subject of lived experiences of acts. Concerning the
constitution of the personal Ego, it must be considered as having the Body
as fie ld o f its free will, and especially in this respect, that the kinesthetic
35 processes, which already provide essential contributions toward the consti­
tution of the thing of the lowest level, are characterized as free processes, to
which are joined, as dependent, processes of other sorts of aesthesiological
data. And thereby is connected the possibility of apprehending the Body as
freely m oved totality o f sense organs, i.e., as a complex of organs moving
40 freely in mutual coordination. If perception is to be constitutive of a thing,
then there must also pertain to it the possibility of Bodily movements as
“ free” movements.
In this way we come round to the constitution of the personal Ego.
Things are constituted for the Ego, but in unity with them the Ego is also
45 constituted in a certain empirically fam iliar manner (thus in a determinate
sort of apperception) as it relates itself to the appearing things. The Ego
carries out perceptual activities, and here belong essentially Corporeal
 “ activities.” Concerned with appearing things, the Ego directs its sense
organs in various ways; it moves its eyes, carries out a changing accommo­
dation, feels with its hand over the surface of the appearing body, etc.

Supplem ent II (to Section Two, pp. 1 1 8 f f .)

5 This old reflection on habituality is still extremely immature; although

everything essential is glimpsed, the description is not carried through to
the end with precision.
In the first place the doctrine of the pure Ego — before all else as
pole— must be [revised?].
10 Just like any object-pole, the Ego-pole is a pole of identity, a center of an
identity, and is an absolutely identical, though non-autonomous, center for
affects and actions.
It might already be said of affects (whose domain is the immanent sphere
and in particular what is in the foreground there) that their sediment is a
15 passive habituality in the Ego. That is still problematic. The Ego-pole is in
any case an apriori center of original Ego-properties. Just as an object has
its identity as a pole of relatively or absolutely permanent properties, and
just as every property is something identical though non-autonomous (in
the pole), so the same holds for the Ego. It is a pole of acts, though acts are
20 not properties, nor are they affects. But every act, carried out “ for the first
time,” becomes an “ instauration” of a permanent possession lasting
throughout immanent time (in the sense of a lasting identity). The Ego
remains unchanged as long as it remains “ of the same conviction,” “ of the
same opinion.” To change the conviction is to change “ oneself.” But
25 throughout change and unchange the Ego remains identically the same
precisely as pole. Where should we put the Ego of humors, of states: “ I am
in bad humor,” etc.?

Supplem ent III (to Section Two, p. 149, 1. 128)

The localization o f the ear noises in the ear

30 Here we have to attend to a phenomenon of orientation, the analogon of
the phenomenon of orientation in vision.
Corresponding to “ my ” approach or withdrawal (in the free “ I move ”)
a visual Object changes its orientation, and likewise so does an acoustic
Object, in virtue of an approximative function of different gradient found
35 in the two senses (in the one case the visual “ image,” retaining its identity,
grows in clarity and inner richness of moments when approached, in the
other case the acoustic “ image ”), connected with enhancement in the area
of accommodation.
I can stop my ears, more or less completely, just as I can shut my eyes.
40 Appearances that I have without a ccom m od atin g to them are not Objective
ones, nor are appearances which remain the same while the accommoda-
 tion is changing by my free movement. There is always an optimum of
accommodation, and that is the “ true ” one. For every distance there is a
different accommodation. — Null point of accommodation? Is that appro­
priate to the noise in the ears? Yes, the moving over there, if we call that
5 accommodation in this sphere, the bringing my ear nearer or farther away
by moving myself— where that does not alter anything, there I have an
Object in the Here. So it is my Body, it is a " subjective tone ” in the ear, or
it is subjective color appearances which remain unchanged and are
localized by me in the eye. But prior to all this insertion in the Body
10 something like that is in itself a null character. That is to be considered
further.

Supplem ent IV (to Section Three, pp. 181 f f .)

Our goal, the working out of the idea of transcendental phenomenology

in full clarity, requires a penetrating study of the relation between the [312]
15 natural sciences and the human sciences.
The outcome of our previous investigations is that phenomenology
maintains a relation to every science. Each science has its object-domain
and each has its method, i.e., its proper procedures to appropriate
theoretically the objectivities of the domain in question. Such objectivities
20 must first be given; the originarily giving consciousness, which corresponds
to them, plays in each science the role of source of ultimate foundation.
Together with this are joined the different ways of mediate foundation
along with the concomitant noetical principles of reason. All this is
material for phenomenological research: all the species of acts which the
25 researcher of any kind of science accomplishes, all the species of meanings
which in such acts mediate the relation to objectivities, all the modes of
appearances in which these objectivities enter into the researcher’s con­
sciousness, all the modes of thoughtful grasping and noetical qualification
which emerge therewith — all these become in phenomenology theoretical
30 Objects. Phenomenology does not investigate the objects investigated by
the researcher in other sciences; on the contrary, it investigates the total
system of possible acts of consciousness, of possible appearances and
meanings related to precisely those objects. All dogmatic investigation of
objects requires transformation into a transcendental investigation. Here
35 phenomenology, as became clear in our considerations, does not have to
deal with each separate object or every individual discipline whatsoever,
but it has rather to investigate the guiding lines of the principles of being
(regional universalities) or the system of rational ontologies. Once, for
example, the phenomenological work is done for the region of being,
40 “ nature in general,” then it is equally done, in the mode of generality, for
all special disciplines of the natural sciences, and only a consideration of
the particularities is then needed.
If we now want to pursue further the phenomenological “ clarification ” 1

1 The expression “ clarification” can be employed here only conditionally.

 of the natural and human sciences, then still other interests are motivating
us. Already before engaging ourselves in phenomenology, these sciences
and the mathematical disciplines intimately entwined with them are already
familiar to us, and they were already formed before phenomenology was
5 established. No matter how much it is for phenomenology a matter of life
and death that it draw its method from the data which are its own, we can
nevertheless not obviate the danger that habitual methods we have adopted
in those dogmatic sciences, and insights about method we have reflectively
formed in them, will determine and confuse us at the outset in our attempt
10 to found a pure phenomenology. If it is our concern to assure ourselves of
the specifics of the phenomenological method, then we must also become
clear about what distinguishes it from that which is apparently identical in
the methods of the dogmatic sciences. Hence we are often aware of being [31$
forced into considerations of a comparative nature. For instance, phenom-
15 enology describes consciousness and correlates of consciousness. But that is
precisely what is also done by mundane scientific psychology. How then is
phenomenological description related to mundane scientific description? Is
phenomenological description distinct from the latter only in that it is
eidetic whereas the mundane scientific description is empirical? Is it then
20 the case that every phenomenological description is eo ipso transformed
into a natural-Objective one when the eidetic attitude is abandoned?
Conversely, is it possible that even dogmatic empirical research can become
eidetic— insofar as empirical concretions are largely mere single examples
of the apriori? Is that actually a transition into phenomenology? From this
25 approach we encounter the question of the relation between a phenomeno­
logy and an ontology of nature and of the world in general. Natural science
is either physical or biological (psychological). What is the special status of
the descriptive psychology, based purely on inner experience, which has
been demanded repeatedly since the last third of the 19th century,
30 especially since Brentano (psychognosis) and Dilthey (descriptive, analytic
psychology)? This psychology certainly accepts the project of a descriptive
analysis of consciousness and its data. So it seems that within psychology
itself we encounter phenomenology and that eidetic phenomenology has to
be inserted into eidetic psychology as a part of it. Doubtlessly, there is an
35 element of truth expressed here (but certainly not the pure truth), and
connected with this is the fact that descriptive psychology offers a genuine
and natural point o f departure fo r the working out o f the idea o f phenome­
nology. This was in fact the way which led me to phenomenology. On the
other hand, it is to be fully established in a deeper investigation that
40 phenomenology the way we understand it — as eidetic, but, at the same
time, as resting on the transcendental reduction — is in no way descriptive
psychology and has, in strict truth, not even one part in common with it.
That, however, does not mean to deny the fact that a transcendental-
phenomenological attitude can be coordinated with each and every imma-
45 nent-descriptive attitude by means of certain, essentially available, apper­
ceptive transformations, and so is justified what we said above about the
“ element of tru th ” in the rejected view. It is obvious that this not only
 holds for empirical- descriptive psychology compared with our phenomeno­
logy (which is indeed supposed to be an eidetic discipline), but it also
applies to eidetic or rational psychology. In other w ords: the idea of our
pure phenomenology does not coincide at all with the equally necessary,
5 although up to now not explicitly realized, idea of a rational psychology [314]
(namely with regard to an eidetic-descriptive infrastructure which belongs
to such a psychology). The transition from the empirical-psychological to
the eidetic-psychological does not require any previous transcendental
reduction of the former and consequently does not lead to the eidetic-
10 phenomenological. It is of the highest importance, however, not only for
practical and methodological reasons but also for theoretical-scientific and
philosophical reasons, to make these relations perfectly clear, and to this
task we dedicate our forces.
With regard to the relation of phenomenology to the human sciences, a
15 relation which is surely problematic with respect to psychology, quite
analogous questions emerge. There are those who oppose phenomenology
to psychology; others want to take them together and unify them. These
views are not yet clarified and are, as is well known, the subject of much
debate. Only phenomenology can decide here, and specifically by means of
20 phenomenological analyses of the kind we have accomplished up to now,
for they are preconditions for the grounding of a systematic science of
phenomenology. Phenomenology is highly interested in the decisive solu­
tion of these questions, insofar as it is the very element of the life of
phenomenology to acquire a fully conscious clarity about itself, and this
25 urgently requires that the sense of human science and psychology be fully
clarified. If the characteristic essence of human science is grasped in its
purity and if then it is grasped as something other than natural-scientific
psychology and the disciplines dependent on it, there results a new way into
phenomenology and a much better one, more far-reaching than the way
30 from psychology.
However, the constitution of an eidetics of the spirit (rather than of
psychic nature in the psychological sense) immediately presses toward the
view that phenomenology is a discipline included therein. Again the
question arises concerning the justification of such an inclusion. In a more
35 penetrating investigation, the present state of affairs emerges as one that is
different than the one which resulted from a comparison of phenomenology
and psychology, since here it is clear that in the case of a very broad and at
the same time thoroughly concrete grasp of the idea of an eidetics of the
spirit, the latter in fact encompasses all of phenomenology, just as— in a
40 certain interpretation, with, so to say, a change of sign — on the other hand
it also encompasses all ontologies and all apriori disciplines whatever. In
connection with the investigations we have to devote to this problem, we
will be able to settle the question that is so important for the self-
understanding of phenomenology, the question of the relation between
45 phenomenology and ontology as well as the question o f the relation between
the m ethod o f phenomenology and the universal scientific-theoretical m ethod
o f intuitive “ clarification ” o f unclear concepts and principles. In this relation [315]
 it will be shown that the universal task of the clarification of all
concepts— understood in the universality of principles— and the correla­
tive task, to be accomplished in the most perfect intuition, of the eidetic
analysis and eidetic description of all objectivities and all kinds of unity
5 pertaining essentially to them, coincide with phenomenology. Individual
clarification is not a work of phenomenology as a science, individual
analysis in the sphere of intuition is not a phenomenological analysis, but it
becomes such as soon as it enters into the compass of a systematic analysis
and eidetic description of the totality of possible intuitive data. It would
10 then be apparent that (eidetically descriptive) phenomenology has the
status of the fundamental philosophical science, hence that phenomenolog­
ical philosophy and philosophy in general must be one and the same. And
in that case it would also become clear that philosophy and intuitive
philosophy must equally count as the same, provided the word intuition is
15 given its proper sense. This sense cannot be ascertained before phenome­
nology, but only through it. More precisely, if one takes into account what
resides in the most original sense of philosophical intuition and what kind
of intuition and mode of intuitive research is required by it, then, in
consistent thinking, one necessarily arrives at the phenomenological atti-
20 tude and the recognition of a great science, on which all philosophizing
must be based if it is to occur at all, precisely phenomenology in our sense.
If, however, one goes beyond the idea of an eidetic-descriptive phenome­
nology, projected originally in the first part of Ideas, to a systematic
development of all the deductive consequences which reside in it, then one
25 arrives at the universal system of an apriori, which encompasses all
conceivable apriori sciences, but as products of phenomenology, founded
purely subjectively and eidetically on absolute data. As a further conse­
quence, though now going back to the empirical, hence to what is factual,
one comes to a universal system of absolutely grounded sciences which can
30 even be designated as universal and naturally enlarged phenomenology.

S upplem en t V (to pp. 207 f.)

The pregivennesses o f the spirit or o f spirits, of individualities of a higher

level in the life o f the spirit .
We make up a normal human community, within which, however,
35 abnormal men can be found and, in addition, levels of various depth.
1.) before all, normal intuitive spatio-temporal nature, especially the
earth and for each circle of men their determinate earthly environment,
inorganic as well as organic. [31^
2 .) men and animals in determinate movable spatio-temporal distribu-
40 tions, constituted this or that way, at rest, working, etc.
3.) goods: works of art, implements, etc. Naturally useful things. Works,
tools, etc. All of which refer back to spiritual works of the past and the
future.
4 .) morals and customs, laws, religion, language, unions and statutes of
 unions, various society units with their particular norms, freely established
by the preference of the society (contracts), conventions in these unities,
classes, professional circles, etc.
Social personalities, the social forms of community which are not full
5 personalities and which are not societies of will and action (linguistic
communities, national communities without a national “ will” and their
correlates).
Genesis, spiritual origins. Origin of the single individuality, origins of
higher spiritual individualities. How the correlative surrounding worlds are
10 constituted in ever new levels, in which what was already constituted
becomes a pregiven objectivity. Types of individualities, solitary individuals
and social individualities, and how they arise. The human type of an epoch,
of a nation, of a professional circle in an epoch, etc.
Biography: description of an individuality in its development. Always
15 already an individual type.
H isto ry : description of the unity and development of a sociality enclosed
in itself with unitary correlates.
Social transformations, types within a development, types of the sociali­
ties which are developing and types of community-formations.
20 A rt and the development o f a r t ; science and its development. Develop­
ment of irreal objectivities as constituted givennesses.
Development o f humanity, of the way of its inner life. The type of its
individualities, its people, languages, arts, sciences, religions. The directions
of development, tendencies of development; ideas as motivations for
25 development, aims of development, God in history.
Development of man as man of a “ lower” level. Development of
sensibility. Development of nature as correlate. Origin of man out of the
animal.

S upplem ent VI (to Section Three, pp. 223 f f .)

30 Inspectio sui
What do I encounter as Ego and what as counter-Ego, as not-Ego, as
foreign to me?
Things are over and against me, not-I, foreign to me. [317]
Even my Body is over against m e— as body but not as Body; what
35 strikes my hand, my Body, strikes “ me.” — The sting in my hand: I am
stung, the sting is unpleasant to me. The warmth of the room flows
through my body, is pleasant to me.
Ego as subject of pleasure and displeasure, Ego as subject of “ acts.” I
pay attention, I grasp, I take together by collecting, I compare, I analyze,
40 I believe, I doubt, I am inclined to belief, I decide affirmatively, I reject, I
consider, I evaluate, I waiver in my evaluating and then decide, and
likewise for willing.
But acts are subjective in quite a different sense than my Body is. My
Body is at one time an Object foreign to me, is over and against me just as
 much as other things are, when it is taken precisely as a Corporeal body, as
that thing there which is in fact a thing like any other. The Body is,
however, also the bearer of fields of sensation, etc. If I stick something into
a piece of wax, then I do not have any “ sting ’’-sensation in my field of
5 touch, the way I do have if it is my Body that is stung.
Thus sensations are subjective, but in quite a different way than acts are.
I have sensations — it is in quite a different way that I carry out acts. The
Corporeal body as bearer of sense-data “ localized” in it, as substrate of
fields of sensation, is subjective in a metaphorical sense; but in addition it
10 is a field of free movement, and indeed in such a way that in certain fields
of sensation free processes are produced, to which then are joined similar
ones in other fields as consequences, apperceived, all in all, as “ I move my
hand, my foot,” etc.
But this connection points back to the fact that whatever is in itself
15 completely foreign to the Ego, every thing, is given through “ appear­
ances;” and appearances, sensations in unity with concomitant apprehen­
sions, “ images,” are subjective. But what sort of subjectivity is this? It is of
course quite different than that of the Ego-acts. I see a tree, I “ have”
appearances, images. I look the tree over, I touch it all over: I experience
20 courses of movement-sensations (in the eye; or, for touch, in the moving
hand), and these lived experiences are not only lived experiences of courses
of events but have the character of an “ I do.” Everything changeable in the
immediate “ I do ” is originally subjective. Thereby the images do not take
their course in just any way, but in a consistent way, as images of one and
25 the same thing and in sequences of fulfillment, tendencies of transition, and
to this is connected the stimulus to pay attention, the stimulus to observe
from every angle. The Object attracts, stimulates, wants to be considered. I
as subject of the voluntary or involuntary “ I do.”

Supplem ent VII (to Section Three, p. 224 to p. 245) [318J

30 The Ego and its over-and-against

Everything originarily proper to the subject is unified in the Ego and
belongs consequently on the side of the Ego. Everything else is over and
against it. We have here, with respect to all constituted “ things” and
“ matters,” an asymmetrical, non-reversible relation. I can indeed say that
35 the Ego is over and against the thing, but then the “ over and against”
loses its specific sense. Only an Ego can have an over-and-against in the
sense in question here. It can of course also function itself as such an
over-and-against. In that case, as Ego it has its over-and-against and is at
the same time an over-and-against for another Ego or is its own over-
40 and-against in reflection. But the non-Ego, the Object that is no subject, is
what it is only as an over-and-against, only as something constituted in
relation to an Ego or to an open Ego-multiplicity and its originally
egological characters.
 The Ego is itself over and against itself, is itself for itself, is constituted in
itself. Each Ego can also be over and against one or more other Egos, a
constituted Object for them, apprehended by them, experienced by them,
etc. But it is also constituted precisely for itself and has its constituted
5 surrounding world as non-Ego, as mere “ Objects,” which exist only as
constituted for an Ego and never as constituting themselves, as Ego. One
must never confuse being-an-Object, in general , (a special case of which is
the peculiar Objectivity of the not-I, and so is the being of the Ego as in an
extended sense being-an-Object for itself), with being-attended-to, being the
10 Object of theses, of position-takings, on the part of what exists as Ego. For
the latter presupposes the former. I “ become” an object for myself— an
object of my attention, etc. But I am an Object for myself only insofar as I
have “ self-consciousness,” even if I do not reflect. If I did not have this
self-consciousness then I would not be able to reflect. Likewise, prior to
15 every act of attention there is by essence a constitutive consciousness of the
objectivity in question.
It is now evident and beyond discussion that what is most proper to the
Ego is something experienced in or at the Body, that it is something unified
with the Body in the manner of a constituted stratum within a constituted
20 Objectivity. Each such Objectivity and stratum indeed belongs on the side
of the not-Ego, the over-and-against, which has sense only as the over-
and-against of an Ego. Thus if I regard an animal or a man as “ nature,”
then that is, together with the totality of nature and all its bodies, Bodies,
and animals, precisely nature, thing, non-Ego.
25 This is no more than a beginning, however. Much is still lacking for a
full understanding of the distinction we are bringing out here between the
Ego as person, as subject of its surrounding world, as subject of various
objectivities, especially as subject of real nature, constituted for it in such
and such a way, and as subject that experiences nature, is affected by it,
30 forms it, etc. — and, on the other hand, the human being as Object of
nature, the human subject, with soul and psychic qualities as occurrences in [319]
nature. What is lacking is, for instance, an understanding of the relation­
ship between the “ pure Ego,” earlier taken as a structural moment of all
cogitations and afterwards still very much utilized, and the Ego as person,
35 for the pure Ego must indeed be designated the subject of all Objects. What
is lacking is an understanding of the insertion into space and time, which
the person also attributes to himself, whereas he at the same time posits his
Body and all nature as not-Ego over and against himself. Was it not
claimed with respect to the psychic Ego that it owes its insertion into the
40 spatio-temporal world to its being founded in the physical Body? Is the
psychic Ego not the person in a naturalistic apperception?— precisely an
apperception requiring still deeper clarification. In addition, how can the
personal Ego, whose essence it is to have its not-Ego over and against itself,
apperceive itself as unified with a not-Ego? How can it, while remaining the
45 personal Ego, posit itself over and against the non-naturalized Ego as
something naturalized? Furthermore, does not the Ego as person require
the Ego as Thou, i.e., an over-and-against that is itself an Ego? Is it just a
 matter of the empirical accident of communicative interchange that such
words as Ego are coined, words that intimate communicative relationships;
or is it a relation belonging to the essence of personal Objectivation (the
subjectivating Objectivation) which is thereby expressed? Is this the essence
5 of the person, that it can be constituted only in a personal association; i.e.,
does the word “ person” designate a kind o f being that is in principle
relative — similar to “ material thing,” which is what it is only within a
possible thingly nexus?—
The positing o f the fellow man . Let us take the following path in order to
10 progress a step or two. We considered earlier how the Ego finds itself as
person. Let us inquire into how we find over and against ourselves our
fellow men not as natural Objects but as persons, as free Ego-subjects, as
partners. Thereby we shall also inquire into how the attitude changes in the
transition from the naturalistic to the personalistic consideration of the
15 fellow man. (We think here always of a consistent attitude and indeed one
that is theoretically interested.) Common to both attitudes is the givenness
of the fellow man through comprehension, but that functions differently in
the two cases. In the one case, what is comprehended is nature; in the
other, spirit. In the one case, what is consistently posited is the other’s Ego,
20 lived experience, and consciousness as a real determination of a real human
being, built on the fundamental apprehension and positing of material
nature, as something really-causally dependent on it, consequently as
something attached to it. In the theoretical attitude, accomplishing consis­
tent experience and experiential research, we find here as our thematic
25 domain the one nature or world of realities with the real physio-psychic
unities (of animal nature) contained in it. In the other case, the Ego, and
specifically as person, is “ posited purely and simply ” and thereby posited
as subject of its personal environment, as related, by means of understand­
ing and empathy, to other persons as partners in a social nexus, to which
30 corresponds a unitary social surrounding world, whereas at the same time
each one of them has his own environment bearing the stamp of his own
subjectivity.
What is the sense of this “ pure and simple” positing of the person and
of the personal surrounding world as its correlate? For is it not, as one will
35 immediately ask, through the comprehension in which the other person is
given that he is posited in relation to his Body and as one with it? Suppose
we are within a society. Looking about naively, we find in front of our eyes
things, Bodies, people. But Bodies are also things; unified with them and
expressed in them we find personal life. In empathy we apprehend persons.
40 We address ourselves to them, just as they address themselves to us. We
determine them, they determine us. What we have here is not two things,
intertwined with each other extrinsically. Rather, what we find here is
intrinsically one. The persons are the men themselves who enter into
personal relations with us; and Bodies are included in the human unity. All
45 that is correct. Similarly, the unity given in this way is not a naturalistic
unity, any more than... (this manuscript continues on p. 245, 1. 37).
 S upplem ent VIII (to Section Three, p. 248)

It is just like reading a newspaper: the paper imprinted with sensory-

intuitive marks is unified with the sense expressed and understood in the
word-signs. Likewise in the case of any other literary offering, whether it be
5 spoken, written, etc. It has as it were a sensuous Body for a spiritual
meaning that is grasped by way of understanding; “ Spirit” and “ Body”
are unified in a particular way in terms of appearances. The objectivity
designated just now as “ Body” is altogether something given in pure and
simple intuition, in mere secondary qualities; in these and in no others it is
10 “ there” precisely for the one who understands, and it belongs to his
environment. Only as such an environing Objectivity does it become for
him relevant for the functions of “ understanding” or “ expression” he has
to exercise. But the relations are of course not altogether the same, and in
addition a more profound analysis shows that all such comprehensive
15 unities refer back to the unity of Body and spirit in the ordinary and most
proper sense. But the reference to them can at the same time serve to make
clearer the character of the unity which interests us here. The human
Body... (continued on p. 256, 1. 17).

S upplem ent IX (to Section Three, p. 252)

20 This applies furthermore also to all human products in visible reality. As [321]
products of the animated Body, they are animated just as any thingly
process produced, stimulated, or elicited by human agency: a stroke that is
aimed, a stick wielded, a book written, etc., take on the spirituality of the
Body. The movement of a machine has its spirituality just as the machine
25 itself has. Each work, each product, each action expresses an activity and is
characterized as work, as act: one sees how the cigar is rolled, one
discovers therein the expression of a manipulation and, on the other hand,
the “ visible” aim. The handwriting, each stroke in it, its " ductus ” bears
the stamp of the operative spirit. In short, products and works are again
30 psycho-physical unities; they have their physical and their spiritual aspects,
they are physical things that are “ animated. ”

S upplem ent X (to Section Three, pp. 259 ff.)

Personal Ego and surrounding world

This will come to be understood still much better if we engage ourselves
35 in a consideration of the relation o f reciprocal determination between the
personal subject and its surrounding w orld: for example, the personal
subject’s being determined in function of the values of an Object of the
surrounding world, namely through its valuable properties, its beautiful
color or form etc., and, conversely, the determination of the Object of the
40 surrounding world by the subject, e.g., by the free movement of the subject,
though what is moved immediately is the Body.
 First of all, however, we again ask the question: what comprises the pure
and simple positing o f the personal subject, the “ spirit;” i.e., in what
consists the straightforward attitude towards the personal subject? The
answer is : while living in the understanding of the Body which appears in
5 our environment, we posit the spirit, the person, exactly as it is given in
comprehension , and it is given in comprehension in a way that is essentially
analogous to the way in which each of us is given to himself in the
" inspectio sui," as “ spirit” of his Body and o f the rest of his transcendent
surrounding world, similarly as subject of the things he sees, of his ever
10 changing appearances of his “ external” things and again as Ego-subject of
his acts and states (in the “ sum co g ita n s,f) as accomplishing them, as
active, passive, receptive, etc. The difference, however, consists in this, that
in the inspectio I perceive my subjective surrounding world insofar as it is a
material world, whereas I do not perceive the subjective material world of
15 the other: I understand it by empathy and I identify it with my surround­
ing world according to the things we have reciprocally in common. The
distinctive characteristic of the material surrounding world consists in its
being, in original constitution, the surrounding world of the individual
subject, i.e., one constituted in his perceptions, and consequently in the
20 appearances of the things as he sees them (and in whatever other
sense-appearances of things he has), and finally in his appearances of things [32)
as full and complete. Each person has therefore, along with his perceptions
and perceptual nexuses, the things of his material surrounding world (they
are the same as those which subsequently, from the standpoint of the
25 naturalistic apprehension, come to count as “ appearances ” of physicalistic
things), and these things first come to intersubjective identification in
comprehension. And then we claim: we “ see” the same things, with the
only difference that each one sees them from his own standpoint, with an
orientation and, in general, with a mode of appearance which can never be
30 the same as the other’s at one and the same time.
In more precise terms, with respect to the same things of the intersubjec­
tive material surrounding world, the perceptions of any one person are for
essential reasons different in content from the simultaneous ones of any
other person; appearing things in their mode of appearance are in principle
35 peculiar to each experiencer in the same present. The situation can also be
expressed by saying that in the m ost proper sense each person sees in his
perceptions the sensory-intuitive unities constituted in them exclusively, and
thus they are his own. It is not through mere seeing (through mere “ sense ”
perception), but through the comprehension founded therein, that the
40 intersubjectively “ perceived ” thing is constituted originally as a unity of a
higher level. Even if this thing is not perceived in the primary and stricter
sense — insofar as we understand by perception mere seeing, touching, etc.,
in which is constituted the mere “ sense-thing,” bound completely to the
individual subject, as a unity in the changing of his, this subject’s, changing
45 images (apparencies)— yet talk of perception as regards the intersubjective
thing is justified to this extent, that it is constituted originally in those
founded acts (and in principle only in such ones), and thus, in other words,
 it comes to givenness originarily in them. But we are used to designating
quite universally any lived experience in which an individual being comes to
originary givenness as perception and to employ the word “ seeing”
accordingly.
5 We have said that everyone perceives sensorially and on the lowest level
his subjective surrounding world, insofar as he lives only his own sense-data
and his own apprehensions, and no one can live those of another and can
never have ones that are completely like another’s. This leads to the further
consequence that everyone has his stream of lived experience, his acts and
10 states, to which he can, in the inspectio , direct his reflective gaze, and
everyone has his pure Ego and likewise his personal Ego, which we have
distinguished from the pure Ego. Let us think of comprehension, grasping
it as actively performed. But in comprehension what each one can grasp is
other persons, in unity with the sensory perception of the other Bodies as
15 Corporeal bodies of his physical surrounding world, and he perceives them
in an original understanding of their “ meaning,” and specifically as
analogons of his own Ego of the inspectio . Thus the other is thereby given
again as “ Ego,” one that encounters its Body as aesthesiological unity, and [323]
likewise as the free field of the other’s “ I move,” as center of orientation of
20 his sensuous things, appearing in an eminent manner over and against the
things in his environment, things that in general are the “ same” as the
ones I have over and against me but now are oriented to my Body, the
Body given to me as mine. The predominant relations here and the only
problematic ones are those of the Ego to its acts, in which it lives and
25 precisely in virtue of which it relates to its surrounding world, the latter
determining its comportment and in turn being determined by that
comportment. This surrounding world has its universal sense and relations,
which first of all arise in comprehension, namely the sense of an “ Objec­
tive” surrounding world, which presupposes genetically the merely subjec-
30 tive surrounding world as primal constitution.
In this connection we need to consider not only the Objective physical
world, but rather we also need to recall the relation in which, again in
virtue of comprehension, an Ego arises for an other, a person for another
person. The primary cardinal opposition between Ego and non-Ego (as
35 Object foreign to me) prior to all comprehension determines also the
cardinal distinctions in the relation between the Ego and the material
surrounding world and between the Ego and the personal surrounding
world: thus in the last analysis between the Ego and an other Ego, over
and against the former and yet still an Ego, precisely an “ other.” My Ego
40 is given to me in a totally different manner than a physical thing is; it is not
adumbrated through sensations, its states are in consciousness, and are
lived, as one with their being; they do not merely “ present” themselves as
unities, which indeed as self-presenting would refer back to lived experi­
ences in which they would appear through presentation. In the nexus of the
45 conscious lived experiences of the Ego as a nexus of absolute givennesses,
the Ego manifests itself absolutely; in the flux of its immanent life, in the
determinate manner of its immanent course of life, it manifests its empirical
 personal unity, its “ individuality.” Thus the egological states are “ abso­
lute” states; that is, they are not merely constituted in relation to absolutes
(lived experiences) as intentional unities of them. What the Ego is given to
itself as, that is precisely how the other Ego is understood in his Body, in
5 virtue of the analogizing comprehension; it is therefore given in absolute
manifestation, in self-manifestation, simply, straightforwardly, without
appearances. In that way Ego enters into relation with Ego: as something
absolutely self-manifesting with an other absolutely manifest to itself. And
just as the individual person is a unity of absolute manifestation, so also is
10 every kind of social unity manifesting itself as a unity of a higher level in
the individual persons founding it as subjects of certain nexuses of acts . 1 It
manifests itself in states which consist of reciprocal relations of empathy [324
between the individual subjects involved, and likewise these are not unities
of appearance nor are they constituted through adumbrational “ presenta-
15 tion.” All personal unities of a lower or higher level belong together
therefore from the radical viewpoint of the mode o f their constitution , and
likewise so do, from another side, all that is impersonal in the surrounding
world, all material objectivities; the latter are constituted as relative, the
former as absolute.

20 The levels o f the constitution o f Objective reality

In a marvelous fashion, the levels of constitution of reality are built on
one another: the individual Ego, encountering only itself absolutely,
constitutes in sequences of levels of appearances its “ external” world, a
world of appearances that is transcendent, though relative, to it. By way of
25 the comprehension of the Bodies appearing to it therein, it grasps other
Egos as absolutely self-manifesting unities, it finds itself in an association of
personal unities and enters into mutual understanding with them. Along
with this is constituted, on the one hand, “ Objective ” physical nature as an
identical unity, and over and against it the subjective worlds (i.e., the
30 separate worlds constituted for the individual subjects posited in a compre­
hensive relation) which are constituting manifolds. On the other hand,
through the interweavings of mutual understanding, social personalities of
a higher degree are constituted, related to the common Objective surround­
ing world as the world to which henceforth all persons find themselves
35 related socially and also as singular individuals. It is the world of their
socially significant and perhaps also socially performed labor, and in
general it is the world constituted in a manifold of specifically social acts
whose sense includes communalities.
However, a world which is still differently constituted is intertwined with
40 it. When persons find over against themselves other persons related to the
world they have in common, then they can also carry out those changes in
1 This is too fast. There are indeed new kinds o f unities, in the unities of
primordial manifestation, that we call Egos, self-giving, though still in a peculiar
manner. This is not “ appearance,” but is in fact quite analogous to primordial
manifestation. This must be examined more closely.
 apprehension we have designated as the naturalistic attitude. They can take
as one with the appearing Bodies the persons grasped comprehensively in
them and can then apprehend these unities in a naturalizing way. What is
then given are not the pure, absolutely self-manifesting unities we call
5 persons, related only to the phenomenal Objects constituted as surrounding
world, but what is given are in a certain way apperceptive transformations
of these, which now themselves have taken on the character of unities of
appearance. The personal subject residing in the psychophysical unity — the
psychic subject with psychic qualities and states in the sense of natural-
10 scientific psychology — has assumed, in virtue of the new apperception,
which requires causal intertwining with the Body, moments that can be
constituted only in the constitutive connection with the real that is given
through appearances (by means of an adumbrative presentation), and that [325]
are hence, even if only in a mediate way, of a natural kind, belonging to the
15 order of appearances. The realm of nature is the realm of the “ phenom­
enal;” that means here the realm of the real unities constituted in or by
means of “ presentation.” The realm of the spirit, however, is the realm of
the realities given in absolute manifestation (self-manifestation and mani­
festation through comprehension), realities having behind themselves only
20 the pure Ego as the irreal, absolute substrate of all manifestation of
reality.
The relation of person to person, of human being to human being, in the
world of the spirit is hence essentially different from the relation between
human beings in nature; and it is again essentially different from the
25 relation between persons and human beings as natural Objects (e.g.,
Objects of zoology or of psychology as a natural science). The human being
in the personal world (the world of spirit, we also say, as the domain of the
human sciences) is the unity of Body as expression of spirit and of spirit
as expressed in the Body, as it is given in the personalistic attitude. One can
30 even speak here of a founded unity insofar as the spirit is comprehended on
the basis of the perception of the Body (in which, being merely sensuous,
the Body is given as a mere sensuous thing), and of course the unity of
Body and spirit is also a founded unity . 1

Pure Ego and personal Ego2

35 It is now time to raise to clarity the distinction between pure Ego and
personal Ego presupposed all along. The former is, according to our earlier
presentation, the pure subject of each cogito in the unity of a stream of
lived experiences, in each of which something absolutely identical steps
forth and again steps back, but without being generated or passing away.
40 We grasp this Ego hence in reflection, in which we grasp pure conscious­
ness (the one purified in the transcendental reduction) and from which we
take the Ego residing in it but not “ manifesting ” itself. This Ego is not a
reality and so does not have real properties. The personal Ego, on the

1 The paragraph appended here in the manuscript can be found on p. 259, 11.
5-14.
2 Cf. § 57, bearing the same title (pp. 259 fT.).
 contrary, is indeed a reality, and this in conformity with the concept of
reality we have fixed and clarified. The original sense of the word “ real ”
refers to things of nature, and nature can be understood here as the nature
appearing sensuously in relation to the individual subject, on a higher level
5 it can be understood as the imperfectly Objective nature related appercep-
tively to an open nexus of “ normally ” experiencing subjects, or, finally, it
can be understood as nature in the sense of natural science, the ultimate
and perfectly Objective nature. Spiritual realities stand over against all
these levels of natural objectivities that are connected together constitu-
10 tively. Spiritual “ substance” is fundamentally different from thingly “ sub­
stance,” whereby substance is here only another expression for “ real
object,” bearer of real properties.
We already know one aspect of the make-up of the distinction: natural
realities are unities of “ appearances,” and the appearances belong to
15 Ego-subjects, which in turn are themselves apprehensible as realities, but as
realities which are unities of absolute manifestation. The latter, however,
means that they manifest themselves in absolute consciousness, which, as
manifesting consciousness, experiences the apprehension as a state of
spiritual unity. What we now need is the clarification of the determinate
20 way in which this manifestion is possible, and what the “ real circum­
stances” here consist in, to which the idea of reality as unity of real
properties is related. After all our analyses, the answer is easily given.
Already through the relation which belongs to the idea of pure Ego,
already through the objective correlate which comes to consciousness in the
25 cogito as its cogitatum, we have a relation to objectivity pertaining to the
essence of the pure Ego and consequently to every Ego. For the personal
Ego, which is constituted as a comprehensive unity, this means that Ego
and surrounding world belong together and are inseparable from each
other. The Ego has the surrounding world over and against itself, both as
30 the natural world of things and as the personal world, of which it is a
personal member. As we have seen earlier in our descriptions, the Ego
carries out, with regard to what is first given in the surrounding world, the
things and persons standing over and against it perceptually, certain active
modes of comportment: it evaluates, it desires, it acts, it forms things
35 creatively, or it comports itself theoretically in experience and research, etc.
Likewise it comports itself as passive, it undergoes “ effects” from the
things and the persons, it finds itself determined by them to positive or
negative evaluation, to a desiring or a rejecting, etc. It finds itself
“ influenced” by persons, it “ complies with them,” it accepts commands
40 from them or it gives them commands, etc.
From the standpoint of pure consciousness all this is reduced to
intentional lived experiences together with their concomitant intentional
correlates, and with regard to all these lived experiences the pure Ego is
something identical. As subject of all such modes of comportment,
45 however, the pure Ego assumes a realizing apprehension that can be
performed by a new act of the pure Ego in relation to itself and to its past
modes of comportment of which it is conscious in memory, or that can also
 be performed by a pure Ego in acts of comprehension as regards an other
Ego. That is to say, each pure Ego, as identical subject of its pure
consciousness, can be apprehended as something which has its determi-
nately specific modes of relating to its surrounding world, its determinate
5 way of letting itself be motivated by it in active and passive kinds of
comportment; and everyone who has developed to maturity apprehends
himself in that way, is aware of himself as a person.
The meaning of personal apprehension, the correlate of which is personal
reality, shows itself, as is the case with every other basic kind of
10 apprehension, in the corresponding experience exhibiting it. If we interro- [327]
gate this experience, then we encounter throughout a determinate type of
comportment toward the common interpersonal surrounding world. On the
foundation of the entire stream of lived experience, through which is
constituted for the present subject its surrounding world (world of things
15 and personal surrounding world), an identical real Ego-subject manifests
itself, and as identical it is manifest in relation to real circumstances: what
functions as the latter are exclusively the things or persons and their
qualities and relations, etc., of which the subject is conscious as objective
reality (for instance, what is. actually experienced by the subject or what is
20 reproductively given as existing (positional consciousness) either in clear or
obscure presentifications or in mediate positing in thought). It is obvious
that these things and persons are constituted as intersubjective unities;
hence they are not considered merely as constitutive correlates of an
individual Subject, as exhibitable in the mere multiplicities of experience of
25 this individual subject. The person as such is related to the intersubjectively
constituted world, which is one for all subjects and to which the person is
joined by means of comprehension. In this intentional world of things and
persons (at first subjects, which all subsequently become apprehensible in a
real way as persons) reside the real circumstances in which subjects exercise
30 and undergo “ causality” and in which they (according to the regulated
character of this causality, which is precisely constitutive for the genuine
sense of causality and consequently also of substantiality) preserve their
identical substance, the identity of the person.
The world as the sphere of influence of persons: that is a constitutive
35 correlation which, as is evident, is connected quite closely with the
correlation between reality itself (real substance) and causality in the special
sense at issue here. To each reality belongs (for once to use the word in
another, somewhat enlarged, sense) a “ surrounding world ” of realities as
the domain of the real circumstances of its influence or, as we can also say,
40 as its field of influence; conversely, each reality then also belongs to the
field of influence of its “ partners” in this “ surrounding world.” Hence in
our case, too, the correlate of personal reality or substance is its real
surrounding world, and the latter is now a dualistic one, composed of
things and persons. To be sure, it is evident here that the many kinds of
45 realities are themselves essentially bound to each other by means of a
correlation: the reality of persons demands the reality of things, and the
reality of things equally demands that of persons.
 S upplem ent XI (to Section Three, pp. 2 7 7 f f .)

Them e:
The human being apprehended in an inductive-natural w ay — the empirical
real, this human being , this person — is not the Ego o f facu lties, is not the [328jf
5 person himself, and in particular is not the fre e person.

Thinking of myself in my action, running through it, so to say,

quasi-repeating it, I experience the “ I am free,” “ I can do it.” But how is
that? Not as mere doxological possibility (possibility of phantasy). On the
basis of this empty ideal possibility is built (again as ideally possible) a
10 practical consent and the insight that from the fia t the action 44would come
forth” eventually. On the other hand, there exist the ideal possibilities of
unfree restraint, distraction, etc. And again, ideal possibilities that in spite
of a strong counter-affection, the “ I d o ” still would proceed or that,
unimpeded by it, I would act freely and not be deterred. I then grasp the
15 essence of the “ I resist,” “ I engage my Ego-power (power of action),” and
of the “ I do,” “ the action has its source in the Ego itself.” In precisely this
way I grasp the essence of the negative f l a t : “ I refuse to give my practical
consent to the distracting stimulus.” But also the tension between both
these “ powers,” the upsurge of the activity of the will (the intensity of the
20 power of action, of Ego-power) over and against the mounting stimulus
(intensity of affection, of passive power, which is something negative over
and against the positive affection and Ego-power).
If both are involved, then something which affects the senses is chosen;
where there are no counter tendencies the power of action is minimal.
25 The question is whether all this is sufficient. D o I have a consciousness o f
factu al freedom on the basis o f the experience that I acted, or that I often
gave my practical consent? Hence in the mode of an experiential appercep­
tion?
E.g., freedom: I can weave thoughts, I can choose to think of anything I
30 want, I can frame the hypothesis that it is this way and not that way. I
make a beginning and if need be I can change the beginrting again into a
neutrality modification, and I know with certainty that I can do it, based
on experience.
But is it always experience, mere experience? I resist such an assump-
35 tion.
By immersing myself in the form of neutrality I can relive the restricting
power of affection and can, so to say, measure it and accordingly
quasi-produce the tension of the active power necessary for there to be an
overcoming. But I can also see that I, as I am fa ctu a lly , cannot summon
40 this power, it will be beyond me. If I hypothesize, with regard to my
empirical Ego, that I could do it, then the operative power does not match
it, and if the occasion arises it will surely be found wanting and will
certainly be overcome by the passive power. \yyQ\
We can formulate here an antinom y: I
 T hesis: Every conscious ability is given as a product o f experience; the Ego
itse lf the subject o f active faculties, is a product o f experience.
A ntithesis: There is an insightful, non-empirical ability, such a one, namely,
that does not spring inductively fro m similar experiences o f the corresponding
5 action. I have the power to act and I can “ see” this power.

If I project myself imaginatively into a temptation, I, being the one I am,

can envisage what follows that beginning: I withstand the temptation, I
deny it my assent, I overcome it, perhaps being reinforced by this or that
motive. Or more simply: it is something evil, I reject it. This is not mere
10 experiential knowledge, knowledge of the “ I am wont to behave in such a
way, to make such repudiations, and therefore I will no doubt also do so in
the future.” That would m ean: I have the empirical property of deciding in
such a way under such circumstances. But that is not the sense o f the fa cu lty
we are trying to grasp here, the “ I can.” This sense is the one by which the
15 beginning of the situation and the value judgment would motivate me,
being the one I am, as a sort of consequent, to decide in this or that way
and to act accordingly: whereby it is not claimed that it would be the right
thing to do, for I can also find that I would decide in favor of the
temptation.
20 When I judge another , for the most part I follow experience. He has
repeatedly shown himself to be a blackguard, he will continue to act that
way. But this experiential knowledge is not an understanding o f the other. If I
understand him, then I see deeply into his motivations and then I do not
need empirical apperception, apperception of the habitual.
25 Naturally, that must then agree with experience. Experience can raise
objections to my apprehension. In that case I would have to consider
whether the concordance in experience was not a mere semblance. I might
then find that the motives were precisely factually different than I
presupposed, the situation not quite the same. If he is the one he is, actually
30 the same Ego, then it is his type to be able to do this and not to do
that.

Ego as subject o f m y decisions and my position-takings, my self-

determinations that have arisen from original, instaurating position-
takings, my definite positions on these or those questions; and with this is
35 connected: Ego as subject of motivations in the specific sense, that I let
myself be motivated by whatever type of motives in such and such a way,
i.e., to take such and such a position. As this subject I have my more or less
fixed style, although I do not retain these positions in all particulars, a style
which necessarily expresses itself on the outside, necessarily puts associa- [330]
40 tions into play, necessarily constitutes associations about myself in my life,
so that I have always constituted and continue to constitute of myself,
according to my own type, an inductive “ outer representation.”
How is this related to the Ego of faculties and lack of faculties, the “ I
can ” and the “ I cannot” ? Here a foundation must be laid carefully first.
45 Precedence goes to the “ I do,” specificallly the “ instinctive” one; then the
 originally following “ I d o !” as “ I will,” with original success and failure.
In repeated success, i.e., through exercise, the practical ability increases. It
increases from the “ association” belonging peculiarly to this sphere, an
analogy with association in the usual sense. In that way is made possible
5 again: willing on the basis of the experiential ability that was previously in
consciousness, especially the will that chooses, the rationally premeditative
will that considers whether it can accomplish something and what it can
accomplish. I know from experience that I have various practical abilities,
but I also know that these are not fixed abilities of mine, that they require
10 exercise and are subject to deterioration from lack of exercise or other
causes. I have an empirical-inductive representation of my Ego-faculties
and can acquire, by imagining myself into other situations, certitude,
though only an inductive one, about what I would do. In more precise
terms, I do not only have faculties and lack of faculties as related one by
15 one to individual cases, but the apperception of faculties may be transferred
to similar cases just as with any apperception, and thus it is in fact
apperception according to the usual sense. It is only that it is precisely an
apperception of faculties, a practical apperception, analogous to the
apperception of being, just as the association of what is exercised, that is in
20 question here, is an analogon of the apperception of being. We must not
fail to note that the transfer of an actually experienced “ I can and I effect ”
to a new case is not simply an inductive ontological belief, related to my
ability as a fact, but that I experience in practical consciousness itself a
possible ability.
25 The ability or lack of ability, which is not a matter for a position-taking,
which precedes it either as valuing or desiring, etc., or leaves it open,
positing it only hypothetically, must be distinguished from that ability and
lack of ability that is related to position-taking. I have not done that in my
text, and so amongst the good things there, there is something essentially
30 flawed.
For we need to establish a fundamental essential distinction, distinguish­
ing all other subjective events (according to the type “ I move”) from all
position-takings. These are not subordinate to the will. I cannot surrender
my judgment in the motivation in which it emerges; and likewise with other
35 position-takings. In connection with them I can still do much. I can inhibit,
posit hypothetically, etc. A position-taking is not a practical possibility like
just any kinesthesis in the system of my kinesthetic “ I can.” [331]
It is necessary to carry on our reflections here with the utmost care.
Suppose I do not have a judgment yet, do not yet have a will, have not yet
40 evaluated. I can proceed to acquire such. I look around for motives and
once I have them the decision follows, not in an arbitrary fashion but as a
motivated consequence. And it arises prior to the question of the insightful
foundation, unless I had already made such a foundation my goal. The way
I am, I as the subject of my previous convictions, and the way within this
45 sphere motives determine me precisely as this Ego, that is how the decision
is produced. What is most proper to the person resides in the Ego as
substrate of decisions and not in the Ego of mere faculties. When I say that
I cannot carry out a certain decision, e.g., the decision to commit a murder,
 when I say I cannot do something like that, I am saying something about
the way I am (and perhaps about how I used to be and how I supposedly
will be); all the motives pertaining to a murder as ones which could
possibly determine it are not, for me, effective ones. The possibility of a
5 murder is a practical possibility to the extent that I, assuming I desired it,
had the ability to carry it out. Each act of the will is related to a practical
realm and thus so is this one. And in that sense I can perform almost any
wrong act (although, more precisely, many acts which have been carried
out by others go beyond my practical abilities, e.g., climbing up facades).
10 But with regard to position-taking, its possibility does not belong at all in
the area of practical possibilities. But here we must certainly distinguish
between cases of evidence and non-evidence. At all events, as I am, I can
predict how I, the one I am, would behave (taking a position) if the
occasion arises, provided it is a situation clearly circumscribed and clearly
15 represented by me, whereas, to the extent that the situation is undetermined
I will not be able to say anything with certitude.
As subject of position-takings and of habitual convictions I have of
course my style, which is inductively operative and which will lead to a
corresponding self-apperception, and in this way it is possible to proclaim
20 inductively, both about myself and about others, how the position-takings
would transpire. On the other hand, a position-taking is not a mere effect
of an association, and even if it is correct that in my consideration of how I
would decide in any given case I am dependent on my previous life and my
former decisions, yet this dependency does not mean that the answer I
25 would give to such questions has been acquired in an extrinsic inductive
way. I depend on motives, in the reactivation of an old decision I depend
on my former decision; I am now the one I am as determined by my prior
being (by my decisions). And in that way even as personal subject of actual
and possible decisions, according to my original peculiar character as well
30 as according to the decisions which have been carried out in factual
relations, I am a unity of determinations (a unity of positions and other [332]
peculiar characters in them), a unity not based on mere association but
preceding it. Because I have a unique character, because I behave according
to that character in a regular way, I must become inductively apprehensible
35 and I must be able to become a theme for an inductive consideration. But
these are all extrinsic considerations: the inductions are proven correct or
incorrect in an external way, but nevertheless they require here a second
verification by means of a transition from exteriority to interiority, insofar
as I precisely am the one I am, not as nature, but as a position-taking
40 Ego.
 S upplem en t XII (to Section Three, pp. 2 6 3 f f .)

I. THE PERSON — THE SPIRIT AND ITS PSYCHIC BASIS

(CONCERNING THE EGO AS PERSON ) 1

§ 1. The distinction between primal sensibility

5 and intellectus agens

The spiritual sphere is the one o f 44 Ego-subjectivities,” the sphere of the

cogitationes which irradiate as activities from the Ego and which within
subjectivity itself, and then going beyond it, weave from one Ego-subject to
another proper networks of nexuses which (in opposition to real— natural,
10 spatial, thingly— unities) constitute personal unities (persons themselves
and personalities at the social level as well as all looser societies). The
spiritual sphere has, notwithstanding this nexus proper to it, its underlying
basis in the inferior 44psychic ” and in addition has its immanent teleology
in the lawful transformations of the higher into the lower, of the spiritually
15 active into passivities, into a secondary sensibility providing the future
Ego-actions with pregivennesses, and at the same time it has predelineated
ways of what can properly be called re-production, ways of retransforma-
tion back into activities.
All spiritual activity, every Ego-act, shares in what is proper to active
20 intentionality: it is a perceptual grasping, an explicating of the perceived
object, an explicating of the directedness to individual features, and the
referring of them back step by step to the identical substrate of the features,
to 44the same,” a comparing and distinguishing, a predicating of under­
standing, a thinking of the universal and an apprehension of the particular
25 under the viewpoint of the universal, a consciousness of what is singular (of
what is one and unique precisely in the logical meaning of particular
consciousness), a subordination of a particular thought under the general
contents thought of as universal. It is an evaluating, and specifically
self-evaluating or evaluating for the sake of a foundational value; it is the [333]
30 positing of a goal and the striving for means, etc. All personal 44intention­
ality” refers to activity and has its origin in activities. For it is either an
intentionality which has arisen originally and is then active, or it is a
“ sedimentation” of activities, which as such are meaningful and in their
44 sense ” refer back to the active or constitutive nexuses, and that by means
35 of many levels built one on the other. Each new act, as a new intentional­
ity, constitutes ever new objectivities productively experienced as act-
correlates. An act is as it were an intending (in a very broad sense), and
every act-formation, such as a predicating, deducing, demonstrating pro­
cess of thought, or the thinking of a researcher which goes on from
40 hypotheses up to probabilities, and likewise each nexus which evaluates

1 Cf. §61, pp.288 ff.

 unitarily and which is performed by the evaluating subject, or each nexus of
acts of the will in the unity of one action, along with the acts which lie at
their basis and are essentially foundational for them — all these are
act-connections which, even in their often overwhelming implications, make
5 up the unity of one act and bring to consciousness an objective correlate
which thereby stands “ over and against” the Ego. And all simple or
involved acts stand under the point of view of validity or invalidity, and in
that way to all o f them belongs the idea o f truth (which in its universaliza­
tion goes beyond the domain of judgment).
10 All original productivity, original at least in one or more steps, is
act-spontaneity. But every spontaneity sinks down into passivity, and that
means here that each objectivity can originally enter into consciousness as
productive in its originary constitution (or in the quasi-originary constitu­
tion of reproduction, memory, mere phantasy, etc.), or it can come to
15 consciousness as “ sensuous” in the form of a passive retrospective
consciousness, which, after productive consciousness runs its course,
remains behind and admits a retrospective gaze (the most primitive
single-rayed spontaneity) upon the object that was just now actively
constituted, or a memory can emerge or even a transformation of former
20 productions can occur through the efficacy of psychic laws, etc. In this way
objectivity can also be given passively and render possible, according to its
character, explications, clarifications, and approximations or can set in
motion tendencies in those directions. To all secondary intentionalities we
must ascribe such tendencies, and they are tendencies toward “ renewal ” or
25 toward transformation into spontaneous acts and nexuses of acts corre­
sponding to them.
The spirit has a psychic basis. This shows itself in that the subject-Ego is
not relegated to mere retentions and memory reproductions. The sensuous
reproduction holds sway also in the form that under sensuously similar
30 circumstances something similar emerges, and in this way sensuous similar­
ity tends to bring it about that new pregivennesses of a sensuously similar
kind, which arose productively earlier, arise again, and among them are [334]
ones which despite this similarity (and indeed because this similarity is
precisely often a merely “ extrinsic ”-^ensuous one) cannot be transformed
35 into the state of originality. In this way can be understood contradictions
of various kinds and absurdities, which indeed are presumably given or
which, as false and yet unitarily understood and thought, are held to be
true. The doxa requires the unitary execution of a production in the
verification and only then has its “ rights.” And the same applies to every
40 kind of thetic quality.
We distinguish here sensibility and (let us say) reason. In sensibility we
distinguish prim al sensibility, which does not contain any sediment of
reason, and secondary sensibility, which arises through a production of
reason. Accordingly we distinguish also within reason between original
45 reason, intellectus agens, and reason which has been degraded into sensibil­
ity.
 § 2. Sensibility as the psychic basis of the spirit

Let us now discourse on sensibility: by that term we understand the

“ psychic” basis of the spirit, and of the spirit on all conceivable levels, i.e.,
the underlying basis of the acts of the spirit on all their conceivable levels,
5 from the lowest, which we can exemplify as the simple act of directing a ray
of spiritual regard onto something affecting the subject, which it terminates
in, grasps, or considers, or as the act of simple turning toward something in
active pleasure, etc., up to the highest rational acts of theoretical thinking
or of artistic creation or of social-ethical behavior.
10 What then is this psychic basis? Primal sensibility is composed of the
sensuous data, the color data in their visual field of sensation, a field which,
before all “ apperception,” is a unity and can still be found afterwards as a
moment of an apperception, namely as a moment of the visual aspect.
Likewise, the sensuous feelings are founded in these sensuous data, and so
15 are the sensuous data of the instincts, the instincts not as something
supposedly transcendent to consciousness but as primal lived experiences,
always belonging to the content of the psychic basis. That is a primal
content of sensibility. And to the sphere of sensibility also pertain its own
laws, not only essential laws but also factual laws as rules for a quasi-
20 production of ever new sensibilities, in a certain valid sense secondary ones,
though not ones originating from reason. (Perhaps a better terminology
would result from distinguishing between authentic and unauthentic sensi­
bility and by speaking as regards the latter of intellective or spiritual
sensibility and as regards the former of spiritless sensibility.)
25 Association and reproduction (memory, synthesis, phantasy) belong to [333J
sensibility as well. But one will say that that is a general property of all
lived experiences — and of acts as well. Admittedly, as they occur here, they
function associatively, are subject to the law of retention, and stand under
conditions of memory, of transformation, of tendencies to produce similar
30 phantasies, etc. This is now exactly the process of the generation of that
secondary intellective sensibility; and then this same process is also decisive
for original sensibility. But it does not arise through association. Primal
sensibility, sensation, etc. does not erise out o f immanent grounds, out of
psychic tendencies; it is simply there, it emerges. The primally intellective
35 also does not arise “ psychically,” from association, but from a ray
emanating out of the Ego; it is not something foreign to the Ego but is
precisely absolute. On the other hand, the Ego presupposes sensibility as
affection, as stimulus, first of all primal sensibility, and then the secondary.
The Ego always has possessions. Primal sensibility is its primal possession.
40 A second possession is the intentional content of reproduction (originary
reproduction as memory) and of the transformation in phantasy taking
place in reproduction, passive transformation, self-structuration with an
overturned doxa.
In the sphere o f this passivity , the sphere of this making oneself by oneself
45 or this coming forth in a new way (a sphere of receptivity: the Ego can
look at, encounter, and thence experience stimuli), we have a prim al sphere
 o f intentionality , an unauthentic one , since there can be no question here of a
genuine “ intention toward,” for which the Ego is required; but “ represen-
tation-of,” apperception, is already there. To remember something is not
merely to have a “ weaker” moment of sensation, etc., and the same applies
$ to the constitution of time, which belongs here, and perhaps it also applies
to the constitution of the very first level of space (oculomotor unity). The
lowest Ego-spontaneity or Ego-activity is “ receptivity,” and by that I mean
that indeed already the constitution of space (and thus also the constitution
of the schema) presupposes this lowest spontaneity; but the unity, which
10 arises as a doxic one, is not a spontaneously posited unity but a receptive
one. Space is a form of sensibility, having originated in receptivity; thus it
is not a form of completely pure sensibility. Sensible nature is constituted in
mere receptivity; it is the world of sense-things with its sensible forms of
time, space, and substantiality-causality. It would then have to be verified:
15 perhaps reception is a mere spectating, whereas the intentional unity arises
in pure sensibility, just as I have always assumed it up to now. In that case
what is intentional on the level of the senses would only be a system of lines
into which the spontaneous regard of receptivity can penetrate and can be
operative as a consideration of the intentional object, just as in the
20 reflective consideration of the aspects, etc.
Thus we have in the sphere of lived experience the immense field of
primary sensibility with its network of tendentious nexuses, with its [336]
Objective constitutions, and with its rules, which are expressed in the
theme: there appears an Objective world that is to be maintained concor-
25 dantly. And thereby primitive laws hold sway, for instance those of
association and reproduction, according to which “ representations” arise
with the lowest, most original intentionality; every reproduction has its
intentionality. — Beyond the sphere of lived experience (in which we class
the system of orthoaesthetic and heteroaesthetic lived experiences, includ-
30 ing, therefore, illusions, etc.) pertaining to the constitution of the world, we
have a fluidum of phantasies. It must be noted that the sensuous
representations related to the world of things occur here and there as
ordered but run a zigzag course: a series of memories and segments of
memory beside the course of perception, which latter runs constantly in the
35 case of waking consciousness, though it is sometimes richer sometimes
poorer. In sleep even this is disrupted; in dreaming we have courses of
heteroaesthetic lived experiences which are not inserted into the real
world.
All this is a proper field of nexuses, ones which run out by themselves as
40 Objective events, though they are subjectively produced. Where is empathy
to be accommodated? The regulation of sensibility is (with respect to the
sensibility of sensation and also with respect to the sensibility of feeling and
every primal sensibility) an intersubjective one. Account must be taken of
that in the appropriate place.
 Excursus: impression and reproduction
In the universal sphere of lived experience I distinguished earlier between
“ impression” and “ reproduction.”
The word “ impression” is appropriate only to original sensations; the
5 word expresses well what is “ there” of itself, and indeed originally:
namely, what is pregiven to the Ego, presenting itself to the Ego in the
manner of something affecting it as foreign. Acts are then not impressions
in this sense but rather are their opposites. Acts are not reproductions,
either, but are origins for possible reproductions. Reproduction signifies
10 certain sorts of modifications, ones which refer back to what is not
modified, not derived by laws of reproduction (association). This non­
derived (“ impression” in the other sense) breaks down into primal
sensibility and into Ego-actions and Ego-afifections. (The terminology is
obviously not very satisfactory.)
15 The (sensuous) impressions, in their emerging and disappearing, are
subject to a certain lawfulness, one that is inseparably intertwined with the
laws of reproductions. Factual laws (laws of existence) of sensuous
impressions are only to be acquired as psychophysical laws, and that means
that only after the constitution of nature, thus after the formation of
20 intentionality, whose correlate is nature, can the rules of existence for the
data of sensation be produced through “ retrospective interpretation.”
Thereby the data of sensation are to be understood as data of primal
sensibility. These factual laws, according to which possible sensations
receive their fixed order and thereby are intersubjectively concordant,
25 presuppose elementary laws, essential laws, and specifically more general
ones, which extend beyond primal sensibility : the laws of association and
reproduction, of a kind signifying for example: If a set of sensations once
existed, and if a similar set again comes up, then there clings to this latter a
tendency toward the memory of the earlier similar one, a tendency toward
30 an emergence of the corresponding reproduction. It is likewise with laws of
expectation, laws related to protentions, laws of the “ advent” of sensa­
tions, etc. In addition, a reproduction has the tendency to produce further
reproductions: it recalls similar previous impressions and impressional
nexuses. If this tendency is fulfilled, then new reproductions arise.
35 In immanence we find sensations and reproductions endowed with
tendencies, “ intentions toward,” which are fulfilled in the arrival of the
“ intended” impressions or reproductions. These instincts or tendencies
pertain to the sensuous itself and move from the sensuous to the sensuous
(from impressions to new impressions, or from impressions to reproduc-
40 tions, from reproductions to other reproductions). The formulation of the
ultimate laws is still outstanding. (What is the significance of the occupied
fields of sense, of the prevention of the fulfillment of the tendencies toward
sense data by means of sense data which precisely occupy the field and
contend with them?)
45 Over and against these tendencies there are others, which are directed to
the Ego-subject as affections , as tendencies toward a grasping. In addition:
 the tendencies toward pleasurable surrender, which proceed from the
feeling-sensations intertwined with the sensations (lived experiences), and
again those that proceed from reproductive moments of pleasure and
displeasure, which pertain to the expected data of sensation, and further-
5 more the tendencies of desire — an active passivity, as it were (that is, not
an activity proceeding from the Ego).
The tendencies lying within sensibility itself have, however, an essential
relation to the affective tendencies; that is, the tendencies and intentions
adhering to sensibility become paths o f affections. The “ intentional
10 Object,” that on which the reproductive tendency is directed, functions as
“ motivating” and works like a stimulus.
Locke saw something valid: sensation is what is first, insofar as a
functioning Ego can only exist if it has a possession, and only insofar as the
possession must first affect it, to which the Ego then reacts: all activity of
15 the Ego presupposes affection, even if— in the developed subject — it is not
exactly the one of primal sensibility. For afterwards secondary sensibility
enters in. But not all Ego activity is mere yielding to an affection, mere
receptivity and passivity in the sense of yielding, surrender to the enjoyment
of pleasure, suffering as negative pleasure: rather, this passive reaction is an [338]
20 underlying level for a new kind of acts, the free acts, which are genuine
Ego-activities, free position-taking with regard to the affections, versus an
already passively carried out indulgence within a disapproval of them.
Afterwards, it is possible for an act of yielding to be a free act.

§3. Development of the Ego — Ego-action and Ego-affection

25 Let us now look into what pertains to the Ego. There we find certain
nexuses, the motivation-nexuses, which are determined by the sensuous
lower level but which have their own law. No active Ego-motivations arise
through “ association” or through “ psychophysical lawfulness;” thus they
do not arise the way all formations of sensibility do. To be sure, the
30 entirety of natural drives is presupposed, the “ natural mechanism.” Can it
now be said that what proceeds from the Ego and occurs in the Ego as
“ affecting,” in penetrating into the Ego as motivating, drawing it to itself
ever tighter — still prior to any yielding— is no longer nature? No, the
affection belongs quite certainly in the sphere of nature and is the means of
35 the bond between Ego and nature. Moreover, the Ego also has its natural
side. All Ego-actions, just like the Ego-affections, come under the law of
association, are arranged in time, work afterwards as affecting, etc. But at
best it is the Ego thought of as purely passive which is mere nature and
belongs within the nexus of nature. But not the Ego of freedom.
40 However, mere nature is the entirety of the “ mechanical I-do. ” There
arises some sensuous drive, for example the urge to smoke. I reach for a
cigar and light it up, whereas my attention, my Ego-activities, indeed my
being affected consciously, are entirely somewhere else: thoughts are
stimulating me, I am following them up, comporting myself to them as
 actively verifying them, approving them, disapproving of them, etc . 1 Here
we have “ unconscious’* Ego-affections and reactions. What is affecting
goes toward the Ego, though not toward the waking Ego, the Ego of
“ conscious” attention, occupation, etc. The Ego always lives in the
5 medium of its “ history;” all its earlier lived experiences have sunk down,
but they have aftereffects in tendencies, sudden ideas, transformations or
assimilations of earlier lived experiences, and from such assimilations new
formations are merged together, etc.—just as in the sphere of primal
sensibility, whose formations also pertain to the medium of the Ego, to the
10 Ego’s actual and potential possessions. All this has its natural course, thus
even each free act has its comet’s tail of nature: but the act itself has not
come from nature (i.e., arisen through mere natural lawfulness) but has
come precisely from the Ego. Ego and nature stand in contrast, and every
act also has its natural side, namely its underlying basis in nature: what is
15 pregiven as affecting is a formation of nature, though here and there what [339f
is of the Ego may have played a role in earlier action. And above all every
act has its natural side in that the accomplishment of earlier similar acts
brings with it an associative tendency, a natural tendency, to accomplish
the act again; that means that under the given circumstances of the
20 affection there is a reproductive tendency directed to the reproduction of
what was intended in the previous similar act-comportment, and not only
that: it is a tendency directed to this (present) similar comportment itself.
Thus a second affection directed to the Ego is bound with the first, and
now perhaps the Ego yields; but then the Ego no longer accomplishes the
25 act altogether freely, no longer from original freedom. This should be
analyzed more precisely; for there are complexities here. I can decide freely,
and at the same time I am following my habitual inclination. I am entirely
free if I am not motivated passively, that is, if I do not carry out the
consequence through affection but through “ rational motives.” I must
30 follow the latter and not yield to the affection. Rational motives, values,
etc., can themselves, however, motivate me as “ pregivennesses” on a
second level, or I can freely give in to them, freely decide in their favor.
After all this, it is comprehensible how “ nature” develops, how the
natural basis of the soul is organized in its development in such a way that
35 “ nature” is constituted in it, and that, for example, at first the Ego
behaves in general in its reactions as mere nature, and thus an “ anim al”
and purely animal Ego develops, and that for the Ego as active subject of
the cogitationes, which is identically one throughout all of them, is
constituted a new pregivenness: the empirical Ego, which has a familiar
40 nature, i.e., a nature to be learned in experience, and has become in its
natural evolution, precisely with its nature, graspable purely according to
“ natural laws” — all this is now comprehensible.
We can also understand that in constituted nature, the Body and the
Body-soul unity are constituted and that the empirical Ego is the Ego of
45 Bodily-psychic nature. The Ego is not itself the Bodily-psychic unity but
 lives in it. It is the Ego of the soul, the Ego to which is related back the
psychic lived experiences of the sensory sphere as its possessions, the Ego,
on the other hand, which is the constant subject in its “ acts,” acts which
here, however, are mere re-acts, natural reactions in face of the posses-
5 sions.
But how does the human being develop, i.e., how does the animal Ego
develop into the human Ego? How is there constituted for the active Ego a
pregiven Ego, which is the free personal subject, with which is then
identified my momentarily present ego-cogito? How is it that my cogito, a
10 momentary state, a passing manifestation of this permanent person,
becomes an Objectively constituted pregivenness? Do laws, properly speak­
ing, hold as regards the personal (free) subject, and which ones?
They are not empirical laws, laws of association. Those rule only in the [340]
sphere of passivity; where they determine the Ego, there they posit nature.
15 They are, one will say, laws of reason. But what are laws of reason, and
how do they determine development?

II. SUBJECTIVITY AS SOUL AND

AS SPIRIT IN THE ATTITUDE OF THE
NATURAL SCIENCES AND IN THE ATTITUDE OF
20 THE HUMAN SCIENCES

§ 1. The reality of the soul and of the human being

In taking up the question of the reality of the soul we need first of all to
clarify the place of origin of the concept of reality and the place where
reality exhibits itself in its most simple form. Accordingly we go back :
25 I. to the thing as nature. As such it is an intuitive substance, in the sense
of an intuitive unity of real properties. At bottom it is a sensuously intuitive
thing, presenting itself through schemata. The schema is the one in it, the
one given through sensuous apperception properly understood. On that is
built the causal apperception: the sense-thing is grasped as something
30 identical throughout modes of behavior. It is first on the basis of this
causal apperception that we designate a thing as real, and here is where talk
of reality has its origin. This apperception of the thing as real is
synthetic. — On a still higher level the thing is “ Objectively” determined
through mere “ primary qualities,” over and against which the intuitively
35 substantial thing is regarded as “ mere appearance,” related to normal
perceivers.
II. But the animal and, in the first place, human beings can also be
regarded as reality or nature, and we can here distinguish again between
the animal as intuitive unity and the animal as unity of modes of behavior.
40 At the start we remain with the first:
A) the animal of intuition: here we have:
1.) in the sensuous-intuitive sphere of the givenness of the Body, the
intuitive Body-substance with its sensuously given properties.
 2.) the “ psychic life ” expressed in the other’s Body, another subject with
his lived experiences, his surrounding world, etc. This is not to be
understood as meaning that we have two separate things beside one
another: the Body of sense intuition and in addition the representation of
5 something subjective; rather, what we have is an intuition of a human
being.' That means:
a.) expression creates everywhere a kind of unity, thus, for example,
linguistic expression and meaning, symbol and symbolized; and there exist
hence double-sided unities, which manifest the ever more intimate inter-
10 twining of the two sides the more articulated in various ways is the
expression, or the expressing, and the more sensuous parts there are that
have a meaning function, and specifically within the unity of one mean­
ing.
b.) the expression is appresenting, the expressed is co-existing. What
15 exists in the proper temporal-local sense of a res extensa is the Body there
as thing of sense intuition. The appresented is co-being along with what
exists, and it is co-existing, participating therefore in Objective spatial
existence and in space-time in the way that appresentation here accom­
plishes, and according to which we have a sort of “ intuition ” of the human
20 being as a Bodily-spiritual unity, which remains preserved throughout the
intuitive alterations and spatial movements of the Body-thing as “ organ­
ism ,” at least within the empirical limits in which obviously remains the
natural intuition of a human being. The corpse bears in itself the
representation of a human soul but no longer appresents it; and thus we
25 see precisely a corpse, which was a man, but now no longer is.
B) Let us pass now to the next level of constitution and compare the
animal as unity of modes of behavior with the thing constituted as real. Its
reality manifests itself in the dependency on circumstances; the thing is
relative to other things and in this relation it has its thingly qualities: as
30 causal states and causal properties. It is what it is in the unity of a
nature. —
What is the situation, on the other hand, as regards the human being and
the animal? Not only is the corporeal Body real, a real physical thing, but

1 I experience a human being, and this has as components: I experience “ exter­

nally” the corporeal Body and I experience “ inwardly” the psychic. This is an
“ abstract” distinction. I do not need to consider further the mode o f experience,
although it is different depending on the object. The inner is original or comes from
empathy, but both o f these are “ inner.” — Both outer and inner experience, however,
are necessary for the unity o f an experience in which an object is experienced: thus
for a unity o f concatenate determinations. Concatenation pertains in itself to the
corporeal Body— that is natural causality— and likewise to the soul— and that is
the motivational concatenation, which still has to be discussed. And finally: nature
and spirit are necessarily in psychophysical concatenation as a kind o f “ causality.”
1. Expression o f an irreal sense: ideal appresentation,
2. Expression o f the psychic: real appresentation, the real linked to the real in the
unity o f a concrete reality.
 the soul is too, in concomitant change; i.e., psychic events are joined as
existential consequences to real Bodily-corporeal events (which as such
stand within the causality of physical nature). That means: the Corporeal
body is not a concrete reality for itself; it is only a real human body by
5 means of the fact that changes in the soul occur concomitantly. And
likewise the soul is not a reality for itself; rather, it has concomitant
changes in the Bodily corporeality: that is, psychic occurrences lead in
themselves to consequences in reality.
The question must now be retrieved: is the soul real in the same sense as
10 the Corporeal body, and is the human being a reality composed of two
linked realities and thereby also itself given as a reality? Immediately,
striking differences appear between the thing and the soul as realities,
above a ll: the latter is not in universal experience constituted tout court in [342]
the way that what it is psychically is constituted in relation to other souls as
15 members of a psychic universe, the totality of all souls whatsoever. Or: all
bodies whatever form a unitary totality of nature, though this does not
imply that all souls are connected as a totality of the psychic purely in
itself, in the way that the thing of nature is what it is as member of the
natural universe.
20 I apprehend by means of expression, as was expounded earlier, the unity
of a human being, that man there, in “ outer” experience.1 In this
apperception there lies a system of experiential indications, by means of
which an Ego-life, with a partially determinate content and a horizon of
indeterminateness and of unknownness, is given as one with the Body and
25 is “ there” as bound with it. And in the species of this apperception there
lies the fact that from the very start relations of dependency between the
psychic and the Bodily (itself interwoven in the causal nexus of physical
nature) come to consciousness by way of apprehension, and by means of
the corresponding attention there enter into the thematic focus: a) accord-
30 ing to the universal type and b) as individuals, present factual structures
that belong in the type according to the general style.
In the attitude corresponding to the experience of a human being, in
which this bound unity is given as there in space, as spatial and as bound
on the spiritual side with the spatial, I have in fact a double reality . I, the
35 spectator, and all the others in the human community, find or can find this
human being as a unity which in the causality of nature persists as
Corporeal body, and to that extent this physical unity, as an organic unity,
fulfills certain physical conditions as the Body of a subject, which in its life
of sensation and perception, and in its life of phantasy and memory (and
40 then further in an unknown way), is dependent on the physical structures
of the Body, and conversely they are influenced by it. (Co-existence as
mutual being-with-one-another in a general structure, thus mutual regula­
tion of co-existence and in possible alterations, thus causality.)
1 Cf. Section Two, p. 146, 1. 4, to the end of the paragraph, where parts o f the
following text are repeated word for word. In order not to disturb the unity of this
supplement, the sentences in question have not been deleted here.
 The Body has a privilege in this unity, and specifically for the following
reasons: man is man in spatial nature, and he is in nature only because of
the fact that in the first place the Corporeal body is a material thing in
nature. Psychic reality is here constituted as a reality in space only through
5 the psychophysical dependencies. The absolute universal form of the world
is space-time. Worldly reality is in all cases spatial and is being-in-space:
that is, corporeal being. Everything real is corporeal, in all cases corporeal,
although not necessarily that alone. There does not exist the same necessity
that whatever is real be psychic or have irreal determinations, whereas the (343j
10 latter can be real only through con-junction (appresentation) with corpo­
reality. The soul is given in appresenting expression as a unity. It has its
unity in itself, but here it comes into consideration as a unity in a nexus:
specifically, within psychophysical causalities I consider an individual
sensation, perception, nexus of memory, etc., but these are moments of the
15 subjective stream of lived experience and are states of the “ soul,” of the
empathized unity, which is, as a unity, a seat of causality. Likewise this is
the way I would excise an individual physical state, e.g., of the optic nerve,
and follow it up to a process in the brain: but it is a process in the brain,
the nerve is an organ in the nervous system, and the nervous system is the
20 one of the closed Body, which as Body is a seat of psychophysical causality.
This pertains to the essence of the ruling, sense-determining appercep­
tion.
The unity of the soul is a real unity through the fact that as unity of
psychic being and life it is connected with the Body as unity of the Bodily
25 stream of being, which for its part is a member of nature. It was quite
correct when I from the start took the human being as a double reality; it is
just that the psychic reality is here what it is (as mundane reality) only
through the reality of the Body, which is founding for it. Only in that way
does the soul become a member of the one nexus in which the soul enters
30 into real relations (relations of nature) not only with the Body but also with
other souls.

§ 2. Psychophysical causality and the causal nexus of things

There is still another question demanding our consideration here. I have

attempted to differentiate between psychophysical conditionality and physi-
35 cal causality. A difference is certainly to be found here, namely in this
regard, that the physical thing is what it is, i.e., has real properties, only in
relation to the causal nexus of physical nature. It pertains to the reality of
the thing (to the sense predelineated for the thing, predelineated through
the original constitution of the thing) that each thingly property is related
40 to physical causal circumstances and to no others. Things can change as a
result of psychic effects, but in that case none of their thingly properties
change, only their states change. In the nexus of physical nature, other
things and their comportment in the causal nexus as regards some given
thing determine what this thing is, which permanent causal properties it
 will have. The causal properties can persist or they can change, and that
depends on the course of nature. To be sure, the exact identity of the thing
requires a certain supreme regularity, a most universal natural lawfulness.
The form of causality, which stands under strict rules (on a higher level,
5 laws), pertains to the very form of the being of a thing.
For example, to speak more clearly: every thing can, psychophysically [344]
understood, function as a stimulus-Object; its physical processes can extend
its effects to a perceiving subject: but the “ property” of being able to have
“ effects ” on an experiencing subject in this manner gives the thing no inner
10 constituting property , 1 supplies it with nothing that pertains to its nature.
The manifold of possible effects on the subject adds nothing to what the
thing is, and conversely: the soul does not interfere with “ nature,” which
remains what it “ is” whether the soul has effects in it or not. Indeed
courses of states of nature arise through these effects, states which were not
15 there before, but still no physical property can change in that way in its
fixed style, prescribed to it by its causal lawfulness and determinate of its
identity. It depends on the course of natural experience how we will
determine the physical thing more exactly, and what we have grasped as its
property with regard to the pregiven casual nexus can prove to be a
20 changeable manifestation of a higher property. Even the property assumed
to be fixed comes to change insofar as the course of experience brings to
light new causal nexuses on higher levels. But psychophysical causality can
accomplish nothing in this respect; the thing and the whole of nature are
sealed off. Psychical consequences are joined to natural processes, just as
25 psychical causes have consequences in nature, but they are such that in
truth they have no influence on nature.
It is clear that the causality of physical nature has in fact a pre-eminent
sense. This causality is a constitutive idea for the idea of nature, for the
idea of a physical thing: that is, all inner features of the thing as features of
30 a lasting (persistent) being, as features of a duration, are themselves
persistent, and each such feature expresses a persistent behavior (a persis­
tent lawfulness of comportment) in the causal nexus .2 For reasons of
principle, the psychic is outside this nexus. Through psychophysical causal­
ity there is constituted no constitutive feature whatever of a persistent
35 spatial thing.

§ 3. Possibility of the insertion of the soul into nature 3

What shall we say then about the reality of the soul? The soul, too, is of
course a persistent being. But this persistent being is no “ nature;” it is not,

1 Constituting properties of the thing: properties in which it persists in all its

changes o f state as the same, which thus belong to it permanently in this changing of
states.
2 Compare this statement with § 32, pp. 134 f.
3 These analyses are employed in part in Section Two; cf. § 32, pp. 134 ff.
 as what it is, a complex of persistent properties which are unities of causal
nexuses. Thus the soul is not constituted simply inductively-apperceptively. [345]
It is the unity of a psychic life, of a stream of consciousness; this stream is
the life of an identical Ego, a unity extending through time (through the
5 same time which is the duration of the Body), and the soul has “ effects ” in
physis and in turn undergoes effects coming from there; it displays, to be
sure, an identity also in the fact that on the whole, under given Bodily-
physical circumstances, it “ behaves” in its reactions in a regulated way,
sensing in this way or that way, perceiving such and such, etc. We mean
10 here also that under given psychic circumstances something in Corporeality
changes as a consequence, the hand moves, etc. But if for that reason
psychophysical properties are attributed to it as well as something like a
nature, then it is not in fact this nature, and in principle it is irreducible to
nature.
15 The being of the soul is not “ substantial” in the sense of thingly being,
and if we relieve it of the idea of substance, as Kant did, then we
undoubtedly will have to say that there is no soul-substance. And that
means that the soul has no in-itself analogously similar to a “ nature;” it
has neither a mathematical nature in the manner of the thing of physics,
20 nor a nature like the one of the thing of intuition. The soul is not a
schematized unity; and as far as “ causality” is concerned, it has to be
maintained that what deserves the name “ causality” is that functional or
lawful comportment of dependency which is the correlate of the constitu­
tion of persistent properties of a persistent real something of the type,
25 nature. Thus in the case of the soul and in psychology there can be no talk
at all of causality. None of the lawfully regulated functionalities in the
factual sphere is causality in that sense. The flux of the life of the soul has
its unity in itself, and since the mundane real “ soul” belonging to a Body
is related to this thingly Body in a functional nexus of mutual dependency,
30 the soul has, to be sure, its persistent psychic properties, which are
expressions for certain regulated dependencies in the emergence of what is
psychic in its dependency on what is Bodily. The soul is a being that is
related conditionally to Bodily circumstances, related in a regulated way to
circumstances in physical nature; and likewise the soul is characterized by
35 the fact that psychic occurrences have consequences in nature in a regulated
fashion.
On the other hand, the Body too is itself characterized by this psycho­
physical nexus and its rules: but the Body does not receive any new natural
property thereby, just as the soul itself is not, due to such a regularity in
40 psychic existence, a nature and receives no natural properties. The soul is
not thereby a mere X of causal properties. But through such a connection
with the bodily (which, in the naturalistic attitude, is posited straightfor­
wardly as being), the soul has an interrelatedness of existence with nature,
“ existence” as event in the world, existence “ in ” space, existence “ in ”
45 space-time. And thus the soul has, we can say, a quasi-nature and a
quasi-causality, to the extent that we broaden precisely the concepts of
nature, substance, and causality and designate as “ substance ” (real thingly [346]
 existence) everything existing related to conditional circumstances of exist­
ence and standing under laws of existence and designate as “ causal ” every
property constituted here as conditionally determined. The soul has in itself
a proper essence of its own, prior to all the causalities in which it is
5 involved. This essence allows the soul to be considered for itself under
abstraction from everything psychic-causal (in opposition to a body, which
is causal through and through and has no anterior proper essence of its
own). The soul is a worldly real being apriori only as intertwined
psychophysically and as united with other souls in a community or as
10 potentially united with them. How the soul is to be posited in its own
proper essence is another matter, certainly not as mundane.
The subjective, the being of a subject and of its subjective life under the
viewpoint of these conditional nexuses, is naturalized subjectivity; it is the
“ psychic” in the sense of modern naturalistic psychology, which thus
15 considers man as nature and inserts him into the nexus of nature.

§ 4. The human being as spiritual subject

On the other hand, what in life we call a human being and what is dealt
with in (is the theoretical theme of) the sciences of life, the sciences of the
spirit, and is treated there as subject, and what in the sciences of the
20 objective spirit is treated as spiritual surrounding world, as culture, and
especially as a human being, is not that naturalized human being. For as
justified as this naturalizing obviously is, and as rightfully as the title nature
encompasses the themata of scientific research, to that same extent does
this title fail to embrace the specifically spiritual sphere in its spiritual
25 relations.
If I am interested in the human being as a human subject, as a person in
a personal association, then he is admittedly also something bound to the
Body; he stands there outside in space, he goes places, he sits, speaks to
other people who are standing near him in space, etc. But my interest does
30 not go toward nature but precisely toward the subject; and it is only a
prejudice to maintain that nature isrfhe true being of the subject. For I
cannot study physical things otherwise than as nature, since nature is their
essence and the truth of a thing is a truth of nature; if I seek “ Objective”
truth, then I must pursue physics. But here it is different. To be sure, to
35 make the spirit one’s theme means, logically speaking, to make it into an
“ Object ” (object), into a theoretical Object. But this is far from meaning to
investigate spirit as nature, and if we nevertheless speak of the “ nature of
the spirit,” we do so by equivocation. For in that case nature means
essence, and in this sense one can even speak of the nature of numbers,
40 etc . 1

1 The following three pages of the manuscript are used in Section Three; cf. § 55,
“ The spiritual E g o ...”, p. 226 to p. 231.
 § 5. Empathy as spiritual (not naturalistic) [347]
relation between subjects

By means of empathy, all Ego-relations are ascribed to the subject of the

other Body, and it is to be noted from the outset in this connection that
5 empathetic apperception first grasps “ from the outside” the other’s Body
as a body like any body and then as a bearer of sensations and of possible
effects and thereby at the same time as organ of a subject, a subject who is
dependent on this organ for his sensations, perceptions, and for his further
subject-acts and dispositions. On the other hand, however, it must also be
10 noted that this realizing apprehension, which here can no longer be
considered an “ experiential consciousness” or an “ apperception,” still
does not involve my making the natural reality of the other my thematic
Object, i.e., taking a human being as a member of nature. Rather, I am, in
empathy, directed to the other Ego and Ego-life and not to psychophysical
15 reality, which is a double reality with physical reality as the founding level.
The other’s Body is for me a passageway (in “ expression,” in intimation,
etc.) toward the understanding of the Ego there, the “ h e :” he moves his
hand, he reaches for this or that, he strikes, he considers, he is motivated by
this or that. He is the center of a surrounding world appearing to him,
20 presentified to him in memory, thought about, etc., and included in it is a
corporeal surrounding world, which to a great extent he has in common
with me and with others. The human being appears, but I am focused on
the human subject and on the subjectivity in its subjective comportments,
in its nexuses of motivation.
25 If we have incorporated other subjects into our subjective surrounding
world and thereby have eo ipso included ourselves in our surrounding
world, there then arises the field of social relations of subjectivity: we as
personal subjects of common work, common research, technical activity,
etc. And in that case there arise the corresponding apperceptions of
30 accomplishments as accomplishments, of individual accomplishments and
communal ones, of works, as works of the individual and works of the
community, but also the apperceptions of thoughts and feelings, etc. of the
individual as motivated by his milieu, through the “ influences” of others,
whether of others in immediate intercommerce or in the mediate way of
35 understanding their works or by way of tradition, etc.

§ 6 . Spiritual Ego and psychological Ego.— Constitution of the Ego

as self in self-apperception. Distinction between the original
Ego and the self apperceived in self-apperception; the person,
the Ego of self-experience, of self-consciousness

40 In the totality of these spiritual relations of subjects, there is opened up

to us a field for another kind of science, different in principle from natural [348]
science. There belongs here all observation of people, and all knowledge
about people, the study of persons, of societies, and of the formation and
 transformation of surrounding worlds for the persons — a complex of
disciplines that we encompass under the title of the human sciences.
What is the relation between this study of human and worldly personal­
ities, the study of “ us and our world,” the world in which we find
5 ourselves, and the study of the soul in the sense of psychology? Let us
begin with the first, the study of the spiritual world, which is the naturally
given world. Here belong together: the study of persons and the study of
individual and communal empirical worlds. Persons, as what they are, are
individuals in relation to their subjective pregivennesses, which are inter-
10 twined with their external world; this is a common possession, or can be
for all normal people.
But there is indeed a distinction to be made: I can study the material
surrounding world as a descriptive surrounding world of the normal human
being or of the normal humans of an epoch. On the other hand I can also
15 study persons, the types of persons, etc., their character dispositions, etc.,
and also the essence and development of persons, the development of their
apprehensions of the world, their things and positings of things; in short, I
can pursue the human sciences. I can, e.g., consider how historical men
carried on physics, examine how they conceived the idea of nature and how
20 they came to the knowledge of nature under the guidance of that idea . 1 But
I can also enter into physics, for even that is a field of possible activity of
the spiritual Ego, in which activity precisely this field arises constitutively:
the logical determination of the material object as substantial-causal unity
and thus of the whole of nature; likewise Corporeality under the viewpoint
25 of nature, and finally the soul.
In the attitude directed to nature and focused on the soul of the
Corporeal body, the theme is the subject as the soul in connection with the
Body (the psychophysical subject); however, in the spiritual attitude I have
as my exclusive theme purely and simply the subjects and their surrounding
30 worlds. Insofar as these worlds, regarding their structure in physical nature,
are common in a typical and normal way, they are not Objective in an
absolute and rigorous way; they require mathematization if rigorous
Objectivity is sought. This Objectivity, however, is an aim of the work of
thought which constitutes new objectivities, the “ true ” ones of the exact
35 sciences. These do not determine (motivate) the spirit, as long as they do
not come to consciousness. Likewise, a tool is determining, as tool, only for
the one who has apprehended it as such; or again, for the Chinese a
symphony of Beethoven does not exist and is therefore not determining for
them. Each object of the surrounding world, e.g., the red poppy, exists for [349]
40 the one who “ h as” it in view, and this existence is “ relative” (a peculiar
relativity).

1 Thus I am now, as before, directed to the world the way it is pregiven, but my
theme is especially human beings and humanity, insofar as they are consciously
related to the world as their surrounding world, and at present are related to their
subjective surrounding world; how they in this present have the field of their present
sciences, etc.
 But the personal subject is not the mere pure Ego. The personal Ego can
be mistaken about its faculties. But in that case it has others. It must have
some faculties or other, it necessarily is developing and developed, and it
has its necessary genesis (teleiosis ) I can study. It is always determined
5 through the rhythm of the pregiven possession and of the attention to it
and of the occupation with it and by the rhythm of the constitution of a
new objectivity and of a new possession for new objectivities.
Is this a study of the “ soul” in the sense of modern psychology? The
soul is not the Ego 1 which has things and comports itself, is not the
10 personal subject of the faculties, but is that which exists as something
psychical inserted in the Body in Objective space and time.2 And here we
touch the main difficulty: to determine this clearly. The spiritual Ego is the
reference point for everything, it is the Ego that is related to whatever is
spatio-temporal, but it is not itself in space and time. Everything temporal
15 is in its field of view and likewise everything spatial, everything ideal and
everything empirical, etc. It is particularly related to a Body it has in a
special sense as its own, but it is not something real connected with the
Body.
On the other hand, an animal (man or beast) can be considered as a
20 thing in the world, as a real-causal unity. This is the case when the theme is
the psychophysical, the subject in the sense of psychophysical psychology:
the identical something in the empirical-real connections between the
physical Body and what is psychical. Considered in this way the human
being is a real unity of two strata in Objective nature. If I plunge myself
25 into what is purely subjective, one of the two strata, and if I remain
precisely in the natural attitude, then a man is an identical person related to
his field of subjectivity, and the theme is the personal subject together with
its subjective field.
Here the question can be raised: is this personal subject not a “product o f
30 a subjective genetic form ation "? It must indeed be thought necessarily as
something which develops and which at the very outset of this development
already has its definite dispositions. They are manifest in the way the lived
experiences proceed in the stream of consciousness. The subject therefore
can be understood also as the unity manifesting itself in the stream of
35 consciousness. So here we distinguish: 1. the unity of the person, 2. the self
as the unity constituted in me as “ Ego,” constituted in self-experience, [350]
self-apperception, as intended with an open horizon, the true being of
which would be the being of the known person. The personal subject as
developed is the subject that is conscious of itself; the self as object is a

1 To be sure, I must distinguish soul and person, but is person not a determination
o f soul, a unity constituted in it?
2 Does that mean to be in space and in space-time in the sense o f natural
science — under the idea o f an “ in-itself” as substratum o f real “ truths in them­
selves” ? This “ Objective” being-in-itself in contrast to the being o f subjective
facticity, hence in contrast to the being-relative to me and my “ here ” and “ now,”
hence at one time idealizing Objectivation, at another time subjectivation.
 product of constitution, an “ apperceptive ” unity. At the beginning of its
development, the subject is not an Object for itself and does not have the
apperceptive unity, “ Ego.” But even in the further course of development,
this unity is never determined once and for all: I can be more and other
5 than the Ego as apperceptive unity . 1

To the pure essence of the soul there belongs an Ego-polarizing; further,

there belongs to it the necessity of a development in which the Ego
develops into a person and as a person. The essence of this development
includes the sense that the Ego as person is constituted in the soul by
10 means of self-experience. A personal being is only possible as conscious of
itself, and the self of self-experience is, as experienced, an intended self; the
true self is the person himself as the person in the present stage of his
development. In life the person is transcendent — an inner transcendence
which in spite of all self-deception is absolutely irreducible.
15 On the basis of the natural attitude, we distinguish:
1. The concrete Ego or the soul, investigated according to its psychophy­
sical character: psychological subjectivity: the subject Ego (it does not
matter whether and to what extent it is itself thematically apperceived)
existing in its “ states ” (as the states of its subjective real possessions), in its
20 apperceptions and their meaning-contents, and in its acts. It is all that
concretely taken together in an empirical-real nexus with the world of
things as posited absolutely. Or the subject itself which lives in its psychic
life and which is constantly involved in change as regards the content of
this life, but which is a unity in this change and develops thereby, taken
25 together with all that is “ subjective ” about it, though it is bound in a real
way to the Body, in which is included the “ person in nature.”
2. The subject in the nexus of motivation, as person, the spiritual subject
or the concrete soul, though not understood as nature, and not the human
personal subject in nature or connected with nature in the stricter (physical)
30 sense. It is the subject which not only is, but which apperceives itself as
subject. The subject as spirit, as person, has self-consciousness or an Ego
(which is the same); a soul does not need to have self-consciousness. The
subject, however, does not only apperceive itself, but it also apperceives
other subjects who likewise not only are but also apperceive themselves,
35 and all these subjects are in spiritual contact; apperceptions of the I and the
thou, of the we, emerge, apperceptions which form the foundation of the [351]
commerce between persons. Furthermore, each subject has its surrounding
world posited by it and given to it, as surrounding world which is
ultimately identifiable as the one surrounding world common to all, i.e., the
40 world. In relation to the one common surrounding world, personal
associations are constituted, which can be considered as personalities of a
higher order. In their case as well, we can speak of a “ self-consciousness,”
and we can differentiate, for example as regards a nation, between the
1 The text which follows in the manuscript is employed in Section Three. Cf.
p. 264, 1. 30 to p. 265, 1. 21.
 national soul and the nation as national subject in the sense of a
self-conscious personality.
What in truth is first in psychology is the soul according to its proper
essence and according to its properly essential psychic connections with
5 other souls. But still further distinctions are called for. The world as a
universe of experience is a universal inductive unity, a unity of “ empirical”
interrelatedness, and within it is a special unity: nature. But inductive
research regarding the psychic is not limited to the psychophysical. One
must and one can project in advance the possible theories of inductive
10 research. But now a basic distinction is still lacking: the distinction between
pure research of the soul, with stratification in personal research, and the
research into the lower level of psychic passivity, which is preparatory
because it is concerned with association as a fact of the spirit (which must
be distinguished from association as inductive experience).
15 But here it must be noted that research in the human sciences has as its
world the surrounding world in its natural validity but at the same time has
this world, in the sense of a subjective surrounding world, as a theme— and
only in this way as theme. For the personal researcher, the human scientist,
things are and are questioned only as existing things — in the way persons
20 (who are thematic there) intend them.

§ 7. Subjects considered as nature and as spirit

In the anthropological sciences of the spirit we have to do with subjects

in the sense mentioned in 2 ) above, we have to do with persons and
personalities. This subject is conscious of itself and thereby is a developed
25 subject at the level of “ spirit” in Leibniz’ sense. The spirit as unity of the
Ego of motivation, as unity of the Ego of faculties, becomes an Object,
while I, in empathy, engage in a consideration of what is interior, and the
Ego with which I then empathize (i.e., the subject prior to self-conscious­
ness) is brought to clarity by me along with its surrounding world and
30 along with what motivates it in that world. I myself remain in my intuitive
world; as Ego I have my environment and I take that which I and my
companion have intentionally in common precisely as common. That is
what I do in the case of all people who I find in the compass of my
environment; I empathize with each one and participate in his doing and
35 suffering and share in his surrounding world, positing it in relation to mine, [352]
precisely as long as they are concordant. I posit the Bodies there as things
of my environment and on the other hand as expressions of the subjects
(who have these Bodies in inner intuition); the subjects stand toward one
another in the bond of communication, thus immediately, precisely in
40 accord with their lived experience. In this life of spirits, in their being active
and their suffering, as well as in their obscure background, in sleep, etc.,
their “ reality” manifests itself, their unity of spiritual “ causality of
freedom” and of unfreedom.
But what happens when we decide to investigate the soul and the person
 as nature? What sort of direction of focus do we then have? As regards this
mode of consideration, the following must be kept in mind: the things of
my and our environment I thematize scientifically are not the things there
as such, that is, not the things correlative to me and to us, as our
5 over-and-against, but instead I posit them “ absolutely. ” That is, I raise the
scientific question of their in-itself, and I investigate this in-itself to the
exclusion of all else. Thus I take all environing things, both mine and those
of the other subject, as mere appearances, and I now have no interest in
these appearances, except insofar as they serve to present to me the in-itself.
10 My theme is henceforth all “ things ” and the whole world valid for me and
for us, yet not as they are factually valid for us, but instead with respect to
their true being, and even then not as they are related to us under the idea
of our rationality (that is, as if this was an ideal surrounding world), but
precisely purely and simply as the one that would be reality “ in itself.” But
15 since the others and I myself likewise belong together to my surrounding
world and to the pregiven surrounding world of everybody and can be
considered under the idea of its true being as members of the world, so all
appearances have their turn as moments of the real world.
What about the subjects, however? Can I also say here that I take them
20 as mere appearances o f subjects in themselves? The Ego which expresses
itself here in the intuitive Body, can that be an appearance of a still to be
determined X? Can it be so in the sense that every intuitive thing is
supposed to be the thing and not an aspect of the thing, an “ appearance,”
which would contain in itself logically a true being, the “ mathematical” ?
25 Thus a product of thought? In this sense, no; the other subject is given in
empathy and manifests itself originally in its irreal absoluteness, and
everyone capable of empathy grasps it directly as such, provided he grasps
it correctly at all, provided he understands. Thus the human subject is
altogether an intersubjective being.
30 But the question is here not whether subjects are mere unities of
presentations in the same sense as physical things, but whether subjects are
not given as belonging to the pregiven world precisely in changing
subjective modes as apperceived, represented, or meant in such and such a
way, so that they, just like everything pregiven as worldly, may be
35 interrogated as to their true sense versus their factical “ appearances” and [353]
opinions about them. And that is obviously the case. A presupposition for
everything here is that we all, in communication and in individual-personal
life, as constantly related to the community and to the world, “ know ” that
what I experience in the world can be experienced as the same by everyone,
40 whereas we know at the same time that each person has his own
viewpoints, modes of appearance, etc. Thus the pregivenness of the world
signifies the persistency of a universal world-conviction, a world-posses-
sion, which at the same time is a presumption of being and is always
givenness of being, indeed as givenness of a being which has its true being
45 only ahead of itself. To be sure, in actual life one need not be conscious of
this fact that true being is an idea lying in the infinite.
What else still remains? Indeed only this, that the positing of the
 Objective world and first of all, e.g., of physical nature “ in itself”
(logical-true nature), a positing which ensues when I posit the relative thing
of the environment purely and simply, creates, beyond its relativity with
regard to me, a framework in which I can insert and must insert the spirit,
5 the subject. Things have a causal essence, absolutely, whether I experience
it or not. They are, together with their determinations, without need of me.
Subjects, too, have their mundane in-itself, and to a certain degree they
have a “ causal ” essence, whether they know about it or not and whether I
know about it or not. There exist, accordingly, psychophysical connections,
10 whether or not they enter into the compass of actual intentionality. Just as
Objective nature was discovered by making experienced nature thematic
purely as res extensa, experienced nature thus becoming a point of
departure for the goal of determining theoretically an Objective in-itself of
nature unconditionally valid for everybody (in other words, to fulfill a
15 scientific theory of nature and a theoretical-logical determination of
experienced being in theoretical operations), so the goal of a truth in itself
valid for the whole world had to result, and thereby in the theoretical
treatment of psychic subjectivity mathematical nature had to serve as
substrate. But, of course, only a transcendental-universal consideration
20 within the human sciences can clarify the sense of the mathematical
naturalization and of its precise or more general application to the world
and can set its rights.
The human being as an inductive-real psychophysical unity is therefore a
legitimate theme, but it must not be substituted for the psychic as the goal
25 of an exclusively psychophysical psychology. The psychic bears in itself the
person with his personal surrounding world as it appears and as in each
case it is posited as valid by the person. In that case, therefore, all research
in the human sciences is directed to a truth which is a component of the
truth of the Objective real world (see below). But understood here is indeed
30 the fundamental distinction between a human science functioning in this
way (as a positive science in the system of positive sciences) versus an [354]
absolute human science. I may completely put out of play my interest in a
knowledge of the world, of the pregiven world of realities, and instead of
making the world pure and simple my absolute theme, I make myself and
35 my communicative subjectivity my absolute theme as the subjectivity whose
comprehensive surrounding world includes that world and its truth, or as
that subjectivity which posits the validity of everything valid as being and
which is the subject for everything that is Object — its Object — and finally
as that subjectivity which itself, if it suited its purpose, would pursue a
40 truth in itself, etc. I posit myself as subject and not as world-Object already
when I posit my Body and then everything valid for me as worldly and as
being in whatever way, as the experienced of my experiences, etc., as what I
possess in knowledge, as my pratical Object, etc.
Here it must be noted that one’s personal self-apperception, as well as
45 the apperception experienced by empathy in the other, and the other’s
apperception are precisely apperception, self-appearance and appearance of
others, and it must be noted further that over and against the true
 Objective being of the person of the personal world, I have in transcenden­
tal subjectivity the counterpole, in which the apperception of one’s self and
of the Objective pole, “ person,” constituted therein, is a transcendental
product.
5 And when I, in the act of empathy, experience others, I do not take them
only as the experienced of my experiences, as my possession, but as subjects
like myself, hence as subjects for their surrounding world, valid for them,
and at the same time as subjects for the one same world which in the
“ appearances” we all have of our surrounding worlds (in the worlds
10 having subjective validity) is, as a result of an all-encompassing validity,
valid for each of us as an identical world, showing itself to one in this way,
to others in that way. But this self-same world can still be relative, for even
if we may all be in agreement on a certain content (as an identical, actually
existing world) over and against what is subjective and changing, yet in the
15 progress of history this content itself can indeed change, though we do
remain convinced that it is the one identical world that it was always, which
only “ appeared ” to us historically or to people of different cultures at one
time in one way, at another time differently. If this manner of consideration
is carried out universally and consistently to the end, we then attain the
20 universal and absolute human science — transcendental phenomenology.
But what now is the situation with regard to the de fa c to human
sciences? Are they sciences in the transcendental-phenomenological sense,
in which is revealed the whole of concrete absolute subjectivity together
with its entire life, including what is hidden in it, the life in which is
25 constituted what appears and what is true, what is relative and what is
absolutely true (in conformity with an idea which may possibly be justified
or only partially justified)? The human sciences are, essentially, personal
sciences. They deal with persons in personal associations and with the
personal surrounding world, which arises out of personal acts in personal [355]
30 motivations. That requires a very precise characterization and the demon­
stration that here exists an immense field of overt nexuses, a field in which
one can move and can intuit and consequently understand the rationality
of motivations, whereas this whole field which can and does exist in the
light has an obscure basis which is to be conquered, the underlying basis of
35 passive motivations and constitutions which brings it about that the
intelligibility of the human sciences always also retains aspects of unintelli­
gibility. In addition, the human-scientific attitude is lacking in purity to the
extent that no distinction is made between world-science, especially natural
science and its attitude, and pure human science and to the extent that a
40 science of nature is admitted beside it, lying on the same level, instead of
being transformed into human science.
The human being understood as a psychophysical unity is, as theme, as
direction of investigation, obviously quite different from the human being
taken as subject of intentionality, related to being as (and insofar as it is)
45 intentionally posited actual being. Surely experienced nature is “ the same ”
as Objective nature, but what does that mean upon closer inspection? It
means that if I carry out experience while in the theoretical attitude, I am
 maintaining, in the further course of natural-scientific thinking, the X of
the determinations, originally posited in experience as being, an X to be
determined precisely in the consciousness of identity. If, however, I am not
in the theoretical attitude but for the rest am living the life of a subject,
5 then the thing stands intuitively before my eyes: it stands there and it
determines me, I evaluate it, etc. The life-attitude of the spirit (at least for
the most part) is then not an attitude of theoretical determination, and
what is the object there is what is intuited in the how of its being intuited,
and it is characterized as being or as what is thought in the way it is thought
10 and posited. That which is thus characterized determines me and is in fact
not the same as the theoretical “ Objective” thing pertaining to another
attitude; it is rather an ideal goal for theoretical work, and in this work I
do not have the Objective thing itself (that would be the goal as attained),
but instead what motivates me is the “ idea” of something undetermined
15 which is to be determined, on the basis experience, as intentional goal. The
attitude of the subject functioning here is hence different in general from
the one of the natural scientist. The personal subject, functioning person­
ally in life, is the subject of active life and has its constituted surrounding
world as its concordant possessions; that is to say, it is the subject-Object,
20 the subject in the apperception, person: the personal Ego of self-appercep­
tion (of human self-experience) and correspondingly of thou-experience and
we-experience. The attitude of the human scientist, however, is again a
theoretical attitude; to be specific, the human scientist makes the subject of
personal apperception and its surrounding world a theoretical theme and
25 raises the question of what a subject is and what pertains to a subject, while [356$
probing deeper, through empathy, into the subject’s attitude . 1 The personal
subject, and what it possesses, is thereby the one whose true being the
human scientist wants to determine, and this true being is a unity in its
motivations, a unity which exists in these motivations in their special
30 character and has consciousness (but not theoretical knowledge) of itself as
such a unity. As self-conscious Ego, it has an apperception of itself, tiie
original Ego-apperception.

§ 8 . Distinction between a psychological

and a psychophysical analysis.
35 Positive psychology — naturalistic psychology — human-scientific
psychology — inductive psychology

The human being as a psychophysical Object has this in common with

the spiritual, that the latter, with all its spirituality, all its comportment and
1 Thereby I have a personal apperception of others, and I distinguish it from the
self-apperception which he has and which I attribute to him by empathy, or from the
apperceptive appearances and intentions therein, from the subject-Object itself, the
truth of which is sought by human science along with the concomitant true
(Objective-subjective) motivations.
 being motivated, must be given in the psychophysicist’s apperception of the
human being and be given as connected with the Body. But the spirit as
unity is not the theme of the psychophysicist as such; instead, he
investigates what in the life of the spirit, in the having of sensations, in the
5 course of its apperceptions, in the course of its acts, etc. is psychophysically
conditioned and, conversely, what in Corporeality depends on the spiritual.
The absolute theme of the positive psychologist (or positive anthropologist)
is not the spirit as a being in itself and for itself but the spirit as pertaining
to the extant world. The spirit taken purely in itself is also his theme, as is
10 all psychophysical conditionality and everything empirically inductive
which belongs to it as mundane; but this researcher’s attitude is precisely a
positive one and not the absolute one.
Hence a peculiar change of attitude in relation to the spiritual is the
result. In self-experience1 and in experience of the subject (the spirit) in
15 general, subjects are experienced as being and are given as unities of their
modes of comportment in relation to what they possess, their spheres of
subjectivity, their surrounding worlds: subject is on one side, and sur­
rounding world is a correlate; the subjective as possession is not the
subject. The subject as person is even to be distinguished from the
20 subjective as life. The Ego-subject itself is dependent on its subjective
spheres of possessions in the sense of its being affected, etc.: motivation.
But in this respect the dependence is not a causal one, or rather, the subject
is not an animal in nature. It is not intended and posited as nature and [357]
hence is not determinable as nature. It does not make sense to consider it as
25 caused or as itself causing in the natural sense. Cause is an inductive and
associative notion. Subjects, on the other hand, affect one another by way
of motivation. Psychophysical conditionality exists between the Ego-
domain of lived experience, together with all that occurs in it, and nature,
first of all Corporeality, and specifically also between, e.g., the Ego-acts,
30 the cogitationes, and Corporeality. The subject can be posited in relation to
nature itself only in the way that the concrete soul (with its Ego, stream of
lived experiences, and acts) pertains precisely in an empirical way to the
Body. The Ego-acts come into consideration thereby precisely as events in
natural time, in world time: as the “ he is investigating,” “ he is evaluat-
35 ing,” etc., i.e., as the respective lived experiences, taken as facts in the
world, in world time.
The attitude of the positive psychologist is hence this: he grasps the
human being as a whole, but he directs his thematic regard toward the
entire realm of the content of lived experiences and toward any other
40 subjective content of the human being, including also the Objects in the

1 With the science o f the spirit (as such and as absolute spirit) the expression
“ self-experience" assumes a double meaning: self-experience precisely as transcen­
dental or naively as human scientific self-experience, and self-experience as mundane
self-experience.
 latter’s surrounding world, taking all these merely as correlates of human
lived experience. What in this domain is ruled by psychophysical condition­
ality is a psychophysical theme. It is obvious that if the human being,
Objectified in this way, is posited in nature and if psychology wants to
5 investigate the whole being of man, it must indeed co-investigate the subject
and all motivational nexuses; it must co-investigate the genesis of the
subject. A complete Objective psychology must obviously encompass
everything, including all motivational nexuses. This Objective psychology,
just for that reason, does not coincide with purely inductive psychophysics,
10 and the latter again does not coincide with the domain of those investiga­
tions which study the human being empirically as a thing— purely accord­
ing to inductive principles. Psychophysics is by no means a mathematically
closed discipline; it is no authentic psychology. It considers the human
being extrinsically, purely within the frame of inductive-empirical regulari-
15 ties and indeed psychophysical ones. But this characteristic of the psycho­
physical, can that be what distinguishes psychophysics from a complete
Objective psychology? 1 The soul, as theme of psychology, has properties
residing outside of the subjective personal sphere of motivation, e.g.,
memory-properties, associations, etc., which one can also observe Objec-
20 tively and establish experimentally, and which on the other hand can in no
way be articulated as psychophysical nexuses. Hence the inductive does not
coincide with Corporeal-psychic conditionality but is to be understood here
as the totality of inductive regularities (and of the regularities of act-
comportment as well), which can be established by considering the subject
25 as an Object in the empirical-inductive nexus, in the nexus of “ habitual
expectation.”
But here the question can be raised as to whether one can, in the case of
such inductive and yet not psychophysical modes of consideration, also be
in a human-scientific attitude. Hence one would have to allow for the
30 possibility of a psychology adopting a human-scientific attitude, proceeding
in an empirical-inductive way, and, if need be, experimentally. And in that
case, experimental psychology would not necessarily be “ natural-scien­
tific” (world-scientific) positive psychology. Under natural-scientific psy­
chology one can understand a psychology which “ naturalizes” the soul,
35 i.e., considers it purely inductively like any material reality. There are limits
within which this is justified: the soul, the psyche of the human being,
comports itself as a thing in empirical regularity according to circumstances
and can then be known according to external rules and indices.

1 Here a clear distinction must be made between: 1) the total range o f inductive-
empirical nexuses; 2) what is specific to the psychophysical nexuses. Hence inductive
psychology is not psychophysics. Even in the human sciences there can be induction,
as an extrinsic method, one that is extrinsic to its essence, a method which produces
precisely nothing in the way of essential nexuses or understanding.
 § 9. Stream of consciousness, lived experience, and
intentional correlates as nexuses of psychic life

Once the “ soul ” is specified as the theme of psychology and the initial
question is raised concerning the relation of the psychological attitude to
5 the attitude of the human sciences, then we have to procure before all, in
order to get beyond these difficulties, an overview of everything that can be
included under the title “ the psychic life of man.”
Here we have:
1) in unity with the Body, nexuses of sensations in the fields of
10 sensation, associative complexes, apperceptions, etc. — a unity of the
stream of lived experiences as a stream of living through. Every lived
experience obtains a position in Objective time, and indeed by means of an
Objective connection with the Body as nature, and there exist here,
however undetermined, manifold Objective relations of dependence
15 between the physical and the psychical, which pertain to Objective time, to
the form of Objective existence.
2) The lived experiences are thereby in and for themselves unities of the
immanent stream of time; hence the nexus of the original flux which
constitutes the temporal in immanence is different from the immanent
20 intersubjective nexus of sociality.
3) In the intentional lived experiences, the subject of the stream of lived
experiences is conscious of this or that “ Iranscendent ” being, visible
things, intuitive things, things thought of, etc. We speak here hence of
three: lived experience, subject of the lived experience, and the Object of
25 the lived experience in consciousness. The title “ soul” includes, then,
together with the one stream of lived experience, the Ego-subject which
pertains to it (now sleeping, now awake, now active in its acts, now affected
by some “ stimuli ” or other, now freely active, now passive). And what is
“ pregiven” to the Ego-subject are those multiple and intentionally consti-
30 tuted “ intuitive” or unintuitive objects, objects toward which it is directed
or is not directed, etc. The “ objects ” are thereby given either in the form of
doxic “ theses” or with the characters of existing, possibly existing or
probably existing, and also as value ^objects, as objects practically required
or practically willed, etc. In a certain way, all that is a part of the stream of
35 consciousness, but it is therein a part as intended, thought, surmised,
valued etc. in this noematic form, together with the axiothetic characteris­
tics and their modifications, related to the Ego.
The Ego, however, can also relate itself to its own lived experiences and
to itself in the form of “ self-consciousness.”

§ 10. The spiritual considered psychologically and the question

of its “ explanation.” Two concepts of nature

What about the noematic contents now, the “ objects,” and the Ego from
the standpoint of empirical psychology and psychophysics? The Ego
 comports itself to its objects, possibly to itself and its lived experiences —
that is in each case to be considered an Objective temporal factum. With
the Objective temporalization of the soul the Ego is also temporalized,
although it is not itself a real [reell] part of the stream of consciousness:
5 everything immanent, so far as it is a part of immanent time, is brought
into coincidence with Objective time and along with it likewise is the Ego,
insofar as it is the inseparable Ego of that stream. It pertains “ always ” and
“ permanently” to it, that each cogito, each affection, has its position in
time. The question can be raised as to how the lived experiences as
10 Objective facta are dependent on Corporeality. Here belongs every cogito
as lived experience and also the fact that the Ego thereby takes this or that
position with regard to the cogitatum, that it comports itself in this or that
way to its “ objects” (noematically); all this is a fact united with the very
lived experiences: the lived experiences in question occur in the stream as
15 this or that cogito. This occurrence is an Objective real fact which can
appear as dependent on physical circumstances, just as conversely physical
processes can arise in Objective nature as a consequence of the psychic. The
spiritual fact (my comporting myself in this way under my noematic
circumstances), we can say, is a factum in the stream of consciousness, a
20 factum of psychic being, which is linked to the Body. It can be studied as
this factum of nature, hence studied also according to psychophysical
conditionalities and according to whatever other empirical-inductive regu­
larities there may be.
The person as such is the central unity of the Ego, a unity which endures
25 through time in the multiplicity of affections and actions. In the course of
these temporal Ego-events, the person is constituted originally as person,
i.e., as substrate of personal characters, as, in its temporal being, substrate- [360)1
unity. The way a person is actually constituted, that is how he functions as
a motivational subject for new affections and actions. Conversely, the
30 person “ manifests” himself to the one who understands him (I myself to
myself in the case of self-understanding) by the way he allows himself at
any moment to be motivated or by the way he is active. Hence a distinction
must be made between original constitution and the understanding-
experience within constitution and ^ithin what is already constituted, the
35 understanding of which is all the more complete the more the constitution
is revealed.
If one studies the person in his unity, which manifests itself in his acts
and affections, then one studies how he “ affects” other persons and
likewise how he spiritually undergoes effects from them, and furthermore
40 one studies how personalities of a higher order are constituted, how
individual persons and collective personalities of a higher level perform,
how as correlates of their spiritual performances cultural objectivities and
cultural arrangements are constituted, how individual persons, communal
personalities, and cultural formations develop, in which forms they do so,
45 in what typicality, etc. Obviously in all that there is also a system of events
in “ nature” as an empirical-causal spatio-temporal world-order, namely
insofar as, to all of that, precisely systems of lived experiences of human
 beings correspond as unities in spatio-temporal nature. If, or as long as,
these lived experiences are psychophysically dependent and in general are
subject to empirical-external inductive experimental rules, then these spiri­
tual facts will also have to be considered under psychophysical and, more
5 generally, natural points of view.
One has to say therefore that a scientific consideration of reality (a
complete scientific anthropology as positive science of man) includes a
scientific study of the spirit and consequently of spiritual accomplishments,
since all that is spiritual is enclosed in a certain way in the nexuses of lived
10 experiences of the individual human being and since these possess to an
indeterminate extent, which is precisely to be investigated further, a
psychophysical conditionality toward physical nature. More generally:
inductively there are empirical facts and in any case, even abstraction made
from these, there are facts of the spatio-temporal world, and these remain
15 even where such dependencies do not come into question. In the lived
experiences is also included the significance human beings attribute to
things of all sorts by means of value predicates, etc., in predicates relating
to works, machines, pictures, etc.
Culture is then a title on the one hand for actual things, which the
20 positive scientific psychologist himself encounters as Objective and which
he identifies as the intended things of the human being who is functioning
here as Object of world-science, and on the other hand, it relates to the
meaning-conferring acts of this human being in relation to his intended
things. From the standpoint of a consideration of reality it is hence correct [361]
25 to say that value-predicates, practological predicates, and likewise the
predicates of sensuous quality, color, tone, etc. are “ merely subjective.”
They are not predicates of “ merely subjective ” modes of appearance in the
sense of the real which is constituted thereby according to real qualities.
This merely subjective is, in a very broad sense, ideal or irreal. It is,
30 however, in its way, true being as intended and perhaps is exhibited truth
over and against the mere appearances: e.g., the correct color related to
our normal experience as human beings. And in another way it is the
truth-value of the authentic work of art, which for its part, e.g. in its
intuited colors and forms, is founded in the normal truth of being as merely
35 subjective.
One could say that the psychological is on the one hand consciousness,
i.e., the real [reell] psychic being in a psychical nexus ( = nexus of lived
experience), and on the other hand the intentional-psychic being, the
intentional correlate in the form of an intended thing with appearance-
40 properties, value characteristics, etc. Thereby however the psychologist as a
positive psychologist or as an investigator of nature executes the positing of
physical n atu re 1 as a foundational positing and he participates in the
positing, as nature, of the human being who serves him as an Object. But

1 Nature always refers to the totality o f nature in the sense o f the universal world
o f realities.
 he justifies his procedure with demonstrative reasons, whereby the thing
which was intentionally posited by the person is at the same time valid as
an actual thing of nature, at least according to certain circumstances, and
for the rest as an actual thing intended or intuited with these or those
5 subjective characters.
It is obvious that every spiritual relation between human beings, and
everything which in the spirituality of a higher personality is constituted
with regard to what gives to this spirituality spatio-temporal existence in
universal nature, is reducible to the singular human beings psychophysi-
10 cally considered and to the nexuses of nature existing between them.
Intersubjective spirituality, taken in its purity, is, in world-experience, not
for itself but, rather, mundane, hence naturally temporal in virtue of the
determinate foundation of the singular subjects, with their individual
empathies, in the individual real Bodies. Here “ nature” (the world of
15 positivity), which each natural science (positive science) investigates accord­
ing to one area, is always thought of as the unity of the temporal order of
existence, the unity of the order of coexistence and succession, in the one
spatio-thingly determined time, the unity of an order of physical and
(partially at least) psychical nature, which can be construed 1 and antici-
20 pated, as well as, in retrospect, reconstrued. Nature must be a system of
univocal determinability of all beings; that is what the natural scientist
holds, guided as he is by physical nature as the fundamental domain. This
world conceived as nature, the universal Objective world, is the universe of
substrates for truths in themselves — this universe thought in a universal [362]
25 science as deductible out of “ axioms ” or hypotheses is a geometrical and
physical paradigm, the latter interpreted in a definite way.
Beyond physical nature, with its closed lawfulness guaranteeing a
constant and univocal temporal sequence in the form of a nature “ left to
its own devices,” though on the other hand nevertheless allowing room for
30 spirituality and spiritual effects in what is physical, there must hence still be
a psychophysical lawfulness and a spiritual one. As regards the first, it is
lawfulness which for certain physical constellations of being (if not, indeed,
for everything physical) requires a spiritual “ parallel” of a definite essence.
As regards the latter, there are structural laws of unity and perhaps laws of
35 the properly essential development of the psyche as immanent psychical
laws. All the person’s spiritual activity, evaluating, accomplishing, and
creating, can be included here, as belonging to the realm of Objective facts
in the one temporal-spatial order.
We are therefore dealing here with nature in a double sense:
40 1) as physical nature, along with the psychic (in the broadest sense)
legitimately empathized in it. It is the realm of Objectively real facts versus
“ merely subjective facts;” it is the totality of all that is given in mere
“ factual ” experience, whose intended Objects of experience have been freed
of all merely subjective determinations, freed of all determinations which
 do not concord and which do not have to comply with the concordance of
demonstration, first within the individual subject and its concordance in its
original demonstrations, and then in intersubjectivity. But there must be a
necessary and not an accidental concordance, founded apriori in the idea of
5 an “ in itself” To the realm of an accidental concordance there also belong
the “ secondary qualities” as the ones by means of which Objective physical
nature “ presents” itself to subjects. In physical nature taken in that sense
we have hence a universe of factual, Objectively determinable being, free of
all determinations which in their proper predicative meaning refer back to
10 subjects and groups of subjects experiencing them, being presented with
them, feeling them, taking positions toward them, acting on them, etc.
In the context of this Objective nature, there also belongs the soul as
experientially connected with the Body, as an Objective real fact.
2) One can, however, understand nature also as the realm of inductive
15 experiential properties, and there must be such properties if talk of an
ordering of the spiritual, of the correlates of lived experience, into nature is
to make any sense.
In this way, all that is psychical or all that is personal can be considered
under the aspect of a being, an event, a homogeneous process-formation in
20 Objective spatio-temporal nature, and it is thereby always a constituent of
what is “ psychic” in physical things, in Bodies. Hence the person is [363]
thereby also something that occurs in nature (in the Objective nature of
natural science), linked with a Body, belonging to what is psychic of the
Body, a higher stratum of the Corporeal body as a being in itself.
25 In this conception there arises a question which is an obvious one in the
attitude of natural science, the question of the “ natural-scientific explana­
tio n ” of the psychic, and the sense and legitimacy of this question must be
considered. First of all, the meaning of the term “ existing” as applied to
the psychic (the psychic as existing) must be investigated. The psychic is
30 subjectivity within the experience of empathy; it is there experienced as
temporally coexisting with the Corporeal-physical. Every physical Object
which has irreal predicates (predicates added on to physical things, such as
values) is posited merely as physical. In the natural attitude, it is precisely
only the individual that is posited, that which is intersubjectively identical
35 for everyone: on the lowest level as physical nature and, as a further
stratum, the “ psychical ” as co-experienced with it in Objective time. The
problem then is how the Objective temporal order of the psychic object of
empathy is to be determined according to its manifold content. The
physical is, in conformity with its proper ontological sense, through and
40 through inductive-empirical. How far does the inductive-empirical go
beyond that? What about the psychic in its own proper character? Is it also
something inductive-empirical, or does it not have an apriori essence
presupposed by all inductive psychic empirics? And if we hence subtract it
by essential necessity from this structure, does there not then remain
45 something still to be investigated that is not inductive-empirical? What
kind of distribution of Objective time belongs to the sphere of the interior
life which reaches beyond the circle of immediate psychophysical indica­
 tion? What kind of distinctions do we need here with regard to the
inductive connections? To have broached these questions may for the
moment suffice.

§11. The human sciences posit subjectivity as

5 absolute. — “ Inner” and “ outer” experience

We now turn to a consideration of the human-scientific attitude. Instead

of assigning the spirit, persons, personal communities, and personal
accomplishments to one nature, instead of attaching them to the nature
which is at their basis and which is posited (absolutely) as something in
10 itself, it is the character of the human sciences to posit subjectivity as
absolute, to acknowledge nature only as the intuitively existing surrounding
world, or as a represented, thought, and intended surrounding world of
persons, and to take mathematical Objective nature, which previously was
the “ true reality,” only as (what in fact it merely is) a theoretical though
15 rational construction on the part of man as the subject of scientific
activities, partially accomplished by individual persons, partially by social
personalities.
In the spiritual attitude we have, as given unities, the persons and their [364]
surrounding worlds and their activities in relation to these surrounding
20 worlds; we investigate them intuitively and analytically, and we bring them
to scientific understanding (based on intuition). Scientifically we go back
to the nexuses of the stream of consciousness of the respective Ego along
with its sensuous substrata, and we investigate here in intentional research
all these connections and the manner in which therein personal unities are
25 constituted by means of a (constituted) determinateness in the surrounding
world. The givennesses of the surrounding world, the things of nature and
so on, are reduced to constituted unities and intersubjective regulations. In
short, all the human sciences acquire an ultimate linkage in phenomenology
as empirical phenomenology (modification of transcendental phenomeno-
30 logy). Human science is a science on the basis of sheer intuition, and its
theoretical determination does not consist in the construction of an
Objective temporal order but in the construction of a subjective order of
phenomena according to noetic and noematic motivations in a subjective
(though super-individual) temporal order. That is, it consists in an order
35 which posits all immanent streams of lived experience and the intentional
correlates in them with their immanent temporal orders in one unitary
ordered relation, the index of which is the transcendently constituted
Objective temporal order.
Natural science proceeds from outer experience; that is its root and
40 ground, from it all its pregivennesses originate. It works on what is
experienced by the subject (or by different subjects in different modes of
givenness) — experienced in changing qualities (though this indeed, in spite
of the differences in the qualities and the subjective aspects, proves to be
the one same actual being)— as the “ in itself,” the content of the
 supra-subjective, the logical invariant for each subject with the same
experience, the invariant in relation to all predicates which derive from the
manifold subjective circumstances. The “ Objective” is what, in the chang­
ing subjective elements, in the subjectively changing manifolds, is the
5 invariant “ true being,” and this is, above all, Objective nature in the first
sense, namely physical nature. The broadened second nature arises through
externalization, through the regulated linkage of the psychical to the
physical.
Descriptive natural science, the science of the intuitive forms and orders
10 of classes (which have an intersubjective content provided they are based
on a society of normal people), is a natural science only if conceived as a
sublevel therein, assigned the task of determining in a theoretical-Objective
way, in the sense of an Objective (exact) science of nature, the universal-
subjective which belongs to a society of normal human beings. Even all
15 morphology in the human sciences, including the morphology of individual
psychology, can be regarded as such a sublevel: hence one aiming at an
“ Objective” determination, a determination with Objective existence as [365]
spatio-temporal existence, which is grasped in the apperception, “ outer
experience.” But the human sciences are based purely and simply on “ inner
20 experience,” or, formulated in a better way, on phenomenological experi­
ence; for inner experience in the sense of psychological self-experience and
experience of the other, as these are founded in physical experience, is a
form of outer experience, of “ nature’’-experience. The immanent, that
which is found in myself, is then considered thematically as something to be
25 found in the soul pertaining to my Body, as a lived experience, etc. In a
certain sense the human sciences thematically use outer experience as well,
but just as the science of nature externalizes immanent experience (by
means of a naturalized thematic attitude), so the human sciences internalize
outer experience. They do not make outer experience thematic as outer, but
30 they make it thematic as an inner accomplishment. The human scientist is
not, like the natural scientist, a subject that thematically-theoretically
engages in outer experience; i.e., his theoretical attitude does not aim at
positing the externally experienced Object as his theme pure and simple,
specifically in the sense of what must be determined Objectively and as
35 purely factual, but he aims at positing it as noema of the experience and as
belonging to the surrounding world of the experiencing subject or exper­
iencing community, and his goal is to determine this in its subjective nexus.
The thesis put into effect here is the phenomenological thesis of experience:
“ an Ego-subject experiences this or th at;” for this thesis, then, there is no
40 difference between the experience of nature, the experience of sensibly
intuitive things, sense-things, and the experience of comparable axiological
and practical Objectivities. The theme is therefore subjectivity and the
Object as such, which, in the subjective, appears, is posited, and perhaps is
even theoretically determined. And so in general, the theme is subjectivity
45 both as individual and social, together with all its intentional correlates.
Whatever is Objective in natural science is then characterized as a system of
distinctive formations of subjectivity, especially of the subjectivity which
 investigates nature in a rational way. The human scientist thus goes back
precisely one level, back to the subject which investigates nature and so to
any subject operative either rationally or irrationally.
The definition of the science of “ nature” as a science of Objectivity and
5 the science of the spirit as a science of subjectivity is obviously old-
fashioned and trivial. But Dilthey was the first to intuit (although he in no
way raised it to theoretical clarity and was not even able to exhibit the
distinction in its purity) that there must be two sciences of subjectivity: the
one follows the path of psychophysics, or, more clearly, it is a science
10 which determines the spiritual Objectively as nature and in nature, hence
determines it Objectively as mundane; the other, which is not a natural
science, not science of the spirit based on outer experience, is a science that
encompasses all sciences of nature, even the natural-scientific theories of
the spirit (natural-scientific psychology, anthropology), as “ spiritual for- [366]
15 mations,” but which also acknowledges them as special spiritual forma­
tions, next to which there are so many others. The extant empirical human
sciences are descriptive-intuitive, because everything spiritual must be given
on the basis of intuitive sources themselves and only on the basis of such
sources, and not given, like the physical in-itself (of the exact natural
20 sciences), by means of evident thought, as ideal formation. Belonging here
are also in a certain way the descriptive “ natural ” sciences, which present
types of spiritual formations and as such pertain to the sphere of
subjectivity. What is intuitively given and what is apprehended by means of
intuitive concepts is, however, not a sublevel of Objectifying explanation
25 (nature-explanation) but of subjectifying explanation; that is to say, it is a
sublevel of the rendering understandable of aspects of the constitutions
which structure the formations and of aspects of all motivations which
traverse different correlative strata— “ m otivations” which connect
together lived experiences in an intelligible way and motivations which
30 extend between the Ego and its intentional correlates, etc. In a very broad
sense, these are purely subjective nexuses of causality, of the because (if)
and the then, that are to be revealed in a purely intuitive way.
Hence the attitude of the historian, or the linguist, etc, is a human-
scientific attitude, although at any given time only a very limited group of
35 formations and motivational strata come within his thematic focus. It is not
the sciences of nature but the human sciences that lead into the “ philoso­
phical” depths; for the philosophical depths are the depths of ultimate
being.
Insofar as we have actually original intuition, we have precisely what is
40 original. And the actually originally intuited, although the natural-scientific
attitude will call it “ merely subjective ” and will treat it as unimportant and
try to eliminate it, as is demanded by the theoretical interest of natural
science, is the true in the best sense. It is the absolute, the source of
everything. It has absolute self-validity and not merely validity as a
45 constitutive product of scientific experience, which in ultimate truth is still
only an index for a regulated subjectivity.
The enormous practical significance of Objectivation, its significance for
 the necessary task of the “ calculation ” of the Objective course of events,
made the moderns blind to the primal legitimacy of the givennesses of
intuition and blind to the fact that here lies the source of all legitimation,
and that this source does not extend into the sciences of nature, but that it
5 alone in its primal form contains truth, and that the development of truth
must preserve the form of intuition, whereas the science of nature has a
place in the realm of philosophical truth only if it is interpreted as coming
forth from that intuitive source and as lying within its subjective signifi­
cance (and not in the absolute significance which is the result of a dogmatic
10 conception of the world).

§ 12. Nature in the human-scientific attitude.— The [367]

human-scientific and the phenomenological attitude

These remarks, though on the whole very useful, are in need of both
delimitation and supplementation.
15 The human scientist, e.g., the linguist or the historian, constantly
“ partakes o f” outer experience; “ nature” is there for him, the one nature
common to all persons who share a social nexus, experienced by all of them
as common, exhibited to all as existent. However, he himself has no
theoretical interest in determining this common nature and therefore none
20 in determining psychic nature as it is “ bound” to the nature determined
theoretically by natural science. His theoretical theme is personal subjectiv­
ity in relation to its surrounding world: and intuitively given nature is
intuited by the persons as intuitive immediate surrounding world, that is,
given to them immediately and precisely intuitively. Perhaps even the
25 nature conceived in natural science is surrounding world, namely surround­
ing world for the practicing natural scientists, but no further than they
know of it in their theories. The human scientist does not need any
transcendental-phenomenological reduction to the phenomena of phenom­
enology, a reduction to the transcendental-pure cogito, to the transcenden-
30 tal plurality of cogitating subjects and to their being as thinking subjects.
The experienced world is for him precisely experienced, and experienced in
the natural sense, in the sense of practical life; it is lived in the experienc­
ing, in straightforward omni-lateral “ experiencing” of the constituted
world of things, of human beings and of animals, of things as natural
35 things, of things perhaps as national economic values, universal aids,
utilities, etc., and in the “ experiencing” of works of art, literary products,
etc. The straightforwardly “ experienced” world is the one in which persons
live related to it in a passive or active way, regarding which they take
positions, judge, evaluate, practically transform, etc. The human scientist
40 may not, by an artificial methodology, exclude anything from this sphere.
To be sure, the method for a human-scientific psychology of the inner life
requires “ psychological reduction.” But the historical, concretely descrip­
tive, human sciences hold fast to experience and its experiential unities and
are in no need of a phenomenological-psychological reduction as a rigorous
 method; they do not aim at ultimate, constitutive, elementary analyses,
elementary essential laws of intentionality, and the ultimate human-
scientific “ explanation.” For the human scientist everything remains open;
and he also investigates it in multiple ways: as a human scientist he
5 investigates human beings, their reciprocal personal associations and their
activities, their accomplishments and the results of their accomplishments,
etc.
But because his research interest focuses exclusively on personal subjects,
individual subjects as well as communal subjects (the latter, for their part,
10 having arisen through the personal influence of individual subjects on each [368]
other), and on personal subjective accomplishments, both as performance
and as the performed, for him all objectivity (always straightforwardly
valid), all nature, and even all other objectivities (including works, goods,
etc.) come into consideration only insofar as the objects are the experienced
15 (or in consciousness in some other way) objects of persons or are newly
constituted by them in active conscious activities.
Included under the title of human-scientific studies (that is, in our
historically elaborated, so-called “ human sciences”) are those sciences
which aim at a clarifying understanding of specifically personal accomplish-
20 ments as active subject-accomplishments and which investigate their “ prod­
ucts” or active formations. But then, for our human scientist, there
remains here a sphere of incomprehensibility, which is obviously not purely
separate; there remains in human-scientific explanation much that is simply
inexplicable and is consequently even characterized as lying outside the
25 realm of the human sciences, as not having originated in effective acts of
pregiven persons, mundane beings in their motivational nexus.
It would be the task of the psychology of the active motivations of
concrete persons to investigate here what is the apriori and, in general, the
empirical of this sphere; on the other hand, psychology would obviously
30 also have to investigate the sphere of passive affections and the passive
modes of comportment of subjects, their phantasies, their associations, etc.
Human-scientific psychology, however, as altogether directed to ultimate
explications, cannot merely be a psychology of active motivations. It
cannot be satisfied with having anything left over that is incomprehensible.
35 Concrete-descriptive human science can be self-satisfied, however, because
it seeks a concretely intuitive understanding, which is possible without an
elemental understanding of ultimate constitution according to essential
laws, something that is a universally explicating cognition of phenomeno­
logy.
40 Analogous to this is descriptive natural science and its comprehensibility
within description (not over against theoretical natural science as “ explain­
ing out of elementary laws” — for intuitive description is here not a
description of what is naturally in itself). The intuitive world remains
thereby constantly presupposed and posited. But the intuitive world is
45 precisely the world purely as a unity of its interpersonal modes of
appearance.
Space “ is ” indeed “ Objective” space, but the scientific interest of the
 human scientist is not simply to determine this Objectivity as such, under
the idea of an unconditioned Objectivity, or to determine spatial things
according to their “ true being in itself” as unconditioned and valid for
everyone and for all times. The things “ themselves” are the ones identified
5 in the here and in the there; they come into consideration, however, only as
things of personal subjects, only as appearing in the here and in the there,
although they are always identified and likewise qualified as the things now
appearing intuitively in such a way. Space is an index for the system of [369]
orientations. All things are under consideration according to how they are
10 given in orientation; the subject comports himself to the spatial thing in the
process of moving “ from here to there,” etc. To each subject these oriented
things, qualified sensuously in this or that way and often individually
qualified in many variations, are pregiven as his surrounding world, and it
is a datum that each subject has his aspects of “ the” things, his
15 perceptions, etc.
Now a distinction must be made between 1) concrete human science as
science of persons, of their personal comportment in relation to their
surrounding world, and of this surrounding world itself— universal des­
criptive science of the subjective, “ personal,” world. 2) The scientific
20 investigation of personal interiority, of prepersonal mundane constitutive
subjectivity hidden in the personal mundane attitude— transcendental
subjectivity in the proper sense. Furtherm ore: the distinction between the
concrete (historical) descriptive attitude and science and, on the other hand,
a science directed to lawful universality, hence not a mere morphology in
25 facticity, which always remains historical. We arrive then at 1) an eidetics
of personal possible worlds and 2 ) eidetic phenomenology.
If, instead of describing identical things, the way they are given in their
intuitive qualities, one undertakes the description of the thing-appearances
in their relative noetical sense— i.e., first of all, the manifold appearances
30 of the intuitive things as they present themselves (and are always posited
intuitively as identical) for the subject — and if one investigates their
nexuses and the way they exhibit themselves phenomenally in the con­
sciousness of the subjects and in the nexus of empathy between subjects and
how they emerge in consciousness according to their different levels, how in
35 subjects unities as thing-unities develop apperceptively and become pregiv­
ennesses, toward which the subjects can take a position, then one is
carrying out the deeper “ comprehending ” clarification of the being of the
surrounding world, which is, moreover, for the human sciences, a pregiven
being, and one is performing a phenomenological clarification of the
40 ultimate foundations of the human sciences. Furthermore, this clarification
is of a being which is already given, as a factum, naturally utilizing here an
eidetic spiritual-psychological “ phenomenology” but not a transcendental
phenomenology . 1 The attitude toward the already given world is here not [370]

1 Transcendental clarification: the foundation o f human science as in its way a

positive science is the eidetic science of personal mundaneity (also in the sense of the
 changed. That which appears in nature is still posited in a natural way, the
only difference is that the theme of the scientific research and of the
theoretical determination is subjectivity, and indeed, both here and ulti­
mately, subjectivity insofar as it in a certain sense produces nature, existent
5 nature, as knowledge, as its representation, and as existing in such and such
a way, by means of manifold ways of appearance and in modes of
consciousness in which it precisely brings this nature intentionally into
appearance and to cognitive positing as existing. To this then is joined
natural-scientific knowledge, which in this nexus turns into the human-
10 scientific clarification of natural science.
All this is the case without there being an explicit enactment of a
“ phenomenological reduction,” without there being any break in the
positing o f natural reality . All historical personalities, states, churches, etc.
are likewise posited in advance, and subsequently they are “ explained ” in a
15 subjective human-scientific way and thus made intelligible. And in a similar
way the pregiven world is made intelligible out of subjectivity, without
having put it into brackets.
According to this conception, we would have in human science several
levels o f clarification and, corresponding to them, several disciplines. In the
20 concrete human sciences, persons, personal communities, accomplishments
as processes of performing, and formations produced in the accomplish­
ments— all this belongs, if it concerns precisely the personal in the specific
sense, to the realm of free subjectivity, active or passive in its proper acts.
In order to bring the objectivities in question to givenness, experience is
25 needed — in this case the experience of personal unities and of their
formations and the experience of the activities (and their motives) which
produce them — in short, what is needed is the sphere of “ spirituality,”
self-integrated and to be characterized especially as a proper mundane
sphere of being. In this characteristic lies also the special task of the

ideally mundane); included in it are the foundational cognitions o f the method o f all
sciences as personal accomplishments. — To personal or human science, however,
does not pertain the constituting life which unfolds “ in ” the persons. But there is still
m ore: human sciences, the historically descriptive and the eidetic, always have their
factual (or possible) world o f the spirit as pregiven, just as in the “ nature ’’-attitude
nature is presupposed. The natural attitude in general i s : to have the natural world of
the spirit pregiven, and to it the nature-attitude and nature itself as theme of
knowledge are subordinated. — Now, however, I can exercise epoche; if I do so with
regard to the world o f the spirit, then consequently also with regard to physical
nature, and then to nature in an enlarged sense, what remains? I am the Ego that has
my personal Ego as a phenomenon and with it the whole personal world. — And then
I arrive at what is new, at absolute transcendental subjectivity and the universe o f its
phenomena. But if I do not execute the epoche, then I attain only a human science
and a human-scientific psychology on the natural soil o f the world of spirit, parallel
to natural psychology.
 physical biology of the organic living being. One must, however, pay
attention to the fact that the identical spatio-temporal world of reality
co-appertains to the content of the personal surrounding world — but in the
way in which it is intuitively determined for the personal community. In
5 order to bring this world to givenness, an originarily giving intuition is
needed (“ inner” intuition, if need be a reproductive one and then a
quasi-originarily giving intuition). This precedes science no matter how [371]
much it is incorporated into the ambit of scientific method. One can
intuitively bring alive a personality in its work and in its creations without
10 thereby making any kind of scientific claim. To that belongs, above all,
description by means of scientifically descriptive concepts. Obviously the
morphology of spirituality is included here, developmental morphology as
well.
In the production of the constituting intuition there is already at work an
15 understanding; in the corresponding description there is already a scientific
understanding— particularly insofar as eidetic necessities of motivation are
acknowledged or even are properly elaborated and applied to a given case,
and then we have an explanatory understanding. We understand hence
concretely and we understand in a scientific way in general by means of a
20 recourse to laws of motivation. We understand individual lines, individual
pages, actions, character-properties of personal subjectivity or of objectivi­
ties correlative to persons, while other pages remain unknown and not
understood. We posit the aim of exposing the unity of the life of the spirit,
the large structural nexuses which encompass it, in an intuitive way and
25 according to concepts and motivational laws. But as long as the underlying
ground of passivity is outside of this investigation, something irrational yet
remains.

Scientific ta s k s :

1) The elaboration o f personal and thereby universal experience. Persons

30 as beings in identity, but unknown as to their “ history,” unknown as to
their previous personal life. With simple empathy there arises in experience
that which is directly indicated together with a more or less vague
evocation of the particular “ apprehensions” inserted into the universal
apperception, person. The disclosure of personal elapsed temporality,
35 together with its concomitant mundane appearances, intentions, motiva­
tions, activities, external and internal actions in their personal nexus — all
of which must likewise be disclosed to a certain degree.
To the apperception, person, belongs a personal nexus and the limitless
horizon of the history in which each individual personality “ develops” in
40 the unity of personal nexuses. Historiography is the elaboration of true
history as a concordant historical experience under the idea of a concor­
dance maintaining itself in the progress of the disclosing elaboration of this
experience and resulting always in the same truth (experiential truth), but
only in a continuously more precise determination. The disclosure results
45 from the actual historical present to which the historian himself necessarily
belongs.
 Linguistic expression here does not have at first the function of an
absolutely fixed conceptuality but is “ pictorial” expression which is [372]
descriptive in the primary sense, that is, gifted in evoking intuition. Every
means to this is legitimate.
5 2) Science in the pregnant sense, as science which strives for “ exact­
ness,” requires a methodology which determines and fixes what is intuited
by means of proper and essential concepts in the absolute identity of the
conceptual essences.
This leads to a universal morphology which is in search of stable
10 typological concepts and which at the same time creates for the historical a
“ natural history ” already moving within universalities.
3) Eidetic idealization: free variation and the search for essential neces­
sities and essential laws.
To the eidetic theme of personality and personal world there also belongs
15 the identical natural (real) world, but in a double way, just as the idea of a
personal world in general is a double one: 1) as morphological idea: idea
of an existing personal world, existing within a flux and hence as
morphological; to it belongs an open horizon though yet not an infinitude.
It is at least questionable first whether, if we or if a personality discloses its
20 horizon and encounters it as infinite, an infinitude can then be claimed as
an actual being. — 2) We form the idea of a personality which sustains
itself into the infinite, together with the corresponding infinitude of the
identical real world sustaining itself for the personality. The infinite idea is
the idea of a world which exists in itself as a substrate of truths in
25 themselves and absolutely valid. From this idea as norm of knowledge for
the living personality taken in its personal (relative) surrounding world,
there results the practical goal of an infinite “ exact science” striving for
this idea by way of approximation.

Supplem ent XIII (to Section Three, especially to § 64)

30 “ Personal subjectivity ” as a theoretical theme — over against that subject

and subject life which is considered £ reality unified with physical nature
and especially with physical Corporeality, as the point of convergence of
psychophysical conditionalities; that is, the subject that now senses red
because certain electro-magnetic waves are striking his retina, functioning
35 physiologically in a normal way, are changed into nervous stimulation, and
are propagated up to the central nervous system, etc. On the other hand,
the “ living subject ” is the subject of his surrounding world, including his
surrounding world of spatial things, but also his world of values and of
goods, his personal and social surrounding world. This subject is a person
40 among persons, a citizen of a state, a legal subject, a member of a union, an
officer, etc., and, as such, is affected by the Objects now given in his
surroundings, feels their force and, in turn, acts upon them. This living
subject is the subject o f actual life, standing towards his congeners in a [373]
nexus of empathy, in accordance with which he acknowledges the other and
 himself as first experiencing one and the same common surrounding world,
though each has his own subjective ways of givenness of this common
world.
Thus man in nature as nature, nature as the correlate of the natural-
5 scientific attitude — vs. man as the center of his surrounding world. Let us
restrict ourselves to the material surrounding world and consider:
1) the subject in reference to a corporeal thing in the surrounding world,
and
2) the subject as nature in a real relation to the same thing: our
10 cathedral, say.
Concerning 1): In the attitude of actual life there is a conscious having
by the Ego of Objects as an immediate having-over-against, a conscious­
ness of the presence of the cathedral “ in the flesh.” If someone else is
standing beside me, looking at the cathedral, then I understand this without
15 any further ado. His seeing, which I acknowledge in him by empathy, is
equally an immediate having-over-against; the Object is immediately given.
With each step that I take, the “ view” of the cathedral, its orientation,
changes, but I see it itself immediately. The seen regulates everything I do,
from it I am affected in all my interests and activities, etc. If I make the
20 man of this life into a theme, then I have to treat him as the subject of his
surrounding world, as the center of intentionality in reference to the
“ existing” Objects he is conscious of.
Concerning 2): In the attitude of natural science, man is corporeally a
body among bodies, one of which is the cathedral in a determinate real
25 place in space. I experience myself and the other as unities o f body and soul.
That is, I am now experiencing human beings as psychophysical; and the
perceptual appearances in the soul then receive the real sense of last
members of a physical-causal and psychophysically conditional process of,
for example, this content: electro-magnetic waves, transmitted from the
30 physical body we call “ cathedral,” are propagated in world-space and act
as physical stimuli on my corporeal nerve endings and on those of the other
person, etc.
Is this the real truth, and over against it is the living subject’s immediate
seeing a mere illusion ? Without entering into an epistemological debate, still
35 it is clear that such an interpretation would be reversed to the extent that all
psychophysical knowledge, all knowledge of reality, rests on immediate
experience. In other words, the nature-attitude is a special attitude within
life; it is only that I do not take the Ego as the intentional subject of life
and this naturally interested life as themes. All that remains in self-
40 forgetfulness. Further, immediate seeing could be an illusion only if it
enclosed in its own sense a claim which was refuted by psychophysical [374]
truth. That is out of the question. On the contrary:
Sim ple perception contains in its sense as perception nothing o f an
apprehension o f a causal relation between m y soul, my sensations, my
45 appearances, and the thing.
I, the seer, also have my Body as something immediately seen, and only
in the course of my experience do I become aware that certain of my
 (immediately perceived or perceptible) organs are organs of perception,
that they really have something to do with the seeing of things, and, last of
all, that psychophysical causality obtains here.
The psychophysical conception arises in a special attitude, which subse-
5 quently can become a theoretical attitude and a psychophysically scientific
one. Likewise, the thematic apprehension of the thing as nature (in the sense
of natural science— but also already prior to science, though not with
thematic consistency) already arises through a special thematic attitude
directed to the true being-in-itself of the seen, to what it is in itself: namely,
10 a substrate of causal properties.
Likewise also arises, in an analogous attitude, the conception of the soul
as a reality in the real world. To this attitude belongs then precisely
everything which makes subjectivity a real component of human, psycho­
physical, reality: thus all of psycho-physical causality.
15 Is the theoretical attitude tow ard nature — toward the world as the total
unity of realities — the only possible theoretical a ttitu d e l No, it is in fact a
special kind of Ego-life and habituality of Ego-life, whereby precisely this
itself remains anonymous; another possible attitude is the one directed to
“ living subjectivity ” or to the human spirit — in the human sciences.
20 Every science proceeds from a natural ground; or, better, every science
stands on one. Natural science deals with reality and real-causal nexuses;
human science investigates natural personal being and life and the nexuses
of personal life (Ego-life, active and passive). The “ worlds” of the natural
and the human sciences are correlative and are not at all incompatible. The
25 life-world of persons escapes natural science, even though the latter
investigates the totality of realities, for even the most subtle theory in
natural science does not touch the life-world, and that simply because the
thematic direction of thought the natural scientist follows is a theoretical
path away from the actuality of life, leaving it behind right at the
30 beginning, and only reverting back to it in the form of technology and in
the form of an application of natural science to life.
The subject of life has things over against himself; that is, to his own life [375]
there necessarily belongs an intuitive life-horizon, and to this life as a
human life there belongs a horizon of things which are not mere bodies but
35 are instead Objects of value, goods, etc. — that is, everything experienced
by the person in apperception, or objects consciously posited in some other
way which are his property as lying within the compass of his subjectivity
and as affecting — his thinking, valuing, desiring, acting.
The basic relationship in this life-world, which predelineates the point of
40 view of the method, is not causality but motivation. The subject can be
motivated only through becoming what he “ lives,” what he is conscious of
in his life, what is given to him subjectively as actual, certain, supposed,
valuable, beautiful, good. These characters arise as motivated, just as, on
the other hand, they are motivating. The subject of motivation posits
45 himself as such in original self-experience and posits others in empathy-
experience. Empathy is not a mediate experience in the sense that the other
 would be experienced as a psychophysical annex to his Corporeal body but
is instead an immediate experience of others.
The same holds for the experience of communication with others,
interchange with them. If we see one another with our own eyes, then
5 subject is confronting subject in an immediate contact. I speak to him, he
speaks to me; I command him, he obeys. These are immediately experi­
enced personal relationships, although in this experience of others and of
communication there are in play special presentiflcations, and I actually
have an original perceptual experience only of my own subjectivity. The
10 indirectness of expression is not the indirectness of an inference from
experience. We 44see” the other and not merely the Body of the other; he is
there for us not merely as a Body, but, instead, his spirit is self-presentified
too. He is there 44in person.”
The life-world is the natural world — in the attitude of natural life we are
15 living functioning subjects together in an open circle of other functioning
subjects. Everything Objective about the life-world is subjective givenness,
our possession, mine, the other’s, and everyone’s together. Subject and
possessions are not equal; the subjects are without qualification, what is
not personal is surrounding world, what is lived is lived experience of the
20 surrounding world, and that holds also for what is seen and thought, etc.
How then will life, subjects, and their possessions become scientific
themes? They will to the extent that we take them precisely as they are and
ask what belongs to them as subjects, as affected by their environment, as
passive and as active, and ask, further, what they accomplish and create in
25 their surrounding world and how their surrounding world arises, grows,
and develops through their individual accomplishments and in reciprocal
motivation as a common accomplishment. Science is a function of a
theoretical interest, which itself belongs in the subjective sphere. The
theoretical interest can be directed to subjectivity itself as the subject of its [376]
30 surrounding world, as working and accomplishing in the surrounding
world, and to the accomplishments as such. The task would be to describe
this subjectivity, its life, its working, its creating, its productions as
productions, and to explain them in the sense which results from the
descriptions.
35 Individual description , morphological: finally, a universal morphology of
the natural world as the common world of a people, of any society
whatever. In this surrounding world, which has the validity of a world
common to all, causalities also arise, but as intuitive causalities. Everything
therein can have an effect, can perhaps also awaken a theoretical interest
40 and lead to the problem of the true being of this world. This is how
44Objective science” arises. That itself belongs, together with its cognitions,
to the surrounding world of the person who has some part in it. But that is
only a special case. The general theme still is and remains subjectivity in
general and its surrounding world.
45 Apriori description: what in general belongs to it. The essential form of a
surrounding world and of the alteration of the surrounding world corre­
lated to the essential form of personality. Also, the essential form of the
 personal substructures. To the question of essence belongs the necessary
structure of the surrounding world with respect to the circumstance that
factical subjectivity has a uniformly enduring world, in a universal experi­
ence which tends towards concordance, and can have a continuously valid
5 world only in the constant establishment of concordance. That leads to the
essential structure of a world that remains intuitive, is enduring, and is
valid for everyone. The “ transcendental-aesthetic world.” The natural
concept of the world as such a necessary validity and as a field of all
possible sciences. And here reappears human subjectivity as the subject of a
10 surrounding world, as a Bodily-corporeal subjectivity to be investigated in
the natural sciences, as psychophysically a Body and a soul, as purely
subjective and yet also as the one which is the “ living ” functioning subject
of the life-world, and consequently also its description.
Humans and animals are perceived as Objects of the world. Thereby they
15 become themes of Objective and, in the first place, descriptive sciences.
Then what is psychic is co-perceived, co-Objective.
The physical thing is “ in itself,” and this in-itself is for natural science
only a formal-methodical rule of unity, according to which each person
standing in the unity of mutual understanding, conventionally related to
20 certain primordially orienting facts (such as the birth of Christ), can
construct the intuitive things of his surrounding world (the “ appear­
ances”). The physical thing o f the natural sciences has only a fo rm a l essence ;
it has only its form ula , and for the rest this is its essence, that, according to
this formula, it is a regulated intentional unity of an infinite variety of [377]
25 appearances “ of all men.”
But each subject has an actual essence and is not merely something
relative (in the harmony of an infinite manifold of systems of appearances
which have their ultimate absolute terms of relation in subjects) but instead
is something for itself and in itself and is only subsequently, by virtue of
30 communication, for others — others who can understand its essence intui­
tively, hence “ adequately” (namely, in an analogy with degrees of perfec­
tion and determination to be carried out on the basis of the intuition of
one’s own psychic being) as there and as graspable.

S upplem en t XIV (to Section Three)

35 The human-scientific attitude — the transposition o f the natural sciences into

the human-scientific attitude.

As will become clear in the following, we conceive of our investigation as

a transcendental-phenomenological one; hence the human-scientific attitude
and its givennesses are described as phenomena within transcendental
40 subjectivity, and it is therefore that use is made of the doctrine of
constitution and of elementary structural analyses. Yet what is essential
would still have been disclosed, even if the investigation had been carried
out in the natural attitude.
 As persons we are in relation to a common surrounding world— we are
in a personal association: these belong together. We could not be persons
for others if there were not over and against us a common surrounding
world. The one is constituted together with the other. Each Ego can
5 become a person in a personal association only when, by means of
comprehension, a relation to a surrounding world is produced.1
Now we want to turn our interest to the world of experience as
communal experience , and indeed first of a ll:
Our theoretical interest can be directed to a given personal association, a
10 closed one (naturally in relation to its surrounding world), but in such a
way that this association comes into consideration only insofar as it is
factually related to the surrounding world in its motivations or insofar as
the motivational relation of the factual persons to their factual environment
can attain intuitive understanding.
15 Intuitive understanding means here: I as historian, or we as historians
working in community, construct out of data of actual experience legiti­
mate presentifications of personal being in personal accomplishments and
formations of accomplishment in progressive unification. We exhibit con­
structively in such systematically unified presentification a common experi- [378]
20 ence which is always expanding, a constructive mediate experience, which,
as it progresses, stands firm and does not unravel through discordance.
This kind of experience is one which opens up; it is not a conceptual
judgmental inference but an intuitive disclosing, the results of which are not
propositions but systematically unified intuitions, whereby what is intui-
25 tive-objective there is personal being and life, as it would be, or could be,
directly intuitive to the thematic personality or to others in its nexus.
This is hence the level o f history. It wants to produce intuitive under­
standing for spirits in relation to their common spiritual surrounding
world. (To this a morphology is joined as a universal doctrine of the
30 intuitive structural forms of personalities and personal associations.)

D eeper exposition s:

I consider subjects in relation to their surrounding w orld: how they let

themselves be motivated. In this way I come to know them as personalities,
as spiritual individuals; I come to know them in their personal activities
35 and in their development, and the same holds for communities in their
individuality and in their communal accomplishments. I investigate how
they develop, how they form themselves and transform themselves, and I
attain from all that, from their being and becoming, from their “ history,”
an intuitive understanding.
40 With regard to the surrounding world, it is to be noted that on the one
hand it is a factual surrounding world, a surrounding world of things,

1 This paragraph is utilized in Section Three; cf. p. 201, 11. 25-33.

 experienced in factual experiences, in an individual’s experiences and then
supplemented in comprehension by exchanges, reports, etc.1
But now we have to take into consideration what we said earlier: things,
which at first are only things of the surrounding world, communal objects
5 standing over and against us, become spiritual objects of a higher level by
means of value apperceptions, practical apperceptions, etc. They are for
example communally valuated as comestibles, or as combustibles, as goods
for “ self-preservation,” and they are now precisely “ goods;” that is, they
enter the surrounding world as objects of a higher order, and they
10 determine, as constituted in these apperceptions, new modes of comport­
ment by means of which new objects can be constituted. We have then in
the surrounding world first of all things as mere nature and then all
concrete cultural formations as things of a higher level. [379]
a) Interest in the personality itself: now we can consider persons and
15 associations of persons with respect to how they “ comport themselves”
over and against pregiven persons2 or things of any level whatsoever in
their surrounding world, how they let themselves be “ motivated ” by them,
therein manifesting their individuality, and how they develop thereby
according to the style predelineated by their individuality.
20 b) Interest in individuals’ cultural accomplishments and in socio-culture
(works of the community): we can, however, also consider them with
respect to how they create thereby a surrounding world, how they produce
for themselves a cultural world, and how they allow themselves to be
constantly determined, by what they have produced, to produce new things,
25 etc.
This gives rise to inquiries of various kinds: ones which study primarily
the persons and associations of persons and ones which investigate
primarily their correlates, although both belong together. One can, e.g.,
proceed purely historically and single out the history of the German people
30 or state, whereby people and state as personal unities are the focus of the
research. But one can also write a history of German culture, German
literature, art, etc. Of course, as we said, both belong together. Likewise
morphologies: a morphology of household utensils, of weapons, religions,
symbols, etc. Everywhere in this field, research may consider objects only
35 as they are for subjects, as ones which they experience, of which they and

1 More precisely: first distinction: the surrounding world is on the one hand a
surrounding world o f things and on the other hand a surrounding world made up o f
persons and associations o f persons. (Opposition: persons and non-persons.)
Second distinction: the objects of the surrounding world in general are either
deprived o f personally-based significations, or they have these significations, they are
culture. Specifically: something is either mere nature or a thing o f culture, i.e.,
something with a spiritual significance, with characters issuing from personal
accomplishments.
2 Even persons are “ cultural Objects” o f the surrounding world.
 their companions have cognition, as ones they let themselves be motivated
by.
Research can and may involve here only what allows of being intuitively
understood; that is, the objects here are what they are only in personal
5 understanding and are to be brought to givenness as such. All physics and
chemistry are thus excluded.

M ere nature, but as surrounding world, considered purely intuitively:

The lowest limit of non-personal objects are mere things. They have the
maximum distance from the Ego, they are as foreign to the Ego as could
10 be, and they have the minimum which is in general required for the
possibility of things and persons to be constituted in relation to each other.
These are the “ sensuous” objects, the “ mere nature” which stands over
and against the spirit as alien to it. If there is posed the scientific task of
investigating systematically the spiritual world, then this task includes that
15 of the description of “ mere nature.” The generally familiar surrounding
world of persons has for everyone an open horizon of unfamiliarity. With
regard to the intuitive nature which is alien to me, there results the
possibility of an intuitive natural-historical investigation which is unhisto-
rical insofar as it was not actually familiar.1
20 But we also know that the world has an open endless horizon: the world [380]
in the present sense of our surrounding world of things. The world of
things, which stands over and against me, my companions, and my human
community as “ Objective ” surrounding world, is endless, corresponding to
the sense of the apprehension of a thing-world. But the world of persons is
25 also infinite — that is, the totality of persons who stand to me, or might
stand to me, in a personal relation. The personal environment is an open
one, new persons can always enter our experience, others can disappear,
and finally there is even nothing preventing Martians from presenting
themselves; hence according to ideal possibility we have here “ infinities.”
30 In this sense one’s goal can be to fathom that horizon. The interest can
expand to the universe of the persons who communicate with us and to the
corresponding universal surrounding world of things. At first according to
its aspects as “ mere nature,” but then also according to spiritual factors.
The explorer penetrates unknown territories and makes them known to us
35 by his descriptions. A special group of sciences (descriptive natural
sciences) elaborates at first the purely descriptive expansion of the known
horizon (universal descriptive research, an investigation of the universal
human surrounding world), and this description is worked out prior to the

1 Here must be added the following: let us start from the personal attitude of
common practical life. In it we will be directed onto a limited (although open) circle
o f persons, our family, our social circles, etc. and a limited surrounding world.
 intervention of exact physicalistic natural science. Those sciences describe
our human surrounding world, the world of pure things, animals’ sur­
rounding worlds, and in anthropology the anthropological surrounding
world. Hence they arise out of a personalistic attitude; we can at least
5 consider them that way. (They can also serve as preliminary stages for
natural sciences, for “ Objective sciences.”) In the surrounding world as our
over-and-against, there are human races and in every race these and those
peoples, and then, however, also the cultures, sciences, and arts of these
peoples, etc. The human sciences are thereby in the end self-related, and
10 that comes from their own specific character. I can as a German or, more
generally, as a European (as a person in the society of European life and
culture) traverse the horizon of our unitary environing world and describe
it. In that case I encounter all European and then all cultures in general, the
whole world, all animality, and all humanity, and finally also our science,
15 as a cultural formation of European culture, German culture.

The various types o f intuitive causality within the personal world

We study the spiritual life and the spiritual communities with their
surrounding worlds not only
1) in concreto , we study them not only in their individuality and
20 individual developments, but [381]
2) we also study them morphologically, we investigate the empirical
generalities with regard to all personal and non-personal directions.
In both cases it holds that we find: 1) causalities of motivation. Spirits
allow themselves to be “ determined ” to act in ways which document their
25 personalities. And we find: 2) causalities of things among each other as
mere physical things, things of nature. The boulder falls and crushes
whatever comes in its way. These are causalities which are perceived and
are comprehensible and which demonstrate themselves, as is the case with
everything that is experienced, by further experience, or by intersubjective
30 agreement. Each in its own way. Material things are given as “ appearing”
through perspectival presentation, persons are given through their connec­
tion with appearing Bodies, but persons, as regards what is individual of
them, do not “ appear” in that sense.
3) We also have a spirit/thing (person/thing) causality: the personal
35 spirit moves the Body, the hand moves in space among the things there
because I move it. This is an immediately understandable state of affairs.
Does something physical here enter into a motivational relation? Extreme
caution is now called for. Consider: I grasp an eraser, I pick it up in order
to erase something with it. The action of grasping, etc., in which the
40 movement in space is included empirically, is motivated by the will to erase.
But in this way the physical movement of the hand is not motivated nor is
it motivated by the correlate of the will, which makes it an action. Things
as such only move mechanically, by being pushed, etc. But things called
“ Body members” move by voluntary direction, in the “ I do,” “ I work,”
 “ I open and close my h an d /’ etc.1 The personal subject performs physical
“ accomplishments.” They have, just as do all personal acts, their motives,
but here is a special kind of “ because.” The physical process unfolds
because the Ego of the Body performs it in the way of an action.
5 It is an important phenomenological task to distinguish the various
“ becauses.” We can correctly speak, at any rate, of a causality of the spirit
in relation to the Body, of a personal or free causality.
Conversely, the Body as an Object in the surrounding world determines
the spirit: e.g., its presumed beauty determines the Ego to vanity, Bodily
10 pain determines it t o ... etc.

What kind o f abstract-scientific, nomological, human-scientific (personalis­

tic) investigations are there?

I consider:
a) spirits as subjects, just the way they are, as persons, accomplishing
15 acts relating to their surrounding world. I consider the acts and am led
back to the nexuses of lived experiences of the persons. And now
phenomenology makes known to me the essence of “ consciousness,” the
essence of all types of acts, the essence of the passive modes of lived
experience which found them, and in these nexuses phenomenology again
20 discovers quite specific relations of because and then. I am led to the
relations between the “ I experience” and the sensations, adumbrations,
sense-things, etc., and I am led to the implicated “ motivations,” relations
between kinesthetic series and the concomitant visual data, etc.

1 Constitutively the Body as a corporeal thing is a unity of corporeal appercep­

tions and has its horizon of causal properties co-constituted in the current actual
apperception or experience.
In the apperception o f the Body as a system o f Bodily members or “ organs,” each
such Bodily member is constituted as subjectively moveable and also as voluntarily
moveable. We have here hence several levels o f m otivation: the associative system of
the bodily thing is motivated by the associative system o f subjective kinesthetic
movements, which are at the same time apperceived as movements o f perceptual
organs (the Bodily member as a thing refers to other Bodily members as perceptual
organs, because the kinesthetic processes which are at issue here are apperceived as
movements o f the Body). The systems are empirically associative and the processes
appear as immediately subjective (kinesthetic) or as consequentially subjective. Then
the “ interference ” o f the will is no longer associative but is founded on the empirical
constitutions. Therefore the performing o f a subjective movement in the world o f
things as voluntary movement, the “ interfering,” is not comprehensible as a merely
intuitive physical process, but it has a super-physical stratum. (For the rest, confer
what follows.)
 Pure phenomenology, or human-scientific psychology,1 investigates here
the constitutive essential necessities and essential possibilities. Empirical
science would have to investigate the empirically general rules of factical
being. To this the whole empirical psychology of memory and association
5 would pertain, insofar as it leaves aside only all reference to so-called
physicalistic and physiological explanations, and thereby all psychological
research is conducted as “ purely psychological,” and what is being pursued
is a mere general empirics of the life of the spirit. It is clear that something
of enormous significance will be gained by the separation of phenomeno-
10 logical essential nexuses from empirical nexuses in personal life. The acts,
the specific cogitationes , are performed in a deeper psychic milieu and must
be investigated in it empirically.

b) N atural science within human science

We remain in the personalistic (human-scientific) attitude. We may be [383]
15 members of a community of researchers in natural science, who on the
basis of their theoretical experience of things intend to investigate the “ true
being” of things according to the sense of thing-apperception. Intuitive
being, presumed to be true being, is the being which is constituted in the
regulated lived experiences of the experiencers, persons who are in personal
20 association. All Objective nature is indeed reduced to regulations of pure
consciousness of the persons who find themselves in the personal associa­
tion— but as Objectivity of the exact natural sciences and not as Objectiv­
ity of the merely factual persons, even in an open community and with an
open horizon of intersubjective temporality: that is, as true being, such as it
25 would presumably be exhibited in possible concordant experience hence­
forth and, in practice, always. On the other hand, modern natural science,
particularly in its classical form, constantly idealizes this; it absolutizes the
open infinity as infinite (not only externally but also internally infinite)
space-time and as infinite divisibility. It produces and uses for that a
30 mathematics of absolute infinities, and it mathematizes nature and its whole
structure of being. In doing so it also makes the whole world of the spirit
infinite, externally and internally infinite. The truths in themselves of
mathematics and the presumed truths of the exact science of nature bear
the stamp of the ideality of this infinity. Aeterna veritas ! (One could ask
35 whether this is not included already in all eidos and in every essential
consideration.)

1 If the investigation, as a reflection on the character o f the attitude and research

found in the human sciences, is carried out on the natural level, then one cannot
introduce any result o f phenomenology. But it would then have to be shown that
personal research has its levels, and that first o f all appears the personal practical
world with its patent nexuses o f specific personal motivations, and that, however,
there belongs to each person an intentionally latent life, the uncovering o f which is
grasped by the personal being in its concreteness. This is the way to a human-
scientific phenomenological psychology, the parallel o f naturalistic phenomenological
psychology, distinguished from it only by the thematic attitude.
 This association of persons is, in spite of its openness, a fixed one on
account of its relation to researchers. But in the research of natural science,
subjects are not investigated and neither is their consciousness, nor are the
actual and possible constitutive lived experiences. Natural science research
5 is directed instead to physicalistic being as documented in experience and
also to what is worked out by means of intersubjective exchange of
descriptions, i.e., by the methods of the natural sciences in their “ Objectiv­
ity ” (“ absolute” Objectivity). In this research we do not posit ourselves,
the researchers, and likewise we do not posit other spirits; what are posited
10 are the things of the surrounding world, the things of our spiritual world,
and we determine them “ Objectively” in their exactly or absolutely true
being-in-themselves. We know what this means. We know that physical
things are at first “ appearances” of individual subjects, that appearances,
up to a certain degree, are interchangeable, that distinctions can be made
15 between normality and abnormality, that the individual subject, even with
regard to its spiritual states, shows itself to be dependent on its Corporeal­
ity, that it can and does make distinctions between normality and abnor­
mality, that, furthermore, the science of the absolute Objectivity of things
overcomes these distinctions by taking all possible dependencies into
20 consideration (but also by absolutizing the infinities), and that it pursues [384]
the idea of reality in all its aspects.1 To presuppose “ norm al” relations is
to leave out of consideration certain changeable circumstances and con­
comitant dependent properties which used to be constant. It is shown that
what counts as a thing accessible to many persons, a thing endowed with
25 secondary characteristics, might only be considered an “ appearance ” of a
thing existing in itself and requiring thought to be elaborated, a thing
which for its part is an index for the regulations of phenomena. This makes
the intersubjective thing of a normal community dependent on motivating
“ abnormalities,” that is, those of the Corporeal and physical organization
30 of the person. Thus is physics essentially related to physiology and psycho­
logy. In more details:
Among the intuitively given physical things, Bodies have this distinction
that psychic data are bound up with them, including those that are the
conditions of the possibility of knowledge of things. Bodies can, in a
35 personal community of biological investigators, be investigated as Objects
just like any other physical Objects (Objective types, which preserve the
type in the process of metabolism, which are formed in development, and
which propagate themselves, etc.). Thereby we have a distinction between
the Bodies which function on the side of the investigators, functioning in

1 N o account is taken of the problems o f biology as physical science (natural

science), which o f course is not physics in the usual sense, for physical Corporeality,
considered exactly, is not reducible to a “ construct” out o f physical elements but is
a “ metabolism ” and a structure o f development, an individual type intuitively given
in empirically intuitive types o f individuals; in exact reductions to the physicalistic,
however, there remains indeed a lawful type.
 such a way that they make possible their knowledge, and the Bodies which
are their Objects. But the Bodies functioning in research can likewise also
be investigated by other investigators, etc. The investigators are spiritually
in a “ norm al” state (they have normal intelligence though perhaps
5 defective senses), and series of lived experiences unfold factually in them,
which are series of Objective cognitions and which correspond in their
essence to the norms of valid empirical knowledge. In the exchange of their
cognitions the investigators experience motivations by which new know­
ledge becomes possible, etc. The methods themselves are demonstrated as
10 valid in intersubjectively motivated thinking and knowing and as corre­
sponding to the essential laws of valid knowledge for interpersonally
constituted series of appearances.
The elaboration of the Objective world means that the sense-qualities of
appearing things are eliminated, for they are dependent on the functioning
15 of the Body (and therefore the corresponding perceptual judgments are
relative). These dependencies are investigated by sense-physiology, at first
as aesthesiology, and then as psychophysics in general.1 They form a [385]
stratum of their own. An abundance of relations remains left over, through
which the appearing thing is determined with so much identity that it is
20 identifiable even in deviant sensuous appearances. The things of sensuous
qualities are now merely subjective, they pertain to the subjects, and many
subjects can have the same sense-things. But in that case they have them
accidentally, insofar as they possess Bodies modifiable in such a way that in
turn the things appearing to the senses change as such, and indeed they
25 change for different subjects in different ways. Should the thing remain
identical, just as it presents itself as identical, then there must also be a
distinction made between the thing itself, which is determined not sen­
suously but rather non-sensuously, i.e., merely through mathematical-
physicalistic predicates, and the sense-thing of subjective “ appearances,”
30 related to the “ accidental” subjectivities.
In the purely spiritual attitude (the phenomenological attitude) there is a
distinction between precisely:
1) the actually unfolding spiritual life of each subject (with the person
constituted therein for itself as pregivenness),
35 2) the transcendent-natural unities of experience constituted in the
subject and constituted in each in its own way (Body— outer thing); and
that means: each subject has its “ external” experiences and always has its
horizon of true being, its constant idea of true nature in itself, and indeed
as posited in a rational and up to now ever verified positing, as motivated
40 concordance for the future. Each subject can posit this nature theoretically ,
but can also, however, posit itself and all others (theoretically), and can
even posit the intersubjective unity of spirits and “ bracket” nature.

1 Indeed not as aesthesiology alone, which knows nothing o f sense qualities but
only o f sense fields. Therefore we have to have recourse to psychology, grounded on
the phenomenological method.
 Theoretical investigation of the relations which exist here: theoretical
positing of nature, theoretical positing and research of spirits (according to
1) in relation to nature, etc.
In the natural attitude, nature is there pre-theoretically, and the others
5 are there and are related to this same nature, and the community of the
spirit is there, things which become clear in all purity only in phenomeno­
logy. I can pursue theoretical research of nature (natural science) as well as
of the spirit in relation to or in nature (naturally directed research into the
spirit), and finally I can investigate spirits in relation to their noematic,
10 appearing, presumed (but counting as true) nature, the nature existing in
spirituality as verified.
But to this are added other dependencies, those of the higher physiolog­
ical stratum. Dependent on Bodies are also the reproductions and thereby
also the apperceptions.1The reproductions stand in the associative nexus of [386]
15 subjectivity. Thereby apperceptions are determined, and that is again
significant for the things which stand over and against the subjects and
perhaps stand over against several subjects as the same things. What
subjects have over against themselves as world depends on their Bodies and
on the peculiarities of their psyches. The investigation of these dependen-
20 cies, however, can be consigned to their own sciences.
a) On the one hand we have the scientific establishment of the Objective
actuality of what is experienced by persons, physically experienced or
experienced by empathy. The apperceptions and experiences which persons
have possess their rights and their legitimation in themselves. This is
25 prescribed by their proper essence. We convince ourselves in the familiar
way whether the experienced thing in the course of experience affirms itself
as actuality and whether it is confirmed by others or not. It is actual if it
affirms itself for all of us and if we may presuppose that it would be
affirmed by each new subject of the association. If I would see something
30 and would find it confirmed as consistent in my experience, while no one
else who is correspondingly oriented would see it that way, then the others
would say I am “ sick,” or I would say that of them. What we have here is
a matter for a special investigation. Likewise I have familiar ways of
confirming for myself whether a comprehensive experience is correct or not,
35 of acknowledging whether it is concordantly confirmed or is annulled, and
this for each kind of experience. How, e.g., to the noetic essence of the
various kinds of experience noetic rules of validity and invalidity belong;
how experiential thought is to be verified as valid or invalid; which
essential connections exist here— all that is investigated by a phenomeno-
40 logically-based noetics. What it establishes in general is particularized in the
evidence, the insights, we then carry out and live through in clear

1 There must be a clear distinction made between: 1) The aesthesiological

dependencies, the ones o f the Bodily localized data o f sensation, the ones which,
concerning sensuous qualities, come into consideration as the data which present
them and motivate them. 2) The functions of presentation itself, which refer back to
association and apperception.
 experiential thought. The “ Objective,” mathematical sciences of nature
have their own methods to convince themselves of the Objectivity of
material being and to determine it as Objective, hence to eliminate what
depends on “ accidental” subjects. The pronouncements of the sciences do
5 not claim to be predicated by each subject, to be actually judged with
insight by each subject, but only, according to a possibility of principle, to
be able to be verified and to be confirmed by every subject belonging to the
same personal association of mathematical scientists. This possibility,
however, does precisely not exist regarding the declarations grounded in
10 secondary qualities and in merely subjective determinations, thus having
recourse to merely subjective concepts.
b) But totalizing Objective research also requires the investigation of
these excluded subjectivities. This is the domain of the Objective (natural-
mundane) study of the Body and the soul, related to Objective physics. We
15 have hence, on the one hand, the material thing of Objective mathematical [387]
physics, for which all intuitively given things are mere appearances. On the
other hand, there are the manifolds correlative to these Objective unities,
ones which are validly constituting and others invalidly constituting, and
there are also the subjects and the subjective lived experiences, in which
20 again the appearances are constituted (and which are indeed themselves
unities) through other unities of deeper levels, up to the ultimate unities
and to the very stream of lived experience, with its content of obscure
backgrounds and clear foregrounds, and with its specific acts. This whole
mechanism of subjects with their lived experiences and their lived correlates
25 calls for an Objective investigation, forming a supplement to the Objective
investigation of material nature. The difficulty here lies in attempting to
investigate the subjective intersubjectively and to determine it intersubjec­
tively. Such determination requires intersubjectively exchangeable concepts.
How is that possible? Now, first of all, Objective nature itself is an index
30 for intersubjectively exchangeable concepts, cognitions, and even phenom­
ena. If there were no exchangeable subjectivity, then there would also not
be any possible personal association, for there would be no possibility of
intersubjective understanding.
Furtherm ore: a stock of intersubjectively exchangeable phenomena of a
35 particular kind, which are excluded as secondary qualities, is de fa c to
available, as descriptive natural history teaches. There are in general
far-reaching descriptive groups of propositions which are thereby intersub­
jectively comprehensible. In connection with what is exchangeable even the
merely subjective can to a certain degree be described indirectly and
40 determined. We determine indirectly the vision of the abnormal by means
of color analogies, sound analogies, etc. We employ physicalistic means to
produce a sensation, e.g., a visual sensation, because an abnormality in
general does not extend so far that no optic lived experiences at all would
be elicited by adequate stimuli, which hence makes possible an optical
45 empathy within a very general framework, i.e., an intersubjective constitu­
tion of visual data. All this has to be examined in detail and its scientific
significance brought out. It is obvious that the science of the Objective
 being of the Body and of all subjectivities and, in the end, of the spirit itself
as subject, proceeds experimentally, whenever it finds possibilities of doing
so. It investigates all dependencies in a mundane nexus, in the one
Objective world, and, of course, it arbitrarily varies the circumstances,
5 whenever possible, in order to be able to observe the dependent conse­
quences.
Spirits as individual subjects of act-motivation. Carrying out acts and
being motivated to do so :
Spirits as subjects that have a soul;1 that is, subjects that carry out [388]
10 cogitationes built on the ground of lived experience, containing in them­
selves apprehensions and interwoven into more encompassing nexuses, in
which motivations in the other sense hold sway. In the lived experiences a
natural “ soul” is manifest, namely insofar as in them representational
dispositions and habitual properties are intimated, ones which do not
15 concern the Ego that takes positions (with regard to the position-taking).
Here belongs the realm of association psychology. The natural soul is one
with the subject of the position-taking; both form a unique empirical unity,
from which only the subject-unity stands out (the unity of the position-
taking Ego). This soul is mine , it “ belongs” to my subjectivity and is one
20 with it. We should even say: it belongs to the person as an underlying
basis.
The “ soul” is here taken not as Objective reality but as the spiritual
soul. That is: “ soul” in this sense is not defined as a real unity with
reference to circumstances of Objective nature; thus it is not defined
25 psychophysically, or it does not have to be defined that way. There is an
immanent lawfulness in the formation of dispositions as substrates for the
position-taking subject. On the other hand, this regulation is also connected
with the psychophysical regulation, to the effect that both are considered as
one in psychology.
30 Spirit is certainly not an abstract Ego of position-taking acts, but it is I,
the full person, the Ego as a human being, the I of the I take a position, the
I think, I evaluate, I act, I accomplish works, etc. To me pertains then a
basis of lived experiences and a basis of passive nature (“ my nature”)
manifesting itself in the tumult of lived experiences. This passive nature is
35 the psychic in the sense of physiological natural psychology, but it even
reaches into the sphere of position-takings themselves, and even these have
a natural side and enter into dispositions.
The word “ basis,” however, means here in addition that the position-
taking subject is also dependent on this substrate, insofar as I, in order to
40 be motivated in my position-taking, precisely must have motivating lived
experiences, and these stand in an associative nexus and under rules of
associative dispositions. But even the position-takings themselves are

1 This and both the following paragraphs are employed in Section Three, p. 292,
1. 21 to p. 293, 1. 13; they are included again here because they are not entirely the
same.
 subject to such rules: there arise “ tendencies,” in every position-taking,
towards similar position-taking under similar circumstances, etc. Neverthe­
less I am “ free.” Here we encounter the problems of freedom and of the
autonomy of the subject of the position-taking as a free subject versus the
5 psychological associative one. Hence are opposed: the free subject and the
subject of drives, of permanent tendencies, of the persistent natural soul.
What sort of an Objective science is it which presents itself within the
compass of an attitude directed to the person, within the “ spiritual”
attitude? And conversely, what sort of Objective science is human science
10 itself? Or, what is the status of the Objectivity of physical, psychic, and [389]
psychophysical nature, which, according to what we have expounded of the
spiritual attitude, is subordinated without qualification (and thereby loses
its absoluteness) to the Objectivity of the specific “ objects” (thematic
Objects) of the human sciences?
15 We have on the one hand physicalistic Objectivity, on the other hand the
Objectivity of the souls linked to physical Bodies, with their obscure
longings, with their apprehensions, their appearances as the correlates of
apprehensions, among which also are those which are constitutive of
Objective nature, namely the ones which appear and are experienced as the
20 valid substrate for possible Objective knowledge of things.
We are considering here Objectivities which belong together, and which
are linked with each other in relations of dependency, and which are
consigned to one another. What does “ O bjectivity ” mean here? In the
broadest sense, it refers to (we are speaking of empirical Objectivity, not of
25 the Objectivity of the idea) a being which in an open personal association is
thought as determinable in such a way or as determined in such a way that
it is in principle and at any time determinable in an absolute way by every
possible Ego-subject of the association of researching subjects.
But in this respect the being which is experienced through appearances, or,
30 similarly, any being which, by its real connection with what is experienced
that way, assumes the character of an appearing being, even if only
secondarily, essentially distinguishes itself from all being for which this is
not the case. In this latter respect, obviously what is meant is the being o f
the persons themselves. They are experienced either a) in inspection or b) in
35 the manner of comprehension, the comprehensive grasping of what is
inspective, which is a particular modification of inspection.
a) In inspection: the person has “ appearances” as his over-and-against;
he himself, however, does not appear and is not something dependent on
what appears. His relation to appearing being is this, namely, that he
40 “ has ” it — by the fact that he accomplishes apprehensions in which objects
appear to him, to which he directs his focus, to which he comports himself
in such and such acts, takes a position, etc. In the manner of this
comportment, the person manifests his individuality. The person arrives at
an inspective grasping, a self-grasping, when the focus of the Ego is
45 directed to the series of the Ego-affections and Ego-acts, in which it
comports itself, as identical, in this or that way to the act-correlates in
 question, including the objects it itself posits and experiences as existing
objects.
b) The person can also be grasped comprehensively by other persons,
however— i.e., grasped as “ expression” of a subjective life in a Body. That
5 person’s Ego with its stream of lived experiences, and with the stream of
acts which flow forth from it, is grasped in empathy; and within the type of
the motivations which are thereby co-grasped, in their habitual type, the [390]
individuality is also grasped. The other person is grasped in his Ego-life, his
Ego-willing, and his Ego-working, etc. Each Ego has its Ego-life, but each
10 is also a person, is an individuality and a distinct individuality.
In principle this Objectivity of the person and of personal objectivities is
comprehensible for each person of the association and is accessible to a
possible understanding. This O bjectivity is the field of the human sciences,
and in general research it is the Object of general human science.
15 Such a science is possible in the form of an eidetic discipline, an ontology
of the spirit, or in the form of an empirical morphology: history or
biography. It operates respectively with sheer eidetic intuitions or with
empirical intuitions.
Something quite different is the case with physical being and with
20 aesthesiological or psychological being founded on it.
Physical things appear; the experience which presents these things
presents them only as they appear, not as they are in themselves. That is : in
the method of natural science, experience is the support for a thought
process each subject of the association can, in principle, accomplish, and if
25 correctly accomplished it leads in each subject to the same result, to a
determination of the intersubjectively identifiable being, a determination
which is itself intersubjectively identifiable, over and against the merely
phenomenal determinations, which in principle do not have to be acknow­
ledged by each subject of the association.
30 As to the natural-psychic, to which is subordinated everything merely
subjective of the appearing objectivities (of the appearances in the ontolog­
ical sense, any kind of appearance) as correlate of psychic apprehensions,
this is an Objectivity supplementing physicalistic reality and interwoven
with it.
35 This is not valid from the point of view of physics but only because we, if
we posit and investigate nature as true Objectivity, then also encounter
Bodies as things of physical nature as well as, “ in ” them, the 44psychic,”
first of all as the Objectively spatio-temporal subjective. Then we find,
however, guided by the sense-content of empathy, the psychic as dependent
40 on the Body. (Physical nature was the first; the psychic that which
supplements it to make an Objective world. The supplementing depends on
the founding.) And now the further articulation is to the point, namely
that in the system of the experiential dependencies of the psychical on the
physical there is constituted a kind of 44reality.” But this 44reality” is not,
45 without qualification, the entire soul, but instead the soul (the Objective
surplus beyond the Corporeal body) has a stratum of reality beyond Bodily
corporeality. The soul as a full reality is the whole Objective-mundane
 subjectivity, which, as supplement of purely theoretically posited nature,
completes the Objective world. These existing subjects, distributed in space
and time, are reality insofar as, under changing Objective conditions
(circumstances), they comport themselves in a regulated way and accord-
5 ingly have “ real” properties in relation to these rules. Comportment here [391]
means the same as it does in the case of things. What exists temporally is
changeable; as something real, it is, in the changes, dependent on real
circumstances.
Physics requires, therefore, aesthesiological physiology and psychology:
10 since, for example, color as secondary thing-quality depends on the
organization of the eye and of the system B, color is then eliminated as
non-physicalistic and is taken as mere manifestation of an Objective
quality, as manifestation of the physicalistic correlate of color. Precisely
thereby, however, the psychic is dependent on the Bodily, since sensation
15 enters into perception; and that then goes further, as has been worked o u t:
in these dependencies a “ reality” manifests itself. It is the essence of reality
in general to be a unity of dependencies. Already in the intuitive sphere we
encounter dependencies of this kind, and they determine an apperception,
the apperception of the Body and of the soul, as a founded apperception;
20 and as real unity the animated Body is there intuitively for us, whereby the
psychic is given as localized in the Body and as temporalized in the unity of
natural time. If we investigate this real unity thematically, specifically
aiming at a knowledge “ valid for everyone,” then we have to determine the
Body as a physical-chemical, biological thing and determine the soul in
25 relation to this physicalistic Corporeality (whereby we come back to our
earlier presentation).
Psychic reality itself is now to be given intuitively and with respect to its
“ states.” In psychic states, psychic reality is itself given intuitively insofar
as we, e.g., experience that “ wine brings jollity,” etc. But this intuitive
30 psychophysical causality is no more a givenness of “ true ” causality than
an intuitively experienced physical causality (e.g., the breaking of a glass
because of its falling) is givenness of the corresponding “ Objective”
causality. Therefore it is quite different in the case of the causality of
motivation.
35 c) Spirits and persons stand in a causal relation to their Bodies and
thereby to the rest of their surrounding world.1 On the one hand we have
the relations of spirit to Body, on the other hand the converse relations.
In the first respect, the Body is in question as the field of the will and
furthermore as involuntary “ expression” of psychic life. Psychic life is
40 mirrored in sensory-Bodily events; parallel to the latter, which are to be
studied experientially, there run psychic events, which are apprehended, in
experience, also as causal ones. These are psychophysical causalities in an
intuitive sphere. E.g., a man feels ashamed — he blushes because he is

1 The spirit obviously includes here the natural psychic basis, and in general the
spirit has indeed its nature and along with this nature is dependent on the Body.
 ashamed, but he is not ashamed because he blushes. His pulse increases —
because he is excited, etc.
In the reverse direction, there are the dependencies which found what is [392]
specifically psychic, namely the ones constitutive of the Body as aesthesio-
5 logical unity. Further: the experiences of health and illness, whereby, in
their contrast, the differences between normal and abnormal Bodily
co n stitu tio n appear, and so do the dependencies of spiritual anomalies on
the Bodily ones. Experience here leads us to regard the dependency as a
physio-psychic one, as in the case of anesthesia, analgesia, or the various
10 disturbances of speech, etc. Thereby it is shown that not only sensations
but also the corresponding reproductions (phantasms) are dependent on the
Body, and through it then are mediated all other phenomena founded on
it.
All such investigations belong, so far as they take place in the framework
15 of concrete givennesses, in morphology, in the descriptive disciplines of
zoology, anthropology, etc.
The matter would be quite different if we first submitted Bodies and the
whole of physical nature for itself to an “ Objective” exact investigation. A
physiology pursuing merely descriptive anatomy, and investigating the
20 concretely intuitive dependencies, belongs completely within morphological
anthropology. It is different with a physiology that aims at ultimate
Objectivity and substitutes something physicalistic-chemical for everything
appearing physically in Corporeality. We are then led to “ physics.” (No
account is taken here of the physical-organic science usually called “ bio-
25 logy.”)
The Objective world or the universe of nature, along with Objective
space and Objective time, in which all Bodies and human beings are
included precisely as natural, is therefore the correlate of the natural
sciences, and specifically as sciences of transcendent nature; it is hence the
30 correlate of the science of physics in a very broad sense, and furthermore,
of the sciences of aesthesiology and psychology.
On the other side, however, stand the quite different sciences of
subjectivity: the sciences of the person, of personal associations, of the
correlates of persons. The most basic level is the purely “ aesthetic ” theory
35 of nature, which is not a science of Objective nature in the sense of physics
but is a science of phenomenal nature as the common surrounding world of
normal people. On higher levels obviously belong here all so-called cultural
sciences.
Thus we have a sharp distinction between the natural sciences and the
40 human sciences: natural science investigates reality (substantiality and
causality) in the appearing world. Human science investigates personal
individuality and personal causality, the causality of freedom and motiva­
tion. Thereby, however, the natural sciences, as sciences, are enclosed
within the human sphere, the sphere of the spirit. It is not nature itself that
45 is encompassed by the Objectivities of the human sciences, but rather that
holds for the science of nature, the science of psychology, etc.; and nature
 as correlate, as what is known at each respective level, as 44world-image ”
of science of this or that age, also belongs obviously in human science, in
history.
Here we have discovered a remarkable parallelism. Everything human-
5 scientific allows of being transformed into the natural-scientific insofar as
intuitive nature is apprehensible as the appearance of an Objective nature
and to the extent that each spiritual factum, each person in his acts and
states, is apprehensible as “ manifestation” of a soul, related to a Body
(which expresses it, in another attitude) as a physicalistic thing.
10 Obviously one must not, as Dilthey did, confuse the opposition of
description and explanation with the opposition between the human
sciences and the natural sciences. That is, if we oppose description and
explanation (and accordingly descriptive and explanatory sciences), then we
are taking description as a lower level of explanation. If this opposition
15 makes sense, then we are in the case of both description and explanation
directed to the same thing: to something “ Objective.” Actually, we find in
each sphere, in the sphere of nature but also in the human sphere, this
distinction between description and explanation as normative. D e fa c to ,
however, if we consider the matter more closely, the so-called descriptive
20 sciences are not substrata of the corresponding "‘explanatory” sciences,
and it is of the utmost necessity, at first with respect to the natural sciences,
to bring to clarity these obscure relations.
EPILOGUE
 Preliminary Remarks [138]

The following pages present, on the whole, the text of the

explanatory comments I have added as a prologue to the
5 forthcoming English edition of my Ideas.2 They may also be of
use to the German reader of the book (published so far only as
a fragment of a greater whole), for in them I speak my mind on
the general misunderstandings which have obscured the true
sense of my transcendental phenomenology. Under the spell of
10 the thinking habitual in the philosophical tradition, people
overlook what is radically new in this phenomenology as to
method and field of research. Neither do they understand its
claim, by no means extravagant, to have first opened the way,
and even to have taken the first steps along the way, on which,
15 in sober research to be conducted in the most radically scientific
spirit, all conceivable problems of philosophy must gradually
achieve their genuinely original formulation and solution.
To be sure, no account is taken here of the situation of
German philosophy (very different from the British situation),
20 with the “ Philosophy of Life ” striving to be predominant in it,
with its new anthropology, its philosophy of “ Existence.” Thus
no account is taken of the charges of “ intellectualism ” or

1 [See the Translators’ Introduction above, p. XIV. The pagination followed here is
that of the Husserliana edition: Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomeno-
logie und phanomenologischen Philosophie. Drittes Buck: Die Phanomenologie und die
Fundamente der Wissenschaften. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952 (Husserliana V),
“ Nachwort,” pp. 138-162.— Trans.]
2 [Husserl is referring to the translation o f Book I by W.R. Boyce Gibson; Ideas:
General introduction to pure phenomenology. New York: Macmillan, 1931.—
Trans.]
 “ rationalism ” which have been brought from these sides
against my phenomenology and which are very closely con­
nected with my specific concept of philosophy. In this concept, I [139]
reinstate the most original idea of philosophy, which, since the
5 time of its first solid formulation by Plato, has laid at the basis
of our European philosophy and science and which signifies for
them a task which will ever be theirs. For me, philosophy, as an
idea, means universal, and in a radical sense, “ rigorous”
science. As such, it is science built on an ultimate foundation,
10 or, what comes down to the same thing, a science based on
ultimate self-responsibility, in which, hence, nothing held to be
obvious, either predicatively or pre-predicatively, can pass,
unquestioned, as a basis for knowledge. It is, I emphasize, an
idea, which, as the further meditative interpretation will show, is
15 to be realized only by way of relative and temporary validities
and in an infinite historical process— but in this way it is, in
fact, realizable. In our positive sciences, in conformity with their
historical origin, this idea lives on, no matter how little they
themselves actually do justice to it on account of the way they
20 are founded. As a result of this shortcoming, difficulties, as is
well known, arose for these sciences in their most recent
development, and at the same time a skepticism is spreading
which generally threatens to discredit the great project of a
rigorous science and, taken more universally, the project of a
25 philosophy as rigorous science. But instead of prematurely
yielding to this skepticism, it appears to me to be more proper,
and to be the great task of our time, to carry out a radical
meditation, in order to intentionally explicate the genuine sense
of this idea of philosophy and* to demonstrate the possibility of
30 its realization. But this will come to pass in a decisive and
productive way only by means of the systematic elaboration of
the method of questioning back into the ultimate conceivable
presuppositions of knowledge. This questioning back leads at
first to universal subjective being and life, which, as pre-
35 scientific, are already presupposed in all theorizing, and from
there it leads on — and this is the most decisive step— to
so-called “ transcendental subjectivity” (an old term given a
new sense) as the primordial locus of all meaning-giving and
validation of being. “ Philosophy as rigorous science,” and
 specifically as universal and absolutely foundational science,
may not be given up, unless first is made anew, and with the
most radical seriousness, an attempt to actually found it, or
again, unless the science of phenomenology, the science of a
5 new beginning, which arose out of such an intention, is thought [140]
through with equal seriousness. I cannot engage here in a closer
confrontation with the counter-trends of the present, which, in
the most extreme contrast to my phenomenological philosophy,
want to draw a line between philosophy and rigorous science. I
10 would only like to say expressly that I cannot acknowledge any
kind of justification to the objections that have been advanced
from those quarters: e.g., my intellectualism, the miring of my
methodic procedure in abstract one-sidedness, my failure, in
general and in principle, to touch upon original-concrete, prac-
15 tical-active subjectivity, and my skirting o f the so-called prob­
lems of “ Existence” as well as the metaphysical problems.
These objections are all based on misunderstandings and,
ultimately, on the fact that my phenomenology is interpreted
back to a level, the overcoming of which is precisely its whole
20 sense. In other words, they are based on the fact that what is in
principle the novelty of the “ phenomenological reduction ” has
not been understood, and consequently neither has the ascent
from mundane subjectivity (from man) to “ transcendental
subjectivity.” So it is my critics who have remained m ired— in
25 an anthropology, whether empirical or apriori, which, according
to my theory, does not at all secure the specifically philosophi­
cal ground. And to take this anthropology for philosophy is
equivalent to a relapse into a “ transcendental anthropologism ”
or “ psychologism.” To exhibit this in detail would require an
30 extended treatise of its own.
For the rest, I hold fast to my old conviction that in matters
of science what counts is work done rather than criticism, work
which in the end remains intact, no matter how much it is
misunderstood and how often arguments against it miss the
35 point. What the Ideas reports o f— as I am still firmly con­
vinced— is indeed work done, in its beginning parts, and to
carry on this work steadily has been my endeavor ever since. A
book I am now preparing [Cartesian Meditations], which is
presumably to appear early next year, will, I hope, prove to all
 who in this restless age have time for theories, built up
objectively in such a laborious and sober way, that transcenden­
tal phenomenology in the sense I conceive it does in fact
encompass the universal horizon of the problems of philosophy
5 and holds in readiness the method they require. It will be
shown, therefore, that my phenomenology actually has within
its field of view all questions that can be put to man in the
concrete, including as well all so-called metaphysical questions,
insofar as they have possible sense in the first place, for it is
10 their original formulation and critical delimitation which is
precisely the vocation of this phenomenology.

1.
My Ideas toward a pure phenomenology and a phenomenologi­
cal philosophy, of which only a first volume has appeared,
15 attempts to found, under the heading of pure, or transcendental,
phenomenology, a new science, although one prepared by the
entire course of philosophical development since Descartes, a
science related to a new field o f experience, exclusively its own,
the field of “ transcendental subjectivity.” This term does not
20 refer here, therefore, to a product of speculative fabrications;
transcendental subjectivity, together with its transcendental
lived experiences, faculties, and accomplishments, is an abso­
lutely autonomous domain of direct experience, even if up to
now, for essential reasons, it has remained inaccessible. Trans-
25 cendental experience, within a theoretical and, at first, descrip­
tive scope, becomes possible only by way of a radical transfor­
mation of that attitude in which natural, mundane experience
runs its course. This transformation of attitude, as method of
access to the transcendental-phenomenological sphere, is called
30 “ phenomenological reduction.”
Transcendental phenomenology is not meant to be founded
in that book as an empirical science of the empirical facts
related to this field of experience. The facts which at any time
present themselves there serve as examples only— for what is
35 most universal — similar to the way empirical examples serve
the mathematician. For instance, intuitive factual groups of
 beads on an abacus serve merely as examples for an insightful
grasping, in pure universality, of, e.g., 2, 3, 4 ... in general, pure
numbers in general, and, related to them, pure mathematical
propositions, universal mathematical essences. Thus Book I of [142]
5 the Ideas deals with an “ apriori” science (an eidetic science
directed to the universal that is original-intuitive) which lays
claim to the factual field of experience of transcendental subjec­
tivity and its factual lived experiences, but which takes them
into account merely as pure possibilities, placing them beside
10 pure intuitive possibilities that have been varied completely ad
libitum, and then extrapolating, as their “ apriori,” the indisso­
luble essential structure of transcendental subjectivity pervading
all the free variations. Since the reduction to the transcendental,
and at the same time this further reduction to the eidos, is the
15 method of access to the field of work of the new science, it
follows (and this is to be emphasized sharply from the start)
that the genuine beginning of the systematic disclosure of this
science lies in the chapters dealing with these reductions. Only
by starting at that point and by following the demonstrations as
20 they proceed step by step, can the reader, participating
inwardly, judge whether or not something peculiarly new is
actually worked out there— worked out and not just fabricated,
drawn from actually universal intuition of the essence and
described faithfully.
25 In that book, eidetic phenomenology is limited to the realm
of sheer eidetic “ description,” i.e., to the realm of the imme­
diately intuitable essential structures of transcendental subjectiv­
ity. For this already comprises in itself a systematically self­
enclosed infinity of essential properties. And therefore the work
30 does not pretend to be a systematically exhaustive elaboration
of the transcendental cognitions that could perhaps be gained
by means of logical deduction. Indeed, even the descriptive
domain is limited to its more easily accessible level; thus the
whole problem of the temporalization of the sphere of imma-
35 nent time remains excluded. (On that, see my lectures on inner
time consciousness delivered in 1905 and published in my
Jahrbuch fu r Philosophie und phanomenologische Forschung,
Vol. IX.) For the second volume of the Ideas were reserved the
problems of the Ego, the problems of the person as person, and
 the transcendental problem of “ empathy.” Eidetic description is
one (but not the only) distinctive feature of the total style of this
new apriori science over and against the mathematical sciences.
The latter are “ deductive” sciences, which means that in their
5 scientific-theoretical style mediate, deductive cognition prevails
to an incomparable extent over the immediate axiomatic know­
ledge that lays the foundation for all the deductions. In the
mathematical sciences an infinity of deductions rests on a few
axioms. In the transcendental sphere, however, we find an
10 infinity of cognitions that precede all deduction, and what is
mediate there (a mediation by way of intentional implication)
has nothing to do with deduction and, being thoroughly
intuitive, resists any sort of methodic or constructive symboliza­
tion.

15 2.

We must still issue a warning against a misunderstanding that

has been so prevalent. If at the very outset of the Ideas, by way
of anticipation, it is given as the author’s opinion (to be
grounded in the further parts of the work as announced) that all
20 radically scientific philosophy rests on the foundation of phe­
nomenology and is, in an extended sense, “ phenomenological
philosophy” through and through, this is not to be taken as
meaning that philosophy is in his view solely and entirely an
apriori science. The setting of the tasks of Volume I, tasks of a
25 science of the eidetic essence of transcendental subjectivity, does
not at all imply (quite the contrary) that a factual science of
transcendental subjectivity has already been accomplished. A
glance at the sciences of mathematics, those great logical
instruments for the factual sciences corresponding to them,
30 would already have forced us to expect just the opposite. For
factual science in the strictest sense, truly rational science of
nature, only became possible in the first place on the basis of
the independent construction of a pure mathematics of nature.
It is the same everywhere; the science of the pure possibilities
35 must precede the science of the actual facts and must provide
the latter with direction, its concrete logic. The case of transcen-
 dental philosophy is no different, even if the achievement of the
system of the transcendental apriori has a much higher dig­
nity.

3. [144]

5 Great difficulties, grounded in the nature of the matters

themselves, in general impede the understanding, or even the
secure mastery, of the distinction between transcendental phe­
nomenology and “ descriptive,” or, as is often said nowadays,
“ phenomenological,” psychology. This has led to misunder-
10 standings, and even researchers who consider themselves as
subscribing to a phenomenological orientation have been sub­
ject to them. Thus some explanations and clarifications should
prove useful here. The change of attitude which in the book in
question is called the phenomenological reduction (we can now
15 name it more clearly: the transcendental-phenomenological
reduction) is carried out by me, the one philosophizing at the
moment, from out of the natural attitude, the one in which I
experience myself at first as an Ego in the usual sense, as this
human person living among others in the world. As psycholog-
20 ist, I in general make my theme this being and life in the mode
of an “ Ego,” and I thematize the person solely with regard to
his “ psychic” aspect. In the pure turn to the interior, exclu­
sively following so-called “ inner experience” (more precisely,
self-experience as well as “ empathy ”) and deferring all psycho-
25 physical questions which include a relation to human corporeal­
ity, I acquire an original and purely descriptive knowledge of
psychic life as it is in itself; and the most original is of me
myself, for here alone is it purely perceptual. If, as often
happens, descriptions which keep purely and faithfully to the
30 data of intuition are called phenomenological, then a “ phenom­
enological psychology” can be said to arise purely on the basis
of inner intuition as intuition of what is essentially proper to the
psyche. In fact, if the right method is followed here (of which
we shall still have to speak later), what results is not simply
35 unselfsufficient typologizing and classificatory descriptions but
indeed a vast autonomous science. Yet this will properly come
 to pass only if— as is possible even here— the goal is not a
factual science of the facts of this sphere of inner intuition but is
a science of the essence, i.e., one which investigates the invar­
iant, properly essential structures of a soul or of a community
5 of psychic life: in short, a science that investigates their
apriori.
Now if that transcendental-phenomenological reduction is
actually carried out, the reduction by means of which the
natural attitude, the attitude of inner psychology, is trans-
10 formed and becomes a transcendental attitude, then psycholog­
ical subjectivity loses precisely that which gives it the status of
something real in the pregiven world of naive experience. It
loses the ontological sense of being the soul of a Body existing
in pregiven spatio-temporal nature. For nature, including Body
15 and soul, and the world in general as the totality of what I
accept naively and straightforwardly as existing, lose, through
the phenomenological epoche, this ontological status.
It is here of decisive importance that one have already made
it perfectly clear to oneself just what this epoche means, what
20 the significance is of this suspension of belief in the existence of
the world of experience, and what kind of theoretical outlook
on “ pure subjectivity” is thereby first made possible. On the
one hand, certain judgments are now excluded, all those that,
resting on natural experience, are about this world constantly
25 and altogether unquestionably pregiven as existing. Conse­
quently all positive sciences are also excluded, for they in fact
have the source of their verification in natural-mundane experi­
ence. It is obvious that psychology is one of their number. On
the other hand, by means of this epoche the regard is freed for
30 the universal phenomenon, “ the world of consciousness purely
as such,” the world purely as given in the manifold flux of
conscious life: that is, as appearing “originaliter ” in a manifold
of “ concordant ” experiences. In these concordances it is char­
acterized, for consciousness, as “ actually existing.” In its
35 details, however, but only in details, it can happen that this
character of “ actual being” is overturned and becomes “ hollow
semblance.” This universal phenomenon, “ world existing for
m e” (and then also “ existing for u s”) is made the phenomeno-
logist’s new field of theoretical interest, the field of a new sort of
 theoretical experience and experiential research. He lets himself
be governed by the “ pure phenomena ” as they present them­
selves in the consistently practiced phenomenological attitude,
and he sees opening up an infinite, self-enclosed, absolutely
5 autonomous realm of beings: the domain of pure, or transcen­
dental, subjectivity. In this domain, the corresponding pure or
transcendental phenomena replace all the mundane events that [146]
were accessible previously in the natural attitude, that is,
precisely those occurrences in which what is mundane “ is ” for
10 him purely and simply or, in other words, has the status of
being and perhaps has been verified.
Once this reduction is grasped clearly then one also sees the
utter radicality of its effect upon the psychological subject of
inner experience and upon this experience itself and thus upon
15 my own Ego, the Ego of the currently practicing phenomeno-
logist. Within my field of transcendental phenomena, I no
longer have theoretical validity as a human Ego; I am no longer
a real Object within the world which I accept as existing, but
instead I am posited exclusively as subject fo r this world. And
20 this world is itself posited precisely as I am conscious of it in
some fashion or other, as appearing to me in a certain way or as
believed, predicatively judged, valued, etc. Thus it is posited in
such a manner that the certainty of its being belongs itself to the
“ phenomenon,” in no different a way than other modes of
25 what I have in consciousness and its “ contents.”
Though the phenomenologist, in all his transcendental
descriptions, does not pass the slightest judgment about the
world and about his human Ego as a mundane being, neverthe­
less he does constantly make a judgment about his Ego, indeed
30 a judgment affirming its existence; but now this is the transcen­
dental Ego, i.e., the Ego as a being absolutely in itself and for
itself, “prior ” to all mundane being, which only in this Ego first
acquires ontological validity. It is evident at once that, despite
the transformation of sense affecting the total phenomenologi-
35 cal-psychological content of the soul, it is precisely this content
that becomes transcendental-phenomenological, just as, con­
versely, with the return of the natural-psychological attitude, it
becomes psychological once again. This correspondence must
remain in effect even if, already prior to all interest in the
 formation of a psychological science and, in particular, of a
“ descriptive” or “ phenomenological” psychology, a transcen­
dental phenomenology is established from philosophical
motives, thus if the transcendental Ego comes into view imme-
5 diately through the phenomenological reduction and is made
the theme of a transcendental description. In this way, there is a
remarkable thoroughgoing parallelism between a correctly exe­
cuted phenomenological psychology and a transcendental phe­
nomenology. To every eidetic, as well as to every empirical, [147]
10 constatation on the one side, a parallel must correspond on the
other side. And yet this whole theoretical content, if taken, in
the natural attitude, as psychology, as a positive science relating
to the pregiven world, is utterly non-philosophical; whereas the
“ sam e” content in the transcendental attitude, and conse-
15 quently understood as transcendental phenomenology, is a
philosophical science. Indeed, it even achieves the rank of the
philosophically fundamental science, as a science that cultivates,
in description, the transcendental ground, which henceforth
remains the exclusive ground of all philosophical knowledge.
20 In fact here reside the greatest stumbling blocks on the path
to understanding, for one will no doubt feel it is asking much
too much that a mere “ nuance,” arising out of a simple change
in attitude, should have such a great significance and indeed be
decisive for all genuine philosophy. The totally unique signifi-
25 cance of this “ nuance ” can become evident only by means of a
radical self-understanding on the part of the philosopher with
regard to what he properly wants to attain under the title of
philosophy and with regard to the extent to which he must want
something different in principle from “ positive” science, thus
30 something else than domination, in theory, of the pregiven
world of experience. In this self-understanding, provided it is
actually carried through radically and consistently, there arises a
compelling motivation which forces the philosophizing Ego to
reflect back on that subjectivity of his own which is ultimately
35 the Ego that does the experiencing in all his natural mundane
experience, both the actual and the possible, and further is the
Ego that is active in all the person’s activity, including the Ego
that is the agent of scientific cognition. This is the Ego,
therefore, that is already presupposed by every natural self­
 cognition in the form, “ I, this man in the world, who experi­
ence, think, act, etc.” In other words, out of this the shift to the
phenomenological attitude arises as an absolute requirement in
order for philosophy to be able to set its distinctive project on
5 the soil of that experience which is in itself the first and
consequently in order for philosophy to begin at all. Thus it is
only in the transcendental-phenomenological attitude that phi­
losophy can get underway and can develop as a science in all its
further philosophical activity. Precisely for that reason, descrip-
10 tive apriori phenomenology (visible in my Ideas in its actual [148]
working) as directly cultivating the transcendental soil, is in
itself “ first philosophy,” the philosophy of the beginning. Only
if this motivation, which calls for a very precise and deeply
penetrating interpretation, has become a living and compelling
15 insight will it be clear that what at first seems so odd, i.e.,
attending to the nuance, the nuance that conducts one from a
pure inner psychology to transcendental phenomenology,
actually is what decides between the being or non-being of a
philosophy— of a philosophy which in a radically scientific
20 spirit knows what is required by its distinctive sense, to be
grounded in ultimate self-responsibility, knows the required
foundation and the required method. It is only on the basis of
such self-understanding that we can understand the deepest and
genuinely radical sense of psychologism — i.e., its sense as
25 transcendental psychologism, as the aberration that has cor­
rupted the pure sense of philosophy by seeking to ground
philosophy on anthropology or psychology, i.e., on the positive
science of man or, respectively, on that of human psychic life.
This aberration is not mitigated even if, following our proce-
30 dure, a pure inner psychology is worked out as an apriori
science. Even then, it remains positive science and can be a
foundation only for “ positive,” “ dogmatic” science— but for
philosophy, never.

4.

35 In the reflections to which I have devoted myself these many

years, I have pursued various ways, all equally possible, aimed
 at exploring, in an absolutely transparent and compelling
fashion, such a motivation as presses beyond the natural
positivity of life and science and forces upon us, by displaying
the necessity of the phenomenological reduction, a conversion
5 to the transcendental attitude. These ways are therefore ones
that lead to the beginning of a serious philosophy. They need to
be thought through in reflective consciousness, and thereby they
themselves belong properly to the beginning, inasmuch as a
beginning can in fact arise only in the beginner’s self-reflection.
10 It goes without saying that the necessary point of departure for
each of these ways is the natural-naive attitude, for which the
world of experience is the “ self-evident” pregiven ground of
being (that is, its being is never questioned). In Ideas I (Part 2, [149]
Chapter 2), I chose the way which at that time seemed to me the
15 most impressive. It proceeds egologically at first, as a self-
reflection entirely within the realm of purely inner-psychological
intuition, or, as we can also say, as a “ phenomenological”
reflection in the usual psychological sense. Eventually it leads so
far that I, the one reflecting on himself, come to realize that, in
20 the consistently exclusive direction of experience toward what is
experienceable purely as inner, toward what is “ accessible” to
me phenomenologically, I have a proper essence that is self­
enclosed and self-coherent. To this essence pertains all actual
and possible experience by means of which the Objective world
25 is there for me with all the experiential verifications in which it
has for me ontological validity, one that is verified even if never
scientifically examined. This essence also includes the special
apperceptions through which I have for myself the status of a
human being with Body and soul, a human being who lives amid
30 others in the world of which he is conscious as surround­
ing world, who is engaged with them in this world, who is
attracted or repulsed by it, and who deals with it in work or in
theory, etc. Reflecting further on myself, I realize as well that
my phenomenologically self-enclosed proper essence can be
35 posited absolutely, as the Ego (and I am this Ego) that bestows
ontological validity on the being of the world of which I speak
at any time. It is for me and is what it is for me only insofar as
it acquires sense and self-confirming validity from my own pure
life and from that of the others who are disclosed to me in my
 own life. I, as this absolutely posited proper essence, as the open
and infinite field of pure phenomenological givens and as their
inseparable unity, am the " transcendental Ego.” Absolute
positing means that I no longer have the world as “ given ” to
5 me in advance or with the status of straightforward existence.
Instead, from now on what is exclusively given (as a result of
mv new attitude) is my Ego. purely as the Ego that exists in
itself and that in itself experiences the world, verifies it, etc.

5.

10 If these considerations are pursued with undaunted self-

consistency (something that will not suit everybody), transcen­
dental-phenomenological idealism arises, standing in the shar- [150]
pest possible opposition to all psychologistic idealism. The
presentation of it in the chapter indicated above suffers. I
15 concede, from imperfections. Although it is unassailable in all
actual essentials, it lacks, regarding the foundation of this
idealism, an explicit taking of a position on the problem of
transcendental solipsism, the problem of transcendental inter­
subjectivity: that is. on the essential relatedness of the world
20 that is valid for me as the Objective world to the other subjects
who have validity for me. These supplements were supposed to
be supplied by the second volume, meant from the start to
accompany the first and which I hoped at that time would
appear very shortly after i t .1 The scandal caused by this
25 idealism and its alleged solipsism considerably impeded the
reception of the book, as if this outline of philosophy were
supposed to contain in some way all that is essential to it. In
fact, the book dealt only with one way in which the motivation
arises to acquire, from out of the problem of the possibility of
30 Objective cognition, the necessary insight that the very sense of

1 My lectures at Gottingen in 1910-11 already presented a first sketch of my

transcendental theory o f empath\, i.e.. the reduction o f human existence as mundane
bemg-with-one-another to transcendental intersubjectivity. See the extensive descrip­
tions in the fifth part of my forthcoming Cartesian M editations. A short precis of the
path followed is given in my Formal and transcendental logic. § 96.
 this problem leads back to the Ego existing purely in itself and
for itself, that this Ego as presupposition of all knowledge of
the world cannot itself be nor remain presupposed as a worldly
being, and that it consequently must be brought to transcenden-
5 tal purity through phenomenological reduction, through £7toxil
with respect to the world’s being-for-me. Perhaps I would have
done better, without changing the essential coherence of the
presentation, to have left open the final decision in favor of
transcendental idealism and only tried to make evident the fact
10 that trains of thought of decisive philosophical significance (i.e.,
ones pressing on toward an “ idealism” ) necessarily arise here
and must be thought through unconditionally and that to do so
it is by all means necessary to secure for oneself the terrain of
transcendental subjectivity. I may not here neglect, however, to
15 declare expressly that I retract nothing whatsoever as regards [151]
transcendental-phenomenological idealism and that 1 still con­
sider. as I did before, every form of the usual philosophical
realism nonsensical in principle, no less so than that idealism
which it sets itself up against in its argumentations and which it
20 ‘refutes." The objection o f solipsism would never have been
raised, given a deeper understanding of my presentation, as an
objection against phenomenological idealism itself; the objec­
tion would only be against my incomplete presentation of it.
For all that, however, it is inexcusable for anyone to overlook
25 the fundamental essentials of the philosophizing whose gateway
has been opened in that b o o k : versus the thinking that is rich in
presuppositions, having as premises the world and science and
various methodic habits of thought descended from the entire
scientific tradition, there a radical cognitive autonomy is
0 enacted. For there the validity of everything pregiven as
'‘ obvious,” and taken for granted, is suspended, and a return
takes place to that which is already presupposed implicitly in all
presupposing, all questioning, and all answering, and which
thereby is necessarily, constantly, and immediately what is, in
35 advance, first in itself. This latter becomes posited freely and
expressly as what is first, and indeed with an evidence that
precedes all conceivable evidences and that bears them impli­
citly. Although it is only with the phenomenological reduction,
which would consciously convert this radicalism into actual
 work, that authentic philosophizing can begin— i.e., precisely a
philosophizing which accomplishes w ork— yet the whole prepa­
ratory reflection has already been carried out in exactly that
spirit. It is in fact — though still unconsciously — a phenomeno-
5 logical reflection. Accordingly, then, it is a piece of pure
self-reflection, exhibiting the most original evident facts; more­
over, if it brings into view in them the outlines of idealism
(although in an indistinct way), it is still anything but a party to
the usual debates between idealism and realism, and so none of
10 the objections found in their wrangling can affect it. Whatever
connections have been exhibited there as phenomenologically
essential, including the motivations in the direction of “ ideal­
ism,” remain intact notwithstanding all the refinements and
supplementations that may prove necessary, just as the reality
15 of mountain ranges and of rivers, described by the first explorer
to actually see them, remains intact despite the corrections and [152]
supplements later explorers will add to his descriptions. The
first preliminary beginning of a new conception of the transcen­
dental problem (serving merely as a motivation toward that
20 goal) must be taken up therefore according to its phenomeno­
logical content, one always of fundamental importance, and
according to what is predelineated therein with concrete neces­
sity even for the true sense of an Objective being that is
knowable only subjectively.
25 Moreover, transcendental phenomenology is no theory
merely there to provide answers to the historical problem of
idealism; it is a science that contains its own foundation and is
absolutely self-sufficient; indeed, it is the only absolutely self-
sufficient science. But it is such only in that, when carried out
30 consistently (as is clear already in the concluding part of the
book, so important for a proper understanding), it leads to
“ constitutive problems” and theories which encompass all
conceivable objects that can ever be encountered by us— thus
the entire pregiven real world with all its categories of objects,
35 and likewise all “ ideal” worlds — and which render them
comprehensible as transcendental correlates. This implies, how­
ever, that transcendental-phenomenological idealism is not
simply a particular philosophical thesis, one theory among
others, but that transcendental phenomenology, as a concrete
 science, is in itself universal idealism carried out as science, even
if in it not one word is spoken about idealism. It demonstrates
this idealism by means of its own sense as transcendental science
in each of its separate constitutive domains.
5 Now, however, we must not fail to clarify expressly the
fundamental and essential distinction between transcendental-
phenomenological idealism versus that idealism against which
realism battles as against its forsworn opponent. Above all:
phenomenological idealism does not deny the actual existence of
10 the real world (in the first place, that means nature), as if it
maintained that the world were mere semblance, to which
natural thinking and the positive sciences would be subject,
though unwittingly. Its sole task and accomplishment is to
clarify the sense of this world, precisely the sense in which
15 everyone accepts it— and rightly so — as actually existing. That
the world exists, that it is given as existing universe in uninter- [153]
rupted experience which is constantly fusing into universal
concordance, is entirely beyond doubt. But it is quite another
matter to understand this indubitability which sustains life and
20 positive science and to clarify the ground of its legitimacy. In
this regard, it is a fundamental of philosophy, according to the
expositions in the text of the Ideas, that the continual prog­
ression of experience in this form of universal concordance is a
mere presumption, even if a legitimately valid one, and that
25 consequently the non-existence of the world ever remains think­
able, notwithstanding the fact that it was previously, and now
still is, actually given in concordant experience. The result of the
phenomenological sense-clarification of the mode of being of
the real world, and of any conceivable real world at all, is that
30 only the being of transcendental subjectivity has the sense of
absolute being, that only it is “ irrelative” (i.e., relative only to
itself), whereas the real world indeed is but has an essential
relativity to transcendental subjectivity, due, namely, to the fact
that it can have its sense as being only as an intentional
35 sense-formation of transcendental subjectivity. Natural life, and
its natural world, finds, precisely herein, its limits (but is not for
that reason subject to some kind of illusion) in that, living on in
its “ naturality,” it has no motive to pass over into the
transcendental attitude, to execute, therefore, by means of the
 phenomenological reduction, transcendental self-reflection. But
all this acquires its full sense only if the phenomenological
disclosure of the transcendental Ego has been carried out so far
that the experience of co-subjects, which is included in it, has
5 obtained its reduction to transcendental experience, thus if it
has been shown that “ transcendental subjectivity,” as what is
given in transcendental experience for the one engaged at the
moment in self-reflection, means not only “ I as transcendental
Ego-self,” taken concretely in the life of my own transcendental
10 consciousness, but, in addition, also refers to the co-subjects
that present themselves as transcendental in my transcendental
life, in the transcendental we-community which is co-presented.
Transcendental intersubjectivity is thus the one in which the real
world is constituted as Objective, as being for “ everybody.”
15 This is where the real world gets its sense, whether or not we
have explicit knowledge of the fact. And how could we have this [154]
knowledge prior to the phenomenological reduction, which is
what first brings transcendental subjectivity, as universal abso­
lute being, within the compass of experience? As long as one
20 knows only of psychological subjectivity, posits it as absolute,
and yet would explain the world as the mere correlate of this
subjectivity, then idealism will be countersensical, will be psy­
chological idealism— the one opposed by an equally counter­
sensical realism. Now, of course, for him who has already
25 secured access to genuine transcendental subjectivity, it is easy
to see that the first great idealists of the 18th century, Berkeley
and Hume on the one side, Leibniz on the other, had actually
already surpassed the psychological sphere in the natural-real
sense. But because the contrast between psychological and
30 transcendental subjectivity remained unclarified, and the pre­
dominating British sensualism or naturalism could not make the
constitution of the real understandable as an intentional accom­
plishment producing sense and true being for transcendental
subjectivity, there thus remained unabated, in the times that
35 followed, the sterile and unphilosophical (occurring on the
terrain of nature) battle between realism and idealism. And
there remained dominant the insufficient interpretation of the
sense which the great idealists actually intended, though, to be
sure, as we said, without their being able to mark out clearly,
 for themselves and for others, the radical distinction between
this sense as a transcendental one and, in opposition to it, the
psychological.
The new works I have started to bring out in the past year
5 (my first publications since the Ideas) will adduce far-reaching
extensions, clarifications, and supplements to what was begun in
the Ideas and, incidently, prior to that already in the Logical
Investigations, so that the claim to have actually set into work
the necessary beginning of a philosophy “ which is to come
10 forth as a science ” will not be regarded as mere self-delusion. In
any event, he who for decades did not speculate about a new
Atlantis but instead actually journeyed in the trackless wilder­
ness of a new continent and undertook the virgin cultivation of
some of its areas will not allow himself to be deterred in any
15 way by the rejection of geographers who judge his reports
according to their habitual ways of experiencing and thinking [155]
and thereby excuse themselves from the pain of undertaking
travels in the new land.

6.

20 There is still one more point that we must address here. In

those circles where the phenomenological reduction is dispensed
with as a philosophically irrelevant oddity— whereby, of
course, the whole sense of my work and of my phenomenology
is obliterated, and what is left is only an apriori psychology — it
25 often happens that precisely this psychology that remains over
is identified, as to its sense, with Franz Brentano’s psychology
of intentionality. However great is the veneration and gratitude
with which I remember my teacher and his genius, and as much
as I consider his transformation of the scholastic concept of
30 intentionality into a descriptive foundational concept of psycho­
logy to be a great discovery, without which phenomenology
would never have been possible, nevertheless an essential dis­
tinction has to be drawn between pure psychology in my sense,
a psychology contained implicitly in transcendental phenomeno-
35 logy, and Brentano’s psychology. This applies no less to his
“ psychognosis,” which is restricted to pure description within
 the realm of inner experience. That is indeed a “ phenomenolog­
ical” psychology, if, as often occurs today, any psychological
investigation remaining purely within the confines of “ inner
experience” is called “ phenomenological” and if the term
5 “ phenomenological psychology ” simply refers to the totality of
such investigations. Disregarding its name, this psychology then
obviously leads back to John Locke and his school, up to John
Stuart Mill. In which case it can be said that David Hume’s
Treatise contains the first systematic sketch of a pure, though
10 not eidetic, phenomenology, and, in particular, Volume I of it is
the first sketch of a comprehensive phenomenology of cogni­
tion. To be sure, Hume’s designation of his work as psychology
concealed the fact, which went unnoticed, that Hume was by no
means a psychologist in the usual sense and that his treatise is
15 instead an actual “ transcendental” phenomenology, though a
sensualistically perverted one. Like his great predecessor, Ber- [156]
keley, it is only as a psychologist that he has been regarded and
been influential. Thus, excluding all transcendental questions, it
is only this “ phenomenological” school as a whole that con-
20 cerns us here. Characteristic of this school and its psychology is
the conception heralded in Locke’s metaphor of the pure psyche
as a “ white paper,” i.e., a complex or cluster of data, tempo­
rally simultaneous or temporally successive, which take the
course they do partially on account of their own rules and
25 partially as governed by psycho-physical rules. The task of
descriptive psychology would thus be to distinguish and classify
the basic kinds of these “ sense data,” data of “ inner experi­
ence,” as well as the elementary fundamental forms of their
combination. And it would then be up to explanatory psycho-
30 logy to seek the causal laws regulating the formation and
transformation of the data, and in this it would be like natural
science and indeed would use a similar method. For those who
live in the habits of thought prevailing in the science of nature it
seems to be quite obvious that purely psychic being, or psychic
35 life, is to be considered a course of events similar to natural
ones, occurring in the quasi-space of consciousness. Evidently
and in principle, it makes no difference in this regard whether
one lets the psychic data be blown into aggregates “ atomisti-
cally,” like shifting heaps of sand, even though in conformity
 with empirical laws, or whether they are considered parts of
wholes which, by necessity, either empirical or apriori, can
behave individually only as such parts within a whole — at the
highest level perhaps in the whole that is consciousness in its
5 totality, which is bound to a fixed form of wholeness. In other
words, atomistic psychology, as well as Gestalt psychology,
both retain the sense and the principle of psychological “ natu­
ralism ” (as we have defined it above) or “ sensualism/' as it can
also be named if we recall the use of the term “ inner sense."
10 Clearly, even Brentano’s psychology of intentionality remains
tied to this traditional naturalism, although it has brought
about a reformation by introducing into psychology the descrip­
tive concept of intentionality as a universal and fundamental
one.
15 What is essentially new, broken open in transcendentally
oriented phenomenology and at the same time a breakthrough
for descriptive psychology, transforming completely the face of
this psychology, its entire method and its concrete aims, is the
insight that a concrete description of the sphere of conscious- [157]
20 ness as a self-enclosed sphere of intentionality (only in this way
is it given concretely) has a totally different sense than descrip­
tions of nature, thus than the exemplary descriptions in the
descriptive natural sciences. A concrete description of conscious
lived experiences, those of perception, memory, predicative
25 judgment, love, action, etc. also requires by necessity the
description of the objects “ as such,” the “ intentional ” objects,
that one is conscious of in the respective lived experiences, i.e., a
description of the objects as they belong inseparably to the lived
experience in question as its “ objectively meant ” (its objective
30 sense). As a further consequence, the description must also take
into account the intentional synthesis, whereby one and the
same intentional object as such is, in a purely inner-psycholog­
ical respect, an ideal index for a manifold of modes of
consciousness coordinated to it in a strict fashion and whose
35 typicality is correlated, for essential reasons, with the typicality
of the intentional object. It is not enough to say that all
consciousness is consciousness-of and go on to distinguish by
type the various modes of consciousness, in the manner, for
example, of Brentano’s classification (with which I cannot
 agree) with its classes of “ representations,” “ judgments,”
“ phenomena of love and hate,” etc. On the contrary, what must
be undertaken is an inquiry into the various categories of
“ objects” — but purely as objects of possible consciousness—
5 and a questioning back to the essential forms of possible
“ manifolds,” ones that are to be joined together synthetically
and through whose synthesis, itself something to be described,
there arises the consciousness of the identity of the present
object of the respective category. One and the same “ object in
10 general,” as meant object, traverses these manifolds. In the
synthesis we are conscious of it as the same one that can and
does come to consciousness in descriptively very different
manners of appearance, manners of givenness, modes of tempo-
ralization, modes of position-taking on the part of the Ego, etc.:
15 i.e., in lived experiences that are extremely varied from a
descriptive point of view, though they are all of the same
descriptive typology, one pertaining to them by essence
(apriori). It is only a first indication, and one that does not say
very much, to proclaim that every object is always either
20 represented, or judged, or loved, etc. At this point arises the
universal task — discussed at the end of the book in the
transcendental attitude— of the disclosure of the phenomeno- [158]
logical “ constitution” of objects, although it is thought there as
projected back on the natural-psychological attitude.
25 I had to emphasize the distinction between transcendental
subjectivity and psychological subjectivity, and so I declared
repeatedly that transcendental phenomenology is by no means
psychology, not even phenomenological psychology. Unfortu­
nately, the effect upon most professional psychologists was their
30 complete failure to notice the radical psychological reform that
is implied in transcendental phenomenology. They interpreted
my remarks to mean that the entire transcendental phenomeno­
logy of the Ideas would be of no concern to them as psycholog­
ists. And even the few who realized that something of great
35 psychological relevance was being said there, and who then tried
to make it accessible to others, did not grasp the whole sense
and the entire import of an intentional and constitutive phe­
nomenology. They did not see that there for the first time, in
opposition to naturalistic external psychology, a psychology
 was expressed and worked out in which the life of the soul
becomes understood in its most proper, originally intuitive
essence and that this intuitive essence resides in the constitution,
ever new and ever being organized in new ways, of sense-
5 formations in modes of ontological validity; that is, it resides in
the system of intentional accomplishments by means of which
presently existing objects of the most varied levels, up even to
the one Objective world, “ are there” for the Ego. Pure inner
psychology, the genuine psychology of intentionality (which, of
10 course, is ultimately a psychology of pure intersubjectivity),
reveals itself through and through as the constitutive phenome­
nology of the natural attitude. The way from the Logical
Investigations to the Ideas is, provided we deflect our aim from
the transcendental-philosophical toward the psychological, the
15 way that leads from a first and still imperfectly elucidated and
delimited disclosure of the task, to the systematic development
of the art, of interrogating the subjectivity of consciousness
itself and of interpreting it out of itself, out of its own essence,
by maintaining a standpoint within it and avoiding the blind-
20 ness due to naturalistic prejudices. The beginning has neces­
sarily to be a self-interrogation of one’s own consciousness,
mine, the psychologist’s, and then the inquiry leads imperatively [159]
from the objective sense, taken as a “ guideline,” to its modes of
givenness of various levels, e.g., those of spatio-temporal orien-
25 tations, perspectives, etc. And on the other hand it also ascends
to the correlative noeses in the realm that is specifically the
Ego’s. Nevertheless, the interrogation of what specifically char­
acterizes the Ego was not yet broached in the first volume of the
Ideas.
30 Moreover, it is not without reason that the reform of
psychology first presented itself as a hidden implication of a
transcendental reform. For it is the philosophical problem, the
transcendental problem, that gives rise to the urgency to attain
the most extreme radicalism in the clarification of the ways in
35 which knowledge and its object are related in the life of
consciousness itself, and only this urgency leads necessarily to a
universal and concrete phenomenology of consciousness, one
that takes its primary orientation from the intentional object. In
the transition to the natural-psychological attitude it is obvious,
 then, that the sense of an intentional psychology is totally
different than anything to be found in the Lockean tradition, or
for that matter, in the school of Brentano. Even A. Meinong is
no exception here, quite the reverse, although some particular
5 doctrines of his, in writings which appeared after my Logical
Investigations, make contact with my own. Indeed Meinong
remains immured in the basic conceptions of Brentano, i.e., in
the psychological naturalism of the tradition of Locke— as does
the entire psychology of modern times, contemporary psycho-
10 logy included.

7.

For all that, however, the work in question is a philosophical

one and does not make the reform of psychology one of its
themes, although it cannot be totally lacking in indications for a
15 genuine intentional psychology as a positive science. Further­
more, even as philosophical is its task restricted. It does not
pretend to be more than an attem pt— the fruit of decades of
meditation oriented exclusively to this single goal— to set into [160]
motion the radical beginning of a philosophy which, to repeat
20 the words of Kant, “ might come forth as a science.” The ideal
of the philosopher to work out once and for all a systematically
complete logic, ethics, metaphysics, etc., which he could at any
time justify to himself and to others on the basis of absolutely
compelling insight, this ideal I had to forsake long ago and still
25 deny myself today, and for no other reason than that the insight
was always, and continues to be, indubitable for me that a
philosophy simply cannot begin naively at random. That is, it
cannot begin the way the positive sciences do, settling on the
pregiven soil of world-experience, a soil presupposed as
30 obviously existing. That they do this explains why they all have
problems with their foundations and find themselves in parad­
oxes, which are then supposed to be resolved by a subsequent
epistemology, one that actually comes too late, however. It is
precisely for this reason that the positive sciences are unphilos-
35 ophical, are not ultimate and absolute sciences justifying them­
selves out of ultimate grounds of knowledge. A philosophy with
 problematic foundations, with paradoxes due to the unclarity of
its fundamental concepts, is no philosophy and contradicts the
very sense of philosophy. Philosophy can take root only in
radical reflections on the sense and possibility of its own
5 enterprise. Through these reflections it must first of all appro­
priate, by its own activity, its own proper soil, the absolute soil
of pure experience, and must then create, again as self-active,
the original concepts that adequately fit the measurements of
this soil, and must in this fashion proceed altogether by way of
10 an absolutely transparent method. In such a case there cannot
be any unclear, problematic concepts or any paradoxes. The
total lack of these reflections— that is, actually radical ones—
and the overlooking of the tremendous difficulties of a correct
beginning, or the quick and easy concealment of these difficul-
15 ties, resulted in the circumstance that we have had, and continue
to have, many, ever new, philosophical “ systems ” or “ trends ”
but not the one philosophy which, nevertheless, as idea, under­
lies and sustains all the would-be philosophies. Philosophy on
the path of its genuine realization is not like a relatively
20 imperfect science which improves itself by taking its natural
course. In the very sense of philosophy there is contained a
radicalism of foundation, a reduction to absolute presupposi-
tionlessness, and a fundamental method, by means of which the
beginning philosopher secures for himself an absolute ground as
25 the presupposition, which can be made with absolute insight, of
all presuppositions considered to be “ obvious” in the usual [161]
sense. Yet that too must first be clarified through corresponding
reflections and disclosed in its absolute binding force. That
these reflections get more and more involved as they progress,
30 until finally they lead to a whole science, a science of the
beginnings, a “ first” philosophy, and that all philosophical
disciplines, indeed the foundations of all science, arise out of
this ground and root — these things had to remain hidden as
long as there was lacking the radicalism without which philoso-
35 phy cannot be at all and cannot even begin. In beginning
naively with the presuppositions of positivity it could not help
but happen that the true philosophical beginning got lost
irretrievably. Since a sensitivity for the seriousness of the
beginning was lacking to the philosophical projects of the
 tradition, there thus was lacking what is first and most impor­
tant : namely, the specifically philosophical ground, to be
acquired originally through autonomous activity, and conse­
quently that autochthony or rootedness which alone makes
5 genuine philosophy possible. These convictions of mine became
stronger and stronger in the course of my work, in the evidence
of the results founded one upon the other, step by step. Even if
I had to tone down the ideal of my philosophical aspirations
practically to that of a rank beginner, at least in my old age I
10 have acquired the perfect certitude that I deserve to be called a
genuine beginner. If the years of Methuselah were allotted to
me, then I could almost hope that I might yet be able to become
a philosopher. Now, I was able to pursue further and further
the problems arising from the beginning of descriptive phenom-
15 enology (the beginning of the beginning) and to elaborate them
concretely in parts which were (for me) very instructive. The
universal horizon of the work of a phenomenological philoso­
phy has been revealed in its main geographical structures, as it
were, and the essential layers of the problems and the essential
20 methods of access to them have been clarified. I can see spread
out before me the endlessly open plains of true philosophy, the
“ promised land,” though its thorough cultivation will come
after me. This optimism might be met with a smile, but the
reader will be able to see for himself, in the fragments presented
25 in the book as the beginning of phenomenology, whether there
is not some justification for it. I would love to hope that those [162]
who come afterwards will take up these beginnings and will
carry them on persistently but will also repair their admittedly
great imperfections, imperfections which can hardly be avoided
30 in the beginnings of a science.
Yet, in the last analysis, my book will be unable to help
anyone who is already certain of his philosophy and his
philosophical method and hence has never come to know the
despair of one to whom the misfortune befell of being in love
35 with philosophy and who, as a beginning student, amidst the
jumble of philosophies, had to make a choice and became aware
that there really was no choice at all, since none of those
philosophies were concerned with genuine presuppositionless-
ness and none had arisen out of the radicalism of an autono-
 mous self-responsibility, the radicalism philosophy itself
demands. In the present time is the situation much different?
Anyone who believes he can appeal to the fruitful bathos1 of
experience in the usual sense, or to the “ sure results” of the
5 exact sciences, or to experimental or physiological psychology,
or to a constantly improving logic and mathematics, etc., and
who believes he can find there philosophical premises, such a
one will not be very receptive to my book, especially if he, in the
grip of the scientific skepticism of our times, has altogether
10 ceased to accept as valid the goal of a philosophy as rigorous
science. Thus he will be unable to muster the intensive interest
required, and he will not consider worthwhile the great pains
and expenditure of time that are demanded for an understand­
ing, in my footsteps, of this beginning way as I have sketched it
15 out. Only someone who is himself struggling with the beginning
of philosophy will react differently, for he will be forced to say
to himself: tua res agitur.2

1 [Reading Bathos for Pathos, following the text o f the Nachwort as originally
published in Husserl’s Jahrbuch, vol. 11.— Trans.]
2 [“ You have a stake in this.” Husserl is quoting Horace: Nam tua res agitur,
paries cum proximus ardet. Epist. I, 18, 84. — Trans.]
INDEX
 INDEX

abnormalities, 63, 67, 71 ff., 94, 393 apperception: of things, 39 ff., 50 ff.;
absolute spirit, 90 of the human, 102 fT., 129 ff., 146;
absolute subject, 180 of the personal, 195 ff., 381; of the
absolute time, 188 interpersonal, 203 ff.; and motiva­
acoustic image, 324 tion, 235 ff.; and empathy, 239 ff.,
advertence [Zuwertdung], 25, 231 358; self-apperception, 259-265,
adumbrations, 62; not the way the 277, 360 fT.; naturalistic, 351; et
pure Ego is given, 111; schema as passim.
unity of, 135; 138 f.; 157 appresence, 170 ff., 208
aestheta, 60 f. Aristotle, 176 n.
aesthetic pleasure, 10, 16 art, 4, 10, 191, 255, 328 f.
aesthetic synthesis, 19 ff. association: as intra-subjective con­
affective (acts, attitude, interest), 9 f., nection, 143, 233 ff., 263 f., 283 ff.,
14 ff., 224, 349 341-351; as inter-subjective con­
affects, 98, 112, 232; in Spinoza and nection, 200-220, 302 ff., 357 ff.,
Hobbes, 233; 324 393 ff.
ages of life, 266 f., 279, 284 authenticity and unauthenticity, 198,
Albrecht, xix 276, 346 f.
alert consciousness, 114ff. axiological attitude, 9 ff., 204 ff.
analogizing apperception, 176, 336
animal nature: vs. material nature, beauty, 4, 12-18, 196 ff., 391
30-32; as object of natural science, Beethoven, 359
96 ff. Berkeley, 421, 423
animalia, 169 ff. Biemel, M., xiii
animals: as founded realities, 35 f.; biology, 381, 401
96; 101; lack stratum of theoretical Body [Leib\ : significance of abnor­
thought, 142; playing cat 185 f.; as malities, 63 ff.; organ of free will,
zoological objects, 192 f.; animal 159 ff., 323; vs. other material
Ego, 350 f. things, 165 ff.; bearer of localized
animating sense, 248-259, 333 sensations, 161 f.; zero point of
anthropologism, 407 orientation, 165 f., 224; for the sol­
anthropology: as positive science, ipsistic subject, 168 f.; unity with
150, 184, 371, 376, 390; as philoso­ soul, 168, 176, 252, 294; as “ subjec­
phy of man, 405 fT., 407, 415 tive,” 224; as expression of spiri-
 tual life, 259, 296; two-sided reality, Descartes, 31, 109, 218, 408
297; impenetrability of two Bodies, description: vs. explanation, 402
216; point of conversion between descriptive psychology, 326 f., 423 f.
causality and conditionality, 168, desire, 104, 121, 160, 197 ff., 269 f.
299; means of all perception, yet differential equations, 89
itself imperfectly constituted, 61, Dilthey, 181 f., 326, 376, 402
167; et passim. doxa, 17, 43, 289, 345 f.
book: as comprehensive unity, 248 f. drama, 244, 249, 251, 255
bracketing, 27, 183, 301, 380 dreaming, 272, 347
brain, 146, 172 f., 229, 305, 354 drives [Triebel 207, 233, 267, 282,
Brentano, 326, 422, 424, 427 289, 349, 398
dull consciousness, 114 fT.
categorial objects, 7 ff., 23, 26 duration: of material things, 30ff.,
categorial synthesis, 19 ff. 49-54, 134; in immanent time,
causality: and reality, 48ff., psycho­ 109 f., 120-127
physical, 68 ff., 258 ff, 306, 354 ff.,
384, 390 ff.; as constitutive idea of Ebbinghaus, 182
material nature, 132ff.; inapplica­ Egology, 181
ble to the soul, 140 ff., 356; the Ego-pole, 103, 107, 111, 324
quasi-causality of the psychic, 145, eidetic intuition, 97
356; motivational, 227 fT., 241 ff.; eidetic phenomenology, 183, 326, 379,
vs. the personal attitude, 247; as 409
mystery, 272; causality of reason, eidetic reduction, 183, 187
235; causality and spirit, 295 ff., eidetics, 327, 379
390 ff.; et passim . eidos, 392, 409
centaur, 62, 274 elasticity, 39, 45, 50 ff.
central nervous system, 164, 198, 382 empathy [Einfiihlung], 170-180,
chemistry, 55, 389 208 ff., 239 ff., 362 ff., 381 ff., et
child, 101 n., 282, 288 passim.
church, 27, 148, 192, 255 empirical Ego, 99, 116, 183, 190,
closet drama, 251 261 ff., 340, 350
cogitationes, 103, 263 f., 278, 292, 344, epoche, 29, 380 n., 412, 418
367, 392 essence, passim.
cogito, 5 f., 103-127, 223 fT., 260 f., ethics, 233, 427
337 f. evidence, 230 ff., 275 f., 286, 343, 418
communal spirit, 209, 255 existence [Dasein]: natural, thingly,
community, 92, 141, 181, 207 ff., 329, 30, 35, 69; psychic, 101, 141, 145;
353, 363, 375, 387 ff. personal, 201, 208; spiritual, 292; et
comprehension [Komprehension]: as passim.
personal apperception, 201, 217, explanation: vs. description, 402
240, 245, 254 ff., 295, 306, 311, 321, expression (of sense) and the
335 ff., 387 f. expressed, 248-259, 333, 352 ff.
convictions, 120-126 extension, 31-36, 40 ff., 135 f.; vs.
corpse, 352 spread, 157 ff.
culture, 201, 250, 357, 365, 371, 388,
390 faculty-psychology, 131
death, 186, 326 family of man, 254
feelings: as original value-conscious- Hume, 421, 423
ness, 6-20; Body as source of stir­ Husserl, E .: Cartesian Meditations,
rings of feelings, 165; sensuous feel­ 407, 417 n.; Formal and transcen­
ings, 194 ff., 207, 243 ff. dental logic, 264, 417 n.; Inner time-
fia t, 104, 269 f., 297, 300, 340 consciousness, 409; Logical Investi­
flux (Fluss) of lived experiences, 109, gations, 276, 422, 426 f.
126 ff., 139, 263, 294, 335 f. (See hyle, 265
also Stream of consciousness.) hyletic substrate, 160, 305, 308
fragmentation, 33 ff., 55, 138, 144
freedom: in the kinesthetic, 73, 158 f., I as man, 99 f., 115 f., 175
167 f.; vs. powers of the objective “ I can,” 13 f., 159, 228, 266 ff., 341
spirit, 149; vs. passivity, tendencies idealism, 417-421
and drives, 225, 267, 289, 350; vs. “ if-then,” phenomenal, 163
influence of others, 281 f. imagination, 97 f., 218
friendship, 170, 210 immanent time, 109, 119 fT., 138, 188,
215, 324, 370, 409
genesis, 209, 226, 263, 267, 329, 360, impact, 42, 48 ff.
368 impenetrability of Bodies, 216
Gestalt psychology, 424 impressions, 125 f., 307, 348 f.
ghosts, 100 f., 227, 244, 301 individuum, 37, 150
God, 90, 329 inertia, 56 n.
goods: vs. mere natural things, 4, 19, infinity: endlessness vs. openness, 313
102, 225, 328, 384 inner time-consciousness, 239
Gulliver, 127 inspectio sui, 223, 329, 334
instauration [Urstiftung], 120, 124,
habit, 143, 193, 235 f., 267 f., 280, 289 281, 324
habituality, 313, 324, 384 instincts, 143, 267, 308, 346 ff.
habitus, 118, 279, 281, 290, 308 intellectus agens, 289, 344 f.
hidden reason, 289 intentional relation: vs. real relation,
historians, 10, 241, 376 ff. 227
historiography [Geschichtsschreibung], intentionality: pure Ego as center,
381 116, 226 ff.; empirical intentional­
history: natural things as history-less, ity, 261; 291; 344 ff.; concept trans­
vs. psychic reality, 144 f.; individual formed by Brentano, 424 f.; psy­
history, 313, 329, 350, 387; as chology of intentionality, 426
human science, 388, 399, 402 interaction (psychophysical), 302,
Hobbes, 233 308 f.
horizon, 42, 114, 205 ff., 314, 360 fT. interest (See theoretical attitude, prac­
human sciences [Geisteswissenschaf- tical attitude, etc.)
ten] : not mere descriptive natural intersubjective motivations, 243 ff.
sciences, 181; grasp motives not intersubjectivity, 86, 93, 311, 315, 373,
causes, 241; as cultural accomplish­ 417, 421, 426
ments, 320; relation to natural introjection, 175, 177, 184, 186, 216
sciences, 325 ff., 384, 401 f.; vs. intuition [Anschauung]: sense intuition
transcendental sciences, 354; and vs. axiological, 10 ff.; thing of intui­
outer experience, 375 tion as such, 30 ff.; form of intui­
 tion, 86 ff.; always has open hori­ Mill, J. S., 423
zons, 163 ; neutralized, 274 ff.; self­ miracle, 53
intuition, 262 ff.; source of all legi­ mobility, 39, 166
timation, 3 7 7 ; originarily giving, molecules, 54
381; psychology based on inner monad, 115, 118, 302, 306, 309, 314
intuition, 411 ff.; et passim. morphology, 375, 379, 381 f., 385,
intuitive “ flair ” [Intuition], 286 f. 387 f., 399, 401
motion, 39, 42, 57, 67, 153, 273 f.
joy, 14 ff., 243, 279, 288 motivation: as law of personal life (vs.
causality), 223-293, et passim.
Munsterberg, 182
Kant, 115, 139, 218, 356, 427
mutual understanding, 86 ff., 194,
kinesthetic sensations, 23 f., 61 ff., 70,
202 ff., 217, 240, 336, 386
136, 154 ff., 323, 342
kinetic sensations, 136, 156, 158
natural attitude, 22, 69, 184 fT., 251,
360 f., 373, 386, 395, 411 ff., 426
Landgrebe, L., xiii, xvi natural history, 214 f., 382, 396
language, 175, 235, 328 natural science: as excluding mean-
Leibniz, 115, 362, 421 ing-predicates, 3 ff., 27 ff.; objective
life-world [Lebenswelt], 302 n., 384 ff. nature as correlate, 217 ff., 302,
lighting, 45, 67, 74, 177 401; vs. human science, 190, 214,
Lipps, 270 n. 325, 352, 356, 384, 393; psychology
lived experience (Erlebnis], passim. as natural science, 181, 184, 423;
localization, 36, 61, 153-165, 172 ff., conception of the person, 373, 383;
185 ff., 213, 216, 324 descriptive natural science, 375 ff.,
Locke, 349, 423, 427 389; oblivious to the life-world,
locus, 35, 406 384
natural-scientific attitude, 4, 29, 215,
machine, 333 376, 383
magnitude, 32 f., 88 naturalistic attitude, 30, 169, 183 ff.,
materiality, 24, 28, 31 fT, 58, 100, 141, 144 190 ff., 220 f., 294, 337, 356
mathematics, 203, 290, 392, 410, 430 naturalization, 176, 254, 311, 316,
mathematization, 145, 359 331, 337, 357, 364, 375
mechanical motion, 42 f., 167, 229, nature-attitude, 189, 215, 380 n., 383
271 ff. neutralization (neutrality modifica­
medium, 57, 65 f. tion), 5, 270, 274-278, 340
Meinong, 427 noemata, 19, 38, 121, 179, 221, 228,
memory, 122 ff., 262, 275, 283 f., 314, 231, 244, 375
345 ff., 353 ff. noeses, 116, 121, 426
mere things, 11, 18 f, 27, 191, 200, non-Ego, 265, 330, 331, 335
225, 319, 389 non-sensuous quality, 320 f.
method: of physics, 89, 242; phenom­ normal sensibility, 61, 91
enological, 96, 189 ff., 405ff.; phe­
nomenological vs. natural-scientific, objectivating acts, 17 f.
325 fT.; human-scientific, 377 ff., objective spirit, 148, 251, 256, 357
424; natural-scientific, 396 ff. ontology, 97, 326 f., 399
opinions, persistence of, 118 ff. also Pure phenomenology, Trans­
organism, 36, 185 f., 267, 352 cendental phenomenology, Eidetic
phenomenology.)
parallelism: psychophysical, 302 ff., philosophy, 328, 405 ff.
307 f. physicalistic thing, 80 ff, 89 ff, 179,
passive Ego, 225 217 ff, 242, 297 ff, 334
passive states, 8 physics, 49, 89 ff., 193 ff, 215 ff,
passivity, 13 ff, 22, 104, 225, 234 f, 356 ff, 389 ff.
345 ff., 362, 381 physiology, 272, 393 fT.
perception: as general objectivation, physis, 134, 298, 356
16 ff.; as originary experience, 40, Plato, 406
123 f., 170, 275; function of abnor­ practical attitude, 4 f, 15; as personal
malities in, 63 ff.; one-sided, 54, attitude, 199
185; perceiver’s Body as medium, practical possibilities, 270 ff, 342 f.
61 ff., 167, 224, 259, 296; self- pregivennesses, 226, 283 ff, 344 f,
perception, 99 ff., 259 ff., 277; 374, 379
visual vs. tactual, 155 ff.; as moti­ presuppositionlessness, 428 f.
vation for judgments, 231 ff.; per­ primal presence, 170 ff., 208
ceptual harmony and discord, 48, primary qualities, 34, 90, 93, 323,
289; not a causal operation, 383 f.; 351
et passim. primordial manifestation [Beurkun-
personal apperception, 262, 366 dung ], 50, 59, 131, 135, 139, 188
personal Ego, 149 f., 193 ff., 213 f., protention, 268
231, 259 ff., 323, 331 fT., 338, 360, 366 psyche [Psyche], 80, 128, 142, 368,
personal properties, 129, 149 372, 395, 411, 423
personalistic attitude, 147 ff., 183 ff., psychic Ego, 98, 102, 128, 141 ff, 184,
259, 294 ff, 332, 390 ff. 255, 331
personality, 111, 117, 148 f, 362, 372, psychic properties, 129 f, 140, 222,
381 ff. 356
phantasms, 143, 304, 401 psychoanalysis, 234
phantasy, 62, 127, 130, 244 f , 276 ff, psychological Ego, 128, 139, 358
345 f. psychological reduction, 377 f.
phantoms (purely visual spatial psychologism, 407, 415
forms), 23 f, 39 ff., 100 f. psychology: theory of faculties, 131;
phenomena: immediately experienced as natural science, 181, 327, 337,
contents, 211, 218, 357, 393; pure, 357, 368; experimental, 308, 368,
transcendental phenomena, 377, 430; as way into phenomenology,
386, 413 fT. 327, 415; as human science, 366 ff,
phenomenological method, 96, 189 ff, 377 f, 392; phenomenological psy­
326, 405 fT. chology, 411 ff, 423 ff.
phenomenological psychology, 411, psychophysical parallelism, 302 ff,
414, 423, 425 307 f.
phenomenological reduction, 183, psychophysics, 368 f, 376, 394
187, 189, 377, 380, 407 fT. pure consciousness, 118, 124, 188 f,
phenomenology, 85, 97, 181 ff, 295, 221, 263, 337 ff., 392
325 ff, 374 ff., 391 ff, 405 ff. (See pure Ego, 103-128, et passim.
pure phenomenology, 183, 326 f., 392, social experience, 210 f.
408 social personalities, 329, 336, 374
society, 92, 181, 204, 208, 241, 246,
rational motives, 267, 350 329, 332, 375, 385, 390
real circumstances, 45 ff., 131 ff., solid body, 56 ff.
162 ff., 296 ff. solipsism, 75 ff.; and constitution of
real properties, 34, 45 ff., 129 ff., 258, physicalistic nature, 82 f., 94 f., 151,
312, 337 169 ff.; vs. intersubjective experi­
real relation: vs. intentional relation, ence, 83 ff.; and constitution of the
227 Body, 168 f.; alleged solipsism of
realism, 418-421 Ideas I, 417 f.
reflection: vs. adoption of theoretical solus ipse, 86, 92
attitude, 15 ff. soul [Seele]: as natural object, 96,
regional ontology, 97 141 ff., 355; vs. pure Ego, 128; real­
reproduction, 125 f., 281, 345 ff. ity of, 134, 351 ff., 384; strata of,
res externa , 36, 141, 157, 352, 364 142, 292; as united with the Body,
residuum (of the reductions), 189 168, 176, 252, 294; vs. spirit,
retention, 16, 307, 314, 346 181 ff.; in the reduction, 412ff.; et
Rickert,-182 passim.
rigorous science, 406 f., 430 space-time, 145, 188, 215, 222, 352 ff.,
392
santonin, 67 f., 78, 80 spatiality, 32, 36, 63, 209, 214
schemata, 40 ff., 61 ff., 100, 135, 212, Spinoza, 233
351 spirit [Geist], passim.
secondary passivity, 14, 21 f. spiritual attitude, 254, 300, 359, 374,
secondary qualities, 34, 81, 93 f., 184, 394, 398
221, 246, 323, 333, 373, 396 spiritual Ego, 103, 151, 226, 266, 279,
secondary receptivities, 19 288 f., 295, 358 ff.
secondary sensibility, 345 fT. spontaneity, 9 ff., 26, 61 ff., 167,
sedimentation, 118, 233, 324, 344 f. 345 ff.
self-apperception, 259 ff. spread [Ausbreitung]: vs. extension,
sensations: vs. things and phantoms, 36, 157 ff.
23 ff.; constitutive-representational stereoscope, 39
vs. motivating-kinesthetic, 62 ff., stimuli, 198 ff., 228 ff., 267, 279, 289,
152; most primitive adumbrations, 295 f., 346 ff.
138; localized, 152 ff.; doubled, stimulatability, 184 f.
153 f; ultimate pregivennesses, Stein, E., xii, xiii
224 f.; et passim . Strasser, S., xiii
sense: as animating, 248-259, 333 stream of consciousness [Bewusstseins-
sense data, 26, 77, 172 ff., 243, 303 ff., strom], 110 ff., 146, 165, 188,
348, 423 234 ff.; as unity of motivation, 239;
sense-things [Sinnendinge], 69 ff., 369 ff. (See also Flux of lived expe­
76 ff., 319 ff. riences.)
sensibility, 72 ff.; vs. reason, 289; vs. stuff [StofA 225
intellectus agens, 344 ff. style of life, 283
Simmel, 182 subjective attitude: vs. natural atti­
skepticism, 406, 430 tude, 69
substantiality, 37, 48, 58, 132, 339, hand touching the other, 152 ff.; vs.
347, 401 vision, 155 ff.
substruction, 178, 242 f. transcendent time, 126, 215
supernatural realities, 145 transcendental Ego, 128, 413 ff.
surrounding world [Umwelt]: not transcendental intersubjectivity, 417,
composed of mere things, 191, 195; 421
person as center, 194 ff.; common transcendental phenomenology, 325,
surrounding world and personal 365, 374, 379, 405 ff.
associations, 201, 387; and spiritual transcendental reduction, 326 f., 337
Ego, 225 ff., 298, 311, 357; egoistic transcendental subjectivity, 365, 379,
surrounding world vs. communica­ 386, 406 ff.
tive, 203 ff.; theoretical surrounding
world, 230; and personal Ego, universe, 3, 30, 116, 353, 362, 372 f.,
333 ff.; et passim. 389, 401, 420
use-objects, 29, 191, 197, 225
tactile image, 73
technology, 384 values: as excluded from nature, 4 ff.;
telos, 228 valuing on the part of the natural
temporalization, 188, 213, 216, 370, scientist, 28 f.; theory of values,
409, 425 230; pre-eminent values, 280
temptation, 279, 341 violin-tone, 24, 156, 196 f.
theater, 244, 250 visual image, 67, 74 f., 324
theoretical attitude, 4 ff., 332, 365 f., vocalization, 101 n.
375, 384
thing in itself, 39, 139 weight, 34 f., 49, 153
thingly properties, 34, 135, 161, 354 Windelband, 182
tones, tonal data, 24 ff., 156,161,196,325 world-image, 84, 94, 402
touch, 57 f.; priority of, 74 f.; one written marks, 256