In the sixth Logical Investigation, Husserl thematizes the surplus (Überschuß) of the perceptual intention whereby the intending goes beyond the partial givenness of a perceptual object to the object as a whole. This surplus is an apperceptive surplus that transcends the purely perceptual substance (Gehalt) or sensed content (empfundene Inhalt) available to a perceiver at any one time. This surplus can be described on the one hand as a synthetic link to future, possible, active experience; to intend an object is (...) to intend it as it would appear if we were to have an exhaustively synthetic explication of it. This perceptual apperceptive surplus is, on the other hand, distinguished from the surplus that categorial form represents over the perceptual sense data. In this paper I show how the apperceptive surplus can also be understood as a synthetic link to past experience that is passively operative in any present perception. The synthetic link to both past and possible experience is a link to non-actual perceptions. Links to non-actual experience are despite their non-actuality nevertheless genuinely intentional in that they enter into the sense of any actively constituted object understood as a unity of sense. Key to this interpretation is an explanation of how Husserl appropriated the key concepts of attention and apperception from psychologists of his day, such as Stumpf and Wundt. (shrink)

Le réductionnisme scientiste a privé le monde de ce qui avait été un univers enchanté, empli des formes et des esprits qui hantaient le monde médiéval. Merleau-Ponty et Husserl dans son œuvre tardive tentent de réenchanter la nature, mais du point de vue de la perception. Leur insistance sur la structure et la forme perceptuelles est un moyen de protection contre le réductionnisme et donc, en un sens, réenchante le monde qui, pour parler comme Merleau-Ponty, est « con­damné au sens (...) ». Être « con­damné au sens », cela signifie être forcé de reconnaître à nos réalisations rationnelles les plus abouties, à nos actes visant à relier ce qui est séparé à partir d’une relationalité déjà perçue, une dépendance génétique (ou Fundierung ) par rapport à des événements de niveau inférieur, pré-rationnels, dans lesquels le soi est présent de façon latente. Être « con­damné au sens » signifie que les réalisations logiques et rationnelles pleinement articulées doivent, pour être dotées de sens, être ramenées à des structures proto-rationnelles dans le champ de la perception. Que Merleau-Ponty et Husserl révèlent la sphère pré-prédicative comme une sphère de simple signification, ce fait reflète une critique commune de l’empirisme. Le monde partiellement réenchanté est un monde conditionné par des horizons de signification qui sont de réels aspects du monde à décrire. Je fais valoir que la perception optimalement monstrative atteint les choses mêmes dans leur télos monstratif où elles se montrent le mieux. Je conclus avec quelques remarques sur la manière dont cette conception du réenchantement mobilise la philosophie de John McDowell, qui est, malgré lui, un partisan de la structure dans le champ perceptuel. (shrink)

There is an interesting sense in which philosophical reflection in the transcendental tradition is thought to be unnatural. Kant claims that metaphysical speculation is as natural as breathing and that transcendental critique is necessary to prevent reason from lapsing into a natural dialectic of dogmatism and skepticism. Husserl argues that the critique of theoretical reason is grounded upon a transcending of the natural attitude in which we are at first unjustifiably and naïvely directed toward objects as separate from consciousness. A (...) perfectly sensible question arises: Why do we need to effect a change in our natural cognitive orientation to both ourselves and the world in order to know each respectively? Why does a sort of dialectical self-deception come so naturally to us, and why is an effort so great as to seem unnatural necessary for philosophical self-knowledge? The aim of this paper is threefold: first, to argue that seemingly compulsory philosophical assumptions are inevitably generated from within reason itself and thus remain resistant to a complete therapy; second, to show how Kant diagnoses reason’s dialectical tendencies as inevitable and ever-recurring without transcendental vigilance; finally, to argue that the early Husserl’s appropriation of a transcendental epistemology is influenced decisively by Kant’s transcendental reflection in order to combat the reigning naturalism of his day. My overall claim is that by thematizing the natural dialectic of reason best articulated in the first Critique, we can disclose the Kantian way in which Husserl conceives of the natural temptation to naturalize consciousness. We first turn, however, to an influential contemporary account of a decidedly non-transcendental philosophy, what has come to be known as “therapeutic Wittgensteinianism.”. (shrink)

Brainard’s systematic introduction to Husserl’s systematic introduction to phenomenology shows the underlying teleological directedness and sense of Husserlian thought as a striving toward absolute rationality. It is a structural analysis of and commentary on Ideas I, the 1913 work that introduces the transcendental aspects of the newly emerging phenomenology, including reduction, the pure ego, the noesis–noema correlation, eidetic intuition, and the static analysis of intentional acts. In a sense, Brainard has written three different books here.