Phenomenological Epistemology

PHENOMENOLOGICAL EPISTEMOLOGY

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PHENOMENOLOGICAL EPISTEMOLOGY

Henry Pietersma

New York

Oxford

Oxford University Press 2000

Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan

Copyright © 2000 by Henry Pietersma Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise. without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicalion Data Pietersma, Henry. Phenomenological episternology / Henry Pietersma, p cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-513190-8 1. Husserl, Edmund, [859-1938—Contributions in theory knowlege, 2. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976 Contributions in theory of knowledge. 3. Mericau-Ponty, Maurice, 1908-1961—Contributions in theory of knowledge. 4. Knowlege. Theory of—History—2Oth

century.I. Title. b3279.h94p467 2000

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99-20502

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO A N N I E

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PREFACE

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his study is both historical and systematic in nature. Its historical character may be seen from the fact that the three central chapters of the book are an attempt to come to grips with the views of Husserl, Heidegger, and MerleauPonty, three towering figures from the recent history of philosophy. In these parts of the book, I offer an historical interpretation of each of their epistemological doctrines. Each doctrine has its own power, excitement, and charm, which I have tried to capture in my exposition. Each chapter, I think, has enough integrity to be studied with profit without reading the others, if the pressure of time and circumstance should require it. I compare these doctrines with one another only to the extent necessary in light of the fact that both Heidegger and MerleauPonty developed their views in criticism of Husserl. But I have tried not to let comparisons of this kind come in the way of exposition of each philosopher's doctrine for its own sake. These chapters, as one would expect, are concerned to do justice to the relevant texts and are therefore essentially expository and historical in nature. When it comes to making comparisons, I give more attention to the affinity between the three philosophers than to their differences from one another. It seems to me that it is particularly interesting to see them together and to relate them as a group to the general history of epistemology. Seeing them against this background, it became clear to me how deeply all three are indebted to the transcendental epistemology of Kant. Each of the three philosophers criticizes

him (or some of his followers) in very important ways, but beneath all this there remains an affinity which all three have with transcendental philosophy, be it that of Kant himself or that of post-Kantian idealism. In spite of everything, Kant remains canonical for them, But since Kant's philosophy marks a very important turn in the history of philosophy, I have also ventured further into the past to give the transcendental turn its proper historical context. I leave much of this at the level of broad outline and without extensive documentation, but I suggest that in appreciating this context of Kant's turn it is well not to stop at Hume, Berkeley, Locke, and Descartes, but to go as far back into history as Plato and Aristotle. In short, 1 read Kant as opponent of what I call classical realism. My book accordingly compares Husserl with Plato as well as with Kant, and I contrast Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty with both Plato and Aristotle as well as with Husserl and Kant. What is new and original about my book is, first of all, that 1 focus on the epistemological views held by the three philosophers, which is a story that has never been told in an epistemologically responsible manner. I call the approach of all three epistemologies phenomenological, taking this term in a broad sense that I will try to explain in the introduction. As noted, I also emphasize the transcendental character of their epistemology, which I likewise discuss in considerable detail in the introduction. The systematic side of my book is apparent in its attempt to relate these doctrines of knowledge to historical and contemporary epistemology. My intention here is not only to compare and contrast but also to engage the three historical figures in contemporary discussions, particularly those involving realism and antirealism. The systematic side remains secondary in relation to the book's historical concerns, at least in the sense that, except for the introduction and the conclusion, discussions of systematic issues are woven into doctrinal exposition as it proceeds in the chapters of the book. I believe my contribution in the discussion of these three philosophers is important, because epistemology is not a topic which is at present accorded the place it should have in scholarly work. Studies of Husserl do generally touch on epistemological issues because for him the theory of knowledge was central among the philosophical disciplines. Commentators, however, seldom confront his doctrines with other theories because they keep the epistemological discussion within the bounds of Husserlian language and thought. Even epistemological discussions of Descartes, Hume, and Kant are packaged in the same language. The scholarly literature on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty shows even less concern for epistemology, presumably because these philosophers themselves are on record as having rejected epistemology. Heidegger, for example, treats knowledge as merely a derivative mode of being-in-the-world and shows little but contempt for epistemology. No attempt has thus far been made, however, to identify and discuss the doctrine of knowledge implied by such a negative attitude. My first chapter is a lengthy introduction in which I try to set forth the general framework of the discussion, indicating what fundamental questions I pursue and how I understand them. Since I emphasize the transcendental character of the thought of all three philosophers, and since I construe transcendental thought as an opposition to classical realism, I devote a great deal of viii

Preface

attention to the relation of transcendentalism to realism. One could say that the dominant feature of my book is an attempt to introduce realism as a partner in the discussion of phenomenological-transcendental epistemology. I begin by discussing the nature of a phenomenological epistemology in contrast with epistemological externalism. The second question I discuss has to do with the relation between transcendental and other epistemologies, especially those associated with realism. I give here a broad characterization of a realist epistemology and contrast it with one that is transcendental in nature. The historical role of scepticism in the formation of Kant's epistemology is here discussed. I argue that Kant saw realism as giving rise to scepticism and therefore held the view that it ought to be rejected in the interests of a transcendental theory of knowledge. The role and nature of the concept in human knowledge—already at issue in the medieval debate about universals—emerges from this discussion as a matter of crucial importance. The views of Kant and Hegel on this matter are briefly discussed and contrasted with a realist view. Since a transcendental epistemology concentrates its attention on the idea of a conceptual framework, I devote a section to this idea, arguing that it is central in the philosophies I deal with in this book. Another thesis I argue for in this book is that Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty emphasize the search for truth as an activity to such a degree that the nature of truth itself is lost from sight. I am inclined to think that this, too, is a tendency inherent in the transcendental tradition since Kant. Since Heidegger's much-discussed doctrine of truth elaborates such a view as a criticism of the correspondence view associated with realism, I discuss then in the introduction a few texts from Plato and Aristotle and other matters relating to the general philosophical debate about truth, trying to defend the view that the nature of truth should be distinguished from the search for it. The introduction concludes with a general consideration of the most important differences between Husserl and the two other philosophers. I venture to think that the importance I give to realism broadens the scope of interest of this book, for neither the philosophers under discussion nor their followers and commentators have deemed realism worthy of philosophical interest. The reason for this opinion, as we will see, is a strange but persistent confusion of realism with the objectivism and naturalism they saw, understandably enough, as fundamentally at odds with their own phenomenology, I reject such a view of realism and therefore discuss at great length the question whether realism as such is compatible with phenomenology, particularly if the latter is developed as a transcendental philosophy. Although my primary aim is epistemological, metaphysical issues could not be avoided. All three philosophers have a doctrine of being which enters into their epistemologies at crucial points. In fact, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty often write as though what they mainly want to present is a doctrine of being. This is especially true of Heidegger. Nothing seems to have been further from his mind than to offer a theory of knowledge. To a considerable extent, then, I had to construe their epistemological doctrine by an examination of their ontology or metaphysics. It proved to be very difficult to establish what Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty held with regard to knowledge. In their case, one sometimes has Preface

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to read not only the text but also between the lines, often piecing together a doctrine only alluded to in widely dispersed passages. Although these textual expositions require close attention from the reader, I have done my best to keep the general line of thought clear throughout the discussion. Throughout my book, I have tried to make the epistemological focus as sharp as I could. What to include in my discussion was not always obvious. The epistemological import of Husserl's doctrine of the transcendental-phenomenological reduction is made fairly clear by the author himself. The same holds for Heidegger's doctrine about the founded character of knowledge and Merleau-Ponty's thesis of the primacy of perception. But it took me quite a long time to decide that on account of its epistemological ramifications I had to discuss, for instance, the topic of essences, not only in connection with Husserl but also in connection with the other two philosophers. The central chapters are exegetical, although I have tried not to lose sight of systematic problems. In my exposition of doctrines, I avoid as much as possible the technical vocabulary used by these philosophers, but when I do introduce the reader to a technical term, I explain what I take it to mean and generally proceed without making much use of it. The final chapter has been kept short. I clarify my criticism and return to a further discussion of the questions that have come up throughout the book, and especially in the first chapter. It is essentially meant to tie things together at the end. I thank James C. Morrison, David Carr, and J. N. Mohanty for reading an earlier version of my book and serving me with their observations and criticisms. I thank Graeme Nicholson for discussing with me early versions of my chapter on Heidegger and David Jopling lor reading the final version of the introductory chapter.

May 1999 Toronto, Ontario

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H. P.

CONTENTS

1. Introduction 3 Phenomenology and Externalism 3 Transcendentalism and Realism 13 Conceptual Frameworks 21 Metaphysical Issues 26 Truth and the Search for It 28 Cognitive and Other Attitudes 32 2. Husserl 36 Introduction 36 Intention and Fulfilment 39 The Transcendental Turn 49 Epistemology of Perception 60 Knowledge of Essences 68 The Problem of History 78 3. Heidegger 85 Introduction 85 The Place of the Transcendental The Ontological Difference 89 The Cognitive Attitude 95

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Subject and Predicate 100 Essences 106 The Question of Truth 111 The Open Space 117 Untruth and Concealment 121 Summary 124 4. Merleau-Ponty 126 Introduction 126 Sensation and Perception 129 Perception and Meaning 130 Nature and Scope of Reflection 132 Perception and the Body 135 Appearance and Reality 137 External Reality 141 Objectification and Predication 147 Perceptual Knowledge and Truth 152 Essences 154 Metaphysics and Epistemology 158 Merleau-Ponty's Idealism 163 Summary 167 5. Conclusions 168 Transcendentalism and Realism Revisited 168 Transcendentalism in Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty Notes

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Select Bibliography Index

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Contents

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1 INTRODUCTION

Phenomenology and Externalism What does it mean to adopt a phenomenological attitude, or follow the associated method, in matters epistemological? Husserl, the father of phenomenology, often starts by contrasting the phenomenological with what he calls the natural attitude, which is that of common sense and science. And in his doctrine of knowledge, he criticizes epistemologists who presuppose the validity of the natural attitude and are in whole or in part, implicitly or explicitly, indebted to it. Phenomenological epistemology, he argues, breaks with that attitude and focuses its attention differently: not on objects, but on their experience. It is supposed to find its subject matter by reflection on our cognitive experience, which is the reason he often develops his own thoughts by starting with some laudatory comments about Descartes. Let us therefore start off by saying that the standpoint of phenomenology is that of reflection and that it approaches cognitive experience from within, i.e., from a first-person point of view. Since this formulation implies some sort of contrast with a nonreflective, third-person approach to the subject matter of epistemology, it does not help us very much until we have a sense of this contrast. Before going into the distinctively philosophical or epistemological debates surrounding this matter, I want to discuss a contrast of attitudes that is already familiar to cognitive experience long before there is any fully systematic or phil-

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osophical episternology. Here too, I suggest, we come across the two approaches which I mentioned a moment ago in a first approximation. One person approaches a given belief, or system of beliefs, from the outside, another from the inside. On one occasion, 1 take the one approach, while on a different occasion I take the other. In the former case, I consider the belief simply with regard to its truth-value and, on the basis of what I know, I come to the conclusion, say, that it is false. Without seriously entering into the frame of mind of the person who holds the belief, I take myself to be in a position to pronounce it to be false. I simply look at the facts that are known to me, and I conclude that the belief does not square with those facts. I need not dwell on why that person held the belief in question or on the meaning it has for her. But there may also be circumstances in which the question of the truth or falsity of beliefs recedes into the background somewhat, and in which my primary interest is to know a person's mind. 1 now ask questions such as these: Why does she believe this or that? By what principles or methods did she arrive at that belief? What was the background of belief which shaped those principles as well as the particular belief in question? What else would she have had to have experienced for her to come to this belief? How different is her world from mine? Is it different only in that it has something which my world lacks? Or is it different in a more pervasive way? To find answers to such questions, one is likely to do a great deal of listening to what that person has to say about her beliefs, rather than talk about them from one's own point of view. The interest here bears some resemblance to that of a friend or a counsellor. A psychiatrist, for instance, may spend considerable time trying to find out his patient's possibly bizarre view of the world. That it is not a correct view may be without question, but the psychiatrist is not interested in that question when he wants to get to know his patient. It is for that reason that he listens to what the patient has to say and how he describes the way he sees the world. While this concern is with an individual person and subserves a practical end—namely some therapeutic improvement—the so-called human sciences offer many examples of attempts to attain theoretical knowledge of human beings. And unless such beings are reduced to scientific objects, in such inquiries the human scientist's approach is bound to be, in whole or in part, phenomenological. One tries to get a picture of a form of life as actually lived by certain groups or communities, a world as it exists in the communal awareness of those human beings, if nowhere else. An anthropologist, being not at all concerned to evaluate worldviews as to their truth, may be satisfied by understanding a particular view as it exists in the community under study.1 What is particularly important for an understanding of these different attitudes is the role played, on the one hand, by the appraiser's own knowledge or beliefs and, on the other, by the convictions and beliefs held by the person under study. If we approach the beliefs from the outside, we base what we say about it largely on knowledge available to us, on our own unquestioned possession of truth; we feel no need to rely on the believer's point of view. One might be inclined to say that, if the purpose is cognitive appraisal in the sense of truthevaluation, this approach almost goes without saying, since it would seem that no belief, or system of beliefs, can be so evaluated on the basis of its own content. 4

Phenomenological Episternology

A belief held by a certain person cannot be a part of that on the strength of which I appraise its truth-value. If it, is true, we generally think, it is true by virtue of something external to its own content or the mental history which accounts for the holding of the belief. When we consider it from the inside, however, a certain reversal takes place. The scale tips the other way and the believer's own point of view becomes paramount, while the appraiser's independent information plays a minor role, or no role at all. I now want to know what the world is like according to the perspective of certain persons. If we think of appraisal as having to do only with truth, we might be inclined to say that the element of appraisal is completely absent in such a situation. For if I do not allow extrinsic information to play a role, how can I possibly appraise the truth or falsity of what is being believed? All that remains is an interest in describing it purely from the inside, which is to say, from the believing subject's perspective. What goes on in an everyday, nonphilosophical appraisal of beliefs suggests that the two approaches are complementary, rather than incompatible, for the practice of cognitive appraisal embraces both. Let us take as an example a cognitive appraisal motivated by doubt; somebody says something which I doubt and proceed to appraise. Since I doubt that the object of a certain belief exists, it goes without saying that I cannot point to it directly but will refer to it as that which so and so believes, i.e., the object as internal to the latter's belief. In other words, an object the status of which remains in question is introduced into the discourse of appraisal by including in the way I refer to it an indication to the effect that it is an object believed to exist by a certain specified person (or group). I refer to the object as what, is being thought of by so and so, as an object in a certain description, constructed, so to speak, in the doxastic situation of that person from the materials available to him—in short, an object represented in that subject's perspective. The effect of this is just what is needed: I introduce the object for the purpose of appraisal, but at the same time I dissociate myself from the belief itself, since I do not (or not yet) believe in the existence of its object. Let us say that the belief in question is one held by, for example, my friend David T. Steen. This kind of situation led to locutions to the effect that that object or state of affairs exists in Steen's mind. Philosophers might now want to ask what kind of being it has in his mind, but since we are trying to envisage what goes on in a prephilosophical process of appraisal, it is perhaps wise not to worry too much about ontology. After all, the appraiser has not yet given the object in David Steen's mind a permanent home. Its present subjective status is simply a function of a cognitive manoeuvre, namely, that of cognitive appraisal. When we talk about an object as existing in Steen's mind, we want it to be understood that we are not yet finished with the job of assigning it an ontological status. To fix the object of evaluative interest, then, the appraiser begins with a kind of focus on ivhat is believed in a certain believer's mind, that is, on what the latter sincerely says he believes. The only status David Steen's object has within the appraiser's universe of discourse is that of an intentional object: it exists in David's mind, even if it does not exist anywhere else. Whether he is right or wrong still remains to be decided. 2 An appraiser takes such an object, to be nothing more than what is believed in the specific mental state mentioned, Introduction

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namely, David Steen's mind. But that does not make it identical with that mental state. The properties assigned to an intentional object are different from those assigned to the mental state, even if they are precisely the same properties ascribed to it by the person in that state. The properties an appraiser ascribes to an intentional object are properties of an object that may very well exist quite independently. Now an appraisal is generally supposed to have an outcome, either positive or negative; we expect a decision as to whether the object in question really exists. In the case of a positive outcome, the indexing of the object with reference to Steen's mind is dropped; the object is set free of its subjective determinants. What is believed is thereby, as it were, removed from the context of a specific believer's mind and given a name and a place in the appraiser's world of truth. The latter accordingly identifies it with one of things that exist in that world and adds the properties David Steen assigned to it to those which, in his view, it already possessed objectively. (In that case, we say that he has learned something about the object from Stcen.) The object's subjective context and background in Steen's mind drop, as it were, out of focus for lack of any further cognitive interest. And in such a case, the belief appraised is held to be true in very much the same sort of sense in which the external approach considers truth and falsity. What I have so far discussed, in a somewhat abstract and simplistic way, are things pertaining to a contrast in attitudes and the differences made by one or the other attitude. I chose to begin this way because I want to highlight certain abstract but fundamental features of the situation before we get into details. To get a more realistic picture, we have to remember that when we talk about the belief held by someone, we are talking about an actual person, though the perspective in which we view that person tends to constrict our consideration. The perspective on knowledge leaves out of consideration a great many things that make up an actual person or an actual society. Our focus is simply on what is believed, but that does not mean that we hold this person to be a being that has no practical interests, values, or emotions. But even when we bear in mind our general perspective on knowledge, we still come face to face with the fact that believing something or other engages a great deal more than a particular belief. A person holds a particular belief for certain reasons he knows. And that, in turn, means that he holds all kinds of other beliefs as well. Some of them may be general beliefs he is scarcely aware of holding. They may be beliefs to the effect that beliefs of a certain kind, of which a particular belief is a member, are justified under such and such circumstances. In the light of that general, higherorder belief, the particular belief that p recommends itself to him as justified, warranted, acceptable, rational, or whatever gives it cognitive status. The belief to be appraised, therefore, is part of a much wider context of belief. And the holding of these latter beliefs will imply yet further beliefs. In fact, as all three philosophers to be discussed in this book emphasize, that believer's awareness is, in the last analysis, an awareness of an entire world, using "world" to designate a holistic system rather than an aggregate of entities. In what follows, I shall often speak of that kind of system as a conceptual framework. More about that later. 6

PhenomenoLogical Episternology

A complete dissociation of the appraiser from the believer, which may have been suggested by some parts of the discussion, is also an abstraction. As pragmatist philosophers particularly, and also Heidegger, would emphasize, cognitive appraisal is usually an affair between members of a community. Accordingly, there is bound to be far-reaching agreement between the appraiser and the person whose particular belief is being appraised. In fact, it is easy to see that the very nature of cognitive appraisal presupposes a community of agreement between appraiser and appraised. Take the particular state of affairs which a certain belief is supposed to be about. If I am to determine the truth or falsity of the belief, I must be able to determine whether that: object exists and/or whether it has the property which it is said to have. How can I do this, unless I know where to look for it? 1 naturally look for it where I know it is supposed to be, or where the person whose belief is in question says it is. Just looking somewhere or other and not finding the object of the belief is irrelevant to the truth-value of the belief. That place must therefore be known to me, so that I can look there. In other words, if 1 am to undertake an epistemic appraisal of somebody's belief, I have to share with that person enough of a world to look for the object in the right place. Cognitive appraisal thus assumes that there exists between us agreement about an implied context or world. Looking for something in the right place should not be interpreted too simplistically, as if it involved only spatial places one can walk to in a fairly straightforward sense. What is required depends largely on the kind of thing involved. When something has been said about a sentence in a book, the place to check is that book. When something is said about the result of an arithmetical operation, what is called for is obviously a calculation. The general point at issue is this: whatever the particular moves might be, they all have in common that after their performance we are in a situation which entitles us to pronounce about the truth or falsity of the belief we set out to examine. Another point, already noted, needs further elaboration. When it comes to appraising a belief with respect to its truth or falsity, not only is the external approach customary but also it, seems to be, in fact, altogether appropriate. Our intuitive sense of things is that a belief's being true, in distinction from its being justified or warranted, owes nothing to the believer's mind. If a belief is true, so our practice of appraisal suggests, it is so by virtue of something altogether external to the mind of the believer, namely, an existing entity being what it is. Even though, as I indicated, an external approach to a person's beliefs ignores the letter's sense of subjectivity and might hurt his feelings of being a significant agent, it is in this respect consonant with our other prcphilosophical convictions. Although there is a distinction, the two approaches are connected and complementary. For the external approach, it is the truth of a belief that matters. On such an approach, knowledge is just a relation between a knower and an object. That the corresponding belief is actually held for reasons appreciated by the person who holds that belief is a decidedly secondary issue. That the truth in question should, on a certain occasion, have been attained by luck or a disposition of nature, rather than by a diligent search, is a question that will only be important only to those who put a premium on what is found as a result of seeking. The emphasis inherent in the external approach is on truth as a posIntroduction

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session and knowledge as a state, even if that state was brought about by some causal influence. In short, taken strictly as such, the emphasis seems to exclude the recognition that the cognitive subject actively participates in the matter, for the appraiser naturally assumes that she is competent to appraise the truth of his beliefs without him. The other approach, by contrast, views the subject as active, for example, as engaged in justifying the beliefs he holds, as basing moral and political ideals on them, and as acting to realize those goals. The subject is an agent who seeks and finds truth, who makes use of whatever truth is already available at a particular time to seek another truth, and so on. Truth as object of search tends to overshadow truth as possession. Knowing is seen as an activity, rather than a state of being related to an independent reality. Now let us try to state Husserl's case for a phenomenological epistemology as an explicitly philosophical discipline, approaching cognitive experience from a reflective point of view. Like anyone else engaged in a theoretical enterprise, the phenomenological epistemologist, of course, tries to be objective with regard to her subject matter, but, what gives her approach its phenomenological character is that she objectifies the internal structure of cognitive experience. Her focus is the first-person point of view, whether that of an individual as such or the communal sense of the individual. The phenomenological theorist describes or articulates cognitive experience from the standpoint of the cognizer, thinking of it as though it were her own, imagining it as if she herself actually had it. Her primary questions include: What are the beliefs of this cognizer? How strongly are they held? What grounds does he give for them? How does he connect them with one another into the whole of his experience? As an actual person, the phenomenologist, of course, has her own convictions about what exists or does not, but her phenomenological approach demands that they should not play a role in the way she describes the cognitive experience under discussion. If she thinks that the state of affairs believed to obtain by the cognizer does not obtain at all, that the belief is wildly wrong, she will not describe the belief as false or hallucinatory or as based on imagination, if by doing so she would contradict the cognizer's sense of it; the latter may take it to be firmly rooted in what he takes to be a perception. The state of affairs she mentions by way of indicating what the belief is about is therefore, in a certain sense, created by the cognitive awareness under study; it is the state of affairs from the subject's perspective. One could also say that it is internal to a specific knower's belief, or rather his system of beliefs, in the sense that one can determine from the inside, as it were, what object a given belief has. Beliefs, of course, do not come singly, one at a time; they do not form in their totality a mere aggregate, but a framework or context of meaning in which they are internally related to one another. The holding of one belief as correct means that another is set aside as incorrect. One belief has relevance to another, a relation that is itself a matter of belief about the other beliefs. There is, for example, the epistemic notion of one belief being verified, confirmed, falsified, or made dubitable by another. A belief based on a perception may count as verifying a belief of some other provenance. Within the system as a whole, certain beliefs are accordingly distinguished as doubtful, undecided, or probably false, others as definitely untrue or incorrect or based on hallucination, while still others are 8

Phenomenological Epistemology

accepted as true because they are held to be based on perceptions. All this amounts to saying that some parts of the framework are, by their very nature, critical of other parts; the whole functions as a self-critical system. Doubt, a favourite topic in traditional epistemology, is clearly an internal aspect of such a system. A phenomenological description will then, of course, follow suit and take such distinctions and relations into account, but (to repeat) what makes it phenomenological is the fact that they are described as made within the system; the criticisms they imply are not imported into it from elsewhere by the phenomenological epistemologist on the strength of her own convictions or beliefs. Since Husserl's time, phenomenologists have tended to be fastidious in the matter of indicating which objects are being referred to in a phenomenological discussion, often going so far as to insist on rebaptizing them, giving them a new name, lest they be confused with other objects. They often say that their discourse is about meanings, rather than objects. If the language they speak is not English, you may catch words like Sinne or noemata. But as readers we have to keep in mind that this vocabulary is used only to send us a clear signal as to the distinctive focus of their discourse. Like all other theoretical discourse, it is about objects, but they call the objects they focus on meanings, because their perspective is second-order. They want to describe an experience of objects. Such language can nevertheless work misleadingly. It is not to be taken as suggesting that this experience is itself cognitively concerned about meanings, rather than objects in a straightforward sense. "Meaning" is a term used by the phenomenologist to indicate the distinctive perspective of his own discourse, rather than to describe the intrinsic character of the cognitive experience under discussion. An object becomes a meaning in the context of discourse that focuses on our cognitive access to objects, rather than on the object as such. Instead of considering something as simply a tree or a house, she considers such objects strictly as what a percipient takes to exist in his environment, including the subjective mode of its being so taken. That object has now become a meaning, in the sense that it is specified only by reference to a certain form of consciousness. In contrast with phenomenological epistemologists, there are those who would describe cognitive experience from, a vantage point outside it, a locution that may sound strange but must, be understood in the light of my preceding discussion. My three philosophers generally call this naturalism. 3 In contemporary epistemological literature, it is called externalism, because such an epistemologist adopts a stance like that of an external observer who reports on the relations of a cognitive subject to his or her environment. As D. M. Armstrong writes: According to 'Externalist' accounts of non-inferential knowledge, what makes a true non-inferential belief a case of knowledge is some natural relation which holds between the belief-state, Bap (to be read as 'A believes that p" (H. P.)), and the situation which makes the belief true. It is a matter of a certain relation holding between the believer and the world.4 Such accounts, as Armstrong says, result in causal or reliability theories. According to a causal theory, a belief counts as knowledge if it is true and if the Introduction

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situation that makes it true is causally responsible for the holding of the belief. According to reliability theories, a belief counts as knowledge if it is produced and sustained by a reliable mechanism, a process that, at least most of the time, produces true beliefs. What gives such theories an externalist character is the presumption that knowledge and justified belief can be done justice to without concerning ourselves with the cognitive subject's interpretation of the cognitive situation, e.g., what reasons he would give for holding something to be true or false. According to such a view, it is possible for a belief to be true without having any relation at all to the subject's other beliefs. A purely externalist view, it is clear, has no use for phenomenology. Knowledge is construed as a possession of truth, as the having of correct information, but how a subject comes to have a true, rather than a false, belief is to be explained, if at all, by an external observer, ideally, of course, by a scientist who is supposed to know about such matters as causes or lawlike connections. 5 From the perspective of the subject, the possession of truth is simply a matter of luck, something accidental that came about for no reasons he knew, although a scientific observer might well know it to be an instance of a lawlike connection. According to Armstrong, for example, a true, noninf'erential belief that amounts to knowledge may be compared to the reading of a properly working thermometer, which informs the user of a particular temperature in the environment. 6 Having knowledge, accordingly, is a form of registering truth. According to such a view, if one possesses knowledge, one does so by having come into possession of the truth in the same sort of way as a properly working thermometer has come to give an accurate reading of a particular temperature. As Keith Lehrer, himself a staunch opponent of externalism, has put it, "it is not our conception of how we are related to a fact that yields knowledge but simply our being so related to it." 7 Husserl's phenomenological theory of knowledge is critical of this way of doing epistemology. As he puts it in his Formal and Transcendental Logic (§§ 5960, 105—6), knowledge is here construed from above (von oben her), namely, by starting from a naively presupposed truth-in-itself. It is argued by such externalists that, if we are to have truth and knowledge, there must be a cognitive experience which "absolutely guarantees" our possession of it. But, Husserl points out, this experience ends up being conceived as having a hold on truth in complete isolation from its concrete context in our cognitive experience, i.e., in abstraction from the belief's being justified by other experiences. As noted, it is in principle possible for a belief to amount to knowledge without the support of the believer's other beliefs. One could therefore say that such externalism completely ignores the important topic of justification. 8 Husserl would be sympathetic to this suggestion, but in the passages alluded to simply notes that, for his part, he wants to start from below, from within the whole of our experience. It is clear that he wants to free cognitive experience from the jurisdiction of such an external observer-critic. When discussing prephilosophical epistemic practices, it seemed altogether plausible to think that the two attitudes are connected and complementary, each expressing a distinctive epistemic concern. One and the same cognitive agent can adopt with a clear conscience one or the other, as circumstances require. Far from being incompatible, one might say that the one adds a perspective or di-

10

Phenomena logical Epistemology

mension which is not open to the other. Their philosophical counterparts, however, display hostility to one another; each is sharply critical of the other. Husserl's phenomenological epistemology, for instance, adopts a very hostile attitude to externalism, denying to it any competence whatever in epistemology. To be sure, conciliatory notes are not entirely absent. His theory is said to aim at clarification, rather than explanation. It professes to be merely descriptive, a return to lived experience from the vantage point of reflection, which is subject matter that is usually passed over in neglect. We are told that, absorbed in its cognitive interest in objects, the subject is oblivious of its own subjectivity; objectawareness is bought at the price of being unaware of itself. Phenomenological epistemology describes our subjective modes of access to objects; it articulates the framework of meanings or concepts which we always and everywhere make use of but which we take for granted without objectifying it. In short, Husserl's theory comports itself as if it merely wanted to add a dimension of reflection to our unreflective life. Its objective seems to be to enlarge the domain of our awareness, rather than to impugn the legitimacy of any other stance or attitude. Suppose a cognitive attitude which is unreflective in this sense; objective claims are made without mentioning or giving details about the subject. The presumption is that such a claim is true with regard to the object as such and that, if it is actually true, the objective state of affairs is what it is regardless of the subjective state of the knower. For all that has been said a moment ago, this insouciance need not count as a fault or deficiency in that cognitive stance. Phenomenological epistemology becomes critical, however, when it becomes transcendental, for Husserl then demands that nothing should count as real knowledge for the epistemologist until it has been subjected to a phenomenological critique. The latter should not presuppose any other claims to knowledge, as was the case with externalism, but is itself able to convert all other cognitive claims into real knowledge. The primary and most explicit targets of his criticism are naturalism (particularly in its psychologistic version), physicalist objectivism, and historicism. These criticisms are discussed in their appropriate place in this study, but I want to give special attention to the relation of transcendentalphenomenological epistemology to what I call classical realism. As I said in the preface, I want to examine the doctrines of the three philosophers against the background of this realism. A proper focus on realism is not so easy to attain because the philosophers under discussion in this book use the term "realism" sometimes as synonymous with "objectivism" or "naturalism," sometimes to refer to certain specific philosophers, such as Descartes and Locke. According to phenomenologists, these philosophers combine a metaphysical realism with a peculiarly subjectivist theory of knowledge; they hold that there is an outside world, but the mind's access to it is held to be restricted to its own ideas or representations. Given this representationalism, their metaphysical realism could be based only on some sort of argument from ideas to a reality outside the mind. The question that now becomes important is whether there is such an argument, which is henceforward supposed to be the central problem of knowledge. If the answer is in the negative, as Berkeley and Hume concluded on the basis of Locke's doctrine, we should abandon realism and embrace either Berkeley's idealism or Hume's scepticism.l; Introduction

11

As Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty frequently argue on phenomenological grounds, the view that the mind has access only to subjective states of mind, and the scepticism to which that view leads, are nothing but elementary distortions of the manifest character of our experience. Our perceptions are of objects, not private sensations or mental pictures. We undeniably hear the sounds of a robin and touch the material surfaces of objects. Our minimal awareness, according to Merleau-Ponty, is one of a figure against a background, i.e., of an object in a field. According to Husserl's well-known formulation, we perceive the object "in person" or "in the flesh" (leibhaftig). A careful phenornenological description can show that a sceptic is just wrong, if the latter holds that this is not so. At first blush, it seems that the three phenomenologists substitute one version of realism for another. While rejecting the version that makes scepticism (or subjective idealism) unavoidable, they replace it with one that is more in tune with our actual experience, a realism that is apparently justified by phenomenological description of experience. Now I think that it is true that realism is not necessarily yoked with a representationalist epistemology, as we can see from Plato and Aristotle, and even more clearly from Thomas Reid, who strongly and persuasively argued against that epistemology and what he called its way of ideas. The view that the mind apprehends only its own ideas seems, indeed, to lead to scepticism, but why should a realist embrace such a view? More about that later. What 1 want to examine very carefully is the nature of such a phenornenologically justified realism. Even if one were to grant that it is a kind of realism, is it what one would call classical realism? Does phenomenological reflection simply add a dimension of awareness? Does it simply restore realism to us after clearing away the previously mentioned confusions of representationalism? The question becomes very serious when phenomenological epistemology takes on a transcendental role. Husserl, for example, makes clear that he wants his phenomenology to give a transcendental critique of knowledge and thus show the possibility of knowledge, as had been the purpose of Kant before him. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty criticize both the Husserlian version of transcendental philosophy and its Kantian original, but the question remains whether they really free themselves of their transcendental tradition. I will argue that, although their views differ on significant points from Husserlian phenomenology, they still adhere to the basic transcendental view, a thesis that becomes particularly clear if we also hold up their views against the background of classical realism. If I want to use realism as a partner in my discussion of phenomenological epistemology, and if you will grant me (for the time being) the thesis that all three doctrines to be examined are transcendental in character, the crucial questions I ought to pursue have to do with the character of transcendental epistemology and its relation to realism. As I glossed it a moment ago, transcendental epistemology wants to demonstrate the possibility of knowledge. Its point of departure is that knowledge is not something the possession of which we can assume as unproblematic at the beginning of our doctrine of knowledge. This explains its opposition to all externalist doctrines, because it became clear in our earlier discussion that an external appraiser has to have an independent cognitive

12

Plienomenological. Epistemology

vantage point. In the passages from Husserl cited earlier, the opposition to externalism is clearly and succinctly formulated: start from below, not from the possession of truths. Another way of saying the same thing: take scepticism seriously by demonstrating the possibility of knowledge by way of a refutation of the sceptic; that is to say, the transcendental approach in epistemology presupposes some version of scepticism, which it takes seriously and which it intends to refute. What is the nature of this scepticism? It is not the scepticism, sometimes called methodological, which is not so much a theory as an internal aspect of any framework of inquiry. It is part and parcel of the human search for truth, for there would be no search if we were never in any doubt as to what we hold to be true. Methodological doubt is a matter of experience and as such a very important theme of phenomcnological-epistemological description. In fact, as we will see, the search for truth can very well be said to be its principal theme. The scepticism in question is also not to be confused with that which, as we noted a while ago, can be refuted rather easily on purely phenomenological grounds, inasmuch as it gives an obviously wrong description of the character of our experience. The scepticism which the transcendental epistemologist wants to confront is what in this book I call radical scepticism. A sceptic of this kind may well agree with the phenomenological critic that in sense perception we are aware of objects, rather than sensations or images. That we experience objects, she may agree, is indeed the basic conviction we all have in both common sense and science. She remains a sceptic, however, because in reflecting deeply on our experience she cannot help wondering whether the whole of experience is anything more than a conviction or a vast web of beliefs to which we adhere. In the course of the following discussion of transcendentalism and realism, we will see more of this radical sceptic, in particular, the transcendental philosopher's confrontation with her.

Transcendentalism and Realism The classical realist, I take it, is a philosopher according to whose concept of being an entity has its own being, no matter whether it is known to have that being or not. It is a being which entities would have, even if there had been no human beings at all. I also think that a realist has the conviction that the mind is suitably equipped to know some entities that have that kind of being and thus exist outside the mind that knows them. He holds that in certain circumstances we can say that an entity exists, that it has such and such a property or is related to other entities in a certain way. That is his Archimedean point, if you like. Such a philosopher need not deny what Kantians make so much of—namely, the presence of epistemic conditions for the possibility of experience—but what he does deny is that such conditions always and everywhere stand in the way of knowing the things themselves. The need to use concepts, for example, is not a problem for the realist; on the contrary, it is a way of apprehending what we could not have cognitive access to in any other way, namely the general properties of things. 10 One may, of course, at times be mistaken in what one says Introduction

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about a particular entity, but the existence and properties of entities can, in principle, be known and spoken of, and if what: is said is true, the entity is what it is said to be, and that ends the matter.11 We sometimes have to defend a belief and indicate its source. To enable others to appreciate our claim, we may elaborate on how we came to it, but, in principle, there is nothing problematic or naive about a statement in which I predicate a property of an entity. What is the transcendentalist's starting point? I have suggested that it is the position of radical scepticism, or at least something close to it. That is not to say that he is prepared to resign himself to scepticism as his own position, but that he wants to demonstrate the possibility of knowledge in the face of scepticism. The sceptic says that it is very problematic whether we know anything—whether we apprehend anything truly external to the mind. I think it is very important to observe that the sceptic has a realist concept of being. 12 As she understands it, the being of things is something that is independent of the mind of the knower; in other words, if there were such things, she would hold them to be mind-independent. What she doubts is whether this concept of being has any legitimate application, i.e., whether there is anything external to the mind. The sceptic will hold, for example, that our use of whatever cognitive powers we may be said to have is compatible with there not being anything real corresponding to them and known by them. Her view is that what we think we find, for example, in perception, is in some profound sense nothing but mental. In other words, our manifest conviction that we sometimes meet with something mindindependent is, in spite of what we think, fundamentally problematic. As I said, the typical transcendentalist takes his point of departure from somewhere in neighbourhood of the radical sceptic. Without categorically rejecting a realist position, he refuses to use it as a starting point but will argue that realism must first be shown to be possible, a demonstration which will actually amount to the rejection of the sceptic's realist concept of a completely mind-independent object an sich. If we retained that conception, if the object and the human knower were external to one another, we could not but be sceptics, because knowledge would be impossible. The realist assumption that the mind is, by its very nature, equipped to know what is external is na'ive, until we have scrutinized the concept of an object an sich from a transcendental standpoint. According to the transcendentalist, everything that has to do with the subject's episternic conditions—conceptualization, for instance—is for that very reason extrinsic to reality as given. If the cognitive subject forms concepts, these can be only an addition to what is given. According to Kant, order and conceptual form are additions, because what is given does not itself have order or form. What is given does not, for example, exemplify concepts; the given does not comprise things that have properties. We therefore cannot say that concepts can be abstracted in the old Aristotelian fashion, that they are born from insight into the nature of things, for we do not have such insight. How, then, does a transcendentalist think knowledge of objects is possible? By objectifying and conceptualizing the given, by going beyond the latter and imposing concepts upon it, to begin with that of an object as such. Objects, once established as such, are understood as independent, as having their own being over and against a subject; alternatively stated, they are items which a subject 14

Phenomenoiogical Episternology

now distinguishes from itself as having their own properties and standing in relations to one another. The crucial idea for the transcendentalist is clearly that of a concept because only conceptualization can transform the given into an object. As is particularly clear from Kant, the supremely important process is that of objectiflcation, and the crucial instruments involved in it are concepts, the so-called categories. Since there would be no objects whatever without those concepts, the latter cannot be abstracted from objects, a circumstance which gives them their distinctively transcendental status. The transcendental epistemologist will therefore not justify them by deriving them from an insight into the nature of reality, but will rather argue that they are instruments required to transform the given into objects, that they are necessary for the possibility of an experience of objects such as we have. Although transcendental concepts are imposed without being constrained by the given, they are saved from being merely whimsical and arbitrary by the fact that they are necessary for the acquisition of other concepts. In short, according to Kant, knowledge is possible by virtue of the imposition of concepts upon the given. The controversy between realism and transcendental philosophy brings to the fore the discussion of the nature of concepts, which was already begun in the medieval debate about universals. A realist, I said a while ago, holds without further ado that the mind is well equipped to know things outside itself. By means of concepts, a realist will therefore say, the mind knows what general or universal properties things have and in what relations they stand to one another. Concepts are ways of apprehending properties and kinds, and recognizing particulars as instantiating properties and as belonging to kinds. This view underlies the traditional doctrine, according to which concepts may be abstracted from things. According to the Kantian perspective, however, concepts—especially those called transcendental—are not arrived at by abstraction but are imposed on what is itself preconceptual. 1 ' (Intuitions, he says, are blind, i.e. devoid of conceptual content.) Conceptualization makes out of what is given something new and different, namely, objects. Conceptualization is therefore always an elaboration (or interpretation) of the given, even where the given, as in ordinary experience, already has conceptual content as a result of earlier conceptualizations. What has already been conceptualized is then subsumed under a still higher conceptual unity. Therefore, strictly speaking, only those concepts which Kant calls transcendental are imposed on the preconceptual, but it is still true, I think, that for Kant the subsuming of something under a concept in the course of some inquiry or other always involves going further than what is given, i.e., elaborating and interpreting it by means of a more general concept. When, as commentators, we say that Kant holds that concepts are basically instruments for the ordering and unification of what is given, and that he therefore takes concepts to be imposed on data alien to them, rather than discovered in them, we should bear in mind that we ourselves are speaking as realists in a broad sense. Our way of speaking implies the conviction that there really are data that are organized by a conceptual framework. In fact, it was on these grounds that Kant himself was accused of remaining caught up in a remnant of realism. If, as we imply, there is a preconceptual and uninterpreted Introduction

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reality, how do we know it by means of our concepts? Fichte and others asked: if Kant was right in saying that our a priori concepts derive from the understanding, what assurance did he give that: they apply to our sensible intuitions? Does not scepticism still threaten the possibility of knowledge? Hegel's solution to this problem was to reject Kant's idea of the supposedly preconceptual thing-in-itself altogether and to substitute a clearly antirealist concept of being. Since this entails the rejection of the very idea of something given, it is no longer appropriate to say, from a fully philosophical standpoint, that there is anything which is real and upon which concepts are imposed. Hegel regards Kant's view that concepts are applied to data alien to them as ultimately subjectivist, i.e., as something which a cognitive subject adds to those data. Concepts in the proper sense, he argues, should not be thought of as applied by some cognitive subject to an alien object. Concepts apply themselves, as it were; if has also been formulated by saying that they create their own objects. As he himself puts it, they determine and particularize themselves. 14 We therefore always have before us a reality that is already conceptualized. We do not begin by seeking application for a concept but by finding it realized in things. What in ordinary parlance we call the given is not strictly given but rather the conceptualized state of affairs which we treat as given, because we start from it in a particular search for new truth. But what we so accept as given has already been conceptualized before us in a process of conceptualization which has already been going on a long time. Beginning with what is given is therefore not at all a beginning with the uninterpreted. In the Hegelian view, then, conceptual form is intrinsic to the very being of whatever we encounter in the world. Consequently, there does not exist for him any doubt that the real is intelligible by virtue of concepts and that we discover concepts in things, rather than subsuming things under concepts we bring to them. In terminology familiar from the medieval debate about universals, universals or essences exist in what, we experience as objects. In the traditional terminology of that debate, the Kantian view must be called conceptualist: universals exist only in the mind; in Hegel's view, they exist in things as well. One can say that, in a certain sense, he restored to the realm of being that which answers to our use of concepts, the objects they uniquely apprehend, namely, universals or essences. In fact, in a universe constituted by conceptual thought, they enjoy being par excellence. What used to be regarded as individual entities are only "moments" of the being of the (concrete) universal, a point on which Kierkegaard attacked Hegel. From the point of view of classical realism, Hegel's realism with respect to universals is only apparent. As a form of transcendental thought, idealism holds that the being of universals is not absolutely independent of consciousness. It is an independence undergirded by the unity that makes up the life of Absolute Spirit, the process of conceptualization mentioned a moment ago. Cognitive claims about objects as such, and therefore also those about objective universals, are condemned as dogmatic, one-sided, nai've, and abstract because they imply that their objects are independent, which to an idealist means that they have been torn out of context. It is a violation of the underlying unity of the absolute process of conceptualization. Statements about such "abstract" universals fall

16

Phenornenological, Epi.sternology

under the same condemnation as other objective statements. Because they imply that objects are independent of the subject, they make knowledge vulnerable to the scepticism from which Kant had sought to rescue human knowledge, an attempt: which Hegel thought he had himself completed in his criticism of Kant. Categorical statements to the effect that S is P are condemned as being, in principle, dogmatic, na'ive, one-sided, and abstract. Calling a particular statement of that form dogmatic might be taken to imply that the statement is made on the basis of insufficient evidence or that it should be subjected to further criticism in a fairly straightforward manner. But that is not the real intent of the idealist charge of dogmatism. Even if it has been subjected to thorough criticism and survived, even if the evidence is deemed to be more than sufficient, it is still called dogmatic, simply on the ground that it is a statement of the form S is P; that is to say, it is a statement in which a person abstracts from himself and simply claims that an object has a certain property and implies that his claim is true, if and only if there is such an object, truth being understood in the old Platonic-Aristotelian manner, namely, as agreement with a given fact. Such a statement is naive, it is alleged, because the one who makes it assumes that she is suitably equipped to make it but has not thought about the equipment she brings with her into an epistemic situation. She looked, as it were, exclusively at the state of affairs and not at the subject who makes the statement. Knowing is accordingly understood in a realist manner, namely, as being related to objects of knowledge that are external. Any designation of something as an sich represents a one-sided abstraction because the idealist alleges that such statements have been torn out of context, namely, the unitary process of the selfobjedification of the Absolute Spirit and its return to itself. A person whose attention is focused exclusively on an object and who makes a purely objective statement about it in a spirit of realism implies that, if the proposition expressed by it is true, it is true without qualification, true regardless of the knower. As a Hegelian philosopher sees it, such implications are too much in the spirit of classical realism for him to be able to allow such statements to stand without criticism. He recommends that we rephrase such statements in such a way that a mention of the subject is included in the reference to an object. There is a sense in which for Hegel objects exist independently of the cognitive subject. He has room for objects which (in terms of an old metaphor) enter consciousness from without. What is to be noted, however, is that Hegel, while acknowledging such a realist point of view, at the same time relegates it to a prephilosophical, inferior level of cognition. The subject-object duality is thus said to be characteristic of finite consciousness, which we have just heard exists by virtue of self-forgetiulness. For infinite consciousness, there is unity, rather than duality. In short, Hegel's realism is one that exists only within the bounds of a transcendental philosophy. As should be obvious by now, the realist epistemologist and his transcendentalist colleague have quite different starting points. Let us illustrate this difference by way of a well-known debate in epistemology. Some beliefs, it is commonly said, are justified on the basis of being inferred (in a broad sense) from beliefs that are already justified, but there are also beliefs that are held to be justified because they are based on a trustworthy source of knowledge, such as sense Introduction

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perception or rational insight. In the latter case, one is justified in holding a belief to be true, so to speak, on the authority of the deliverance of perception or reason. Such beliefs are therefore said to be based on what is given. Since the beliefs will involve concepts, one could rephrase this by saying that the believer recognizes that what is given exemplifies the concepts applied to it by the belief. Such a train of thought is altogether congenial to a realist, inasmuch as he is not at all inclined to doubt the human mind's capacity to get in touch with an external state of affairs. It is characteristic of the transcendentalist, however, to object to this portrayal of our human search for truth, especially if the account claims to be a fully philosophical one, i.e., more than an epistemologically naive characterization of our natural, pretranscendental cognitive experience. What is the reason for his objection? Simply stated, the objection is that this account makes it appear as though our search for truth ends by accepting something as given, by acknowledging sources of knowledge. To repeat, that may be all right as a prephilosophical account, say, a phenomcnological description of the natural attitude; as we just saw from Hegel, transcendental thought always has room for inferior modes of thought beside itself. If we were to think, however, that it is a fully philosophical or epistemological account, the transcendental philosopher will observe that it does not take scepticism as seriously as it should. It begs the question against the sceptic, rather than granting the legitimacy of his scepticism. For the transcendental epistemologist, that is a very serious allegation, for he would not adopt a transcendental position if it were not for the fact that scepticism should be taken seriously. What does this mean, for instance, with regard to perception? It means that as serious epistemologists we cannot say that perception is an awareness of the thing itself and that it therefore bestows justification on beliefs, for such an asseveration is based on the assumption that perception is a generally reliable source of knowledge. What the transcendentalist wants us to do is to show that it is. He wants to show its possibility. Obviously, he is not going to try to do this by introducing something like a superior, rational insight that would validate sense perception. That would once again be a failure to take scepticism seriously, because it would involve an appeal to reason as a (superior) source of knowledge. The only way the transcendental epistemologist can give status to perception is by introducing the framework or context of concepts within which it functions and which therefore gives it this status. For the thinkers in discussion in this book, something like the account Husserl gives of perception—in the Logical Investigations and later works—is canonical. Perception is described as an awareness of the object "in the flesh," which as such justifies belief. To understand this further, however, we must describe perception in its proper context, i.e., by way of seeing how its intrinsic character consists in relations to other beliefs. Perception as a cognitively distinctive act, so the argument goes, is internally related to other objective acts in such a way that it functions as their fulfilment. Other acts directed upon an object—e.g., referring to it by means of words, signs, pictures—count for us as empty, unsatisfied intentions until they achieve cognitive fulfilment in the recognition of their object in a perceptual mode of givenness. The percipient is aware of apprehending an object of a certain kind in this manner because the perceptual 18

Phenornenological Epistemology

apprehension compares favourably with a certain range of indirect apprehensions of that kind of object. If it counts for us as being an apprehension of an object "in the flesh," we imply that we do not merely see it on a television screen or present it to ourselves in some other way, for example, by way of understanding a sentence. In terms an epistemologist might use, it counts as justifying belief, but it has this epistemic property only because it has the property of being suitably related to similar intentional acts. In short, there is a background of belief to which perceptions owe their achievement character. What is noteworthy about this kind of argument is that the givenness of the object in a source of knowledge is redefined in coherentist terms, i.e., in terms of a context of beliefs. One might say that the argument transforms a perception into a complex of particular and general beliefs. At the centre of it, there is a particular belief about some concrete event or state of affairs, for instance, the belief that there is a blue jay perched on the bench of my sundeck. But this particular belief is surrounded by other beliefs, all of them supporting it in one way or another, for example, the general belief that beliefs of the kind exemplified by that particular belief about the blue jay count as observational beliefs of our environment. Perception no longer depends on the givenness of an object, but rather on the kinds of beliefs that form its background. A transcendentalist account does not stop here. The entire conceptual framework within which perception functions must itself be subjected to a transcendental critique. It cannot be taken as ultimate because radical scepticism focuses its doubt, not on this or that particular perception, but on the capacity of perception in general. In consequence, it is not a doubt that can be overcome by further perceptual inquiry, which is precisely what distinguishes radical from methodological scepticism. The radical sceptic asks: is not that entire framework merely a set of deep-seated beliefs that is perhaps shared by all human beings but has no basis in fact? What is the transcendental epistemologist to do. if he is to take such scepticism seriously? He will have to turn his back on the entire framework in which perception has such an epistemically important role. But he obviously cannot take an externalist position of the sort I discussed at the beginning of this chapter, for such externalism presupposes at least some knowledge and is, to that extent, not taking scepticism completely seriously. The transcendentalist can only take his refuge in a conceptual framework that is wider than that of perception but does not presuppose the epistemic validity of it. Husserl opens up this further direction of epistemological inquiry by urging the need for what he calls a transcendental reduction. As he sees it, the entire perceptual framework or "world" must itself be shown to be "constituted" within such a wider framework, which (as he sees it) in last analysis coincides with the life of a consciousness that is absolute. This turn to a transcendental consciousness on account of radical scepticism about perception must not be misunderstood. 1 therefore repeat a point already briefly noted earlier. Suppose that we call into question our perceptual capacity in the name of a cognitive capacity which we assume to be superior; this superior cognitive capacity might be called reason or thought. Modern philosophy since Descartes has many examples of this kind of scepticism. But such positions are Introduction

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not forms of radical scepticism. If we think that the capacity of reason to yield truth is superior to that of perception, we still think of ourselves as capable of finding truth, namely, by reason. Scepticism has led us from perception to reliance on reason, but we still have a cognitive power that can give us truth. Although we may be convinced that we can no longer rely on anything we previously thought we had learned from perception, we can still know what is the case. We may downgrade perception, but if we still have reason on our side, we need not despair of the attainment of truth. Radical scepticism shows its true colours when even our faculty of reason is called into question, while no superior capacity is available to us. The radical sceptic wonders whether even our best efforts (which might be our purely rational efforts) can give us truth. What is peculiar about this radical sceptic is that such a person does not claim to appeal to a cognitive power of which we had not hitherto made use, in which case we would, of course, respond by using that hitherto neglected power. No, the radical sceptic also calls into question reason's capacities for truth, assuming this to be our highest faculty. This is the sceptic whom the transcendental epistemologist wants to confront and refute. The turn to consciousness is therefore not to be taken as a turn from sense perception to purely rational insight. It is a turning to a wider conceptual framework. The identification of the ultimate framework with consciousness is an extremely controversial matter within the epistemological tradition in discussion. As we shall see, both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty will have nothing to do with such a thesis. A very important question I pursue in this book is whether this means that they completely break with the transcendental tradition, f do not think so because they continue to argue for a primordial context of meaning which ultimately unifies everything, although their account of it is different from Husserl's. Besides, their attitude toward realism is not appreciably different. I will come back to this in a separate section later in this chapter. What is the verdict on realism which the transcendentalist can be expected to give? As I presented it, realism posits knowledge as an external relation between a subject and an object. A necessary (though probably not a sufficient) condition of knowledge is a relation of a believer to an object in which the latter is an sich; a true belief is one which requires there to be an object corresponding to it. I also mentioned that the realist does not regard such an external relation as a ditch too wide for the human mind to leap over. Such a statement of the position, the transcendentalist tells us, is epistemologically unsatisfactory, or, to use terms that have been given wide currency in the tradition by Hegelians, naive, one-sided, and abstract. While expressing disapproval or something even stronger, none of these expressions is meant to suggest that realism is just plainly false and therefore to be repudiated altogether. Instead, what they call for is a critique; what they advocate is a more philosophical statement of it. The transcendental epistemologist refuses to embrace it in the form in which it was just stated; in that form, he will accept it only as the expression of an inferior standpoint, a prephilosophical mode of thought to be subjected to a transcendental critique or, as he might prefer to say, a clarification. In fact, he deems such a critique es2.0

Phenornenological Epistemology

sential to safeguard the realist mode of thought, particularly in its scientific manifestation, against radical scepticism. The critique begins by calling attention to all assumptions which the radical sceptic finds problematic. As we saw, although the sceptic operates with a realist concept of being, she claims that she cannot find anything exemplifying such a concept. In deference to the sceptic, therefore, a transcendental epistemologist holds any view that supposes the human mind capable of knowing a mindindependent object to be unacceptable, at least as a philosophical position. Realism as a metaphysical, fully philosophical doctrine has to be rejected and give way to transcendental idealism, if there is to be any chance of refuting the sceptic, who considers the realist concept of being as meaningful. Again, the transcendentalist will not reject the concept of a mind-independent object altogether; if he did, he could not make much sense of natural science and its inherent realism. He will, as I said, relegate it to a prephilosophical level and proceed to show how such a concept was arrived at. In her prephilosophical thought, he argues, the realist operates with concepts of various kinds but is unaware of this fact. She lakes herself to have some knowledge of a reality an sich, but being exclusively object-oriented, she fails to take into account her own condition or state. As he sees it, the realist is oblivious of something she could, and should, be aware of, namely, the concepts she brings into a cognitive situation from her past, not only her personal past but also that of the cultural tradition of which she is a part. She discourses of entities as if they were entities an sich but seems to be unaware of the fact that the concept of such an mindindependent object is itself a transcendental concept. In the language used earlier, realism is abstract because it abstracts from the knower and thus tears the object out of context; it is one-sided because it attends to the object-to-be-known without attending to the knowing subject, and it is naive, inasmuch as it is unaware of what it is actually doing.

Conceptual Frameworks The idea of a conceptual framework is very important in a consideration of the three philosophers in discussion, which is the reason I want to discuss it as a separate topic. Although Husserl and Heidegger use the term Sinnzusammenhang (context of meaning), rather than Begriffsrahmen, the idea profoundly shapes their thought, which I interpret as another indication of their affinity with the transcendental tradition. What is a conceptual framework? 15 As a first step, we can say quite simply that it is an extensive interpretative scheme in terms of which the factual data of a domain of entities are conceptualized or understood. What it consists of, we might initially say, are concepts whose cognitive standing is, in traditional terminology, a priori and whose role is transcendental (in a broad sense). Both terms clearly require the complement "with respect to whatever entities are supposed to fall within the framework specified." If the framework in question is one used for some kind of empirical inquiry, the entities falling within it will become known by empirical inquiry, various concepts being applied, tested, and either rejected or accepted in the spirit of such an inquiry.

Introduction

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Here sentences accepted as true are held to be contingent, since they simply capture what, as a matter of fact, the actual world is like, or what it seems to be like on the basis of our experience. The concepts constitutive of the framework, however, will be a priori in the sense of remaining fixed; sentences about them, if true, are necessarily true. They are transcendental, relative to that framework, because they make a given kind of inquiry possible. As Carnap has pointed out, such a framework will have two complementary aspects. It will indicate the fundamental kinds of entities in the framework but also the fundamental ways in which they can come to be known. Husserl, in fact, already made this point in his Logical Investigations: every object has its distinctive mode of being perceived. Each kind of object is correlated with a kind of cognitive situation in which particulars of that kind may be recognized as such ("seen," as he tends to put it) and in which statements are accordingly evaluated as true or false. Material objects of the kind recognized in common sense are "seen" for what they are in sense perception, but universals or essences, it is generally agreed, are not perceived by sense organs. If within a given framework universals are acknowledged as entities, that framework will also indicate how universals can be "seen" in a nonsensible manner. While different from sense perception, such "seeing" nonetheless functions in that framework as the way in which beliefs about universals are evaluated as either true or false. When we noted a while back that within the perceptual framework the general capacity of sense perception as the way in which to attain truth is taken for granted, we could say that we just made a remark to the effect that sense perception is part of that conceptual framework. A framework, then, is a kind of mutual accommodation of object and subject. They form a unity in the sense that neither can be considered in abstraction from the other. Given a specific framework, both are defined in an a priori correlation of the one to the other: given such and such a kind of object (within a specific framework), there necessarily exist ways in which particulars belonging to that kind are accessible to a cognitive subject. In other words, in a framework there are no objects that are unknowable. The subject-object relation is thus not external—merely a matter-of-fact conjunction—but internal, which is precisely why the framework is called conceptual. It is a framework the coherence of which is conceptual; the connection between its constituent elements is conceptual rather than merely factual. It is important to highlight this because it explains why transcendental epistemologists give so much attention to conceptual frameworks. The metaphysical realism implied by the radical sceptic posits an external relation of subject and object. The transcendental epistemologist, therefore, thinks that one cannot get rid of scepticism without also rejecting metaphysical realism, and he accordingly undertakes to show that the subject-object relation is ultimately not external. This will be accomplished by showing that this relation subsists within a conceptual framework and is therefore internal. The object is different from the subject, in some cases indeed independent, but since they are related to one another within a conceptual framework, they can no longer be considered separately (as the realist assumes) or torn apart (as radical scepticism does). Any such attempt will be condemned as an abstraction. A valuable side benefit of this way of reasoning is that such epistemologists can 22

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still pay their respects to an empirical realism of the sort that flourishes in natural science, the latter being no more than an inferior cognitive attitude confined to a conceptual framework. For those who love a paradox, this conceptual framework is precisely such that those who work within it use realist language and speak of entities that are mind-independent or an sich. Another important point Carnap made with regard to conceptual frameworks is the difference between the internal and the external aspects of such a framework. The internal aspect is that of the user, and the external aspect that of the person who considers it as itself an object of cognitive interest and study. The former works within it and strives to gain knowledge of the particular entities to which it supposedly gives access. It is very likely that such a person is not even aware of the presence of a framework. The latter is sometimes discussed as consisting of background beliefs—beliefs one uses without being aware of actually holding them. As noted earlier, some of the so-called background beliefs are higher-order beliefs about; beliefs. Background beliefs are, in the nature of the case, relatively fixed, since we do not actually form and evaluate them in the light of available facts. For the user, a framework is like an instrument, for example, one's glasses. He uses it to form his beliefs, but these are not about the instrument or explicitly based on an investigation of it. What he says is about the objects. The instrument does not call attention to itself, because in actual use it is assumed to be a suitable vehicle for the purpose at hand. One could say that the user of a framework, by definition, has no doubt that he has good cognitive access to the entities of the domain to which his cognitive interest is directed. But, as noted, we can also adopt the stance of one who does not use the framework but considers it from an external point of view. The framework itself is now the object of cognitive interest, rather than the instrument that is serving the knowledge of other objects. In fact, use of the phrase "conceptual framework" in common scholarly parlance usually implies such an external point of view, as when we speak of the Ptolemaic or Marxist frameworks. Now given this external vantage point, all kinds of questions can be asked about the framework that were not asked by the user. If such an external observer-critic has independent access to the objects under study, if he confronts the framework as a whole with reality as he knows it without use of that framework, the question can arise whether it is an instrument that might conceivably fail to deliver what it is used for. We can also become interested in its historical origins or its sociological context. The phenomena interpreted according to a Marxist interpretation, for example, are also open to those who are not Marxists. Those phenomena, and presumably some of their properties, are then assumed to be independent of the framework in question. Such entities can be said to enter that framework, but it is understood that they might not. In any event, they do not owe all their properties to the modes of inquiry defined by that framework. A conceptual framework can also be considered with a view to its historical or sociological origins. We then try to find out when and how the framework came to be adopted, what motivations were at work when it was initially established, and what circumstances account for the fact that it was adhered to for a certain period of time. Introduction

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When this is undertaken, the concepts held to be a priori by virtue of their role within a given framework of inquiry become empirical, because in a historicalsociological investigation we are no longer working within it. We have left the framework, as it were, behind us and now consider those concepts as themselves having been arrived at on the basis of some kind of experience. One might say that in such a history the framework as a whole is treated as a very complex object that is now to be studied, rather than as an instrument of discovery. The framework has lost its status of being beyond question. I have thus far generally illustrated the use of the expression "conceptual framework" by referring to explicitly cognitive activities or practices, for example, those characteristic of scientific work. I should point out, however, that this may be misleading in the following way. We have to bear in mind that it is an expression typically used by an interpreter or critic and that its use is formal, rather than material. An interpreter refers to something as a conceptual framework when she wants to indicate that it is a constellation of elements that are related to one another conceptually, rather than merely factually. By calling it a conceptual framework, she is not speaking about the nature of the constituent elements but about the manner in which they are related to one another. What she has in mind may be activities aimed at obtaining theoretical knowledge, but they may also be practices that do not at all have that aim. Heidegger's beingin-the-world may quite properly be called a conceptual framework, but when we do so, we do not imply that it is a mode of life dominated by conceptualization and the search for theoretical knowledge. We simply mean that it is a whole or totality comprising the various factors that Heidegger discusses in Being and Time as forming a unitary context of meaning. Again, Merleau-Ponty's primordial perception may be called a conceptual framework, even though he emphasizes that it is a movement in which concepts play no role at all. When as interpreters we nevertheless designate it as a conceptual framework, we consider it in its integrality, as it were, from a point of view outside it. We mean to say that each distinct element is defined by the contribution it makes to the whole and, for conceptual reasons, cannot be considered apart from all the other elements that belong to it. The transcendental philosophy of Kant also employs the idea of a conceptual framework, but in this case the framework is understood as wider in scope, as being constitutive of our very experience of objects. It is that in the absence of which there would be no awareness of objects at all. Kant's forms of sensibility and categories of understanding outline a framework that is a priori and transcendental with respect to any objects whatever. The very being or existence of objects consists in being accessible within this framework. Needless to say, there is no clear way to step outside such a framework to consider its genesis or its adequacy. Tn my earlier characterization of the realist position. I emphasized that the latter takes for granted the fact that the mind is suitably equipped to know things external to it. As the transcendentalist sees it, she is oblivious of the relevant conceptual framework. She talks of entities as if they were external, but if she were to speak more concretely, she would mention the transcendental framework by virtue of which she can refer to objects at all. The realist, for her part, thinks

24

Phenornenological Epist.ernolagy

that it is perfectly all right not to do so. She will confess to using concepts, but she holds that this does not necessarily prevent knowledge of extramental things, that in fact some concepts actually apprehend what is given. The transcendentalist does not directly attack any one of her particular knowledge claims in everyday perception or science, for that would be to lapse into pretranscendental discourse, but he argues in a most urgent manner that any statement about an objective state of affairs ought to be expanded and qualified by a complete disclosure of its provenance. In her statement, the realist makes reference to an object and says something about it, for example, that it has a certain property or stands in a relation, period. Holding that the object is independent of the subject, she believes that it ought to be possible to speak about it as such. But according to a transcendentalist, this leaves out a dimension that ought to be specified and is therefore wrong in principle.1'1 Full concreteness involves the disclosure of all frameworks im'olved, in particular, the framework that is considered to be transcendental in the strong sense. One might say that full concreteness demands that all forms of knowledge be explicitly relativized to a framework. To think concretely, i.e., philosophically, we have to ascend, or (as a realist might put it) withdraw, to a semantic plane and add to the supposedly objective statement a specification of the discourse or framework of interpretation to which it belongs. We have to specify the cognitive situation of the person who makes the claim and indicate what conceptual material she brings into it out of her history and tradition. We have to add the premises (or motivations) for the making of the statement, even if these are for the most part concealed from the person who makes the statement. In short, the statement should be rephrased so that it comes to include reference to that person's conceptual framework. Nobody can deny, it is true, that we often speak without bothering to go beyond a simple objective statement, both in everyday common sense and in scientific contexts. But that indicates to the transcendentalist just how much our language and thought are in need of a transcendental critique. And until it has been rendered, a body of belief cannot really be said to constitute knowledge in the full sense. This has given rise to the idea that philosophy is really the only science. When in the first section of this chapter 1 characterized the phenomenologist's approach to experience by saying that she wants to describe it from the inside, [ had in mind a description of the user's perspective. But when this phenomenologist puts on his transcendentalist hat, he begins to talk of things that he admits lie beyond the circle of the ordinary knower's awareness. He is now talking about that knower's transcendental conceptual framework (if you prefer a Husserlian phrase, the general structures of transcendental consciousness), supposedly in an effort to explain how the ordinary knower's awareness is possible. Is that a description or an explanation of the letter's experience? That is a moot point, although the transcendentalisms point of departure compels him to hold that what he articulates is, in some sense or other, implicit in our experience, that the conceptual framework which is transcendental (in the strong, Kantian sense) is, in principle, accessible in reflection. Transcendental consciousness does not exist outside ordinary human consciousness. Transcendental consciousness is, in fact, at work within the human, so that it is accessible by Introduction

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reflection carried out in a certain systematic way. When Husserl, for example, moves to a consideration of the perceptual world from a different, i.e., transcendental, point of view—a move which he calls a reduction or e.poche—the latter only seems to be an external point of view with regard to the perceptual framework. In any event, the framework, which the transcendental phenomenologist objectifies, articulates in conceptual form, is not as such present in the awareness of a user. In terms we used a while ago, it consists of background beliefs. Giving the general idea of a conceptual framework such an important role is one of the hallmarks of the Kantian tradition. Although clearly discernible in Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, it is quite prominent and crucial in Husserl. He holds that transcendental consciousness is not an object of physics or any other form of pretranscendental experience. His argument for this can be formulated quite simply in terms of the logic of conceptual frameworks. If a framework is supposed to be that which enables one to study certain entities, that framework itself cannot be an object of investigation within itself for the simple reason that it is the enabling condition for such an investigation. Entities falling within a specific framework are to be distinguished from the framework itself. Inasmuch as the latter has the distinctive role of giving us access to those entities, it cannot be identified with any one of them. But I will contend that the distinction just mentioned is also central in Heidegger, namely, as the so-called ontological difference. For reasons I will briefly discuss in the following section, he characterizes the access-giving framework as being, so that he formulates the distinction as one between being and entities: being, he contends, is neither an entity nor a property which an entity can be discovered to possess by those who stand within what he calls the disclosure of being. As we shall see, Heidegger spends a great deal of time emphasizing how being is not manifest to us in our usual preoccupations with entities. It seems to me that his point is best appreciated when we take it as applying to our conceptual framework.

Metaphysical Issues

Aristotle and Aquinas held that metaphysics is a doctrine of being in the same straightforward sense that physics is a doctrine about physical entities. Metaphysics yields knowledge of the most general and pervasive features of reality, runs parallel to the knowledge attained by science, and adds to what the sciences teach us about reality. Those who think that philosophy is transcendental, however, will hold this to be impossible. Reason is not a faculty of knowledge, as Kant is assumed to have definitively shown. Philosophy must approach things from a second-order perspective. One way of summing up my discussion so far is to say that the transcendental philosopher, whether metaphysician or epistemologist, makes assertions only about conceptual frameworks in the sense of the preceding section. Having abandoned the concept of being in the sense of classical realism, the transcendental philosopher turns his attention to conceptual frameworks or contexts of meaning. This formulation, it may be objected, embodies a realist prejudice in the choice 26

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of words used. The characterization of the philosopher's subject matter by means of the expressions "conceptual framework" or "context of meaning" seems to attribute a subjectivist view to transcendental philosophy. Their use implies a realist way of looking at things. Discourse about frameworks and meanings, it is implied, does not directly engage the being of things, but rather abstracts from it. According to the realist, it is still an open question whether such a framework of concepts is true of reality. The same is true of the word "meaning" and expressions formed around it. 17 A transcendental philosopher, however, will not, at least need not, admit that the preoccupation with concepts and meanings represents in any sense a subjectivism. The implied realism is. in fact, precisely what he has repudiated. There is no being with which to contrast a conceptual framework. Once the transcendentalist has gotten rid of the concept of being as externally related to the subject's conceptualization, the being of things can no longer be conceived of as an open question, let alone as something we might invoke to ask critical questions or to generate doubt about our concepts or meanings, for it no longer makes sense to speak of a being independent of them. To be is to be in a framework, inasmuch as in a framework certain kinds of entities are assumed to exist. Having thus gotten rid of the concept of being in the sense of classical realism, the transcendentalist can concentrate on meanings and concepts without feeling any sense of missing out on anything. If the very being of objects consists in their being accessible within a framework that is transcendental, then metaphysics is a doctrine of being precisely because it is discourse about the internal structure of our framework and the meanings constituent of it. Being is accessible in no other way than from such a point of view. There is no question of being which is left open by considering a conceptual framework. Without a realist concept of being, I noted, radical scepticism does not really make sense. For it to be intelligible, one has to have at least the concept of something existing without being thought or known. Even if one doubts that there actually are such things, one nonetheless thinks it is possible. Now transcendental epistemology wants to demonstrate the possibility of knowledge and thus refute scepticism, which it undertakes to do by repudiating the concept of being that makes scepticism intelligible and proposing an alternative concept. Putting it very generally, this alternative concept of being implies that the being of things cannot be considered in abstraction from the being that knows them. In terms introduced in the preceding section, the implication is that being a certain kind of entity and being known in a certain kind of way are so intimately connected as to form a unitary conceptual framework. All three authors discussed in this book propose an alternative concept of being to that of realism. Their introduction of a new metaphysics, I suggest, is meant to make their rejection of classical realism explicit. They felt that they had to affirm that, being itself falls within the scope of a transcendental framework, if their own proposals of such a framework were to escape the charge of subjectivism that might come from the sceptic.18 Although Husserl already clearly saw the need for such a new concept of being, Heidegger surely deserves the credit for having made the concern about ontology prominent. MerleauPonty also proposes a new concept of being, especially in his last work, The Visible Introduction

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and the Invisible. There are important differences between them, but in each case, as we will see, it is a concept arrived at by transcendental considerations; that is to say, it is designed in such a way as to establish the surt of intimate correlation between subject and object they hold to be demanded by knowledge. With this new concept of being in hand they can now say that what brings these two together is nothing short of the unity of being itself. This antirealist concept of being enables them to claim that their phenomenological descriptions have metaphysical or ontological import. Their philosophies are thus no longer disturbed or haunted by the sceptic who uses a concept of being according to which their primordial context of meaning might well fall far short of capturing the nature of things as they are, for as their new metaphysics has it, the being of things is internal to that context.

Truth and the Search for It In the first section, I noted two very different views of truth. In one view (that of externalism), truth tends to be seen as a possession and knowledge as a state of being related to what makes for truth. In the other (phenomenological) view, truth is seen as something that constantly engages our powers of inquiry, either as the product of striving in the past or as the starting point for a new inquiry. I observed that here truth as object of search tends to overshadow truth as possession. Subsequent discussion led us to the debate between a realist and a transcendenlalist epistemology. The former tends to side with the first view of truth, while the latter favours the second. The realist holds that the nature of truth is a matter of agreement (or correspondence) between what is thought (or believed) and what is the case; as an old definition has it, it is a relation of adequation between thought and object. This correspondence view of truth, the transcendental-phenomenological epistemologist replies, is unsatisfactory and needs to be reinterpreted. The reason why she finds the correspondence view, stated as a relation obtaining between a belief and a mind-independent state of affairs, unsatisfactory can be gathered fairly easily from the preceding discussion. Her complaint, basically, is that it is not epistemological enough. It states what the nature of truth is, but it does not show how we seek and find truth. The proposed rcinterpretation is intended to remedy this by showing how, in the course of our search for truth, we establish agreement or correspondence. As I will argue, this critical reserve with regard to truth as a relation and the epistemological preoccupation with truth as object of search brings to the fore yet another feature of transcendental epistemology. The cognitive subject that we meet with in that epistemology is primarily seen as cognitive agent, which is the fundamental reason why knowledge is construed as inquiry, truth as object of inquiry. One can read Critique of Pure Reason as making the seeker for knowledge primordial. The cognitive agent begins with himself, which means that from the outset he cannot but accept at least some concepts as valid beyond question. They are very general concepts pertaining both to himself as cognitive agent and to the objects he wants to come to know better by means of his activity. A constituent of the idea of search is the pre28

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sumption that, one has a firm hold on truth at least in regard to one's competence as an inquirer. If one did not hold oneself to be a competent and reliable observer at least in some respects, inquiry would obviously never begin. According to Kant (in this reading), this knowledge consists of the categories of the understanding and the forms of sensibility. The primordial agent might not have any idea as to whether anything in reality corresponds to these concepts, but he certainly can begin his search for further knowledge, notwithstanding his ignorance about the Ding an sich. The most historically oriented of my three philosophers, Heidegger, has generated an intensive discussion of the Platonic-Aristotelian definition of truth, generally regarded as a version of the correspondence view of truth. Since the nature of truth defined in that way will be very important in my discussion as a whole, I think it will be useful to consider briefly the texts that have shaped that traditional view of truth. What exactly do Plato and Aristotle say? In Plato's dialogue The Sophist (2638), we read that a true statement states the things that are as they are (legei ta onto, hoos e.stiri). The same phrase is used in Cratylus (3853), while in Euthydernus (284A), truth is defined simply as legein ta onta. If we also take into account what is earlier said about error in The Sophist (24OD-E), we have substantially what Aristotle says in his Metaphysics (iniib 26-27), where we read: "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not, is true." I want to begin by highlighting what they do not say, because this will turn out to be extremely important in our consideration of Heidegger's views. As I think we can clearly see, and as the context shows, there is not even a hint of a concern to describe a state of mind or the justification of believing this or that to be true. Neither do they discuss the search for truth and what our chances are of finding truth. These are apparently for Plato and Aristotle matters about which we should try to become clear from a different perspective. Their definitions say what truth is, not how we find it. What they said, in effect, is that truth consists in agreement or correspondence between thought and reality, but they did not give the relation a name and left it otherwise unspecified. I used the term "thought," but they put the matter in terms of saying things. But if they had used the term I used, they would probably have meant by it no more than a proposition entertained in a state of mind, leaving that state otherwise unspecified. Apparently, all they meant was that what we say or believe is true if, and only if, what we say is. in fact, as we say it is, it being, of course, understood that what we are saying does not cause or produce that about which we are saying something. To be enlightened by these philosophers about how a believer manages to attain truth, we have to turn to other texts. In his Phaedo, in which the concept of truth as correspondence is implied but not stated, Plato, in fact, says that our ability to know the Forms is based on a kinship of the soul with such objects. And in ])e Anima, Aristotle says that the material object has to be modified or transformed into an immaterial form, if the mind is to receive it within itself and know it. In the third book, particularly chapters 4 through 8, we learn that, according to Aristotle, the cognitive soul must be "unaffected but capable of Introduction

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receiving the form, and potentially such as it, although not identical with it," and that it can have "no nature of its own, other than that of having a certain capacity" (4293). We need not: here examine what these formulae mean exactly, because the simple point I want to make is that Aristotle gave his definition of truth in passages in which he made no mention of all this. In short, Plato and Aristotle apparently did not think that their definition of the nature of truth had any epistemological implications. But, as we will see in the following chapters, phenomenological philosophers, in particular Heidegger, have insisted on interpreting that Platonic-Aristotelian definition epistemologically, i.e., as addressing the question of the possibility of knowledge. More precisely, they want to understand the correspondence or agreement which figures in that definition as the kind of agreement we often enough establish in our search for truth. At the end of an inquiry, we often say something to the effect that we have found that what we thought or said agrees with the facts; we recognize the latter as corresponding to what we had thought. Husserl already identified the recognition of the agreement of what we say with the state of affairs we are talking about with the relation of correspondence. Heidegger continues on this path by raising the (typically transcendental) question as to how such recognition is possible, to which he offers his doctrine of truth as disclosure as answer. Epistemological interpretations of the correspondence view of truth are not original with phenomenological philosophers. Post-Kantian idealists, as I understand them, shared Kant's concern to ensure the possibility of knowledge in the face of radical skepticism. They approached the traditional definition of truth in the expectation of finding enlightenment on how we attain knowledge, and when they did not get it, they suggested alternative definitions of truth. Truth was said to consist in some kind of coherence among beliefs, because those idealists saw, in a sense quite correctly, that considerations of coherence play an important role when we come to accept a belief as true. Kant apparently subscribed to the correspondence theory of truth, according to a few brief remarks in his Critique of Pure Reason (B 82, 136, 670). But as I see it, these remarks should be understood in much the same way as his acknowledgement of empirical realism, [n the latter case, he acknowledges that there is such a thing as a realist stance, for example, in science. That means that there is also a correspondence view of truth. In empirical inquiry, we do, indeed, work with the idea that our concepts may or may not correspond to their objects. Kant's remarks should not be taken to mean that he also affirmed that theory of truth from the transcendental, i.e., fully philosophical point of view. As we will see, Heidegger similarly acknowledges what he calls the correctness-view of truth. That a correspondence view of truth should not fare particularly well, when considered from the perspective of the search for truth, is not surprising. If we take it as giving us direction in the search for truth, it seems to suggest that we must establish a relation of correspondence between a specific thought and a state of affairs which we admittedly can only get at by thought, namely, the reality which corresponds to that thought. How can the mind be required to undertake such an impossible task? To those to whom Kant had bequeathed a 30

Phenomenological Epistemology

preoccupation with the transcendental problem of demonstrating to Hume the possibility of attaining knowledge and truth, it seemed useless or worse. Truth viewed as the subsistence of a relation between thought and a relatum external to it is scarcely an asset in the arsenal of a transcendental epistemologist who wants to demonstrate the accessibility of objects. If one wants to speak about what makes the attainment of knowledge possible, one should examine the cognitive capacities that enable the forming of beliefs. Or to put this in a different way, one should construe the idea of a field or matrix within which cognition can reach the thing as it really is. Another way of viewing the matter has to do with the concept of relation. A realist, we saw, understands the correspondence view of truth as designating an external relation. That is to say, correspondence is a relation of thought and reality such that it is not necessary for either relatum to stand in the relation in which it stands in the case of actual knowledge; they might not have stood in the relation in which they do stand. This means, on the one hand, that entities do not have to be related to human thought as its objects, and on the other, that thought may well be without an object. Spelling out, the second half of the idea, we can say that no matter what the intrinsic virtues of a thought may be, no matter how well supported by other thoughts and research, it may still lack something corresponding to it in reality. The realist holds that even a completely justified belief can be false. Since this is often thought to force us into a position of radical scepticism, it is important to note that the possibility mentioned here is purely logical. That is to say, if I were to state all the reasons for holding a certain belief to be true, including in my statement a mention of the fact that the believer had satisfied the highest standards of justification available to him, and then went on to say that the belief is nonetheless false, I would not have stated something selfcontradictory. A belief, whatever its nature, can always (logically speaking) lack an external object. This is not to be understood, however, as meaning that whenever I believe something on good or even excellent grounds, I always have some reason to believe that the belief in question is not true. What is expressed by saying that it can be false does not represent an assessment of the evidence for the truth of the belief. That evidence may be such that it is perfectly reasonable to hold it to be true—in fact, utterly unreasonable to believe otherwise.19 We might again call to mind that truth as defined in a realist manner, for example, by Plato and Aristotle, does not raise or answer questions having to do with the search for it, i.e., questions about justification. And when we say that a belief can always be false, we are only talking about what truth is. As the realist understands it, if a belief is so related to a state of affairs as to agree with it, the relation in question is nonetheless external. He will, in fact, be prepared to add that what is known is always external to the believer. But we have already seen in the course of the preceding discussion that, since Kant, external relations have been in bad repute, particularly when it came to such a crucial case as the relation between the knower and the known. Kant's answer to the question "How is experience of objects possible?" may be understood as an attempt to substitute an internal relation, namely, a unitary context—a conceptual framework—to which both relata belong. His forms of senIntroduction

31

sibility and categories of the understanding are a scheme in which the accessibility of objects is guaranteed, fn such a view, truth as an external relation has disappeared. More precisely stated, contexts where it does undeniably appear—for example, in science—arc interpreted as derivative, as a conceptual framework that is not primordial, as manifesting a prcphilosophical mode of thought that needs to be reinterpreted by philosophy. The abandonment of the old definition of truth clearly has the virtue of dealing with the radical scepticism that nourishes itself from that definition and is meaningful only in terms of it. We can then proceed to stipulate that the truth of a statement does not require that it stand in a relation to an external state of affairs, that it requires nothing over and above the grounds we can have for holding it to be true. Henceforth, a belief or statement is related only to other statements or beliefs, namely, those which in some way lend support to it or justify it. This amounts to a coherence theory of truth, although the abandonment of the old definition of truth has also led some philosophers to a so-called pragmatic theory of truth.

Cognitive arid Other Attitudes It is not unfair to say that an actual elaboration of a phenomenological epistemology is found only in Husserl. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty were not concerned to offer a distinctive and independent epistemology in that sense. The focus of their interest is not justification and related matters, but cognitive activity in relation to other kinds of human activity. Their doctrine of knowledge has to do with the contrast between theory and practice, rather than the internal structure and articulation of the cognitive attitude as such. What they focus on is not the knower purely as such, but the human being who engages, among other things, in cognitive activities. Knowledge, they say in agreement with Husserl and Kant, represents a broadly theoretical stance characterized by objectification and conceptualization. But what Heidegger tries to show in Being and Time is that such a distinctively cognitive attitude derives from practical interests and attitudes; it is abkiinftig, acquired, or learned. The domain of practical interests is called being-in-the-world. He does not deny that such interests are in their own way cognitive, but he calls particular attention to the fact that they do not involve objectification and conceptualization. In a similar vein, MerleauPonty argues for the basicality of a world without: concepts and objects, namely, the world of embodied perception. Clearly, the interest of both of them is focused on the wider context in which distinctively cognitive activity takes place. Husserl's basic concept may be said to be the knower as such in relation to entities-!o-he-known. In his view, the cognitive attitude par excellence is theoretical in the sense that, it is objective and disinterested, adopted for its own sake. To know something in this sense is incompatible with acting upon the objectto-be-known. Practical attitudes may be based on what we know, but the cognitive interest, considered purely as such, is not concerned with action in the broad sense. It should be carefully noted that this does not mean that Husserl construes the knower as passive. On the contrary, what all three have in common 32

Pfienomenological, hpisternology

is the characteristic emphasis on the search for knowledge which I commented on in the preceding section. Husserl's truth seeker is very much an agent with the self-ascribed capacities the attainment of the goal requires. In Husserl, however, objects are correlated with distinctively intellectual capacities and practices, for example, those operative in theoretical or scientific work. For this reason it will not do simply to say that, according to Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, knowledge is intimately related to practices, for the general doctrine so formulated can also be found in Husserl. What distinguishes them from Husserl is the emphasis on nontheoretical practices. While they clearly acknowledge intellectual practices, their principal objective is to trace their origin back to more aboriginal practices and powers. The intellectual capacities and practices Husserl has in mind are themselves open to scrutiny and critical assessment, inasmuch as they are the powers of a consciousness which is, in principle, transparent to itself. While any given cognitive activity displays powers that in the ongoing activity remain unexamined, Husserl held that those powers can be described and examined in a higher-level analysis or transcendental reflection. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, however, hold that, in last analysis, those activities bring powers into play that in principle cannot be objectified. If knowledge involves objectification, the nature of what; is known by us as agents cannot: be known objectively. They are ours as we make use of them, but we can only acknowledge them as given. Merleau-Ponty, for example, emphatically teaches that the cognitive activities of an embodied percipient display capacities that cannot but be accepted as such. It is said, therefore, that our distinctively intellectual activities, all of which involve objectification and conceptualization, emerge out of a background that remains obscure from the vantage point of even our most strenuous and radical reflections. Both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty reject the primacy of the theoretical attitude and proceed to contextualize the attitude of objectification. Again, we have to be careful, for there is a sense in which it may be said that both Husserl and Kant did something like that, too. Kant argued that objectification arises from the application of transcendental concepts. And Husserl argued, in a more descriptive style of analysis, for the origin of objectification in transcendental subjectivity or consciousness. Going back to origins, in this sense, is a distinguishing mark of any transcendental philosopher. What is distinctive about Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty is where they look for origins. Heidegger calls it being-in-the-world; Merleau-Ponty, primordial perception. In either case, we are referred to an ultimate context of meaning in terms of which cognitive activities are to be explained. As already noted, in this context there is no objectification and conceptualization, since its dominant feature is practice, not theory. The subject is a practical agent, endowed with practical knowledge; the object is something in the nature of a tool or instrument (in a very broad sense of those terms). (Heidegger himself avoids the use of the terms "subject" and "object" in speaking of this framework.) Whereas theoretical knowledge involves activities such as objectification and predication, the stance characteristic of the practical knower does not involve objective detachment; one does not ask whether a thing exists or whether it has this or that property. This practical knowledge does not call for scrutiny of individual items as such, trying Introduction

33

to decide what concept to apply to them. It is a matter of having goals and knowing how or when to do this or that in the pursuit of those goals. Things are here quite literally given as already interpreted, because the knower is an agent who has goals. As Heidegger puts it, practical things are ready for use. Agency is a matter of involvement and participation, rather than detachment and scrutiny. For what is known in the practical sense is part and parcel of the active being of the knower as agent. Things are ready for use, because they are the tools an agent is aware she needs to act with a view to a particular end. Using them without asking questions or raising problems is here not a matter of haste, superficiality, thoughtlessness, or credulity on our part; they are not failings which deserve epistemic censure or admonition. When knowing is viewed as a genuinely human activity—or, as Heidegger would prefer to say, a mode of being of Dasein—such censure is out of place. This is the sort of context of meaning out of which theoretical knowledge arises. The most important feature of their doctrines, however, is not simply the thesis that the practical precedes the theoretical. Plato and Aristotle would have admitted that without any difficulty. If we were not first, in some sense, practical beings, we would probably never become theoretical. The theoretical knowledge we call science today requires a great many practical skills, but the same was always true of the attainment of knowledge. It always called for some efforts to get in touch with reality. In spite of this, however, there exists a long tradition of thought in which it has been claimed that the theoretical stance gives us knowledge of what is really there. Using Plato's famous metaphor, it leads us out of the cave of opinion and illusion into the sun, where we behold the truth of ousia ontoos ousa. In Plato's view, that we were once in the cave of opinion does not tell against our ability to know the truth. What is most important is that, according to Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, the origin of our knowledge is always with us as transcendental condition, i.e., a condition in the absence of which knowledge would not be possible. In the nature of the case, we are not usually aware of it; a primordial perception, Merleau-Ponty writes, is a rare experience, and Heidegger makes much of the theme of self-forgetfulness. As transcendental philosophers, they tell us that, because of this failure to be aware of our being-in-the-world or our primordial percipience, we have gone wrong in our assessment of the nature and scope of theoretical or scientific knowledge. In other words, they tell us that this assessment is problematic and calls for a transcendental critique, particularly its realism. Their account of the origins of knowledge, then, is not intended to leave it untouched, but to show us the limits of its scope. The transcendentalist character of their strategy becomes particularly clear from their attempts to delineate a new metaphysics or ontology. In view of their critical perspective on theoretical knowledge, one would not expect them to construe their concept of being on the basis of that kind of knowledge, for example, by taking the nature of reality to be reflected in the subject-predicate propositions characteristic of theoretical knowledge. But their approach is otherwise typically transcendental; their envisaged metaphysics is just as clearly second-order as that of Husserl and Kant. The concept of being, they argue, should be construed on the basis of the transcendental origins of theoretical knowledge. Being, as 34

Phenomenological. Episternology

they see it, does not first come to be known in theoretical knowledge but is already preontologically "understood" by us in our being-in-the-world or our embodied percipience. For the purpose of arriving at a doctrine of being, we should concentrate on this unitary context of meaning. Heidegger argues that practices have their own kind of knowledge with their own kind of "objects." What we meet with here are not objects-to-be-known, but tools and their use by practical agents. Tools, however, have their own distinctive kind of being, for which Heidegger coins a special term, "being-readyto-hand." But being "useful" is not to be considered as a supervenient predicate of material or natural things. As tools, they already reveal or disclose being. And making use of them is itself a distinct mode of being, namely, that of being concerned about being, one's own in particular. Objects-to-be-known (in a broadly theoretical sense) are derivative, construed entities. The necessary conditions of their construal as objects are to be found in being-in-the-world. In many of his texts, he argues in a similar vein that the primordial locus of truth is not the judgment or belief but the unitary context that is their transcendental origin, namely, being-in-the-world, which is accordingly described as being-inthe-truth. In Merleau-Ponty's view, reality is discerned in primordial perception, which is a process of constantly going beyond appearances in a search for reality or, more simply, taking them as appearances of reality. We are told to conceive of this as a movement of transcendence that does not as such comprise anything in the nature of stable or relatively permanent objects of which we might be said to have possession in the sense of knowing them. Caught up in the movement of transcendence, appearances are not objects in their own right, but rather stages of the active search for reality. Objects are the product of objectiflcation; they appear only when the movement is arrested and appearances are converted into objects of cognitive interest. Another way of saying the same thing: objects are abstractions in the fairly literal sense of having been drawn out of the movement characteristic of primordial perceptions. But as MerleauPonty would have it, when we gain objects and objective knowledge, we lose our hold on being or reality. Metaphysical philosophy is for him the attempt to regain it, which requires that we turn away from objects and seek out their transcendental origins in primordial perception.

Introduction

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2 HUSSERL

Introduction For reasons already given in the previous chapter, Husserl's doctrine of knowledge plays a central role in this study. Because he attached a greater importance to a theory of knowledge than either Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty, he developed it with greater care than they did. In fact, his epistemology introduced most of the concepts and terms which" Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty made use of in writing about epistemic matters, whether to agree or to disagree with him. The doctrines of knowledge which they developed are therefore not intelligible without a thorough study of Husserl's doctrine. In my presentation and discussion of it, I am not going to be very concerned about the chronological order of the composition of Husserl's works. Nor do I claim to present anything like an exposition of all the relevant texts; only the most important texts will be actually cited and expounded. My presentation will be designed to bring out the lines of thought underlying the texts and the doctrine as a whole in its systematic connections. If a particular statement in an early text leaves much unstated, though fairly clearly implied, I will not hesitate at such a point to introduce later texts that do state what was earlier implied. As I see it, Husserl's epistemological thinking began with a certain schematic conception, such as that of the contrast between intentions and fulfilments, the implications of which are often fairly clear to a philosophical reader who enjoys

36

the benefits of hindsight, although not all of them may have been entirely clear to Husserl at first. I argue, for example, that the important concept of the horizons of intentional acts was certainly implied by his early statements of the contrast just mentioned, but he worked it out and gave it a name only at a later time. For a historical account of his development, it would be very important to scrutinize the textual record, as Theodore de Boer did in The Development of Husserl's Thought, but such matters would encumber an exposition like this. And in any case, an interpretation of a stated doctrine in abstraction from what it quite clearly implies, as later texts often confirm, seemed to me to lead to unnecessary repetitions. I also want to say that, for the sake of giving a clear and readable exposition of Husserl's doctrine. I introduce the reader to as little of Husserl's technical vocabulary as possible. He used a vast number of technical terms, often explicitly introduced by definitions, which give his texts, whether in German or in translation, an intimidating appearance. Moreover, his vocabulary developed and changed in time. To inflict all of it on my readers seemed to me unnecessary and confusing. His extraordinarily frequent use of "essential" (wesensmassig or eidetisch) is a case in point. Rather than taking up space by introducing the full arsenal of Husserl's vocabulary, I have chosen to devote that space to interpretation of his basic ideas. I therefore often paraphrase rather than quote a text, because it allowed me to omit adjectives or qualifications that for my purpose were unnecessary. I should also not fail to admit in a general way that in working out what I see as implications of Husserlian statements I occasionally say things which it would be very difficult for me to document from actual texts. These are risks of which I am aware but which I took for the sake of giving as powerful a presentation of the doctrine as I am able to give. Finally, even when I do give textual documentation for particular assertions of mine, I have not, in general, tried to give an exhaustive listing of passages in Husserl's texts. Another point on which I want to beg the reader's indulgence is the concentration of all the attention on what is, at least in my view, distinctively epistemological. I have omitted whatever I thought could be missed in my study. In regard to the famous transcendental reduction, for example, I probably present what some will call an incomplete, possibly somewhat austere picture because 1 focus on its epistemological role, which I am, in fact, inclined to think was its most important role in Husserl's own thought. But I admit that I may not have done full justice, for example, to its hermeneutical, existential, or other features. Husserl's philosophy, it seems to me. is fundamentally shaped by his epistemology. At the outset, he. of course, developed it by making use of certain phenomenological analyses which he had already arrived at before he presented his theory of knowledge, for example, the analysis of the intentionality of consciousness. But when he had conceived that theory, he not only tried to justify his phenomenological claims in the terms of the theory but also he used it to argue that philosophy as a whole has to be phenomenological in character. For example, in the lectures he delivered in .1907, posthumously published under the title The Idea of Phenomenology, he introduced what he then began to call transcendental phenomenology, as an approach necessary for epistemological reasons, namely, to give an answer to what he conceived to be the problem of knowledge. Husserl.

57

If that problem is to be dealt with, he thought, this can only be done by developing a phenomenology of that cognitive experience which is transcendental in relation to all other knowledge. In these lectures, the phenomenological or transcendental reduction is designated as an epistemological reduction (Hua 2, 39i'f. [IP, 3ifi'.]).' In the final analysis, it is epistemology that determines Husserl's general strategy and his philosophical vision. His metaphysics, accordingly, is determined by his epistemology. As we will see, the being of something is defined by the ideal epistemic situation for asserting it. What can be asserted with absolute justification has absolute being, everything else only being in relation to that which exists absolutely.2 Husserl saw appraisal and criticism of beliefs as having a fundamental humanizing role. For us to be human is to examine our beliefs. Our very humanity, he thought, demands of us that we examine our beliefs. The requirement to seek knowledge is for Husserl a kind of moral imperative (Hua 8, 230, 296, 352; 6, 2OT. 324 [C, 197, 279]).' Like many other epistemologists since Descartes, he gives his doctrine a somewhat deontological tone. We have epistemic duties, just as we have moral duties. Furthermore, he clearly subscribes to the traditional view that our actions are to be guided by knowledge; the values we acknowledge in our actions are to be critically examined. The human being is basically a knower, not in the sense that the human being desires nothing but knowledge but in the sense that everything else is to be based on knowledge, a view that gives the search for knowledge that culminates in philosophy great importance for human life. In formulating his epistemology, Husserl makes use of a certain amount of phenomenological material he had already worked out in his general analyses. Their central tenet is that of the intentionality of consciousness, a doctrine he inherited from his teacher, Brentano. Quite apart from any question as to whether there actually exists an object outside of an act or state of awareness, the latter is intrinsically object directed. Whenever we want to describe such an act or state, we have to mention something like an object, which is that upon which it is directed. As we saw in the first chapter, when we focus on a belief in order to appraise it as to its correctness or its justification, we have to begin by understanding the belief as having an object, though the appraisal may show that this object exists only "in the mind" of the believer. My belief about a house may well turn out to be erroneous in several ways, but even as we set out to describe or appraise a belief we cannot get away from saying that, in that belief something is thought of as being, for example, a house of a particular kind in a particular location, etc. One could say that the belief contains that house in the sense that, if at the beginning of my appraisal I base what I say merely on the belief, I know on the basis of its content what has to be the case, if it is to be a correct belief. Having introduced this general idea of intentionality, Husserl proceeded to make further distinctions. A multiplicity of different acts can be directed upon one and the same object, but in each of them the object is intended—described, broadly speaking—in a different way (Hua 19/1, 414 [LI, 578], 425-30 [LI, 58689]). In slightly different terms, the specific way in which an act intends an object or person counts as a mode of givenness of an object or person that may 38

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Epistemology

also be given to us in a different way. We therefore have to distinguish an object from its modes of being given. Venus may be "intended" as the Evening Star or as the Morning Star; Napoleon may be "intended" either as the Conqueror of Jena or as the loser of Waterloo. The same sort of situation obtains when an object such as a house is given to us as the reference of a purely linguistic act, in which case it is presented differently from the way that same house is presented in a picture, which is again different from the way it is presented in direct perception. A person's particular way of being intentionally directed upon an object is thus embedded in a context in which other ways of being directed upon it are open to him. Intentional acts do not occur in isolation or follow one another merely as a matter of fact. They are intrinsically related to one another, so that, in a sense, one mode of access invites and leads into another, which for its part fulfils it. Aware of this context of different modes of givenness, a subject can be aware of being presented with one and the same object. One can also put it this way: we notice how an act in which one actually perceives an object is essentially accompanied by capacities for further perceptions. A perceiver ascribes to herself capacities, which give her a sense of environment and context. She knows that she can do things other than what she is doing at the moment, which gives her a sense of her powers of inquiry. She is therefore convinced that her actual awareness of an object at a given time takes place in a context of other ways of being aware of it, namely, those in which the same object would be apprehended under a different description or from a different perspective. In short, no intentional act is an isolated act; no object can simply be identified with one mode of givenness. Such brief observations should, of course, be expanded, if the phenomenological account is to become fully convincing, as the rich detail of Husserl's own texts testify. But they will be enough to suggest the kind of general phenomenology Husserl presupposes, when he begins to state his theory of knowledge in the sixth and last of his Logical Investigations. In this theory, he begins by calling attention to a new range of differences in the manner in which intentional acts are directed to objects, or rather differences in the modes in which objects are given to us. In some cases, we refer to an object or a state of affairs by purely linguistic means. We utter words by means of which we refer to something that is not perceptually present at all. In other cases, we actually see what we mean in that we see the object itself. We recognize what we mean or think in what we see. And Husserl then proceeds to note that in matters of knowledge we give preferred status to the latter and regard the former way of referring to the object or state of affairs as inferior. He assumes, it is clear, that from our own experiences we are already familiar with something like a distinction between knowledge and belief and know what it is like to attain knowledge.

Intention and Fulfilment In the traditional view, knowledge is a form of belief, but it is better than a mere belief, even if the latter, by chance or whatever, is, in fact, true. Knowledge has Husserll

gg

often been said to be a true belief that is also justified. Husserl generally speaks of such a belief as one that is evident to the believer.4 The status of being evident may accrue to a belief because it can somehow be inferred—in a broad sense of the term—from other beliefs that are supposedly justified, and the latter may again have to be shown to be justified by going further baek to other beliefs. Ultimately, however, we have to have beliefs whose justification is no longer a matter of being in some way inferred from, or supported by, other beliefs. For their justification, these beliefs can, as it were, stand on their own, i.e., without support from other beliefs. They are said to be noninferentially justified, justified because they are intuitive or by the circumstance that they are directly based on what is given in a source of knowledge such as perception, introspection, or memory. Descartes, for example, held that the justification of such a belief comes from the circumstance that it is clear and distinct. This at least is the way a long tradition in epistemology has conceived it, namely, the foundationalist tradition. At first, Husserl appears to be such a foundationalist. The source of knowledge, according to him, is to be found in what is immediately evident (Hua 3/1, § 141). The justification of all other beliefs derives in one way or another from this. And as we will see, he speaks of the evident as being a matter of the givenness of the object or state of affairs. But this first impression will turn out to be deceiving. We will see that the phenomenological directness of perception, which gives us the sense of seeing the object itself, gains its epistemic importance from background beliefs, which give the Husserlian account a more coherentist character. The sixth of the Logical Investigations is entitled "Elements of a Phenomenological Elucidation of Knowledge." Knowledge, Husserl says, requires the sense on the part of a believer that something is evident to him or her. Already in the first volume of the Investigations, the "Prolegomena to Pure Logic," we read: In knowledge, however, we possess truth. In actual knowledge . . . we possess truth as the object of a correct judgement. But this alone is not enough, since not every correct judgement, every affirmation or rejection of a state of affairs that accords with truth, represents knowledge of the being or non-being of this state of affairs. Rather we may say that, if it is to be called "knowledge" in the narrowest, strictest sense, it requires to be evident, to have the luminous certainty that what we have acknowledged is, that what we have rejected is not, a certainty distinguished in familiar fashion from blind belief, from vague opining, however firm and decided, if we are not to be shattered on the rocks of extreme scepticism. (Hua 18. 28-29 [LI. 60-61]) The question Husserl addresses has been familiar to philosophers since Plato's Theaetetus: what distinguishes knowledge from a mere belief? According to Husserl, the distinction between true belief and knowledge is a matter of our experience. Knowing involves being in some sense aware of the contrast of a present belief with various epistemically inferior beliefs. And as the passage just cited has it, knowing is also a state of being in a position to reject doubt, i.e., to have grounds for certainty rather than doubt. In other words, if knowledge is to be possible, some beliefs must be defensible, i.e. justifiable, presumably because it is evident to the believer that things are what he believes them to be.5

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But how are we to understand this relation of something being evident to someone? This is the question Husserl tries to answer in the sixth of the Logical Investigations. This is where he gives his first, though not his final, statement of a theory of knowledge.'1 Knowledge, he tells us, is the attainment of some sort of recognitional vision of the object of our belief. Often we are directed to an object by having at our disposal only a linguistic sign signifying it; at other times, we see it by way of a picture or mental image, but there are also times when the same object is present without that presence being mediated in any of the ways just mentioned. Husserl calls that seli-givenness or self-presence. In such a case, I recognize the object as such and say that I now perceive it. Tt is then evident to me that the situation I claimed to exist really does exist. In typically Husserlian language, I see the object itself. The account implies much that was not made explicit until later. The most important matters are the ideas of context and of cognitive agency. The context of particular acts later came to be captured by the concept of horizons. But from what he does say in the Logical Investigations, it is clear that he was aware of its role. From the fact that his account views the knower as one who seeks knowledge and truth we can see that he wants us to think of the knower as an agent already motivated to seek truth and therefore seeing himself as equipped with capacities for such a search. As the doctrine of the intentionality of consciousness has it, the object of the search is already before the mind. And the knower envisages things that he can and is required to do. Husserl views matters from the perspective of one who seeks knowledge, would like to know whether his beliefs are correct, and looks for ways to find out. Knowledge is discussed as the goal of a search, rather than as a possession. He, of course, speaks also of knowledge as the possession of truth, but rather than considering it as a relation obtaining between knower and reality, he relates it intimately to the search, namely, as the achievement of its goal. As Husserl sees it, the distinction between belief and knowledge is made by seekers of truth. To that extent, it accounts for the inner dynamic of our cognitive life. I want to emphasize that Husserl's statement of a theory of knowledge in the last of his Logical Investigations, begins in medias res, as it were. He starts with a discussion that implies a knower already engaged. He does not assume a passive mind, a tabula rasa, on which in the fullness of time objects impinge. We are not asked to imagine a mind which has not yet, experienced anything. The mind is not confronted with mere data, something merely given and waiting to be conceptualized and interpreted. On the contrary, what presents itself to the mind are objects that have already been conceptualized to a certain extent. His account invites us to transport ourselves into a setting in which we already assume to have a certain amount of knowledge. Things already present themselves to us with a certain character, and we therefore have words to refer to them and are able to recognize the latter as being what we mean by those words. Sometimes we speak, while the things we mean come into view only later, in which case we experience a peculiar satisfaction, just as when an expectation we had is fulfilled by recognizing what we expected. I already mentioned the concept of cognitive agency. That concept entails that

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various kinds of capacities are acknowledged by the truth seeker as capacities which she undoubtedly has and which are therefore, unproblematically and without further thought, ready to be used—for example, the capacities to refer to objects by uttering words or sentences and, if appropriate, to move to a particular location to see if the object spoken of is really there. Such a truth seeker already operates with a global sense of how the various objects within the scope of her experience may be referred to or apprehended. She believes that, when it comes to acquiring knowledge, specific steps have to be taken to lead us to the object, while others are to be avoided as leading us away from that goal. In other words, she has a sense of what counts as the best epistemic situation. As one might put it. Husscrl's account articulates the subject-object correlation as a search for truth, and the truth seeker he envisages is one who has an implicit ontology and epistemology, which a phenomenological epistemology begins by describing. From the point of view of such an epistemologist, there is no such entity as a truth seeker, if we cannot begin by describing him as endowed with some sort of prephilosophical ontology and epistemology. Husserl implies that the ultimate motivation for the search for knowledge arises from a sense of differences and contrasts between modes of givenness. Part of what is distinctive of a cognitive agent is the fact that he or she works with such a distinction between various acts of awareness. In certain situations, such an agent will have a sense of dissatisfaction about his or her grasp of an object or state of affairs. In others, by contrast, that agent has a sense of satisfaction of having grasped an object in an optimal manner. Dissatisfaction will be accompanied by a sense of certain specific steps which might be taken to improve the cognitive situation. And actually taking one or more of such steps will accordingly give the agent a sense of fulfilment or, as the case might be, disappointment. In fulfilment, something gets recognized, i.e., identified, as being (or not being) what was earlier meant or thought. Beginning an epistemological account in this manner, we, of course, have to dissociate ourselves from the noncognitive connotations of "fulfilment" and "disappointment," for example, those primarily connected with wishes, hopes, and apprehensions. We should think of a person's interest as purely cognitive, as an interest in what is given, rather than in changing things. What is sought is knowledge and truth, nothing else. Fulfilment is to be understood as progress on a line that measures, not quality of life or whatever, but just the attainment of knowledge in the sense of justified belief. The ideal we seek is knowledge of what is the case, regardless of emotional or other attitudes we may have with respect to the object to be known. The intentions that find fulfilment, which Husserl calls empty or purely signitive, are shown to be correct by the fact that in the fulfilling intention one recognizes an object—using "object" in a broad sense—as being the one which was intended, so that the full intention can be said to confirm or verify the empty intention. Fulfilment is a matter of identifying, or recognizing, something as being the object or state of affairs which one earlier thought of and referred to. It has a sense which might be expressed by exclaiming, "That's it." The perceived tree, let's say, is recognized as the tree meant by a linguistic expression that was uttered by a speaker some time ago or merely as something exemplifying what

4,2

Phenomenological Epistemology

The object is then given, or present, both terms to be understood in correlation with contrasting situations. It is given or present in contrast to being merely referred to with words, conjectured on the basis of some sort of sign, or projected by an image, illustration, or model. As Husserl uses the expression, "being given" also means that its givenness is not produced—intentions do not contrive their own fulfilment—or inferred in one way or another. "Emptiness," then, does not mean an absence of belief, for the account assumes that consciousness is intentional, that there is already an awareness directed upon an object or state of affairs. Phenomenologically speaking, the object terminally given in a fulfilment does not make its first appearance there, for in some sense it already occupies the mind, namely, as the intentional object of an empty intention. And as to an empty intention, it is crucially important not to interpret an intention of this sort as if it had, in fact, a present image or mental state as its object. Neither is it the case that, if the belief is expressed in words, the latter serve as substitutes for the object upon which one is directed, ff that were the case, how would we then interpret the fact that, in spite of the presence of words and images, we feel a need for fulfilment? What we encounter in a fulfilment, then, is not a new object, but the object we already sought in a new and distinctive mode of givenness, namely, self-givenness. The intensive pronouns in the locutions "self-givenness" and "seeing the thing itself" are meant to indicate just that. Since "fulfilment" is used by Husserl in what one might call a theory of justification, or whatever we call that which gives positive status to our beliefs or claims, fulfilment must not be confused with an increase in information or detailed knowledge about an object. What is at issue is justification. It is not a matter of becoming better acquainted with an object initially known only in part, but rather of gaining status for a given claim to knowledge. The question is: what is that by virtue of which a given belief or claim has cognitive status and may be called justified? That it is not the former but the latter that is episternically important is easily overlooked, since an actual perception of an object, earlier only mentioned in a statement, frequently also increases our knowledge about the object. An actual perception will give all kinds of additional and unforeseen details—thus leading to new beliefs—about a particular object as well as fulfilling or confirming an earlier reference and thus justifying a cognitive claim about that object. In the course of an inquiry, we generally come to apprehend more and more of an object's properties. From a very general and sketchy notion we proceed to detailed knowledge, even knowledge of what is unique about an individual thing or person. But this is not what Husserl has in mind with his concept of fulfilment. Strictly conceived, fulfilment does not bring a new object, nor does it add new aspects to what is already intended. Husserl emphasizes in this connection that the identification of the object should not be understood as involving a reflective, conceptually mediated comparison of the object's different modes of being referred to (§ 7). It is an experience of identity that can, but need not, be explicitly stated. Recognition (Erkennen) is a matter of appreciating the fittingness or appropriateness of what we say or believe to what we encounter in experience, and vice versa. It will not Husserl,

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do, he argues, to postulate a hidden mental mechanism by virtue of which as a matter of fact a certain perception is generally accompanied by the uttering of a word. As a result of linguistic training, a perception might often, or generally, be followed by the uttering of a word. But to hold that the perception is the cause of a verbal utterance does not account for our sense that by our use of a proper name like "Hans" at a particular time we mean a person we perceive on that occasion, or our ability to recognize a particular percept as an example of what we mean by the word "red." In the absence of such recognition, however, a person would not appreciate their connection and fail to see that the word refers to what is perceii'ed. The speaker would not see the latter as what she meant in the uttering of a name or as showing the correctness of a belief which she held and expressed by the uttering of a sentence. The recognition can indeed be expressed in the form of an explicit statement of identity. It is "a priori possible" to compare the object in its different modes of givenncss and come to the conclusion that it is the same object on two or more occasions. But here the same kind of recognition would be called for, if that statement of identity is to be seen as stating an identity which actually exists. Husserl observes that the cognitive interest is directed on the object and its characteristics, not on the fact of its being identical with the object meant (§ 8). It is a claim, for example, about: a perceptual object that is shown to be justified, rather than the closely related, but clearly different claim about its identity on different occasions of givenness. As we might also put it, the identity is implied but not stated. Husserl also makes this point in his discussion of the relation between the evident and the true (§ 39). He states that the evident is the experience of correspondence. It is, once again, a recognition of a perception, for example, as being cognitively relevant to a belief in the sense of showing its correctness. This experience, however, is not to be equated with a statement to the effect that there exists an objective correspondence between something meant or thought, on the one hand, and a state of affairs perceived, on the other. One can, of course, make such a statement (Hua 19/2, 652 [LI, 766]), but for the latter claim to be evident, to be itself appreciated as justified, the person who makes it has to have the same unexpressed and as yet unconceptualized experience, this time recognizing the objective fact of correspondence as justifying the statement to that effect. What we should note for the sake of future reference is the fact that, in describing this recognition or experience of correspondence, Husserl uses on two occasions the traditional definition of truth: "adaequatio inrellectus et rei" (Hua 19/2, 540, 647!'. [LI, 640, 762]). In the light of the preceding, that is not difficult to understand. One does, indeed, find that a thought or a sentence is adequate to what is perceptually given to us and thus corresponds to it. As I argued in the introductory chapter, the important question is whether we may assume that this is what was intended by the term adaequatio in the traditional formulation. My contention is that this is not the case. I hold that the traditional view of the nature of truth, first formulated by Plato and Aristotle, should not be made to serve in a discussion of the search for truth. If we want to follow Husserl and highlight the experience of correspondence, the latter should not be identified 44

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with truth. On my view, then, Husserl is taking here a rather fateful step, but we can see how a doctrine about fulfilment such as his tempts one to take it. As we will see in the next chapter, Heidegger followed Husserl's lead on this point. Something being evident to me, says Husserl, is for me to experience truth, i.e., to be aware of the correspondence of what is (or was) meant and what is given. What is given is known, or recognized (crkannt), as what is meant or merely believed. Husserl calls it being in the sense of the true, that is, being as that which makes a belief or statement about being or truth justified. Husserl mentions in this same connection three other concepts of truth. Their differences emerge quite readily from the different ways in which the experience of truth can be objectified: truth can be spoken of as the ideal relation instantiated by the experience of truth (Evidenz), in which case truth is like a universal. Truth can also be defined as what is evident (i.e., the object or state of affairs which is seen) and finally as correctness of the intention, or rather of its prepositional content. From an epistemological perspective, we need not discuss them in detail. In the text of the sixth of the Logical Investigations, Husserl presents much of his epistemological doctrine in a discussion of perceptible objects apprehended in various ways. In the light of the foregoing discussion, however, it will be clear that what a fulfilment concretely consists in will depend on the kind of object targeted in the empty or signitive intentions, as well as the specific capacities deemed appropriate to reach such objects. In other words, it will be relative to the implicit ontology and epistemology. What: seeing an F means depends on the concept of being an F. "Seeing" is used by Husserl to mark a contrast: with various ways of not seeing F. With regard to houses, ordinary perception will do, but, as we shall see, that need not be the case when it comes to other categories of objects, for example, numbers or essences. What is at: issue is a purely general relation between intentional acts. It is a relation which can hold between variously characterized acts, depending on the network or context to which they belong. It is a functional relation that may also hold between acts that are descriptively different from those which were first singled out as exemplifying that relation. The frequently used phrases "seeing the object that was meant" or "seeing the object itself" do not describe any particular kind of act. but rather a role which, given a specific context, an act plays for an act of mere belief, namely, the role of giving it fullness or fulfilment, thereby putting a knower in a cognitively better position with respect to whatever object that person desires to know. As Husserl argues in the second half of the sixth investigation, there are many objects that cannot be apprehended in ordinary sense perception. A predicative statement to the effect that something has or exemplifies a property can be justified only by a different kind of intuition or seeing.7 It performs the same cognitive role as ordinary perceptions, namely, the role of justifying beliefs, though in relation to intentional acts of greater complexity. Furthermore, there arc acts which are not at all about perceptual particulars but about properties or essences (as discussed later). In all this, it is important to keep a firm grasp on the Husserlian sense of the term "intuition"; intuiting or seeing an essence is not as simple a matter as directing our eye upon the colour of a flower. Husserll

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If we are to sum up the preceding discussion, we can say that Husserl has distinguished knowledge from mere belief by considering various cognitive stages we go through in the search for knowledge: for example, from word to image, to perception (which he calls cognitive levels [Erkenntnisstufen]). (In many texts he simply talks about empty intentions and fulfilled intentions, because that is the epistemologically important contrast.) He has in mind a cognitive agent who knows how to work his way from one cognitive situation to another, until he or she is satisfied that the object itself has been reached. What is in question, then, is a scale, the highest point on which constitutes knowledge in the sense in which that is contrasted with mere belief. What is measured on such a scale, to repeat a point made earlier, are degrees of justification. The logic of Husserl's doctrine naturally generates the idea of an ultimate, terminating fulfilment, a cognitive situation in which nothing remains to be done because we are really in touch with the being of things. This is, of course, an ideal situation, but precisely as such it indicates the kind of goal we are after in the search for truth. We could say that it is an extrapolation from our cognitive practices (Hua 8, 363-68). It is that in the light of which any particular claim to knowledge should be evaluated. Whether we ever find ourselves in such a situation remains to be decided by evaluative criticism. As we will see in the following section, however, Husserl holds that it cannot be reached without taking a transcendental turn. Before we turn to further elaborations of Husserl's episternology, we should note an aspect of the earlier account that is often passed over or mentioned only in passing. The fulfilment of empty intentions is the schema he uses to account for the discovery of truth, but he also uses it to account for the discovery of error, which he speaks of as the disappointment of intentions. And in doing so, he foreshadows what is often considered to be a concept characteristic of his later doctrine: the idea of horizon. An empty intention can, of course, be disappointed rather than fulfilled. But Husserl points out that such disappointment can only be partial. It is possible only within a wider context of fulfilment (Hua 19/2, 574-81 [LI, 701-6]). What this implies is that an empty intention is directed upon an object in a context: we not only refer to an object or state of affairs, but we also co-intend—i.e., implicitly refer to—its place or context. There is discovery of error, for example, when what is claimed and expected turns out not to be in the place where it was thought to be. That means that the place is recognized as being that of the object referred to, but we discover that the object is not there. Fie also argues that we can recognize the object to be there, although it turns out to have a quality different from what it was claimed to have. In such a case, too, there is disappointment within a wider context of fulfilment. As Husserl clearly saw, simply failing to find something or finding something different will not have the kind of cognitive relevance for a belief that is assumed to be in error. What is found must have relevance, which is secured by the general context of the belief. What this shows is that the cognitive subject implied by Husserl's stated account of knowledge is a subject whose beliefs form a network and whose intentional references implicitly locate their objects in the context circumscribed by those beliefs. Discovery of error or a mistake in regard to a particular object is

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possible only if its co-intended context remains unchanged. If we are to discover error, we can do so only against the backdrop of what is taken to be truth and knowledge. We may at times have doubts, but that is only possible on the basis of knowledge we have. 1 shall come back to this matter later in this chapter. It is therefore clear that intending is more than being directed upon an object in isolation. Intention places its object in a world, as this term has come to be used in the phenomenological tradition. This is not a Heidcggerean discovery or an insight Husserl reached only late in his life, but a fairly straightforward implication of the phenomenology of the search for truth which he had already formulated in Logical Investigations* The evident, Husserl argued, should not be construed simply in terms of truth, as a state in which one possesses truth. In his Formal and Transcendental Logic (§§ 59. 105-6), he called this a dogmatic theory of the evident, because it construes the evident in terms of a presupposed truth-in-itself. An adherent of such a theory might even hold that the belief is in some sense a direct result of the fact which makes it true. What makes a mere belief knowledge would simply be the fact that it is true, a case of possessing truth. Husserl holds that this view is a construction, because it is clear that it takes no account of the phenomenological nature of the cognitive situation. It implies that the subjective appreciation which a cognizing being has of her situation is unimportant. The account gives no attention to the way in which she formed the belief and evaluates its relation to other belief's of hers; in short, this looks like a version of pure epistemological externalism. As Husserl says, it leads to the view that the awareness of something as evident is isolated from the rest of our experience. As he puts it in the text, it is torn out of the concrete, essentially unified context of a subject's experience (FTL, § 59). And thus the only alternatives we are left with arc these: either it is altogether without significance from a cognitive point of view, or it has to be interpreted as an apprehension of truth that is infallible for the simple reason that it cannot be criticized from alternative points of view or overridden by later experience. The general point is clearly of a piece with the doctrine discussed so far. I noted at the outset Husserl's interest in truth as an object of search. Such a search is possible only if the agent is familiar with the context of her cognitive experience and the object's "place" in it. In his Formal and Transcendental Logic, we read: We have already touched on the fact that self-givenness is, like every other single intentional experience, a function in the all-embracing nexus of consciousness. The achievement of a single experience, in particular its achievement as an instance of self-givenness, the achievement of the evident, is not finished when the event is over. A single self-giving, by virtue of its own distinctive intentionality, implicitly calls for, and can point to, further self-givings to complete its objectification. (Hua 17, 168 [FTL, 159-60, translation changed]) It is stated even more clearly in § 27 of the Cartesian Meditations, where he says that a situation in which something is evident to me establishes (stiftet) for me a possession which I presume to be permanent, but it does so only within an

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implicit context or horizon. This context is ranged over by my (self-ascribed) capacity to come back to it and assert the same thing again with the same degree of justification. When on a particular occasion I make a claim to truth on the basis of the evident, I presume that I can do this again. Because the evident is embedded in a context, it is fallible. The context permits it to be confirmed or repudiated, so that any particular truth claim, based on something taken to be evident by a person in a situation, can be found to be in error.'' Any particular expectation springing from the presumption that [ can come back and recognize the same claim as still justified can be disappointed. In Formal and Transcendental Logic we read that even a so-called apodictic claim— i.e., a claim about an eidetic state of affairs—is defeasible (Rua 17, 164 [FTL, 156-57]). Though the justification of such a claim is generated by reason rather than by sense experience, memory, or introspection, and though, if such a claim is true, it is necessarily true, the manner in which it is made and justified—i.e., its Evidenz—is, in principle, subject to critical scrutiny, as when an alleged insight or proof is subjected to criticism. 10 In other words, with respect to both kinds of knowledge, Husserl maintains that one can have an experience of truth in the form of a belief that is evident and therefore be justified in one's believing, but one does riot have knowledge if the experience is in one way or another defeated. The point does not imply that there are no necessary truths, that the distinction between them arid contingent truths has disappeared, for in the case of claims justified a priori, error is discovered by reason, independent of sense experience. In other words, the discovery can be made only in the form of another apodictic claim with regard to what is necessarily true. 11 Although Husserl has described the evident as a situation that has a subjective component, namely, the recognition of something seen as being what is (or was) meant—which he called the experience (Erkbnis) of truth—the situation cannot be interpreted in purely subjective terms. A mere feeling of cognitive fulfilment is not sufficient. As he puts it in the Ideas, it is not a voice heard within the mind and telling us of the presence of truth (§ 145). The feeling theory would have it that the truly optimal situation is a belief accompanied by a characteristic feeling of truth, e.g., a powerful, nearly irresistible inclination to accept it. It is supposed by those who subscribe to such a theory that this sort of feeling functions as a reliable sign of the existence of the state of affairs to which the belief is directed. Husserl rejects such an account, noting that this knowledge of signs as reliable presupposes independent access to the state of affairs of which, under certain conditions, the feeling is supposed to be a reliable indicator. In his view, sign talk is parasitic on talk in which things themselves are addressed. To bring into focus the more epistemological implications of the feeling theory, hoxi'ever, we should note that to insist that such a feeling is the best we can expect to attain in our search for knowledge leads directly to radical scepticism. When applied to an optimal, ie., terminal situation, it results in radical scepticism. Ex hypothesi, we cannot improve on that kind of cognitive situation. All relevant powers of inquiry or exploration are assumed to have been fully exploited. Nothing further can be done to secure a claim to knowledge. Now if you then proceed and interpret that kind of situation in the mariner suggested by the feeling theory, a subject in such a situation cannot but wonder whether in 48

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some other mind, or in some possible world, the same kind of feeling might not be associated with a belief contradictory to his own belief. And this amounts to wondering whether his mind has been tampered with by a Cartesian demon, although the question remains without answer. He can never find out, again ex hypothesi, whether in actual fact there exists such a conflict of opinion. The result will therefore be a doubt that cannot be resolved through criticism or further inquiry. The awareness of something as evident is not a psychological indicator, but a distinctive mode of assertion or positing (eigentiimlicher Setzun0smodus).]2 And positing an object as existing, or a state of affairs as obtaining, is to be correlated with the characteristic mode of givenness of a kind of object. An optimal mode of givenness, sell'-givenness, "rationally motivates" the act of assertion (Ideas L, § 136). Husserl writes that self-givenness (of an object) and acceptance of the object: as real, i.e., positing it, are experienced as belonging together. This belonging together must itself be a matter of experience, so that we can say that the justified belief has its justifying ground in that mode of givenness. ft will not do to say that, as a matter of fact, the one is accompanied by the other or that there is a relation of cause and effect between them. Such a relation might obtain without any awareness on the part of the knower that the mode of givenness is cognitively relevant to her believing. Husserl captures all this in what he calls the principle of all principles (Ideas I, § 24). According to it, whenever we see something in the epistemologically fundamental sense of something being evident to us, we are justified in believing; that mode of givenness generates justification for the corresponding belief; what is so given should be accepted as it gives itself, although, of course, our claim should not go beyond what is so given. No theory, Husserl says, should make us lose sight of this principle. The evident: is to be trusted as far as it goes, but it must prove its trustworthiness by defeating criticism.

The Transcendental Turn The search for truth has thus far been considered as the attainment of justification for a belief. Justifying was seen as activity on the part of a cognitive agent who, as I put it, works with an implicit ontology and epistemology. This justification consists in a seeing of what we believe, for example, seeing with our own eyes the object of our belief. Seeing the object itself is a state which may also be interpreted as one in which the object itself is given, ff we state this in terms of perception, this amounts to saying that beliefs are justified when they are based on perception. Alternatively, sense perception can convert mere belief into knowledge. Now according to common sense, perception is for that reason counted as a source of knowledge. The justification of some beliefs may come from other beliefs, but there are a great many beliefs whose justification comes from what is taken to be a source of knowledge. When perception functions as a source of knowledge, it does not itself function as a belief for which a justification needs to be given, but as that which generates justification for a belief. In a sense, the Husserll

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agent's justifying activity ends with perception. Common sense assumes that perception is a generally reliable source of knowledge, and we mostly accept what presents itself in that way. All such convictions, we might say, are embodied in the implicit ontological and epistemological contours of common sense. Now the theory of knowledge presented in the preceding section, particularly the basic doctrine about intentions and their fulfilments which Husserl presented in his Logical Investigations, is based on reflection, but it is reflection within the bounds of common sense. As Husserl at times put it, it is natural or psychological reflection. This means that the cpistemologist's reflections still share the basie convictions of common sense which I just: sketched. The knower is seen as a human being in contact with the world around him through his sense organs. The justiiication of a belief about that world is based on the data of sense perception. Husserl, however, thought that epistemological reflection on knowledge claims ought to go still further, so that we may attain for them what he calls absolute justification. To be absolute, it would have to be a justification in which no use is made of a cognitive power, the status of which is assumed as a given, and remains unexamined for that reason. To put it differently, what he recommends is that, if a specific search of truth assumes a source of knowledge (e.g., sense perception), that search should not end there but go on, although its direction should be changed. As he explains, our attention has been fixed on inquiry regarding objects as such—positive knowledge, as he calls it (cf. Hua 8, zjff.). 11 As f glossed this point in chapter T, the knowing mind takes its ability to know things other than itself for granted and, in that sense, could be said to abstract from itself. But the search for truth with its goal of absolute justification demands that cognitive claims should be evident in every respect, even if this means that we adopt a critical attitude toward what is normally taken for granted (Hua 8, 31). Suppose that, in a given direction of cognitive interest, everything about the object has become evident, so that nothing further needs to be done. Inquiry should now be directed toward the knower, more specifically, to what the latter took to be his faculty of knowledge, e.g., perception. What Husserl asks for at this point is that epistemology become transcendental. The general ground Husserl gives for this demand is the threat of scepticism, particularly that implied by scientific naturalism. 14 That it is the threat of scepticism which motivates the transcendental move in his epistemology is, of course, completely in line with the broadly Kantian background of his thought. Kant's own thought was, at least in good part, an attempt to refute Humean scepticism. In Husserl's view, the plausibility of scepticism is largely due to the fact that philosophers have neglected the study of the cognitive subject, or at least not pursued it far enough. As long as we remain in the dark with respect to the nature and being of that subject, sceptics will exploit that ignorance and, as h says, alarm us with their wild theories about it. I take it that examples of such a "wild" theory, according to Husserl, are the view that all beliefs are ultimately the effects of causes in the physical world and the view that the human being is nothing but a product of natural selection and chance. In any case, Husserl's point is that we must therefore shake off our "transcendental naivete" (Hua 8, 38). He urges that we distinguish between what is evident from a "positive" point

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of view (Evidenz der Positivitdt) and what is evident from a point of view of transcendental clarity about origins (Evidenz der transzendentalen Ursprungsklarheit) (HIM 8, 30). Even if we assume that in a specific direction a cognitive agent has done all she could and needed to do in view of the object-to-be-known, her search for truth cannot be accepted as finished without the transcendental turn. The cognitive subject, whose ability to gain knowledge has been assumed in the "positive" direction of inquiry, should now be targeted in a new inquiry, the goal of which is to secure it from sceptical attacks. What we should note here in particular is the universality of the demand. Husserl's point does not pertain to the circumstance that a given direction of inquiry is empirical in nature, although he has a great deal to say about its empirical nature and often gives the impression of being particularly concerned about the dubitability of sense perception. His point applies likewise to mathematics and logic, for they are also "positive" disciplines and therefore in need of transcendental clarification of what they take to be evident. It is the nai've directness of the inquiry (its naiv gerade Erkenntnisrichtung), the lack of selfknowledge on the part of the knowcr, that Husserl sees as calling for further criticism and demanding the transcendental turn. Any objective inquiry is vulnerable simply by virtue of being objective. One could say that it is vulnerable by virtue of its intrinsic realism about the being of its objects. As stated before, such inquiry trusts sources of knowledge that have not been examined as to their trustworthiness. The new epistemological orientation which Husserl calls for entails that it is not enough to reflect, if in the last analysis we still see ourselves as beings endowed with faculties of knowledge such as perception or reason, if at the end of the day we still hold on to the belief that we are psychological beings in the world who depend for knowledge on being affected by external objects; this is what Husserl calls the natural attitude, which is exploited in scientific naturalism or physicalism. In his reflective stance, the epistcmologist should dissociate himself from that attitude. As Husserl would have it, this means that he should stick to the direction of inquiry involved in reflection but continue it to the end, i.e., until he reaches the transcendental subject. Unlike the human knower, the transcendental subject does not see herself as an entity affected by other entities but as one who constitutes all entities. In a nutshell, dissociation from the natural attitude is the so-called transcendental-phenomenological reduction. Pursuing reflection as far as it will take us. the epistemologist gives up such presuppositions as that perception is a source of knowledge in the sense I specified earlier. Perception as a source of knowledge becomes a theme of transcendental-epistemological reflection, which, in effect, analyzes it into a complex of beliefs. It was considered as a source of knowledge, justifying beliefs about the spatiotemporal world; now it will be shown to owe its own cognitive status to beliefs about perception. The principal question for the epistemologist has now become: what are the background beliefs which constitute perception? in slightly different terms: what are the implied beliefs which make us treat perception as a source for knowledge about the external world? The epistemologist withdraws to a transcendental plane, i.e., a point of view which is not controlled by that presupposition but sees perception as embedded in a framework of beliefs that Husserll

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deline it. As we have already seen, within this framework a perception stands out by way of contrast to other modes of awareness; it is what the latter point to as their fulfilment or goal, from which they derive the justification for their claims to knowledge. In a well-known study, Eugcn Fink, a close associate of Husserl in his last years, suggested that it might be helpful in this connection to distinguish three egos. 15 Freely adapting his suggestion, it comes to this. There is, first of all, the natural ego, i.e., the cognitive agent pursuing his search for truth in a manner not affected by philosophical questions. But we also have the epistemological ego, who is the person engaged in developing a philosophical doctrine of knowledge. He is already well under way on the reflective path, but let's assume that he has not yet entirely freed himself from the natural ego's outlook, the so-called natural attitude. He has studied epistemic practices "from within" and presented something like the intention-fulfilment doctrine we examined in the previous section. But still subscribing to the natural attitude, and its tendencies toward naturalism, the epistemological ego ascribes this practice to the natural ego, which is to say, you and me in our everyday life and scientific engagements. He is still inclined to think of epistemology as a kind of psychology, a study of the inner world of the mind. As Husserl sees it, he has not yet performed the epistemologieal move par excellence, namely, the transcendental move. The knower in the natural attitude, not even aware of the possibility of any different attitude, would not come up with the idea of such a move, let alone the reasons for making it. It is the epistemologisf who conceives the idea that an individual human knower, captive to the natural attitude, is not the cognitive subject in the ultimate sense, that he is not, so to speak, alone in his confrontation with all there is to be known, that a great deal of work is actually being done for him by a cognitive subject that is not human. The epistemologist baptizes this subject: as the transcendental subject, which is therefore the third ego. As the epistemologist sees it, this is the subject to which we should, in last analysis, ascribe the achievement of knowledge. Although the epistemological ego started out with a concentration on the cognitive experience of human beings, the reflective approach transforms itself—through the previously mentioned reduction—into a way of gaining access to the transcendental subject. Having made the transcendental move, this epistemological ego (ego number two) now takes himself to be the reflective, impartial observer-reporter of the cognitive experience of the transcendental subject (ego number three), rather than that of the human being with which he began (ego number one). But: isn't this transcendental turn at the same time a big jump as well? We move from reflecting on human experience to reflecting on an experience that has an altogether different feel to it, from a cognitive experience dependent on sources of knowledge (e.g., perception) to one which is an experiencing ego for which everything known is completely its own achievement. In the latter kind of experience, there are no instances of a belief which derives its justification from what is given but only beliefs justified by other beliefs. Many of these beliefs, the transcendental epistemologist will in fact admit, are not consciously entertained by human beings; they lie, as it were, too deeply concealed. Yet he will

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insist that there are such belief's and that there is a transcendental subject who holds them. There are various ways of reacting to this question. In the previously mentioned study, Fink makes much of the fact that, since to get beyond the natural attitude we have to make use of what is available within it, we are in danger of interpreting what the transcendental attitude reveals in terms of what has all along been familiar in the natural attitude. But since the transcendental attitude is supposed to reveal precisely what was concealed by the natural attitude, problems of transcendental phenomenology are distinctive and new, rather than already familiar (Studien, 108). The problems we naturally have about knowledge, for example, should not dictate to us our understanding of ego number three. He also argues that in the natural attitude the capacity for adopting a transcendental attitude is not at all one we all know we have (Studien, no). We naturally see ourselves as capable of reflecting on our human experience, but as we just saw, transcendental reflection does not delimit its domain as human consciousness. These points are well taken, but we must not overlook the profound continuity between the two attitudes, the unity within the trinity of the three egos. If Husserl is right, we can say that the natural ego turns inward in reflection and on that path of reflection he ultimately finds the life of the transcendental ego. The transcendental standpoint is not that of external observer-critic in the sense of the epistemological externalist. The transcendental turn is a radically new departure, but it is not an altogether alien and external point of view. The transcendental subject which the epistemolegist discovers is therefore, in a sense, his own subjectivity. However much one may accentuate its difference from the natural attitude, it does not bring to bear on the latter a truth altogether alien to it, possibly even harmful and destructive. The obvious fact that human beings can become philosophers shows that by means of capacities we already have we can discover capacities perhaps hitherto unknown, as xvell as problems of which we were not aware in the natural attitude. We might say that the spirit of philosophy is already operative within us, capable of making us envisage goals we can apparently attain, for example, the goal of absolute justification, although their attainment lies beyond the scope of the natural attitude. The cognitive ideal of absolute justification confronts the human knower in the natural attitude, but he cannot attain it as long as he persists in that. And what one discovers by virtue of the transcendental turn, Husserl would say, is epistemically relevant to the natural attitude. Naivete, positivity, and dogmatism are, according to Husserl, defects shown by the natural attitude, although the latter generally does not see that. I therefore think that there must be continuity, if we are to be able to say, as apparently we must, that the one is a response to the problems affecting the other. 16 According to Husserl, then, the pursuit of knowledge, in and through criticism, brings us to the realization that we can, and should, go further and adopt a transcendental attitude. In the text under discussion and elsewhere, he argues in various ways that we should adopt a transcendental attitude. He called these arguments ways to the reduction, as they have been designated in the scholarship ever since.17 The withdrawal to the transcendental plane, then, will enable

Husserl

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the knower to become ultimately clear as to his being and to give a critique of supposed forms of knowledge that would distort and conceal it. The percipient, for example, is not an evolutionary product of nature but constituted by beliefs held by the transcendental subject. (Husserl speaks here of the latter as objectifying himself—i.e., interpreting himself—in the form of an empirical, psychological, and biological entity.) Perception, which was considered a source of knowledge justifying all other beliefs about the spatiotemporal world, will now be shown to owe its cognitive status to beliefs about perception on the part of that transcendental subject. I therefore said earlier that: transcendental consideration reduces it to a complex of beliefs. Let us consider a text in which Husserl argues for the transcendental turn on the basis of what he calls the problem of knowledge. The text is that of a few lectures he delivered in 1907, posthumously published under the title The Idea of Phenomenology.18 Historically, it is his first formulation of the famous, muchdebated doctrine of phenomenological reduction or epoche. The general argument is that there is a problem of knowledge which cannot be solved as long as it is stated in the way it usually is, namely, as a problem about the existence of an external relation between two entities, a human mind and an extramental object. True to the transcendental tradition, Husserl then reformulates the problem by moving to the transcendental plane, which eliminates that relation. As Husserl sees it, the natural attitude is in conflict with itself, because in common sense and science it assumes without question the possibility of knowledge, but as a result of reflection, which gives rise to the science of psychology, it becomes uncertain and is in danger of falling into scepticism. This reflection still shares the natural attitude and interprets cognition as a psychological experience of human beings. Human beings are entities within the world, and their experience is a process that takes place between them and their environment and is accessible to scientific explanations. More strongly still, Husserl writes, a theory such as the biological theory of evolution cannot but assume that it embodies knowledge, but the upshot of the theory itself destroys its very possibility. Our human search for knowledge thus destroys itself. He goes to considerable lengths to argue that the question of knowledge should be taken seriously, but that it is absurd to expect an answer to it from any of the positive sciences (including psychology) or, for that matter, from any other accepted source of knowledge. No causal argument will help to answer it because it would beg the question, for if we are to show that a causal, i.e, external, relation exists between subject and object, we necessarily have to assume that we have access to the object as well as the subject. If, in view of this difficulty, we abandon our initial realism with respect the world and reduce everything to mental representations, we end up with solipsism. (In later texts, he attributes this sort of reduction to Berkeley and Hume and calls it psychological idealism.) Already in the first lecture, Husserl suggests that, if we are to answer the epistemological question, we need to consider the metaphysical question of being (Hua 2, 23 [IP. 18]). In fact, his construal of the problem of knowledge and the threat of scepticism clearly shows not only that the natural attitude is realist in character but also that its concept of being is held to be in part responsible for this threat. Realism is not mentioned by name, however, because Husserl sees

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the threat as coming from its naturalistic versions, ultimately physicalistic objectivism. It is also significant that Hume receives emphatic mention in this lecture as the representative sceptic. (Descartes does not make an appearance until the second lecture.) It is the combination of realism with Hume's philosophy of mind, or something along that line, that generates the problem. The cognitive subject is a mind in possession only of representations of things, so that the question of knowledge becomes that of how that mind can know something outside itself. In other words, Husserl thinks of the external nature of the cognitive subject-object relation as consorting with a view of the mind which gives to that relation the appearance of a gulf that cannot be bridged. As already noted, the problem can be dealt with only by setting it aside or reformulating it. Although Kant has not been mentioned by name so far, can his paradigmatic reaction to Hume's scepticism be far from Husserl's mind? Husserl's commitment to a phenomenological-internalist approach to epistemology remains clear. The path of reflection must be continued. Epistemology cannot make use of knowledge external to the cognitive situation but must begin "with some cognition which it does not take unexamined from elsewhere but which it rather provides for itself and posits as primal" (Hua., 29 [IP, 22, transl. altered]). At this point, Descartes is, of course, called in to testify that what is unproblematic is the givenness of mental representations. The path of reflection, already taken by the natural attitude in the development of a psychology, is to be followed far beyond the point where psychological reflection stops, which, as we saw, leads to the transcendental turn, alternatively put, the performance of the phenomenological reduction. Psychological reflection still held on to the belief that human experience takes place within the context of the world at large, but transcendental reflection suspends that belief. Accordingly, the possibility of knowledge will be demonstrated to the sceptic by reflection on consciousness, i.e., by recourse to what is unproblematically available. Such a demonstration, Husserl says, requires that the epistcmologist see, as it were, with his own eyes— which are the eyes of reflection—what the relation is between knower and known (Hua 2, 37 [IP, 30]). The first part of the demonstration has already been accomplished by the intention-fulfilment doctrine, which I discussed previously. The doctrine was set forth in terms of modes of givenness or, if you prefer, intentions. According to that account, the quest for knowledge ends with the cognitive agent recognizing his object in what is given, for example, in sense perception. In the present section, I have tried to suggest why, in Husserl's view, that doctrine could not be the whole story, because it leaves in doubt the cognitive status or worth of selfgivenness and leaves open the question whether there are "transcendent" objects and whether we can know them. If their being is interpreted according to a realist concept of being, those objects exist quite independently of our experience, which means that the problem of knowledge, as Husserl understands it in line with the transcendental tradition, has not been settled. This problem cannot be settled as long as the realist concept of being remains uncontested; in other words, the metaphysical question of being has to be addressed. As I see it, Husserl does precisely that when he urges that we move to the transcendental plane, that is to say, perform the transcendental-phenomenological reduction. Husserl l

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Toward the end of the second lecture, Husser] argues that the problem of knowledge as formulated by means of the term "transcendent" is unclear because of the ambiguity of that term and its companion "immanent" (Hua 2, 35 [IP, 27-28]). To help matters, he distinguishes two quite different meanings that may be attached to them. In one sense of the term "transcendent," it simply designates a class of objects, namely, those existing outside consciousness. Physical objects are, in this sense, said to be transcendent because they exist in their own right outside the mind, and the relation in which they stand to the mind is external. But Husscrl suggests that there is an altogether different sense in which "transcendent" and "immanent" may be taken. In this sense, they designate modes of givenness of an object. When we use the terms in the second sense, we do not talk about an object directly, but rather about a kind of episternic situation that we may find ourselves in with regard to an object. In this second sense, it is important to note, both terms can be understood with the help of the intention-fulfilment doctrine: in terms of this doctrine, "transcendent" designates a mode of givenness: the object: is referred to all right, but it still escapes our grasp at the moment. "Immanent" likewise characterizes a mode of givenness: it means that the object is seen or given in the mode of self-givenness. In Husserl's view, the question of how knowledge is possible can be answered only in terms of modes of givenness. Assurances to the effect that there is a transcendent object external to the knower are of no use when it comes to showing how knowledge is possible. The reason that epistemological reflection, in a Cartesian spirit, can accept a mental act is not that it exists within the mind (although that is true) but that it is given in a certain manner, in an immediate seeing of what is meant. The performance of the reduction is therefore precisely the move which properly focuses the episternologist's view, namely, on subjective modes of givenness and their correlative intentional acts. During the earlier stage of reflection—the so-called natural or psychological reflection—she still shared the natural knower's belief in the existence of mind-independent objects, perhaps even adhering to scientific objectivism and holding that cognitive states are the effects of purely material causes, but with the reduction she has put all such beliefs out of action and resolutely interpreted consciousness as transcendental. The net effect of all this is the reinstatement, as it were, of the earlier doctrine, for that which had cast doubt on its scope and effectiveness—the realist concept of being—has now been set aside by the move to the transcendental plane. The problem of knowledge, as Husserl saw it, now has a solution. The question "How can a cognition be a claim about something that is not self-given?" can now be answered exclusively by appeal to modes of givenness. As the earlier doctrine had it, it is an example of an empty but fulfilment-seeking intention embedded in an implicit context or horizon of other acts we can perform. Transcendence, as the term is now understood, designates a mode of givenness in an episternic situation that is within our reach, not the existence of an object outside the mind. It is, as he sometimes puts it, a transcendence within immanence. Whether something is immanent or transcendent—alternatively, how an object is given—is a function of the totality of the experience of transcendental consciousness, which it is the task of epistemological reflection to analyze and describe. 56

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Transcendental reflection is an extension, or continuation, of natural or psychological reflection. Because of this starting point, it may create the impression of being a narrowing of our focus, an abstraction from a whole for the sake of concentrating on a part. But if we have carefully noted the metaphysical transaction implied by the transcendental reduction, we can appreciate why this is not at all the way Husserl wants us to interpret it. He claims that by turning away from the natural attitude we do not lose anything and gain the whole of absolute being (Hua 3/1,107 [ID T, 113]). All we got rid of is what he regards as the mistaken realist view that the object is independent of the subject. To rephrase this in terms of his critique of scientific objectivism, we have destroyed the view that the real world is the imperceptible material world of mathematical physics. His view is that transcendental reflection gives access to the real being of things, inasmuch as their being consists in their being constituted in transcendental consciousness. What we attain by adopting the transcendental attitude is not something second best but the real thing in its true being, or, as he puts it in his Formal and Transcendental Logic, "Everything outside is what it is within this inside and has its true being in the self-presentations and confirmations within this inside" (Hua 17, 257 [FTL, 250]). Such language presupposes the rejection of metaphysical realism. Given his anti-realist, transcendentalidealist interpretation of being, statements to the effect that we have not lost anything are quite in order. Let us look at this a bit more closely. Because the transcendental epistemologisf turns away from the natural attitude and adopts the standpoint of reflection, one is inclined to say that her peculiar object is a meaning or a construct of meaning (Sinn or Noema, Sinngebilde), rather than the object simply as such, the Gegenstand schkchthin, that she speaks of intentional rather than real objects. Such vocabulary reflects the natural attitude. It aptly expresses the impression initially created by the fact that phenornenological reflection begins as a psychological reflection, which in the natural attitude we understand as a turning away from objects to our consciousness of them. The person engaged in such reflection thinks that now she has only consciousness of the world left, which she accordingly interprets as being no more than a representation of the world in its real and true being. The latter, she probably assumes, is the subject matter of the natural sciences, not of phenomenology. Such an interpretation implies that, although she has turned away from the world, the latter still exists by itself, constituting perhaps the subject matter of physics. But it should be noted that, as long as an episternologist thinks in this way, the problem of knowledge has not gone away. If one still holds on to that realist metaphysics, but at the same time suspects the ability of the human consciousness to grasp something other than itself, as did Descartes, Hume, and even Kant, the problem of knowledge persists. The question remains: How can we bring being and consciousness together into the kind of unitary context typically sought by transcendental reflection? In Husserl's view of the matter, both ideas have to be modified. Human consciousness has to be abandoned in favour of absolute consciousness, and being has to be conceived of as internal to the latter. Both modifications are accomplished by the ascent to the transcendental plane, if we interpret it in Husserl's Husserl l

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sense. What happens with this ascent? The person engaged in reflection, i.e., the epistemologist, dissociates herself from her earlier conception; she performs the transcendental-phenomenological reduction or epoche. She now takes herself to be reflecting on the experience of the transcendental subject, absolute consciousness. But as we saw. this change of view would not help with the alleged problem of knowledge, if she did not also play her ontological card at the same time, i.e., if she did not address the question of being. The consciousness of the transcendental subject, which she now says is to be her subject matter, is not externally related to the being of things. As Husserl puts it, the latter is "constituted" in that consciousness. It will be recalled that when I first introduced phenomenology in chapter I, I introduced it as using the vocabulary of meanings in order to signify its subject matter. We now see that the epistemologist's admission that she deals directly only with meanings (noemata, modes of givenness, appearances, etc.) is a selfinterpretation forced on her by her latent metaphysical realism. It looked like a self-limitation, but once we consciously reject realism, its sense will have to undergo a radical reinterpretation. We now have to understand if as actually being a claim to the effect that she speaks of the very being of things. Things simply are their meaning for transcendental consciousness, If she earlier said that she could speak only of consciousness, she was the victim of the realist view that being is independent of the knowing mind. Now that she has ascended to the transcendental plane, she realizes that she spoke the dialect of the prephilosophical herd, to which the philosophical realist also belongs. What she earlier designated as meaning and ascribed to a human consciousness—which has no objects unless they are given to it, as it were, from outside—, she now ascribes to a transcendental subject, for which no objects are so given. For the latter, an object is constituted in consciousness. What a person in the natural attitude believes or says about being—that it is independent, or something to that effect—is a mistake due to ignorance of the transcendental dimension of knowledge. What such a person in her epistemic practice appeals to as sources of knowledge (perception, memory, introspection, reason) are not natural faculties of knowledge. Knowledge drawn from them seems to such a person to be a matter of receptivity, or even passivity, but transcendental critique shows that those faculties are constituted by transcendental beliefs. Perception, as already rioted a number of times, is constituted by a complex of beliefs. Whose beliefs? Those of transcendental consciousness. The beliefs we ordinarily ascribe to a percipient get their justification or cognitive status from perception and other sources of knowledge. But such a percipient does not constitute the faculty of perception; on the contrary, she depends on it and the other faculties she makes use of. The beliefs that constitute perception itself are to be ascribed to transcendental consciousness. Since Kant, the term "realism" has been used as a designation of a standpoint or attitude that is compatible with transcendental idealism. Kant himself called it empirical realism. Not only is it compatible with transcendental idealism but also one can say that it is justified by it. In fact, if we take into account that Kant's idealism is introduced to explain, among other things, the possibility of objective knowledge, one could perhaps say that transcendental idealism is in-

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troduced precisely to safeguard the realism which is a natural ingredient of objective, nonphilosophical knowledge. Whether the realism that emerges from the transcendental treatment is to be equated with classical realism is controversial in the highest degree, as I have suggested in the preceding chapter. Husserl's attitude to realism is very similar. One may say that he defends realism against, for example, the subjectivist views that in perception we apprehend only sensations, and that the apprehension of objects can be based only on inference. Husserl counters such views by stating the obvious: we hear the bird's song, not acoustic sensations. And it is equally clear that perception is not a matter of having a sign or image representing something else. In perception, the object is clearly taken to be distinct from the experience directed upon it. We see a distant object where it is, which is not where we are. The object of perception is not a constituent of our mental perceiving of it, but, as he says, transcendent in relation to it, i.e., apprehended in a perceiving but never exhausted by it. This realist flavour of his account, however, should not mislead us. 1 " Husserl did not see himself as denying realism in the way Berkeley and Hume denied it. He characterizes their position as psychological idealism because it declares the world to be an idea of the psychological subject. This is the idealism he wants us to regard as the opponent of realism. As he then goes on to point out, the battle between them is fought "auf dem natiirlichen Boden." But he assures us that his own transcendental idealism does not engage in a struggle with realism (Hua I, 118 [CM, 86]). He assures us that he himself does not deny the real existence of the world (Hua 5, 152-54). More strongly yet, he writes that genuine transcendental philosophy would not dream of contesting the world of experience or of taking away from it any of the meaning (Sinn) which it really has in the actuality of experience. It is not a "Philosophic des Als ob." The independent being (An-sich-Seiri) of the world is an undoubted fact (Hua 7, 246-48). He adds very significantly, however, that transcendental philosophy does reserve for itself the right to say what all that really means. As I put it in the previous chapter, it is a realism within the bounds of a transcendental philosophy. Using the idea of framework, let us put it this way. Realism is an internal feature of the framework of the natural attitude in general. As Hegel, for example, had already pointed out, natural consciousness distinguishes its object from itself. The integrity of this realism must be respected, which Berkeley and Hume allegedly failed to do. The framework in which such a distinction is made, however, is not ultimate; the self-interpretation of the natural cognizer is not the last word on knowledge and being. It needs to be reinterpreted transcendentally, namely, as itself constituted by absolute consciousness. The ordinary realist's understanding of himself, according to Husserl, needs to be scrutinized within the wider framework of a transcendental vantage point (Hua 6, 190-91 [C, 187]). It turns out that the realist has gone wrong because he has forgotten the origins or roots of his realist framework. 20 Because of my emphasis on the influence of Kant, I should call attention to an important difference between Husserl and Kant. Husserl does not view transcendental consciousness as limiting its constitutive activity to, say, a priori forms, leaving out a posteriori content. For him, there is no thing-in-itself which Husserl

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gets its form, but not its content, from the transcendental concepts of reason. If Kant's talk about a thing-in-itself makes him a realist, as has sometimes been alleged by idealists, there is no realism of that kind in Husserl. 21 Whatever may be the meaning of "constitution," it certainly implies the denial that transcendental subjectivity is, in any respect, a receptive consciousness. To wind up this discussion of Husserl's general doctrine of knowledge, it has now become clear to us that knowledge, as he would define it, requires that all claims or beliefs about objects be based on their being evident to us, but it also requires that it be evident to us that the cognitive capacities employed are trustworthy or reliable. As Husserl puts it, absolute justification comprises two sides (Hua 8, 31). Knowledge so conceived is, of course, an achievement through criticism; all legitimate criticism or scepticism has to be faced. In fact, such knowledge is not so much a possible possession as an object of an unending search. In an optimal situation, however, the knower, according to Husserl, must be able to defend his or her claim as follows. When I see something as I do now and keep this fact before my mind. I simply cannot conceive the possibility that what I see might not exist or that it might be different from what I see it to be. If I try to negate, or generate doubts about, what I hold with regard to an object, it becomes immediately altogether evident to me that its nonexistence or its being doubtful is impossible. I cannot imagine that doubt might be warranted in the present situation. Neither can I imagine that the object's being or so-being might be merely possible (in the sense that something could also be said on the opposite side). I cannot conceive the possibility that it might subsequently turn out that what I now see did not exist. Such things are, to be sure, conceivable in one sense, for I can acknowledge the nonexistence of the object or state of affairs as an evident possibility. But I can admit this only if at the same time I do not take into account the fact that I am now seeing it: the way I do. In this latter case, I do not, of course, call my present situation into question, since ex hypothesi I ignore it or assume that I do not find myself in it. 22 This completes Husserl's definition of the nature of knowledge, which is, in actual fact, a definition of the ideal that governs the search for knowledge. What is described as the optimal situation is the goal which keeps that search alive and makes it meaningful. It remains the standard in the light of which even our best attainments, even those of transcendental-phenomenological philosophy itself, are to be evaluated. It is, of course, not attained by the mere performance of the transcendental-phenomenological reduction. The idea of it, however, can be extrapolated from our cognitive practice and set forth in clear and compelling terms, which is exactly what Husserl claims to have done in the theory I have expounded.

Epistemology of Perception We have already discussed this topic on several occasions, because Husserl stated his general theory of knowledge largely in terms of perception. The search for knowledge was illustrated by the search to apprehend an object perceptually. 60

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Much material of great interest, however, remains to be discussed. Let us begin with a terminological point. Husserl frequently designates the world of sensible, spatiotemporal particulars as the real world, using the German word "real." In a similar vein, he talks about real objects, in contrast to the ideal or irreal objects, such as mathematical or abstract objects. "Reality" (Realitdt) accordingly means a domain of entities. In an epistemological discussion, however, the noun "reality" and the adjective "real" obviously mean something quite different. In such a discussion, we want to be able to say that something really exists, when we mean that its existence is not merely apparent, conjectured, or fictional. We want to be able to speak of something existing in truth and reality, not: just in somebody's mind. The entity in question might not be real in the sense of being a perceptible object or event; it might be a mathematical state of affairs, but we may nonetheless want to say that it does really or truly exist, that it is not simply a case of something somebody imagines. When he had to formulate such an epistemological matter, he used a range of Germanic words such as wirklich, wirklich seiend, or wahre Wirklichkeit, which the English language renders with the use of "real" and "reality." In my discussion, I shall generally use the term "real" as a translation of wirklich rather than real. Husserl's best-known affirmation on the subject of perception is that it is a seeing of the object "in the flesh" (kibhaftig), an expression clearly designed to mark perceiving as a cognitive achievement. A belief with respect to a really existing object is here based on a mode of givenness which, in contrast to inferior modes, is that of self-givenness. The belief is thus justified, for in the terms used in my earlier discussion, the percipient seeker for truth has, in a certain sense, done all she could be expected to do. Beliefs about objects of a material sort cannot be better verified than by perception. In perceiving something, the believer is convinced that she has come into contact with what is not another belief or contrivance (e.g., a mental representation or image) but the existence of the object specified in the content of that belief. The perceiver takes it that here the object-to-be-known presents itself. The sense of achievement is, in fact, so strong that to express it in the third person, as one of course does in a philosophical or phenomenological discussion of it, seems to detract from it. If I say, mindful of the fact that it is only a matter of the iritentionality of an act, that a certain person takes the object to be there, I seem to detract from the sense of achievement intrinsic to that person's own, first-person perceiving, for that person does not have the sense that there is anything hypothetical or iffy about it. Recognition of something as self-given is the conviction or belief that we perceive or, in the broad sense of the term, see the object or state of affairs in its real or true being. Rephrasing this from a strictly transcendental point of view, we would have to say that this conviction is a high-level belief to the effect that any belief formed in a perceptual situation counts as giving information, but in the framework of the ordinary percipient it means that one is in touch with a spatiotemporal entity that is real in the sense of not being either an inference drawn from earlier beliefs or in some other way a product of a belief. This is what I think Husserl was getting at, when he spoke of the object as being present "in the flesh" ( (leibhaftig). Husserll

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But, as Husserl hardly ever fails to add at once, the percipient knows that there is more to a material object than can be perceived in a single perception. Such an object not only has spatial parts but also has causal properties not manifest in a given perception. In fact, such an object serves as Husserl's paradigm of an object that is "transcendent," taking this term in the sense stipulated by Husserl, namely, as indicative of a mode of givenness. A perceptual belief goes beyond what is immanent (taking this term in the same way) to encompass the object also in regard to what is actually not perceived and even relatively unfamiliar. In Logical Investigations, we read that perception presents its object in one stroke (in einem Schlage), but it takes the form of a temporal process of perceiving a material object from various points of view (Hua 19/2, 673-81 [LI, 786-92]). As he further explicates this, what is actually perceived (in the cognitive achievement sense) in any single perception of an object is surrounded by interpretative intentions directed upon the parts of the object that are not so perceived. What is actually fulfilled in a perception is therefore accompanied by as yet unfulfilled intentions. Nevertheless, according to the percipient, what really exists is the object: as a whole, not just the part that is actually perceived (Hua 3/1, 319 [ID I, 331]). To put it somewhat dramatically, the percipient does not wait for atomic bits of information to come in to synthesize them in a subsequent act." This means that sense perception is essentially fallible. Although a perceptual belief that there is a cat in front of me is rational or justified by seeing such an animal a few feet away, the justified belief is defeasible. Since what is taken to be given is the cat, not the mode in which it appears at the time of a particular perception, and since that cat is a unity in which different modes of givenness are to come harmoniously together, it; is possible that doubt might arise, if, in reaching out, I do not feel the furry animal. And if all further perceptions speak against there being a cat, the original belief is abandoned. A justified perceptual belief may thus be defeated or outweighed, when subsequent perceptions cannot be harmonized with it. What was co-intended in the earlier perception with respect to the cat: may be disappointed rather than fulfilled. It also means that beliefs can be strengthened by the fact that they are coherent. As Husserl says, a rational positing gains weight when it is constantly confirmed by later perceptions (Hua 3/1, § 138). In the terms of his epistemology, the justification which a belief already has from a perception can increase as I acquire new perceptual beliefs that support the earlier one. This is not a contingent circumstance of our perceptual capacities that might conceivably be overcome. It might be said that our perspectival perceptions do not really have access to a material object itself, that we have only an image or sign of the latter, but that there might be a different and superior cognitive access to material objects, for example, one which God has. In § 43 of the Ideas, Husserl brands such a view as an error of principle. It belongs to the essence of material objects to be so given. "Not merely for human beings but also for God" material objects can be known only through appearances (Hua 3/1, 351 [ID I, 362]). If we somehow acquired radically different powers of sense perception, then we would no longer experience what we now call material objects. In other words, the distinctive manner in which material objects are given is to be taken as 62

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definitive of their very being. In a nutshell, perspectival perception and material objects belong together in one conceptual framework. Husserl offers in this connection a remarkable criticism of Descartes (Hua 17, 288 [FTL, 282]). The Cartesian critique of sense experience, he says, led to a complete rejection of it because of the heavy emphasis placed on its deficiencies. Descartes made so much of the possibility of error and the shortcomings of any perception taken in isolation that he lost sight of the fact that perception is experience in the sense that in perception spatiotemporal objects do give themselves. Descartes failed to ask how we should think of such entities and assumed from the outset that they possess absolute being, a being which, Husserl comments ironically, floats high above the clouds of our cognitive enterprise. An intentional analysis of the stream of our sense experience would have shown Descartes how the world of experience is constituted. It is a being which is always subject to correction; the world as we think of it exists as a presumption justified in relation to our sense experience. It is a world the meaning of whose being comprises an essential relativity. Blindness for the distinctive self-giving role of perception results in a need being felt for inferential argument. He says that all "transcendental-realist theories" undertake to infer an extramental world from an immanent domain of inner experience. Descartes, for instance, had to resort to hypotheses and arguments for the veracity of God to get rid of that relativity and to snatch, as Husserl put it, "the phantom of a transcendent being an sich." He therefore argues that we should see the fallibility of perception, not as a defect, but as constitutive of the nature of its object. The supreme principle of Husserl's epistemology, we heard, is that every case of self-givenness justifies a claim to knowledge, it being understood that the claim in question does not extend its scope beyond the limits of the self-given. What is given must be adequate to what is claimed, for the claim derives its justification or reasonableness (Vernunftcharakter) solely from self-givenness (Ideas, § 136). In perceptions of material objects, however, there is inadequacy because perceptual beliefs are epistemically transcendent: they extend their scope beyond selfgivenness. Fallible perception nonetheless gives us the right to believe, as long as we continue to have perceptual experiences. More strongly put, it would be utterly unreasonable not to do so. Or, as Husserl also puts it, it is an apodictic impossibility to believe that something does not exist while we have a coherent perceptual experience of it (Hua 3 [1950], log). 24 That a situation in which a claim is made allows for the possibility that doubt should arise does not mean that there is now already a legitimate ground for doubt. In fact, doubt could not conceivably arise, if we did not continue to adhere to the principle that perception in general is a justifying ground for belief. For doubt to arise, we have to perceive things which are incompatible with earlier perceptions but which we take to be really perceived. The fallibility of a given perception therefore does not endanger the cognitive worth of perception in general. The point can be made more clearly if we recall what Husserl said about the possibility of cognitive disappointment of an intention in Logical Investigations. We can discover the error of a particular belief—more generally, observe that something is absent—provided that we know the circumstances in which we would see it, if it were there. That means that we accept as undoubtedly existing Husserl l

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the context to which the belief, implicitly or explicitly, refers. If somebody says, "The maple trees on Fairview Avenue are all diseased," it is usually clear from the context where we have to go to find out whether this is true or false. That person may be wrong about the maples, but, if we do not take her to be partly right we will never find out that she was, There are maples on Fairview Avenue; if not, there is at least a street with that name. And as we go to it, we generally recognize it as being the one where the trees were said to be diseased. The same account holds for fallible perceptions, f must be able to walk to a different point of view, namely, the place where I should be able to perceive again the same object, if the given perception is veridical. Here, too, 1 accept as given, and as undoubtedly what it is believed to be, the environment in which the object may be expected to be visible. When [ get there and do not see it, I am convinced that the circumstances are such that I would see the object if it were there. In general, then, discovery of error and the correction and change of belief are possible only by accepting a great many other beliefs as true. If the object of a belief is not where if was claimed to be or if it is different from what was believed—if there is disappointment rather than fulfilment—we fill in the gap, so to speak, with what we find there instead. We thus correct our belief and restore, for the time being, the harmony of our world (cf. Hua 8, 4647). As f pointed out, this implies that an intentional act, in this case a belief with respect to a perceptual object or state of affairs, "co-intends" the location in the world of that object or state of affairs. Husserl calls this aspect of the belief its horizon or Mitmeinimg, an idea already familiar to us from earlier in this chapter. Therefore, although a particular belief may be an error of some sort, we are not trapped in our error as long as we hold on to the supporting belief that there is a context or world which remains sufficiently constant to examine the belief in question. Whenever we find a belief to be in error, we come to it, as it were, from a wider context of accepted belief. Thus any discovered error, no matter how extensive, presupposes what Husserl later called world-belief, which is the assumption that the structure of experience, by virtue of which percipients attain truth in and through doubt and error, will remain. This world-belief is unshakable simply because it is presupposed in every discovery of error (Hua 8, 54). In that sense, the world cannot itself be discovered to be nothing but a drearn. Even if large portions of what we now take to be the world were to turn out to be completely illusory, we believe that we could still establish what the world is really like: there is a world out there that can be further explored to resolve our doubts, however extensive these might: be. This can, of course, also be stated by saying simply that we continue to trust our general capacity to perceive. A belief in the real existence of the world beyond errors is unshakable from the percipient's point of view because to doubt that the world exists is tantamount to doubting whether she herself exists as a percipient being capable of finding truth beyond error. Within the perceptual framework, there is no place for a doubt about that perceptual capacity because it is constitutive of the framework as such. As Husserl himself usually puts it, as long as this structure of perceptual experience continues, the percipient is necessarily certain of the real existence of the world. In the lectures on First 64

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Philosophy, he states emphatically that "nothing speaks for the non-existence of the world and everything speaks for its existence" (Hua 8, 54). All this, however, is no more than an expression of the perceiving subject's point of view; the certainty about there being a real world is constitutive of the percipient's framework and, more strongly still, of the letter's status as percipient. The latter cannot give up this certainty without also losing in her own eyes her status as truth seeker. But Husserl thought that this framework had to be secured against scientific naturalism and other externalist-sceptical attacks. Earlier discussion showed that, according to his epistemology, the basic vulnerability of perception, as of other cognitive acts, lies1 in its failure to examine the cognitive agent. This one-sidedness is to be overcome by the phenomenologist, who asks the perceiver how she arrived at making claims about independently existing objects. What convictions or beliefs support her certainty that in perception she is in touch with material objects? (Alternatively stated, what is the sense of her realism with regard to such objects?) The latter can give part of the answer by becoming more reflective about herself. I take it that, according to Husserl, the phenomenological doctrine about intentions and their fulfilments that he presented in Logical investigations is essentially a formulation of the kind of answer the perceiver would be able to give. But there comes a point where the percipient rests her case. In everything she says to satisfy the epistemologist's questions as to how perception is possible, or what it is like to perceive, she takes for granted the basic capacities and the contexts (or frameworks) in which they can be exercised. Her confidence to be able to overcome possible errors, for example, is due to her ever-present awareness of horizons, in particular, the world as co-intended in her beliefs. We noted that, in explaining her capacity to get beyond linguistic expressions and appearances to grasp a material object in its real being, she assumes that the general structure of her experience will continue to be as she has described it. Yes, she can know on the basis of perception what things are really like, if that assumption continues to be confirmed, i/ she continues to be able to recognize an object as the same, or, at any rate, correct her mistakes and restore the coherence of her world. From Husserl's epistemological perspective, the assumption remains to be examined. It should already be clear that the assumption cannot have an empirical basis because it underlies all empirical inquiry. In relation to all such inquiry, it is a priori, a feature of the conceptual framework underlying such inquiry; it cannot be revised on the basis of the results of such inquiry. That perception can give us knowledge cannot be counted as just another matter of fact because it is constitutive of the framework. Is it then a priori in an absolute sense? The phenomenological epistemologisf turns his attention from the perceiving to the transcendental subject to let the latter, as it were, pronounce on that fundamental assumption which makes percipience a source of knowledge. That is to say, he brings in a framework wider than that of perceptual consciousness but nonetheless comprehending the latter. We accordingly find in Husserl's oeuvre many statements to the effect that the givenness of the world in chains of coherent perceptions does not exclude its nonexistence. Perceptual experience can break up into radical incoherence.

Husserl,

GK

This is not the perceiver reflectively speaking about herself, but it implies a point of view outside the framework of perception, namely, the transcendental point of view. In a merely natural, psychological reflection, a transcendental subject has not yet been identified, but according to Husserl there is a sense in which the perceiver can attain a transcendental point of view. She can take distance with respect to herself and speak about perception from that external standpoint. Husser] often speaks as though the percipient, while still enjoying a generally coherent perceptual experience, can envisage the dissolution of her perceptual experience into a chaos of appearances (e.g., Hua 3, § 46; 8, 53). Or he will say that this is a possibility left open by experience. But when he does, he usually also warns his readers that the belief in the existence of a real world beyond error and mere appearance does not have room for even the slightest suggestion to the contrary, and that the possibility is not one the percipient envisages on the strength of available evidence. The annihilation of the world, mentioned in § 49 of the Ideas, is not a foreseeable or empirically possible catastrophe that we should reckon with. In fact, nothing empirical speaks in favour of the nonexistence of the world (Hua 8, 54). Empirically speaking, the existence of the world is indubitable, because in the face of a generally harmonious experience it is apodictically impossible to believe in the nonexistence of things and the world as a whole. Then again, neither can we empirically demonstrate the existence of an ordered world, since the necessary data are never all in (Hua 3 [195°]. 109). And unless we abandon the empirical stance and resort to construing future data in conformity with our beliefs, for all we know, future data might be utterly chaotic, recalcitrant to any reasonable interpretation. The possibility of nonexistence really exists, but we can see it only from a transcendental point of view. We are told that neither the existence nor the nonexistence of the world is absolutely evident; what is so evident is the possibility of either alternative. But to repeat, it is evident, not to the percipient as such but to the transcendental ego, who can see the possible nonexistence, inasmuch as that ego can see that sense experience can be such that every experiential certainty is repudiated, rather than confirmed, by new experiences. That ego can conceive a course of experience in which it is impossible to hold on to a unity of an experienced world. But that ego can, of course, also see that the structure of my actual experience might, in fact, remain unchanged: although certain things turn out to be mere appearances, in the long run, a unity without change is established (Hua 7, 336-37). It is apparent that we are not to understand this as an affirmation of the traditional metaphysical view regarding contingency of the world, as if Husserl meant to say that, while it is a fact that the world exists, it might not have existed. Husserl calls it an epistemic contingency (Erkenntniskontinge.nz), which he explains as follows: a generally harmonious experience of the world never excludes its nonexistence (Hua 8, 50). Our perceptual certainty with regard to the existence of the world is compatible with the statement that the world is a pure nothing or a transcendental deception (Schein). Neither should Husserl's point be confused with a realist affirmation to the effect that, since the being of entities is independent of the knower, it is logically possible that we might not 66

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have any knowledge whatever. The possibility of such an affirmation has already been eliminated by the transcendental turn and the rejection of metaphysical realism it entails. But what, then, is the being of the world according to transcendental consciousness? As we saw, the epistemologist cannot evade that question. He will begin by acknowledging the percipient's realism as altogether reasonable from such a person's point of view. Given that person's assumption that experience will continue to be as it now is, constantly confirming the belief in a real world beyond appearance and error, the world can indeed be said to exist. In his phenomenological descriptions, the epistemologist will acknowledge that this is so, but this must not be taken to indicate that he endorses its realism from his own standpoint. Speaking from the point of view of absolute consciousness, the epistemologist himself can assert only that the world exists, while adding an important qualification. His complete answer is this: the world exists as the correlate of a consciousness that has the specific structure actually displayed in our perceptual experience of the world. In Ideas, we read that its being or reality (WirkHchkeit) is only "presumptive" (Hua 3/1, § 46). A few pages later, he affirms that the entire spatiotemporal world has only intentional being, in the sense that it has only the secondary, relative kind of being which is typical of a "being for a consciousness." Its being, according to Husserl, is posited by consciousness. The idea that an entity might possess this being also outside consciousness is roundly declared to be absurd: The whole spatio-temporal world in which man and the human ego claim to belong as subordinate singular realities, is according to its own meaning (Sinn) mere intentional being, a being, therefore, which has the merely secondary, relative sense of a being for a consciousness. It is a being which consciousness in its own experiences posits, and is, in principle, intuitable and determinable only as the element common to manifolds of motivated experiences, but over and beyond this it is just nothing at all. (Hua 3/1, 106 (ID I, H2) 2 5 One can give a paradoxical twist to this and say that the absolute being of the world is its being relative to a specific form of consciousness. Moreover, in the terms of Husserl's general theory of knowledge, this statement is evident, indeed, completely justified. Empirical statements have a scope such that they are never fully justified: the real world always extends beyond what we see of it. The transcendental epistemologist, however, does not directly address entities in the empirical world. From a point of view outside the actual world, he speaks of structures and meanings. In perceptual experience, complete givenness is sought but never attained. It is rather an Idea in the Kantian sense: something which it makes sense to continue to seek but which is, by nature, unattainable. Only the Idea as an essence can be clearly and completely given, because it is accessible to the transcendental subject. The search for empirical knowledge is motivated by a realist conviction: the world to be known is surely there, even if we know it only incompletely and in a fallible manner. This conviction, according to Husserl, is a reasonable one, given the fact that the truth seeker makes the assumption that our ability to rise above appearance and error cannot be frustrated by any possible course of Husserll

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experience. We are not aware of that assumption, which makes for the "positivity" of empirical claims to knowledge. But Husserl's theory of knowledge requires that the search for knowledge should not merely assume the reliability of certain given capacities for knowledge—in this case, perception—but become reflective. And the demand for reflection, as we have seen, eventually leads to transcendental-phenomcnological epochs. The realism of perception, then, is due to its one-sidedness, its failure to inquire into its own transcendental conditions. Only by being complemented and corrected by the transcendental view can it be elevated to the status of real knowledge.

Knowledge of Essences Experience in the customary sense posits what is individual—i.e., what exists at a particular time in a particular place—but what is so posited has a content (Realitcitsgehalt) which could exist at another time in another place, where it might characterize a numerically different individual. In other words, the object of experience is the factual exemplification of a conceptual content that could have other exemplifications. Everything actually existent—i.e., existing in the mode of individuality or factuality—has a whatness of which the existent is an actual case or exemplification. In ordinary sense experience, cognitive interest tends to be focused on the individual, but Husserl holds that it can be focused on that whatness, which thus becomes an object of a distinctive cognitive inquiry, namely, the desire to see it in the sense Husserl's general theory of knowledge has specified. This whatness may be taken as comprising only an abstract or general property of an individual existent, for example, tone, colour, shape, or size. But we can also conceive a whatness that is nothing short of the "full concretion" of an existent individual. The latter is then the one and only exemplification of that whatness, but it is for all that to be distinguished from it, inasmuch as that same concrete essence might be exemplified in some world other than this actual one. When things undergo change, they do so by exchanging whatnesses; when in spite of change they remain essentially the same, they last by virtue of exemplifying the same whatness or character throughout. In the former case, the individual thing possesses whatnesses due to circumstances (accidentally, as Aristotle said); in the latter, essentially—i.e., regardless of circumstances. This is how Husserl began his discussion of essences in paragraph two of Ideas I. He spoke of essences, rather than whatnesses or properties; he also frequently used Plato's Greek word eidos, from which he formed the adjective "eidetic." In distinctively Husserlian language, that red is a colour and justice a virtue are two eidetic states of affairs. Redness and justice are essences, i.e., objects about which we can gain knowledge. While other philosophers use in this connection the term "concept," speaking of propositions that can be seen to be true by virtue of the concepts involved, Husserl generally avoids such terminology for fear of psychologism. He also did not speak of seeing something to be true by virtue of the meanings of the words involved because, according to his theory of knowledge, when we see a statement or proposition to be true, 68

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our minds are directed upon eidetic states of affairs rather than the words used or their meanings (Hua 17, 65-66 [FTL 60-61]). In the following exposition, I shall nonetheless make use of some of this alternative vocabulary, including the term "universal." According to Husserl, essences are objects, just as individual entities are objects. When we talk about individuals, we understand them as having certain properties, but as already noted, Husserl's distinctive doctrine is that we can likewise talk about properties as such, or concepts as such, although such talk implies what one might call a shift of cognitive interest. Talking about a property as such is to ignore the empirical question of whether there exist individual things exemplifying it. We can in fact come to know certain things that are true of properties, even if no actual individuals exist that have them. Similarly, when we talk about a concept as such, we may not at all be concerned about whether there actually are things that may be subsumed under that concept. Essences (Husserl's preferred term) are to be recognized as objects because, as he says, we recognize truths that pertain to them as such, propositions that remain true wherever or whenever they are exemplified, if exemplified at all (Hua 19/1, 106, 124-25 [LI, 330, 348-49]). Therefore, if statements about essences are true, they are necessarily true, unlike those whose truth depends on contingent matters of fact. Traditional philosophy spoke here of truths of reason or a priori truths. They were considered truths of reason because it was thought that we gain such truths from a source other than sense perception. That they are a priori means that we do not apprehend them as a result of empirical knowledge. We have already seen that Husserl's epistemology has no difficulty accommodating such objects. He interpreted the epistemic situation of something's being evident to someone, and thus being justifiably believable, in a functional way. The evident was thus characterized in terms of the role it plays in a given context or framework of experience. In each context, there are cognitive situations which perform the role of justifying beliefs or statements about the objects that belong to it and modes of criticizing them. In the framework of spatiotemporal particulars, justification is typically found in perceptions; in that of essences, however, the role of justifying belief is performed by a nonsensuous awareness. Given his general theory of knowledge and the obviously technical use of the term, it is perfectly in order to talk about seeing essences. But already in the second of the Logical Investigations, he warns his readers that he does not want to be taken as one who embraces a Platonic realism with regard to so-called ideal objects (Hua 19/1, 127 [LI, 350]). The mistakes of such a view, he notes, have been pointed out long ago, so that it calls for no further consideration. In view of the importance I have given to the position of realism, this passage cannot be overlooked, as it often is when his antipsychologism is taken to be tantamount to Platonism. 26 But as we will see, the fact that essences or universals are not mental in nature does not entail that they exist independently of the mind. Husserl certainly held the view that universality or generality is an irreducible feature of experience. But the fact that we subsume particulars under general concepts does not reflect, as Plato thought, a reality where particulars participate in Forms altogether independently of a mind. Because the latter held this view, he is considered a realist with respect to universals. From Husserl

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a point of view such as his, to call something a horse amounts to the recognition that that particular participates in the Form called horseness. While a locution such as "subsuming something under a concept" suggests that we do something to it, namely, that we classify it, a realist would claim that the locution is, to that extent, misleading. It would be better to speak of "recognizing something as falling under a concept," for he would hold that applying the concept is simply a matter of getting in touch with an entity which in its individual existence exemplifies the property of being a horse, or exists as a member of the kind Horse. To be sure, Husserl uses Platonic terminology, in particular the term eidos, and he does on occasion speak of particulars participating in an eidos. But this should not cause us to overlook the fundamental difference in the position of the two philosophers. As Husserl puts it in his Experience and Judgment: Despite all the Platonic turns of phrase by which we have described its relation to the particular, the ideality of the universal must not: be understood as if it were a question here of a being-in-itself devoid of reference to any subject. On the contrary, like all objectivities of understanding, it refers essentially to the processes of productive spontaneity which belong to it correlatively and in which it comes to original givenness. The being of the universal in its different levels is essentially a being-constituted in these processes. (397 [EJ, 33o]) 27 This passage clearly reflects the transcendental position which we examined earlier. The idea of production entails that essences or universals would not exist, if absolute consciousness did not exist. According to Husserl, then, using concepts is not an activity of grasping entities which in their very own existence already exemplify properties and belong to species or kinds, but rather of creating such a reality. He would have it that using concepts is like constituting new objects. We create (schopfen) essences out of what is individual (Hua 17, 220 [FTL, 212]). They would not exist if mental activities did not create them. 28 In spite of appearances, Husserl's position is closer to that of Kant. It is noteworthy that the Kantian distinction between receptivity and spontaneity or activity is found throughout the work from which I just quoted, a work which is specially devoted to the genealogy of ideal objects. 29 Forms or conceptual unities (using Kantian rather than Husserlian language) are introduced into experience by the mind. The passage just cited is from a text of the later Husserl, 30 but it should be borne in mind that his well-known argument against the nominalism of the British empiricists in the second of his Logical Investigations has a rather conceptualist conclusion, namely, that universality is to be recognized as an irreducible feature of our experience. He argues, as Kant also did, that there is no experience of objects without conceptualization. But that does not mean that there is a reality an sich corresponding to our conceptualization. What gives Husserl's doctrine a realist tone is his vigorous defence of the thesis that universals or essences are objects. To identify them with the mental activities to which they owe their existence would be psychologism (Hua 19/2, 665-70 [LI, 780-84]), a view he espoused in his early Philosophy of Arithmetic. Neither a state of affairs (Sachverhalt) nor a judgment (in the objective, logical 70

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sense of proposition) is the same thing as the predicative act of subsuming objects under concepts. To apprehend a state of affairs as such, he writes, we need not reflect on this predicative act. Husserl's talk of seeing essences themselves and of beliefs that are justified by their givenness is, of course, a strong invitation to a realist interpretation, but in the preceding chapter I have already suggested reasons to decline it. It is clear that the doctrine that essences are objects is altogether compatible with Husserl's transcendentalism. When he wrote Logical Investigations, this transcendentalism had not yet been explicitly formulated, but from the first book of Ideas we can see that both are represented side by side. His view with regard to essences merely amounts to saying that there are contexts of thought or conceptual frameworks in which essences function as objects, just as there are conceptual frameworks in which individuals function as objects of our predominant interest. Although frameworks or object domains are distinct from one another, according to Husserl, they are also related. Within the total context of experience, one framework arises from another; in his technical language, one is founded upon another. What gives rise to a new and distinctive domain is the ever-present power of objectification. Thus sense particulars are transformed into states of affairs. And by a shift of cognitive interest, particular states of affairs, which involve sense particulars, are transformed into those which involve only universals or essences. Whereas ordinary sense perceptions are first level and apparently apprehend their object without support: from cognitively prior acts, there are higher level acts which presuppose ordinary perceptions (with their corresponding objects) but also go beyond them to constitute a new object, namely, a state of affairs. In the latter, a particular object is taken as exemplifying a property or standing in a relation; alternatively, as belonging to a general kind. Higher level acts constitute new objects, but they can do so only by presupposing lower level acts that already have their own distinct objects. He therefore granted to spatiotemporal particulars an ontic priority (Seinsvorzug), as he expressly stated in Formal and Transcendental Logic (Hua 17, 177 [FTL, 168]). The higher level act is not conceivable without the first-level act upon which it is accordingly said to be founded. This relation of dependence is not contingent but necessary." A singular predication, such as "This paper is white," is inconceivable without an underlying perception, inasmuch as it says something about a perceived object. As Husserl puts it, the perceptual object is included within the state of affairs, although it now plays a new role, i.e., that of an individual existent exemplifying a property. As I read him, Husserl holds that perceptions posit their objects as particular through and through, whereas predicative statements introduce a universal as the property of a particular entity. While the cognitive interest of the person who makes the statement is still focused on the particular, she is implicitly aware that, without affecting the truth of what she says at the time, she can apply the same predicate term to other objects. She is aware that "red" is a predicate applicable to many possible individuals (Hua 19/1, 151-54 [LI, 371-73]).)2 And this awareness of an identity in spite of difference, according to Husserl, suggests to the knower that she can shift her cognitive interest from the perceived object, which she has till now taken to be an actually Husserl

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existing particular, to the property as such, objectifying it in order to inquire, without further interest in actually existing particulars, what is true of this object. The capacity to thematize a universal is also manifest in statements about all As, some As, or some A or other. Here universality belongs to "the form of the act itself" (Hua 19/1, 151-54 [LI, 371-73]). An act of that form "relates itself to each member of the extension through its 'content,'" "not in a real but in an ideal, logical manner." All As are here "conceptually presented," i.e., by whatever conceptual content A stands for (Hua 19/1 183 [LI, 397]). What Husserl clearly has in mind is an extension or class specified, not by actual enumeration or itemization, but by a concept (Erfahrung und Urteil |EJ], §§ 43d and 62). 3i Such a class may nonetheless be spoken of as having an intrinsic unity because all possible As are, so to speak, tied together in a conceptual unity. No possible member of it can fail to have whatever character A stands for. In a similar vein, he argues that a statement about some As cannot be identified with a sum of acts in each of which a single A is pointed out or named, or with an act of enumeration in which we collect into a group the items enumerated. If in a certain situation some As are in fact given, the statement we make may in effect be such that we cannot identify these As, either singly or as a group, with what we refer to in expressions of the form "some As." The indefiniteness or generality of the reference is in such a case an essential feature of the reference itself. In all such cases, we do not point to or enumerate individuals, but we refer to them by means of the concept symbolized by A. They are conceptual objects, i.e., objects referred to as falling under a specific concept, as possible but not as actually existent. A class so specified will obviously not be affected by the nonexistence of actually existing members. A "purely conceptual extension" may be empty in the sense of not having any actually existing members, but given the specific cognitive interest in essences, it is none the worse for that. When in a subject-predicate statement we subsume a particular under a concept, the cognitive interest in actually existing particulars is still alive. It continues to be alive when we corne to make general statements about classes of things or events, as in empirical inquiry. Here concepts are employed, but the concepts in question are intended to have application to what we find in such inquiry. We speak about all or some individual objects by using concepts, but the latter are emphatically treated as empirical. That means that we here generalize about what actually exists, so that, if our statements are to be true, they must draw their justification from actual matters of fact. If A stands for an empirical concept, a claim about all As will be defeated by experiences that contradict it. There are, however, categorial acts in which this cognitive interest in what actually exists has altogether lapsed. In such a case, as Husserl puts it, the objects of the founding acts do not enter into the intention of the founded act (Hua ig/ 2, 690 [LI 799-800]). To put it more epistemologically, the experience on the basis of which we became acquainted with those objects does not play a justificatory role with respect to the founded act. What counts for the justification of this latter act is the concept as such, not the time or the circumstances in which we acquired it. It is an act directed upon conceptual relations and draws its justification from the understanding of the concepts involved, however or when72 Phenomenological hpistemology

ever these may have been acquired. As a consequence of this shift of cognitive interest, observation and perception cease to be decisive in regard to the cognitive claims and their justification. The question of whether a property is in actual fact instantiated, and not merely imagined as such, lapses for lack of cognitive interest. What may in fact be perceived functions only as an example or illustration of the kind of thing we want to know. Hence, an imagined situation would do just as well, as Husserl frequently points out. We might say that, when we are interested in a kind as such, wanting to know the concepts defining it, we are ipso facto no longer pursuing an interest, on other occasions lively enough, in the question of whether there are individuals in space and time which, in fact, exemplify that kind. Such an act accordingly speaks of possible objects, i.e., objects conceived of as being of a certain kind or as exemplifying a certain property. Now we already noted that, according to Husserl, in predicating, a person is aware that the same thing she now predicates of a given particular might be predicated of other particulars. She has a sense of something that is possibly true of other particulars as well as the one now before her. What is that something? What is it to be an F? This predicated property may be understood simply as the meaning of a word or a string of words, but in such a case that property is far from being self-given as an object in its own right, ft may also be assumed to be a property exemplified in the actual world, in which case the inquiry is factual or empirical. But when knowledge of a pure essence becomes the aim of an inquiry, the important question is this: can the cognizer get into a cognitive position to make a justified claim about that which she initially predicated of a particular and was prepared to predicate of other particulars as well? How can one come to see the concept as an object in its own right? As we saw, if such a concept is to gain the status of an object in its own right, there must be statements which arguably refer to such an object and predicate of it something we can see to be true of it. One might want to say that what is at issue is the content of concepts, but since Husserl's discussion has in mind the objectification of concepts, it is better to speak here of objects, provided we keep in mind that these are objects viewed purely as determined by concepts; they are, as Husserl occasionally calls them, purely conceptual objects (Begriffsgegenstande).M34 Now let us return to a point already noted more than once, namely, that when we apply a concept to a particular object (let's call it F), we can redirect our cognitive interest in such a manner as to objectify the concept and ask what precisely it contains: what it is to be an F? In our actual experience, however, this conceptual content does not present itself as an object by itself. Most of the time it is not at all an object but a way of characterizing an object by mentioning one of its properties. As such, it is conjoined with all the other things we can say about that particular object. In traditional Aristotelian terminology, any substance always has both accidental and essential properties, but we usually apply concepts without carefully distinguishing them into empirical and essential ones. What, then, is it to be an F? To find an answer, one looks for other things we are inclined to call F, noting what generally accrues to an object by virtue of being an F. Thus we discover what may be the empirical concept of F, allowing Husserl

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us to claim what (presumably) all Fs are like. But the properties unified by an empirical concept do not necessarily form a unity among themselves. In that case, we say that the complex of properties which forms the unity of its content is contingent, meaning that in worlds other than this one they do not come together. Even if it continues to be exemplified as a unity throughout perceptual experience, it is still only a unity a posteriori. At best, it designates a certain state of our actual world. If there is such a thing as a pure essence, however, it is supposed to be an object such that what is true of it is so independent of sense experience (which I shall here take to include memory and introspection). Otherwise, we have nothing but a thernatization of an empirical concept. A triangle is a rectilinear figure of two dimensions in all worlds in which triangles exist, but an apple presumably forms a unity of properties only in the actual world. Essences, which are to be conceived of as pure, i.e., nonempirical kinds or species, exist in all possible worlds, even in those in which they are unexemplified. Initially, however, empirical and pure concepts are presented to us as concepts we apply in experience to particular entities or processes without clearly distinguishing them from one another. Since the latter do not offer themselves to us in their purity, they have to be freed, as Husserl puts it, from the admixture of empirical circumstances. To gain knowledge of essences, then, is a matter of trying to discern clusters of properties that do not come together merely by virtue of empirical, contingent circumstances, that do not simply come together in the contingent being of entities in the actual world, but belong together by necessity. How can we come to see essences for what they are in their own right? Pure concepts or essences represent properties that are necessarily conjoined with one another, for example, the properties of being red and being coloured, being coloured and being extended. Properties are related to one another necessarily. They also necessarily exclude others: the property of being a colour, for example, excludes the property of being a prime number. The knowledge attainable with respect to such essences is said to be a priori, because we do not expect justification for our belief from further experience. How do our eidetic beliefs get justification? As Husserl argues, particular objects always present themselves as examples of kinds, and as falling under concepts. Every new thing we meet presents itself within a horizon of antecedent familiarity. A concept, therefore, is familiar to us from the outset as invariant relative to a multiplicity of examples, as an identity in differences. But as noted just now, the epistemological question is: which of them can be objectified and known us essences? When a concept word gets applied to a particular in a concrete situation, it is not yet apparent precisely what it includes and what it excludes. The purely conceptual unity lacks sharp distinction from accidental, contingent unity. To see clearly what belongs to it requires inspection of different examples so as to find out what it captures in the various applications of the concept. Exemplifications of concepts can, of course, be found in experience without having to search for them very strenuously. But as the empirical search for knowledge makes abundantly clear, we also at times deliberately seek out further examples. In empirical science, the search for examples is tantamount to the 74

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search for observations of a suitably important kind. In the search for essences, as distinct from empirical concepts, the deliberate element in the search for examples is further accentuated. Given this direction of our cognitive interest, we no longer are content with what experience in the usual sense can offer us. The truths sought are not supposed to be peculiar to the world in which we actually live. The conjunctions of properties sought are supposed to persist through all possible worlds. To free ourselves of the merely empirical, Husserl recommends that we use "free, imaginative variation of examples." i5 In some respects, it is a method as old as the Platonic-Socratic search for Forms free from the admixture of temporal accident and circumstance. As Plato already suggested, it is also the method followed by the geometer in his study of spatial configurations. But the most important thing to note is that it is the method Husserl himself used in his phenomenological inquiries, as many texts in Logical Investigations and other works show. Although it shows obvious affinities with induction, the method differs from empirical research in that we seek examples without restricting ourselves to what ordinary experience shows to be the case. From the outset, we take leave from perception in that we do not take any particular to be an actual existent in the world. Therefore, the sameness envisaged in an imaginative variation of examples is not that of an individual object which, like an Aristotelian substance, remains the same in spite of change, but rather a property, or a complex of properties, that is recognized as the same in all exemplifications and would be recognized in any further examples. We take an individual object, then, to be merely an exemplification of a concept or a group of concepts. But, given that we seek knowledge of a concept or essence, an imagined particular can just as well serve as our initial example of being an F as an actually perceived one. Its characteristic matrix of operations is the imagination, the realm of the conceivable. In a discussion of the essence of materiality, Husserl notes (Hua 3/1, 345 [ID I, 356—57]), we freely imagine winged horses, white ravens, and golden mountains, because these are clearly objects of a material kind, though absent from the actual world. We "play ball with known physical properties and laws about them," imagining what are, from the point of view of present-day science, the most incredible monstrosities (Hua 5, 29!'.). Having at the outset what we take to be an example of an F, we try to conceive how this example might be different while nonetheless being an exemplification of F. What would a particular have to be by virtue of being an F? The Fs are what Husserl calls empty possibilities because they have no relation to present fact. The various Fs do not have to fit together to make up a unified world; they need to lit together only as exemplifications of the same concept F. Furthermore, the extension of Fs is not an arbitrary plurality of Fs already given or enumerated in some way or other, but the infinity of possible particulars falling under that concept. The totality of Fs is conceptually presented, rather than by enumeration or itemization. The variation of examples can. in principle, always be continued, although in actual fact we have to stop at some point. But the examples actually produced on a given occasion are, rightly or wrongly, taken to be merely a sample of what Husserl

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a seeker for essences could produce, if he so decided. In any event, that which we recognize as the same in all examples is the essence, which, in Husserl's terminology, can then be objectified and seen for what it is. In sum, the conceptual content, we already envisaged in our use of the corresponding predicate term we now recognize as being the same as this objective essence. What we have here are "material" essences (sachhaltige Wesen); each constitutes a kind of object (using this latter term in the broadest sense), for example, material thing, spatial extension, redness, colour, sound. Husserl envisaged many more essences and entire sciences dealing \vith them—e.g., an ontology of nature—but, as noted, phenomenology itself is also eidetic in its procedure. Many of Husserl's texts, but particularly his Logical Investigations, clearly show how diligently he explored conceivabilities in order to scrutinize examples before he ventured to come up with a conclusion with respect to essences such as those of perception, memory, imagination, judgment, and relations that hold between them. All essences are objects in their own right, which is to say, according to Husserl, that statements about them can be evaluated as true or false. If true, such statements are necessarily true or apodictic, e.g., that a cube is a shape or that beliefs have intentionality. Since the propositions involved are true no matter what, we can in principle always, as it were, come back to them to reevaluate the statements we earlier made about them. Needless to say, such statements are no more beyond criticism than any others. One may be charged with having envisaged too few examples, so that as a consequence one has included in an essence what is a feature of some of its exemplifications but not part of the essence in its purity. The charge would be that we have not yet completely freed ourselves from empirical presuppositions. Husserl would then say that we can and should continue the variation of examples in order to correct such errors. There is no doubt, as he might add, that we can free ourselves of empirical assumptions; eidetic insight is attainable. There is thus, according to Husserl, knowledge of essences, which he called ontology, either formal or regional. Just as in the case of empirical knowledge, Husserl argues for a transcendental-epistemological critique of eidetic knowledge. A cognitive inquiry directed upon essences cannot be regarded as yielding genuine knowledge without such a critique, for it is object oriented and therefore one-sided or positive. It takes for granted that we have a certain cognitive faculty, namely, the faculty to apprehend the essential structures of reality, but this remains only an assumption, not even recognized as such. And in regard to eidetic knowledge, psychologism is a particularly tempting error. The naive ontologist is like those whom Kant reproached for thinking that concepts as such can be used by human reason to attain insight into the nature of things in themselves. It: is therefore no surprise that Husserl is not prepared to let such ontology have the last word. As I said previously in this chapter, the dynamic of the search for knowledge includes a transcendental thematization of the subject of knowledge. Mere ontology tempts us to think that essences have real being in the way the Platonic tradition saw it, that necessity and possibility are real features of reality. The necessity inherent in essences, in Husserl's view, cannot be left in its de re formulation. An ontologist innocent of transcendental philosophy might

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make such a claim, but Husserl would call it dogmatic. De re necessity has to be reduced to a feature of transcendental consciousness. A transcendental critique shows the possibility of knowledge of objects, whether particulars or universals, by a reflective thematization of the subjectobject relation in a broadly Kantian perspective. In Husserl's interpretation of it, this thematization, of course, involves the phenomenological reduction, which is to say that objects undergo the peculiar modification by virtue of which they are henceforth specified as meanings, as correlates of transcendental consciousness. Now if a transcendental reflection considers how the object is related to the subject or, alternatively, how the object is constituted in the subject, then this discussion of how we acquire knowledge of essences is certainly part of this transcendental account. The justification of our beliefs about essences as objects is to be discussed in correlation with specific forms of consciousness. That is why in telling that story Husserl gives so much emphasis to the fact that one really can free oneself from presuppositions pertaining to the actual world, vary this world within the limits of conceivability, and thus apprehend something that has being in all possible worlds and thus represents an indefeasible rule of experience. But while this demonstrates the possibility of knowledge of such objects, it also shows, in opposition to realist claims with regard to universals, that the necessity of essences is really nothing more than a reflection of indefeasible rules inherent in transcendental consciousness. According to the presentation of his doctrine, for example, in the final paragraphs of the Ideas, the would-be objective essences are to be reinterpreted as essential structures of consciousness. Essences, to be sure, are not objects falling within the scope of empirical inquiry; the concepts of essences are not general concepts whose justification must come from being verified by experience. But that does not mean that their justification is based on rational insight into the nature of things. Husserl is not a realist with respect to universals. According to him, their validity is derived from consciousness. As I noted at the beginning of this section, it is a position nearer to Kant than to Plato. For Kant, too, it will be recalled from my discussion in chapter i, concepts, in particular those which are a priori, are rules for combination or synthesis; and such combination "does not lie in objects, but is an affair of the understanding alone" (Critique, 6135). What seems to be distinctive of Husserl is his more resolute and explicit doctrine that objectified concepts function in our pretranscendental experience as objects. The consciousness in correlation with which essences are described cannot be a subject defined in empirical, psychological terms. We cannot define essences in terms that reflect the way the world is actually experienced in perception and science, which are matters of fact accessible to an empirical psychology. Psychologism represents the position that consciousness is part of the actual world accessible to science. As he argued with special cogency in his Formal and Transcendental Logic, psychologism is a particularly attractive theory with respect to higher order objects such as universals, since such objects admittedly do not exist in space and time. In fact, as we saw, Husserl himself rejected realism with respect to universals and held that in some sense or other they are constructed Husserl

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by the mind. As I formulated Husseii's position, such objects would not exist if there were no mental activities. The last battle to be fought by a Husserlian epistemologist is about the mind or consciousness.

The Problem of History What I want to discuss in this final section of the chapter are epistemological issues connected with what in Husserlian scholarship is known as the contrast between static and genetic phenomenology. The later Husserl, it is said, shifted his emphasis to matters of history, development, and process. 36 What implications did this have for his epistemology? What we have seen thus far is that Husserl's theory of knowledge was transcendental. What he saw as the fundamental dynamic of the search for knowledge must eventually turn to the transcendental conditions that make possible purely object-oriented forms of inquiry, whether empirical or a priori, if the search for knowledge is to be made secure against such sceptical attacks as come from natural science and psychology. But as Husserl was aware, there is also the threat of historicism, a phenomenon particularly well represented in nineteenthcentury German thought, and historical relativism is, of course, also an epistemological issue. He addressed it in his characteristic thoroughness, most ambitiously toward the very end of his life, in a work that remained unfinished but was nonetheless published, for the most part posthumously, as The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy. The best way to sketch this phase of Husserl's epistemological thought is to return to the idea of a conceptual framework. As the term suggests, a framework has a certain stability in relation to the activities made possible by it. It could not play its transcendental role if it did not have a more or less fixed structure. That structure comprises, as I put it, an implicit ontology and epistemology, roughly a systematic correlation of subject and object. That is to say, a given framework is one in which certain kinds or categories of objects are recognized as existing and as correlative with the epistemic situation in which they become known. Relative to particular perceptions, for example, the framework correlating material objects to sense perception has to remain fixed if it is to function as their transcendental condition. Another way of making the same point, a framework is intrinsically a priori relative to an a posteriori. A framework, however, can also be considered from a point of view outside it, as when we talk about it in a philosophical discussion such as the present one. We might consider questions about its origin, about the way it developed, and so on. These considerations are obviously genetic, in a fairly straightforward sense of that term. In other words, a phenomenology of a framework is static or genetic, depending on the sorts of questions that are dealt with. A framework appears stable, unchanging, ready-made, from the point of view of those who do not think about it but use it to form beliefs about what they encounter in their experience; it will also appear stable and unchanging to a phenomenologist who wants to describe it from the user's point of vantage. To an external critic,

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however, it may appear as a peculiar product of history, something that came to be in a certain way and, if it is an everyday sort of framework like Freudianism, may, in fact, some day pass away. As Husserl portrays the search for truth, it always begins within a framework, a context of meaning with its unconsciously made assumptions. As the search progresses, however, critical questions about the framework arise—for example, those of radical scepticism—and to confront those questions, we adopt an external point of view. Its underlying assumptions are made explicit, and examined. But to consider a framework from a critical point of view, it first has to be thoroughly understood. In fact, this phenomenological understanding has to be more profound and systematic than that of the average nonphilosophical person who works with it. We thus noticed in Husserl, on the one hand, a concern to describe a framework and, on the other, a concern to critique and/or defend it from a point of view not sharing its assumptions. Perceptual consciousness was meticulously described and then subjected to an evaluation from a nonperceptual point of view, which was called transcendental. From the latter point of view, the perceptual world appeared as a product rather than as something already in place. Essences were described and an apparently realist view of them was defended, as in the first volume of Logical Investigations, but that view was later subjected to a transcendental evaluation, most clearly in Formal and Transcendental Logic. Briefly put, the transcendental point of view considers everything in terms of an absolute consciousness, which is not part of the world, but comprises the entire world within itself. This transcendental-phenomenological framework of absolute consciousness, indeed, claims to be more than a framework: it claims to be the truth about being. Let's think of the distinctively genetic or historical question as being addressed to this supposedly absolute framework: Whence does it originate? The transcendental subject may well be startled by this question, but in any event she will begin to wonder whether she is indeed a product of historical development. In that case, her supposedly absolute standpoint would be reduced to a mere historical point of view. Each statement would have to be indexed with reference to the historical period in which it was uttered. And that amounts to the threat of historical relativism. Can Husserl secure the search for truth in the face of this threat? I think that the salient features of Husserl's position on this point can be made clear by a study of "On the Origin of Geometry," published as an appendix to the main text of Crisis. The text is clearly intended to illustrate the relation between a cognitive situation and its historical background. I should begin by quoting the passage that announces in a general way the epistemological position which is to be argued. It reads as follows: The ruling dogma of the separation in principle between epistemological clarification (Aufklarung) and historical, even humanistic-psychological explanation (Erklaruny), between epistemological and genetic origin, is fundamentally mistaken, unless one inadmissibly limits, as is customary, the concepts of "history," "historical explanation," and "genesis." (Hua 6, 379 [C, 370])

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It is a remarkable statement in the light of HusseiTs earlier views on the subject of the relationship between epistemology and historicisrn, particularly those expressed in Philosophy as a Rigorous Science (1911). He had then categorically rejected matters of history as having any relevance for epistemology. It is important to note, however, that there was not a basic change in his position. As we can already see from the passage just cited, he dissociates himself from the usual sense of the terms "history" and "historical explanation." Clearly, if that sense were adhered to, epistemology and history would still be held to be incompatible. In stating the importance of historical origins for epistemology, he does not conceive history as a purely empirical, contingent process which might very well run its course without those who are caught up in it knowing anything about it. If our cognitive achievements were to be embedded in an environment external to themselves, it is hard to see how that environment could strengthen our confidence in those achievements. Neither can it be a history presided over by a World Spirit heedless of our cognitive efforts, for that would also be external to our consciousness. In the essay I want to discuss, we hear that the history from which our cognitions arise must be understood as an internal history. This idea, too, is not at all foreign to the train of epistemological thought we have discussed. From the very beginning of my account of Husserl's theory of knowledge, it was clear that the distinctively cognitive status of a belief came from its history or origin. In the last analysis, it has status because of its origin in transcendental consciousness. What is new is the idea of relating this consciousness itself to some kind of history. What is crucial to his new theory is the fact that this origin is internal (in the sense of being cognitivcly accessible). How a belief arises is a story that can, in principle, be told by a sufficiently reflective knower, who is the transcendental philosopher. "On the Origin of Geometry" seems to be about the situation of a geometer working within the age-old tradition of geometry and coming up with a new insight. The question Husserl pursues has to do with the cognitive dimensions of such a person's situation in the history of geometry, but 1 take it that the question is really more general. 1 shall here interpret the essay as a geneticphenomenological clarification of a typical cognitive situation, which Husserl wants to illustrate by the situation of the geometer. Husserl's interest is clearly transcendentalist in its focus on the question, "How is a geometrical insight possible?" But the formulation of the answer is significantly different from what we have thus far encountered. Instead of talking explicitly about transcendental beliefs or forms of consciousness that enable us to have knowledge, Husserl talks about the role of tradition in cognitive practice. A practising geometer can have knowledge because she stands in a tradition of geometrical thought. It is clear that Husserl now speaks of tradition as performing a role similar to that which he earlier simply assigned to transcendental consciousness, namely, that of being a necessary condition for the possibility of a cognitive act. He does not repudiate transcendental consciousness, but he adds the historical dimension to the transcendental point of view. In a sense to be clarified in the essay under discussion, that consciousness bears within itself the transcendental conditions of knowledge in the form of tradition or historical

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acquisition. Consequently, the philosophical reflection that is needed to uncover such conditions will now have to include a consideration of history. As Husserl's account of the geometer implies, if we did not leave the past behind us, we would not ever be able to come up with a new insight. We would waste our energies in rediscovering, reinventing, reenactment (nachvolhieheri). But it is also true that such new insights could not be born if we did not take the past with us as acquisition, as capacities, mastered practices, skills and habits, on the one hand, and as propositions, handed-down belief content, on the other. Within the cognitive subject, acquisition takes the form of capacities and competencies, on the strength of which a cognitive agent at a later time can do what is required to apprehend something new, something that is evident to us by virtue of our capacities and competencies. If the past were simply lost, we would confront experience as Kant thought we would confront intuitions if we did not have the categories of the understanding. "On the Origin of Geometry" emphasizes the distance that is constantly being created between a geometer's new insights—for example, some ancient Greek's "primal establishment" (Urstiftung, Hua 6, 366 [C, 354]) of the science of geometry—and those who later follow in her tradition and make use of her insights to arrive at their own. Acquisitions are, in that sense, modifications of the selfgivenness of the evident. The evident becomes something, the truth of which is later simply taken for granted, which is available only in linguistic form, written marks on paper—expressions for which the original meaning is sometimes a matter of uncertain interpretation. And since tradition is a process involving many contingent factors of history—e.g., the state of preservation of ancient manuscripts in dead languages—a "primal establishment" may not be preserved by tradition without distortion of one kind or another. The emphasis put on modification serves Husserl to prepare the ground for his contention that it is something that must be eliminated in reenactment or re-creation. To be sure, competence in a cognitive practice such as geometry does not depend on such reenactment. The ordinary practising geometer—who represents, I take it, every ordinary knower—gets along well enough without reenacting past history. In fact, as stated a while back, re-creation would have an altogether disabling effect on the geometer's performance of her work. If she did try, she would never make any progress in her particular pursuit of mathematical truth. But it is also true that geometry cannot become genuine knowledge, in Husserl's sense, without being raised above the level of mere technical competence. In the terms familiar to us from the preceding discussion, sciences cannot get along without assumptions, but if they are to attain the status of genuine knowledge, those assumptions have to be recognized and examined, a task that can be undertaken only by transcendental epistemology. The beliefs of the earliest geometer must therefore be formed again (nachvoUziehen) and, of course, on the same grounds that originally justified them. The habits of thought that have been acquired by a mathematician in training, being recommended to her as the paradigmatic way to think, which, of course, made that person a competent mathematician, have to be scrutinized as to how they themselves were originally devised.

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From an epistemological point of view, then, the distance is unsatisfactory; those insights that constitute the transcendental conditions of subsequent knowledge claims should be re-created in their original form. As should be clear, Husserl is still of the opinion that the absence of actual self-givenness amounts to the absence of genuine knowledge. In this respect, there is nothing new in the epistemology of the late Husserl. What is new is that the absence of selfgivenness is traced to the inevitable modification of the evident in history. A point that is clearly important to Husserl is that the return to origins should not be understood as a return to the foundational axioms and rules in prepositional form that were before the minds of the first geometers, as we might be inclined to think because of the deductive character of geometry. Belief contents, Husserl had always held, must be correlated with cognitive capacities that interpret, and thus constitute, them. What Husserl has in mind is a matter of going back to the processes of thought which constituted the propositions. As he indicates in the essay, we should put ourselves in the place of those geometers and obtain anew the insight they arrived at, imagining where they began and how they proceeded from there. This point should not be missed because Husserl's turn to history does riot mean that he abandoned the transcendental mode of thought. As I put it a while ago, he wants to add the historical dimension to the transcendental point of view. The transcendental framework should be shown to include its own history. I will return to this point at the end of this section. The history appealed to is not history in the usual sense. It cannot be one based on examination of documents and archaeological remains. Husserl called it an internal history, based on a universal historical a priori (Hua 6, 386 [C, 378]). With regard to the first beginnings of geometry, we should be able to say: "This is how it necessarily must have been" (Hua 6, 366 [C, 354]), even though we have no idea of how it actually did happen. But in what sense, one may ask, does this contribute toward Husserl's theory of knowledge? It may have some plausibility in the case of geometry, but how can it be elevated to a general epistemological requirement? How does it respond to scepticism of the historicist variety? To discern Husserlian answers to these questions, we have to generalize and extrapolate. We may also have to speculate a bit, since Husserl did not put his entire design before us in the text of Crisis. As I interpret "On the Origin of Geometry," the geometer stands for the knower in general. I think that the moral Husserl wants us to draw from the essay is this: finding something to be evident, which is to say, basing a particular belief on self-givenness assumes the presence of a tradition. Simply to say that it assumes the presence of a conceptual framework constituted in transcendental consciousness is not enough. As I interpret the later Husserl, the framework itself, including its ontology and its epistemology, has a background in history. In other words, the framework should be seen in terms of the history that has brought it forth. If such a justification is to be possible, there must be a history that explains cognitive consciousness in just that form which the earlier Husserlian epistemology had determined. And that is why the historical analyses that Husserl offered in Crisis try to show that this epistemology is the teleologies! fulfilment

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of a history that begins with Greek philosophy. Every philosophy in that history is construed as a stage on the way to that fulfilment, while it is criticized for being one-sided and abstract, that is, falling short of that comprehensive concreteness which, as we noticed earlier, Husserl claimed for his own transcendental-phenomenological view. Typical Husserlian criticisms of previous philosophers are to the effect that they have forgotten something or failed to go far enough in a particular direction. This is, of course, an interpretation of history from the standpoint of Husserlian epistemology, which gives the entire argument a kind of circular form; it is, as it were, an attempt on the part of that epistemology to narrate its own coming into being. The possibility for such an attempt is given with the nature of an absolute consciousness. Consciousness can narrate this history because in its very nature it sums up its history. This consciousness, it must be assumed, has been there from the beginning, somewhat like Hegel's absolute. Although it developed through history in the ordinary sense, it never lost its way or its sense of identity. And because the history is, in the last analysis, internal to consciousness, it can be reenacted or re-created from the end in. Because I have called Husserl's position idealist at several points in the preceding discussion, it might be interesting to conclude with a few remarks about Hegel, of whom one cannot help being reminded by this ultimate turn of Husserl to history for the justification of his position. Hegel's appeal to history also had an epistemological basis. He, too, was concerned to answer scepticism in its most radical form, which he saw in Greek, rather than Cartesian or Humean, scepticism. 37 Hegel's strategy was to show that all systems of categories or shapes of consciousness, to which a sceptic might appeal as equally plausible alternatives to the Hegelian system, are, in fact, self-contradictory. Hegel pursued this destructive strategy by attempting to give an account of each alternative, supposedly in its own terms, and thus demonstrating its shortcomings to its proponents themselves. Every alternative to his own view, Hegel thought, was a one-sided abstraction which can exist only by virtue of omitting something that is nonetheless essential to its own very being. His most ambitious attempt at such demonstrations was Phenomenology of Spirit. And since he also thought he had exhausted all alternatives, he felt that his own philosophy had been adequately defended against all sceptics. Without making Husserl out to be a Hegelian, I submit that the comparison is extremely illuminating, particularly in that both seem to end up battling scepticism in "historical" terms. Both hold the quintessentially transcendentalist view that, in the last analysis, the ground for a knowledge claim must be found in the history that leads up to it. While this may seem a curious position to take, they were led to adopt it in a way that can easily be understood. That knowledge might: be, at least in part, a relation to an irreducibly independent reality both Hegel and Husserl—and Kant before them—considered to be a possibility that could not be demonstrated in a way that would defeat the sceptic. I have argued in the first chapter that the sceptic employs a realist concept of being that makes the object of knowledge independent of our knowing it but despairs of the chance of coming across an entity enjoying that kind of being. Hegel and HusHusserl

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serl, along with Kant, wanted to defeat the sceptic, i.e., make the possibility of knowledge safe from his attack. To clear the way for such a demonstration, as they saw it, we have to reject the sceptic's realist concept of being. Once that has been rejected, the relation to an independent object is superfluous. To show the possibility of knowledge is to find something within cognitive consciousness itself which warrants the conclusion that we know something. In a nutshell, knowledge will have to be construed exclusively in terms of the mental capacities and concepts (some of them transcendental) that give rise to the knowledge claim. But I think that both Hegel and Husserl were circumspect enough to realize the price to be paid for this way out. There has to be an authoritative account of the history of consciousness, a narrative that cannot be questioned or doubted from any other point of view, human or divine. Consciousness, in other words, cannot be merely a product of history: it has to be its own history. Scholars assure us that neither Hegel nor Husserl fell victim to either historicism or psychologism. If that is true, it has to be added that they were saved from such a fate only by clinging to an absolute consciousness.

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3

HEIDEGGER

Introduction

A study of Heidegger's doctrine of knowledge is difficult for a number of reasons. While the development of an epistemology was for Husserl a matter of central importance, the primary question that occupied Heidegger, as he frequently said, was that of being. In fact, he said early on in Being and Time that knowing, in the sense that particularly occupied Husserl, is but a founded mode of being-inthe-world. And judging by the vocabulary he typically used, his work is overwhelmingly ontological. Consequently, in what he published during his lifetime, there are no texts exclusively devoted to the elaboration of a doctrine of knowledge. While Husserl's principal works all have long sections expressly dealing with epistemological issues, Heidegger's discussions of such things are episodic, limited to a few paragraphs in contexts dealing with other matters, ostensibly ontological ones. And when he did write about epistemology, it would seem that he assumed that many details were sufficiently known to his readers, for example, from the Neo-Kantians and, especially, Edmund Husserl. It is difficult to get a clear view of his own doctrine of knowledge. Another reason for the difficulty of a study of his theory of knowledge is that his discussions are often designed to indicate what he rejects or regards as dubious, rather than to set forth his own doctrine in a positive manner. The latter

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often lies behind the text, implied by the writer's distinctive point of view or hinted at in what principally concerns him. This state of affairs is reflected in the literature on Heidegger, where we do not find much work on epistemological matters. Guignon's Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge tells us quite clearly that Heidegger was an anti-Cartesian, but the author does little more than that. We may agree and accord various accolades of praise to Heidegger for having pointed out how hopelessly wrong the Cartesian starting point is. Descartes, however, is not canonical in contemporary epistemology, although Guignon suggests he is. Descartes's theory is not to be taken as the one and only theory of knowledge discussed among philosophers today. The fact that Heidegger's position is anti-Cartesian does not mean that we need not examine his own doctrine critically. Heidegger's doctrine of knowledge, in fact, is the argument that knowledge is not primary but derivative, a founded mode of being-in-the-world. Apparently identifying an attitude of objectification with knowledge, he argues that an attitude of that kind is not possible except as an outgrowth from a context characterized by different attitudes. We do not begin by viewing things, their properties and relations, "disinterestedly," in a unumskhtiges Nur-hinsehen (Sein und Zeit, 6g J ), but come to adopt such an attitude only later. He did not share Husserl's view that a human being is basically a knower. He did not believe that whatever engages a human being is (or at least should be) based on what she knows or justifiably believes. According to Husserl, a genuinely human life is one guided by insight or knowledge; action, perhaps even moral virtue itself, is based on knowledge. He talked about activities and the capacities displayed in them, but they were distinctively cognitive activities. As he saw it, only knowledge leads us out of Plato's cave of illusion and opinion to a clear view of reality. For Heidegger, however, knowing is not at all an access to reality and truth by which we gain for the first time, perhaps after a long captivity in the cave, an insight into our real situation in the scheme of things. Knowledge does not give us a superior view of being but rather, as we shall see, an impoverished one. Yet another difficulty that confronts a study specifically focused on his theory of knowledge has to do with his relationship to Husserl. The latter's philosophy is, in an important sense, epistemological throughout. To many Heidegger scholars, in fact, Husserl seems to be the very embodiment of epistemology in general. Heidegger's apparent rejection of Husserl's philosophy as a whole, his contempt for a theory of knowledge, and his emphasis on the question of being can thus lead one to overlook the fact that he did have an epistemology of his own. The thesis that knowing is a mode of being-in-the-world is in every respect a doctrine of knowledge. I will also argue that, notwithstanding his strikingly different terminology and his criticism of Husserl, he clearly accepted and used in his own work important features of the latter's epistemology, without apparently feeling it necessary to argue for them on his own account. An example is the doctrine of knowledge as fulfilment, which Husserl first expounded in the sixth of his Logical Investigations. It is undoubtedly true that Heidegger's emphasis on being-in-the-world had the effect of eliminating mentalist overtones in Husserl's

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account of fulfilment, but even so there remains a great deal of doctrinal agreement. Heidegger's doctrine with regard to cognitive comportment has much more affinity with Husserl than with behaviourism and pragmatism. In my discussion of his doctrine of truth in Being and Time, I shall try to show how much of its argument (in distinction, of course, from the conclusion which it is used to support) is clearly of Husserlian vintage. The Place of the Transcendental Heidegger's primary concern is the question of being, but, as I have argued in chapter i, doing ontology is not at all foreign to the enterprise of a transcendental epistemologist. Husserl had ample room for ontological or metaphysical questions within his transcendental philosophy. Now, although Heidegger's language is much more strongly ontological, due weight ought to be given to the fact that the ontology he envisages in Being and Time is, as he says, an ontology in the form of a phenomenology. Ontology so understood is nothing like a science of being in the straightforward sense of traditional, essentially pre-Kantian metaphysics. Ontology as phenomenology is explicitly second-order: it thematizes being only indirectly, namely, as the meaning of being. Ontology wants to describe a first-order experience in which being and truth are understood in a certain way. The philosophical task Heidegger set himself in Being and Time was to spell out or articulate that meaning of being which is already present in that experience, even if in a badly distorted form. In other words, ontology considers the being of things in intimate correlation with experience. This leaves a great deal of room for disagreement, particularly since the sense of the term "experience" has not yet been specified. In a broadly Kantian sense of that term, it refers to objective experience that leads to science. In the light of what we already said, it is clear that Heidegger is not going to take it in that way. Both Kant and Husserl, two of the great masters in the transcendentalist tradition, are explicitly or implicitly criticized in Being and Time. From a letter he wrote to Husserl in 1927 (published in Hua 9, 6ooff.), it is clear that his disagreement with the latter did not have anything to do with the idea of transcendental constitution as such. As he put it, it had to do with "the place of the transcendental." Husserl assigned the transcendental to consciousness, so that his doctrine about the being of things was, in the last analysis, executed by way of an inquiry as to how entities constitute themselves in transcendental consciousness. As Heidegger saw it, there are two quite distinct notions at work in Husserl's philosophy, one which he was prepared to accept, while finding the other objectionable in the highest degree. There is, first of all, the idea that the question about the being of entities of a certain kind cannot be answered in terms of something that is itself an entity of that kind or a property of such an entity. The being of spatiotemporal entities, for example, cannot be transcendentally explained or clarified in terms of what is itself a spatiotemporal entity or property. Husserl had accordingly argued that the being of material things is to be clarified by reference to what by its very

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nature or essence is not a material entity, which he identified as transcendental consciousness. Except for this conclusion, Heidegger embraces this train of thought with enthusiasm. The scope of his own inquiry, however, was being as such, rather than the specific region of material, spatiotemporal entities. Given the wider scope of his inquiry, Heidegger's agreement with Husserl led him to make the distinction between being and entities, which acquired for him great importance and which he designated as the ontological difference. It amounts to the thesis that the being of entities can be clarified only by reference to something which is not itself an entity. How we are to take the distinction is not immediately clear, but we have already noted that Heidegger does not follow Husserl in the turn to a transcendental consciousness. He will formulate his own view by saying that "being 'is' only in the understanding of those entities to whose being something like an understanding of being belongs" (183). Paragraph 43 of Being and Time offers material on this controversy with Husserl. The general topic here is his criticism of what he takes to be the tendency of traditional philosophy to identify being with the reality of objects of knowledge. What I consider to be of special interest, however, are comments he makes about realism and idealism. Husserl's name is not mentioned, but it is clear that the position Heidegger characterizes as idealism is his. This agreement with Husserl translates into praise for idealism. Since the latter is also a form of transcendentalism, critical observations about realism are not surprising. Heidegger remarks that, although idealism may be untenable in its conclusion—i.e., the primacy accorded to consciousness—in one important respect it was right over against realism, and for that reason it displayed a sense for the ontological altogether absent among realists. 2 When idealists affirmed that being and reality are "in consciousness," they were clear about the fact "that being cannot be explained by reference to entities." As he sees it, they were quite right in thinking that being is to be distinguished from entities and that ontology therefore cannot be a study of entities. The question of being and reality must be discussed transcen dentally. Having thus praised idealists like Husserl, he proceeds to criticize them by saying that they have not gone far enough because they have not asked questions about the being of consciousness (207). Husserl placed the transcendental in consciousness, discussing the being of everything by describing its meaning for this transcendental subjectivity.3 What, then, is exactly at issue between the two philosophers? The question needs to be discussed at greater length, but at this point in the discussion I suggest, that we be content with a partial answer. Husserl's transcendental consciousness is a cognitive subject. Heidegger's proposal is that we extend the search for transcendental conditions by going further back than our cognitive capacities for objective knowledge because any conceivable capacity of that sort is derivative or acquired, rather than primordial, so that whatever such a capacity leads us to acknowledge as being is likewise derivative with respect to a more primordial sense of being. Therefore, an important project of Heidegger's philosophy in Being and Time is to give an account of the birth of the cognitive attitude as such.

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Given his own perspective, Heidegger is quite right that realists lack understanding for ontological matters (ontologisches Unverstandnis). They certainly do not understand ontology in his sense at all. Why not? The short answer is that such a philosopher declines to make the transcendental turn, which, in Heidegger's view, leads to the ontological distinction. That turn and the distinction that comes with it amount to the demand that we discuss the being of things, not as a status enjoyed by actually existent entities but as a status bestowed in experience (using this term in a broad sense). According to a realist, a basic feature of the being of an entity is its independence of the beliefs held with respect to it. An implication of such a view is that, when we know an entity, we stand in an external relation to it. But according to Heidegger, a question like that about an entity's being independent should be considered as a question about the meaning of being independent. In a first approximation, we might say that he wants us to concentrate attention on how we come to treat an entity as independent. Our question should be "How do we come to the adoption of an attitude which treats something as independent, as objective vis-a-vis the knowcr?" Perhaps more precisely: "How must we presume the concept, of independence to have been acquired?" In the lectures on the history of the concept of time (1925), an early version of Being and Time, he roundly affirms that the "in-itself" is not an original character.4 This means that entities acquire their mind-independence in our experience, and what the philosopher must do is explain how this happens (20, 299 [HCT, 218]). His explanation is that being independent comes to have meaning for us in the process of developing a distinctively cognitive attitude. Granted this transcendental interpretation, the concept of independence indicates something about an attitude we can adopt, rather than a property of entities; as he says in Being and Time, it comes and goes with an understanding of being (212). The realist therefore displays nothing but ignorance of its origin, when he applies it to entities. When properly—i.e., transcendentally—understood, a statement about an independent entity is a statement about the internal economy of Dasein.5

The Ontological Difference How are we to understand the distinction between being and entities, once we have established that Heidegger's doctrine of being is circumscribed by a transcendental strategy? Does this mean that being makes knowledge possible? Here is a typical passage that suggests such a reading: A being can be uncovered, whether by perception or some other mode of access, only if the being of this being is already disclosed—only if I already understand it. Only then can I ask whether it is actual or not and embark on some procedure to establish the actuality of the being. (24, 101 [BP, 72]) Apparently, the primacy of being has to do with what must already be in place, if in our search for truth we are to discover by perception, for instance, what

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things exist and what they are like. The meaning of being, it is here stated, must be understood before any belief about the existence of a particular entity or about its properties can be formed. In Heidegger's view, ontological inquiry does not wilfully make the basic distinction between entities and their being but begins by recognizing a difference that already exists, for he would have it that we all make it in our understanding of being. Since the ontological distinction is a recognition of an actual difference, he designates it as the ontological difference. It is not mentioned by name in Being and Time, but the idea is clearly expressed.6 Its name was first published in "The Essence of Ground" (1929), although the appearance of the collected works shows that it was already designated as the ontological difference in Basic Problems of Phenomenology, lectures given in the same year that saw the publication of Being and Time (1927). The clearest and most explicit exposition is perhaps in lectures he delivered in 1929-30, recently published in translation as The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics.7 Heidegger carefully explains here the difficulties about making a distinction that is supposed to have such a universal scope. When we are instructed to make a distinction between entities and being, we begin by forming the idea of a whole that comprises everything which in any way at all is an entity or a being, and having collected everything into one whole (which is already a difficult task), we are told to distinguish that whole or totality from something else. But having collected what actually exists and what is possible into some sort of whole, do we have anything left? And if there is something not included in the totality, what is it? As we can see from even this brief and crude formulation, the problem Heidegger faces is not unlike the one that Husserl faced in clarifying the transcendental-phenomenological reduction or epoche.8 In both cases, there is a totality that is in some sense to be set aside for the purpose of thematization and clarification. Both Husserl and Heidegger direct us to a place where we have apparently nothing left in terms of which we might explain that whole. I think that the analogy should not surprise us. In both cases, the difficulties arise from the fact that the philosopher wants to raise transcendental problems with respect to everything that has being in any way whatever.9 Heidegger emphatically agreed with Husserl that the transcendental explanations sought cannot lie within the domain for which such explanations are sought. He rejected, however, Husserl's appeal to consciousness, which he regarded as itself an entity. If one grants Heidegger the point, it follows that consciousness cannot be considered to stand over against everything that is. From the discussion of the ontological difference, we will learn what kinds of explanations Heidegger seeks and where he expects to find them. In the lectures of 1929-30, he explains that the ontological difference is unlike any differences that are familiar to us. It is neither a difference within a kind nor one between kinds. It is not like the difference between white and black or even like that between a house and a garden, a motorcycle and a triangle, or God and the number 5 (517). To be sure, some of these differences are also difficult to specify, but they do nonetheless fall within the domain of entities. The

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difficulty surrounding the ontological difference is that we are not even sure in what dimension the distinction lies. He then proceeds to articulate the problems pertaining to this distinction in nine points (518-20). This is what he says (in my free translation): 1. We constantly fail to notice the difference (Unterschied) between being and entities, especially while we make use of it, as when we use the copula "is," and particularly when we deal with entities as regards their essential and contingent properties (Wassein and Sosein) or their actual existence (Dafisein). 2. We constantly use the distinction, but it would not be correct to say that we make it in the manner of applying a rule, a principle, or anything of that sort. 3. Quite apart from the problem as to what we distinguish, we are unclear about the dimension in which the difference lies. We are not in a position to indicate a basis of comparison between being and what is, which suggests that the difference cannot be presented cognitively, namely, as an object of cognition. 4. If we do not think of the difference as one between objects confronting us, then it must be the case that we always already move within the differentiation as a happening. We do not make the distinction, but we are involved or caught up in it as a primordial happening of our Dasein. 5. This happening affects us, not superficially and at certain intervals, but profoundly and all the time. 6. If there were no differentiation between being and entities, we would be unable to attend solely to entities, as we so often do, because we would be quite oblivious to the difference in question. We would not be able to experience what or how something in itself really is, if we did not already understand, perhaps without having the necessary concepts, what it is for something to exist or to have a certain whatness. 7. The differentiation between entities and their being is not only taking place all the time, it must already have taken place, when we want to find out what things are like. We do not ever subsequently experience (erfahren) being, namely, on the basis of what is. That-which-is already stands in the light, of being. 8. The difference between being and entities always comes about in such a manner that "being," though neutral in regard to the differences between entities, is all along understood in an unexpressed articulation, minimally in terms of whatness and thatness. A human being can thus always ask: "What is that?" and "Does it exist or not?" Why the primordial nature of being comprises precisely this twofoldness of whatness and thatness is one of the deep problems we encounter here. Until now it has not been a problem, because philosophers have taken it to be evident, as one can see from traditional metaphysics and ontology. Philosophers distinguished between essence and existence, whatness and thatness, taking such distinctions to be as little in need of further consideration as the difference between day and night. 9. The preceding eight points, we read, yield the conclusion that the difference is sui generis and universal in scope.10 The fact that the distinction in question is usually overlooked, on which Heidegger places a great deal of emphasis here and elsewhere, is in large measure to

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be explained by the fact, also noted by Husserl, that the transcendental dimension is by its very nature something of which we are not usually aware. The general impression created by this exposition is that of an all-comprehending unity which helps us. at least if we are of a transcendentalist turn of mind, account for some basic diversities in our experience. Items i, 6, and 7 clearly suggest that Heidegger conceives of being as having an epistemic role; it is something in the absence of which certain epistemic ideas and distinctions would not be possible. In 6, for example, it is suggested that in the absence of a sense of that unity we could not get to the idea of an entity in itself, which implies a diversity between object and belief. The attempt to give a transcendental explanation of the origin of the idea of a mind-independent object was already noted in the preceding section and will receive further attention later. Let us look at what Heidegger has to say by way of explaining his ideas. The idea of a wholeness or unity of being, in distinction from the plurality of beings and whatever we say about them, leads Heidegger to use language that may at first strike us as speculative in the extreme. In the lectures from which I just quoted, Heidegger says that "being" basically means an original whole of multiplicity (ein Games der Vielfaltigkeit)t) that is as yet lacking differentiation (i (indifferent), without articulation or figure (ungegliedert, unabgehoben). It is a whole that does not reflect the differences of entities from one another, but it takes on specific meanings, and thus becomes articulated, by a process called limitation (Einschrankung). The limitation, he says, is always posterior to the original whole, and the latter is still concealed in the specific meanings (29/30, 483 [FCM, 33233]). But this monistic talk does not come from a speculative metaphysician of a Neo-Platonic stripe. On the contrary, we are still within the transcendental tradition. In the part of Critique of Pure Reason dealing with the dialectic of reason, Kant discussed the world as the whole that lies beyond particular existents and cannot, for that reason, be specified by enumeration of entities. As he argued, this whole can therefore be specified only transcendentally. It is not a constitutive property of things, but a property things have by virtue of entering into human experience. The unity Heidegger is talking about is similarly constituted, namely, solely by virtue of the fact that entities in general, spatiotemporal particulars among them, are revealed. What unifies experience in this manner has nothing to do with the predicable content of various kinds of entities but everything to do with the fact that we do experience something, rather than nothing. Heidegger's contention that the ontological distinction originates from prephilosophical experience is clearly in the spirit of a phenomenological philosophy, which is supposed to describe, rather than explain or introduce extraneous distinctions. Gathering everything together into a whole and discerning this whole as something distinguishable from what is included within it make a distinction which, he claims, is already present in experience itself, although he emphasizes at the same time that its presence is not obvious to the ordinary person. Does the kind of whole envisaged by Heidegger actually feature in our experience? And if the philosopher does not introduce the distinction between being and beings, if it is an ontological difference, what is it or how does it come about? Heidegger's discussion of what he calls the world is meant to answer the first 92

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question. The world, in his distinctive use of the term, is what in our experience we mean by the whole. In the lectures on metaphysics of 1929-30, he introduces the ontological difference by a lengthy discussion of that concept. As he understands it, this concept captures precisely a totality or wholeness: entities insofar as they form a whole (das Seiende im Ganzeri). World is "die Offenbarkeit des Seienden als solchen im Ganzen," literally, "the revelation of what is as such in its aspect of wholeness" (29/30, 412 [FCM, 284]). World, as we also read in Being and Time, is not to be equated with a denumerable totality of beings. It is not a whole we could conceivably attain by adding to what we already know about entities. In the treatise "The Essence of Ground," he talks about the world as the how (das Wie) of the being of that-which-is (9, 143 [PM, 112]). But the world so conceived does not, of course, exist apart from entities; we must not abstract from the latter and hypostatize the world. The world is precisely what unites all entities into a whole, so that we can legitimately speak of entities as being in this whole. The whole Heidegger has in mind, I suggest, is one that unifies in a manner analogous to that in which conditions of the possibility of experience unify the entities of experience in a unity of apperception. Ordinary object awareness is not as such an awareness of the world (wholeness) but rather a doxastic attitude that presupposes it. For that reason, we find many broadly transcendental arguments in Heidegger to the effect that this or that experience or activity would not be possible, if there were not already a wholeness from which it emerges by way of a modification or limitation. In Being and Time, for example, he argues that making a subject-predicate statement presupposes the wider context of being-in-the-world. And being-in-the-world itself is possible only because of temporality. Finally, there is the primordial event called being, in the absence of which nothing at all would be revealed. He often attacks philosophical opponents, not because they have failed to give a phenomenologically adequate characterization of this or that phenomenon but especially because they have ignored the whole without which it would not be possible. He charges that, instead of seeing it in its context, they absolutized the phenomenon and treated it in abstraction. As we will see in the following section, Heidegger argues that especially the cognitive attitude has often been so absolutized, as when philosophers thought that we are "in a world" by virtue of knowing or believing that we are. Heidegger's use of the expression "being-in-a-world" is designed to emphasize that this is a matter of what is presupposed by a cognitive or doxastic attitude, rather than constituted by such an attitude. Being as a whole is present to us before the exercise of specifically cognitive capacities. How does the ontological difference happen? Where does being become distinguished from everything that is? His answer is that being is revealed to Dasein which by its very nature understands being as distinct from what is, especially in its own case. It understands its own being as the being of an entity who has responsibility for its being. Because a person has the being which Heidegger calls Dasein, a person's being is always different from what a person already is, for example, by virtue of physical and biological facts, past actions, and acquired characteristics. Its being is a task, a history in which it is involved. The ontological distinction of being and that which is is thus enacted in Dasein. This is the "place" of the transcendental. The making of the distinction is not an act or Heidegger

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accomplishment that one could ascribe to a person in the ordinary sense. We already saw that it is supposed to be a primordial event in which a person is involved (see item 4). It takes place where a person exists (in the special sense in which Heidegger uses the term "exist"). The ontological difference, we already heard, is not a difference that holds between objects but a difference or distinction that emerges where entities are revealed (disclosed, unveiled) in the sense that truth is attained. If being is that by virtue of which anything whatsoever is revealed, it will have many of the characteristics of a conceptual framework. It will make sense to say that it is concealed from ordinary, first-order awareness, that it cannot be an entity or object, for any appeal to an entity in answering the question of being would involve begging the question, inasmuch as the answer would rely on the revelation of that entity. For the same reason, it cannot be a property of such an entity. Properties are assigned to entities on the basis of their presence to us in experience. Being, then, is not an empirical generalization. If being is taken in the sense of revelation, then (so one might continue) it is not at all the same as the being or thatness which one ascribes to an entity of a certain kind when we discover it. Rather, discovering that an entity of a certain kind exists is possible only in the light of being. Whether an entity exists, or could exist, is a question we can answer only on the basis of its being given to us in a suitable manner. Being as the theme of Heideggerean ontology is not the being which an entity may have or lack, as the case may be. In the latter case, as we saw from the elaboration of the ontological difference, we are working with a posterior distinction within being, i.e., the traditional distinction of whatness and thatness. Being itself is a kind of historical happening, but it is not an event that can be observed or studied as we study events in ordinary history. For that reason, Heidegger called it a Grundgeschehen, a primordial happening or history. It is a history in which we are involved, rather than a history about which we have knowledge. Heidegger is aware that it now becomes difficult to see how we can have a philosophical discipline that has being as its subject matter. In thinking about being, a philosopher will objectify it and attempt to capture it by the use of concepts, whereas it is, in fact, an event in which we are involved precisely insofar as we exist in the mode of being of Dasein. The event or history which he calls being engages a person who takes his own being as his primary task in life. Although admitting that ontology cannot but use concepts, Heidegger says in the lectures on metaphysics that we should not overestimate the power of concepts in this regard (29/30, 510 [FCM, 351]). They cannot bring about, but at best only prepare, the required change in an individual human being. Ontological concepts are to be seen as only formal indications (formale AnzeAgen) of a task that lies beyond conceptualization. When all conceptualization is done, there yet awaits each human hearer or reader a task which is essentially a matter of taking care of his or her own being. Without undertaking this task, that person will not really and fully understand the ontological concepts, e.g., that of a world (29/30, 425-30 [FCM, 293-97]). This concept of world designates a whole, namely, that-which-is considered as a whole (das Seiende im Ganzeri). It can be 94

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specified and genuinely understood only from within experience. It is not an object of knowledge but that by which something can become an object for us, which for Heidegger means that the concept itself can be understood only in existential appropriation.11 What this section has shown is that the doctrine of the ontological difference, which is undoubtedly fundamental in Heidegger's entire philosophy of being, is a doctrine of knowledge in the broad sense in which transcendentalism conceives of it. The being it speaks of is understood as the historical process called the disclosure or revelation of entities. What this more precisely means will become clear in the following sections. The Cognitive Attitude Heidegger approaches knowledge phenomenologically and transcendentally. That is to say, his focus is on the cognitive attitude and the activity of seeking knowledge. What is distinctive about his account is that he relates this attitude and activity to a broadly practical matrix that makes them possible. This reflects his disagreement with Husserl on the place of the transcendental conditions; Husserl places them in consciousness; Heidegger locates them in the domain of practical activities, being-in-the-world. The knower is already in-the-world when he seeks knowledge in the broadly theoretical sense of objectifying something and assigning a certain property to it. The search for knowledge, Heidegger argues again and again, does not begin with finding oneself in an internal, mental state of belief, and it does not proceed by using that as a starting point to find what is then, by contrast, called the external world. It is not a matter of attaining knowledge by interpreting or decoding mental signs. It begins in a situation in which the truth seeker is already in a world, i.e., a situation in which entities are already disclosed. The expression "being-in-the-world" is ontological, precisely because Heidegger wants to counter a subjectivist construal of the starting point of the search for truth. He wants us to construe it, not as a mental world of representations or beliefs, but as a being-in-a-world. (This is his anti-Cartesianism, much emphasized in Guignon's Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge.) Hence the many asseverations throughout §§ 13, 43, and 44 of Being and Time, according to which the objective, external world is not to be equated with anything like faith or conviction. Talk of that kind still suggests that our starting point is a mental posture, an idea which he thinks falls short of capturing the nature of the context out of which the objectifying, cognitive attitude arises. For example, we should not think of the existence of the external world as something to be demonstrated by an argument or, in the absence of such a proof, something that is perhaps a necessary presupposition or an unavoidable article of faith (205). To describe the existence of the external world as either to be demonstrated or to be taken on faith, Heidegger contends, rests on the assumption that what connects us to the world are, in last analysis, purely mental acts or attitudes. Even when we say, as we often do in philosophical parlance, that we cannot but presuppose the world, Heidegger does not want such talk to be taken to imply Heidegger

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that there is, on our part, such a mental, doxastic stance as presupposing. Our relation to the world, on his view, is not epistemic, but ontological in character. The cognitive attitude, then, is not aboriginal but derivative (abkiinftig) or founded, as he puts it with a term borrowed from Husserl (§ 13). What these terms imply is that by its very nature the cognitive attitude is one we could have adopted only by way of an elaboration or modification of a different and antecedent attitude. Alternatively, acquiring knowledge of what entities exist, what properties they have, and in what relations they stand to one another is a form of cognitive activity which necessarily presupposes knowledge of an altogether different kind, namely, the kind characteristic of an agent who knows how to act in a particular context and is familiar with the set of instruments or tools required.12 Initially, we might think here merely of a certain limited range of actions that are necessary, for example, to get into a suitable position with respect to one's subject matter. The attainment of any kind of scientific knowledge requires the ability to perform all the activities involved in that specific line of research, for example, those involved in handling laboratory or other data. But Heidegger would insist that such research-specific activities are performed in a much wider setting or world and that they call for an agent able to perform a wide range of ordinary human activities. The transcendental conditions of knowledge are to be found in everyday action. How, then, does Heidegger understand knowledge (Erkennen)? We should now turn to the manner in which Heidegger characterizes it, particularly in § 13 of Being and Time. He says that it is a matter of restraining ourselves from manipulation and interference, of being content to tarry in the presence of what is there (61). Knowing is also described as a fixed staring at something that is simply there, observing it rather than using it for a purpose in the manner of a practical agent who wants to get somewhere or to make something. One might at first say that what such remarks express are some age-old convictions about knowledge. Knowledge has been said to require an attitude of objectivity or detachment, often called dispassionate or disinterested. Knowing, it was said, is altogether different from acting. Entities as objects of knowledge do not call for anything to be done to them. Relative to an act of knowing, objects are ready-made, to be taken as what they are. No matter how much activity may be involved in seeking for knowledge, as in the case of scientific knowledge, the knower, strictly as such, does not act to change the object of his knowledge. The knower, as we also say, should not impose his own subjectivity upon the object, even if what he knows is, on occasion, contrary to his interests and repugnant to his feelings of value. He should let the object speak for itself. Now there is no doubt that Heidegger's remarks may be so taken, for it is clear that he is thinking of knowledge as primarily an attitude, rather than a relation obtaining between a belief (or statement) and its object. And it is also clear that he holds that this distinctively cognitive attitude is very different from our practical attitude. His real intent, however, is to argue for a stronger thesis: namely, that such a purely cognitive attitude is not possible except on the basis of antecedent interests and activities of a practical nature. More strongly still,

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his contention is that it is nothing but a modification of the latter, a change in the direction of one's interest or concern. Knowledge represents, on the part of the knower, a new way of being in a world already uncovered or "known" in other ways. That is exactly what his use of the term "founded" implies. What is involved in a relation of Fundierung is a new construal of something already given; what results is therefore different, although impossible (in a broadly logical sense) without that which lies at its foundation. In Heidegger's view, a knower understands entities in a new way, namely, as vorhanden (present-at-hand), a term he pairs with zuhanden, usually translated as "ready-to-hand." 15 What the expression "present-at-hand" exactly means is difficult to ascertain from Heidegger's text because his characterizations are almost entirely in negative terms. He says, for example, that "theoretical comportment is a matter of merely observing something without circumspective concern" (ein unumsichtiges Nur-himehen) (69). He tells us that it is an attitude which refrains from interference or manipulation; what matters to us when we understand something as vorhanden is only the way it looks, intent on making statements about it that accord with what we see (61).' 4 The attitude of objectification Heidegger primarily has in mind is that characteristic of theoretical science. One of his concerns is that an attitude properly normative in science has come to be regarded as a norm generally to be complied with and infected the self-image of people in general. They tend to see themselves as would-be scientific observers of a world of objects. This self-image leads them to adopt a theoretical attitude, even with regard to themselves and their situation; they think that the truth about themselves can be found only in science. People thus become alienated from themselves, the world, and other people. One might say that in this way their own sense of agency becomes atrophied. They no longer see themselves as beings that have responsibilities for themselves, other people, or their natural environment. What they are left with is the view of themselves as subjects holding beliefs about a world of nothing but objects. Once those beliefs themselves have been given scientific form in neuroscience and cognitive science, the sciences divide between them the whole of reality. The general theme Heidegger touches on in such expressions of concern is familiar from the literature of existentialism. The prevalence of the objective, scientific attitude is thought to be inimical to the human subject. Hence, a need is felt to criticize that attitude, for example, by showing that it represents no more than a one-sided view and an illegitimate absolutization. 15 Now if theoretical knowledge is, in fact, a development that cannot do without the support of the practical stance, as Heidegger contends it is, such an absolutization is clearly wrong. The cognitive stance, it is said, must be relativized or contextualized. Science, the most significant product of that stance, is nothing but a social construction, as one hears nowadays. Transcendental philosophy, as we can see from post-Kantians like Cassirer, is well suited to perform the task of relativizing science. Heidegger used his transcendental inquiry to a similar end, namely, to show that the cognitive stance cannot be absolutized, that it cannot be considered as

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the only access to what is real and true. Although human beings do, as a matter of fact, sometimes adopt such a stance, his doctrine of knowledge is designed to show that, in fact, we cannot possibly adopt such an attitude except on the basis of a practical attitude, which we customarily adopt and which we never completely abandon. Understanding something as vorhanden, then, is derivative. As a matter of fact, Heidegger's language clearly suggests that we lose something important by understanding things that way. What we lose is the world as the context or horizon of action. Another way of making the same point is to say that we lose being as instrumentality, things as ready-to-hand.1'' Instruments always present themselves in the context of a world, i.e., within a whole, to use a phrase with which we earlier became familiar. A particular tool is attended to, if at all, only in its usefulness to us in doing something that we want to do. Therefore, it is always embedded in a network of other tools, ranged over by an agent in pursuit of this or that end, ultimately the individual agent's own being as a self.17 If a knower may be said to want to mirror reality without wishing to change anything, being as ready-to-hand is understood precisely as calling for interference or manipulation. 18 Entities understood as ready-to-hand are not singled out and observed for their own sake. A hammer used for a job is not attended to, or referred to, for its own sake; we take account of it only by using it appropriately to accomplish something. In a sense, then, a tool is essentially inconspicuous, passed over in favour of the action it serves. As Heidegger says, a tool is not focused on unless it breaks down, goes missing, or becomes an obstacle in our way. But being a tool means precisely being in working order. The user of tools is an agent, a person who can do certain things with skill and without thinking about them. Agency is, as it were, inscribed in the very nature of the things within a person's world. An agent's world contains entities, because in his activities he takes account of them and responds to them in appropriate ways. There is no hesitation as to what they are; no consideration as to whether they should be subsumed under this or that concept. They do not first have to be made intelligible by being brought under concepts. An agent finds them ready for use, which means that they present themselves as already interpreted and understood. As far as the practical situation is concerned, they do not present problems. As long as they remain in working order and serve as instruments, there is no question or suspicion that they might not be what we understand them to be. They simply call the agent to respond to them, in the latter's realization of his or her possibilities. A cultural anthropologist, however, may very well be uncertain whether tools, which are in her circumstances simply cultural objects, had this or that use, but they are not the tools she uses in her research (361). A tool, then, is intrinsically contextual; a tool is em Seiendes im Ganzen, an entity within a whole. In Being and Time, Heidegger makes this point by way of his concept of world. As it figures in the phrase being-in-the-world, "world" designates the whole in the light of which we approach individual entities. The world is not a denumerable totality or an entity with respect to which one might have a belief or adopt a mental stance of some other kind, but rather a totality which a philosopher can conceive only in a holistic manner, namely, as the 98

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revealing or unveiling of all that is ("die Offenbarkeit des Seienden als solchen im Ganzen"). 19 Knowing as an objectifying attitude is accordingly said to be a certain kind of unworlding (Entwdtlichung) (65), an "act" of isolating or disengaging something from a context in which it already exists. This does not mean, however, that the knower deals henceforth with entities without any context at all. The decontextualized object enters into a new context, namely, that of the science in which it is to be studied (356-63). That we always need such a context is, indeed, an important point of his general doctrine of knowledge. Every cognitive apprehension of an entity involves the projection of one or more concepts that are not formed on the basis of observation but function as the a priori of this or that science. The search for knowledge cannot do without the guidance of concepts. Science is not a matter of pure induction. For Heidegger, as for Husserl, inquiry has to be guided by an ontology and epistemology that are implicit in it. Foremost among the ontological concepts is, of course, that of being as Vorhandenheit, but in the case of any particular science this is made more specific by means of concepts that delineate its specific structure. 20 While the nature of the cognitive attitude, as well as the character of the transition from the practical to the cognitive, is still unclear, there is no lack of clarity about the fact that the approach Heidegger takes is transcendental. The place of the latter, however, has shifted to the practical domain of being-in-theworld; the conditions for the possibility of the cognitive attitude are sought in action, rather than in consciousness or reason. Before going on, I want to consider a question which is crucial in any comparison of him with Husserl. How does this doctrine about the relation of knowledge and action specifically differ from Husserl? In my interpretation of the latter's thought in chapter 2,1 emphasized that he, too, saw knowledge as an object of search, and a search, of course, assumes the existence of a cognitive agent who is able to do the various things that are required to attain a particular goal, the epistemically privileged situation of seeing the object itself. Doesn't that suggest that Husserl's knower is also first and foremost an agent? I think that the answer is somewhat as follows. Husserl clearly saw that any concrete search for knowledge in a specific area must take place in a context or framework which is taken for granted. Within the latter, the knower is an agent able to seek knowledge of the kinds of entities belonging to that context, because he is certain about the framework and therefore also about his own abilities, i.e., his status as agent within that framework. The framework comprises, as I have been in the habit of putting it, an implicit ontology and an implicit epistemology: a general view of the world and of the subjective capacities for acquiring knowledge of that world. The cognitive agent, in his natural, pretranscendental innocence, takes all this for granted, as simply true and not at all in need of investigation: there is the world, and here am I, a being possessed of certain powers of investigation, which, as a matter of fact, I have already made use of on countless occasions. It is the kind of situation which Husserlian phenomenology might well have expressed by using Heidegger's phrase: the being of such an agent is a being-in-that-world. To see the contrast with Heidegger, however, we have to realize that the kind Heidegger

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of phenomenological account just hinted at is not Husserl's complete story. I accordingly pointed out in chapter 2 that from the position of Husserl's fully elaborated transcendental philosophy, the previously mentioned ontology, which defines a specific sense of cognitive agency, turns out to be only provisional and precritical (one-sided) because from the higher, transcendental point of view each framework or context for inquiry is actually cashed out, so to speak, as a context of beliefs held, not by the seeker for knowledge in his natural naivete, but by the ultimate, transcendental subject. From this higher point of view, the framework is constituted solely by the beliefs of the transcendental subject. For Husserl, the life-world, which is a close analogue to Heidegger's being-in-theworld, is not ultimate; it is constituted by transcendental consciousness. All such beliefs fall under the scrutiny of the transcendental philosopher, including even the complex of beliefs that constitute a person's own cognitive agency in a world. Husserl could place the transcendental in consciousness because he was confident that he could reduce everything to beliefs or doxastic attitudes held by a transcendental subject. The really fundamental contrast between Husserl and Heidegger has to do with the fact that the latter rejects the possibility of such a philosophical point of view. Being-in-the-world, as he sees it, is not a doxastic framework that can, or should, be examined in the course of our search for knowledge, namely, when this search takes the form of transcendental reflection. Being-in-the-world, in Heidegger's sense, is a network of activities that are not amenable to the kind of transcendental-epistemological scrutiny that Husserl required. They might be said to be cognitive in their own right, but they are not based on beliefs or assumptions that could still be held to be in need of philosophical elucidation and justification along Husserlian lines.21 It is therefore obvious why for Heidegger an analysis of knowing cannot have the central importance it had for Husserl. For the latter, I think, the ultimate and ideal subject is an epistemic one, i.e., a subject who holds justified beliefs about the world and herself, rather than one whose status depends on an ontological acknowledgement of an ultimate context of being in which it is involved. This is what Heidegger saw, when he accused Husserl of placing the transcendental within consciousness. Subject and Predicate Paragraph 33 of Being and Time is entitled 'Assertion as a Derivative Mode of Interpretation." As Heidegger remarks (154), this discussion has a crucial importance for him. With regard to this topic, he faces the ancient metaphysicians, such as Plato and Aristotle, who held, not merely that a cognitive attitude gives us access to what truly exists, but that a subject-predicate statement, or the belief expressed by such a statement, is particularly revealing about the real being of what is. It was held, for example, that by making such a statement, we identify an entity and predicate a property of it, which we claim in our statement to be a property which that entity possesses. When we make a statement, we,

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of course, do many other things as well. For example, we utter certain noises, move our lips, use words, address ourselves to fellow human beings, give pleasure to some, and grief to others. But I think that Plato and Aristotle held that, in doing any or all those things, we also do something else: we try to grasp what is there to be known. And if we are successful and our statement is true, we have actually grasped something, namely, the fact that an entity possesses a property. Those metaphysicians therefore held that predication shows something about the nature of being. It shows, as Aristotle put it, that entities are substances having properties, both essential and accidental, and that in having properties individual entities exemplify universals. 22 In Heidegger's view, however, we already have "knowledge" of being by virtue of being-in-the-world. Entities are already understood as being this or that within the holistic totality which he calls a world. Or, as he puts it, being is already offenbar before the advent of theoretical knowledge expressed in the language of predication. In fact, his discussion of making a statement is primarily intended to reinforce this point with regard to subject-predicate statements. His principal contention, therefore, is that making a statement in a purely cognitive sense is a modification of tool using, in fact, a narrowing of our focus. As in § 13, the cognitive attitude in general was contrasted with more practical attitudes, so in this paragraph Heidegger contrasts the kind of interpretation that involves the explicit assignment of a property to an entity, as we do by predicating of it a concept-word, with the practical understanding of things such as we find in everyday activities. His concern is to show that predication is a cognitive performance to which we cannot attribute the kind of privileged status traditionally attributed to it, because it rests on antecedent activities of a practical sort. In the practical understanding of being, an entity is seen contextually. In the context of building a house, something is interpreted as a hammer; four walls and a roof are interpreted as a house in the context of our human need for shelter. With the advent of a cognitive stance, however, the interpretation ceases to be a function of a practical context. By virtue of this new understanding of being, what is said about the referent of the subject-term does not accrue to it by virtue of its involvement within a practical world orientation. The attitude is one of objectification, a perception of things as merely objectively present, objects possessed of properties and standing in relation to one another, having no relevance in the world of our practical concerns. While much remains vague, this is what Heidegger portrays as the distinctively cognitive attitude underlying science in all its forms, as well as propositional knowledge in general. This new stance does not consider things in the context of everyday practical concerns but considers things as having a being that is altogether their own. What is said is supposed to be found in the entity as it exists an si'ch.23 People who adopt such a stance are realists of a nonphilosophical kind, understanding themselves as dealing with entities that have properties independently of their knowing about them. Expressing it in philosophical language, they believe something to the effect that a concept-word applied to an entity is able to capture a property that the entity possesses "in itself." The question which now arises is this: what is the transcendental philosopher going to say when he encounters

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such nonphilosophical realists? Is he going to adopt their point of view, as Plato and Aristotle had done, thereby raising their realism to the status of philosophical realism? As we already noted, Heidegger addresses himself to the matter of realism in § 43 (202), where he briefly discusses the idea of independence. He also touches on this matter in his lectures on the history of time (20, 299-300 [HCT, 21819]). If we are to attain a proper understanding of the meaning of discourse about mind-independent objects, he tells us, we first have to become clear about the being of that subject in relation to which they are said to be independent (202). As we read in his lectures on the history of the concept of time, because objects are supposed to be independent of the subject, we really need an adequate understanding of subjectivity if we are to understand properly what is meant by that independence of the object from the subject. How do objects acquire the meaning of being independent? The answer is: when entities somehow get released from the context of practical relevance in which they existed before the advent of objectification and predication. An entity as object of knowledge is said to be independent from us, but in saying that, so Heidegger would have it, we implicitly understand ourselves as beings with practical interests. The realist thinks he can apply the concept of independence to entities as such, but according to Heidegger, this shows that he is not aware of its true origin. What we really mean is that the object of knowledge is one in which we have no practical interests; our attitude becomes one of detachment and objectivity; we declare that it is independent, an sich—it means nothing to us, as one might put it colloquially. From Heidegger's transcendental standpoint, then, the independence which a knower grants to his object amounts to no more than a certain way of understanding being. We could call this Heidegger's transcendental critique of realism.24 Armed with this transcendental explanation, Heidegger will be able to grant with equanimity that there are entities that exist an sich, i.e., independently. He will be able to say that natural science, for example, deals with such entities. He can do so because the meaning of this expression has been clarified. It does not mean what a realist thinks it means, namely, that entities exist independently of the knowing mind. It means that entities are understood as independent. Given this understanding, it is necessarily, though trivially, true that there are entities existing independently of their being experienced, known, or grasped. Given that understanding, we can speak, as we do in physics, of things, their properties, and their relations. But the transcendental philosopher knows that all such talk is possible only on the basis of a certain understanding of being. Consequently, he will not assert the object's independence on his own account, since he is not himself captive to this understanding. If we expect Heidegger's discussion of predication in § 33 to advance our understanding beyond what he has to say about the birth of the cognitive attitude, we are in a sense disappointed. He tells us with great emphasis that making a predicative statement should be seen as a way of addressing oneself to entities. Predication, we are told, is a matter of pointing out an entity (Aufzeigung).). While this may be true phenomenologically, the emphasis placed on it in a discussion

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of predication may seem surprising and unwarranted. The point is not original either, since it had already been made very clearly by Husserl in the Logical Investigations. Making a predicative statement, the latter said, is an intentional activity directed upon entities, which are the objects about which the statement is made, rather than the words or sentences used in making it. He also repeats another Husserlian point, namely, that one may be directed upon an entity, even if the latter is not in direct view or within our immediate grasp. The intention is on such occasions unfulfilled but nonetheless object directed by virtue of the cognitive interest of the speaker, who wants to say what the entity itself is like. And that implies, as Heidegger states, that he does not refer to an intermediary or a representation of the entity or the mental state in which he finds himself. (From such remarks, it is clear that Husserl's intention-fulfilment doctrine is also embraced by Heidegger.) I think the basic reason that he emphasizes that predicative assertion involves pointing out the entity in question is that he wants to underscore that knowing is based on the disengagement of an entity from its practical context or, as we might also put it, the concentration of cognitive attention on an entity in its independence from that context. I think Heidegger wants to say that this is how we acquire the idea that things are independent and, in the absence of transcendental critique, end up with a realist view. Predication, as he goes on to say, narrows our view of an entity to one of its aspects or looks, rather than of the object as a whole (155). We not only see the hammer outside the context of its use but also determine it by mentioning one or more of its properties, such as, its shape or weight. The difficulties of interpretation that faced us in the previous section still remain, however, since Heidegger's explanations at this point revert to the use of terms he had introduced earlier, but which we found to be themselves in great need of further explanation. He tells us, for example, that when a hammer is interpreted as having this or that property, "the 'as' no longer reaches out into a totality of involvements" and the hammer "gets pushed back into the uniform plane of that which is merely present-at-hand" (158).25 Most philosophical accounts of predication would agree with Heidegger that, at least in the case of singular statements, it involves pointing out, or referring to, an entity, for example, by naming or describing it. But according to those accounts of predication, while we begin by naming or referring to something, we complete the act of predication by saying something about the named object. And it is this second move which makes the act distinctively predicative in nature. Heidegger, however, says little more than that the making of a statement or assertion involves a pointing out of an entity. Predicate as well as subject are said to be generated within the scope of such a gesture. As he puts it rather obscurely, "Within this pointing-out, the elements which are articulated in predication—the subject and the predicate—arise" (155). But what does this mean? He speaks of synthesis and says that something is seen in association or conjunction with something else (33). 26 But he does not make clear what the elements are that enter into synthesis. Heidegger says that what is joined to an entity as its predicate is actually

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"drawn from that which is present-at-hand as such" (158). That has a certain amount of plausibility, since his examples are singular predicative assertions of the kind that are verified by observations of particular entities. But he does not clearly answer the question, "What do we draw from the particular object before us?" He uses the word "property" but does not explain its meaning. 27 Do we draw from a particular entity a property which that particular exemplifies but which is itself multiply exemplifiable? To ask the question from a slightly different angle, Can we exhaustively characterize what is uncovered or unveiled in the case of a singular predication without reference to something intrinsically general? Is it a mere particular, experienced in a moment of time, or is it a particular exemplifying one or more properties? Plato, I take it, would say that the presence of an individual entity reflects a Form that is present, if not visible to our senses, because the very being of individuals consists in participation in Forms. It is clear from § 33 that Heidegger's primary concern is to articulate how we understand the being of so-called present-at-hand entities associated with the making of subject-predicate statements. But one may nonetheless reasonably expect a further elaboration of the nature of predication, because, as we shall see, when being is understood as Vorhandenheit, predication does have a distinctive form in that a predicable content or whatness is predicated of an entity. In other words, in this domain entities may quite legitimately be said to have properties. According to one traditional view of the matter, predicate expressions in a subject-predicate statement refer to, or stand for, properties or universals, so that a typical subject-predicate statement says either that a particular entity instantiates a property or that it is an individual member of a species or kind. And on this view, both properties and kinds are universals, i.e., multiply exemplifiable entities. To be sure, the cognitive interest in predication may be said to be directed upon an individual entity, but in saying something about it one relates that individual to something else, namely, to the property it exemplifies (which may likewise be exemplified by other individuals) or to the kind of which it is a member. Even if the universal or species is not named in the same way as the particular subject is, the point I want to make is that in predication there is more than a concentration on that particular entity. The individual is viewed as being more than merely a particular. It is implied that, if the predicative assertion is true, what is said about a given individual may equally truly be said about other individuals, if there are any. Granted such a view, one may quite reasonably quarrel with Heidegger's contention in § 33 that predication is a concentration on an individual entity as such and so object to what he says by arguing that it introduces universals into our universe of discourse. Even Husserl, who was not at all a strong realist with respect to universals, had held something very much like this view. He had argued against Berkeley in the second of his Logical Investigations (Hi/a 19/1, 154-60 [LI, 374-78]) that if I point out a singular entity and abstractively attend to one of its aspects or parts, what I apprehend is individual. The process of merely abstracting from the object as a whole and focusing on one aspect of it does not make the aspect attended to a universal. The individual aspect of an entity is as individual as the

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entity itself. The aspect itself is not a universal, although it can of course be conceived as an instance of a universal property, as we do in a genuine predication. As both Plato and Aristotle noted, and as Husserl explicitly affirmed in the text just mentioned, an individual entity has its individual properties. In Aristotle's terminology, they exist in an individual but are not predicable of it because they are not themselves universals but exemplifications of universals (Categories ra 22-30). Plato's wisdom exists in Plato, not in Aristotle. And the truth of the predicative statements "Plato is wise" and 'Aristotle is wise" is established by finding wisdom in Plato and also in Aristotle. But these statements are true by virtue of the fact that Plato's wisdom is an exemplification of the same wisdom of which Aristotle's wisdom is an exemplification. As it is often put, the instances differ individually but not qualitatively. My particular reason for calling attention to this matter is that the question whether there are universals is crucial for any epistemology, including Heidegger's own. Its importance is due to the fact that all knowledge expressed by the use of subject-predicate sentences involves general concepts. This is true of philosophical-epistemological knowledge as well as any other, and it therefore makes an important difference how we understand what we are doing when we use concepts. Because of its importance, I devote the following section to a study of Heidegger's view of concepts. Let us say (in a Kantian manner of speaking) that concepts bring a certain unity to our experience, as when we call different things by the same name or call something the same object every time we see it. Our vocabulary is therefore full of words that are general in application. But what precisely are we doing when we think and speak conceptually? Do we subsume the manifold of our experience under concepts so as to have an experience of objects, as Kant thought? Is it simply a matter of coping with a manifold that would otherwise overwhelm us? Shall we say that we impose concepts upon things to simplify our references of things? Is our classification of different things as belonging to one kind merely serving an interest or purpose we have? If we adopt such a view, it would seem to follow that, whatever the purpose may be said to be, the use of concepts does not really tell us anything about the innermost being of things. Those who hold such a view have traditionally been called nominalists. They hold that concepts are just our ways of classifying things that in themselves do not belong to kinds and do not have anything in common. 28 Concepts simply label things, says the nominalist, and the pragmatist may come along and show in what ways such labelling is useful to us. A realist in the matter of universals, by contrast, holds that we use concepts in order to get an adequate grasp of reality. If we make a cognitive claim that amounts to genuine knowledge, the use of a certain concept is in actual fact a grasping of what is true about things in their own being. Things, according to the realist, are not through and through individual; they actually share properties. And this is what we try to grasp with the use of concepts. We subsume things under concepts because they come in kinds and share properties we can grasp with the use of concepts.

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Essences Heidegger's texts are full of essentialist vocabulary. He speaks resolutely and without hesitation about the essences of comportment or statement making and about essential relations of dependence, such as that of founding. When he speaks about something not being possible without something else, as his transcendentalist mode of thought frequently requires, he makes it quite clear that he is not talking about contingencies of experience. The thesis that statement-making is derivative assumes that we have a grasp of the essence of statement making before giving what he often calls an account of its origins, which, in turn, is not a matter of discovering empirical circumstances or historical beginnings. In Being and Time (356-57) we read, for example, that when an existentialontological analysis inquires into the origin of theoretical discovery in circumspective concern, this is not to be regarded as ontic history or development. And again in the lectures on metaphysics of 1929-30, he comments that considering the origins of statement making is a matter of inquiring about the ground of their "inner possibility," their "eidetic origin" (Wesensursprung), which requires of us to grasp the whole structure of that activity and try to find out what its "inner eidetic structure" (innere Wesensbau) points to as the ground on which it is based and with which it is connected (29-30, 485 [FCM, 335]). Yet while his vocabulary is almost as essentialist as that of Husserl, there is in Heidegger nothing like the elaborate doctrine of essences that the former felt obliged to present. One can sense from the assured manner in which Heidegger uses essentialist notions that he had a firm grasp of them and that he had something like Husserl's doctrine in the back of his mind, but in his principal works we do not have a statement of his own doctrine on that subject. He does not offer an account like that of the free, imaginative variation of examples, a methodology necessary, according to Husserl, to grasp an essence in its purity. One might explain the absence of such a doctrine by saying that Heidegger felt that there was no need for him to present such a doctrine in the light of Husserl's splendid work on that subject. But if he felt that way, why did he not explicitly endorse Husserl's doctrine of essences, which would have been helpful to students of his thought in the light of his criticism of Husserl on so many other matters? Now whatever the answers may be, in the previous section, I raised questions about Heidegger's treatment of predication, complaining about his silence on what has traditionally been considered a distinctive feature of predication, namely, its conceptual content. In saying what something is, we apply to it a word expressing a concept, for example, "black" or "horse." In subsuming the particular entity under such a concept, so it has been said, we claim that the entity instantiates or exemplifies a property. And some of these properties seem to constitute the essence or whatness of something, which is to say that the particular entity must have those properties, if it is to exist at all. Essential properties thus were distinguished from accidental ones, the latter being those properties an entity will at times have but that, in the course of its existence, may come and go. And quite apart from this question about individuals, concepts

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express properties that, by virtue of their own intrinsic nature, are related to one another (either by inclusion or by exclusion) in essential ways. I urged the importance of the topic of concepts, because without it a philosophical account of predication leaves us in the dark as to the use of predicate expressions. Lack of clarity about that leads, in turn, to lack of clarity about the nature of knowledge because knowledge always involves concepts. Furthermore, if we are not clear about knowledge in general, we cannot be clear about specifically philosophical knowledge either. Now, then, since it is obvious that predications have a significant conceptual content, what is the nature of concepts? Picking up the discussion of the previous section, are we doing no more than applying one and the same word to various items within our experience, perhaps on the basis of a convention regarding the use of the word? Or do those words express concepts which, when used in predication, may grasp the properties the things themselves actually have? In chapter i, I noted that the question resuscitates the medieval debate between nominalism and realism. I argued that in § 33 of Being and Time the author did not give a doctrine about the conceptual content of subject-predicate statements because he was preoccupied with something altogether different, namely, an argument to the effect that the cognitive understanding of being arises out of an understanding of entities as zuhanden. But even if one grants the cogency of the Heideggerean argument against the primacy of Vorhandenheit, one may still want to know what we are to make of the conceptual content of predicative statements. Without telling us what he thinks a concept is, Heidegger has not done full justice to the cognitive nature of such statements. And finally, a clarification of the nature of essences is required if we are to be clear about the import of the concepts contained in his own philosophical claims. Now we can find in Heidegger's works a few texts that shed at least some light on this and related issues. First of all, in Basic Problems of Phenomenology, he offers a lengthy discussion of the traditional distinction of essence and existence. And in that connection, he states that the thesis that every entity has an essence does not have universal validity. Its scope is to be restricted on account of the fact that Dasein has a being that is not straightforwardly accessible with the use of concepts.29 He does affirm, however, that essence-talk is definitely valid in the realm of Vorhandenheit, i.e., in the realm of entities insofar as they are objects of knowledge claims (Basic Problems § 12 c). And in the lectures on metaphysics (1929-30) discussed earlier, it is said quite explicitly that being is articulated in whatness and thatness (29-30, 519 [FCM, 357]), which is to say that, while not intrinsic to being as such, there is an understanding of being according to which things have essences. He even notes, albeit in passing, that one ought to distinguish between properties possessed essentially—those which constitute the Was-sein of an entity—and properties which are accidental or contingent (So-sein) (29-30, 476 [FCM, 328]). From earlier discussion, we may recall that Heidegger wants to interpret predicative statements as object directed; their intention is to say something about an entity. Now in Basic Problems, he maintains this view also when it comes to essential or analytic statements. He rejects the view that, unlike contingent state-

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ments, essential or analytic statements do not intend to say anything about real entities but are only verbal because they explicate only the meaning of a word. He rejects this way of distinguishing between contingent and essential judgments and puts forward the view that so-called analytic statements are also about reality. They differ from other statements in that they view things in the light of a "common meaning and understanding, as it is already laid out in every language" (24, 280 [BP, 197]). They are only abbreviations (Ve.rkummerunge.n), which sum up past and still common views of things. 30 Although they are historical in origin, they function in much the same way as a priori concepts. Heidegger unfortunately does not elaborate on his remarks. But it would seem to follow from what he does say that, although essences are historical and changeable, during particular periods of history, things present themselves as having essences, natures that remain fixed during the period in question. The essence of a thing is simply what that thing is commonly thought to be during such a period of history, in distinction from its accidental properties that we attribute to it on various occasions. For an explicit discussion of essences, we have to turn to lectures of 1937— 38, published in 1994 and translated under the title Basic Questions in Philosophy. The principal role Heidegger here assigns to essences is a cognitive one: they give us cognitive access to particulars. He agrees with Plato and Aristotle (and, we might add, Husserl) that there resides in all factual knowledge an essential knowledge guiding and supporting it. If we did not in some way see essences, we would be blind with regard to individual things (45, 65 [BQ, 59]). Without them, we would not recognize particulars when we come upon them. Essences, we read, are "what we have in view in advance (im vorhindn im Blick haberi), though without considering it explicitly, when we name and experience whatever we encounter as what it is, e.g. as a house" (45, 61 [BQ, 56]). An "acquaintance with the essence (Kenntrzis)—no matter how preliminary and undetermined . . . — guides us constantly and everywhere at every step and every dwelling place in the midst of beings and in every thought about them" (45, 81 [BQ, 73]). Such an acquaintance is "ordinary and necessary," as when we are acquainted with the essence of houses, trees, birds, roads, vehicles, and human beings (Heidegger's own examples) (45, 81 [BQ, 73]). In sum, essences function as concepts or descriptive names; in that sense, they are indispensable instruments for recognizing particulars in our environment.31 As we can see from the essay "Plato's Doctrine of Truth," he does not hesitate to interpret a Platonic Form in the same vein. Like a concept, a Form has only an epistemic role; it is something that helps us recognize things as being, say, a house or an animal. Forms are that in whose light any particular entity shows itself as being this or that, so that a certain particular entity is unconcealed and accessible (9, 221 [PM, 170]). It shows what an entity is; it is that by virtue of which something can appear as what it is, so that it can be present to us as being a certain kind of thing; it makes possible the appearance of everything that is present to us in its visibility (9, 228 [175]). This identification of Forms with concepts, it should be noted, is very questionable. What Heidegger plays down in his interpretation of Plato is the fact that for the latter a Form exists in. its own right, not merely as a mode of 108

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cognitive access to particular entities. For Plato, Forms are entities and objects of theoretical knowledge, not merely aids or guides in our empirical knowledge of sensible particulars. For Plato, theoretical knowledge of the Forms is actually our very best guide in practical life. As we will see, Heidegger denies this.32 In both our theoretical and our practical dealings, essences have a guiding role. But are they also objects of which we can have knowledge? Can the concepts we use be objectified and known in the same way in which we know particular objects? And can we make statements about essences that can be evaluated as true or false on the basis of seeing such an essence? In the text of the lectures under discussion, Heidegger calls it the question of giving a ground (Begrundung) for a claim about an essence (§§ 20-26). Is there something given to us as an object, to which an assertion about an essence has to conform to be true, and in the light of which we can therefore evaluate the assertion? In the case of a statement about an essence, that view would require that we have access to the essence itself in order to see whether a given statement about it is true or false. This led Husserl to the idea of Wesensschau, but Heidegger holds that we do not have such access. If giving grounds for an essential statement is understood in the way we understand it when we justify ordinary statements of fact, then there are, in his view, no grounds we can give for an assertion about an essence. The cognitive grasp of an essence, then, does not have a ground in anything objectively given. It is not a seeing in the usual sense, but an Ersehen, which the English translators render as "productive seeing": This seeing does not see by merely staring at what is present at hand and already otherwise accessible. . . . It is a seeing that draws something forth, not a mere looking at what is standing about. . . . It is not a mere noticing of something previously unheeded. (45, 85 [B.Q, 76]) The rather puzzling terminology used here, I take it, is intended to express the customary sense given to the term "seeing," which Heidegger is concerned to ward off. According to this nai've realism, one can only see what is already there to be seen. Essences would then be thought of in the same manner in which we think of material objects, namely, as objects present-at-hand. The account Heidegger offers, in fact, amounts to a transcendental critique of such realism. We are accordingly told that "the grasping of the essence is a kind of bringing forth (Hervor-bringung) of the essence" (45, 83 [BQ, 74]). The essence is "brought out from its previous obscurity and hiddenness" (45, 85 [76]). Heidegger explains himself as follows: The grasping of the essence is a bringing forth: specifically, in the Greek sense of a bringing out and fetching forth. Whence? From concealment. Whither? Into unconcealedness. . . . To see the essence in productive seeing means to posit. . . beings in their unconcealedness, to dignify the latter by giving them a name (in das nennende Wort heben), and in that way establish them (zum Stand bringen) and thereby let them stand in the visibility of an essential cognition. (45, 96 [86, transl. altered]) We are supposed to think of this so-called productive seeing as a process or event in the history of being itself, antecedent to the arrival of theoretical cognition. Heidegger

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It is a mode of our participation in that history, a form of the kind of Seinsverstandnis we always have as beings-in-a-world. Let us consider the quoted passage in some detail. To see an essence in the special sense of Ersehen (productive seeing) is a matter of positing an entity in its unconcealment. In other words, some entity becomes accessible to us through an essence. It seems to be a matter of things getting a name and having henceforth status as bearers of that name. Thus we have houses, trees, birds, and the like. Now each of these words or names implies a certain description of whatever it is applied to. Calling something a house is to imply that it has four walls and a roof and is suitable for human beings to live in. Something being called a house reveals something to me in its essence or whatness. It is essentially whatever justifies calling it a house. As he says, things thus become visible in essential cognition. If it bears the same name as long as it exists, it has essentially whatever properties arc associated with its being described as a house, a tree, or a bird. Things sharing the same name share the same essence. But in terms of Heidegger's account, a thing's essence is, of course, nothing but the result of a kind of primordial baptism, which, in turn, is based on earlier experiences of houses. As we already gleaned from some remarks in Basic Problems, the essence of a thing is simply what that thing was taken to be in the past. In short, what we now see as a thing's essence is nothing but what it is by virtue of its historical characterization in distinction from what we know about any particular house that we are familiar with. Essences are historical constructions or creations. Their ground lies in history, the history of being. A thing interpreted or conceived as a house and being so called, whether in a practical or a distinctively theoretical domain, allows us to make a statement that is eidetic and in a sense necessary. To make such a statement, we objectify the concept of being a house and speak of it as if it were an object, for we now understand being cognitively, as Vorhandenheit. We distinguish eidetic statements from empirical or contingent ones, but, according to the Heideggerean account, the difference between them is not absolute but rather relative to the status they have in the economy of our thought. What we take for granted and as a priori about houses can be captured in eidetic statements, whereas that which we regard as relative to our actual experience of houses generates empirical, or a posteriori, statements. It should be clear that Heidegger would not affirm the thesis that there are essences without qualification. Such a realist affirmation would be naive and one-sided, displaying an ignorance of the transcendental dimension, i.e., the history of being. He would, first of all, insist on adding the transcendental codicil "given an understanding of being as objects." If our stance is a cognitive one, we cannot but objectify concepts at certain points in our dealings with things. Analytic statements are therefore as much object directed as synthetic, empirical ones. But such a construal needs to be subjected to a transcendental critique, lest it be understood as a full-fledged realism with regard to essences.

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The Question of Truth Truth is obviously a crucially important topic in a theory of knowledge. A cognitive attitude that expresses itself in a predicative statement involves a claim to truth, namely, that the state of affairs articulated in the content of the statement obtains. And the concern about the justification of a claim is premised on the presumption that a justified claim is true. Now Heidegger has offered a sustained argument to the effect that the cognitive attitude that expresses itself in predicative assertions presupposes a context of practical attitudes. Whereas the tradition of philosophy since Plato and Aristotle held that the truth of such statements entails, for example, that there exist entities (or substances) that have properties, Heidegger denies that such statements engage being in a primordial or privileged way. In his discussions of truth, he continues this argument, contending that truth itself is not confined to statements but that there is a more primordial truth. We saw in chapter 2 that Husserl made the assumption that his doctrine of fulfilment could be used to interpret the definition of truth as adaequatio intelkctus et rei, a medieval formulation of the Platonic-Aristotelian view. In a case of fulfilment, one belief functions as confirming or verifying another; by virtue of being so related, one is recognized as giving cognitive status to the other. It is not difficult to understand, I noted, why Husserl thought that his notion of fulfilment could capture correspondence as it functions in this definition of truth. When we find what we looked for in a particular search for truth, it seems quite natural to say that we find what corresponds to what we had thought. In fact, we often have the sense of seeing that our words correspond to what is there in the world around us. One might therefore readily agree that Husserl's phenomenology of fulfilment admirably shows the phenomenological character of recognizing such correspondence. What is controversial in a superlative sense, as I already stated in my first chapter, is the question of whether Husserl's basic assumption is one we should accept. Is an epistemological interpretation appropriate to the definition of truth as correspondence? More specifically, is truth, traditionally defined as correspondence between thought and object, reducible to the kind of correspondence which is a relation between cognitive experiences? I have argued that, when epistemologists favour such a reduction, they do so because they expect from the traditional view answers to questions it neither raises nor claims to answer. In § 44 of Being and Time, we meet the same assumption. Heidegger's text is clearly addressed to the epistemic aspect of truth: "truth phenomenally explicit in cognition" (217). His question is: how do we encounter truth in our search for knowledge? Still more simply put, how do we actually find truth? One might therefore say that what is discussed by Heidegger is verification (or justification"), rather than truth. In subsection (a), he criticizes an epistemological interpretation, but what he himself propounds is a doctrine that is different but nonetheless epistemological. According to one epistemological interpretation of the traditional idea of correspondence, the attainment of truth depends on establishing a correspondence between a mental representation (Vorstellung) and an extramental reality. Very Heidegger

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little reflection is needed to see that this requires an external point of view. To establish that there is correspondence, one has to have cognitive access to the object itself, as well as its mental representation. Heidegger rejects this portrayal of the search for knowledge, as we already saw in this chapter. He characterizes its starting point as being-in-the-world, using this ontological expression precisely to counter the view according to which it is an inner world of mental representations and mere beliefs. The truth seeker, as he sees it, must begin in a situation appreciated by her as a being-in-the-truth, where truth is, in most respects, a possession rather than an object of search. In terms I have used before, as a cognitive agent, she is in possession of an implicit epistemology and ontology. As Heidegger puts it, the moment she makes a statement about the object, she herself is already a "Sein zum seienden Ding selbst" (218). She begins, for example, by locating the object or state of affairs in a world in which she is already at: home in a general way; what makes her an agent capable of going out to find the truth is knowledge of her own abilities and of the relevant things that need to be done. Without being in a general way in-the-truth, the seeker for truth could have neither goal nor direction. It is for reasons such as these that she cannot see her starting point as merely a mental state, as the view under attack would have it; in a situation consisting of nothing but representations, everything would presumably be just as problematic as the particular truth she seeks. In short, Heidegger's general point is that the search for truth presupposes being-in-the-truth. The doctrinal background of the discussion in § 44 is, in a certain sense, altogether Husserlian, as he himself admits in a footnote on page 218.34 That is to say, the discussion is about the epistemically important transition from an unfulfilled to a fulfilled intention. That step involves identifying something we have come to see as being just what was earlier meant but not seen. The point is important because, without such an identification, a later situation could have no epistemic relevance to an earlier one and could therefore not be counted as verifying or falsifying it. And Husserl had emphasized in that connection that for this recognition to be possible the as yet unfulfilled intention must itself be directed upon the very object that later comes into view. It is a recognizing of what is seen as being what was meant." Heidegger asks: What happens when we take a step in the direction of an object not yet seen? His example is taken from an everyday context of finding out what is true, but it is meant to illustrate also scientific inquiry. What happens when I find that the picture on the wall is actually hanging askew, as I had said it was while my back was still turned to the wall? He replies that in verification the perception just confirms that the statement was, indeed, directed to the picture and "uncovered" the state of the picture, as had, of course, been the intention of the speaker. "To say that an assertion 'is true' signifies that it uncovers the entity as it is in itself" (218). Does this mean that a statement is, by its very nature, true? To be sure, Heidegger says that a statement is found to be true, when we find that it uncovers an entity as it really is. But he also says that merely to make a statement involves a pointing out of the object. The problem I raise is that of Ernst Tugendhat, who

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has argued that the notion of uncovering (entdecken) is ambiguous because Heidegger apparently uses it to characterize both the statement as such (whether true or false) and the statement as true rather than false. 36 Tugendhat's question implies that Heidegger is talking about a statement as something which either has or does not: have the property of truth. I agree that Heidegger's talk about true and false statements is rather misleading because it does not clearly indicate the basic perspective of his discussion. The primary questions that concern him are epistemological and have to do with our situation as truth seekers. When he argues that in making an assertion or statement: we have already uncovered an entity, he does not mean that a statement is true, simply by virtue of being made, but that the statement maker is in a position to establish whether it is true or false; that is, she knows where to look to see whether what is said is correct. 57 And the same is true, if she is to be able to discover error. The discovery of both truth and error, as we saw in Husserl, presupposes the constancy of a specific context of reference or direction of inquiry, for instance, a reference to a particular object in a particular place. In Being and Time, Heidegger does not discuss a case in which an assertion is discovered to be false, as Husserl had done in the Logical Investigations, where he discussed disappointment as well as fulfilment. But in other texts from the same period as Being and Time, Heidegger devotes considerable attention to the possibility of error, or, rather, the discovery of error. He often affirms that it is essential to a statement that it can be true or false. For example, in the lectures on logic of 1925-26 (21, 182-90), he presents a doctrine very similar to that which I ascribed to Husserl in the previous chapter. The example Heidegger uses here is that of a shrub being mistaken in a forest for a deer. The background of his discussion of this example is a lengthy disquisition, starting from Aristotle, on how or why a statement (logos apophantikos) can be false (21, 162-90). A statement can be false, we read, because in it something is said to be something: it is a presenting of something as conjoined with something else ('Aufweisen aus und in der Hinblicknahme auf anderes") (21, 186). (Note that he does not say that something is said to exemplify a property.) We can thus present something as conjoined with something with which it is not conjoined, or vice versa. In the discussion of the previously mentioned example, this is applied as follows. In the circumstances in which I find myself (in a dark evergreen forest in which I know there are deer, so that I know that I might actually meet one), I take something to be coming toward me and, until I discover my mistake, I take it to be a deer. As Heidegger seems to want us to construe this, the belief that it is a deer conjoins a location with the beast. It can be discovered to be a mistake only if we come to that place in the forest and find that there is only a shrub. If there is to be such a phenomenon as the discovery that one was in error, that place must be there. The forest constitutes the implicit and unchanging context in which I move and in which I mistake a shrub for a deer. If it were not for this unchanging context, coming across a shrub could not show me that I had been mistaken. In terms of the example which served the previous discussion of verification, a person turning

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his back must have a sense that the wall is behind, so that turning is the appropriate move to perceive the picture, if, indeed, it is there. Falsification, like verification, assumes that the appropriate action has been performed but the object does not show itself in the way that was anticipated. The picture on the wall is there all right, but it hangs straight. Or, to revert to the other example, I have continued to walk in the same direction and have thus come to where I took a deer to be, but there is a shrub, rather than a deer. The general doctrine emerging from all this is that, if a statement about something or other is to be evaluated as to its truth or falsity, the entity in question must already be taken in a way such that we can go and see whether what was said is true, thus recognizing the object, if it is there. Before any such attempt at evaluation, there must therefore be an environment—in Heideggerean language, a world—which exists unproblematically and is familiar to us in a practical way. Granted Heidegger's perspective on propositional truth as an object of search, one can easily appreciate how he might come to the conviction, which he often puts forth as his main thesis, that truth cannot be confined to statements, as traditional philosophy since Aristotle had held. If a propositional truth is to be verified, there must be a truth which is meanwhile accepted and unquestioned, and which is in that sense more primordial than the truth discovered in statement making (220). The search for truth presupposes truth (221). Truth in this sense is given, rather than arrived at as the outcome of a search. It is a truth of which we make use as seekers and finders of truth, and as such it is the transcendental condition of whatever truth we find. Heidegger says that we are "in the truth," the truth we rely on in our daily activities, and also in scientific work. Does this mean that Heidegger completely rejects truth as correspondence or, in terms he himself often uses, truth as correctness, as well as the realism associated with it? I think the answer is: yes and no. From §§ 13, 33, and 43, it is quite clear that, according to Heidegger, there is a distinctively cognitive attitude which honours a view of truth that can be designated in this way. This attitude understands the being of its objects as vorhanden. Although his characterization of it is negative rather than positive, prominent features of it are objectification and detachment. This understanding of being clearly bestows a certain sort of independence on the object. As we read in § 13, we tarry in its presence, without interference or manipulation; we observe and say what it is like. The object is interpreted as "in itself," as having its own properties, in distinction from the subject. Objects of this sort do riot, for example, have to be apprehended or discovered; as he puts it, they already exist before that. In "The FjSsence of Ground," we read: "This is why we speak of their possible and occasional entry into a world. Entry into a world is not some process that transpires in those beings that enter it, but is something that 'happens' 'with' beings" (9, 159 [PM, 123]). When the entity is discovered and, in Heidegger's language, enters into our human world, science does not count the relational property that accrues to it by virtue of this historical event as a property of the entity "in itself," but rather as an event in the personal history of the scientist or the general history of science. In Being and Time, we read that the physical bodies subject to gravitational forces already existed before Newton made his discovery (226-27). Such 114

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a view can clearly be glossed as realist, at least in tone. Hubert Dreyfus calls it hermeneutical realism in his commentary on Being and Time.38 There is nothing strange or remarkable about this. When Heidegger writes this sort of thing, he does not commit himself to the kind of philosophical realism which I have called classical. As I explained in chapters i and 2, what we have here is the acknowledgement on the part of a transcendental philosopher that there is such a phenomenon as realism, whether it is that of common sense or that of science. An acknowledgement of this sort, however, must be carefully distinguished from an endorsement. His acknowledgement is no more than an indication of the area of belief, the conditions of which he wants to examine. The transcendental philosopher is therefore not at all captive to realism or to the closely associated idea of truth as correspondence. On the contrary, realism and everything connected with it can be reinterpreted in terms of beingin-the-world. When he has traced its transcendental origins to that "domain," he will be ready to acknowledge realism as legitimate or justified under that interpretation. As Husserl had it, realism is not to be denied, but the meaning of it is to be clarified transcendentally. With respect to the definition of truth as correctness, he notes, in a text from the late thirties, that it is neutral in regard to the realism-idealism controversy, for even an idealist will agree to it, although deep down he thinks that statements are shown to be correct and therefore true by reference to what are, in fact, nothing but representations. Consequently, "a thinker such as Kant, who founded idealism and strictly adhered to it, and who has most profoundly thought it through" nevertheless raised no questions about the correspondence view of truth (45, 16-17; 23-24 [BQ, 16-17; 22]). I think that in B Being and Time h his position is very similar, both with respect to correspondence-truth and realism. The crucial question for us as his interpreters is to measure the effect of his transcendental reinterpretations of realism and truth." Although a small number of passages are frustratingly difficult to interpret and have been widely discussed in scholarly literature (by Dreyfus and Guignon among others), I take it that, strictly speaking, Heidegger as philosopher—i.e., from his own point of view—is not at all asserting that there are entities correctly described by science as existing in their own right. As noted, Hubert Dreyfus calls him a minimal hermeneutic realist, a position he characterizes as follows: "Hermeneutic realists hold that a science's background realism cannot be used to justify the claim that the objects of science exist independently of the activity of the scientists" (254). In other words, Heidegger does not make the scientist's realism his own but leaves it to the scientist to understand being in that fashion. This is, in my view, altogether characteristic of a transcendental philosopher, who does not speak directly about reality but only about the ways reality is understood by certain modes of first-order experience. To accept or reject a position such as that of natural science in any straightforward way would require an insight into the nature of reality, which he denies he is capable of having. Not being captive to the scientific understanding of being, however, he can and will reinterpret it. Such a transcendental reinterpretation, we saw, focuses on the origins of the concept of independence, which the scientist employs without knowing of such Heidegger

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origins. The latter talks as if there are mind-independent objects, but, being ignorant of the origins of such talk, his realism is naive. He molds his theories to fit the facts, but this view of truth as correspondence is likewise nai've, i.e., in need of a transcendental critique. That re-interpretation of realism, both in its scientific and its commonsense versions, shows its underlying understanding of being to be founded, which is to say that it represents a modification of a different way of understanding being. According to Heidegger, as I understand him, there is an ontology of Vorhandenheit all right, but the philosopher can acknowledge this fact only by specifying the conditions that make such an ontology possible. What Heidegger's reinterpretation of truth consists in we saw earlier in this section. I called it an interpretation of truth in terms of verification. The example by means of which he illustrated it was an everyday happening, but Heidegger would want us to understand that scientific modes of inquiry also fall into this pattern. In other words, truth as adae.quatio in the old-fashioned sense is likewise reinterpreted in a transcendentalist manner, i.e., in a thoroughly epistemological fashion. At the end of § 44, Heidegger mentions scepticism, but in the light of the preceding, we should not expect Heidegger to be agitated by it at this point in his theory of knowledge. He remarks that it need not be refuted (229), but that remark is deceiving, ft is true, granted the entire argument of Being and Time up to this point, but it fails to acknowledge that the argument was, at least in part, designed to make scepticism impossible or meaningless.10 As I see it, the sceptic was already dismissed, when being-in-the-world was introduced as the unitary matrix from which the search for knowledge begins. On the basis of this antecedent possession of truth, all cognitive statements can be established as true or false, but no cognitive questions can be asked about the underlying matrix. A philosophical or radical sceptic, it will be recalled, uses a realist concept of being and takes the view that, if there were knowledge, it would be a relation to an entity or state of affairs that is mind independent. Now such a realist concept of being has almost from the outset been declared nai've by a transcendental philosopher. An entity present-at-hand, in Heidegger's view, is independent, but it is not an independence he himself would assert without adding qualifications. The qualifications would be necessary, because they embody his transcendental interpretation of that independence. That interpretation attempts to show that independence-talk derives all its meaning from a context in which everything is a unity-in-difference. He can therefore allow such talk without fear that it might create a gap between object and subject that a sceptic could exploit. His concept of being (being as presence or accessibility) does not leave him with a problem of radical scepticism that would require special discussion. Rather, it eliminates the possibility of such a problem arising. What is present-at-hand is, to be sure, independent of our cognitive claims, but that independence is an internal feature of being-in-the-world. It indicates the manner in which a specific way of beingin-the-world understands the being of entities.

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The Open Space Three years after publishing Being and Time, Heidegger returned to the topic of § 44 in a lecture, "The Essence of Truth." It remained unpublished until 1943, during which time the original text underwent some changes, most notably by the introduction of the notion of the open space (das Offene).*141 I shall take some account of the original version in the following discussion. The lecture, in both its original and its published versions, continues the preoccupation with the epistemological aspect of truth. Heidegger cites the traditional formulation of truth as "adaequatio rei et intellectus" and again interprets it as a formula intended to shed light on how truth is attained. He translates adaequatio into German as Angleichung, a term obviously intended to capture the activity whereby a truth seeker adjusts what he says to what he sees or measures what has been said against what is given to him. 42 The question he pursues is again the transcendental question: how is this adjustment possible? Granted the broadly anti-Cartesian thesis that a statement maker does not attempt the verification or falsification of her statement from a situation constituted by mental representations of the object (which Heidegger had already argued in Being and Time but which he reinforces in the text now under discussion), where does such a person come from? If such person's situation is not adequately described as one of having in her mind a mental representation of the object referred to, how is it to be characterized? As the earlier work suggested, what is antecedent to the cognitive attitude is the life of practical activity, being-in-theworld. Does he simply want to argue for the thesis that knowledge presupposes action? "The Essence of Truth," particularly in the early version of 1930, suggests something along that line, for great prominence is given to action or comportment (Verhalten). Making a statement about something is itself an action, namely, the adjusting of a statement to what it is about (angleichen). Since to be true a statement has to say things as they are, adjusting it is an action that is, Heidegger emphasizes, demanded by what the statement is about. His example is that of a statement about the shape of a coin, which has to be made to be in accord with the shape of that coin, if it is to be correct or true. What kind of action is this? How can it be cognitive with respect to something altogether different, for example, a coin? How can the statement be found to be correct, i.e., to be in accord with its object? In the earlier version of "The Essence of Truth," he begins with a careful examination of the general nature of human action or comportment. Comportment in general involves a taking account of, or responding to, an environment in appropriate ways. What is appropriate, we are told, is what is required by that environment. But it is not a doing which, from an external point of view, just happens to be appropriate. Action is doing something in response to a situation which the agent understands as calling for that specific action. Action, then, appears to follow a measure and a rule ("gibt sich ein Ma(3 und eine Hegel"). But if so, that which binds the agent (das Bindende, as he puts it) must be out in the open (oj'fenbart) before the agent can, so to speak, measure his action by Heidegger

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reference to it. Simply put, only if that is the case, can the agent can do what is required. The question which clearly agitates Heidegger and the pursuit of which here determines the entire course of his thinking is this: we sense the demand that we get in tune with (uns abstimmen auf) what is around us, but where does that demand come from? Our actions take, as it were, for granted that there is something by which they are "bound," something to which the agent owes an appropriate response. Whence this Verbindlichkeit so intimately connected with action? At this juncture of his discussion (following the older version), Heidegger introduces the notion of freedom, which is supposed to be the essence of truth, i.e., the ground of its possibility. Freedom is not to be taken as inherent in human actions or something human beings have within their power, but rather something like the general condition by virtue of which every human action is open to the requirements of the environment. Soon after the phrase "letting be" (Seinlassen) makes its appearance and we are told that human comportment must let itself be guided by the surroundings, letting an entity be what and how it is, giving it "power over us," a locution obviously intended to emphasize that our actions are a response to something prior and given. Truth in the sense of unconcealment (Unverborgenheit or Entborgenheit) now enters the discussion of action, because Heidegger writes that the entity in the environment (which we size up to prepare a response) becomes "unconcealed." What is revealed—and what we respond to—is an entity in its being. Its being demands from us that we respond to it appropriately, be it by way of an ordinary act of avoidance or by way of saying something about it. "Only if an entity becomes in its being verbindlich, does it appear as an entity" (copy, p. 15). In that case, we do not say simply what we feel like saying, but we say what the entity wants us to say. As one can see from this introduction of the topic of truth into a discussion of action, what is at issue is an epistemological question. In what sense can an action, in particular, that of statement making, be a knowing of things? How can an action grasp what things are like? In terms of Heidegger's doctrine of knowledge, what are the transcendental conditions of knowledge? The published version of "The Essence of Truth" condenses the general theory of comportment into a few lines, but it gives what may reasonably be regarded as the climax of the discussion that began with a general theory of action. It comes in the form of Heidegger's formulation of a new idea, that of an open, unobstructed space (das Offene). All comportment is offenstandig, i.e., taking place in an open space. Statement making, like other forms of comportment, can attain truth only by virtue of a specific ontological environment in which it takes place. The epistemologically crucial affirmation is found in § 2, where Heidegger says that a statement can be correct by virtue of the fact that the comportment takes place within an open space. Much of what we already saw in the earlier version has remained unchanged. The activity of making a statement—or of evaluating in respect of truth an already existing statement—requires that the state of affairs addressed in it be somehow presented in advance (vor-gestellt, in Heidegger's orthography). The point is familiar to us from earlier discussions. If it were not so presented, a 118

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cognitive agent would clearly not know what statement is appropriate or how to determine whether a given statement does so correspond. The state of affairs addressed in the statement cannot be represented by a mental intermediary or something else that stands in for the real state of affairs. If we had merely various representations at our disposal, and if the object were conceived as not being within the open space, we would be unable to establish the truth of the statement in question. In the case of the statement about the shape of the coin lying in front of us, however, speaking phenomenologically, there is no distance yet to be travelled in the search for truth. We are as close as we can be. Das Seiende itself is present. Heidegger formulates the matter this way: the object about which a statement is made "must maintain its stand as a thing and show itself as something withstanding" (9, 184 [PM, 141]). The principal concern expressed in this formulation is that the knower must not conceptually overwhelm the object and impose on it a concept without due consideration of the object's otherness. The object, Heidegger wants to say, must remain standing over and against our conceptualization of it. Its status as an independent entity must not in any way be compromised. Exactly at this point, the idea of an open space is first mentioned. The adjective "open" clearly means that we are to think of a space in which objects a certain distance away are nonetheless visible because the space contains no obstructions. We read that for the real coin to be actually present to us—open or accessible in such a manner that we can appropriately speak about it or actually settle the question about the truth of what somebody said—the coin must come towards us across an open space, while nonetheless—paradoxical as that may sound—keeping its own place out there, i.e., keeping its independence. Speaking in the terms of the metaphor, the space simultaneously separates and brings together the activity of statement making and the object about which one makes a statement. Trying to get beyond metaphor, we might say that the linguistic activity can be an appropriate response to an entity that is something other than itself, if that entity itself is accessible or visible, that is, falls within the scope of our cognitive activities. Heidegger's open space is thus meant to explain how the activity or comportment of statement making can be cognitive with respect to entities in the sense of taking account of their otherness. Statement-making has access to entities because it is comportment that is offenstdndig zum Seienden, which is to say, related to the entity by virtue of the open space in which it exists. But for us to be able to see the correctness of what we say, the entities must have their own place within the same space in which we make statements about them. Otherwise, they cannot be the criterion (Richtmap) by which a speaker measures the appropriateness of what she says or evaluates what has been said by others. Being in an open space is not peculiar to theoretical cognition, as the general theory of action underlying Heidegger's discussion makes clear. All action takes place within it. If the open space constitutes the cognitivity of statement making, other forms of comportment are likewise cognitive. All action, he now wants to say, is a matter of taking account of things in the environment. How an action takes account of the environment depends on what understanding of being guides the action. In actions of a practical sort, as Being and Time had argued, Heidegger

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things are understood in their instrumentality (Zuhandenhdt). But the being of entities can also be understood as independent from us, as having no relation to us as practical beings. With the arrival of this new Seinsverstandnis, we objectify the things around us, maybe even ourselves. And we engage in activities the intent of which is to make statements about objects and their properties and relations. My interpretation of Heidegger's metaphor emphasizes its epistemological import. In language that is somewhat old-fashioned and certainly objectionable from a strictly Heideggerean point of view, we might simply say that the open space is what, unites subject and object. As the Kantian tradition had argued, if scepticism is to be avoided, philosophy ought to bring these two together in a such way that the sceptic cannot pry them apart, but of course without making them out to be simply identical. Although the object remains distinct from the subject, they are, as it were, reconciled in a unitary matrix that somehow overrides that distinction, so that we can meaningfully say that the subject knows the object for what it truly is. The matrix, one might perhaps say, opens the one to the other by construing the distance between them in such a manner that it no longer stands in the way of knowledge.43 There can be no doubt, I think, that the language of the Heideggerean metaphor has to be understood, at least in part, as elucidating the old Kantian problem in the face of radical scepticism. The metaphor illustrates, among other things, that even an entity whose being is understood as vorhanden, and therefore an sich, is for all that accessible to us, provided that the entity appears (erscheint) in a space shared by cognitive activities such as predication. The emphasis on the sameness of the space is intended to ward off a separation such as that of the mental space of the knower and the real space of what she knows. The uttering of a sentence like "That coin is round" with cognitive intent is an activity taking place in the presence of the object, or at least in the same space where the object is also to be found. A truth seeker can therefore conclusively establish that those words are in accord with the object. From the fact that it forms the meeting ground of subject and object, it is clear that the open space has to be understood as having the character of a conceptual framework in the sense specified in chapter I. Heidegger may thus be said to have put forth an argument in favour of the conclusion that independently existing entities are accessible and that a statement can be found to be correct in the sense of being in accord with those entities. From this, he concludes further, in the same manner, that the essence of truth is being open or free for that which is manifest in the open space, because the latter makes possible establishing the correctness of a statement. The fact that the metaphor of the open space unites entities and human experience makes it a suitable metaphor for being as such. Heidegger speaks of it as the lighting or truth of being. As we saw earlier, being is seen by Heidegger as a whole which embraces the totality of what is. It is not an entitative unity: being is therefore not a predicate of any entity. The human being can know entities qua entities only if he exists within the whole of being. For that-which-is "is" as a whole, which is the open space. The fact that Heidegger does introduce the concept of being in his metaphor 120

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of the open space shows, it seems to me, that he is not prepared to settle for a version of pragmatism. He is not prepared to reduce everything to activities or practices and the rules or conventions governing them. He insists on asking the question of how activities can be cognitive with regard to that-which-is. The question of knowledge is somehow still alive in his mind. One could perhaps even say that the question of scepticism, which he dismissed so cavalierly in Being and Time, does not seem to have entirely vanished. In other words, he feels the need to say something more than that we find people engaged in such and such practices. He still wants to know what those practices amount to with regard to das Seiende. Untruth and Concealment Heidegger's texts on this topic are among his most difficult and obscure, but we cannot altogether avoid discussing them, since they belong to the same essay in which he discusses truth, namely, "The Essence of Truth." The difficulty lies in the fact that it is not a doctrine of error in the usual sense. That is a topic we already discussed. Untruth is supposed to be, in some sense or other, a natural occurrence and therefore to be acknowledged as an essential part of the general scheme of things. Truth and untruth, he tells us, belong together, or more strongly, the latter has its origin in the essence of truth. And concealment and unconcealment likewise go hand in hand. (He is, of course, using the term "truth" in the sense his doctrine gives to it: truth is that: by virtue of which entities are revealed, accessible, or present.) If truth is something like drawing the veil from what was concealed, then untruth must be concealment. In talking about concealment, he says he does not have in mind the fact that a great deal still remains to be known and that there is much that we shall never know. The concealment in question is not one that could be remedied by acquiring more knowledge. It is a concealment that unavoidably accompanies unveiling or unconcealment. Both untruth and concealment, like truth itself, are said to be historical in that deep sense in which being itself is also historical: they are happenings or processes in the history of being. Now in our discussion of the ontological difference, we saw that being is a matter of revealing (disclosing) entities. If that is so, then it is altogether natural that our awareness is directed to the entities that appear to us in its light, rather than directed upon being. The light of being, we could say, has to be behind us if we are to benefit from it. In that sense, there is a concealing of being which, presumably, accompanies its act of disclosure as a matter of necessity. As we read in many places, we forget being and cling to what is; we forget that by virtue of which we see, that in the absence of which we would not see anything. This happens whenever we seek objective knowledge, for example, in science, particularly if we do so in a manner that does not leave room for seeking truth in any other way. Following this path is tantamount to having our back turned to being because we are so engrossed in what is right in front of us and within our grasp. Heidegger

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All this is fairly straightforward, even if couched in Heideggerean German. As I said in chapter i, there is even a certain analogy between what Heidegger says and the kind of thing that could be said about any conceptual framework that plays a transcendental role with regard to a certain domain of entities. It, too, is usually concealed to those who use it. Those who use it do so as they are engaged in a study of the domain of entities falling within it, and they need not at all be aware of the framework as such, which is simply the prevailing paradigm, as many nowadays put it. Kant, for example, could easily have said something like this about the transcendental as he characterized it. Thus far I have run together concealment as an ontological happening and the fact that we forget that there is such a concealment. Heidegger, however, distinguishes between the two. While I said that forgetting seems to be a fairly natural consequence of being as it functions in its transcendental role, he apparently does not hold that this forgetting is altogether necessary. He thus allows for the possibility that a human being here or there might be fully aware of what is happening. Such people might be rare, but it is possible to be as aware of being in its concealment as we are of the entities it reveals to us, even if there are fundamental differences between the two forms of awareness. Heidegger himself would certainly maintain that he was somehow aware of both entities and their concealed being when he asked the overwhelming question, "What is being?" In "The Essence of Truth," however, particularly in the discussion of untruth and concealment that begins in § 5, frequent use is made of the phrase "das Seiende im Ganzen" (that-which-is considered as a whole), sometimes expanded to "das Seiende im Ganzen als einem solchen" or (at the end of § 7) das Seiende ah ein solches im Ganzen.** In my discussion of the ontological difference, I pointed out that the phrase is important because it is a designation of being itself, but it refers to being under the aspect of that which forms the peculiar transcendental unity of all entities. That it is a designation of being is apparent, I would say, from its very first occurrence in the text of the essay. It is used without formal introduction or hint of warning, and it is used as another way of speaking about disclosedness and unconcealment, which figure in the immediately preceding sentences (9, 189 [PM, 145]). In the sentence itself, he calls that-which-is physis, one of Heidegger's titles for being itself. A little further in the same paragraph the phrase "that-which-is as a whole" functions as an adjectival determination of disclosure (Entbergung). Being is disclosure of entities as entities-within-a-whole. I have suggested that being is in Heidegger's mind associated with unity and wholeness. But in the discussion of the ontological difference, it already became apparent that, although the whole is precisely that by virtue of which we apprehend entities as such, it is usually overlooked because it lies, as it were, hidden behind the multiplicity of entities or, alternatively stated, the multiple forms of human comportment. Entities come to be regarded as forming a totality of a different type, namely, a set specifiable by enumeration of the variety of entities that are members of it. And this conception suggests that each entity, or at least each distinctive region of entities, can be apprehended and known in isolation. In § 2 of "The Essence of Truth," the whole was discussed by Heidegger as 122

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the open space. Every entity exists in it, and so does every human action, including distinctively cognitive acts such as statement making. Statements, he had contended, owe their truth or correctness to the context of the open space in which they are made. How does this lead to the topic of concealment and untruth? At the end of § 5 we read: Precisely because letting be, in the form of a particular comportment, always lets the particular entity be to which it comports itself, . . . it conceals thatwhich-is as a whole. Letting-be is intrinsically at the same time a concealing. (9, 193 [PM, 148, transl. altered]) Letting be (Seinlassen), it may be recalled, is a general characteristic of comportment. An agent lets something be if he allows his actions to be determined by the nature of the things in his environment or world, rather than imposing his own preconceived ideas. And as Heidegger's doctrine of action would have it, inasmuch as an action lets an entity be what and how it is, it discloses that entity. Now what the passage just cited means is something like this: to the extent that an action is oriented to a specific entity, it conceals that-which-is as a whole. But the statement "It conceals that-which-is as a whole" does not mean what it seems to mean. What it seems to mean is that it conceals because it is focused on one entity, rather than on many, or possibly all, entities. But in the light of what I said about the manner in which Heidegger uses the phrase "das Seiende im Ganzen," it does not mean that at all. There is a concealment of that-whichis as a whole because there is a context from which the particular entity is isolated. But that is not the context of the other entities taken as a denumerable set. The context or whole is that of being, that origin which brings all entities together in the unity of the happening of revelation. Reading it this way, however, seems to lead us back to the point made a while ago without any reference to "das Seiende im Ganzen." Simply put, I said then that revealing is, of course, an event that benefits only those who ignore it in favour of what it reveals. By using the phrase "that-which-is as a whole" Heidegger suggests that something is drawn from a context in which it somehow belongs. Both ideas come to the same, namely, that concealment is the other side of every revealing. And as we saw, Heidegger says that we are not usually mindful of this concealment, with the result that the concealment itself is concealed. The consequences of this unmindfulness of concealment as a primordial event intrinsic to the history of being are dire indeed, as Heidegger proceeds to detail in truly existentialist manner, in the remaining pages of the essay: Humans cling to what is readily available and controllable even where ultimate matters are concerned. And if the human being sets out to extend, change, newly assimilate, or secure the manner in which entities arc revealed in the most various domains of his activity and interest, then he still takes his directives from the sphere of readily available intentions and needs. (9, 195 [PM, 149, transl. altered]) The human being in the state of what he calls errancy may still take his standards in action and cognition from what is, but he has clearly forgotten both Heidegger

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the revealing and its concurrent concealment as transcendental events. Errancy, however, cannot be captured by what philosophers have discussed as cognitive error. On the contrary, "incorrectness of judgments and falsity of knowledge" is the most superficial form of errancy. Unlike the Husserl who wrote the Crisis, Heidegger does not show any strong conviction that philosophical insights can turn things around. The turn is a possibility that exists for the existential freedom of the human being, but philosophical concepts can only prepare the way for the making of an existential decision. He writes: While in a state of errancy, one can catch a view of the mystery by way of asking a question—which is to say, that unique question of what is that-whichis as such as a whole ("was das Seiende als solches im Ganzen sei"). (9, 198 [PM, 151, transl. altered]) This question, he goes on to say, is the question of the being of entities, which, since Plato, has been called philosophy or metaphysics. But according to Heidegger, historically speaking, the question was no sooner asked than rejected by those people who say that no questions need to be asked about what is revealed (das offenbare Seiende), since its givenness is sufficient for us. As Heidegger sees it, however, simply to hold by what is ("sich an das Seiende halten") cannot be the philosopher's final view of the matter. The remark seems revealing. Transcendental philosophers have always held that an acceptance of the given without transcendental critique is to lapse into dogmatism. He is too much a disciple of Kant not to share that view. That is to say, he is a transcendental philosopher who, though critical of Kant, nonetheless thinks that every cognitive claim needs to be subjected to a critique of a transcendental kind, which involves an inquiry into the origins that make it possible.

Summary I have presented Heidegger's view of knowledge as belonging to the transcendental tradition, arguing that what is distinctive about it is the place he gives to the transcendental. While Kant placed the transcendental conditions in reason and Husserl spoke of the transcendental as cognitive consciousness, Heidegger thinks of himself as going further by inquiring into the conditions that make a cognitive subject possible, which he designates as being-in-the-world or Dasein. His question of being, I suggest, is to be interpreted in terms of the same tradition. I pointed out that, when he raised the question of being in Being and Time, he did not simply bypass Kant and turn directly to metaphysics in the traditional sense. He approached the question of being from a phenomenological and transcendental point of view. The term "being" designates a wholeness or unity that is transcendental in character, which is to say that it is not a generic unity inherent in the properties of what is unified, but one which is, in some sense, extrinsic to the nature of what is unified. Viewed in this transcendental manner, being is the dimension by virtue of which entities are present, i.e., the dimension of their revelation or epistemic accessibility. The multiplicity of entities is related to this unity as the ultimate condition for their accessibility. 124

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From an epistemological view, his doctrine is circumscribed by the traditional transcendental assumption that knowledge is to be considered as an attitude of objectiflcation rather than as a relation to an object. His argument is that this cognitive attitude is "founded," which is to say, it cannot be adopted except on the basis of having previously adopted distinctively different attitudes in the practical domain of being-in-the-world. While the object of the cognitive attitude has generally been considered to enjoy independence from a cognitive subject, Heidegger undertakes to undermine this realism by interpreting the independence transcendentally, namely, as a feature of the attitude of one whose sole interest lies in objectification. According to Heidegger's interpretation, the object's independence from the knower should be transcendentally explained as independence from practical concerns. Heidegger's concern to show the derivative character of objectiflcation remains dominant in his discussion of predication. I contended that, because of this preoccupation, he does not do justice to the peculiar nature of predicative thinking and, in particular, that he fails to make clear how we are to understand the use of concepts in cognition. In view of the epistemological importance of the latter problem, I devoted the following section to a study of his doctrine of essences and found that, according to Heidegger, entities have properties or essences only insofar as we understand their being as presence-at-hand, i.e., as objects of knowledge. The account of truth in § 44 of Being and Time, I argued, is actually an account of the epistemological aspect of truth, that is, verification or the search for truth. But Heidegger uses that account as a critique of the traditional, Platonic-Aristotelian view of truth as correspondence of thought and object, a strategy I criticized on the ground that it is a confusion of truth with verification. The transcendental argument runs like this: the condition of the possibility of finding out whether objective statements are true or false is our situation of being-in-a-world, where truth exists in a form antecedent to verification. I suggested then that "The Essence of Truth" takes a further step in this direction. In this essay Heidegger locates the transcendental beyond action. Knowledge itself, according to Heidegger's account, is a form of action, but both knowledge and action are embraced by the open space, a metaphor serving to illustrate the condition of the possibility of their cognitivity. Action as appropriate response to our surroundings is itself cognitive by virtue of what is not itself action. The open space is Heidegger's illustration of being as a whole, as a unity distinct from all entities. Being as a whole, we saw, is that by virtue of which anything at all is revealed to us. It is that all-encompassing context which every human action, including cognition, presupposes as the transcendental ground which enables action, including cognition, to take account of entities and in that sense reveal them.

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4

MERLEAU-PONTY

Introduction The work that established Maurice Merleau-Ponty as a major phenomeriological philosopher, Phenomenology of Perception, was published in 1945.1 Because of his early death, it remained his main work and is therefore the principal source for my study in this chapter. Upon turning to it after a study of Being and Time, the difference between Heidegger and him seems very great indeed. If Heidegger tends to overwhelm his reader with ontological terminology and his emphasis on the question of being, one who is reading the Phenomenology for the first time often loses the sense of reading a philosophical text because the author takes his reader through so much psychological and related scientific literature that it takes more than one reading to trace the outlines of the philosophical argument that runs beneath the surface. Nothing seems to have been further from his mind than the primacy of the question of being or the importance of recognizing the ontological difference. If the difficulty with Heidegger was to discern epistemology in his ontology, with Merleau-Ponty it is to find a doctrine of knowledge in psychological discourse. There is, however, a lot of common ground between them because of their phenomenological background and Husserl's influence in particular. MerleauPonty, like Heidegger, is also very critical of the latter's formulation of a phenomenological philosophy, although I shall argue that he, too, remains within 126

the transcendental tradition. Although his starting point is more psychological, even Merleau-Ponty does not escape the charm of the question of being and argues for a new concept of being. Whether or not one attributes this to Heidegger's influence, it is integral to his philosophy. As we will see in a moment, even the focal point of his criticism of Husserl is similar to that of Heidegger. As we found in our study of Heidegger, the criticism of Husserl is a convenient point of departure for an epistemological study of Merleau-Ponty. Husserl gave epistemology a central place in philosophy, a view grounded in the conviction that the human being is fundamentally a knower, a cognitive subject who holds beliefs about a world. Concerned about the justification of those beliefs, this subject develops an epistemology by becoming reflective about his experience, elaborating such a theory of knowledge in phenomenological analyses until the transcendental turn is called for and the status of consciousness becomes transcendental. As Husserl saw it, this consciousness has absolute being and is "constitutive" with respect to the being of everything else. Like Heidegger, MerleauPonty rejected such a view of a world-constituting, cognitive consciousness that becomes transparent to itself in reflection. His Phenomenology of Perception is largely devoted to arguments for this rejection. Merleau-Ponty wrote a phenomenology of perception, a favourite topic also with Husseri. Epistemologically speaking, the latter's position on this topic can be summed up as follows. Sense perception is for us a source of knowledge, but only by virtue of unexamined, even unacknowledged, assumptions. The validity and scope of perception can therefore be determined only by examinations of those assumptions, which require a vantage point external to the perceptual one; and thus he argued for the transcendental turn to nonsensuous consciousness. In criticism of this view, Merleau-Ponty sets out to argue for the independent validity of perception in matters of knowledge. Perception, as he saw it, does not conceal epistemological questions or problems that force us to appeal to a more authoritative faculty or power of knowledge. There are, for example, no sceptical questions that would drive us to a standpoint above that of sense perception. There is no need for an appeal to divine veracity to deal with the question of an evil demon who allegedly tampers with our mind (50 [40]), as Descartes had held. Traditional idealism had prided itself on dealing successfully with the radical scepticism spawned by early modern empiricism, particularly Hume. As Merleau-Ponty saw it, it had done this by introducing an absolute, well-nigh divine subjectivity, but his own position is that we do not have to opt for such an absolute subject to eliminate the threat of the evil demon. Perception, properly interpreted, is equal to that task (50 [40]). Another way of making much the same point: Merleau-Ponty wanted to reassign to prereflective perception the cognitive capacities he thought it had so often lost, when it was examined from the supposedly higher standpoint of transcendental reflection (278-79 [241]). He did not think that we need to appeal to such a standpoint to find answers to epistemological questions. He held that the questions about knowledge that arise from perception are also dealt with on the same level. In the course of his philosophical inquiry, he also came to the conviction that we need a new metaphysics. We have to ask anew, "What is the meaning of Merleau-Ponty

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being?" Along with the transcendental tradition in philosophy, Merleau-Ponty thought that human knowledge cannot be dealt with successfully without a new consideration of the fundamental nature of being. And the answer to the question of being is to be determined by the character of the experience which vouchsafes the accessibility of entities, namely, perception. His metaphysics is therefore extrapolated from a phenomenology of perceptual knowledge, rather than, say, predicative thought. An embodied percipient projects an ontology of the flesh, as he argued in The Visible and the Invisible. Unlike other transcendental philosophers, Merleau-Ponty wanted to construe being as perceptual accessibility. As he put it, his philosophy was to be an "ontological rehabilitation of the sensible" (Signs, 210 [167]). He saw the defence of sense experience as an argument against what he called idealists, intellectualists, or philosophers of reflection, a fairly large grouping of philosophers that seems to include, first of all, Husserl, but also Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel; his arguments are also directed at empiricists, but for my purposes the argument against the former reveals better his own doctrine of knowledge.2 [ do not follow his use of traditional labels. I call his philosophy transcendental, although he does not seem to distinguish transcendentalism from idealism and would therefore not accept my label. I also take exception to his use of the term "realism," which I consider to be as strange as that which we found in Husserl and Heidegger. He uses it mostly to designate a form of objectivism or naturalism, especially a theory that claims to give a causal explanation of experience. What he terms "the prejudice of the world' is thus referred to as a realist prejudice (17 [10]). A realist perspective, he states near the end of the Phenomenology (489 [428]), is one according to which consciousness is part of the objective world.3 Naturally enough, he rejects objectivist or naturalist realism in the name of phenomenology. A causal approach that is externalist in nature is incompatible with the internalism of the phenomenological method, even if we do not construe the latter in a purely Husserlian manner. Phenomenology requires a direct apprehension of experience. In spite of his peculiar use of the term "realism," Merleau-Ponty was, of course, aware of the concerns of metaphysical realism in the more classical sense, a central tenet of which is the independence of entities from human cognition, their being en soi. Idealism, as it is often stated, views being as internal to the knower, as, in some sense or other, created or constituted by the latter's conceptualizations. Merleau-Ponty was keenly aware of this debate between classical realism and idealism and of how it impinged on his discussion. One might at first think that he sided with realism. With great emphasis, he taught, as we will see, that the object always remains external to any perceptual act directed upon it and transcendent of every concept applied to it. In his view, it is this externality or transcendence that constitutes the reality or being of objects. Lengthy and difficult parts of his work are devoted to working out this interpretation of reality, but his own position does not amount to classical realism. The emphasis on externality is a criticism of idealism rather than an endorsement of realism. As he puts it in one place, we cannot be realists because "there is an element of final truth in the Cartesian return from things and ideas to the subject" (423 [369]). He agrees that it has been shown once and for all that our 128

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relations with things cannot be regarded as external (428 [374]), that the nature of such a relation creates a gap that needs to be bridged, but his quarrel is with the way the idealists had done this. 4 Entities are to be essentially correlated, not with the power of absolute consciousness or the power of reason and thought, but with that of embodied percipience. Both he and his idealist opponents, however, reject the realist concept of being.

Sensation and Perception on

A fundamental point in Merleau-Ponty's epistemology is that perception is an awareness of objects. He formulates that thesis in critical debate with two important traditions he discerns in modern philosophy. In the empiricist tradition since Locke, it had been common to speak of sensations or impressions, which as such are purely subjective in nature. They designate no more than a percipient's state of sensible awareness at a particular time. Although taken by the natural percipient as conveying a certain piece of information about the environment, a sensation as such is not, strictly speaking, an awareness of an object at all. For us to become aware of objects, sensations have to be interpreted, and several sensations have to be taken together as bits of information about one and the same object, perspectives of an external, reidentifiable entity. Hume represented at this point a very sceptical view because he held that this interpretation had little except need and custom to recommend it. The other tradition, which Merleau-Ponty in the Phenomenology calls intellectualism, represents a reaction to that empiricism. In this tradition, which may be said to begin with Kant, it was argued that the interpretation is based on a priori principles, which can be shown to be necessary for the possibility of our experience of objects but do not arise from it. These principles, as Kant said, are forms of synthesis, concepts imposed by the mind. Conceptualization, then, is necessary for any experience of an object. But Kant's argument, it seemed to Merleau-Ponty, gains a good deal of its dialectical force from the underlying and unquestioned empiricism. Kant still spoke of a pure sensible manifold that is antecedent to its combination or synthesis. What is given is material that has to be formed or ordered, but as the argument so far already implies, the form comes from a higher level than that of what is formed. To reach the experience of objects, we must ascend to a higher level. And he went on to argue that this means that the form is conceptual rather than sensible. Kant thus seemed to agree with the empiricists that there is no experience of objects at the level of pure sensation, that the given as such has no form or structure. Things do not come, for example, as substances with properties, as members of general kinds, or as causally connected to one another. These are all conceptualizations of the mind or reason, although to the unphilosophical mind they seem to be objective properties of things in the real world.5 But as Merleau-Ponty points out, the empiricist view of sensible experience was wrong to begin with. A phenomenological analysis shows that sense experience never has the character of atomic sensations or apprehensions of mere qualia that do not yet amount to an awareness of objects. Kant's argument that concepts are needed to make perception an awareness of M.erleau-Ponty

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objects therefore loses its force for us. The need for mental activity (mediation, as it came to be called by Hegel), which was so strongly felt in the Kantian tradition, was due to an uncritical acceptance of the empiricist doctrine of sensations. Merleau-Ponty, therefore, argues that perception has no need of nonsensuous, purely mental conceptualization or categorization. As perception, it is already an awareness of objects. It apprehends objects without having to rely on mental functions of a supposedly higher level; instead, it relies on given bodily capacities or acquired skills. Perceptions do not follow the pattern of applying concepts to given data. The recognition of something as this or that does not come about by recognizing certain data cither as calling for a particular conceptualization or as leaving us free in this respect. It is not a matter of predicating a concept of an entity, as we might be inclined to think on the basis of the importance traditional philosophy assigned to the subject-predicate proposition. The recognition of something as being this or that comes from the perceptual field, which is ranged over by those bodily capacities. In his chapter "The Thing and the Natural World," for example, he argues that perception itself already makes the appearance-reality distinction and apprehends objects in distinction from their modes of appearing. Perception is an awareness of genuine objects.6 Kant had, of course, also made this point against Descartes, but he had followed it up with an attempt to show that this is possible only because of the transcendental categories of the understanding, a view Merleau-Ponty rejected. He thought that the experience of objects does not owe anything to conceptual categorization. Kant, he says, overlooked the power of embodied percipience. It is not the power of thought that is at work here but the power inherent in embodied percipience (216, 237 [185, 204-5]).

Perception arid Meaning The features of the Kantian position objectionable to Merleau-Ponty are very similar to views advocated by Edmund Husserl. The latter held the view that, while perception is certainly intentional and thus object directed, its meaning (Sinn)—in the specifically phenomenological sense of that term—is conferred by consciousness. The fact that a quality—being appeared to redly, as one puts it in contemporary epistemological jargon—represents something for us, say, the red colour of a wool carpet, already shows the work of a consciousness, which is, in last analysis, of a higher level, namely, nonsensuous, transcendental consciousness. In opposition to this view, Merleau-Ponty writes that analysis discovers, in each so-called quality, meanings which reside in it, rather than being conferred upon it, or again, "the material itself takes on meaning and form" (374 [324])- "The meaning (sens) of the thing is constructed before our eyes" (374 [324]), rather than introduced from elsewhere. As he notes, I have only to look at a face or a landscape upside down to recognize nothing at all. What a thing imparts to us is imparted "through the very organization of its sensible aspects" (373 [323]). The following passages make the point in a telling way:

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If I wait for someone at a door in a poorly lit street, each person who comes out has an indistinct appearance. Someone is coming out, and I do not yet know whether I can recognize him as the person I am waiting for. The familiar figure will emerge from this nebulous background as the earth does from a ground rnist. (374 [324]) I expect someone, but my expectation does not constitute the real being of the person, f have to wait until the distinctively perceptual meaning is formed, which is the appearance that fulfils my expectation. The interpretation "That's him" will have to emerge perceptually. And what this amounts to, according to Merleau-Ponty, is that this meaning has to arise from the field: The visual thing appears when my look, following the indications of the visual scene, and drawing together the light and shade spread over it, ultimately settles on the lighted surface as upon that which the light reveals. My look "knows" the significance of a certain patch of light in a certain context; it understands the logic of illumination. (376-77 [326, transl. alt.]) That kind of meaning is not imposed by applying a concept but found as a result of what is itself sensibly present, namely, the field created by the illumination. Here is another passage making the same point: The significance of the ash-tray (at least its total and individual significance, as this is given in perception) is not a certain idea of the ash-tray which coordinates its sensory aspects and is accessible to the understanding alone, it animates the ash-tray, and is self-evidently embodied in it. (369 [321]) For us to recognize something as an ashtray we need neither concepts nor a meaning-conferring transcendental consciousness. The meaning of a thing, says Merleau-Ponty, inhabits a thing as the soul inhabits the body (369 [319]). In perception, meaning and existence are one (374 [323]), a statement obviously intended to counter the idea that we impose the meaning upon what is given. It is therefore within perception itself that a sensation becomes meaningful, in the sense that it becomes the configuration of a perception of an object. The meaning of perception is intrinsic to it, not conferred. 7 In the cited passage about the ashtray the author makes parenthetical mention of the total and individual significance of the ashtray. This raises a point that calls for some further comment. Merleau-Ponty recognized that many kinds of perception are satisfied with something far less than the complete individual riches of a thing. We usually come into a perceptual situation with limited expectations, often of a practical sort. We simply want to make sure of what is there. For practical purposes, we want to know: Is this an ashtray? Is that a tree? We know the meanings of such general terms. In that sort of situation, a perception serves merely to answer a question about the kind to which an individual entity belongs. The familiar presence of one such entity will do for those purposes. But Merleau-Ponty holds that our perceptions are not always harnessed to practical purposes or playing merely the role of instantiating our general concepts. There are perceptions in which "I contemplate an object with the sole

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intention of watching it exist and unfold its riches before my eyes" (54 [43-44]). He calls them primordial perceptions, in distinction from secondary or empirical ones. That is the kind of perception he had in mind in the passage cited previously. It has a meaning that is too rich to be captured with a name such as "ashtray" or "tree" or a description equally applicable to other individuals of that kind. I shall return to this important idea of a primordial perception.

Nature arid Scope of Reflection Merleau-Ponty defends the thesis of the primacy of perception also against the claims of reflection. Perceptual meaning, he contends, is inaccessible to reflection; it cannot be separated from the sensible object which has it, not even ideally or in theory (48 [38]). "There is a significance of that which is perceived that has no equivalent in the universe of the understanding" (58 [46—47, transl. alt.]). And this brings him into direct conflict with his own phenomenological tradition, in particular with Husserl. Besides, since Merleau-Ponty as a phenomenologist subscribed to the view that philosophy is reflective in character, the issue addressed here has very important consequences for his understanding of philosophical knowledge. Let us briefly recall the views on meaning held by Husserl.8 Phenomenological philosophy is systematic reflection. The direct objects of reflection are therefore said to be meanings (Sinne). While prereflective awareness or consciousness is aware of an object, reflection is focused strictly on that object qua object of that awareness. The object of first-order awareness is modified by the adoption of a reflective stance and becomes a meaning, that is, the meaning of a certain species of awareness. What a reflective act has as its peculiar object is this correlation of awareness and meaning (Husserl's noesis and noema). One might therefore say that meanings are objects first created by reflection. They are indubitably given, because meanings are accessible by inspection of the content of first-order awareness. Even a false belief harbours a meaning that can be considered as an object of reflection, namely, as that which was thought of as an object. We can talk about an objectified meaning and enumerate everything that makes up its predicable content. Since it is the intentional object of the awareness upon which one reflects, in principle, nothing needs to escape the reach of reflection, a claim very dear to Husserl. But as noted, in prereflective experience, the object is not a meaning. Our prereflective awareness passes right over, or through, the meaning because the cognitive interest of the natural attitude is the object as such, the object which appears in one act of awareness but exists independently. Now, if one also holds that meaning is conferred by consciousness—in the last analysis, by transcendental consciousness—it makes sense to think, as Husserl clearly did, that reflective consciousness can retrieve in meanings what prereflective consciousness holds to be objects. What a perceiver means can be ascertained without toss by way of reflection. In reflection one recaptures what has been projected by the percipient. The phenomenological reduction entails, to be sure, that the one who is engaged in reflection does not share the percipient's 152

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convictions, but that does not prevent him from apprehending the object of prereflective awareness. In Ideas, he confidently affirms that we have not really lost anything by the reduction (Hua 3/1, 107). The negative import of the change of attitude is only apparent. One can easily imagine Husserl saying that we have simply rid ourselves of the deception constitutive of the natural attitude. In fact, the passage just cited continues by stating that we have gained the whole of absolute being. Knowledge in the genuine sense, as he would have it, begins only with reflection, because it is precisely this act that eliminates the one-sidedness characteristic of all first-order beliefs by explicitly bringing the object into relation with the subject. Instead of being referred to merely as an object of an undefined knower, it is now indexed as the object of such and such a form of consciousness. In Husserlian terms, we consider it solely as it is intended by that consciousness. We saw that Merleau-Ponty contends that the meaning cannot in any way be separated from the sensible object that has it or that the significance of what is perceived has no equivalence in the universe of the understanding. Intent on defending the cognitive integrity of perception against Husserl or other philosophers of reflection, he continues by combatting the cognitively privileged status of reflection. He therefore argues in various ways that reflection introduces a modification that is philosophically important, that makes a difference we should not ignore. He wants to make it impossible for the philosophers of reflection to claim that perceptual awareness can be replaced by reflection. In other words, he is arguing against a philosopher like Husserl, who held that, if only we continue the reflective direction of thinking initiated by Descartes, we will reach a point of view from which perceptual awareness can be completely understood. Now Merleau-Ponty is not about to deny that philosophy uses the way of reflection, but he does not think that reflection can give the philosopher a secure domain in which to tackle all human questions. It is not the dawn of truth. In a sense, it cannot be the philosopher's point of departure, he holds, because it is founded on the unreflective (451 [394]), which means that it is a development and modification of the latter. It is not absolute but is intrinsically related to that of which it is a modification. A reflective consciousness defined in the Husserlian manner—namely, by a complete break with perception—is for Merleau-Ponty an abstraction: something that has been separated from the whole to which it belongs. That is why he said in the Introduction to his Phenomenology that the phenomenological reduction cannot be complete (viii fxiv]). Philosophy uses reflection, but if used in isolation it leads to an abstract point of view. To restore reflection to concreteness, we have to consider the genesis of reflection: Reflection cannot be complete (pleine)) . . . if it does not arrive at awareness of itself as well as its results. We must. . . reflect on this reflection, understand the natural situation which it is conscious of succeeding and which is therefore part of its definition. (75 [62, transl. alt.]; cf. 247 [213], 278-79 [241]) We ought to reflect upon reflection itself to become fully conscious of its origins in prereflective, first-order awareness. We then recognize that a reflective state of mind is the result of a modification, and that its objects (meanings) are likewise not aboriginal but the result of that modification. In effect, Merleau-Ponty argues that meanings as objects of reflection are derivative from what is more Merleau-Pontyy

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primordial, as Heidegger had argued in Being and Time that objective presence (Vorhandenheit) is derivative. Merleau-Ponty mentions several respects in which the objects of reflection are different from the objects of prereflective perception. First, what was an object of a fallible perception turns up in reflection as an object about which one cannot be in error, a "negation of negation" (VI 62 [39]). Second, what was an actually existing object becomes for reflection a possibly existing one. The confident assertion "I see a tree" is translated into the language of reflection by "I think that I see a tree" (430 [375]).' He also suggests that the so-called eidetic reduction— the shift of cognitive interest from a particular existent to the essence or whatness which it exemplifies—is likewise a change brought about by philosophical reflection (VI 70-71 [46]).'° In his last work, The Visible and the Invisible, he sums it up by stating that reflection is unfaithful to prereflective experience in three ways: it is untrue to the visible world, to her who sees that world, and to her relations with the other people who see that world (VI 62 [39]). Rather than being a faithful rendering, reflection is the transformation of the visible world into a world of thought (VI 67 [43])- He actually goes so far as to remark that, even if reflection did not change anything in the experience it considers, it still could not take the place of perception. For reflection is a return to experience: a posterior apprehension, an interpretation from a later point of view. His point is clear from the following passage: Never therefore will the philosophy of reflection be able to take possession of the mind it discloses, to see the world as its correlate. Precisely because it is reflection, re-turn, re-conquest, or re-covery, it can never flatter itself that it would simply coincide with a constitutive principle already at work in the spectacle of the world, that, starting with this spectacle, it would travel the very route that the constitutive principle has followed in the opposite direction. (VI 69 [45, transl. alt.]) In other words, if one were to grant that the world had been constituted by thought, the fact that reflection must begin with the finished product (i.e., the world as we have it) and proceed from there to inquire as to what brought it about, that fact alone would be enough to dismiss the claim of philosophers like Husserl to constitute the world from the standpoint of transcendental reflection. Philosophy, the owl of Minerva, is therefore not a cognitively superior approach to the world. Even in its transcendental form, it can only be a reflective reconstruction that must draw its inspiration from the prior presence of the world in perception (VI 55 [34]). There is accordingly a need to recognize the fact just mentioned, namely, that reflection itself is an act of "recapture" (reprise). And such recognition can come only from a metareflection, which he calls a surreflexion. In such a metareflection, one steps back from reflection per se and notes the modifications which the supervenience of reflection introduced into its subject matter (VI, 61 [38]), for example, that the perceptual entity has undergone a modification and become something that can be apprehended in reflection. This is a truly remarkable argument, and much in it calls for further discus154

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sion, especially in regard to the epistemology it presupposes. But at this stage of the study of his doctrine of knowledge, we need to consider it only as an argument supporting the thesis that perception is knowledge in its own right and that it does not have its credentials from any other source. His criticism of reflection is an attempt to protect the originality and integrity of prereflective awareness against those who would treat it as inferior and scrutinize the cognitive claims of perception from a reflective point of view and, like Husserl, claim to reduce perception to a certain set of beliefs which can be examined and described from a second-order vantage point. In other words, Merleau-Ponty does not reject the use of reflection but the claims philosophers based on it, when they claimed to be able to understand everything from the point of view of reflection, Other points will be discussed later in this chapter. He mentions, for example, absolute knowledge and says that its attainment demands that we reflect on the place of reflection in relation to the unreflective (75 [62]). We will come back to discuss in more detail the concept of knowledge that is implied by such a remark. I shall also comment further on his understanding of philosophy as a search for concreteness.

Perception and the Body

Perception is not an act to be attributed to a nonsensuous consciousness. To specify his notion of perception further, Merleau-Ponty introduces his doctrine of the embodiment of percipience. That the percipient is embodied is an essential ingredient in his doctrine of knowledge and to his philosophy in general. His well-known arguments against objectivist interpretations of the human body are an essential part of his general epistemological argument in favour of perception. From this perspective, the important point he wants to make is that embodiment is not a feature of perception that stands in the way of interpreting perception as a source of knowledge. In last analysis, everything depends here on the kind of ontology we have: if we define being as knowable only to the intellect, it follows directly that the body is an obstacle to knowledge. But, as he put it toward the end of his life, embodiment need not be conceived as entirely alien to the nature of being. Accordingly, Merleau-Ponty construed being as precisely that which is accessible to the body. If an objectivist view of the body were accepted without critique, the body would be the object that always stands between us and all other sensible objects. To get beyond it, we would require, before anything else, knowledge of this object to measure how reliably it transmits to us information about the objects in our environment. And such an attempt would obviously require knowledge of the environment as well. Viewed as a tool or instrument, its adequacy could be discussed only against the background of such knowledge. Against all this, Merleau-Ponty argues phenomenologically. As it functions in the subjectivity of the perceiver, the body is that by virtue of which there are for us sensible objects (108 [92]). Although this last formulation may suggest that the body is merely another Merleau-Ponty

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form of transcendental subjectivity, Merleau-Ponty did not see it that way. In the transcendental tradition, as he interpreted it, the subjectivity that conditions knowledge is accessible to itself in reflection. The cognitive powers of Husserl's transcendental consciousness, for example, can themselves be cognitively examined, so that we can demonstrate their validity or adequacy for the purpose of knowledge. On Merleau-Ponty's view, however, the cognitive powers of embodied percipience are not transparent to itself or to thought. (In terms I used in the previous section, this means that he does not wish to reduce perception to a complex of beliefs, as Husserl did.) The cognitive powers of embodied percipience, by virtue of which there are objects for us, are obscure. That the body is truly cognitive, a way of being in touch with things as they are, is known by us only from actually using it. We cannot know it from a point of view of detachment, for that would make it into an object. We can only "know" the body as an instrument of knowledge to the extent that we actually address the world in a bodily manner (90 [75]). The body can be perceived as an object by other persons, or even by itself when the percipient touches his or her own body (108 [92]). It can be scientifically examined, like any other object. But in such objectification the distinctiveness of the body-subject—i.e., its distinctive cognitivity—is lost from view: If I can, with my left hand, feel my right hand, as it touches an object, the right hand as an object is not the right hand as it touches: the first is a system of bones, muscles and flesh compressed in a spatial location, the second traverses space like a rocket to reveal the external object in the place it occupies. In so far as it sees or touches the world, my body can therefore be neither seen nor touched. (108 [92], transl. alt.) The operative idea here is that of function: the body can have the function of a cognitive subject, as well as that of a cognitive object. But as he again emphasizes in his later work, The Visible and the Invisible, my left hand may be on the verge of touching my right hand as the latter is engaged in a tactile exploration of some object or other, but the former never quite succeeds in touching my right hand in its exploratory role. Either the right hand becomes an object felt by the left hand, in which case its own exploratory function is interrupted, or the left hand does not really touch the right hand itself in its exploratory function (VI 194 [147-48]). The body can therefore never be reduced to an object without losing its function as a subject. In his attempted elaboration of an ontology in The Visible and the Invisible, this twofold function of the body became for MerleauPonty a very crucial point, to which we shall have to return, when our discussion will focus on this work. For the moment, I shall quote from it a very remarkable passage which serves to show the positive role Merleau-Ponty wants to assign to the body in his doctrine of knowledge and the ontology associated with it: We understand then why we see the things themselves, in their places, where they are, according to their being which is indeed more than their being perceived—and why at the same time we are separated from them by all the thickness of the look and the body; it is because this distance is not the contrary of this proximity, it is deeply consonant with it, it is synonymous with it. It is because the thickness of flesh between the perceiver and the thing is 156

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constitutive of both the thing's visibility and the perceiver's corporeity; it is not an obstacle between them, it is their means of communication.(VI 178 [135, transl. alt.]) In spite of the terminology, the point is simple and clear. The being of things is to be defined as being accessible to the distinctive way in which it is, in fact, open to an embodied perceiver. We should therefore learn about the meaning of that being from the way things appear in perception.

Appearance and Reality In what way is perception knowledge? By distinguishing between appearance and reality. In making the distinction between appearance and reality, a percipient is in touch with being in the sense of a reality beyond appearances. As far as the Phenomenology is concerned, the principal elements of this answer are worked out in part 2, chapter 3, "The Thing and the Natural World." That this distinction is already made at the level of perception is clear, according to Merleau-Ponty, from the phenomenological fact that a perceptual object or entity always appears in a perspective. Sense experience is by nature perspectival. From a certain angle of vision, we see some parts of an object but not others. From a distance, an object looks smaller than the same object nearby. What a house looks like depends on the angle from which we view it. These looks may be called appearances, as when we talk specifically about them in a discussion such as the present one, but we should keep in mind that in actual first-order perceiving we do not perceive them as objects. They do not function as objects from which we infer the existence and character of the real object. The perceptual awareness of the object does not come about by way of an inference based on considerations of the character of the appearances and the conditions in which they occur. Neither does the object emerge from the association, or synthesis, of appearances. Merleau-Ponly wants to steer clear of any view that would see perception as consisting of nothing more than a manifold of appearances (or sense data), which a subsequent, higher order act construes or interprets as constituting an object, thus arriving at a definition of the object as a class or aggregate of appearances. The appearances do not have to wait for a synthesis to become for us appearances of one object. The percipient goes straight to the object as such (374 [324]). The perception of an object is an act that unifies itself, for example, by interpreting successive perceptual acts as stages of an extended perceptual process (380 [329]). The constitution of things, he writes, is made possible by the fact that consciousness forgets its own phenomena (71 [59]). As emphasized previously, Merleau-Ponty held the view that perception is not in need of mental constructions and conceptualizations. To begin a movement towards a distant object, we do not first have to form a belief about its goal, say, an object in a certain place. The movement may be triggered by the object (cf. 100 [84]) and is guided by the field of other objects in which it has its place (376-77 [326]). We read that lighting already knows and sees the object and

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that the look follows paths already traced out for it by the lighting (358 [310]). In another place, he writes, "I do not so much perceive objects as reckon with an environment" (476 [416]). An appearance is merely an appearance by virtue of a perceptual power that reaches beyond it toward the object itself. The appearance and that power are internally related to one another. Differently stated, presentations are "cognitively evaluated," namely, as being merely the way an object appears under certain circumstances, but such evaluation is the work of percipience as a power that transcends any momentary appearance. One could say that it leaves behind what is now given, taking it as mere appearance, and moves on to the real object. Yet another way of formulating the matter is that perception as a power of transcendence bespeaks its own attainments as limited by passing beyond them. This is the dialectic Merleau-Ponty uses in his phenomenological analysis of the appearance-reality distinction, a distinction central for his theory of knowledge. That perception goes straight to the object, and so transcends any particular appearance of it, is due to the fact that perceiving is the actualizing of a specific power in a system of powers. And the latter, in turn, articulates a field, which is precisely the range or scope of those powers. Any specific power is, so to speak, defined as familiarity with an articulated field. But being cognitive in that manner, according to Merleau-Ponty, does not involve nonsensuous beliefs (358 [310], 359 [311]. 37° [320]' .376~77 [326]). Appearance, object, power, and field are the factors which together account for the appearance-reality distinction. Together they form what nowadays would be called a holistic system, which, he holds, has to be understood from the inside, i.e., pbenomenologically. Within this system, an appearance is internally related to the real object by virtue of the field of embodied percipience. The matter is well expressed in the following passages: Each attitude of my body is for me, immediately, the power with respect to a certain spectacle, and . . . each spectacle is what it is for me in a certain kinaesthetic situation. In other words . . . my body is permanently stationed to perceive the things before it and, conversely, appearances are always enveloped for me in a certain bodily attitude. In so far, therefore, as I know the relation of appearances to the kinaesthetic situation, this is not in virtue of any law or in terms of any formula, but to the extent that I have a body, and that through that body I am at grips with the world. And just as perceptual attitudes are not known to me singly, but implicitly given as stages in the act which leads to the optimum attitude, correspondingly the correlative perspectives are not posited before me successively, but present themselves only as so many steps toward the thing itself with its size and shape. (349 [303, transl. alt.]) Appearances, then, are related to the object itself because they simply are the ways the object appears in a field; and because perceptual powers range over this field, the appearances represent the stages of movements towards the object or away from it. For the percipient the object exists in a field to which he or she already has access simply by actualizing already available powers, namely, those powers by virtue of which he or she is a percipient: To say that I have a visual field is to say that by reason of my position I have access to and an opening upon a system of beings, visible beings, that these 138

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are at the disposal of my gaze in virtue of a kind of primordial contract and through a gift of nature, with no effort made on my part; from which it follows that vision is pre-personal. (251 [216]) The phrase "primordial contract" is intended to express the idea that the cognitive nature of perception is a function of our participation in being, which is, of course, similarly expressed by saying that it is a "natural gift." Perceiving is not a personal act, inasmuch as we cannot describe it as an egocentered act performed by an individual person as such (249 [215]). It must not be confused with the personal habits and learned skills that distinguish one person from another; such habits and skills are to be thought of as later acquisitions. Perception is a natural capacity and does not engage powers that single out the individuality of a person. We should rather say that an individual is percipient by virtue of his or her natural, generic endowment. Perceptual awareness of things around us is often forced upon us, rather than being a matter of the will of an individual. A person can be distracted from what she wants to do by something in the natural environment that draws her attention away (100 [84]). Basic to all of Merleau-Ponty's discussion here is a teleological conception. Perception as movement within a field is teleological. When a percipient looks for an object, the latter already appears, for example, from a distance, perhaps in a place where it cannot yet be seen at all. And that amounts to saying that it is the terminus of a goal-directed movement. He puts it rather paradoxically by stating that the moving subject sets out his departure arid arrival points in strict simultaneity (135 [116]). The percipient targets that object as a goal to be attained, as a certain optimum, which Merleau-Ponty calls the privileged perception. For each object, as for each picture in an art gallery, there is an optimum distance from which it requires to be seen, an orientation from which it vouchsafes most of itself (348 [302, transl. alt.]). When the movement reaches its goal, one can say that, in contrast to its earlier modes of appearing, the entity itself appears. In contrast to the way it appears at other times, it is now given in person, in flesh and blood (in French, en chair et en os).n As he explains: But for me the perceiver, the object a hundred yards away is not real and present in the sense in which it is at ten yards, and I identify the object in all its positions, at all distances, in all appearances, in so far as all the perspectives converge towards the perception which I obtain at a certain distance and with a certain typical orientation. This privileged perception ensures the unity of the perceptual process and draws into it all other appearances. (348 [302]) This privileged perception gives the percipient a "precise hold" on the object (343 [367]). Since that hold constitutes a good grip on the object, the percipient stops there. All the appearances of that object are "collected by the last of their number, in the ipseity of the thing" (269 [233, transl. alt.]). The distinction between appearance and the real thing is based on a movement in which the one who moves "knows" where she is and how far she has yet to go, thus distinguishing different phases of progression and, in particular, earlier ones from the attainment of the goal (162-63 [ I 4°])' What is so distinguished, however, are internally related factors. The phases are so characterized

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because they point forward to the goal, and what is experienced as goal is appreciated as that which those phases or stages led up to. Let me cite a passage which not only addresses the point under discussion but also is remarkable in that it indicates a doctrinal point of great importance, as we will see later: At each successive instant of a movement, the preceding instant is not lost sight of. It is, as it were, dovetailed into (emboite dans) the present, and present perception generally speaking consists in drawing together (ressaisir), on the basis of one present position, the succession of previous positions, which envelop each other. (164 [140]) Since the spatial movement of the percipient is a movement of cognitive exploration, its general importance is readily seen. Because Merleau-Ponty's cpistemology focuses on the search for knowledge, the point made in this passage will be used to characterize in a general way the basic situation of the cognitive agent with regard to both the past and the future of that search. As the philosopher already tells us here, our bodily experience of movement provides us with "a way of access to the world and the object. . . which has to be recognized as original and perhaps as primary" (164 [140]). The movement involved in perception is characterized as active transcendence, a movement that carries one beyond subjectivity (395 [343]), or a passing beyond oneself (se depasser) (43: [376]). Both appearance and reality are "moments" (in a broadly Hegelian sense) within this active transcendence. The reality here in question is internally related to its appearances, and vice versa. To speak of either by objectifying it as an entity in its own right is to indulge in an abstraction, a drawing apart of elements that belong together. Concretely speaking, reality is what appears; appearance is an approach to reality. Both together make up the never-ending movement of transcendence. It has to be noted that, according to Merleau-Ponty, even our so-called privileged perceptions of reality (to use his phrase) pass beyond themselves. The arrival at the thing in person at the terminus of a certain bodily movement is not a possession, as he emphatically states. Even when the specific capacities of the body are, so to speak, played out, when a perceptual movement apparently comes to an end in the presence of the object sought, there still remains the sense of something eluding one's grasp. Perception (at least in its primordial form) reaches forever beyond itself: The ipseity is, of course, never reached; each aspect of the thing which falls to our perception is still only an invitation to perceive beyond it, still only a momentary halt in the perceptual process. . . . What makes the "reality" of the thing is therefore precisely what snatches it from our grasp. (269-70 [233])

As he notes, an unchallengeable presence (of what we would ordinarily call an object) in a privileged perception is still accompanied by perpetual absence. This formulation is somewhat puzzling, but the idea is familiar. The idea of something escaping a perceptual grasp and being in that sense external or transcendent was already familiar to him from Husserl and Heidegger. An object seen from a certain perspective is experienced as having aspects or properties not at present visible and as belonging to an environment of other 140

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objects not actually perceived, which Husserl called the horizon surrounding any particular perception. Heidegger also worked with the idea, though he mostly used the term "world." Merleau-Ponty uses both terms, but he prefers "world." When this term is used in this manner, it does not refer to any determinate entity or set of entities, but their background or horizon. It is a distinctively phenomenological concept in that we can appreciate what it captures only by actually having the experience. "We have no other way of knowing what the world is than by actively affirming it every instant within us" (379 [328]). It designates the world that, always escapes us in particular perceptions but to which we take the object of a particular perception to belong. Insofar as I take the object to have aspects I would perceive if I occupied a different point of view, or I take it to exist when I do not actually perceive it at all, I regard that object to belong to the real world. Merleau-Ponty's point about perception can now be readily interpreted. Given the idea that perception is itself a movement of transcendence, it follows that the thing withdraws from the grasp of a privileged perception because the movement of transcendence goes beyond it into a future of further exploration. On this way of looking at it, a privileged perception is really nothing more than a moment between past and future. Merleau-Ponty goes so far as to say that, if something were completely known, it would by that very fact forfeit its status as a thing (a term he uses as a synonym of "entity"). Its reality as a thing is precisely that which makes it impossible for us to have cognitive possession of it (270 [233]).12 In another passage he makes the same point by saying that things are transcendent to the extent that I am ignorant of what they are (423 [369]).

External Reality The philosophical project we have been discussing so far is that of elucidating knowledge by means of a phenomenology of perception. The philosopher engaged in such a project, specially if he works in the transcendental tradition, encounters on his way what we could perhaps call the phenomenon of realism. That is to say. he is confronted by people who hold, altogether without philosophical reflection, that knowledge is an apprehension of a reality that is external or independent. Both Husserl and Heidegger, we saw, had encountered this realism and undertaken to interpret it from a transcendental standpoint. Neither was prepared to accept the way in which the externality of the object of knowledge is understood in common sense or science, not to mention the way in which some other philosophers had interpreted prephilosophical realism. MerleauPonty's discussion of the distinction between an appearance and a reality can be seen as a contribution to the problem transcendental philosophers have with realism. In fact, what he says about the distinction as it is made in perception is, as I see it, his own transcendental interpretation of realism. Towards the end of the preceding section, we saw the idea of transcendence emerge as a fundamental concept of great importance. Distinguishing appearance from reality, we saw, is a matter of active transcendence. Adopting MerleauPonty's point of view, one might say that whether something is an appearance Merleau-Ponty y

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or a reality depends on the function or role the movement of transcendence assigns to it. If it is, so to speak, left behind in that movement, it is revealed as no more than an appearance of that which functions as the goal of that movement. Appearances, for example, are not entities of a certain kind, such as mental representations, nor is reality a specifiable kind of entity, such as a spatial object. The distinction is a functional one within the movement of transcendence. Appearance and reality are moments in a never-ending movement of transcendence. In a sense esse non est percipi, because reality is never reached in a perception. But within the unique, concrete whole, called transcendence, they do belong together in such a manner that there is also a sense in which esse est percipi (370 [320], because the being of things is aimed at in transcendence.13 This way of thinking controls several specific points that are made in the Phenomenology. It implies the claim that perception goes straight to the real object. To be sure, it does so by way of its appearances, but the latter are not objects of perception but, rather ways of "sliding into the world" (380 [329, transl. alt.]). As Merleau-Ponty says (374 [324]), we are only secondarily aware of appearances or points of view as limiting our knowledge. The same general logic underlies the view that no individual entity can as such be taken to have reality: each entity must, in last analysis, be taken as an appearance of one reality.14 To exist is to exist in a field or horizon. In other words, existence or reality is bestowed upon an individual entity by the field. As became already clear in the previous section, the way of thinking is at work in the idea that there can be no cognitive possession of anything real. Possession would mean stopping the movement of transcendence, and that would be tantamount to the vanishing of reality altogether. It would vanish, clearly, because the field which constitutes reality would not be there, if there were no movement of transcendence. A good deal of all this becomes clearer from the later parts of Merleau-Ponty's chapter 3. What I have thus far expounded is the first part of this chapter, which may be summed up as follows: a percipient distinguishes appearance and reality by virtue of bodily powers of transcendence. The real object is the "terminus of a bodily teleology" (373 [322]), which makes the object the correlative of the "cognitive body" (375 [325]). Although most bodily capacities have been modified by cultural customs, learned capacities, and personal skills, they are in themselves capacities exercised by a prepersonal percipient. At this level, performances are subject to norms, the satisfaction of which is simply the full realization of a given capacity. When perceptual activity reaches its terminus or goal, we say that the percipient perceives such an entity itself, namely, in a so-called privileged perception. Now according to common sense, each object is suitably captured by the words we use to name and describe it. Many such words name objects that are tools we have designed and for which we therefore have specific uses. An axe, for instance, just is a tool for splitting wood. This means that we usually come to our perceptions with limited expectations of a practical sort. When they are fulfilled, we simply apply those words to what we perceive; alternatively formulated, we subsume what we perceive under those concepts. "There's an oak and here is a house," we say, and let our actions be guided by that. We ignore what 142

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is there over and above what we need for our practical objective, the thing in its individual and unknown details, because it does not serve our practical objectives. But perception is fundamentally a natural capacity, a power native to us all and prepersonal in character. Now if this natural power gives us knowledge of reality, which is Merleau-Ponty's contention, then the reality known must also be natural and prepersonal (cf. 381 [330]). There must be a natural reality underlying the cultural object of practical and personal concerns. The latter is a rather domesticated reality, thoroughly familiar to human percipients, and in that respect altogether part of the human scene. If perception is at bottom a matter of natural capacities, however, there must be a perceptual transcendence that consists in going beyond this familiar object and in passing over into an inhuman world. Merleau-Ponty therefore begins the second half of the chapter by expressing the view that "we have not exhausted the meaning of 'the thing' by defining it as the correlative of our body and our life" (372 [322]). While we usually see objects simply as instantiations of familiar concepts available in our everyday language or as fulfilments of our customary expectations, there are perceptions in which we are alive to the onward sweep of transcendence, so that reality becomes a phenomenon for us in a very different sense:15 But when I contemplate an object with the sole intention of watching it exist and unfold its riches before my eyes, then it ceases to be an allusion to a general type, and I become aware that each perception, and not merely that of sights which I am discovering for the first time, re-enacts on its own account the birth of intelligence and has some element of creative genius about it: in order that I may recognize the tree as a tree, it is necessary that, beneath this familiar meaning, the momentary arrangement of the visible scene should begin all over again, as on the very first day of the vegetable kingdom, to outline the individual idea of this tree. (54 [43~44])16 The point taken in isolation is, of course, familiar from poets and philosophers. Words and concepts, they have said, are by nature general and do not capture what's individual and unique. As philosophers often added by way of explanation, they capture the species or kinds, but not the individuals belonging to those kinds. Perceptions show the applicability of our general words in particular circumstances, which makes them practically useful to us, but it remains true that we never grasp the full individual detail which perceptual things actually have. Merleau-Ponty makes use of this point for his own purposes. He recommends that we distinguish empirical or secondary perception from primordial perception. The former merely confirms or disappoints our expectations, which are determined by the current meanings of our words and concepts. The role perceptions then play is that of showing whether a word or concept applies, verifying or falsifying statements. In other words, the character of perceptual meaning is assumed to be like that of the words which we apply to it. Things appear to us in a conceptualized garb.17 But what really meets us in perception is not to be equated with instantiations of current concepts. Meaning in a primordial perception is actually being formed by the sensory organization of the perceptual Merleau-Ponty

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field at each moment of perception. Putting what we perceive into familiar words is therefore a transformation, rather than, as we tend to imagine, an apprehension of what is really there. The accustomed meaning of a word does not capture the meaning inherent in primordial perception, and, to that extent, they fail to grasp what is real. To appreciate the distinctiveness of primordial perception, we are told, we have to suspend our practical preoccupations and perceive in a metaphysical and disinterested manner (372 [322]). What we then realize is that, unlike our everyday perceptions, which discover in things only their "familiar presence" as cultural objects, primordial perceptions reveal to us the thing in its reality or being, what he calls its in-itself-for-us. In a primordial perception, we discover, not the thing as "goal of a bodily teleology" (373 [322]), but "the non-human character which lies hidden" within it. When so perceived, we are told, "nous nous ignorons en elle, et c'est justement ce qui en fait une chose" (374). l8 We do not recognize ourselves in it, which is just what makes it a thing. Our self-image, formed by the familiar world of our practical concerns, is not mirrored in this utterly "external" reality, but Mcrleau-Ponty holds that this strangeness is what constitutes its reality. What a genuinely real, utterly "external" object is like, Merleau-Ponty describes as follows: "It is ... hostile and alien, no longer an interlocutor, but a resolutely silent Other, a Self which evades us no less than does intimacy with an outside consciousness" (372 [322]). According to MerleauPonty, such primordial perceptions are unusual, but they do occur. And when they do, we transcend the familiar world of ordinary life, which is conceptual in nature, and encounter what is truly external and an sich—in his phrase en soi pour nous. The core of a thing's reality, we read, consists in the fact that "whatever it imparts to us, is imparted through the very organization of its sensible aspects" (373 [323]). "The miracle of the real world . . . is that in it meaning and existence are one, and that we see the former lodge itself for good in the latter" (373 [323, transl. alt.]). The cited passages take us back to a discussion where I gave an account of Merleau-Ponty's doctrine of meaning. A perceptual entity has meaning—i.e., intelligibility of some sort—not by virtue of a meaning being bestowed on it by consciousness (as Husserl held) nor by virtue of being conceptualized by transcendental categories (as Kant taught), but simply by virtue of its own sensuous character. When Merleau-Ponty speaks of matter taking on form, he rejects the Kantian view that the form cannot be of the same order as the matter it forms. As he puts it, the material itself takes on meaning and form (374 [324]). If perception is to be self-sufficient in the sense of being intrinsically cognitive, it must be able to discern a real object in distinction from its appearances. In the previous section, we saw how this distinction is made and how perception understands reality or being. But we have just noted that Merleau-Ponty holds the view that many of our perceptions are infected by our practical reliance on linguistic and conceptual conventions. Perceptual objects tend to be seen as merely instantiations of concepts or illustrations of current linguistic meanings. If reality implies strangeness, however, we have a concept of reality, according to which such objects arc not really real, not really external to ourselves. The genuinely real object is not a conceptual or linguistic construction: no belief can 144

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capture it by its conceptual content. Only primordial perceptions, we are told, embody a true understanding of reality. How, then, does such a perception construe its object? Merleau-Ponty's answer can be discerned in the rather obscure point he makes about the identity of meaning and existence. Another way of answering it requires attention for the fact that the object of a primordial perception speaks to us by virtue of its sensible aspects, rather than being made to speak, as it were, by the conceptualizations we impose on it. Drawing on what we already know about the perceptual field, we could expand this formulation and say that an object bespeaks itself as real by virtue of belonging in a perceptual field ranged over by the movement of the percipient. None of these formulations, however, can become reasonably intelligible without the underlying idea of transcendence. Reduced to fundamentals, it is the idea of going further than what is actually given. Heidegger said that we understand an entity before us by approaching it, not in a radically empiricist manner of starting from that entity, but by coming, as it were, from a "standpoint on the other side" of what is given, interpreting entities in the light of the world envisaged in and through them. In the texts under discussion, however, MerleauPonty is speaking of the "natural world" and of a perception that is free of conceptual or theoretical constraints. And in his view, this is how we confront the aspect of the reality of things, namely, as something foreign to whatever concepts we use to interpret it. Now to put it very simply, for the percipient the reality of the object consists in its having aspects beyond those at present in view. If she does not take it to be a private fancy or fiction, it is because there is more to the object than at present appears. In that sense, we might say, she goes beyond the appearance whenever she takes herself to be perceiving a real object. It is real, because it is open for further exploration. In a thoroughly familiar setting, however, many of the invisible aspects of an object are nonetheless familiar, for the particular object is taken to belong to a familiar kind of object. A real table, therefore, has for a percipient unseen aspects or sides, but she is nonetheless familiar with them in a general kind of way. They are all aspects of a table because I take this particular thing to be a table. I can break it up and examine the fibres of the wood of which it is made, but that would not count as an exploration of the entity which I call a table. The concept "table," in a sense, ties together the possible perspectives of a particular table. Sensory exploration, however, is not guided by concepts or theories. Verification of concepts cannot give us the confidence that we are making headway in understanding reality. When Merleau-Ponty talks about reality as that "which lends itself to unending exploration" (374 [324]), he is not talking about reality as it appears in ordinary perception (which he designates as "empirical or secondary"), reality conceptualized as tables and chairs. Using a distinction which is important for him but that he does not always observe in his own use of words, he writes that "objects belonging to man, tools, seem to be placed on the world, whereas things are rooted in a background of nature which is alien to man" (374 [324]). It is the world as known by natural and prepersonal perception. Perception as a natural and prepersonal capacity finds reality as yet unconMerleau-Ponty

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ceptualized. The concept: of reality implicit in the understanding of natural perception is that of a reality which we constantly seek in and through its appearances, but which remains beyond our grasp. It is beyond our grasp, not only in the sense that our concepts do not fully grasp it in its individual detail but also in the sense of being beyond the scope of any finite sensory apprehension. Primordial perceptions are not guided by concepts or anything that has to do with our practical expectations and our linguistic conventions; they are guided by whatever the field of our natural perception offers to us. What we take things to be—their meaning—is solely dictated by their appearance to embodied perception. This kind of perception is incluctably perspectival, for it is based on appearances of reality. Therefore, when I say that I see the ashtray over there, "I suppose as completed an unfolding of experience which could go on ad infinitum, and I engage a whole future of perceptions" (415 [361]). The real object, accordingly, is taken to be one that: "is penetrated from all sides by an actual infinity of looks" (83 [69, transl. alt.]); cf. 84 [70]). It is characteristic of what is real to "contract in each of its moments an infinity of relations" (373 [323]). What is of crucial importance to Merleau-Ponty's philosophical strategy is to block all attempts to abstract reality from the appearance-reality dialectic. He writes that we should not conceive of being as timeless, but rather as intimately associated with time. His own doctrine of being is based on the way we are in touch with being through natural perception. The world is not a very complicated object that we might know only in part and very imperfectly, but the dimension or implicit: context in which appearances figure as leading us to reality. As one can see from a point such as this, the search for knowledge and truth is as central for Merleau-Ponty as it was for Heidegger and Husscrl. What in common sense we call objects of perception are to the philosopher nothing but appearances of reality in that search. Every apprehension is from a point of view, and every point of view indicates others on its horizon. There never comes an end to the points of view from which something can be explored. The direction of transcendence is determined by the movement towards a unitary and individual world. If a perception is wrong, this will be shown to be so by other perceptual appearances that correct it, which Merleau-Ponty takes to demonstrate that, as a cognitive power, perception settles its own problems. The determinate, that which we take to have a certain nature, is appearance, the indeterminate is reality. What accounts for this intrinsic indeterminacy is, of course, the dialectical logic of transcendence. It dictates that reality is not an object which some day we might come to know or which God already knows, but the field of the search for reality, the discoveries of truths and errors, the recognition of illusion, and the correction of mistakes. Every finite perception tells us, according to Merleau-Ponty, that there is more to it than we see. Nonetheless, he sometimes uses language that suggests the view he combats, rather than his own. He speaks as if we moved towards a determination of something, as if something was waiting to be deciphered (379 [328]). Thus we read that the world is the "inexhaustible reservoir out of which things are drawn" (396 [344]). In one passage, he refers to the world as the cradle of all meanings (492 [430]). Time—the world as temporality—is spoken of as having 146

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the character of light because it makes us see things (487 [426]), This language is misleading, since it expresses the typically human tendency to identify the world with a sum of objects or the realist attitude, which is just what he wants to reinterpret. There are no things already existing and having a certain character before becoming visible. They become visible in that they come into being.

Objectifieation and Predication In the discussion of Merleau-Ponty's appearance-reality distinction, it became clear that he conceives of perception as an active and constant transcendence. Perception is knowledge, and thus in touch with reality, because it is by its very nature a going beyond everything. In pursuit of reality, it leaves behind every particular entity and directs itself to the world. It never stops at anything, but penetrating its background or horizon it goes beyond it. Even a privileged perception of a particular entity is no more than a stage in this apparently irresistible movement of transcendence. The position expounded so far obviously needs to be further developed. Realism in common sense and science not only needs to be criticized from a transcendental point of view but also the existence of it has to be explained and, in a sense, justified. The transcendental philosopher has to account for the fact that perceptual reality seems present itself in the form of relatively permanent objects and that we think we have a certain body of knowledge of such objects. The search for truth may be an invigorating, indeed ennobling, venture that keeps complacency and laziness away, but do we not also possess at least a small portion of truth? To stay close to the topic of perception, do we not, on occasion, have a sense that we have actually attained knowledge or truth? As he himself says with great clarity, "Perception is inseparable from the consciousness which it has, or rather is, of reaching the object itself" (429 [374]). The further development of Merleau-Ponty's doctrine comes in the form of what we might call a theory of objectification, which modifies the general idea of transcendence in such a way that he is in a position to make sense of objects of perception and our knowledge of them. The theory involves what in one place he calls a "halt (caret) in the forward movement of consciousness" (454 [396]). What he has in mind can be readily understood, if we recall the logic of transcendence that I explained earlier. As he would have it, appearances are no more than stages on the way toward reality; they are passed over and, as it were, left behind in the forward thrust of a perception towards the real object. In my discussion of it, I observed that whether something is an appearance or a reality depends on the function or role the movement of transcendence assigns to it. If we now use this same logic, we obtain without much trouble the idea that objectifying an appearance is tantamount to a halt in the forward movement of transcendence. As a consequence, it is no longer an appearance of reality, but an object claiming attention for itself alone. In short, what he argues is that objects are the result of objectification of appearances. According to Merleau-Ponty, all objectification represents an interrupted transcendence. We encountered an aspect of this view in our discussion Merleau-Ponty

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of the distinction he makes between primordial and empirical (or secondary) perceptions. The latter see objects of perception in the light of current linguistic meanings and reduce them to instantiations of available concepts. In the terms of the theory now under discussion, they would be characterized as perceptions in which the forward thrust of transcendence is no longer felt. Primordial perception, by contrast, has within itself the movement of transcendence. Unfortunately, the theory in question is not elaborated but rather hinted at in various places. I want to begin by assembling the textual materials on the basis of which 1 will then try to formulate his doctrine. To begin with, he writes that "our perception ends in objects, and the object once constituted, appears as the reason for all the experiences of it which we have had or could have" (81 [67]). He also remarks that "perception opens a window on to things" and that "it sets for itself the goal of a truth in itself in which the reason underlying all appearances is to be found" (66 [54 transl. alt.]). Or again, "The perception of one single thing lays for ever the foundation of the ideal of objective or explicit knowledge" (383 [332]). Elsewhere, we read that "perception hides from itself" (71 [58]) and that it tricks us in that it makes us forget itself in the interest of the object it presents (69 [57] cf. 240 [207]). In light of this fact, Merleau-Ponty sets himself the task of foiling the tricks of perception, awakening perception from its dogmatic slumber (69 [57]). Science, for example, is a form of perception "which loses sight of its origins and believes itself complete" (69 [57]). Scientific truths, once attained, are used to give causal explanations of perceptual experience itself. In so many words, what he calls the prejudice of the objective world originates in perception itself. Such self-concealment or self-forgetfulness is clearly a case of withdrawing the perceptual object from the forward movement of transcendence, a "reduction of things as experienced to objects" (388 [336]). "Objective being is not plenary existence" (383 [332]). Along this line of thought, we read that it: is of the essence of consciousness to forget its own phenomena (71 [59]). Elsewhere, he ascribes to consciousness the characteristic of recapturing itself (se reprendre) and drawing itself together (se recueillir elle-meme) in an identifiable object (86 [7i]).19 The underlying idea, very important in Hegel's philosophy, is something like this: an object we are aware of is actually the result of some process or other, e.g., the process of our learning about it as we grew up. Whether we are aware of it or not, object awareness is always an appropriating of the result of a process, but in being object-oriented we focus on the result, rather than on the process as such. We capture the result by way of a concept, which is meant to sum up the process. Abstracting from the process, we may, in fact, think that the object is simply given, coming to us ready-made from outside, its character determined objectively. The conclusion Merleau-Ponty obviously invites us to draw is that the apparent object is, in truth, an objectified segment of our experience. More about this follows shortly. There are also passages which formulate the view in terms of temporality as such. We are told that it is of the essence of time to sum itself up (se ressaisir lui-meme), to contract or compress itself (se contracter) into visible things (452 [395]) CI- 487 [426]). Or again, there would be no thought or truth if we did 148

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not somehow rise above (surmonter) the temporal dispersion of the phases of that thought (441 [384-85]). An object is a "hold on a segment of time" (277 [240]). What these passages imply, I suggest, is something like the following doctrine: what Merleau-Ponty clearly sets out to account for is the tact that reality presents itself to us in the form of relatively permanent objects that have properties. We think we know some of them, and we may set forth what we know in the form of so-called objective claims to knowledge. Since this view is fundamentally discordant with what we have already seen of Merleau-Ponty's metaphysics and epistemology, he wants to give an explanation of how it came about. His short answer is that it came about by objectiflcation and conceptualization. The longer answer involves references to temporality. According to MerleauPonty, time wants to be more than a process of mere passing away. It wants to overcome itself, sum itself up in a form that does not pass away. Now as Kant had already suggested, this overcoming of temporality is accomplished by the introduction of concepts. We objectify the temporal manifold by means of concepts, which introduce unity into what would otherwise be sheer multiplicity. Kant sought the origin of the most basic concepts in the mind, but at this point MerleauPonty seems to change his allegiance to Hegel, for he holds that their origin is in some sense historical. The nature of time is to lay hold of segments of itself without letting them pass away. In this way, it constitutes itself as a tradition, i.e., a historical process such that concepts formed in earlier stages are regarded as keeping their validity in spite of the passage of time. Tradition is a matter of concepts we do not give up. On such a view, concepts are fundamentally commodities that come from the historical tradition that lies behind a cognitive claim. Thinking along this line, one could say that subsuming what is actually before us under a concept is to interpret it in terms of the past. In fact, concepts are available to a cognitive subject in the form of sedimented history, a framework of thought that is, in fact, historical but does not look that way because of our forgetfulness. We regard it as still valid, perhaps even timelessly so. The most important point for Merleau-Ponty, it is clear, is the contention that objectification comes about as an interruption of the movement of transcendence; it is the withdrawing of a thing (in Merleau-Ponty's sense of the term) from that onward movement to which it really belongs and treating it as something in-itself. How does such an interruption of transcendence take place? Setting aside Merleau-Ponty's terminology, it is brought about by identifying an entity with a concept or a certain group of concepts and assuming it to be completely captured by the latter. What we, in consequence, meet with in the passage of time is not the entity as such but rather a concept's instantiations.20 In the terms of a statement we already cited before, the object is completely displayed before us (stale devant nous),21 an object all parts of which exist for us simultaneously, or rather timelessly, because it is merely an instantiation of a concept assumed to have abiding validity. But as Merleau-Ponty sees it, since we now believe that we possess the entity in our concepts, we have stripped it of its mystery and its reality (270 [233]). What Merleau-Ponty works with in his account is the basically idealist notion to which I already called attention in the first chapter and to which I have Merleau-Ponty 149

alluded a few times earlier in this chapter. It is the notion of isolating and withdrawing something from the context in which it is alleged to be at home. In view of the holistic character of its native habitat, the item withdrawn is felt to be torn from its original context and, as it were, reconstructed according to whatever purpose motivates the act of abstraction. The distinction between the abstract and the concrete is supposed to be philosophically important because it carries the suggestion that the abstract ought to be returned to its concrete state of being. Objects, then, are the products of objectification, which is an act or process of abstraction, a kind of primordial transformation of the context of transcendence. Common sense may think that there are many objects related to one another in various ways, but if one takes Merleau-Ponty's view, all of that is an illusion due to abstraction, Viewed concretely, the various objects are only perspectives of the one reality called the world. We think otherwise only because we are "obsessed with being" and forget that time is the measure of being (381 [330]). We forget the perspectivism (85 [70]). Forgetfulness leads us to identify the object with a certain finite number of perspectives, or with conceptual meanings that have been cut off from the experience of being (VI 126 [92]). It is basically this kind of abstraction which, according to Merleau-Ponty, is at work in all object perception. Every percipient who thinks she apprehends a determinate object, or at least a determinate aspect of such an object, must be reminded of what has been forgotten, namely, the movements by which consciousness sums up (ressaisir) its own stages (demarches) (48 [38]). What is taken to be a real, external entity is, in truth, an entity coming out of the subject's own history (in a broad sense of this term). Its identity is due to the fact that the development that led up to it is summed up in the form of a concept. Although the percipient would have it that it is an apprehension of something real and external to herself, it represents, actually, a halt in the forward movement of transcendence, which is forever a search, rather than a possession, of what is real. And that is why Merleau-Ponty says in several places that philosophy, unavoidably conceptual and theoretical as it is, has to include the story of its own beginnings. This movement of transcendence, as we read in The Visible and the Invisible, does not formulate itself in successive statements, each of which we ought to take as it stands. On the contrary, "Each statement (enonce), in order to be true, must be referred, throughout the whole movement, to the stage from which it arises" (VI 123-24 [90]). That is to say, the statement remains abstract until we add the specification of the time of its utterance, which includes, of course, an account of the person who uttered it. It is plausible to think that objectification leads to predication; one focuses on something and then says something about it. In philosophical parlance, one applies a predicate word to the object we have before us. What is Merleau-Ponty's view of predication? It is by nature a posterior act, as reflection is posterior to the prereflective. Perception—i.e., primordial perception—is prepredicative (372 [322], 395 [343]) as well as preobjective. The relation of predication to what is prior to it is expressed in terms of the idea of presupposition or founding (Fundierung) (451 [394]), a notion already dear to both Husserl and Heidegger. If Y 150

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is founded on X, it is essentially based on X, but at the same time an elaboration of it. The founded act does something to the act on which it is founded, and its objective correlate is a modification or transformation of that of the founding act, in this case the object of perception.22 As Merleau-Ponty expresses it, the founded is a "determination or explicitation" of the founding term (451 [394]). He even uses the ambiguous term "sublimation" in this connection.23 Now because of its founded character, Merleau-Ponty observes, the predicative act can never "absorb" that on which it is founded (451 [394]). We might also say that it could not substitute, or stand in for, prepredicative perception, for predicative determination and explicitation imply modification. He makes the point that the founded term cannot "absorb" the other term of the relation, presumably because he thinks that we tend to ignore this modification, in which case we take the posterior as an adequate representation of that upon which it is founded, rather than as a modification or transformation of it. A subject-predicate statement cannot fully capture the prepredicative perception of which it is a supervening determination. As already noted earlier, he holds that perceptions have meanings that embody riches that cannot be captured by words. When we express perceptions in words and sentences, however, we tend to overlook this and take the meanings of our words and sentences to capture the founding perceptual meanings. The world of primordial perception thus goes into hiding behind words or concepts; reality itself comes to appear to be linguistic or conceptual in nature. Merleau-Ponty's own view, however, is that "being is not made up of idealizations or of things said, as the old logic believed" (VI 129 [94]). His metaphysical doctrine is an extrapolation from prepredicative perception. The propositional form of our thought and language cannot therefore be held to be, in some sense, a mirror of the general nature or being of things, as has been believed by many philosophers since Plato and Aristotle. Prepredicative experience is also preconceptual, but it is not for all that atomic, as we have already seen earlier. In The Visible and Invisible, he writes that the fragments of the luminous field adhere to one another with a cohesion without concept, which is of the same type as the cohesion of the parts of my body or that of my body and my world (VI 199 [152]). A term he uses a number of times is "style." Concepts or ideas function as the texture of experience, "its style, first mute, later uttered" (VI 159 [119]). "Like every style, they are elaborated within the thickness of being, and could not be detached from it, either in fact or by right, to be put on display for inspection" (VI 160 [119, transl. alt.]). Merleau-Ponty's position is not the fairly traditional view that essences are present in rebus but difficult to discern for human cognizers. His problem is not merely that of knowledge of essences. He says that he does not want to posit real but unknown essences (VI 151 [112]). In this experience, there are no universals or essences. Objedification and predication leave this experience behind, when they introduce objects with predicable properties.

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Perceptual Knowledge and Truth The epistemological discussions of certainty and evident beliefs in the Cogito chapter of the Phenomenology are best interpreted against the background of the theory of objectification that I tried to sketch in the previous section. The paradox created by the general idea of transcendence is modified by the idea of objectification in a way that enables Merleau-Ponty to make sense of our knowledge of objects of perception. Active transcendence may be interrupted or suspended to create a unity of framework or tradition. Given that the forward movement of consciousness may be halted by an objectification of what has been acquired, we have the concept of an object that has a certain permanence or identity and can be known for what it is. Objects, then, are the result of objectification of appearances, although a particular percipient may not be aware of this fact, for we are not to think of the objectification of appearances as an act: attributable to an individual person. It is a philosophical, transcendental theory designed to explain how objects are possible. Now the character or nature objects will have for particular cognitive subjects will depend on their experience of them. The experience need not be entirely personal but may be a matter of inheriting a framework or "field of thought," the origins of which lie in the distant past. Since a cognitive subject, in one way of another, shares this history with the object, it is quite understandable that he will hold beliefs about the object which are obvious or evident to him. Taking for granted what he has acquired from the past, he may be altogether certain that the object has the properties he assigns to it. It is very likely that he will, in fact, distinguish between essential and accidental properties in a way reminiscent of Aristotle, though, in fact, simply marking a distinction between properties that are important for him (and his society) and those that are not. And what he says, he will, of course, hold to be true with respect to a real object, an expression of a truth in itself. The philosophical author of the theory of objectification is bound to say, however, that his certainty exists only under certain conditions (454 [396, transl. alt.]). He might say: "Yes, as a matter of fact, the cognitive subject in question is certain about an object of perception, but that certainty exists only under conditions of which that subject is unaware; his realism is therefore naive." He might add by way of further explanation that the certainty is a matter of having forgotten the fact that active transcendence has been put out of action, taking various things for granted, failing to ask certain questions, being one-sided in one's cognitive orientation, being obsessed with objective thought, and so on. (Everything the transcendental philosopher typically finds fault with in the pretranscendcntal attitude could here be mentioned.) Merleau-Ponty writes: It is no accident that what is evident (Vevidence)) may itself be called into question, because certainty is doubt, inasmuch as it (the certainty) belongs to a tradition of thought which cannot be condensed into an evident "truth" without my giving up all attempts to make it explicit. (454 [396, transl. alt.]) The paradoxical equation of certainty with doubt in this passage—surely for effect only—is to be explained by the circumstance that one thing is simulta152

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neously considered from two incompatible points of view. What is considered certain by those working within a traditional framework is considered as falling far short of that by those outside it, for example, transcendental philosophers. The latter will accord it no higher status than that of an objedification of an appearance of reality. Merleau-Ponty's point is simply this; different standpoints yield different verdicts on one and the same issue. If we try to read more into this passage, epistemological questions would have to be raised that he clearly is not addressing at this point. What Merleau-Ponty affirms is that we find something to be evidently thus and so, to be irresistibly compelling belief and beyond doubt, only because of a certain history or tradition of thought that is accepted as beyond question. The epistemic status of the object and the cognitive capacities of the subject are thus both relative to the historical framework or tradition. While adhering to it, we are convinced that it makes truth accessible to us. Our adherence may be complete and we may actually be so confident that we think that the totality of being has been captured by that traditional framework. However, when new questions are asked, when this tradition is opened up, for example, by the transcendental theory of objectification, its self-interpretations appear for what they really are, namely, peculiar interpretations relative to a certain historical epoch.24 In saying such things, Merleau-Ponty does not want to be taken as implying that all this could, and should, be otherwise. On the contrary, his primary opponent is a philosopher like Husserl who embraced the ideal of presuppositionless thinking. The latter, as we recall, accepted framework relativity in many areas, recognizing that a knower relies on cognitive powers that she takes for granted and assumptions that have not been scrutinized, but that had led him to call for examination of all frameworks and all cognitive capacities, so that in the end we might have a framework without any unexamined premises, exercising only powers whose validity is transparent to us. Merleau-Ponty's theory of knowledge sanctions the idea of accepting a tradition, acknowledging given capacities (fundamentally, those of embodied percipience), and proceeding from there, but he rejects the idea of a transcendental recuperation of the tradition, such as Husserl sketched in the essay on the origin of geometry, which I discussed in chapter 2. 25

If Husserl was in some sense a Cartesian, Merleau-Ponty was in some sense a Spinozist. Descartes had emphasized the importance of a method to help us to distinguish true from false ideas. Spinoza argued against him that in order to devise such a method one has to make use of an intellectual power that can discern the correct method. And if that is so, one is, in effect, already making use of the same kind of power for the governance of which we set out to devise a method. The Cartesian method must accordingly be founded on a prior recognition of truth. We cannot but begin by actually using the intellectual powers we have and devise better methods by making use of what we were given. "Habemus ideam veram," Spinoza said, and Merleau-Ponty said it with him. We must begin by trusting a certain cognitive power to deliver truth, be it intellect or perception.26 This is how Merleau-Ponty puts it, stating his agreement as well as his disagreement with Spinoza: Merleau-Ponty

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The actual possession of the true idea does not, therefore, entitle us to affirm that there is an intelligible abode of adequate thought and absolute productivity, it establishes merely a "teleology" of consciousness which, from this first instrument, will forge more perfect ones, and these in turn more perfect ones still, and so on endlessly. (453 [395-96]) The phrase "intelligible abode of adequate thought" presumably refers to the kind of ultimate subject in Husserl's philosophy. The reference to teleology must be an allusion to perceptual transcendence, the power to go beyond appearance and error in the search for reality and truth. In Merleau-Ponty's view, the evident and the doxastic certainty that comes with it are not absolute, but they are none the worse for that. While transcendence might thus be said to take away our certainties, Merleau-Ponty hastens to assure us that it is itself cognitive. That is, it guarantees knowledge of truth, if only for the reason that it gives us the guarantee that we will not remain in error. In fact, it would seem that it represents in his doctrine the only genuine knowledge we possess, although it is not prepositional knowledge of anything definite. Perception is knowledge, and thus in touch with reality, because it is by its very nature a going beyond everything that might present itself as an individual entity. It is only by virtue of a withdrawal from transcendence that we come to think that perception gives us knowledge of a particular entity or state of affairs. From the philosophical point of view—i.e., speaking concretely—real knowledge consists in the conviction that the world is real. This is the only unconditional and indefeasible certainty that can be affirmed without abstraction (458 [400]). "There is absolute certainty of the world in general, but not of any one thing in particular" (344 [297]). According to other formulations of the same thesis, it is the conviction that there is meaning, that there is consciousness of something, that something shows itself, that there is such a thing as a phenomenon, or that there is something and not nothing (342 [296], 454 [397]). He elaborates this in an argument to the effect that we never lose contact with the truth and that scepticism is not a threat. He means that, within the context of transcendence error is sure to be discovered, and we need not fear that we might remain imprisoned in falsehood without escape. The search for truth is therefore made safe, as its possession becomes impossible. He prides himself on having a philosophy that does not have to avoid ultimate scepticism by way of a doctrine that accounts for truth but does this in such a manner that it can 110 longer account for error. Essences The topic I now want to discuss has to do what used to be called truths of reason, in distinction from factual truths. Do we know such truths? As became clear in previous chapters, the topic of essences is closely associated with that of predication. In a predicative statement, let us say, a general term is predicated of an entity (a particular) to which the subject term refers. Now, according to a long tradition, the general term expresses a concept, and a concept is a way of 154

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apprehending a general property which a particular entity often shares with other entities. A property, however, is something that can be objectified, i.e., considered as an object in its own right. Husserl called such an object an essence. Now if essences are objects, it is plausible to think that we can also make predicative statements about them. And if statements of this kind are true, they are true by virtue of what the essence in question intrinsically is; we might add as a rider, their truth is altogether independent of the question of whether there are particular or individual things that have the essence as their property. As it is sometimes put, statements about essences are either necessarily true or necessarily false. The doctrine of essences, I have urged, is important from an epistemological in addition to a metaphysical or ontological point of view. Putting the matter very briefly, since all knowledge involves concepts, it is important to be clear about the import of their use. Do we, by means of concepts, grasp properties that things actually have, or do we merely classify or unify those things on the basis of considerations alien to them? 27 As with Heidegger, we shall have to construct Merleau-Ponty's doctrine to a large extent from scattered passages in his works. While clearly aware of the topic and its discussion by philosophers, he nowhere discusses it with the detail Husserl did. In the light of what we have already seen of his system of thought, however, we will not expect him to regard the distinction as basic. His theory knowledge begins from embodied percipience and introduces its account of things in a phenomenological mode, namely as the acknowledgement of certain powers in fact possessed by the body-regarded-as-subject (cf. 254-56 [219-22]). There is no talk of necessity here, or of forms or structures necessarily imposed on empirical, sensory content that is alien to them. Perception itself is knowledge, because both form and content come together. As active transcendence, perception can distinguish reality from appearance, for there is no limitation upon what can be an appearance of reality. It is only his theory of obj edification (as I have called it) that gives his theory of knowledge the scope to come to terms with ordinary experience. And it is this theory that also allows him to make sense of a distinction between necessity and contingency, the a priori and the empirical, although he cannot do much better than acknowledging its legitimacy, given a certain kind of objedification. His problem is not that of knowledge with regard to essences. His view is not the traditional view that essences are present in rebus but difficult to discern for human cognizers, so that our formulations of particular essences should perhaps be tentative, since they are open to criticism and often wrong. Merleau-Ponty is a long way from wanting to posit real but unknown essences (151 [112]). His doctrine is that they are introduced at the level of objedification and predication and are thus constitutive of an experience different from preobjective and prepredicative experience. Merleau-Ponty does acknowledge the distinction between truths of reason and matters of fact, or that between a priori and a posteriori statements, but not without adding a codicil to signify his own position to the reader. It seems to be something like the following: those properties which we attribute to an object, for instance, at the start of a particular inquiry and that serve as criteria of its Merleau-Ponty

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identity throughout may legitimately be called a priori for that inquiry, because ex hypothesi our attribution is not based on the results of that particular inquiry. Indicating what we want to study, we conceptually specify a kind of object or happening. We thus distinguish the properties referred to in that conceptual specification from those we come to ascribe to the object at the end of the inquiry. In this sense, whatever you start with is a priori; everything else comes later and is therefore a posteriori. This may be what lie means in a rather unclear statement in his Phenomenology, where he says that "the apriori is the fact which is understood, made explicit, with all the consequences of its tacit logic articulated, while the a posteriori is the isolated and implicit fact" (256 [221]). An important consequence of this is, of course, that an actual distinction between a priori and a posteriori (or essence and accident) can be made only by specifying a particular inquiry. What is a priori (i.e., the essence) is nothing other than the concept of the object we start out from in a given inquiry. But is it not often the case, we can ask, that: the starting point of a given inquiry is actually the result of a different but earlier inquiry? That is indeed so, and MerleauPonty embraces that idea with enthusiasm. The essence stands fast, because it has been acquired. The a priori is in actual fact—i.e., from the transcendentalphilosophical point of view—just what in a given inquiry counts as acquired, that is, standing fast. If in a given inquiry some things are a priori—i.e., beyond question—and thus not subjected to further inquiry (testing, verification, etc.), this is so, simply because those things function as what guides that particular inquiry. In one passage, he hints that the contingent may become the necessary by virtue of an act of reprise (199 [170]). He does not elaborate, but he probably means that, in preparation for a new inquiry, the results of earlier ones are, as it were, summed up in one or more concepts and thus objectified. To the extent to which the objectified concepts form the basis for the inquiry about to start, their status changes from being contingent to being necessary. What were empirical conclusions in the terms of an earlier inquiry become framework features with regard to the new inquiry. Consequently, what was contingent has become necessary. Whether an object has a property necessarily or contingently—alternatively, essentially or accidentally—depends on how it functions in the context of inquiry.28 In the remainder of this section, I want to discuss two texts in which MerleauPonty deals with the topic of essences at some length. The first one is that of lectures titled Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man, a translation of which is found in The Primacy of Perception;2'' the second one is a section of The Visible and the Invisible, titled "Interrogation and Intuition." The lectures are a form of introduction to phenomenology, in the course of which he discusses Husserl's doctrine of Wesensschau, the seeing (or intuition) of essences. In this connection, he contends that an intuition of essences is not a mystical awareness but a concrete and familiar phenomenon (17-18 [53-54]). It is, he says, as familiar as seeing something conceptually, i.e., seeing something as exemplifying one or more concepts. He thinks that viewing something as falling under a concept is the same as elevating it to the status of an essence:

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The seeing of essences is an intellectual recapture (reprise), an elucidation or explicitation, of what has been concretely experienced. It is essential for the seeing of essences to recognize itself as posterior to the things from which it begins. It is essential that it recognize itself as retrospective. The idea that it comes after a more direct contact with the thing itself is enclosed within the very meaning of the intuition of essences. (38 [68, transl. slightly alt.]). The first sentence of this passage will be clear in the light of my construal of the theory of objectification. We see an essence when we conceptualize our intellectual situation, say, at the beginning of an inquiry by specifying what will be the object to be studied. In the sentences that follow, Merleau-Ponty registers his specifically philosophical concern: essences are not to be taken as primary or self-dependent. They come into being as objects only in the context of the process of objedification, which is itself a matter of capturing an entity by means of one or more concepts. Merleau-Ponty therefore sees a fundamental homogeneity between the seeing of essences and the conceptualization we find in empirical and scientific inquiry (38!'!'. [681'f.J). Both start with observable matters of fact and seek to interpret them by means of concepts, or, as he puts it, they read a structure into a multiplicity of cases. Fundamental to both sorts of inquiry is the idea of seeing things in the light of concepts, whether as examples of an essence or as cases of an empirical lawlike connection. That in the search for essences the factual status of the phenomena has no justificatory role, while in empirical inquiry it is crucial throughout, is a matter of secondary importance from the perspective governing Merleau-Ponty's discussion in these lectures. (With regard to essences, he seems to subscribe fully to Husserl's method of free, imaginative variation.) The point he wants to make is that essences owe their being to objectification, which is, in turn, founded on perception. From a philosophical point of view, then, an essence is as contingent as a fact (44 [72]). Or, as we read in the Phenomenology, there is no fundamental difference between truths of reason and truths of fact (255 [221]); every truth of reason has a coefficient of facticity, as he thinks we can appreciate from the fact that Euclidean geometry has now lost its former prestige (451 [393-94]). Such truths are not timeless but merely the result of a particular historical objectification; they are a function of historical frameworks or traditions. That essences are thought of as timeless entities is an illusion for which Merleau-Ponty blames the nature of language. Whenever we express something in language, particularly in factual and scientific language, we are inclined to think that what is expressed may be separated from the expression and that we can therefore come back to it ad infinitum, as if what had been said were a truth for all time. Speech, like perception, "forgets itself as a contingent fact" (221 [190]). Scientific expressions, for example, claim to grasp and convey a truth relating to nature in itself, which Merleau-Ponty regards as a misconception. Expression is always creative and what is expressed is inseparable from the expression (448 [391]). A truth represents only the way a certain period of history sums up what it acquired from earlier times, so that it cannot really be timelessly true. The nontemporal is only the disguise of the acquired (450 [392]). In reality,

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it is only a case of adherence to the concepts governing an inquiry or, more broadly, those dominating a segment of history that we speak of as a specific tradition of thought. To return to the question of essences or concepts, it is his view that they exist only in language.30 In the preface to the Phenomenology, we read: "It is the office of language to cause essences to exist in a state of separation which is in fact merely apparent, since through language they still rest upon the ante-predicative life of consciousness" (x [xv]). What he means by adding that the separate existence of essences is merely apparent is, once again, nothing more than Merleau-Ponty's philosophical voice coming through, affirming the primacy of perception. Philosophy itself, of course, cannot avoid concepts any more than it can do without reflection, but, as he states in the same preface, grasping the essence is not the goal but rather a means to it (ix [xivj). The field of philosophy, we read in The Visible and the Invisible, is: Made up of significations or of essences—since it has detached itself from the facts and the beings—but these significations or essences do not suffice to themselves, they overtly refer to our acts of ideation which have lifted them from a brute being, wherein we must find again in their wild state what answers to our essences and our significations. (VI 149 [no])

His principal concern in the discussion of essences in The Visible and the Invisible, as he formulates it, is the question as to the primacy of essences (VI 147 [109]). Is the question of essence the ultimate philosophical question? Can we learn from essence what being is? His answer has not changed: essences are dependent, neither primary nor positive. Essences are dependent, because they are born from objectification, which is itself a suspension or interruption of the transcendence that constitutes our link with reality. It is therefore obvious that they cannot tell the whole story of being. Given that proviso, however, MerleauPonty has ample room to acknowledge both their existence and our knowledge of them.

Metaphysics and Episternology Although I have on several occasions cited passages from Merleau-Ponty's last but unfinished work, The Visible and the Invisible, I want to discuss it as a work in its own right to raise the general question about the relationship of his metaphysics to his doctrine of knowledge, as well as the more specific question as to what contribution the metaphysics of the flesh makes to his epistemology. I also want to discuss in some detail Martin Dillon's Merleau-Ponty's Ontology—already mentioned in several footnotes—because he emphasizes the importance of the relation just mentioned. To begin with Dillon's book, as the title indicates, the emphasis is on metaphysics or, as he calls it, ontology. He thinks that the metaphysics of the flesh contributes to the doctrine of knowledge because it marks the overcoming of a metaphysical dualism that made knowledge impossible. His argument is as fol158

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lows: metaphysical dualism divides being into two domains that do not share any property. As he puts it, immanence and transcendence, interiority and exteriority, exclude each other; on the one hand, we have consciousness and, on the other, things that share no property at all with consciousness. This dualism makes knowledge impossible because knowledge requires that we cross the line of demarcation which separates immanence and transcendence (36). An object of consciousness, a percept, must capture a transcendent thing, which is impossible. "The percept is taken to be an immanent representation which is ontologically disjunct from the transcendent thing it purports to represent" (94). "The epistemological problem for dualist theories lies in the possibility of a breakdown of correspondence between immanent percept and transcendent thing" (62). That means that a dualist metaphysics leads to solipsism and scepticism. Now the way to deal with these epistemological problems, says Dillon, is to adopt a nondualist metaphysics. To heal the bifurcation, we have to make "the fundamental relatedness of seer and seen . . . conceivable," which Merleau-Ponty accomplishes with his new metaphysics of the flesh (223, 150). With the thesis that all is flesh, we are rid of mutual exclusion and, as he sees it, the epistemological problem connected with it. What Dillon presents here, it seems to me, is a broadly dualist metaphysics combined with an epistemology that actually undermines the metaphysics, a combination I briefly discussed in chapter I and which is perhaps best illustrated by Locke." In such a view, one wants to say that we have knowledge of mindindependent, material objects by way of mental representations. But this view is undermined, if one also advocates a doctrine of knowledge according to which we are acquainted with only representations or ideas that are mental. We are thus, indeed, led to a scepticism with respect to the external object, as Berkeley and Hume pointed out. But I would suggest that what is called for here is a more adequate doctrine of knowledge, rather than the overcoming of metaphysical dualism. One should not confuse the metaphysical dualism of consciousness and things (mind and matter) with the epistemological subject-object duality. That which allegedly drives a wedge between knower and known is not the bifurcation of being into spheres of immanence and transcendence, as Dillon would have it, but the epistemological contention coming from Descartes and Locke to the effect that the human mind never gets beyond its own representations and beliefs, that it never actually encounters the objects it believes to be material but has to be content with what are taken to be their mental representations or effects. When the subject-object duality is said to be the problem that threatens us with the prospect of scepticism, as I think it has been since Hume and Kant, the problem has to do with the external character of the relation constitutive of knowledge. According to a very old tradition, it is constitutive of the concept of knowledge that a true belief is true only by virtue of the fact that what the belief is about is different from the belief in question. The affirmation of the subject-object duality essentially serves only to indicate that a belief cannot be knowledge unless, corresponding to it, there is an object or state of affairs that is independent of it in the sense that neither its existence nor its nature owes anything to that belief, whatever metaphysical domain the object might belong to. Merleau-Ponty

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That concept of knowledge and the associated episternic duality have therefore nothing to say about what kinds of entities there are in the universe. If everything in the universe were mental in nature and if all our beliefs were about mental objects, a belief and what it is about would still have to be independent, if the belief were to be true. Whether metaphysical dualism is true or false is a different issue altogether. When an epistemologist speaks of an object outside the mind, he does not necessarily refer to a material object. A thought he himself had entertained in the past would be outside his mind in the sense that its being would be independent of his present belief about it. Again, does a mathematical object such as the number five not exist outside the mind that thinks about it? There is, of course, a metaphysical—if one prefers, ontological—side to Merleau-Ponty's doctrine of knowledge; as we shall see, it receives particular emphasis in the doctrine of the unity between "seer" and seen in his last book. Now if I reject Dillon's thesis that it is a move against metaphysical body-mind dualism, what kind of move is it? In my view, Merleau-Ponty's metaphysics is of the kind that has been characteristic of transcendental thought since Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The episternic duality of subject and object—undeniable in fact—cannot be accepted by the transcendental philosopher as an ultimate fact, for that would give legitimacy to philosophical realism with respect to objects of knowledge and, as Kant pointed out, invite scepticism. While a realist is not deeply troubled by external relations such as that between subject and object, a transcendental philosopher can bring himself to accept the duality only if it can be construed as in some sense derived from a unity. (I have, on several occasions, spoken of such a unity as a matrix of meaning or a conceptual framework.) The question then arises: how does the transcendental philosopher characterize this unitary matrix further? As pointed out in chapter I, to call it a matrix of meaning or a conceptual framework is a merely formal characterization: it implies that its constituents are internally related, but it leaves open questions pertaining to the nature or character of the constituents so related and the framework's place in the general scheme of things. Kant formulated such a unitary matrix as a doctrine of forms of sensibility and categories of understanding, thereby giving the impression of offering only an account of the nature of the human subject. Hegel, for example, wondered whether all that was simply a way of speaking about the general way in which we have to think; in other words, he wondered about the status of Kant's framework: is it merely subjective, or does it likewise engage the very being of things? Kant's acknowledgement of a thing-in-itself that eludes it seemed to Hegel to suggest that it is only subjective, for it implies that there is something outside the framework. He concluded that the thing-in-itself would have to be brought within its scope, if the claim of transcendental philosophy to have answered radical scepticism was to be accepted as valid. In other words, the thing-in-itself seemed to Hegel to be a last vestige of realism in Kantian philosophy. It still employs a realist concept of being that could be exploited by scepticism. He therefore argued that if we want to make the latter altogether impossible, being itself should not be left in the care of realists but brought within the scope of transcendental thought. The unitary matrix it introduces should therefore be conceived of as nothing less than the metaphysical unity of being that embraces object as well as consciousness. In

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short, Hegel's metaphysics served the purpose of elevating the status of the primordial framework represented by Kant's forms of sensibility and categories of understanding. Now Merleau-Ponty rejects the Hegelian doctrine of Spirit and the centrality of conceptualization implied by that idea, but the motivation for his "monistic" metaphysics is the same. His proposal for a new metaphysics also serves to confirm and secure a certain transcendental view of knowledge. Its purpose is to affirm that the unitary matrix of primordial perception does not leave the question of being open, but speaks for the very being of things. As noted, what is striking about Merleau-Ponty's later work is the emphasis on unity underlying differences. And while the idea as such was clearly present in the Phenomenology of Perception, it receives a new formulation by the introduction of the idea of reversibility. Knower and known are different, but their difference is like that of reversible roles played by one person or that of two sides of the same thing. Merleau-Ponty's example, adapted from Husserl, is that of human hands, turn by turn, touching each other. One hand can be touched by the other and thus become an object touched, but that same hand, which felt itself being touched, can also touch and explore the hand that earlier touched it, all within the sphere of what we sense to be the same body. Taking this as an analogy of knowing, Merleau-Ponty suggests that, while knowing or seeing— "seeing" is his preferred term in The Visible and the Invisible—is a distinctive role, it is played by a being that is not fundamentally different from the world it explores. Both are flesh, a term the sense of which we are to take as neutral with respect to both mind and matter (VI 183-84 [139]). Now, as I suggested earlier, Merleau-Ponty introduces this metaphysical unity to support and secure his epistemological doctrine, which for its part wants to show that knowledge is possible. Epistemologically, he holds that embodied perception is knowledge. Touching is "initiation to and openness toward a tactile world" (77 176 [133]). That is why we read a statement such as the following: We understand then why we see the things themselves, in their places, where they are, according to their being which is indeed more than their being perceived—and why at the same time we are separated from them by all the thickness of the look and the body; it is because this distance is not the contrary of this proximity, it is deeply consonant with it, it is synonymous with it. It: is because the thickness of flesh between the perceiver and the thing is constitutive of both the thing's visibility and the perceiver's corporeity; it is not an obstacle between them, it is their means of communication. (VI 178 [135, transl. alt.]) In other words, everything that might have counted against the cognitivity of embodied perception, "the thickness of the look and the body," is here undergoing a transvaluation. Distortions due to embodiment become an initiation to the being of things. The metaphysics that accompanies and confirms this epistemology, it is clear, will have to say something to the effect that the transcendence characteristic of primordial perception is not merely a subjective matter but that being itself is such that it can be known by embodied percipience. Being known in this manner, I think he wants to say, is ultimately in complete accord with the nature of being Merleau- Parity

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itself. Being known and knowing are, to be sure, two distinct roles, but there is a unity of being embracing both of them. Hegel would have said at such a juncture of philosophical discussion that the unity-in-difference is that of consciousness or spirit—more specifically, that the difference is a function of consciousness not yet having reached self-consciousness and therefore being in a state of self-externalization. Knowledge, in such an idealist view, is possible by virtue of consciousness coming to recognize itself in its objects. Merleau-Ponty does not construe the unity as one of consciousness returning to itself from its alienation from itself, for he offers a metaphysics based on prepersonal, natural perception, where perception is not a matter of objectifying and conceptualizing but of being caught up in a movement of transcendence. His metaphysics is different from Hegel's, but I suggest that his doctrine of the flesh is similar with respect to the matter at issue. In both cases, the unity introduced by the philosopher is not intended to eliminate differences recognized by finite consciousness; its purpose is to assure us that the relation between knower and known is not purely external (as realism would have it) but that the cognitivity of primordial perception engages the very being of things. As we have already seen, what he regards as reality, the world (as it was called in Phenomenology), forever eludes the grasp of perception. This externality, however, implies a primordial unity from which it is inseparable, which accounts for the fact that the earlier work treats of it as the transcendence characteristic of primordial perception. He now writes that there is "a relation of the visible with itself that traverses me and constitutes me as one who sees" (VI 185 [140]), or again, "there is vision, touch, when a certain visible, a certain tangible, turns back upon the whole of the visible, the whole of the tangible, of which it is a part, or when suddenly it finds itself surrounded by them (VI 183 [139]). Such passages, it seems to me, hint at a process that is in some sense self-confirming in that it is one in spite of differences. What is external is really the same as the experience in which it is encountered. A great deal of Merleau-Ponty's doctrine is captured by the following passage: This concentration of the visible about one of them, or this bursting forth (edatement) of the mass of the body toward things, which makes a vibration of my skin become the sleek and the rough, and which makes me follow with my eye the movements and the contours of the things themselves, this magical relation, this pact between them and me according to which I lend them my body in order that they inscribe upon it and give me their resemblance, this fold, this central cavity of the visible which is my vision, these two mirror arrangements of the seeing and the visible, the touching and the touched, form a close-bound (bien lie) system that I count on, define a vision in general and a constant style of visibility from which I cannot detach myself. (192 [146])

As Merleau-Ponty himself suggests, "the flesh (of the world or my own) is not contingency, chaos, but a texture that returns to itself and conforms to itself" (192 [146]). The idea seems to be that vision and its objects fit together, that their relationship is not merely a matter of fact, external and thus in some sense accidental. Speaking metaphysically (as Merleau-Ponty understands this), they were made for each other. Being perceived is not something that happens to things merely accidentally: it is essential to them to be seen, in fact, to be cog162

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nized in all the ways in which the body is sentient, and by all sentient beings in the world. I am constituted as one who sees the things themselves by the fact that my seeing fits into the system, which as a whole is well fitted together (bienlie). We may recall that in Phenomenology he spoke of a primordial pact between the perceiving body and the world (251 [216]). To repeat, I am inclined to think that Merleau-Ponty addresses roughly the same point as an idealist who speaks of consciousness returning to itself. Both may be thought of as addressing the same question, namely, what the idealist has accustomed us to call the question about the unity of subject and object. That Merleau-Ponty puts distance between himself and the idealists of consciousness is clear from the fact that he speaks of a system well fitted together rather than of a unity consisting in the self-conceptualization of absolute consciousness; in Phenomenology, he says that the world is not necessary but radically contingent (456 [397]). If we consider the matter metaphysically, however, the relation between percipience and wild being is neither accidental nor external, since they form one framework of meaning.

Merleau-Ponty's Idealism

In Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty expounds his own doctrines largely by using as a foil the two philosophical tendencies he calls empiricism and intellectualism. One also frequently encounters "idealism" as a synonym of "intellectualism"; in The Visible and the Invisible, "philosophies of reflection" seems to be the preferred designation of the same philosophies. Most expositions of his doctrine adhere to this classification and therefore interpret Merleau-Ponty as an anti-intellectualist or anti-idealist, as well as an anti-empiricist. I noted at the beginning of this chapter that, for the purpose of a study of his theory of knowledge more can be learned from his debate with intellectualism (idealism) than from his debate with empiricism. My reason for saying that is that the former kind of debate is with philosophers with whom he shares a great deal, i.e., the transcendental tradition. There is a broadly defined intellectualist position that he rejects, but when all is said, and when we consider his doctrine somewhat objectively or perhaps even from a realist point of view, his anti-idealism is still replete with idealist notions. Several points of doctrine that were dear to idealism in its Kantian or post-Kantian versions are still ardently embraced by Merleau-Ponty. The most important features of the position he rejects are clear, since that is in the first instance the position of Husserl. It is clear that he rejects the view, according to which consciousness is the transcendental subject, constituting entities as objects of knowledge, so to speak, within itself, as well as the correlative view that philosophy is fundamentally reflection focusing on that subject (4252 9 [37I-74J)- Nonetheless, Merleau-Ponty still holds the typically transcendentalist view that there is something profoundly problematic about the idea of entities independent of the subject. He likewise shares the view that radical scepticism requires a response, a concern he already mentions in the introductory chapters to Phenomenology (50 [40]). This response comes in the form of an account that establishes a context of meaning that unifies entities and those who Merleau-Ponty

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seek knowledge of them. As noted earlier, this context is a constellation of various intimately related factors: an embodied subject, a field of perception and exploration, appearances and reality, and transcendence as the most basic and unifying phenomenon. When he says that perception is capable of providing a sufficient response to scepticism, it is clear that he conceives perception in its primordial form as active transcendence, i.e., as the kind of act or process that bridges the gap between subject and object. Transcendence is, by its very nature, a grasping of reality in and through appearances, or of truth beyond illusion and error, and thus, by its very nature, a refutation of scepticism. Objects enter our experience by way of an objedification of appearances, a process in which concepts play a very important role, a view that is certainly Kantian, even when due regard is given to the fact that for Merleau-Ponty objectification is not presided over by pure reason or transcendental consciousness but seems to be a development intrinsic to the unity of being. Reality as envisaged in transcendence does not permit the kind of permanence objects have or any relatively secure possession of a certain body of belief about them. If reality is to become intelligible in terms of objects and what we predicate of them, transcendence has to be temporarily halted or suspended and appearances subsumed under concepts. Let us look at another feature of transcendental-idealist philosophy. Object knowledge, it was said by its adherents, is fundamentally defective, since in its orientation to what is objective (as opposed to subjective) it is positive, one-sided, naive, and abstract. The cognitive stance implied by objective knowledge suggests the view that the grounds for our cognitive claims come from objects in a fairly direct manner; as we have seen on many previous occasions, the selfinterpretation of those who make such claims tends toward realism. Idealists therefore thought that object knowledge is in need of a critique, which consists in a return to the subjective that was passed over and forgotten in the search for objective knowledge. More strongly yet, since it is held that our knowledge of objects is made possible by conceptualization, we cannot afford to remain ignorant of this transcendental background. While Merleau-Ponty does not seek out the transcendental subject in its Kantian or Husserlian form, he does bemoan abstractness and self-forgetfulness and emphasizes the need to become clear about the origins of objective knowledge. Though self-transparency and selfpossession are out of the question in his philosophy, within the limits of attainability, self-knowledge is very important. His account of primordial perception and active transcendence serves the purpose of redeeming objective knowledge from its abstractness by way of a transcendental critique. This contextualization of objective knowledge within a unitary context of meaning, out of which it is thought to arise, is also clear from Merleau-Ponty's metaphysics. He extrapolates the concept of being from preobjective and prepredicative experience, rather than from objective knowledge. As noted, reality is that which is sought in transcendence. As such, it is not independent of this context of meaning but an internal aspect of it. Its externality is a feature of transcendence, not something that may be conceived of as independent in the spirit of realism. Metaphysics so interpreted reinforces the attack on scepticism, because in this view it is impossible for a sceptic to appeal to being or reality 164 Phenomenological Epistemology

and wonder whether we ever gain access to it. Since primordial perception is, in his view, cognitive by virtue of its transcendence alone, it constitutes knowledge, although not objective knowledge. We are in touch with reality because transcendence is, by its very nature, a going beyond everything that might present itself as an individual entity or a particular state of affairs. Primordial perception embodies the conviction that the world is real (458 [400]), that there is meaning, that there is consciousness of something, that something shows itself, that there is such a thing as a phenomenon, or that there is something and not nothing (342 [296], 454 [397!). In the light of this metaphysical doctrine, his emphasis on the search for truth becomes quite clear. I have expressed my opinion that this emphasis, which we also found in Husserl and Heidegger, is an indication of affinity with the transcendental or idealist tradition. Dillon rightly draws attention to this aspect of Merleau-Ponty's thought, though he seems to overlook the presence of the same emphasis on search in the idealists generally. According to Merleau-Ponty, the possession of knowledge is a misconception arising where objedification and conceptualization are dominant and their transcendental origins forgotten. According to what he has to say about objectification, an object known is but a stage or phase that has, as it were, been lifted out of the active search for knowledge that cannot come to an end. Although I already alluded to this important matter earlier in this chapter, in this general enumeration of idealist traces in Merleau-Ponty's thought—some of which also applies to Heidegger—we cannot omit mention of external relations. (He is, in fact, the only one of the three philosophers who uses the phrase, as far as I have been able to ascertain.) The fact that he is burdened by Kantian and idealist worries about external relations sheds important light not only on his observations about empiricism and causal thought but also on the general strategies he pursues in his philosophy. The problem of knowledge was conceived of by Kant and his idealist followers as the problem of the bridge because an external relation between subject and object was construed as a gap that needed a bridge. Now Merleau-Ponty rejects the idealist solution as too intellectualist, as too reliant on the predominance of conceptualization, but it is very important to note that he agrees with them on the point that external relations are problematic (428 [374]; VI 53 [32]). Realism is out of the question, since it acknowledges that the relation between subject and object is external, but as he sees it, the act of perception will bridge the gap and ward off scepticism by nonconceptual means (50 [40]). Interpreted as a movement of transcendence, the perceptual act makes the external relation internal. When we consider subject and object, or rather perception and world, appearance and reality, as integral wholes, we see that they are internally related, a point reinforced by his idea of reversibility and the strong emphasis on the unity that embraces both the one who sees and what is seen in The Visible and the Invisible. I want to mention one more point of agreement that should be noted. What I have in mind is the way he understands concepts. He accuses the idealists of reducing reality to concepts and of viewing knowledge as a matter of imposing concepts or of reducing everything to concepts, and he firmly rejects that view of reality and knowledge. His criticism may very well have cogency, but the fact Merleau-Ponty

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remains that he accepts their interpretation of concepts. He therefore devises a strategy to get around the consequences of that interpretation, but he does not call it into question, as I think he should have. He argues that perception (at least in its primordial form) is cognitive without being conceptual, distinguishing between appearances and reality without the aid of concepts. It takes appearances (or phenomena) as stations we pass on our way to something else, namely, reality. Whatever the merits of such an account, it does not fully capture our perceptual experience of objects. This involves concepts of varying degrees of generality. Instead of raising the question about the nature of concepts, MerleauPonty assumes that the Kantians were right about concepts. According to their view, we are supposed to imagine a preobjective state in which we have no objects and no concepts defining them. Concepts, Merleau-Ponty says, are ways of summing up and unifying appearances, giving them a name, and ascribing to them a character, in order to prevent them from disappearing in time. He does not explain exactly how we are to think of this, but his formulations suggest the classification of different phenomena either as appearances of a relatively permanent object or as members of the same kind of object. The concept of an individual object, for example, unifies the various appearances of that object, the concept of a class unifies the various members of that class. Primordial perception is supposed to be free of concepts, and Merleau-Ponty's portrayal of the introduction of concepts suggests that they are imposed on the perceptually given, rather than abstracted from it. I think that he follows the idealist view of a concept as a formation of what is given, the idea being that the given does not already exemplify any concept. The reality that is given is not one of individual objects instantiating general properties and belonging to kinds of objects that share the same property. Merleau-Ponty says that meaning is intrinsic to perceptual things, but he denies that our words and concepts can grasp it. Entities elude our grasp to the extent that we approach them by applying to them words and concepts. The meaning he states to be intrinsic to perceptual things cannot be grasped, even in part, by our words and concepts. The moment we think we know something on the basis of perception, and say so in words and sentences, Merleau-Ponty tells us that we have, in fact, begun to do just what the idealists did and we are doing it no better than they did. We unavoidably objectify, conceptualize, and reduce things to essences; we imprison an entity in the concept we apply to it. We cannot but transform it into a timeless entity, a manoeuvre that tames the wildness of being and places an object before our minds. We form conceptual frameworks and live in adherence to traditions of thought, but everything we do along this line is unavoidably reductive. To remain faithful to the path of perceptual knowledge, which is the path to reality, we must avoid objectification and the use of concepts. But does this not show that he still adheres to the idealists' understanding of concepts? Does he not still think that knowledge is transformation and reduction, if it involves the use of concepts? He grants their view that conceptual thought and language transform, rather than grasp, what is ultimately real. There is no critique of their understanding of concepts in Merleau-Ponty.

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Summary Merleau-Ponty's epistemology is based on his phenomenological analysis of perception. He defends the integrity and self-sufficiency of perception (i) as an awareness of objects (against both empiricists and intellectualists like Kant) and (2) as awareness of Sinn (against Husserl). Meaning is not bestowed by consciousness and the meaning of prereflective awareness cannot be fully recaptured from the reflective point of view. We dealt with Merleau-Ponty's doctrine of the body construed as cognitive subject, rather than as object of knowledge. No objectification can do justice to what the body is as a cognitive subject. What emerged from the discussion was the idea of a holistic system of internally related factors such as appearance, reality, the perceptual power of transcendence, and the field or scope of that power. As one would expect in a doctrine focused on the search for truth, the most prominent factor is that of embodied percipience as a movement of transcendence or interpretation. Appearances are essentially moments or phases in this movement, the never attained goal of which is reality. Merleau-Ponty's metaphysics interprets reality or being as essentially external in a sense which I explored in "External Reality." Reality is the correlative of natural, prepersonal perception, an interpretation of appearances that is purely sensory and does not involve conceptualization. To be is to belong to a sensory field. In the following two sections, I elaborate the idea of arrested or interrupted transcendence, which Merleau-Ponty to account for perceptions of objects and epistemically evident claims about objects. The latter turn out to be abstractions from the concreteness of the never-ending movement of transcendence. Although objectification, conceptualization, and predication are said to be founded on perceptions, they are incapable of giving us knowledge of the reality that meets us in natural perception, since the relation of being founded is defined as a transformation of perception. The latter does not have a structure analogous to our conceptual ways of thinking. Since reality has been specified by reference to perception, objects and essences are in that sense imposed. They cannot be said to be real in their own right. Later in the chapter, I discuss the relation between Merleau-Ponty's metaphysics and his epistemology, particularly in the light of The Visible and the Invisible. His doctrine of being, I argue, has to be seen as the correlate of his doctrine of perceptual knowledge. The doctrine of the flesh is intended to capture the unity between the knower and the known in a manner consonant with his doctrine of knowledge. I conclude with a discussion of the various features Merleau-Ponty's philosophy shares with traditional idealism or transcendentalism.

Merleau-Ponty

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5 CONCLUSIONS

Transcendentalism and Realism Revisited In this study I have used realism not only as a background against which I project ray interpretations but also as a partner in the discussion of the various phenomenological epistemologies. Contemporary followers of the philosophers under discussion may object to my introduction of realism because they are of the opinion that phenomenology has deprived the controversy about realism and antirealism (or idealism) of its philosophical significance. This opinion is already fairly old, for when I studied in Louvain in the late 19503, the important interpreter of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, Alphonse de Waelhens, already said to us that phenomenology is a position beyond realism and idealism, an opinion that made a great impression on me at the time. As a matter of fact, passages to this effect may be found in all three philosophers we have studied. Although I discussed the issues in chapter i, in view of the importance I have assigned to the controversy between phenomenology and realism, it is well to return to it in conclusion. To assess this claim, we have to be clear how these time-worn labels are used, when it is thought that idealism and realism should no longer be part of the debate surrounding phenomenology. As far as the term "idealism" is concerned, we know, of course, that Husserl appropriated it for his own philosophy, but in declaring himself to be an idealist, he emphatically dissociated himself from 168

Berkeley by distinguishing between the letter's "psychological" or "subjective" idealism and his own "transcendental" idealism. Berkeley had rejected the reality of Locke's material objects on the ground that they were clearly unknowable in the terms of Locke's theory of knowledge. Husserl, however, charged that simply rejecting material reality left Berkeley with a mind or soul that is as much a wordly entity—in the transcendental-phenomenological sense of that expression—as Locke's material objects. That is to say, Berkeley remained caught up in the natural attitude, while a train of reflective meditation pursued to the end would have led him to absolute consciousness. By adopting the transcendental point of view, according to Husserl, one can accommodate both material and mental objects, since both have their being in transcendental subjectivity. The unknowability of material objects in Locke is clearly no longer a problem for Husserl who correlates them with sense perception in the unity of a conceptual framework. As we noted in the chapter on Husserl, the latter relegates the debate between idealism and realism to the natural attitude and holds that his own transcendental idealism is beyond the fray. For Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, idealism is closely associated with Husserl, though including Kant and Hegel and their followers as well. Heidegger's qualified approval of idealism, I have argued, is a commendation of the transcendental tradition and in particular Husserl's philosophy. As he saw it, the transcendental turn involves a recognition of the ontological difference, inasmuch as Husserl resolutely refuses to discuss the being of entities from a first-order standpoint. While sympathetic to transcendental idealism, Heidegger holds that the realist shows absolutely no understanding of ontological questions, since he refuses even to make the transcendental turn and thus cannot see the ontological difference between being and entities at all. Merleau-Ponty's "idealists" and "intellectualists" are also, for the most part, to be found in the transcendental tradition. Both of them, accordingly, spend most of their criticism on Husserlian idealism with its emphasis on absolute consciousness. As I indicated in chapter I and at various places in the following chapters, what the three philosophers tend to call realism is a position similar to that of John Locke. Realism is for them a curious blend of a metaphysical position and a subjectivist theory of knowledge. It holds that there is a mind-independent world all right, but it also holds views that clearly entail that we cannot really know such a world. As Heidegger notes in § 43 of Being and Time, realism holds that what it posits as real can and should be demonstrated. A demonstration is obviously needed because our epistemic situation has been construed exclusively in terms of mental representations, so that it is not at all clear that there is any reality outside the mind. What is needed is obviously something like a causal argument, but if our situation offers nothing but mental data, it is difficult to see how these could serve as premises for a convincing argument from effect to cause. The prospects of a demonstration are not very good, so bad, in fact, that one cannot but sympathixe with Berkeley and Hume, as they drew their conclusions. Realism maintained on such grounds has to give way to either Berkeleyan idealism or Humean scepticism. A slightly different form of realism that figures in the works of the three philosophers is scientific naturalism or physicalistic objectivism, which was often Conclusions

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the principal target of their criticism. It is here assumed that natural science, assuming the traditional role of metaphysics, discloses the real and true nature of things independent of human subjectivity. As Galileo said at the dawn of modern physics, the world outside us is accessible only in mathematical physics. Now if that is the case, the real world—which natural science makes out to be purely material—is held to be mind-independent, but something of which we are never directly aware in our perceptions; what we are aware of are subjective states. Once again, an argument seems to be needed that interprets subjective states as causal effects of the real world. Epistemologically speaking, this realism finds itself in the same predicament as the previous one. Understanding realism as they did, Husserl and all other phenomenologists were right that they could definitively dispose of it. Husserl pointed out on purely phenomenological grounds that the underlying picture of mental activity associated with it is not only counterintuitive but even internally incoherent. First, it contradicts manifest experience, since we are generally aware, not of subjective states, but of objects. Second, talk of representations, images, or signs makes no sense unless there are situations in which we see things directly. It therefore makes no sense to give a global characterization of our epistemic situation solely in terms of representations. In our epistemic economy, there have to be situations of seeing the object itself, of recognizing representations of it as appropriate, fitting, correct, or the opposite. Husserl likewise subjected physicalistic objectivism to a fundamental critique, particularly in his study of Galilean science in Crisis.1 Although phenomenological thinkers were obviously not inclined to call their own position realist, one may nevertheless be inclined to credit them with having freed realism from its own incoherence and restored it to the status of a viable philosophy. The knowability of the object of knowledge has been restored by their phenomenological analysis and description. Humean scepticism has been warded off and Berkeley's subjective idealism refuted. One might thus want to say that realism has found a home within the bounds of phenomenology in one or another of the three versions dealt with in my book. But what is the meaning of "realism" when we say that? In this book, I have given special importance to the question of the meaning of realism in relation to the transcendental character of phenomenological epistemology. I have in fact formulated the question as follows: can classical realism of the kind advocated by Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Reid, and contemporary philosophers such as William Alston and Alvin Plantinga, survive within the bounds of transcendentalphenomenological epistemology? Is the latter simply a dimension added to it or does the transcendental turn have an impact on what we started off with, namely, the natural attitude of realism? Is the transcendental account of realism an explanation or a subtle and polite correction of it? We cannot give answers to these questions, until we are clear as to what is meant by the terms in question. When the transcendental turn is thought of as in Husserl, for example as a kind of reflection, and a transcendental epistemology is presented in phenomenological descriptions of cognitive experience, one is inclined to think that our prephilosophical realism only stands to gain. A whole

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dimension of our experience to which we pay little attention because of our natural attitude is now brought into the open. Matters that had no name are now named and described. Besides, if Kant is to be believed, we have gotten rid of scepticism and the possibility of realism has been proved with an argument. Husserl himself expressed the view that as a result of the transcendentalphenomenological reduction we have lost nothing but gained the whole of absolute being. Or, as he assured us in other places, the transcendental philosopher, unlike Hume, does not distort our manifest experience and make our knowledge of the world out to be fictional. Transcendental philosophy does not impugn our experience of the world in the slightest degree or take from it any meaning it actually has in experience. It does not deny the real existence of the world but seeks only to understand this kind of realism properly. In all three philosophers, we noted descriptions that are strongly realist in tone, as when we are told about cognitive situations in which objects appear as present "in the flesh," as objects that in their mode of givenness justify our beliefs about them, as objects that are independent of the subject, simply there, objectively present, external to any perceptual apprehension, and so on.2 In short, it seems that the transcendental theory adds a dimension that can only enrich our cognitive awareness. Alternatively, it seems that the transcendentalist does not reject realism but rather that he justifies it and gives it a secure dwelling place, as Kant already suggested when he rioted that transcendental idealism makes room for an empirical realism. We have been enriched and lost nothing but ignorance and misconceptions. In opposition to this irenic picture of the relation between realism and transcendental thought, I develop the thesis that classical realism stands in direct conflict with the entire transcendental tradition since Kant. When it is portrayed as peacefully coexisting with transcendental reflection, I contend that the realism in question is not a philosophical theory but rather a mode of thought that the transcendental epistemologist regards as prephilosophical and in need of critique. Similarly, the transcendental reflection supposedly tolerant of realism is not the kind of epistemology first developed by Kant. The latter quite clearly said that he could demonstrate that we have knowledge of objects only by repudiating the view that we can know things-in-themselves. This view is, of course, nothing other than that of classical realism, according to which there are mindindependent entities and our mind is not immured in its own representations and concepts but, on the contrary, suitably equipped to know such things. Kant cannot adopt this view because he construes our ability to know mindindependent entities as precisely the problem of knowledge that has first to be dealt with in a transcendental epistemology. Another way of saying this: he wants to refute radical scepticism and proceeds to do it by repudiating the realist concept of being that makes scepticism, intelligible: being is independent of being known by a human being. As I formulate scepticism in this book, its view is that, if there were knowledge, it would be a relation to an entity or state of affairs that is mind-independent. In other words, scepticism holds that the cognitive relation between subject and object would be external, if there were such a relation. Kant agrees that this kind of relation amounts to a gap the mind cannot jump over. His solution to the problem of knowledge is to repudiate

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metaphysical realism, which means that he implies that there is no gap to be bridged. It follows that the only form of realism his epistemology may be said tolerate is one that does not posit the subject-object relation as external. Yet an epistemology like this confronts cognitive attitudes and ways of thought that imply just such a relation, namely common sense and science. In fact, if epistemology wants to demonstrate the possibility of knowledge, it has to show how such realist attitudes are possible. How do we manage to distinguish something like an object from our own experiences? How is an experience of objects possible? As we know, Kant argues that this is possible by virtue of transcendental concepts, that is, concepts not abstracted from the given but imposed on it. The knowledge we have is said to rest on such concepts, rather than on a relation to independently existing objects and states of affairs. The only objects we can claim to know are internal to the mind (Kant's phenomenal objects). That the attitudes exhibited by common sense and science continue to adhere to realism in spite of the transcendental philosopher's idealism is to be explained by saying that transcendental concepts are operative in experience as assumptions that lie so deep that only the philosopher can discern them. The philosopher calls it naive realism. It is clear that "realism" has now become the designation, not of a metaphysical and epistemological theory, but of a cognitive stance that misunderstands itself and must therefore humbly wait for a transcendental reinterpretation and clarification to come to a proper understanding of itself. We have seen in the course of the book that the reinterpretation can take various forms, but one common feature is that each attempts to show that the subject-object duality is derived from a context with a high degree of unity. In this context subject and object are internally related, so that neither can be considered by itself, in abstraction from the other. As I put it in chapter i, they form a unity characteristic of a conceptual framework. The framework ultimately sought by the transcendental epistemologist must also have a very high degree of self-sufficiency in the sense that it cannot be related to anything outside it in a contingent (external) manner. It has to be self-contained and self-explanatory, which means, for instance, that it needs no explanation that would require appeal to something external. All questions and problems that arise within such a framework are capable of being handled within it; all those apparently referring to something outside are to be ruled out as illegitimate. To give an example with epistemological implications, it would be a violation of the character of such a framework to hold that beliefs within it are true or false by virtue of states of affairs outside it; a belief and what makes it true must both be considered within the same framework. If the transcendental epistemologist is successful in his endeavour to outline such a primordial framework, scepticism will have been shown to be, not merely false, but impossible and meaningless, since it works with a concept of being that is prephilosophical and naive. How can the sceptic entertain the possibility that for all his cognitive efforts a person might not at all be in touch with a real world? If somebody thinks that a belief can only be shown to be true or false by an independent reality, he has fallen victim to an illusion common to nonphilosophical minds. Consequently, when Husserl takes the transcendental path, the realism he 172

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seems to embrace for phenomenological reasons has to sacrifice the idea of the object's independence. The transcendental turn has downgraded realism as a fully philosophical position with a distinctive metaphysics and epistemology to an attitude allowable within certain parameters of thought because of unexamined assumptions or questions that have not been pursued. As I put it earlier, the transcendental epistemologist acknowledges the existence of the realist attitude but realism is not his own position. Because of unexamined assumptions and questions that never came to be formulated common sense and science are justifiably realist, but the epistemologist will point out the existence of the assumptions, urge the relevance of the unasked questions, and emphasize the need for a philosophical critique. In Husserl's view, the origins of such naively realist attitudes are to be found in absolute consciousness, in a subjectivity in which everything is constituted. According to Heidegger, the origins are to be found further back, namely, in the being of Dasein, while Merleau-Ponty points to the primordial being of the percipient. Although both reject Husserl's absolute consciousness, it is nonetheless noteworthy that they also introduce a framework that functions similarly, for example, by being self-sufficient and keeping realism and scepticism at bay. I. have thus far sketched the transcendental critique of realism by pointing out that it unifies subjects and objects in terms of a conceptual framework. I want to elaborate this a bit further by calling attention to some of the implications of this idea. Let us discuss a basic feature of our cognitive life with respect to which realism and transcendentalism hold quite opposite views. An ordinary cognitive agent sometimes makes statements that purport to express what things are in distinction from what she experiences and what they appear to be. We might say that on such occasions she directs herself exlusively and singlemindedly to an object, and recognizes that it exemplifies a certain property, whereupon she says that the object has that property. Reaching, as it were, beyond herself she claims to say what the object is without paying regard to herself. Provided such a person has done her "research", a realist epistemologist sees nothing amiss or problematic about such statements and will applaud this as realism in practice, for philosophical realism holds that, since the object is in fact independent of our beliefs, it ought to be possible to speak about it as such, and that under certain conditions there may actually obtain a relation between a belief and a reality independent of it. The circumstance that objective statements so often take the form of subject-predicate statements the realist interprets as suggestive with regard to the general nature of reality. Her transcendental colleague, by contrast, finds fault with objective statements as such, whether true or false. He typically condemns them as "dogmatic," "one-sided," "abstract," and "nai've," all terms used to suggest that something has been omitted by the one who simply makes a statement of the form S is P. The latter presents as independent what is in actual fact inseparable from her. All inquiry that yields objective statements has this defect; it is present in natural science but also in mathematics and logic. Even the objective statements of philosophers are not free of it. We can therefore readily see why Husserl's transcendental-phenomenological reduction is .supposed to be universal in scope. The problem to which it responds is one that attaches to every form of knowledge Conclusions

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that involves claims about objective states of affairs. No knowledge of that kind may be presupposed, which thus compels us to make the transcendental turn. The issue between the opposing philosophies has to do with the subjective conditions in the absence of which an objective statement would not be possible. That there are such conditions is obvious, but what is at issue is their epistemological importance. Our experience of objects would not be possible, if we did not have capacities for certain experiences or if we did not possess various sorts of concepts. If a person is not familiar with the concept of an F, she will not be able to recognize that an entity has the corresponding property. What is noteworthy, however, is that the nonphilosophical knower does not take subjective conditions to stand in the way of making at times an objective statement, for instance, when the object is clearly perceived. In critical reflection she is confident of being able to distinguish between them and the object-to-be-known, so that on certain occasions she pays no attention to them. On such occasions, as one might say, she abstracts from them and trusts her mind's capacity to yield truth. According to the way of thinking of a transcendental epistemologist, however, such a trust is misplaced. He therefore holds that it is strictly illegitimate to consider the object in abstraction from the subject, to speak about its having such and such properties without expatiating on the cognitive framework of the subject. In his view, what the practicing realist does in making statements about an object an sich amounts to tearing it out of its proper context. As we saw, he wants to take radical scepticism seriously and refute it. Taking it seriously means that the epistemologist cannot countenance the realist's trust in the mind's ability. In order to refute such scepticism, he approaches the subject-object relation in terms of a conceptual framework that makes it out to be an internal relation. In other words, the transcendentalist interprets the presence of epistemic or subjective conditions as barring knowledge of things in themselves. The realist epistemologist, for his part, acknowledges such conditions but sees no grounds to draw a conclusion that would prohibit the making of objective statements. The transcendentalist adopts a reflective standpoint, one that will presumably give him access to the dimension passed over. He begins to speak in great detail of the doxastic attitude expressed in the objective statement. To be sure, he also speaks of the state of affairs, but his discourse is here indirect. He contextualizes the objective state of affairs by speaking of it only as the intentional correlate of that belief. Considered from this perspective, as Husserl pointed out, it is only the nucleus of a variety of features that cluster around it in the awareness of the subject. From the standpoint of a realist metaphysics, it might be said that such phenomenological descriptions do not capture the true being of the state of affairs, but if we give due weight to the transcendentalist's rejection of that metaphysics and his alternative concept of being, the objection loses its force. Contextualization continues as the transcendental phenomenologist relates the doxastic attitude in question to others that form its implicit context or horizon. Faithful to my epistemological preoccupation, I return to the contextualization of perception so powerfully presented by Husserl's doctrine of the relation between intention and fulfilment. On the pretranscendental level, sense perception is what I called a source of knowledge. Many of our beliefs about the world of material objects are taken to be ultimately justified by what is given in per174

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ception and not by other beliefs.3 We feel that the justification of such beliefs ends here, presumably because we meet here with matters of fact that we simply have to acknowledge if we would have our beliefs be true rather than false. We believe that, if a belief is successful in that it gives us truth, its success is due to its object being the way it is believed to be and perceptually apprehended as such. The transcendental epistemologist, however, is of the opinion that in the matter of justification there is really no such thing as confronting a belief with reality. Accordingly, he does not accept that perception is (strictly speaking) a source of knowledge, able to convert mere belief into knowledge. He therefore cannot agree that the justification of beliefs ends with perception or whatever other sources of knowledge one may draw on at various times (e.g., introspection, memory, rational insight). Such sources are in fact complexes of beliefs of various degrees of generality, so that the justification process cannot be regarded as finished until the transcendental philosopher has identified and described them. Perception will therefore be considered in the context of the beliefs that define its meaning; in Husserlian language, in a framework in which it functions as the fulfilment of other intentional acts. It now appears, not as a state of mind taken to be related to an external state of affairs, but as internally related to other acts. The character that distinguishes it as a perception is one that contrasts it with these other acts. The transcendentalist's contextualizing continues when a particular framework as a whole is considered within a wider framework, until we finally arrive (at least according to Husserl) at a framework coextensive with consciousness, which therefore deserves to be called absolute. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty continue further and embed Husserlian consciousness in a context they consider to be wider still. I will have more to say about their strategies in the following section. One can readily see how Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty will account for realist attitudes. The short account they agree on is this: what accounts for our persistent talk about independent entities is some high-grade, wide-spread, absent-mindedness or self-forgetfulness. What we have forgotten, they say, is the conceptual framework or background of our beliefs. They differ on what we have to go back to in an attempt at "recollection," but in all three cases we have what Frederick Beiser calls the typically post-Kantian quest for a unity that is selfcontained and self-explanatory but at the same time capable of explaining the differentiation of subject and object characteristic of a cognitive situation, the so-called unity-in-difference4 The goal is to define a specific framework that would show the meaninglessness of the concept of something related to it but nonetheless independent of it. The undeniable fact that such a concept of independence is operative in the natural attitude, in common sense and science, can be addressed only by going back to a framework that is itself intrinsically unified but makes intelligible to us how we came to treat things as objects of knowledge that have a being of their own. The realist will turn down the urgent invitation to make the transcendental turn because she does not see the need for it. From her point of view, it is clear, the problems of one-sidedness, abstractness, external relation, etc. are spurious. When the transcendental epistemologist declares with emphasis that, as a matter Conclusions

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of fact, he acknowledges the existence of a realist attitude and that he desires only to explain its meaning, she recognizes that this is a subtle correction arid transformation, rather than an explanation. The designation of realism as an attitude is already objectionable to her, for it reflects the dominance of the transcendentalist point of view. It implies that it is an attitude rather than a relation to something that exists. The realist, however, maintains that a cognitive attitude can, under certain conditions, actually be an apprehension of a real state of affairs and that what obtains in such a case is a relation between a belief and a reality independent of that belief. The obtaining of this relation is, in fact, a necessary condition of knowledge, but it is altogether different from the existence of a cognitive attitude. The concept of an entity's independent existence cannot be equated with that of an attitude that recognizes or bestows independence. The exemplification of the one concept does not entail the exemplification of the other. The realist's conviction is that, if we do have knowledge, it is a relation to reality. Transcendentalism in Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty Does the vigorous criticism of transcendental philosophy that we find in both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty mean that their own philosophy is not transcendental in nature? Although I have already given reasons for a negative answer, let me review some the most important considerations for such an answer. In the chapter on Heidegger, I pointed out that, at least around the time he published Being and Time, he did not object to the transcendental approach as such, but to a certain view about where the transcendental conditions are to be found. Notwithstanding the primacy he gave to the question of being, he praised Husserl's transcendental idealism because he saw the transcendental turn as signifying a recognition of the ontological difference. In other words, he approves of his determination to discuss the being of entities, not from a natural vantage point but from a transcendental, second-order vantage point. A first-order orientation that considers entities and their properties cannot be called ontology, according to Heidegger. Realists who turn down the invitation to the transcendental turn and adhere to a first-order point of view show an abysmal lack of understanding of ontology. As he provocatively said, in matters ontological, Kant was the first one who took a significant step forward since Plato and Aristotle. Although he agrees that ontology treats the being of entities, he agrees with Kant that it speaks about entities from a point of view entirely different from that of objective scientific inquiry; if it adds to our knowledge, it does not do so in the way in which science does. In sum, Heidegger is enthusiastic about the transcendental constitution of the being of entities. This is obviously far from making a complete break with the transcendental tradition; it is, rather, a proposal to give a different version of it. Although there seems little room to doubt that Heidegger is in the transcendental tradition, this presents the interpreter with the task of construing his doctrine of being, which I did by discussing his thesis of the ontological difference, promulgated shortly after Being and Time. But as I just noted, it is a doctrine 176

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Heidegger himself already saw adumbrated by idealists like Husserl. Idealists, he said, distinguished between the question being and questions directed straightforwardly to the entities that are usually said to have being. Being as dealt with by ontology, they had taught, is in some sense in consciousness. It consists, Husserl thought, in being constituted by a consciousness that is cognitive in a broadly theoretical sense and accessible in reflection. This location of being in consciousness is what Heidegger objects to by arguing that the transcendental is not to be sought in such a cognitive consciousness but in the practical context of meaning out of which cognitive consciousness arises. In the previous section I noted, however, that being-in-the-world possesses many of the virtues which a transcendental idealist looked for in absolute consciousness. Broadly taken, the transcendentalist theme of the possibility of there being entities as well as knowledge of them is still Heidegger's theme. Being is for him that by virtue of which there is for us something rather than nothing at all. While it is not a subjective condition in the Kantian sense, it is intimately connected with human subjectivity, which means that it can be spoken of only in relation to an understanding of the being of entities; to say that entities have being makes sense only in terms of an understanding of being. One such understanding is practical, so that entities are understood as tools and being as readiness-to-hand. But there is also an understanding of being, on the strength of which one can meaningfully believe and say that entities exist independently, for instance, the realist understanding of being found in objective knowledge and science. He does not begin with reason as our capacity for objectiflcation, as Kant had done, but he still follows the direction of transcendental philosophy when he asks what he takes to be a question that Kant did not ask: how is that capacity itself possible? The substance of the argument in Being and Time is an attempt to show the provenance of the theoretical attitude; its transcendental origins are found in the primordial context of human practice. His argument to this effect is formally similar to Kant's. The latter had also treated knowledge as an attitude of objectiflcation but construed this as an objectiflcation of a sensible manifold. Heidegger's point of departure is materially different, since he starts from an antecedent context of practical interests; knowledge of objects comes about as a result of an objectification of tools. Nonetheless, objective knowledge presupposes objectiflcation. What we are led back to as transcendental condition is not a mind or a cognitive subject but a conceptual framework, the various elements of which are intimately related. A specific understanding of being is internally related to entities understood as having a corresponding kind of being. It is also to be noted that the unitary context of being-in-the-world is supposed to be self-sufficient in the sense defined earlier and thus protected from sceptical questions; questions and doubts that are legitimate with regard to matters within its scope are to be ruled out as illegitimate, as soon as they are directed at the context itself.5 It is not Husserl's absolute consciousness, but it has a similar kind of absoluteness about it. It is often said that Heidegger himself rejected his early position as being still transcendental in character, but it is not clear to me that his later work is not transcendental. My detailed examination of the essay "The Essence of Truth," Conclusions

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which is generally held to mark a turning point in his development, certainly does not seem to me to warrant such a claim. The doctrine of the so-called open space is clearly a transcendental doctrine, based on argumentation about conditions in the absence of which we would not have a sense of the correlation between words and objects or of actions and the environment in which they are performed. Cognitive activities such as predications and their evaluation with regard to truth are performed within the same open space as that in which their objects exist. The latter cannot be conceived of in a sceptical spirit as possibly unknowable to us, for such a conception would have to employ a realist concept of being. According to Heidegger, the open space itself is being. Merleau-Ponty's doctrine of knowledge is, in many respects, different from that of Heidegger, inasmuch as he argues for a doctrine of knowledge arrived at by a phenomenology of embodied perception. Knowledge is here said to be constituted by transcendence of appearances. This perceptual knowledge, however, is preobjective and prepredicative. Knowledge of objects, whether in the practical or the theoretical domain, is to be contrasted with primordial knowledge. It is derivative in the sense that it comes about as the result of a transcendental process of objedification. This is a kind of suspension or interruption of transcendence that makes us stop at an appearance of reality and convert it into an object that we take to be real in its own right and apprehend as having a definite, relatively permanent character, about which statements can be made that are, in certain circumstances, evidently true. Objects are really no more than abstractions from the concreteness of the never-ending movement of transcendence that is at work in primordial perception. He therefore agrees with Heidegger to the extent that knowledge of objects is seen as presupposing a kind of transcendental objectification. The context of primordial perception, Merleau-Ponty tells us, assures us of truth and has accordingly the virtue of being able to keep radical scepticism at bay; that is, it has what the transcendentalist looks for in the unitary matrix of experience, namely that it should be self-contained and therefore secure from anything outside it. Internally considered, it is, of course, a movement in which everything supposedly self-contained and secure is constantly overturned. My remark applies to primordial, perceptual transcendence seen, as it were, in its integrality. As we saw in the previous chapter, philosophical realism in the classical sense is also quite unacceptable to him for the same reason it was unacceptable to Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger, namely, on account of its construal of the subjectobject relation as an external relation. Realism is allowed only as a prereflective stance, such as in science, but Merleau-Ponty clearly indicates that he will not make it his own philosophical position. Like his predecessors, he calls for a nonrealist metaphysics, which for him is a doctrine of being based on the characteristic transcendence of primordial perception, introduced to confirm and secure his transcendental theory of knowledge. It is to assure us that there is no being other than what we are in touch with in primordial perception.

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NOTES

Chapter i 1. See Clifford Geertz, who speaks of a distinction between experience-near and experience-distant concepts in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (Basic Books, 1983), 57. I thank David Jopling for this reference. 2. The term "intentional object" belongs, of course, to the phenomenologist's own language, in which it is used to designate that upon which an intentional act or state of belief (right or wrong) is directed. 3. The term "naturalism" is used here to designate a view according to which the human being is a part of nature and falls within the scope of natural science, but "nature" is understood here in the manner of contemporary natural science, i.e., causally and mechanistically. As they saw it, scientistic naturalism made human consciousness or awareness into a natural process, and the human being then appeared as nothing but an object of science. In other words, the point of view privileged by externalism was identified with that of natural science. 4. David M. Armstrong, Belief, Truth, and Knowledge, 157. 5. As someone familiar with contemporary epistemology will recognize, my coristrual of the internalism-externalism debate makes the participants in it rather more uncompromising than many of them are in real life. Certainly not all externalism is scientistic or bent on construing knowledge as a natural phenomenon accessible to science. The reason for my construal is that the phenomenologists tend to view externalism as typically involving scientific causal explanations of knowledge. 6. Armstrong, Belief, Truth, and Knowledge, 166.

!?9

•j. Keith Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 153. 8. Laurence Bonjour, for example, suggests this reaction to some versions of externalism in The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, 35, 37. 9. The view is similar to what Kant calls transcendental realism. Cf. Critique A^6<j and A49O-gi. "If we treat outer objects as things in themselves, it is quite impossible to understand how we could arrive at a knowledge of their reality outside us, since we have to rely merely on the representation which is in us" (A378). The implication clearly is that, if the possibility of knowledge is to be explained and scepticism to be warded off, the realism of things in themselves has to be sacrificed. 10. My use of the expression "epistemic conditions" is an allusion to Henry Allison's argument in his Kant's Transcendental Idealism. His view is that transcendental idealism is "nothing more than the logical consequence" of the acceptance of epistemic conditions (p. 10). He writes: Whatever is necessary for the representation or experience of something as an object, that is, whatever is required for the recognition or picking out of what is "objective" in our experience, must reflect the cognitive structure of the mind (its manner of representing) rather than the nature of the object as it is in itself. To claim otherwise is to assume that the mind can somehow have access to an object (through sensible or intellectual intuition) independently of the very elements that have been stipulated to be the conditions of the possibility of doing this in the first place. This involves an obvious contradiction. The transcendental realist avoids this contradiction only because he rejects the assumption that there are such conditions. In so doing, however, he begs the very question raised by the Critique. (27) Let us say what can hardly be denied, namely, that conceptualization is a condition for the possibility of recognizing or picking out what is objective in our experience. Now why should this be taken as standing in the way of apprehending things as they are? One would have to assume, as Kant perhaps did, that fundamentally the object and the cognitive subject are external to one another in the sense that everything subjective, including concepts, is utterly foreign to the object, so -that if the subject contributes something to a cognitive situation, as it presumably always does, this must count as a distorting, subjective addition. I think it is of the utmost importance for the realist to contend that there is no compelling reason to assume anything of that sort. Neither does she have to hold that we have access to an object without concepts, which she may well suppose to be impossible. But the fact that we use concepts does not stand in the way of knowing an independently existing entity. 11. From a strictly epistemological point of view, we should bear in mind that we are talking about only the truth of a claim, not about the justification for the claim as such. For a realist epistemology, the distinction is important. 12. "Realism makes skepticism intelligible," as Thomas Nagel writes in The View from Nowhere, 90. 13. "But a concept is always, as regards its form, something universal which serves as a rule" (Critique of Pure Reason, Aio6). Cf. George Schrader's "Kant's Theory of Concepts" in Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert Paul Wolff. I also want to express indebtedness to two articles by Nicholas Wolterstorff: "Realism vs. AntiRealism," in Reality in Focus, ed. Paul K. Moser, and 'Are Concept-Users WorldMakers?" in Philosophical Perspectives I: Metaphysics, ed. James E. Tomberlin. The nature of concepts is also discussed by Gerald Vision in Modern Anti-Realism and Manufactured Truth, 82-86. 14. From Hegel's vantage point, Kant's residual realism was due to his holding that "thoughts, although they are universal and necessary determinations, are still

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only our thoughts, and are cut off from what the thing is in-itselfby an impassable gulf" (Encyclopaedia § 41, Addition 2). See also § 163, Addition 2: It is not we who "form" concepts. . . . It is a mistake to assume that, first of all, there are ob-jects which form the content of our representations, and then our subjective activity comes in afterwards to form concepts of them. . . . Instead, the Concept is what truly comes first and things are what they are through the activity of the Concept that dwells in them and reveals itself in them, (cited according to the translation by Geraets, Suchting, and Harris) 15. A classical answer is perhaps that given in Rudolf Carnap's article "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology," first published in Revue internationals de philosophie (1950) and reprinted as a supplement in the second edition of the author's Meaning and Necessity. More recent discussions of the matter have been generated by Donald Davidson's "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Framework" in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. 16. As Hegel puts it, "If we halt at ob-jects as they are merely in-themselves, then we do not apprehend them in their truth, but in the one-sided form of mere abstraction" (Encyclopaedia § 124, Addition, transl. by Geraets, Suchting, and Harris). 17. I previously noted that Hegel criticized Kant in this spirit, urging that the latter's dualism of things in themselves and concepts puts a subjectivist stamp on the latter. His own doctrine of the self-determining concept was intended to eliminate this impression of subjectivism. 18. One may think about the issue in historical terms by recalling Hegel's objection to Kant's idea of a thing-in-itself. See my discussion of this matter on p. 16. 19. For a clear discussion of the distinctions required with respect to uses of statements of the form "It is possible that p," see G. E. Moore's "Certainty" in Philosophical Papers, 231-35, and Norman Malcolm, Knowledge and Certainty, 27-32.

Chapter 2 I. Simple page references will be inserted in the main text and will be to the German text of the collected works, the Husserliana edition, published by Martinus Nijhoff since 1950, followed by a reference to an English translation, if available. Passages will be cited according to these translations (with alterations as noted). The customary abbreviation for references to the German text is Hua, followed by the number of the volume and the page reference. Abbreviations for the English translations of Husserl's works are as follows:

C CM EJ FTL ID I IP LI

Crisis of European Sciences, transl. David Carr Cartesian Meditations, transl. Dorion Cairns Experience and Judgment, transl. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks Formal and Transcendental Logic, transl. Dorion Cairns Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, transl. Fred Kersten The Idea of Phenomenology, transl. William P. Alston and George Nakhnikian Logical Investigations (2 vols.), transl. J. N. Findlay

Notes to Pages 21—38 181

2. See my article "Husserfs Concept of Existence." 3. This moral aspect of the epistemological enterprise in Husserl has been clearly explained by Theodore de Boer in his article "De Idee der autonomie bij Husserl." 4. I do not mean to say that he does not at all use the term "justification" and its cognate forms, or rather their German equivalents, Berechtigung, Recht, Rechtscharakter, Rechtsgrund, etc. 5. Husserl uses the term Evidenz, which designates the state of mind in which something is clear or evident to a certain person. In the scholarship on Husserl and phenomenology, the German term is usually translated as "evidence" or "selfevidence." I depart from this custom because in contemporary English usage, the noun "evidence" has completely lost the sense we require to understand what Husserl meant by Evidenz. According to Webster's Third New International Dictionary (unabridged), the English cognate is used to designate (i) an outward sign, indication, or token and (2) something that furnishes or tends to furnish proof, while the meaning "state of being evident" is said to be archaic. Accredited facts or observations form evidence for the truth or falsity of a claim, hypothesis, or accusation. There is said to be a certain amount of evidence for a claim if there are facts that tend to indicate that the claim is true. The German term designates something much more subjective or psychological, namely, the relation between something like a proposition and a mind that apprehends it, suggesting that this relation is such that it is clear to that mind that the proposition is true, i.e., that the state of affairs expressed by that proposition actually obtains. This can be formulated by saying that it is evident to S that p, but not by saying that S has evidence tending to show that p. (See John Austin's remarks in Sense and Sensibilia (115-16.) Take as an example a claim to the effect that there is considerable evidence for the claim that the overthrow of the government in a certain country was engineered by the CIA. Now this state of affairs—there being considerable evidence, etc.—may or may not be clear or evident to S. Evidence typically confers upon a claim or hypothesis a degree of probability, but Husserl wants to say that the degree of this probability may itself be quite clear or evident to us, when the hypothesis itself is, of course, not evident. The case for "self-evidence" is no better. A proposition is typically said to be self-evident when it does not need to be shown to be true by a logical argument or empirical evidence. And it has always been held that this is the case only for very simple propositions. In Husserl's view, however, what is evident to someone need not at all be a simple proposition. Consequently, I will use the expression "the evident" as an abbreviated characterization of a state in which something is evident to some person. 6. A later and more concise statement is in the second chapter of part 4 of Ideas I, published in 1913. 7. The German expression Husserl generally uses is Anschauung, which is usually translated by "intuition" in Husserlian scholarship. In view of the associations that have grown up around this term, however, it should be avoided or used with great caution. What Husserl means by Anschauung is not anything like gazing or looking at. There is nothing contemplative about it. It is not necessarily an act without conceptualization, nor is it defined by the circumstance that its object is simple. See my article "Intuition and Horizon in the Philosophy of Husserl." In Husserl, it marks a cognitively important contrast, though the terms that stand in this relation of contrast can be materially specified only by reference to a given context, that is, for a given implicit ontology and epistemology. See the following passage: Plainly this appearance of actuality (als wirklich Erscheinen) and self-givenness (which may very well be delusive) is throughout characterized by its difference from essentially related acts through which alone it achieves full clarity. (Hua 19/2, 672 [transl. 785])

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There have been complaints about his use of the term Anschauung ("intuition"), particularly his talk of seeing or intuiting essences. One protests that the latter certainly involves concepts and is nothing like a direct grasp of something simple in nature. See, for example, Elisabeth Stroker's Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology, 72. Such discomfort can be alleviated only by intimate familiarity with his epistemology. Alvin Plantinga, though not philosophizing from anything like a Husserlian standpoint, has interesting things to say about this in his Warrant and Proper Function, 104-6. 8. Here Husserl implies what Donald Davidson has more recently formulated as the Principle of Charity operative in all interpretation. We can only interpret particular beliefs as erroneous against a general background of belief that we accept as correct. 9. To put it with the words of Elisabeth Stroker, Evidenz in Husserl's sense is to be interpreted "nicht als das 'Wunder' eines Kriteriums fur absolute Wahrheit, sondern als kritische Instanz, vor der die Schritte aller Wahrheitssuche der Bewahrungsprobe auszusetzen und zu verantworten sind" ("Husserls Evidenzprinzip," 30). 10. Alvin Plantinga has an illuminating discussion of such matters in Warrant and Proper Function, 108-13. n. Merleau-Ponty misinterprets this point in the preface to his Phenomenology of Perception (p. xi, n. 2), where he takes it to mean that Husserl abandoned the idea that something can be apodictically evident. 12. Assertion must not be confused with predication. In an act of predication, according to Husserl, one may target, as it were, a state of affairs consisting of an entity having a property, without asserting (or positing) that state of affairs as truly existing. States of affairs "existing only in fiction," for example, Hamlet's being revengeful, illustrate this. See my articles 'Assertion and Predication" and "Husserl's Concept of Existence." 13. In the Ideas, he uses the Kantian term "dogmatic" in contrast to "critical" (§ 62). Along with "positive," "abstract," and "one-sided," it is widely used in the Kantian-Hegelian tradition of philosophy to characterize epistemic situations that, from a philosophical point of view, are deemed to be in need of further examination, especially a transcendental critique. 14. I counter Elisabeth Stroker's remark that "scepticism is not at all the problem that occupies him" (Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology, 50) by saying that his entire strategy, certainly in epistemological matters, is motivated by the desire to overcome scepticism. For agreement with my interpretation, see the passages cited by Karl Mertens in Zwischen Letztbegrundung und Skepsis, 53-58. 15. Eugen Fink, Kant-Studien (1933). It was republished, along with other studies from the 19305 by the same author, by Martinus Nijhoff (1966) under the title Studien zur Phdnomenologie. The passage is on pp. 121-23. 16. If we take the transcendental turn to imply a form of scepticism, we have to be clear that it must be a scepticism entertained by the truth seeker himself, and that means that it must be based on further knowledge. If knowledge is to be criticized or called into question, it can be done only by the truth seeker himself. Consciousness in its natural attitude does not fall into any error from which it needs to be rescued by something external to itself. What leads to the reduction is the fact that the natural attitude calls itself into question. Epistemic criticism is ultimately criticism by the knower directed towards himself. We can therefore say that Husserl's idea of extending the search for knowledge into the transcendental dimension of experience displays the same logic as Hegel employed in his dialectic. 17. See Iso Kern's discussion in his Husserl und Kant. A summary statement may be found in an article translated and published in Elliston and McCormick's anthology, Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals. As becomes clear from what follows, I am skirting the scholarly debate surrounding the merits and defects of the various arguments

Notes to Pages 47—$)

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and Husserl's employment of them during his philosophical career, although, in a sense, I follow what Kern calls the argument from ontology. 18. They were published in the second volume of Husserl's collected works and translated as The Idea of Phenomenology. 19. For two examples in which it leads to a mistaken interpretation, see Karl Ameriks, "Husserl's Realism," and Suzanne Cunningham, "Representation: Rorty vs. Husserl." I have discussed Ameriks (along with Harrison Hall) in 'A Critique of Two Recent Husserl Interpretations." 20. In his book Husserl's Phenomenology and the Foundations of Natural Science, Charles Harvey makes very strong statements in regard to Husserl's realism. He argues that the idealism of phenomenology presupposes realism in the sense that the latter is precisely what phenomenology undertakes to interpret correctly: Husserl is a "realist" prior to epoche and reduction, indeed, realism promotes the need for these devices; and he is a (no longer naive) realist after the act of will that dissolves the epoche or the completion of constitutional analyses that regain the world within the scope of the interpretative achievements of those constitutional analyses. (225) I agree with the first part: one might say that the problems of phenomenology are provided by realism, which simply means that "realism" is a term that may be used by the transcendental epistemologist to indicate the subject matter or theme of the analyses he is about to give. Husserl himself uses "natural attitude" in that way. There is, however, also a different sense in which realism in general—not merely in its naturalistic version—provides the problem. As I argue, realism in general is the problem for phenomenology because in its transcendental mode the latter confronts the so-called problem of knowledge and undertakes to eliminate scepticism, which requires a rejection of the realist concept of being. 1 have profoundly serious doubts about the second part of the previous passage: is the transcendentally clarified realism that is regained the same as what was suspended? It seems to me that the answer is in the negative. 21. One may say that such realism is minimal in the sense that it amounts to little more than the conviction that there is a preconceptual, uninterpreted reality of things in themselves which are given to, but not created by, reason. For idealists like Hegel, however, it implied a subjectivist interpretation of the Kantian categories. See chapter I, n. 13. 22. The defence is constructed from various passages in Hua 8, pp. 35, 50, 368. 23. In analytic philosophy, adherents of the theory of sense data sometimes argued along this line, which, of course, resulted in the object being equated with a class of sense data. 24. In the 1950 edition of Ideas, this passage, found in later manuscript materials, was inserted into Husserl's original text. The original text was restored in a subsequent edition. 25. In his Formal and Transcendental Logic (§ 62) he makes what I take to be the same point by saying that all objects without distinction are ideal. 26. I do not understand how Gilbert Null can nonetheless classify Husserl as a realist with respect to universals. See Husserl's Phenomenology, ed. J. N. Mohanty and William R. McKenna, 78. 27. See also Husserl's explanation in Formal and Transcendental Logic, § 63. 28. Making such an observation, we should, of course, bear in mind that the mental activities Husserl refers to are not ascribed to individual human minds but rather to transcendental consciousness. 29. Cf. the comment on this distinction in § 49 of Experience and Judgment.

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Notes to Pages 54—70

30. That is, of course, not altogether true, since the text in question was composed at Husserl's request from manuscript materials by Ludwig Landgrebe. 31. Husserl and Meinong introduced into philosophical vocabulary a new technical term for this relation: Fundierung. Objects or acts so related to other objects or acts were called fundiert, generally translated as "founded." For a fairly abstract definition of the relation, see the third of Husserl's Logical Investigations, § 14. More accessible explanations may be found in the sixth investigation, §§ 45-48. 32. A much later passage to the same effect may be found in Experience and Judgment (§ 81). The details differ somewhat in that Husserl argues (unconvincingly, if I understand him correctly) that there is an initial predication in which an "individual moment" is actually predicated of the individual object. That would mean a statement to the effect that the case or instance of redness, which is identified as the redness of my car, is itself predicated of that car. 33. Also Philosophie der Arithmetik, Halle a. S.: C. E. M. Pfeffer, 1891, pp. i6if; 168. 34. As far as I know, the expression Begriffsgegenstdnde is not often used. Its first occurrence is in the article "The Deductive Calculus and the Logic of Contents" (Hua 22, 55). In the second of his Logical Investigations (§ 29), he formulates the idea but does not use the expression. Instead, he talks of objects that are "presented conceptually" (gedanklich vorgestellt). In part I of Ideas I, he speaks of eidetic singularities. But the expression emerges again in Experience and Judgment, 396 (EJ, 329), along with one of its synonyms, that of a purely conceptual extension (reiner Begriffsumfang) (429 [EJ, 354]). 35. The method is explained in full detail in Experience and Judgment, § 87, and Phenomenological Psychology (Hua 9), § 9. 36. For a strong accentuation of the contrast, see Robert Sokolowski's influential book, The Formation of Husserl's Concept of Constitution. 37. I am indebted at this point to Hegel and Skepticism by Michael N. Forster and Hegel's Epistemological Realism by Kenneth R. Westphal. Chapter 3 i. Simple page references inserted in the main text will be to the eighth edition of Sein und Zeit. The page numbering of this edition is found also in the margins of the existing translations, so that additional references to the latter are not needed. Other works are referred to according to the Gesamtausgabe, followed by a reference to an English translation, if available. Abbreviations for the translations are as follows: BP BQ FCM HCT MFL PM

The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, transl. Albert Hofstadter Basic Questions in Philosophy, transl. Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, transl. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker History of the Concept of Time, transl. Theodore Kisiel Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, transl. Michael Heim Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill, which contains translations by various authors of all the essays of Wegmarken, volume 9 of the Gesamtausgabe (1976), a collection of many of the philosopher's shorter publications, for example, "The Essence of Ground" and "The Essence of Truth" (transl. by John Sallis), which I frequently refer to in my book.

Notes to Pages yo—&6

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2. See also Basic Problems of Phenomenology, where his sympathy for idealism and his contempt for realism are even more strongly expressed (24, 237 [BP 167]). Here he expresses the view that realism "has not yet even pressed forward at all into the dimension of philosophical problems." See further the footnote in "Essence of Ground" (9, 133 [PM 368]), where he emphatically denies realism the title of ontology. Simply to be convinced of, or to acknowledge, the reality of the external world, he says, is not appropriate in ontology. And he remarks in a provocative manner that, since the time of Plato and Aristotle, it was Kant's transcendental question which marked the first important new step towards the establishment of an ontology. Heidegger's remark in § 43 of Being and Time (207) to the effect that realism is committed to the view that the reality of spatiotemporal entities is in need of a proof and that such a proof can be given is extremely puzzling, if not altogether bizarre. As Husserl did before him, he sees realism as a position which combines a version of metaphysical realism with a broadly Cartesian or Lockean epistemology. Epistemically, we are supposedly in a situation where the only matters that are unproblematically given are mental and subjective. Combine this with metaphysical realism, and what we have is a position which, to remain coherent, cannot but provide a proof of the existence of something outside the mental sphere. And a causal inference may then have a certain attraction, although its epistemological credentials are dubious, to say the least. As I said earlier, a classical realist would not want to be associated with a Cartesian epistemology. 3. It is, of course, not fair to say that Husserl did not discuss the being of consciousness. He discussed it and declared it to have absolute being. Transcendental consciousness understands being, its own as well as that of everything else. 4. It is clear that Heidegger uses an sich here as simply a synonym of unabhangig (independent), which is to say that he ignores its traditional Kantian connotations. 5. Another way to appreciate Heidegger's proposal to explain the origin of this expression is to recall chapter I. The realist's Archimedean point, I said, is the conviction that the mind is able to apprehend entities other than itself. The transcendental epistemologist, however, holds that this is problematic in the highest degree and that it requires a transcendental critique to correct this mistaken view by an account of its origins. 6. Here he states it by way of citing the Aristotelian affirmation that being is not a genus (38, 208). 7. Gesamtausgabe, vols. 29-30. The translation was made by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker. 8. Husserl formulates the problem clearly in chapter I of the second part of Ideas. This possibility of the comparison is also mentioned by Jean Beaufret in his essay on Heidegger and the problem of truth, Introduction aux philosophies de 1'existence, 12021. 9. In the Metaphysical Foundations of Logic is the phrase "die Ganzheit des Seienden in der Totalitat seiner Moglichkeiten" (26, 231 [MFL, 180]). In the same work, one also reads: Die Welt als das Ganze der wesenhaften inneren Moglichkeiten des Daseins als des transzendierenden iibertrifft alles wirklich Seiende. Dieses enthiillt sich, wann und wie immer es angetroffen wird—und gerade wenn in seinem Ansich—immer nur als eine Einschrankung, als eine mogliche Verwirklichung des Moglichen, als das Ungeniigende aus einem Ueberschup" an Moglichkeiten, darin sich das Dasein als freier Entwurf schon immer halt. (248 [192]) 10. The reader may want to consult the translation by McNeill and Walker (FCM, 357-58). It had not yet appeared at the time I wrote this chapter, which is the reason I thought a lightly interpretative translation was helpful.

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Notes to Pages 88-91

11. As should be clear, a fundamental problem is raised here about the nature of concepts. It is of such epistemological importance that I shall have to come back to it in a more elaborate attempt to clarify Heidegger's doctrine of concepts. 12. This talk of presupposing is clearly to be taken, in Heidegger's view, as technical, philosophical discourse. He does not want us to take him as suggesting that the knower himself is consciously engaged in performing something like a mental act of presupposing. 13. As Dreyfus notes in his commentary, Being-in-the-World (40), there is really not much reason for translating vorhanden as "present-at-hand," "since there is no mention of presence in the German, and since Heidegger rarely makes use of the embedded word for hand." His own translation is "occurrentness," but one may very well object that there is no mention of occurrence in the German either. I approve of Joan Stambaugh's decision to translate Vorhandenheit as "objective presence" in her recent translation of Sein und Zeit, but I generally follow existing practice of using "being present-at-hand." 14. Heidegger uses a remarkable variety of essentially negative or privative characterizations of knowing. Here is a sample of such expressions used in Being and Time: ein starres Begaffen (61), ein Sichenthalten von allem Herstellen, Hantieren (61), nur-noch-verweilen bei (61), nur noch in seinem puren Aussehen begegnen lassen (61), nur noch vernehmendes Erkennen (67), unumsichtiges Nurhinsehen (69), hinsehendes Feststellen von Eigenschaften (73), lediglich betrachten und begaffen (74), anstarren (137), ein Nur-noch-vor-sich Haben von etwas (149), verweilend hinsehendes Besorgen (220). In § 69, he adds some cautionary remarks with regard to such terminology, esp. p. 357f. See also the remarks on Vorhandenheit in Metaphysical Foundations of Logic (26, 161 ([MFL, 129]). 15. Nobody has captured the sense of such an absolutization of the objective attitude better than Nietzsche in a passage in Beyond Good and Evil (sect. 207), (Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. W. Kaufmann, New York: Modern Library, 1992), in which he portrays with inimitable irony how stunted a human being would be, if he were to try and live up to the norms of such a stance. Here it is in part: The objective person who no longer curses and scolds like the pessimist, the ideal scholar in whom the scientific instinct... for once blossoms and blooms to the end, is certainly one of the most precious instruments there are; but he belongs in the hand of one more powerful. He is only an instrument; let us say, he is a mirror—he is no "end in himself." The objective man is indeed a mirror: he is accustomed to submit before whatever wants to be known, without any other pleasure than that found in knowing and "mirroring." . . . Whatever still remains in him of a "person" strikes him as accidental, often arbitrary, still more often disturbing: to such an extent has he become a passageway and reflection of strange forms and events even to himself. . . . His love is forced, his hatred artificial and rather un tour deforce, a little vanity and exaggeration. After all, he is genuine only in so far as he may be objective. . . . His mirror soul, eternally smoothing itself out, no longer knows how to affirm or negate. In the Genealogy of Morals (III, sect. 12) Nietzsche speaks of a "pure, will-less, painless timeless knowing subject." Similar passages can also easily be found in Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript (transl. Howard V. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 16. Cf. the following passage:

Notes to Pages 95—98

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The hammering itself uncovers the specific "manipulability" [Handlichkeit] of the hammer. The kind of being which equipment possesses, in which it genuinely reveals itself, we call readiness-to-hand. Only because equipment has this "being-in-itself" and does not merely occur, is it manipulable in the broadest sense and at our disposal. (69) It goes without saying that a hammer can be studied as a tool, as it is in history or anthropology (361). The tool has then become an object about which we say, for example, that it was used by such and such people for such and such purposes. An anthropologist uses tools in her work, but, the hammer as object of her study is not one of them. 17. The word "tool" (Zeug) is here clearly used in a very broad sense; a landmark guiding our way, a warning sign, and a pistol shot that starts a race are in that sense tools. 18. Heidegger only rarely speaks of knowledge in connection with the ready-tohand. When he does, he puts quotation marks around the word (cf. 67). On p. 69, he says that using a tool has its own peculiar sight (seine eigene Sichtart). See also his remarks on p. 358, where he admits that praxis has its specific sight or "theory," whereas theoretical research has its own relevant practices. 19. This phrase does not occur in Being and Time, but in writings that are only slightly later, e.g., the lectures on metaphysics I mentioned in the previous section. 20. Very good presentations of this matter are given by Edwin Jones in his Reading the Book of Nature, 67-73, ar>d Charles Guignon in Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, 157-61. 21. I think it is important to point out this aspect of Husserl's thought, for the contrast between him and Heidegger is often construed rather simplistically. Mark Okrent, for example, writes: Husserl conceives of the fundamental form of intentionality as cognitive; Heidegger conceives of it as practical. As a result, Husserl thinks of the horizons in which beings are presented on the model of sensuous fields in which objects are placed before us for our intuitive apprehension, whereas Heidegger thinks of these horizons as fields of activity. (Heidegger's Pragmatism, 123; see also 200) If we understand "cognitive" simply in terms of such a contrast, we overlook the fact that Husserl's doctrine of knowledge assigns a central place to the concept of cognitive agency and activity. As I think I made clear in the previous chapter, Husserlian intuition (Anschauung) has the practical sense of an achievement of a cognitive search. The contrast between the two philosophers is that Husserl holds that cognitive and other activities are in principle open to cognitive insight and can be discussed objectively as doxastic attitudes, as in transcendental-phenomenological analyses, a thesis I think Heidegger rejects or the scope of which he limits. Certain things cannot be objectified without falsification. 22. As is well known, Plato and Aristotle had their disagreements on the matter of universals, but I am ignoring that in my formulation of the sense of our tradition. 23. Heidegger explains that the uttering of a subject-predicate sentence is not by itself an indication of purely cognitive intent. Saying that a hammer is too heavy is a remark, or rather a complaint, about its unsuitability for the use to which it is to be put, or an explanation of why I cannot do something (21, 157). In Being and Time, he also mentions in a similar vein statements about what is happening in one's surroundings, descriptions of instruments, etc. (158). 24. A philosophical realist will insist that independence is not merely a feature

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Notes to Pages 98—102

of the way we deal with things but of entities themselves. To be sure, what is attributed is a relational property, i.e., a property an entity has by virtue of standing in a relation to the cognitive subject, but if the attribution is correct, the entity is implied to have nonrelational properties that do not depend on a relation to a subject. Heidegger's account of how we come to adopt an objective attitude and to speak of independent objects may seem innocent enough, but if it is meant as an argument that shows that it is illegitimate to apply the concept of independence to entities, the realist will beg to disagree. 25. Later in Being and Time, Heidegger returns to this matter of the change from the practical to the theoretical, but as far as I can see, he again fails to add anything helpful on this point (357f.). Talk of the breakdown of tools, the disruption of the smooth flow of activities, or the complete collapse of a world (to cite phraseology used by Guignon) does not explain the transition from the practical to the theoretical. 26. For further elaboration, see his logic lectures on the question of truth (192627), Gesamtausgabe 21, esp. pp. 182-90. 27. The discussion of predicative assertion in Basic Problems of Phenomenology (§ 17) is equally disappointing in this particular respect. In fact, I am not familiar with texts that are clear on this point. In many places, he discusses the "is" of predication, but his interest lies in the question of whether it is related to being. In his sympathetic and painstaking exposition of Husserl's sixth Logical Investigation in the lectures on the concept of time, he distinguishes a state of affairs (Sachverhall) from a perceptible object, but the question of whether what is predicated is a universal property is not really addressed (Gesamtausgabe 20, 85-90). A little later he does talk about universals, namely, in a discussion of Husserl's concept of ideation, but in that context (Gesamtausgabe 20, 90-98) he does not say anything about how universals enter into states of affairs as these are captured in predicative statements. 28. Heidegger's discussions of nominalism are not very helpful with regard to the question at issue. His criticism of that position has to do with something that we already noted in passing at the beginning of this paragraph, namely, that making a predicative statement is a matter of using words to refer to objects. Nominalism, he says in Basic Concepts of Phenomenology, views assertion merely as a sequence of words or a complex of names, a view he illustrates in a discussion of Thomas Hobbes (§ 16 b). Hobbes interpreted a predicative proposition as one in which two names for one object are used, "without interpreting in further detail this specific reference of names to things and the condition for the possibility of this capacity for reference, the significative character of names" (272 [192]). A more helpful point about nominalists clearly is that, even when they do consider reference, they construe this as a reference only to individuals. 29. See pp. 94-95. 30. It is interesting to note that Heidegger here (in 1927) raises the same problem Quine raised in his article "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1950). See also the following passage from the same discussion: Names, words in the broadest sense, have no a priori fixed measure of their significative content (Bedeutungsgehalt). Names, or again their meanings, change with transformations in our knowledge of things, and the meanings of names and words always change according to the predominance of a specific factor of meaning (Bedeutungsmoment), that is, depending on the specific manner of viewing (Blickrichtung) the thing named that happens to be predominant. All significance, including those that are apparently mere verbal meanings, arise from the matters under consideration. Every terminology presupposes some knowledge of things. (280 [197, transl. alt.]).

Notes to Pages 103—108

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31. What all this comes to is, of course, the well-known Kantian dictum that without concepts our intuitions are blind. 32. That this reading of the doctrine of Forms fails to do justice to Plato has been pointed out by several critics, most notably Paul Friedlander, Gerhard Kriiger, and Stanley Rosen. For a helpful discussion of the whole issue, see Robert J. Dostal's "Beyond Being: Heidegger's Plato." 33. I use "verification" and "justification" to capture the sense of Heidegger's term Ausweisung (217). Macquarrie and Robinson have translated Ausweisung by "demonstration," which is lexically permissible but decidedly unhelpful. That Heidegger himself uses Ausweisung as having to do with cognitive justification is clear from the lectures on logic of 1925-26 (21, 105-8). Ausweisung, he points out, means showing a statement or knowledge claim to be justified (rechtmaig) in view of what its object is. 34. As I stated in the previous chapter, the combination of the notions of agency and context, i.e., being-in-a-world, is not unknown to Husserl. See also my discussion earlier in this chapter. 35. Cf. the following passage from Logical Investigations: We experience how the same objective item which was "merely thought of" in symbol is now presented in intuition, and it is intuited as being precisely the determinate so-and-so that it was at first thought or meant to be. (Hua 19/2, 566 [LI, 694]) It seems to me that Dreyfus seriously misinterprets Husserl when he alleges him to be in disagreement with Heidegger on this point (Being-in-the-World, 267-68). 36. Ernst Tugeiidhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger, 331-37. 37. See his Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (29-30, 489 [FCM, 337]). Here he emphasizes that a statement is not em vorhandenes Gebilde but a capacity (Vermdgeri). 38. Hubert L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, 254. 39. I agree with Graeme Nicholson that there is a sense in which Heidegger admits "for certain contexts the validity of the correspondence theory of truth" (Illustrations of Being, 74). But what does this agreement really mean, if we are not clear as to what kind of correspondence theory we have in mind? I am not sure what Nicholson means by "correspondence theory." To the extent that he wants to respond to my criticism of Heidegger in the articles he cites, he must be using it as a designation of the traditional theory with regard to the nature of truth, which I have ascribed to Plato and Aristotle. He wants to meet my criticism by arguing that Heidegger has both a theory of correspondence and what he calls a theory of truth as disclosure. It seems to me that much of his unclarity is due to the fact that he does not take into account the characteristically transcendental outlines of Heidegger's argumentation. A transcendental discussion naturally and typically combines an admission of the context-relative validity of a view with a reinterpretation of it that is meant to bring out into the open its concealed transcendental background. Nicholson puzzlingly notes that Heidegger does not give a vindication of the correspondence theory but is also of the opinion that he does not reject it in favour of another theory, even though he says that Heidegger does expose the insecure foundations of the theory (71). 40. I do not want to say that Heidegger consciously and deliberately designed his argument that way but rather that in the tradition in which he worked the relation to scepticism was, as it were, a built-in feature of philosophical strategy. Even when scepticism was not mentioned, the general strategy of argumentation was designed to ward off its possibility. Heidegger's argumentation, I submit, has that general feature of transcendental philosophy.

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Notes to Pages 108—116

41. The original text still exists in a typewritten form. I obtained a copy from Graeme Nicholson, who received his from Walter Biemel. According to an attached note, Heidegger gave the lecture in Freiburg on December n, 1930. 42. John Sallis renders Angleichung as "correspondence" in his translation of "The Essence of Truth," which is, in my opinion, somewhat unfortunate because "correspondence" is commonly used to refer to the traditional definition of the nature of truth that has come down to us from Plato and Aristotle. The French translation by Alphonse de Waelhens and Walter Biemel (De I'Essence de la Vtrite. Louvain: Nauwelaert and Vrin, 1948) has adequation, which is preferable because Heidegger clearly has in mind the Latin adaequatio, which he glosses in an epistemological vein as meaning to make something accord with, to adjust something to something else, and in that sense to make the one correspond to the other. But if we do want to speak here of correspondence, we have to bear in mind that what is in discussion is a relation between experiences, as in fulfilment. Something I said is recognized as corresponding to the object before me. 43. Jean Beaufret has some very insightful comments on this matter and speaks of an "alliance originaire de 1'etre et du sens" (Introduction aux philosophies de I'existence, 123-24), a phrase I think is helpful, if it is interpreted in the way he does. A translation of the passage in question may be found in Frederick Elliston's collection, Heidegger's Existential Analytic, 203-4. 44. John Sallis translates it by "being as a whole." This makes perhaps better English, but I think that it is somewhat unsatisfactory. After all, the German is not das Sein im Ganzen. In fact, Sallis himself uses "being" in the plural in a few places of his translation (PM, 148, 151). De Waelhens and Biemel translated it as I'etant en totalite in their De I'Essence de la Verite, 86.1 think that Heidegger's use of the phrase, here and elsewhere, implies a consideration of das Seiende in its relatedness to das Sein. What is distinctive about this consideration is expressed by the addition im Ganzen: das Seiende, which is considered as somehow gathered into a unity or whole and by the event or process designated as das Sein.

Chapter 4 i. All page references to the Phenomenology are inserted within the text. The first number refers to the French original, the second to the English translation by Colin Smith. Most of my references are to this work, but I also refer fairly frequently to The Visible and the Invisible. In such cases, the page reference is preceded by the abbreviation VI. The following list is the works I cite, the original text followed by the English translation. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. La Structure du comportement. . The Structure of Behavior, transl. A. L. Fisher . Phenomenologie de la perception . Phenomenology of Perception, transl. Colin Smith . Le Primal de la perception et ses consequences philosophiques. . The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays, ed. and introduced by James M. Edie . Les Sciences de I'homme et la phenomenologie. . "The Human Sciences and Phenomenology," in The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays, ed. and introduced by James M. Edie . Signes. . Signs, transl. R. C. McCleary . L'CEil et 1'esprit

Notes to Pages 117—126

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. "Eye and Mind," transl. Carleton Dallery in The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays, ed. James M. Edie . Le Visible et I'invisible, ed. Claude Lefort . The Visible and the Invisible, transl. Alphonso Lingis. 2. The third chapter of the introduction of the Phenomenology, " Attention' and 'Judgment,'" has been a very rich source of insights for me. 3. Scholarly literature still follows this usage. A recent example is Martin C. Dillon who lists Locke, Mill, and behaviourist psychology as representatives of realism (Merleau-Ponty's Ontology, 22). 4. He repeats the point in the same terminology in The Visible and the Invisible (53 [32]). 5. As Dillon perceptively remarks, "Kant transported the fundamental principles of intelligibility from the transcendent world to the sphere of immanence" (MerleauPonty's Ontology, 130). See also his observations on p. 65, where he mentions Descartes, Hume, and Husserl. 6. As noted later in this chapter, a statement like this will be qualified in a very important way in the light of Merleau-Ponty's metaphysics. 7. Merleau-Ponty's construal of meaning, it might be noted, is very similar to the way he construes structure, a notion he adapted from gestalt psychology. Both are contingent configurations. See his definition in The Structure of Behavior, 223 (2067): the joining of an idea and an existence which are indiscernible, the contingent arrangement by which materials begin to have meaning in our presence, intelligibilit in the nascent state. Cf. also Phenomenology, 139-40 (120). 8. See chapter I. 9. Merleau-Ponty uses the expression pensee de voir, which Colin Smith translates by "thought about seeing." There is, however, an allusion to Descartes here, who writes in the second Meditation that from the reflective point of view we should substitute videre videor (I seem to see) or cogito me videre (I think that I see) for video (I see) (Adam-Tannery IX 29, 33). The expression is therefore better translated by "the thought that one sees." 10. See his remarks on eidetic reduction in the preface of the Phenomenology, p. ixff. (xivff.). 11. Although this latter phrase is reminiscent of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty does not mention him at all. This may seem surprising because the doctrine he presents recalls Husserl's phenomenology of intention and fulfilment. But note that Merleau-Ponty's paradigm is not an objectifying intention, as was the case with Husserl. He is thinking about a norm given with our psychophysiological nature (373), a certain equilibrium attained within the perceptual field between richness and clearness of detail relative to our specific organs of sense. 12. In the context, the author uses also the late-medieval expression aseitas (abstract noun formed from ens a se), which connotes a very strong sense of independence and self-sufficiency. In medieval thought, the term is used to refer to God's independence from his creation. 13. Cf. his remarks on p. 491-92 (430). 14. As he argues in The Visible and the Invisible, to grant a thing a principle of internal unity, as we, of course, do when we give it a name, is a departure from the primordial experience of things (215 [162]). To be a reidentifiable, nameable object— an Aristotelian substance—already represents a modification of the encounter with external reality. 15. That we should be able to have a sense of reality in its externality is, of course, crucial for Merleau-Ponty's strategy to derive a metaphysics from perception, rather than from some other cognitive power.

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Notes to Pages 128—143

16. Cf. also the passage on p. 339 (293). I owe this reference to Theodore Geraets, "Sens Percu, Profondeur et Realite," 246. 17. See Dillon's remarks on what he calls the transcendental function of language in Merkau-Ponty's Ontology, ig4f. 18. Colin Smith omitted this in his translation, an oversight that has not been corrected in the revised translation. 19. It may be worth noting that he characterizes an optimal perception in similar terms. He writes that it gathers into itself (recueille en die) all the other appearances (348 [302]). 20. We would, of course, seriously misunderstand Merleau-Ponty if we thought of interrupting the movement of transcendence as a singular historic episode or as a voluntary decision on the part of a percipient. Merleau-Ponty would probably see it as simply a part of what takes place when perceptual entities get a name and a place in a language. 21. In The Visible and the Invisible (169 [127]), he speaks of it as un etre frontal, which can be completely encompassed by a look (obturer le regard, which Lingis translates as "stopping up the look") and which is the result of cutting it off from its horizon, i.e., its implicit context. Inasmuch as we abstract from this context, we think that what we see on display before us is all there is. 22. Dillon interprets sedimentation as part and parcel of the relation of Fundierung (Merleau-Ponty's Ontology, 194-95). I do not think this is correct, either historically or otherwise, although one has to admit that in Merleau-Ponty they seem to be closely associated. 23. In the prospectus of his work submitted to Gueroult, published in Revue de metaphysique et de morale (1962), and translated in The Primacy of Perception, we read: It seems to me that knowledge and the communication with others which it presupposes not only are original formations with respect to the perceptual life but also they preserve and continue our perceptual life even while transforming it. Knowledge and communication sublimate rather than suppress our incarnation, and the characteristic operation of the mind is in the movement by which we recapture our corporeal existence and use it to symbolize instead of merely to coexist (405 [7]). For commentary on the term "sublimation," see Samuel B. Mallin, Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy, esp. 167-82. 24. There is a vagueness in his discussion that is epistemologically troublesome. See my discussion in the article "Merleau-Ponty's Theory of Knowledge" in the volume I edited, Merleau-Ponty: Critical Essays, esp. 126-27. 25. It is interesting to compare Husserl's essay with Merleau-Ponty's remarks on geometry in Phenomenology (439-45 [383-88]). 26. For more on this, see my "Merleau-Ponty and Spinoza," International Studies in Philosophy 20 (1988), 89-93. 27. For a more detailed account, see chapter 3, pp. 105-7. 28. The Hegelian background of all this is obvious. 29. The original text of the lectures was published in Paris by the Centre de Documentation Universitaire (1961). I follow my practice of referring to the pagination of the original text, followed by a reference to the pagination of the translation. 30. "That which is called an idea is necessarily linked to an act of expression, and owes to it its appearance of autonomy" (447 [390]). He mentions as examples not only Beethoven's Ninth Symphony but also the ideas of the triangle and the

Notes to Pages 143—158

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quadratic equation. As cultural objects, these have their "historical and geographical area" and are not imperishable. In The Visible and the Invisible, we read that the proper order of essences are statements (enonces) (169 [127]). Dillon writes: "The meaning structure of language reflects the meaning structure of the world because what is made intelligible in language is the world's innate intelligibility (the logos of the world)" (Merkau-Ponty's Ontology, 172). I cannot see that to be Merleau-Ponty's position. Linguistic structures certainly presuppose what Merleau-Ponty would consider to be an innate intelligibility of the world that is revealed in primordial, natural perception, but the relation of founding entails a modification that Dillon, it seems to me, underestimates. 31. I cannot agree with him that it is a view characteristic of the entire tradition of Western ontology (153). I also have serious problems with his characterization of intellectualism. What he says on p. 26 about the intellectualist's construal of the problem of knowledge and its solution strikes me as Locke's philosophical problem with Berkeley's solution attached. Dillon also states that intellectualists could not make sense of the search for truth (34), and that their position is a subjectivism that cannot "handle the idea of an in-itself-for-us"(87). Given such characterizations, it is difficult to see how Merleau-Ponty could call a post-Kantian idealist an intellectualist. Chapter 5 1. Charles Harvey's Husserl's Phenomenology and the Foundations of Natural Science gives a clear discussion of Husserl's philosophy as a critique of this view of science. 2. Heidegger's efforts to accentuate the element of givenness are particularly impressive. His doctrine of the open space (das Offene) in "The Essence of Truth" may be read as an attempt to preserve and justify the unmediated givenness of the entity to the knower. As he would have it, an entity must be given in the sense that the believer does not create it, but is obliged to measure the appropriateness of his beliefs by reference to it. The idea of the open space is to suggest the transcendental conditions that make it possible. 3. Strictly speaking, the justification is prima facie, for it does not mean that one is committed to reject in advance all contrary evidence or argumentation. It does not imply a dogmatic posture in which such evidence or argumentation is declared to be irrelevant. Prima facie justification can be overridden. 4. See Frederick C. Beiser's The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte, 43. The quest was motivated by the perception that Kant himself had left us with the unsatisfactory dualism of transcendental concepts, the origins of which are to be found in reason, on the one hand, and intuitive data upon which the mind imposes its concepts, on the other. On account of Kant's realism with respect to the latter, this dualism was felt to be unsatisfactory; it seemed to lead to scepticism, rather than deliver us from it. 5. See Charles Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, 149, 205.

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SELECT

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Pietersma, Henry, ed. Merleau-Ponty: Critical Essays. Washington: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1989. Plantinga, Alvin. Warrant and Proper Function. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. . Warrant: The Current Debate. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Poggeler, Otto. Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers. Pfullingen: Verlag Giinther Neske, 1963. Putnam, Hilary. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Richir, Marc, and Etienne Tassin, eds. M.erleau-Ponty: phenomenologie et experiences. Grenoble: Jerome Millon, 1992. Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. Rosen, Stanley. "Heidegger's Interpretation of Plato," in Essays in Metaphysics, ed. Carl G. Vaught. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970, PP- 51-77Schatzki, Theodore R. "Early Heidegger on Being, the Clearing, and Realism," in Heidegger: A Critical Reader, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Harrison Hall. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, pp. 81-98. Schrader, George. "Kant's Theory of Concepts," in Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert Paul Wolff. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1967, pp. 134-55. Sokolowski, Robert. The Formation of Husserl's Concept of Constitution. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964. Sosa, Ernest. Knowledge in Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Stroker, Elisabeth. "Husserls Evidenzprinzip," Zeitschrift fur Philosophische Forschung 32 (1978), pp. 3-30. . Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology, transl. Lee Hardy. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993. Stroud, Barry. The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984. Taminiaux, Jacques. "Heidegger and Husserl's Logical Investigations," in A Companion to Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, ed. J. J. Kockelmans. Washington: University Press of America, 1986, pp. 63-88. Taylor, Charles. "Engaged Agency and Background," in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Tietz, John. "Heidegger on Realism and the Correspondence Theory of Truth," Dialogue 32, no. I, 59-75. Tugendhat, Ernst. "Heideggers Idee von Wahrheit," in Heidegger: Perspektiven zurDeutung seines Werkes, ed. 0. Poggeler. Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1969, pp. 286-97. . Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl and Heidegger. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967. Vision, Gerald. Modern Anti-Realism and Manufactured Truth. London: Routledge, 1988. Waelhens, Alphonse de. Phenomenologie et verite. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1953. . "Phenomenologie Husserlienne et phenomenologie hegelienne," in Existence et signification. Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1958, pp. 7-20. Westphal, Kenneth R. Hegel's Epistemological Realism. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1989. Westphal, Merold, "Hegel and Husserl," in Critical and Dialectical Phenomenology, ed. Donn Welton and Hugh J. Silverman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987, pp. 103-35. . "Hegel's Theory of the Concept," in Art and Logic in Hegel's Philosophy, ed. W. E. Steinkraus and K. I. Schmitz. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1980, pp. 103-19.

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Willard, Dallas. Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge: A Study in Hussed's Early Philosophy. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1984. Wolff, Robert Paul, ed. Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. "Are Concept-Users World-Makers?" in Philosophical Perspectives I: Metaphysics, ed. James E. Tomberlin. Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1987. . "Realism vs. Anti-Realism," in Reality in Focus, ed. Paul K. Moser. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1998, pp. 50-64.

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INDEX

abstraction, 16-17, 20, 21, 27, 93, 150, 164, .173-174, 175 agency, cognitive, 28-29, 32-33, 41-42, 96, 99-100 Allison, Henry, iSonio Alston, William P., 170 Ameriks, Karl, i84nig Anschauung. See intuition apodicticity, 48, 76 appearances (vs. reality), 137-138 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 26, 170 Aristotle, 12, 14, 17, 26, 29-30, 31, 34, 44, 68, 73, 75, 100-101, 102, 105, 108, in, 113, 114, 125, 151, 152, 170, 176, i86n2, i86n6, i88n22, igon39, igin42 Armstrong, David M., 9-10 Austin, John. i82n5 Beaufret, Jean, i86n8. igin43 being-in-the-world, 24, 32, 93, 95, 98, 177

Beiser, Frederick C., 175 Berkeley, George, n, 54, 59, 104, 159, 169, 170, I94n3i Biemel, Walter, igin4i, igin42, igin44 body-subject, 136 Boer, Theodore de, 37, i82n2 Bonjour, Laurence, i8on8 Brentano, Franz, 38 Carnap, Rudolf, 22, 23, i8ini5 Cassirer, Ernst, 97 coherentism, 19, 30, 40, 52 concepts in Hegel, 16, 149 in Heidegger, 106-110 in Husserl, 68-78 in Kant, 15—16, 129, 149, 172 in Merleau-Ponty, 154-158, 165-166 realist view of, 13-14, 106-107 See also essences and universals concrete. See abstraction consciousness, transcendental. See subject, transcendental

201

constitution, 19, 57-58 contingency, epistemic, 66 correspondence, as defining truth, 28, 29, 114-116 as a feature of inquiry, 28-29, 44-45, in Cunningham, Suzanne, i84ni9 Davidson, Donald, i8mi5, 18308 Descartes, Rene, 3, n, 19, 38, 40, 49, 55, 56, 57, 63, 86, 95, 117, 127, 128, 130, 133. !53. X 59' 186112, ig2ns, 19209 Dillon, Martin C., 158-160, 165, 192113, ig2n5, 193017, I93n22, 194030, 1941131 disappointment. See fulfilment dogmatism. 16-1.7, 53, 77, 124, 173 Dostal, Robert J., 1901132 Dreyfus, Hubert L., 114-115, 187013, 1901135, 190038 ego, 52-53 traoscendental. See subject, transcendental emptioess. See fulfilment epistemology realist, 13-14, 15, 17-18, 20, 28, 171, 173. 174 transcendental, 12-13, 14-18, 28, 33, 170-176 epochs. See reduction error, 46-47, 64, 113, 154 essences as objects, 68-69, 71-76, 109-110, 154158 transcendental critique of, 76—77, 109— no, 158 evident, the as fallible, 47-48 interpreted as feeling, 48—49 as justificatory experience, 40-41, 4344. 153 positive vs. transcendental character of, 50-51 Evidenz. Sec, the evident externalism, epistemological, 9—10, 19 exteroalism vs. pheoomeoology, 10— n, 19, 52-53, 54-55 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 16, 160 Fink, Eugen, 52, 53. 1831115

202

Index

Forms, Platonic, 69, 104, 108 in Husserl, 69-70 as interpreted by Heidegger, 104-105, 108-109 Forster, Michael N., 1851137 founding, relation of (Fundierung), 71, 72, 96, 150-151 framework, conceptual, 21-26, 149-150, 160-161, 172 internal vs. external aspects of, 23 in Kant, 24-26 Friedlander, Paul, 190032 fulfilment, 42-46, 55, 56 Galileo, 170 Geertz, Clifford, 17901 genesis, 79-81 Geraets, Theodore, 193016 giveo, the io Hegel, 16 in Kant, 15-16 realist view of, 17-18. See also sources of knowledge givenness (in the phenomenological sense) modes of, 39, 42, 44, 56 rationality and, 49 self-givenness, 18-19, 41, 43, 49. See also iotuition Guignoo, Charles B., 86, 95, 115, 188020, 189025, 19405 Harvey, Charles, 184020, I94ni Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 16-17, 18, 59, 83-84, 128, 130, 140, 148, 149, 160-161, 162, 169, 180014, 181016, 181017, 181018, 183013, i83ni6, 184021, 193028 oo the abstract and the concrete, 16-17 and the answer to scepticism, 16, 8384, 160-161 on the nature of concepts, 16, 149 on the thing-in-itself, 16, 160 Heidegger, Martio on concepts, 106-110 on Platonic Forms, 104-105, 108109 on realism, 88-89 on scepticism, 116, 121 on truth, 111—116 on universals, 108-110 world, 92-93, 95-96, 98-99

historicism, n, 79-80, 84 history (in epistemology), 79-84 Hobbes, Thomas, 1891128 horizon, 37, 46, 48, 64, 65 Hume, David, n, 31, 50, 54, 55, 57, 59, 83, 127, 129, 159, 169, 170, 171, I92ns Husserl, Edmund on concepts, 68-78 on immanence and transcendence, 56 on intuition (Anschauung), 45 on perception, 61-64 and Platonic Forms, 69-70 on realism, 59 reduction, 49-60 on transcendental subject, 52—54, 5758, 65-66, 79 on truth, 44-45 on universals, 68—78 idealism, 59. 88, 163-166, 168-169 immanence. See transcendence intentionality, 38-39, 42-43, 47 intuition (Anschauung), 45 Jones, Edwin, iSSnao Kant, Immanuel, 12, 14-17, 24, 25-26, 29. 30, 3L 32, 33. 34. 50, 55, 57. 58, 59-60, 67, 70, 76, 77, 81, 83-84, 87, 92, 105, 115, 120, 122, 124, 128, 129-130, 144, 149, 159, 160-161, 163, 164, 165, 167, 169, 171-172, 177, 178, .iSong, iSonio, i8oni4, l8ini7, iSiniS, i83ni3, i84n2i, i86n2, i86n4, igon3i, I94n4 on conceptual frameworks, 24 on the given, 14-15, 129 on the nature of concepts, 14—16, 129, 149 on realism, 58-59, 171-172, iSong on scepticism, 14, 171 on truth, 30, 115 Kern, Iso, i83ni7 Kierkegaard, Soren, 16, i87ni5 Kriiger, Gerhard, igon32 Lehrer, Keith, 10 Locke, John, n, 129, I5g, i6g, i86n2, ig2n3, ig4n3i

Malcolm, Norman, iSinig Mallin, Samuel B., I93H23 meaning as object of phenomenology, 9 as object of transcendental thought, 2628, 57~58 as perceptual, 130-133 Meinong, Alexius von, i85n3i Merleau-Ponty, Maurice on the body, 135 on concepts, 154-158, 165-166 on prepersonal perception, 139, 142 on primacy of perception, 127—129,144147 on realism, 128 on reflection, 132-135 on scepticism, 127 on transcendence, 140-142, 145, 147149 on universals, 154-158 Mertens, Karl, i83ni4 metaphysics classical realist, 13—14, 26, 89, 100— 101, 102, 171 from a transcendental perspective, 2628, 57-59, 88, 127-128, 160-162 Mill, John Stuart, ig2n3 Moore, G. E., iSinig Nagel, Thomas, iSonio naivete, transcendental, 50. See also abstraction naturalism, 9, 50, 55, 65, 128, 169 Newton, Sir Isaac, 114 Nicholson, Graeme, igon3g, igin4i Nietzsche, Friedrich, i87ni5 Null, Gilbert, i84n26 Okrent, Mark, i88n2i one-sidedness. See abstraction ontology. See metaphysics perception as cognitive achievement, 61, 152-153 fallibility of, 62-63 perspectival character and inadequacy of, 62-63 primacy of, 127, 144—147 the prepersonal nature of, 139, 142 as source of knowledge, 17-18, 174175

Index

203

Plaotinga, Alvin, 170, [8207, 183010 Plato, 12, 29-30, 31, 34, 40, 68, 69-70, 75. 76, 77. 86, 100-101, 102, 104, 105, 108-109, in. 124. 125, 151, 170, 176, i86n2, 186022, 190032, 190039, 191042 positivity, 50-54 pragmatism, 105, 121 predication, 100-101, 103-105, 150-151 preseot-at-hand (vorhanden), 97 Quioe, W. V, 189030 ready-to-haod (zuhanden), 98 realism classical, 12-17, 105, 168-176 epistemological, 13-14, 17-18, 171-176 Heidegger's view of, 88—89, 102 Husserl's view of, 58-59 Merleau-Pooty's view of, 128-129 as prephilosophical attitude, 17, 20-21, 171-173 transceodeotal epistemology and, 1321, 27-28, 58- 59, 168-176 reductioo, transcendentalphenomeoological, 8-9, 19, 26, 38, 49-60, 68, 90, 132 retlectioo divergeot views oo, 132—135 transceodeotal (as distinguished from psychological), 51-54 Reid, Thomas, 12, 170 relations, external, 31-32, 171-172 representationalism, 11-12, 55, 95-96, .111-112, 169-170 Rosen, Stanley, igon32 Sallis, John, 191042, 1911144 scepticism and exteroal relations, 31-32, 171-172 Heidegger and, 116, 1:21 Merleau-Ponty and, 127 methodological, 13 radical, 13—14,19—20 realism and, 14, 27, 116, 171 and transcendental epistemology, 13-14, 16, 50, 116, 127, 171 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 160 Schrader, George, i8oni3

204

Index

Sokolowski, Robert, 1851136 sources of knowledge, 17-19, 49-50, 52, 174-175 Spiooza, Baruch, 128, 153 Stambaugh, Joao, 187013 Stroker, Elisabeth, 18307, 18309, i83ni4 subject, transcendental, 52-53, 58, 66, 79 tradition, 78-84, 149, 153 transcendence vs. immanence, 56 of appearances, 140-142, 145, 154,164165, 178 interrupted, 147-149, 178 transcendentalism. See epistemology, transcendental truth as correspondeoce, 28, 44-45, 114-115 epistemological ioterpretatioos of, 28, 30, ii1-112 Heidegger oo, 111-116 Husserl on, 44—45 necessary, 48, 69, 76-77 Plato and Aristotle on, 29-30 search vs. possession of, 28-29 Tugendhat, Ernst, 112-113, 190036 turo, trarisceodental. See reduction, transcendental-phenomenological universals, 15-16, 101, 104-105, 107 Heidegger on, 108-110 Husserl oo, 68-77 Merleau-Pooty oo, 154-158 Visioo, Gerald, 180013 vorhanden. See present-at-hand Waelhens, Alphonse de, 168, igin42, 191044 Wesensschau. See essences Westphal, Kenneth R., 185037 Wolterstorff, Nicholas, 180013 world, 6, 64-66, 93, 98, 143-147 certainty of the, 64-66, 154 contingency of the, 66-67 possible annihilation of the, 66 See also beiog-io-the-world, horizoo zuhanden. See ready-to-hand