In the present article, I introduce Husserl’s analyses of ‘natural causality’ and ‘volitional causality’, which are collected in the volume ‘Wille und Handlung’ of the Husserliana edition Studien zur Struktur des Bewußtseins. My aim is to show that Husserl’s insight into these phenomena enables us to understand more clearly both the specificity of, and the relation between, the motivational nexus belonging to the sphere of the will in contrast with the causal laws of nature. In light of this understanding, in (...) the last part of the article I reflect on whether and to what extent there is, in fact, an ontological and epistemological compatibility between volitional causality and natural causality. (shrink)

In the present article, I discuss Husserl’s analysis of the genesis of action in the Husserliana edition Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins. My aim is to clarify how a “voluntary action” has its...

In the present article I aim to make a new contribution to our phenomenological understanding of the foundation between intentional experiences. In order to accomplish this goal, I discuss Husserl’s effort to avoid the conflation of the class of non-objectifying acts, i.e., evaluations and volitions, with the class of objectifying acts, i.e., cognitions. Through the analysis of the transition from his early to his mature account, I explore how Husserl, by readdressing the idea of foundation in relation to the shift (...) from the practical-evaluative to the theoretical attitude, clarifies how evaluations and volitions can exert their intentionality only on the basis of a foundation on cognitions without thereby being reduced to a mere special case of founded representations. (shrink)

In the present article I discuss, in confrontation with the most recent studies on Husserl’s phenomenology of acting and willing, the taxonomy of action that is collected in the volume ‘_Wille und Handlung_’ of the Husserliana edition _Studien zur Struktur des Bewussteins_. In so doing, I first present Husserl’s universal characterization of action (_Handlung_) as a volitional process (_willentlicher Vorgang_). Then, after clarifying what it means for a process to have a character of volitionality (_Willentlichkeit_), I illustrate the various types (...) of actions, which Husserl distinguishes as ‘straightforward’ (_schlicht_) or ‘deciding’ (_entscheidend_), ‘primary’ (_primär_) or ‘secondary’ (_sekundär_), ‘inner’ (_innere_) or ‘outer’ (_äußere_), ‘immediate’ (_unmittelbar_) or mediate (_mittelbar_), ‘simple’ (_einfach_) or ‘compound’ (_zusammengesetzt_). Finally, I consider Husserl’s discussion of the direction and foundation of action. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that according to Edmund Husserl “tendency” does not designate a specific class of intentional experiences but rather, on par with “consciousness-of,” a universal mode of intentionality essential for any constitution of sense. In doing so, I explicate Husserl’s distinction between intentionality as tendency (_Tendenz_), which he describes as a striving (_Streben_), and intentionality as consciousness-of (_Bewusstsein-von_), which he describes as a presentation (_Vorstellung_) of an intentional object. Then, I discuss Husserl’s problematic way of relating these (...) two universal modes of intentionality. Although he claims that intentionality as tendency presupposes intentionality as consciousness-of, I argue that the universal validity of this presupposition is put into question by the consideration of drives (_Triebe_), which Husserl describes as passive tendencies that originally lack any consciousness of the end strived toward, and, hence, do not seem to presuppose any presentation of it. I show that the lack of intentionality as consciousness-of poses two major problems in Husserl’s account, in that it makes drives seemingly unintelligible as (i) strivings and as (ii) motivated experiences. Lastly, to find a possible solution to these problems and better clarify the relation between intentionality as tendency and intentionality as consciousness-of at the level of drives, I explore Edith Stein’s account of drives as aimless strivings governed by experiential causality (_Erlebniskausalität_), discussing its advantages and potential drawbacks, as well as its compatibility with Husserl’s account. (shrink)