Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity: Norms, Goals, and Values 1032003189, 9781003179740

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Phenomenological Approaches to Normativity: An Introduction
Notes
References
Part I: Basic Perspectives
Chapter 1: Varieties of Normativity: Norms, Goals, Values
1 Phenomenological Discussions on Normativity
1.1 Normativity of Intending
1.2 Perceptual Normativity
1.3 Moral Normativity and the Alterity of the Face
1.4 Social Norms and the Judgment of the Gaze
2 Rules of Action and Criteria of Evaluation
3 From Goodness to Beauty
4 Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 2: Methodological Atheism: An Essay in the Second-Person Phenomenology of Commitment
1 My Way to Phenomenology
2 Methodological Atheism and the Phenomenological Project
3 Darwall’s Reasons-First Approach to Second-Person Phenomenology
4 Levinas’s Normativity-First Approach to Second-Person Phenomenology
5 Methodological Atheism, Again: Conscience and Commitment
Notes
References
Chapter 3: What Is Moral Normativity?: A Phenomenological Critique and Redirection of Korsgaard’s Normative Question
1 Introduction
2 Korsgaard’s Normative Question
3 The Question about the Experiential Sources of Morality
4 Loving Understanding versus Desire for Social Affirmation
5 Korsgaard’s Theory of Moral Normativity: A Short Critique
6 Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 4: Husserl on Specifically Normative Concepts
1 Introduction
2 Normative Judgments and Normative Concepts
3 Specifically Normative Concepts as Predicates of Sätze
4 Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Part II: From Perception to Imagination
Chapter 5: On the Phenomenology and Normativity of Multisensory Perception: Husserlian and Merleau-Pontian Analyses
1 Husserl on Multisensory Awareness
2 Merleau-Ponty on the Ontological Structure of Perception
2.1 The Indiscernibility Thesis
2.2 Readiness to Act
3 The Normative Impact of Sense-Coordination on Perceptual Agency
4 Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 6: Normativity in Perception
1 Introduction
2 Types and Tokens
3 Familiarity Schemes and Gestalt Qualities
4 The Quasi-Concrete, Its “Embodiments,” and Intuitive Evidence
5 Phenomenal Vagueness and Perception as Performance
6 Phenomenal Intimacy and the Normative Force of Types
7 Phenomenological Presence and Normative “Type Constancy”
Note
References
Chapter 7: The Role of Instincts in Husserl’s Account of Reason
1 Introduction
2 Instincts within the Scope of Genetic Phenomenology
3 Instincts and Norms
4 Concluding Remarks: Husserl’s Notion of Rationality and the “Space of Reasons”
Notes
References
Chapter 8: The Normativity of the Imagination: Its Critical Import 1
1 Introduction
2 The Telling Tale of Phantasiemodifikation
3 Immersion and the Thickness of the Given – Inconceivability and Resistance
4 Spaltung, Fissures, and Imagining Modification Anew – Imagination’s “Open” Normativity
5 Thresholds, Points of No Return, Imagining Absence – The Import of the Imagination’s “Critical” Normativity
Notes
References
Part III: Social Dimensions
Chapter 9: Feckless Prisoners of Their Times: Historicism and Moral Reflection
1 Fecklessness Envisioned
2 Fecklessness Validated: Dreyfus on the Background
3 Fecklessness Mitigated
4 Concluding Remarks: Of Icebergs, Rivers, and Riverbeds
Notes
References
Chapter 10: (Re)turning to Normality?: A Bottom-Up Approach to Normativity
1 Introduction
2 Turning to Normality to Understand Normativity
3 Perceptional Normality
4 Bodily Normality (Bodily Habit)
5 Social Normality
6 Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 11: Phenomenology of Culture and Cultural Norms
1 Introduction
2 Lifeworld and Genetic Phenomenology
3 Community and the Lifeworld
4 Normative Implications: Theory of the Other
5 Conclusion
Note
References
Chapter 12: Epistemic Norms and Their Phenomenological Critique
1 Introduction: From Value Freedom to the Plurality of Epistemic Values
2 Husserl and the Value-Freedom of Science
3 The Crisis of the Values on Kuhn’s List and the Need for an Alternative List
4 Towards a Plurality of Epistemic Values
5 Galilean Science: The Crisis vs. The Origin of Geometry
6 Conclusion – Husserl and the Question of Value-Freedom of Science
Notes
References
Subject Index
Person Index

Citation preview

Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity

This volume investigates forms of normativity through the phenomenological methods of description, analysis, and interpretation. It takes a broad approach to norms, covering not only rules and commands but also goals, values, and passive drives and tendencies. Part I “Basic Perspectives” begins with an overview of the phenomena of normativity and then clarifies the constitution of norms by Husserlian and Heideggerian concepts. It offers phenomenological alternatives to the neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian approaches that dominate contemporary debates on the “sources of normativity.” Part II “From Perception to Imagination” turns to the normativity of three basic types of experiences. This part first sheds light on the normativity of perception and then illuminates the kind of normativity characteristic of imagination and drive intentionality. Part III “Social Dimensions” analyzes the norms that regulate the formation of practical communities. It takes a broad view of practical norms, discussing social and moral norms as well as the epistemic norms of scientific practices. By clarifying the divergences and interrelations between various types and levels of norms, the volume demonstrates that normativity is not one phenomenon but a complex set of various phenomena with multiple sources. Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity: Norms, Goals, and Values will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on issues of normativity in phenomenology, epistemology, ethics, and social philosophy. Sara Heinämaa is Academy Professor (2017–2021) and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Mirja Hartimo is Senior Researcher at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Ilpo Hirvonen is a Doctoral Student of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

Routledge Research in Phenomenology Edited by Søren Overgaard, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, University of Sheffield, UK, and David Cerbone, West Virginia University, USA

Levinas and Analytic Philosophy Second-Person Normativity and the Moral Life Edited by Michael Fagenblat and Melis Erdur Philosophy’s Nature Husserl’s Phenomenology, Natural Science, and Metaphysics Emiliano Trizio The Bounds of Self An Essay on Heidegger’s Being and Time R. Matthew Shockey Towards a Phenomenology of Values Investigations of Worth D.J. Hobbs Mechanisms and Consciousness Integrating Phenomenology with Cognitive Science Maren Pokropski Phenomenology as Critique Why Method Matters Edited by Andreea Smaranda Aldea, David Carr, and Sara Heinämaa Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity Norms, Goals, and Values Edited by Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo, and Ilpo Hirvonen For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Research-in-Phenomenology/book-series/RRP

Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity Norms, Goals, and Values Edited by Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo, and Ilpo Hirvonen

First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo, and Ilpo Hirvonen; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo, and Ilpo Hirvonen to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Heinämaa, Sara, 1960- editor. | Hartimo, Mirja, editor. | Hirvonen, Ilpo, editor. Title: Contemporary phenomenologies of normativity: norms, goals, and values / edited by Sara Heinamaa, Mirja Hartimo, and Ilpo Hirvonen. Description: New York, NY: Routledge, [2022] | Series: Routledge research in phenomenology | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021052416 (print) | LCCN 2021052417 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032003184 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032017136 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003179740 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Normativity (Ethics) | Phenomenology. Classification: LCC BJ1458.3 .C665 2022 (print) | LCC BJ1458.3 (ebook) | DDC 170--dc23/eng/20211115 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021052416 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021052417 ISBN: 978-1-032-00318-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-01713-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-17974-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740 Typeset in Sabon by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

Contents

List of Contributors vii Acknowledgements x Phenomenological Approaches to Normativity: An Introduction

1

SARA HEINÄMAA, MIRJA HARTIMO, AND ILPO HIRVONEN

PART I

Basic Perspectives

17

1 Varieties of Normativity: Norms, Goals, Values

19

SARA HEINÄMAA

2 Methodological Atheism: An Essay in the Second-Person Phenomenology of Commitment

43

STEVEN CROWELL

3 What Is Moral Normativity? A Phenomenological Critique and Redirection of Korsgaard’s Normative Question

66

FREDRIK WESTERLUND

4 Husserl on Specifically Normative Concepts ANDREA STAITI

87

vi Contents PART II

From Perception to Imagination

105

5 On the Phenomenology and Normativity of Multisensory Perception: Husserlian and MerleauPontian Analyses

107

MAXIME DOYON

6 Normativity in Perception

126

FRODE KJOSAVIK

7 The Role of Instincts in Husserl’s Account of Reason

144

JULIA JANSEN

8 The Normativity of the Imagination: Its Critical Import

157

ANDREEA SMARANDA ALDEA

PART III

Social Dimensions

181

9 Feckless Prisoners of Their Times: Historicism and Moral Reflection

183

DAVID R. CERBONE

10 (Re)turning to Normality? A Bottom-Up Approach to Normativity

199

MAREN WEHRLE

11 Phenomenology of Culture and Cultural Norms

219

TIMO MIETTINEN

12 Epistemic Norms and Their Phenomenological Critique

234

MIRJA HARTIMO

Subject Index Person Index

252 258

Contributors

Andreea Smaranda Aldea is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Kent State University, USA. She is also Faculty Member at Kent State’s Brain Health Research Institute. Her expertise is the phenomenology of imagination and her research focuses on issues surrounding modalities, especially possibility and necessity, and their relation to the phenomenological method. She is the co-editor of two special issues Imagination in Phenomenology: Variations and Modalities (Husserl Studies, with Julia Jansen) and Historical a priori in Husserl and Foucault (Continental Philosophy Review, with Amy Allen). She is currently finalizing a book project on phenomenology as radical immanent critique. David R. Cerbone is Professor of Philosophy at West Virginia University, USA. He is the author of Understanding Phenomenology (2006), Heidegger: A Guide for the Perplexed (2008), and Existentialism: All That Matters (2015), as well as numerous articles on Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and the phenomenological tradition. He is also a co-editor (along with Søren Overgaard and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc) of the Routledge Research in Phenomenology series. Steven Crowell is Joseph and Joanna Nazro Mullen Professor of Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Rice University, USA. He is the author of Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths Toward Transcendental Phenomenology (2001) and Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger (2013) as well as of numerous articles on topics and figures in the continental tradition. He edited the Cambridge Companion to Existentialism (2012) and co-edits, with Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, the journal Husserl Studies. His current research concerns the relation between phenomenology and metaphysics. Maxime Doyon is currently Associate Professor of philosophy at Université de Montréal, Canada. His research focuses on various topics and problems in philosophy perception, philosophy of mind, and especially phenomenology. He currently holds a research chair (https://

viii Contributors chaireesope.org/) for a project entitled L’unité de la perception (2020– 2024). In line with most of his recent publications, including the edited volume Normativity in Perception (2015), he concurrently works on a project called Phenomenology and the Norms of Perception, which is financed by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2020–2024) and the Humboldt Foundation (2021–2023), and for which he is actually preparing a monograph. Mirja Hartimo (PhD, Boston University 2005) is Senior Researcher at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She is the author of Husserl and Mathematics (2021), an editor or co-editor of several journal special issues and anthologies, for example Phenomenology and the Transcendental (2014), and an author of numerous journal articles and book chapters. Sara Heinämaa is Academy Professor (2017–2021 Academy of Finland) and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She specializes in phenomenology, existentialism, philosophy of mind, and history of philosophy, and has published extensively in these fields, especially on normativity, emotions, embodiment, personhood, intersubjectivity, and gender. She is an expert of Husserlian phenomenology but has also contributed broadly to our understanding of existential phenomenology and its methods, especially the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, and Sartre. Ilpo Hirvonen is a Doctoral Student of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His research interests lie at the intersection of Husserl’s phenomenology and analytical philosophy of mind and language. He focuses especially on issues related to intentionality and meaning. He is currently finishing his doctoral dissertation titled “Husserl and the Internalism-Externalism Debate.” Julia Jansen is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Husserl Archives at the University of Leuven, Belgium. She is specialized in phenomenology and transcendental philosophy. Her work combines systematic research and historical scholarship in an original manner. She draws on phenomenology and Kantian philosophy to illuminate problems of imagination, perception, and a priori cognition. She has published widely on all these topics, and contributed strongly to the phenomenological analysis of imagination, cognition, and practical reason. Frode Kjosavik is Professor of Philosophy at the School of Economics and Business at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway. He was group leader for the project “Disclosing the Fabric of Reality – The Possibility of Metaphysics in the Age of Science” at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters,

Contributors  ix 2015–2016. He has publications in leading international journals, and has edited (together with Christian Beyer and Christel Fricke) Husserl’s Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity: Historical Interpretations and Contemporary Applications (2019) and (together with Camilla Serck-Hanssen) Metametaphysics and the Sciences: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (2020). Timo Miettinen is an Adjunct Professor and a University Researcher at the Centre for European Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. He is specialized in phenomenology and continental philosophy but has also published on philosophy of history, European and EU politics, and German economic history. Miettinen is the author of Husserl and the Idea of Europe (2020) and one of the co-editors of Phenomenology and the Transcendental (2014). Currently, he works as a Team Leader in the Academy of Finland Centre for Excellence in Law, Identity and the European Narratives. Andrea Staiti is Rita Levi Montalcini Professor of Philosophy at the University of Parma, Italy. He has previously held positions at AlbertLudwigs-Universität Freiburg and Boston College and a fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Universität zu Köln. He specializes in phenomenology, Neo-Kantianism, theories of personhood and metaethics. His published work includes a monograph on Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology: Nature, Spirit, and Life (2014) and a co-edited volume on The Sources of Husserl’s Ideas I (2018). Maren Wehrle is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Previously, she was postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Husserl Archives, KU Leuven, Belgium. Her areas of specializations are Phenomenology, Philosophical and Historical Anthropology, Feminist Philosophy, and Cognitive Psychology. Wehrle has authored a monograph on attention in phenomenology and cognitive psychology Horizonte der Aufmerksamkeit (2013), edited Feeling and Value, Willing and Action (2015, with M. Ubiali), and Husserl Handbuch: Leben-Werk-Wirkung (2018 with S. Luft). She has published many journal articles and book chapters on the topics of embodiment, habit, normality, and normativity. Fredrik Westerlund is a Senior Researcher at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and he currently works in a research project funded by the Academy of Finland. Westerlund also teaches philosophy at the University of Helsinki. His research interests include phenomenology, moral psychology, ethics, understanding, ontology, emotions, shame, and love. He is the author of Heidegger and the Problem of Phenomena (2020).

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the excellent team at Routledge and, in particular, to Andrew Weckenmann and Allie Simmons for their patience and support throughout the editorial process. We also wish to thank three anonymous reviewers of the book proposal for their helpful suggestions. We are deeply indebted to stimulating discussions and debates on the topics of this volume with Fredrik Westerlund, James Jardine, and Jaakko Belt as well as colleagues at the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen, in particular, Dan Zahavi, Thomas Szanto, Sophie Loidolt, and Alessandro Salice. We also wish to acknowledge the generous support of Sara Heinämaa’s Academy of Finland research project Marginalization and Experience: Phenomenological Analyses of Normality and Abnormality, affiliated with the University of Jyväskylä, and the contribution of Mirja Hartimo’s research project Self, Other, and Communities – Besinnung in Husserl’s Philosophy funded by Kone Foundation. Finally, we wish to thank Joonas Pennanen, Minna-Kerttu Kekki, and Hermanni Yli-Tepsa for their reliable help in the final editorial stages of the project.

Phenomenological Approaches to Normativity An Introduction Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo, and Ilpo Hirvonen Normativity is ubiquitous. Norms constrain, guide, and compel all our activities and experiences. Thanks to them, we strive for truth, goodness, and beauty; they tell us how to act and live; they govern the ways in which we use and change our concepts. They also make us reach for optimality in perception, and they direct our concrete behaviors and movements. In this volume, we understand normativity to refer to the general power of various kinds of norms to guide our experiences in diverse ways in all areas of human life. Normativity pervades all levels of activity from embodied instincts, desires, and passive habits to the sphere of reason where we self-critically try to establish objectively correct statements, make difficult decisions of life, promote genuine values, and choose and deliberate. Norms motivate our deliberation both when it takes place in a kind of solitary inner dialogue and socially in diverse forms of communicative relations. We believe that these different types of normative guidance, both individual and social, are interrelated in multiple and complex ways. One cannot do justice to the phenomenon of normativity unless one takes into consideration its various dimensions and facets and studies their intricate relationships. Indeed, the main aim of this volume is to gain understanding of the phenomenon of normativity by giving an account of its different dimensions and studying how they are connected to each other in particular cases. While the number of studies devoted to problems of normativity has exploded in contemporary philosophy (cf. Finlay 2019; Parfit 2011; Baker 2018), the tendency to more and more specialization has resulted in increasing focus on specific aspects of the phenomenon. Growing specialization has led to remarkably rigorous in-depth analyses, but, on the other hand, it has also given rise to isolated and scattered discussions, thus hindering the forming of a general insight into the field of the phenomena or what Wittgenstein calls the “perspicuous view” of things (übersichtlichen Darstellung).1 We still lack a reasoned view of how the specific and varying facets of normativity function together and how

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740-1

2  Sara Heinämaa et al. the different analyses of these facets combine. Here phenomenology can make an original and indispensable contribution. By “phenomenology,” we mean the philosophical methodology that was established at the beginning of the century by Edmund Husserl and his collaborators and critics, most importantly Martin Heidegger.2 We believe that phenomenology is unusually pertinent to provide a “perspicuous view” of normativity since its methodology does not prioritize any sets of pre-established concepts or rule out any types of experiences. Phenomenology is committed to the task of describing phenomena, things as they give themselves, for the purpose of analyzing their constitutive senses (i.e., what makes the phenomena in question precisely the phenomena that they are), and thus it does not, and cannot, proceed from any pre-established conceptual grounds but needs to devise its concepts while proceeding (Husserl 1976a, 7/xxiii, 154–158/165–170; cf. 2012, 62–72).3 For example, phenomenologists traditionally use the concepts of noesis and noema to analyze the intentionality of experience, but if we were to encounter phenomena whose intentionality escaped these concepts, then we would have to abandon these tools and devise new ones to describe the phenomena accordingly. In other words, phenomenology is tied by the principle of describing phenomena, “the things themselves,” i.e., things as they are given. Thus, it must account for all variants of experiencing, including those that escape our current concepts or do not suit our firmest preconceptions. This implies also that phenomenology remains “metaphysically neutral.” The principle of neutrality is expressed already in Husserl’s Logical Investigations: The investigations which follow aspire solely to such freedom from metaphysical, scientific and psychological presuppositions. (…) The real premises of our putative results must lie in propositions satisfying the requirement that what they assert permits of an adequate phenomenological justification, a fulfilment through evidence in the strictest sense. Such propositions must not, further, ever be adduced in some other sense than that in which they have been intuitively established. (Husserl 1984, 28–29/179) Metaphysical neutrality demands that things are described as they give themselves and only as they give themselves. In his maturely transcendental investigations, Husserl broadens the concept to cover not only individual judgments but entire attitudes to the world, scientific and practical.4 Phenomenology thus aims to rise above the necessary limitations of all particular attitudes to examine their mutual relations and tensions but yet as points of view to the one single world. By providing a metaphysically neutral general description, phenomenology fulfills the aim of yielding a perspicuous view of phenomena such as normativity (see Husserl

Phenomenological Approaches  3 1976b, §§40–41, 153–154/150–151; Husserl 2021, 187–188; see also Husserl 1950, 180–183/154–157; Husserl 1952, 179–180/189.) The main challenge that all philosophers face when approaching the phenomena of normativity is that the field is divergent, multifaceted, and historically layered. One recent author argues that the phenomena clustered under the heading “normativity” are so heterogeneous that any attempt to unify it conceptually by meta-normative theorization is hopeless and leads to ambiguities and confusions (Finlay 2019; cf. Parfit 2011). An earlier contributor describes the field as a “conceptual jungle” (von Wright 1963, ix). In everyday discussions, the terms “norm” and “normativity” are often used in a narrow sense to refer to what commands or requires us to do something or prohibits us from action. For example, parental commands and military rules as well as divine laws fall within this category. So do rules of grammar, rules of etiquette, and paradigmatically, for example, Kant’s categorical imperative. These are deontological norms that guide what we ought to do.5 However, human action and behavior is also directed in several other manners. We are lead, not only by commands, but also by paradigms, values, and goals of different sorts. Examples are ample: Greta Thunberg does not guide climate-conscious school strikers merely by her “rules and recommendations” but also, and more efficiently, by her personal behavior; Mahatma Gandhi did not devise any rule book of sit-ins or nonviolent disobedience but organized events that serve as paradigms of political non-compliancy still today. Linguistic expression is not necessary for all forms of guidance. Each of us can, for example, adopt new ways of moving by simply following the model movements of a dance teacher; or we may happen to witness a virtuous action – a generous or a courageous deed – which instantiates an ideal value, and thus can be called to realize the same value in our own actions. Furthermore, such social forms of guidance cannot be approached as isolated phenomena but they have to be appraised against the backdrop of customs, passive instincts, desires, and bodily capabilities. In a broader sense then, the term “normativity” encompasses many different kinds of phenomena that guide action and behavior, including goals and values. While some phenomenologists restrict the usage of the term “normativity” to the deontological kind, there are phenomenological grounds to arguing that the phenomena of normativity entail more than deontological norms. If this is the case, then we need a more diverse understanding of the concept and more specifications in its use. An important resource for this end is provided by early phenomenologists who systematically distinguished between norms of action (Tunsollen) and norms of being (Seinsollen) (cf. Scheler 1913–1916; Hartmann 1926; Husserl 1975, 2004; cf. von Wright 1963). Whereas the former regulate actions and types of actions, the latter specify what should be or become. Based on

4  Sara Heinämaa et al. this fundamental distinction, early phenomenologists developed further divisions between various types of action-norms: while some operate as rules, others restrain by giving prohibitions or commands and still others guide by providing models or paradigms. Furthermore, some phenomenologists, emphasizing the way the normative guidance is concretely experienced, have been led to examine how optimality and normality operate in perception and behavior. The present collection takes a broad approach to normativity and includes in its scope rules and commands of various kinds but also goals and values as well as passive drives and tendencies. We argue that these phenomena are all normative and can be called “norms” in the general sense that they guide or direct human action and behavior and human ways of being. However, we do not thereby suggest that the normativity of rules, values, and goals would be identical, or operate in the same manner in all fields or levels of intentional experience. Rather, there is a philosophical need to distinguish between the kind of normativity that is characteristic of goals and the kind of normativity that is characteristic of values as well as a need to clarify their mutual relations of dependency. Phenomenology, we argue, is able to shed light on both divergences and similarities between all these kinds of normativity. The terms “goal,” “value,” and “norm,” germane to the discussion at hand, are used interchangeably in many philosophical contexts. For example, truth is sometimes said to be the (ideal) goal of scientific practice; but in other contexts truth is characterized as an epistemic or cognitive value; still in other occasions, truth is conceived as a practical norm without any further specification. Before engaging in sorting out the relationships between various kinds of normativity, some terminological confusions have to be settled. We believe that the vocabulary of goals and values can be usefully clarified in the following general manner: Goals are the palpable realizations and embodiments of values. Human life entails varieties of many different kinds of goals (decorating a house, defending a friend, giving a plausible and interesting scientific explanation to a phenomenon), which realize different kinds of values (beauty, equality, empirical adequacy). When a professional philosopher is writing a research paper, they might be primarily reaching for the concrete goal of getting their research published; and that goal might then realize, say, the value of the publicity of knowledge. Whereas goals are posited by explicit and implicit acts of willing, that is, by volitional acts of various kinds, such as deciding, resolving, and concretely acting, values merely demand volitional intervention when promoted or furthered in reality.6 Thus understood, goals are what we try to reach in practice and action, both individual and collective; they allow us to realize values and make them part of the material world. But we are also able to simply enjoy values, such that are realized by fellow human beings and such that we can find instantiated in nature or cosmos.

Phenomenological Approaches  5 Paintings and scholarly articles exemplify the first type, while natural sceneries and celestial constellations epitomize the latter. Some values are not realizable by individual agents but only by collectives. Other values may not be realizable even collectively and not even by an infinitely chained generational community of agents, but they too can direct our actions and behaviors as ideals to be pursued. Such values regulate our concrete actions here and now (e.g., Husserl 1959, 329, 336–339, 1993, 154, 206, 215, 1989, 100–101). This plurality of evaluative direction entails that our actions can promote different kinds of values with various intentional structures, and as such can be said to be either “embodiments” or “realizations” of values or “manifestations” of them. Moreover, several different goals and practices may be in service of one value. Pursuing the value of beauty, for example, we may aim at decorating our home in different ways: ordering, repairing, extending, diminishing. On the other hand, many activities also serve various kinds of values. For example, inviting friends over for a meal may be in service of friendship, generosity, health, and beauty. Alternatively, in science, a certain kind of theory may serve the values of simplicity, consistency, truth, and so forth. In a word, goals are our volitional posits that are in service of the values that we intend. Goals are determined by what we think is in practice realistic to achieve. We posit them based on our awareness of our own personal abilities and the general capacities of human beings as well as our beliefs about and expectations of our surrounding world and its situational features. This makes goals contextual and relative to our capabilities and the practical situations in which we find ourselves. Regardless of the situation, however, the pursued value can remain the same. For example, the way in which we can aim at beauty is different now from what it was in the nineteenth century, since our capacities and our goals in service of realizing beauty are now different from what they were 200 years ago. Moreover, the capacities and therefore also the goals are different for the one with limited means in life as opposed to the one with abundant resources in terms of time, materials, and one’s bodily capabilities. A graduate student and a college professor presumably pursue different kinds of concrete goals while being both guided by the same values of truth and beauty, for example. In some situations, we may be forced to give up on our goals; we may have to adjust them in order to cope with the situation. In other situations, we may have to abandon them altogether in order to deal with some more urgent issues or an evident obligation that unconditionally demands our full commitment. Goals are thus contextually determined and relative to one’s capabilities and the historical situation. While many values are independent of our capacities and interest in realizing them, the particular constellation of values to which we commit ourselves is dependent on our personal composition.7 In an authentic,

6  Sara Heinämaa et al. self-responsible life, we do not commit ourselves to values arbitrarily but reflect on them, think about their pros and cons, measure their sources, and make reasoned choices and decisions. Such reflection always takes place in a historically and socially shaped situation. Moreover, similarly to the way we may inherit goals, we also always operate as inheritors of values and as such have to make our minds about our motivations for and possibilities of promoting or realizing the values that our predecessors pass forward to us. Alternatively, we can search for other values, such that better suit our deepest feelings and our capacities and powers; and finally we can also try to invent and design new values on the basis of what we have been given or found in life. Husserl’s paradigmatic example in his analyses of deliberation is the choice that a person has to make between his commitment to his fatherland, his love for his son, and the epistemic values to which he has been dedicated to as a scientist (Husserl 1974, §7, 36/32–33; 1976b, §35, 139/136).8 He argues that often we are able to integrate several obliging values in our lives but that the values to which we have committed may also conflict. Such a conflict is not merely a matter of description, worry, or lamenting but a situation that allows and calls for a personal as well as political reform and action. When we realize that the community, the society, and the world should not be so that one has to make such sacrifices, we are able to aim at a transformation of our social surrounding. In a different world, one would not need to send one’s sons to war (as Husserl did). And in yet another world, both parents could commit themselves to caring for their children and their careers in science, and could promote both ends equally without compromises on either sides. On some occasions, one of such obliging values may need to be “suspended” or “set aside” for a while, when another task, say taking care of a baby or managing a chemical process in the lab, requires one’s full attention. Sometimes the sacrifice of an obliging value is unavoidable: in one lifetime, a person cannot be both a professional cello player who promotes beauty with all their energy and a philosopher who is committed to wisdom by all their strengths.9 While phenomenologists are relatively like-minded when it comes to their methodology and their basic research tasks, there are differences in how various phenomenologists analyze the experiences of valuing and willing. Many phenomenologists, of course not all, argue with Husserl that the basic level of norms is not deontological.10 They do acknowledge the importance of the deontological norms but see their role as secondary to the more fundamental relation to values. Despite this agreement about the fundamentality of values, phenomenologists nevertheless disagree about which particular constellations of values are fundamental, and whether the establishment of values is a matter of personal choice or rather communal debate and deliberation. Some argue for the fundamental role of certain values or sets of values, calling them “the highest

Phenomenological Approaches  7 values” or “basic-values.” Max Scheler, for example, contends that experiences of love reveal to us persons as the highest values and the divine person as the highest of all. Husserl, on the other hand, is known for his arguments about the fundamental role of the epistemic values of evidence and truth in human life but, in a more comprehensive manner, he also argues that the higher values of truth, beauty, and good form a unity, designated by the Greek term “καλοκαγαθία” (kalokagathía) (Husserl 2020, 256–257, cf. 174). In general, phenomenological thinkers typically articulate value hierarchies of different sorts, not to propose any normative theory of values, but to describe and explicate various implicit sets of values that operate in different practical situations. In accordance with the principles of phenomenological methodology, such hierarchies are conceived to be dynamic and subject to intersubjective critique and communicative deliberation. Moreover, many phenomenologists argue that value systems are not static or fixed but dynamically evolving, and in both personal and communal lives. Husserl himself argues in The Crisis that the epistemic values of the natural sciences underwent a profound transformation in modernity (Husserl 1976b), and in the Kaizo essays analogously portrays Christ as a radical reformer and renewer of the values of an inherited religion (Husserl 1989, 65). On the other hand, several classical phenomenologists also discuss concrete cases in which changing circumstances motivate individuals to reconsider objectively prevailing values as well as the ones to which they have personally been committed. This is a common topic for Husserl, Scheler, and Stein. *** Contemporary phenomenology provides a powerful alternative to neoKantian, neo-Hegelian, Foucauldian, and naturalistic approaches in the analysis of norms and normativity. Drawing inspiration from multiple historical sources, ancient and early modern, phenomenology is capable of teaming with neo-Aristotelian as well as pragmatist and Wittgensteinian approaches. It has several advantages over competing approaches, but it also opens new perspectives on the basis of its inquiries into intentionality, temporality, embodiment, and intersubjectivity. The alternative account of normativity that phenomenology offers entails the following three insights that are mutually related. First, several phenomenologists challenge contemporary neo-Kantian (Korsgaard, McDowell) and neo-Hegelian (Brandom) attempts to trace all normativity or the normative as such back to the self-reflective or discursive structures of judgmental reason. Steven Crowell has opened this line of argumentation with his Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger (2013), and many others have thereon joined him in arguing for the experiential grounds of normativity (e.g., Doyon and

8  Sara Heinämaa et al. Breyer 2015; Burch, Marsh, and McMullin 2019; Crowell and Westerlund in this volume). This phenomenological challenge takes several different argumentative forms. One option is to argue that normativity is founded on and emerges from the structures of intentional experience or preintentional existence, rather than having its origins in the structures of judgmental reason. Insofar as human life involves normative structures that support or enable those of judgmental reason – for example, structures of perceptual disclosure, emotive experiences, or existential-projective life – the origins of normativity are deeper, and also more variant, than Kantian and Hegelian analyses suggest (cf. Loidolt 2018). Second, on the basis of its accounts of the constitution of concepts, phenomenology is able to illuminate specifically the normativity of pre-conceptual and pre-judgmental layers of experiencing. If one follows Husserl’s mature analyses, then these layers are revealed as affective, driven, and sensory-kinesthetic. If one chooses the Heideggerian way instead, then they turn out to be proto-practical or existential. In both cases, the normativity of pre-judgmental experiences and world-relations turns out to be independent of discursive reason. Thus these experiences and relations demand their own analyses on independent grounds (cf. Jansen in this volume). Moreover, by distinguishing between diverse modes of preconceptual, pre-predicative, and pre-reflective life – life in desire, drive, passion, feeling, and sensation – phenomenology elucidates important differences between the experiential underpinnings of cognitive, emotive, and practical norms as well as normative and evaluative judgments. On the basis of such analyses, phenomenologists are able to examine how passively adopted social norms, goals, and values, shape our experiences and limit our reasoning and, on the other hand, demonstrate how passively acquired and implicitly operative norms can be made conscious and explicit, and thus submitted to critical examination and evaluative assessment, reform, or change (cf. Cerbone and Wehrle in this volume). Third, classical and contemporary phenomenology offer sophisticated analyses of the norms of being that guide our lives as wholes in addition to norms that guide individual action or action types. These analyses illuminate our professional and vocational aspirations, in teaching, research, music, literature, and sports, for example, but they also shed light on the notion of becoming better as a human being or person. Several phenomenologists argue that such norms are grounded, not (merely) in cognitive or intellectual acts, but (also) in emotive acts in which we directly encounter values or disvalues (cf. Heinämaa in this volume). Insofar as the concepts of profession and vocation can be applied to our epistemic and cognitive aspirations – those concerning evidence, truth, and objectivity – also science and philosophy turn out to involve not just rules that regulate individual actions or action types but also fundamental evaluative standards that guide our whole lives and our aspirations of being or becoming human. Apart from examining our personal aspirations, these

Phenomenological Approaches  9 approaches also illuminate the mechanisms that prevent us from such aspirations, and show how habituality and normality may stifle our lives from striving for deliberated values (cf. Hartimo in this volume). The volume at hand acknowledges and endorses these basic insights but proceeds to investigate particular forms and levels of normativity by the phenomenological methods of description, analysis, and interpretation. It opens new viewpoints into the heated discussion on the sources of normativity, but it also offers novel analyses and interpretations of particular forms of normativity and specific types of norms. We gain fresh insights into the normativity of judgments, central to all sciences and evaluations of all sorts, as well as original accounts of the normativity of pre-judgmental experiences, from perception and imagination to drives. Both the subjective and intersubjective aspects of normativity are equally illuminated, and as a whole the volume demonstrates that it is this double-illumination, characteristic of phenomenology, which allows us to account for the social and historical contextuality of all norms, from political to epistemic. Together the texts constitute an experiential exploration that covers the entire field of the phenomenon from the origins of normativity to particular forms and general aspects of normativity. The volume is structured in three parts. The first part “Basic Perspectives” begins with an overview of the phenomena of normativity and then clarifies the constitution of norms by Husserlian and Heideggerian concepts. It offers phenomenological alternatives to the neo-Kantian and neo-­ Hegelian approaches that dominate contemporary debates on the “sources of normativity.” The second part “From Perception to Imagination” turns to study the normativity of three basic types of experiences. This part sheds light on the normativity of perception but it also illuminates the kind of normativity characteristic of imagination and that of drive intentionality. We win fresh perspectives both on the enabling and restrictive functions of normativity but also on the internal dynamism of experience. The final part “Social Dimensions” proceeds to the analysis of the norms that regulate the formation of practical communities. It takes a broad view of practical norms, discussing both strictly taken social and moral norms and the epistemic norms of scientific practices. In all cases, it clarifies the historical constitution of norms and envisions various manners of breaking the “spell” of habituated and sedimented goals and values. By clarifying the divergences and interrelations between various types and levels of norms, the volume demonstrates that normativity is not one phenomenon but a complex set of various phenomena with multiple sources. Part I “Basic Perspectives” begins with Sara Heinämaa’s chapter “Varieties of Normativity: Norms, Goals, Values.” The chapter starts by providing an overview of contemporary phenomenological discussions of normativity. In order to organize this multilayered field, Heinämaa

10  Sara Heinämaa et al. turns to Husserl’s classical account, arguing that it provides an elegant and powerful manner of unifying the phenomena of normativity without disregarding or downplaying their plurality and layered character. The aim of the explication is to buttress the conceptual tools that allow us to treat the field of normativity in a systematic phenomenological manner. Steven Crowell’s chapter, “Methodological Atheism: An Essay in the Second-Person Phenomenology of Commitment,” opposes a “reasonsfirst” account of normativity by defending a “normativity-first” account of reasons. Crowell’s central idea is that reasons and reason-giving are grounded in what Heidegger calls commitment, the experience of being the addressee of a normative claim that turns what is given to me into my normative reasons. Crowell argues that commitment is necessary for normativity: only if I am committed to things can I encounter them as succeeding or failing at being what they are supposed to be. In Chapter 3, “What Is Moral Normativity? A Phenomenological Critique and Redirection of Korsgaard’s Normative Question,” Fredrik Westerlund challenges Christine Korsgaard’s normative question about the sources of normativity. Westerlund first opposes the very posing of Korsgaard’s question, arguing that it relies on several theoretical presuppositions about morality. He then problematizes the answer that Korsgaard gives to her question. His argument is that Korsgaard’s way of locating the sources of normativity in the desire to conform to practical identities makes the normative reasons to be moral in fact non-moral, which is counter-intuitive. On this basis, Westerlund calls for an experiential exploration of the experiential sources of moral normativity, which he outlines by distinguishing loving concern for others from our desire for social affirmation and sensitivity to social pressure. In Chapter 4, “Husserl on Specifically Normative Concepts,” Andrea Staiti looks at an overlooked manuscript from Husserl where the philosopher analyzes normative concepts. Based on an exposition of Husserl’s analysis, Staiti challenges the commonly held view according to which the anticipatory structure of intentionality makes intentionality as such normative. In turn, Staiti argues that positionality enables the anticipatory structure in the first place and makes intentionality normative, which also means that only positional intentional acts can be normative. In Staiti’s interpretation of Husserl, specifically normative concepts are predicated on posits rather than objects or acts. Part II “From Perception to Imagination” begins with Maxime Doyon’s chapter “On the Phenomenology and Normativity of Multisensory Perception: Husserlian and Merleau-Pontian Analyses.” Doyon claims that the phenomenal character of experience is broader than the generally accepted understanding of phenomenality as “what it’s like to” experience since phenomenality also encompasses forms of bodily self-experiences and felt possibilities of action. By providing an experiential analysis of phenomenality as thicker than commonly

Phenomenological Approaches  11 assumed, Doyon argues that all perceptual experiences depend on the interaction between two or more senses. Finally, Doyon makes the argument that this dependency on multiple senses makes perceptual experiences normative in the sense that every perception triggers a series of motivated expectations which may or may not be fulfilled by the further course of experience. In Chapter 6, “Normativity in Perception,” Frode Kjosavik outlines a particular source of normativity in perception with the help of Charles Peirce’s type-token distinction. Kjosavik highlights how abstract forms function as standards for the organization of sensory data. Having argued that Husserl’s two accounts of grasping types in terms of either founding or variation fall short due to a separation of types and tokens, Kjosavik calls for an account that appreciates their interrelatedness. When the perceiver takes something as a token in perception, Kjosavik argues, they give it a structure of constancy characteristic of a type. In Chapter 7, “The Role of Instincts in Husserl’s Account of Reason,” Julia Jansen studies the implications that Husserl’s discussions on instincts have on his account of practical reason. It turns out that Husserl’s analysis of the genesis of subjectivity discloses that the temporal constitution of subjectivity is grounded on instinctual life, namely a specific kind of drive intentionality (Triebintentionalität). On this basis, Husserl’s account deems irrational the traditional oppositions between reason and instinct. The chapter concludes by arguing that in order to develop an adequate phenomenology of reason one must reconsider the established interpretations of Husserl’s account of rationality in light of his discussion of instincts. In Chapter 8, “The Normativity of the Imagination: Its Critical Import,” Andreea Smaranda Aldea demonstrates that an in-depth analysis of the intentionality of the imagination provides much needed tools for critique and renewal of established positions. She argues that Husserl’s discussion of the imagination is inadequate for these purposes but that it can be enriched by a detailed phenomenological analysis of the different modalities of the imagination and its relations to various practices. The analysis, she contends, needs to pay heed to the evidence of experience in its imaginative registers and must not be modelled on perception. Such an approach articulates abstract possibilities into concrete possibilizations that serve human action and social reform. Part III “Social Dimensions” begins with David R. Cerbone’s chapter, “‘Feckless Prisoners of Their Times’: Historicism and Moral Reflection.” Cerbone discusses the historical nature of norms and specifically a pessimistic implication that seems to pertain to it. If people of the past were “imprisoned” by their normative frameworks to the extent that they were unable to reflect critically on some morally problematic ideas present in those frameworks, then it is implied that we, too, in the present might be similarly complacent. Arguing against Dreyfus’ interpretation

12  Sara Heinämaa et al. of Heidegger, which emphasizes the inaccessibility of our normative background, Cerbone suggests that critical reflection is possible despite the historical nature of norms. Using the feminist consciousness-raising movement as an example, Cerbone maintains that even if such critical reflection were piecemeal and limited, it could nevertheless be sufficient in bringing to light ideas that have been taken for granted. In Chapter 10, “(Re)turning to Normality? A Bottom-Up Approach to Normativity,” Maren Wehrle approaches normativity from its experiential dimensions in normality. Rather than trying to form a general theory of normativity, Wehrle sets to describe normativity by looking at how we experience it in various deviations from normality. Working with two different senses of normality, as optimality and concordance, Wehrle defines normality as self-evident feelings of orientation and familiarity. In fleshing out the phenomenon, she goes through cases of abnormality in perception, corporeality, and social embeddedness in a community. In Chapter 11, “Phenomenology of Culture and Cultural Norms,” Timo Miettinen discusses the nature and constitution of cultural norms in Husserl’s phenomenology by looking at Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, the theory of the communal person, and the concept of the lifeworld. Against materialistic or idealistic conceptions of culture, Husserl’s phenomenology of cultural norms is informed by the insight of the interrelation between nature and spirit. According to Miettinen, cultural norms allow normative individuations of the general lifeworld by which he means that such norms cultivate the lifeworld into more specific worlds with varying systems of practical significance. In Chapter 12, “Epistemic Norms and Their Phenomenological Critique,” Mirja Hartimo argues that although Husserl conceives of the theoretical sciences as value-free, his phenomenology necessarily involves critical reflection on the epistemic values that guide the sciences. Comparing Husserl to Helen Longino’s pluralistic position, Hartimo argues that competing sets of epistemic values can guide the sciences in Husserl’s philosophy of science. Following Longino’s argumentation, Hartimo claims that the presence of diverging epistemic values shows that any choice between such values is social to Husserl as well. Husserl’s discussion of values further suggests that the theory choice is not irrational but can be construed as a matter of deliberation about the chosen constellation of epistemic values.

Notes 1 We find this philosophical task explicated in paragraph §122 of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: “Our grammar is lacking in this sort of perspicuity [Übersichtlichkeit]. A perspicuous representation produces just that understanding which consists in ‘seeing connexions’. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases. The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental significance for us. It earmarks the form of

Phenomenological Approaches  13 account we give, the way we look at things. (Is this a ’Weltanschauung’?)” (Wittgenstein [1953] 2009, §122, xxx/49e). 2 The early developers of phenomenology adopted the central aspects of Husserl’s methodology, especially from its early formulations, but at the same time were highly critical towards the transcendental and eidetic dimensions of Husserl’s approach, spelled out for the first time in the first book of Ideas. During the first decades of the twentieth century, early phenomenologists in Munich and Freiburg in Germany worked to develop interpretations and versions of Husserl’s methodology that served realistic and/or existential interests. In addition to Heidegger, these early contributors included Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Adolf Reinach, Alexander Pfänder, Nicolai Hartman, and many others (cf. Sokolowski 1984; Smith 1997; Salice [2015] 2020). Heidegger and Stein also worked as Husserl’s assistants, editing some of his most influential works; later other young scholars, Ludwig Landgrebe and Eugen Fink, took over the task and became collaborators but also independent developers of the method. In the 1940s, French existentialists adopted concepts and methods from Husserl’s and Heidegger’s works and used them to analyze subjectivity, intersubjectivity, communality, embodiment, and perception. Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre are the best-known contributors in this line of work, but also Emmanuel Levinas, Simone de Beauvoir, and Frantz Fanon should be mentioned due to their groundbreaking contributions in phenomenological ethics and political philosophy. Today, phenomenology is developed on this pluralistic basis in a dynamic manner, both methodologically and thematically, and it has grown into one of the main approaches of twenty-first-century philosophy. 3 When it comes to historical figures such as Husserl, the reference in this book is to the original work, the English translation, or both. When the reference is to both the original work in German or French and the English translation, then the page number of the English translation is also given (after the slash). Publication information about the English translation is entailed in the list of references, after the information about the original work. 4 Thus, in Ideas II, Husserl discusses the human being as an object of zoological, psychological, and anthropological sciences, and at the same time as the historical object of the human sciences or Geisteswissenschaften as he calls them. He demonstrates that these two senses of human being are different but interrelated. In The Crisis, he emphasizes the relativity of different cultures as opposed to the one world to which they all belong. In addition to investigating the attitudes of the modern sciences, phenomenology also investigates the attitudes of other human practices, from religious to social and moral, and also all the traditional attitudes of philosophers, including metaphysical attitudes. 5 Thus by “deontological norms” we mean obligations of all sorts, both externally imposed obligations as well as autonomously decided ones. The term “deontological” is derived from the Greek terms “δέον” (deon ≈ necessity, what is binding) and “λόγος” (logos ≈ reason, study, science). The term is usually understood as referring alternatively to what concerns obligations or to what concerns rules. The term “deontic logic” stems from the same Greek root and refers to the field of logic that is concerned with obligation and permission. 6 Phenomenological formulations draw from both Aristotelian concepts of realization and Platonic concepts of participation. Thus, individual actions by concrete persons can be said to “realize values” and also to “participate in the promotion of the value.” 7 Without taking any particular metaphysical position, phenomenologists have analyzed the constitution of both intrinsic values and subjective values.

14  Sara Heinämaa et al. Husserl’s well-known examples of the former entail beauty and goodness, and the latter the value of a good cigar or an excellent red wine. Methodologically taken, both are constituted objectivities, but whereas the constitution of a subjective value depends on the sensory capacities and experiences of particular persons (e.g., capacities of tasting and smelling), the constitution of the latter is completely independent of the sensory, experiential, social, and historical peculiarities of particular subjects and merely depend on the operations of axiological and doxic reason. 8 We use here the masculine pronoun “he,” since the example that Husserl formulates concerns the dilemma of his own life (cf. de Warren 2014/2015; Natanson 1973; Moran 2011; Schuhmann 1977, 200). 9 For a full explication of Husserl’s concept of love-values, see Heinämaa (2020). 10 Husserl expresses this view already in his 1898 talk “On the Psychological Justification of Logic” where he explains that every normative discipline relies on one or more theoretical disciplines. This idea is further developed in the Prolegomena to the Logical Investigations. See especially Husserl (1975, §15).

References Baker, Derek. 2018. “The Varieties of Normativity.” In The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, eds. Tristram McPherson and David Plunkett, 567–581. New York: Routledge. Burch, Matthew, Jack E. Marsh, and Irene McMullin (eds.). 2019. Normativity, Meaning, the Promise of Phenomenology. London: Routledge. Crowell, Steven. 2013. Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. de Warren, Nicolas. 2014/2015. “Edmund Husserl: Philosophicus Teutonicus (1914–1918).” The Leuven Philosophy Newsletter 22: 31–41. Doyon, Maxime, and Thiemo Breyer (eds.). 2015. Normativity in Perception. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Finlay, Stephen. 2019. “Defining Normativity.” In Dimensions of Normativity: New Essays on Metaethics and Jurisprudence, eds. D. Plunkett, S. Shapiro, and K. Toh, 187–219. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hartmann, Nicolai. 1926. Ethik. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co. Heinämaa, Sara. 2020. “Values of Love: Two Forms of Infinity Characteristic of Human Persons.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 19, no. 3 (July): 431–450. Husserl, Edmund. 1950. Cartesianische Meditationen: Einleitung in die Phäno­ menologie. Husserliana I. Ed. S. Strasser. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Cartesian Mediations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Trans. Dorion Cairns. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. Husserl, Edmund. 1952. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phäno­ menologischen Philosophie, Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Husserliana IV. Ed. Marly Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Andreé Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989.

Phenomenological Approaches  15 Husserl, Edmund. 1959. Erste Philosophie (1923/24), Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion. Husserliana VIII. Ed. Rudolf Boehm. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1974. Formale und transzendentale Logik: Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft. Husserliana XVII. Ed. Paul Janssen. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1975. Logische Untersuchungen, Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Husserliana XVIII. Ed. Elmar Holenstein. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Logical Investigations, Vol. I. Trans. J.N. Findlay. London, New York: Routledge, 2001. Husserl, Edmund. 1976a. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phäno­ menologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Husserliana III/1. Ed. Karl Schuhmann. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Trans. F. Kersten. The Hague, Boston, Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982. Husserl, Edmund. 1976b. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Husserliana VI. Ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. David Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970. Husserl, Edmund. 1984. Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, Erster Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. Husserliana XIX/1. Ed. Ursula Panzer. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1989. Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937). Husserliana XXVII. Eds. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Husserl, Edmund. 1993. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, Ergänzungsband, Texte aus dem Nachlass 1934–1937. Husserliana XXIX. Ed. Reinhold N. Smid. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 2004. Einleitung in die Ethik, Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1920/1924. Husserliana XXXVII. Ed. Henning Peucker. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Husserl, Edmund. 2012. Zur Lehre vom Wesen und zur Methode der Eidetischen Variation, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1891–1935). Husserliana XLI. Ed. Dirk Fonfara. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 2020. Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins, Teilband II: Gefühl und Wert, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1896–1925). Husserliana XLIII/2. Eds. Ullrich Melle and Thomas Vongehr. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 2021. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phäno­ menologischen Philosophie, Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution und Wissenschaftstheorie. Husserliana IV/V. Ed. Dirk Fonfara. Dordrecht: Springer. Loidolt, Sophie. 2018. “Experience and Normativity: The Phenomenological Approach.” In Phenomenology and Experience: New Perspectives, eds. Antonio Cimino and Cees Leijenhorst, 150–165. Leiden: Brill.

16  Sara Heinämaa et al. Moran, Dermot. 2011. “Edmund Husserl.” In The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology, eds. Sebastian Luft and Søren Overgaard, 28–39. London and New York: Routledge. Natanson, Maurice. 1973. Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of infinite tasks. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Parfit, Derek. 2011. On What Matters, Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Salice, Alessandro. 2020. “The Phenomenology of Munich and Göttingen Circles.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 edn), ed. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/phenomenologymg/. Originally published in 2015. Scheler, Max. 1913–1916. Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik. Halle: Verlag von Max Niemeyer. Schuhmann, Karl. 1977. Husserl-Chronik: Denk- und Lebensweg Edmund Husserls. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Smith, Barry. 1997. “Realistic Phenomenology.” In Encyclopedia of Pheno­ menology, ed. Lester Embree, 586–590. Dordrecht: Springer. Sokolowski, Robert. 1984. “Review of Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book.” Review of Metaphysics 37, no. 3: 640–642. von Wright, Georg Henrik. 1963. Norm and Action. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2009. Philosophical Investigations, eds. G.E.M. Anscombe, Rush Rhees, and Georg Henrik von Wright. Revised fourth edition by P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte. Malden, Oxford, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Originally published in 1953.

Part I

Basic Perspectives

1 Varieties of Normativity Norms, Goals, Values Sara Heinämaa

Several contemporary phenomenologists contend that classical phenomenology provides a powerful alternative to neo-Kantian, neo-Hegelian, Foucauldian, and naturalistic approaches in the theorization of normativity.1 Phenomenology is taken to offer one or both of the following two advantages over competing approaches. First, it is argued that, thanks to its methodological resources, phenomenology is able to articulate differences between various forms of normativity without reducing them to one another. By distinguishing between types of experiences and types of experienced objects, and by analyzing their intentional and temporal structures, phenomenology can offer a richer, thicker, and more comprehensive understanding of the field of normative phenomena than most other approaches. On these methodological grounds, it is contended that phenomenological analyses of normativity respect the plurality of experiencing. In “Experience and normativity,” Sophie Loidolt formulates this insight by emphasizing the diversity of the noetic and noematic aspects as well as the doxic, axiological, and practical variants of intending: [N]ormativity is explained as emerging from different features and structures of experiencing and of that which is experienced. (…) All phenomenological claims about normativity can be traced back to the intentionality of experience (…) However, there are very different kinds of givenness: the way [in which] I experience the glass of water I have just been drinking from is different from the way I appreciate the value of freedom and again different from the way I experience the alterity of and responsibility for the other. Consequently, there are also different kinds of normativity to be gained from an analysis of intentional experience. (Loidolt 2018, 1–2)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740-3

20  Sara Heinämaa Second, on the basis of its in-depth account of the constitution of c­ oncepts (and universals of all kinds), phenomenology is also able to illuminate pre-conceptual, pre-predicative, and pre-judgmental layers of experiencing and their relations to normative judgments and assessments (e.g., Loidolt 2018; Dreyfus 2017, 19–44; Doyon 2015a; Crowell 2013, 26ff., 127–128ff.; Dreyfus 1995). If one follows Husserl’s mature analyses in Experience and Judgment (1939) and Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Syntheses (1966, 2000), then these layers turn out to be affective; if one chooses the Heideggerian approach instead, then they are disclosed as proto-practical and/or existential.2 In both cases, normative judgments are established on the platform of non-judgmental experiences and world-relations. Moreover, by distinguishing between diverse modes of pre-conceptual and pre-predicative life – life in mood, feeling, desire, drive, and sensation – phenomenology illuminates crucial differences in the experiential bases of cognitive, emotive, and practical norms and normative judgments. In addition to arguing for these two strengths, contemporary phenomenologists have contributed strongly to the analysis of different forms of normativity and different types of norms, from epistemic to moral and socio-institutional ones. In the following, I will first identify four discourses on normativity that are central to contemporary phenomenology and explicate their main arguments (Section 1.1). What we have is a layered and segregated field of phenomena that are analyzed by several concepts, Husserlian and Heideggerian, but also Levinasian and Sartrean. In order to organize the field, I will turn to Husserl’s classical account and demonstrate that it provides an elegant manner of phenomenologically unifying the field of norms without disregarding or downplaying its plurality or its layered character. We find an original account of the constitution of norms but also experientially motivated distinctions between various kind of norms that figure in our practices. The aim of this exegetic account is to broaden and deepen the insights that help us traverse the field of normativity in phenomenologically systematic manners.

1 Phenomenological Discussions on Normativity Contemporary phenomenology entails (at least) four central discussions of normativity. I begin by delineating these territories and identifying their thematic foci and analytical results. The point made in this section is merely preparatory: I will not yet suggest any explication of the meanings of “normative” and “normativity”; I merely want to differentiate between the main argumentative contexts in which these terms are used in phenomenology today. In Sections 1.3 and 1.4 below, I will then move forward and offer explicatory and organizing concepts on the basis of my reading of Husserlian sources.

Varieties of Normativity  21 1.1 Normativity of Intending One dominant argument in contemporary phenomenology is that the structure of intentionality is teleological-positional and, as such, normative. This argument is based on the idea that all intentionality involves acts of intending which posit senses that are necessarily either fulfilled or disappointed in the course of experiencing. The fulfilment of the senses posited by intentional acts can be partial or total, adequate or non-adequate, but the tension between the intending and the fulfilment/disappointment structures intentional experience as such (e.g., Husserl 1973, 84/46; cf. Smith 2011, xiii; Crowell 2013, 16–20; Staiti in this volume). In Normativity in Husserl and Heidegger (2013), Steven Crowell presents a powerful argument for such an account. Crowell equates intentionality with the categorial as-structure of intending, as defined by Husserl in Logical Investigations (Crowell 2013, 16). He then contends that, since phenomenological questions concern the implications built into such as-structures and their fulfilment conditions (Crowell 2013, 20), these investigations can be said to deal with the normativity of experiencing, and exclusively so: The only justificatory questions that the [phenomenological] epoché leaves open are those first-order questions that arise within ordinary experience: are intentional implications that normatively structure the experience of an object fulfilled or disconfirmed by further experience of the sort demanded by precisely that kind of object. (Crowell 2013, 2) If this holds, then the subject matter of phenomenology would carry at its core normative structures, and the problem of normativity would concern all phenomenological inquiries, independently of their specific thematics, be they cognitive, axiological, or conative. In other words, a basic structure of normativity would be shared by all areas of intentional experience and conscious life, from believing and its modifications to valuing and willing in their various forms. 1.2 Perceptual Normativity Another central discussion concerns the intentional structures of perception; more specifically, the fulfilment conditions of perceptual experiences. The basic idea is captured by Maxime Doyon as follows: “If perception is normative for Husserl, it is not because it is realized in the form of a judgment, but it is rather because it aims at its object” (Doyon 2015a, 283). This way of using the concept of normativity stems from Husserl’s early lectures on thinghood and spatiality, Thing and Space (1907). However, on a closer analysis, perception turns out to involve actually two different

22  Sara Heinämaa kinds of normative structures: In Thing and Space, Husserl distinguishes between the normativity of interested perceptions and the normativity of perceptual appearances as such, considered abstractly from the perceptions in which they figure. Whereas the fulfillment of a perceptual intention is a goal that can be reached in intuition, the adequate givenness of appearances as such is a regulative idea that cannot be intuited but can merely be entertained in thought (Husserl [1907] 1973, 130–132/109– 110; cf. Doyon 2015a, 2015b, 2017). This is because the perceivable thing – any perceivable thing – is always endlessly richer than any particular perceptual intention and perception (e.g., Husserl [1907] 1973, 49ff./42ff.;1950, 84/46). We cannot perceive or sensorily intuit material things from all possible angles, in all possible lightings and settings. Such a complete grasping is an operation of thought, illustrated by an endless series of partial perspectival acts of grasping or else repetition of perceptions ad infinitum (cf. Husserl 1976, 350–351[297–298]/342–343, cf. 13–14[10]/8–9). When perception is embedded in human (or animal) practices, it is guided and delimited by interests (Husserl [1907] 1973, 108–109/91–92, 128–129/106–107).3 This form of limitation is disclosed to us comparatively by the juxtaposition of interested perceptions and ideally by the concept of the thing as such, independently of all interests. Husserl calls “optimal” the best possible givenness characteristic of interested perception. In other words, “optimal” is the appearance that maximally or best gives the intended object to interested perception (Husserl [1907] 1973, 125ff./104ff.). Accordingly, Husserl writes, perceptual optima do not belong to pure “appearances as such but to the interest” ([1907] 1973, 135/112; cf. Doyon 2017). Husserl thus contends that we must conceptually distinguish between the type of fulfilment that characterizes interested perception and the type of fulfilment that belongs to the essence of thing-appearances as such, as abstracted from interested perceptions. In his analysis, both can be said to be “normalizing” or “normative” in involving standards of certain types. However, whereas the norm of interested perception is realizable or achievable, the norm intrinsic in the essence of appearance as such is that of a limitless possibility of enrichment. In other words, the goal of optimal or maximum givenness in respect of an interest can be achieved, and so striving for fulfilment has a terminus in this case, but the goal of full enrichment of thing-appearances as such is a limit idea (Husserl [1907] 1973a, 108/91, 119/99, 125–126/105–107, 976, 350–351[297–298]/342–343).4 1.3 Moral Normativity and the Alterity of the Face The third context of discussion is fundamental-ethical in nature. Namely, contemporary phenomenological ethics includes a strong Levinasian line of argumentation that traces moral norms and moral normativity

Varieties of Normativity  23 to the experiential face-to-face encounter between two persons, oneself and a stranger. According to this Levinasian argument, the other’s face operates as a proto-normative command and a trace of the absolute (the third, God), and thus provides the grounds on which the properly ethical form “ought” and all moral principles and imperatives with their various contents can and must be established. A good example of such argumentation is provided by William H. Smith in his Phenomenology of Moral Normativity (2011), where he argues on the basis of Heidegger and Levinas as follows: [T]he face-to-face instantiates my understanding of my being, it instantiates my understanding of meaning as meaning or my attunement to norms as norms, to normativity as such. I am a being that is responsive to norms – I act in light of norms – because I have been claimed by the face. The face baptizes me in the name of the normative. (Smith 2011, 184)5 The main idea here is that the proto-normative command, issued by the other’s face, constitutes us as responsible agents, and this fundamental responsiveness operates as the ground for all moral (and social) norms with their diverse contents. In other words, it is the other, the stranger, who constitutes us as moral agents with obligations, duties, and responsibilities. 1.4 Social Norms and the Judgment of the Gaze Structures of social and institutional norms have also been illuminated by phenomenological methods. These analyses cover habituated rules and conventions but also social customs and juridical laws (e.g., Overgaard and Zahavi 2008; Loidolt 2018; Wehrle 2014; Salice and Schmid 2016).6 In addition to clarifying the character of specific types of social and institutional norms, contemporary phenomenology also offers insights into the basic intersubjective relation that conditions the field in which social norms can be established in the first place. Sartre’s and Heidegger’s analyses, in particular, have been influential in articulating the idea that intersubjectivity is normative in its basic structures. More precisely, both reject empathy-based approaches that identify a non-normative basic layer of intersubjectivity (or intercorporeality).7 In Sartre’s terms, the gaze of the other that first constitutes us as subjects and social agents is not an impartial identification but a judgmental and incapacitating verdict. The other’s gaze frames us as social beings but, by the same token, also as subjects of, and respondents to, normative verdicts. Heidegger’s concepts of conscience and authenticity illuminate the fundamental-ontological conditions of normatively structured intersubjectivity.

24  Sara Heinämaa These accounts of social normativity are developed in several different manners in contemporary phenomenology. Some authors apply them in their philosophical critiques of prevailing social and/or political conditions. Others stay on the existential or fundamental ontological level of analysis and, clarifying its structures, generate arguments about the sources of all normativity. On this basis, contemporary phenomenologists have developed challenging alternatives to the dominant neo-Kantian, neo-Hegelian, Foucauldian, and naturalistic paradigms. *** In order to organize the multifaceted territory of normative phenomena, I turn to Husserl’s reflections on the topic. The point of this exercise is not to suggest that Husserl’s conceptualization would be the only organizing resource available in contemporary phenomenology. That clearly is not the case: powerful alternatives have been offered on Heideggerian, Levinasian, and Sartrean grounds (e.g., Crowell 2013; Schmid and Thonhauser 2017). Nor do I pretend to demonstrate that Husserl’s account of normativity would be the best that phenomenology can offer. That would demand detailed and extensive comparisons between all alternatives available. My aim here is more modest, but still crucial, I believe: I want to explicate and clarify the particular type of order that Husserl’s approach is able to bring into the territory of normativity. For this end, I will tie his early epistemological arguments to his later axiological investigations, and compare his conceptualizations to those of two other early phenomenologists, Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann, who both emphasized the fundamental role of values for our intentional lives. My hope is to contribute thereby to the discussion of the strengths of the phenomenological framing of the problem of normativity and the analytical tools that phenomenology offers.

2 Rules of Action and Criteria of Evaluation Husserl’s approach to normativity is comprehensive and covers all subfields of philosophy – from epistemology and ontology to ethics, aesthetics, and social philosophy. We find discussions of the cognitive norms, such as self-evidence, truth, clarity, distinctness, and elegance, but also detailed discussions of many other kinds of values, aesthetic and moral, that operate as criteria of evaluation but also directly motivate our action or conduct (e.g., Husserl 1988, 60; cf. Loidolt 2009). Husserl’s phenomenology of normativity is best known, however, for its epistemological arguments, or better, arguments that address problems central to philosophy of science.8 These arguments are developed already in Logical Investigations (1900–1901) where Husserl makes

Varieties of Normativity  25 two far-reaching moves: first, he distinguishes conceptually between two fundamentally different kinds of sciences – theoretical and normative sciences – and second, he argues on the basis of this distinction that normative sciences depend on theoretical sciences. Simply put, the idea is that whereas the task of the theoretical sciences is to describe things or objects of different types and explicate the relations that hold between them, the task of normative sciences is to provide (i) criteria of evaluative judgments about things and objects, and (ii) practical rules that regulate concrete actions that aim at realizing values (Husserl 1975, 53/32; cf. 1988, 3ff., 27–29).9 The main target of Husserl’s argument is the widely held view that considers logic and epistemology as practical sciences (Kunstlehre) and takes their determining tasks to be in the guidance, direction, and regulation of acts of thinking and reasoning. Such views have been developed by empiricist philosophers but also voiced by philosophers who attacked psychologism. Kant, for example, states that logic “is a science of the right use of the understanding and the reason generally (…) according to a priori principles, as to how [understanding] ought to think” (Kant 1885, 6).10 Against such normative definitions and framings of logic (and epistemology and ethics), Husserl argues that fundamentally both logic and epistemology, as well as ethics and aesthetics, are theoretical sciences without any normative or practical contents. In order to defend and develop this view, Husserl introduces a set of conceptual distinctions that identify different types and levels of epistemic normativity but, due to their principled nature, also cover norms of other kinds and point far beyond epistemology. Furthermore, his distinctions ground normative sciences, not only in theoretical sciences, but also in valuing and axiological intentionality. He developed the axiological dimensions of his analysis later in reflections dedicated to value theory and ethics (Husserl 1988; 1994; 2013; 2020). The early analysis, however, remains influential. It affected many of his contemporaries. Most importantly, Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann built on it in their own groundbreaking discussions of axiological intentionality. In Logical Investigations, Husserl prepares for his distinction between normative and theoretical sciences by pointing out that the judgments of the former, but not the latter, operate by concepts of obligation (Sollen, Seinsollen),11 expressed by the deontic verbs “shall,” “should,” “may not,” and “must not.” Paragraph §14 of the Prolegomena to Logical Investigations famously begins: [E]very normative and likewise every practical science depends on one or more theoretical disciplines, inasmuch as its rules must have a theoretical content separable from the notion of normativity (of the ought) [Normierung (des Sollens)], [a theoretical content] whose

26  Sara Heinämaa scientific investigation is the duty of these theoretical sciences. Let us first discuss the concept of a normative science in its relation to that of a theoretical science. The laws of the former tell us, it is usually held, what ought to be [was sein soll], though perhaps is not and cannot be under the actual circumstances. The laws of the latter, contrariwise, merely tell us what is. (Husserl 1975, 53/33–34, translation modified, cf. 61/38–39, 159/101; cf. 1984, 2; 2001a, 11) Basing his reflections on this deontic characterization, Husserl then argues that normative sciences necessarily are grounded in theoretical sciences. This is because all normative generalizations depend on theoretical laws for identifying and understanding their normatively characterized objects. The argument holds equally for the normative aspects of logic, value theory, and theory of action as well as moral theory, political science, pedagogy, pragmatic linguistics, theory of art, etc. In other words, all normative sciences and normative aspects of sciences depend, for the establishment of their thematic domains, on some corresponding sciences (actual or possible) that deal with beings of relevant sorts, such as propositions, meanings, values, artefacts, artworks, natural things, human persons, and communities of persons: “Every normative discipline demands that we know certain non-normative truths: these it takes from certain theoretical sciences, or gets by applying propositions so taken to the constellation of cases determined by normative interests” (Husserl 1975, 61/39; cf. 1974, 28/31–32; 1984, 27/27). To clarify this dependency relation, and to argue for its universal character, Husserl distinguishes between two principally different ways of using the deontic terms “shall” and “should”: on the one hand, the common meaning of prescriptions and commands and, on the other hand, the deeper meaning that specifies criteria or conditions of evaluation or, more precisely, conditions of ascribing value-predicates to objects.12 Husserl argues that the latter meaning, the one that specifies conditions of evaluation, operates independently of any reference to anybody’s volition or willing (agent or patient) (Husserl 1975, 53–54/34; cf. 1988, 231). The pedagogical principle “A teacher should be firm and kind,” for example, does not command anyone to be firm and kind, categorically or conditionally. Nor does it express the volition of any pedagogical authority, external or internal, dependent or autonomous (cf. von Wright 1963, 7, 12–13). Rather, the principle identifies two excellences or virtues – firmness and kindness – as the criteria or standards by which teachers, their actions, attitudes, and personalities, are to be assessed. Husserl’s own example, “A soldier should be brave,” analogously identifies an excellence by which good soldiers can be distinguished from less successful ones. Both examples concern professional norms, but Husserl’s argument is general: deontic language is generally ambiguous, allowing

Varieties of Normativity  27 two alternative interpretations, one that refers to the wills of agents and another that identifies criteria or standards of evaluation that are independent of volition or willing.13 In Husserl’s analysis, it is the latter, criterial and value-identifying use of deontic terms that is crucial for the establishment of the normative sciences. To be sure, normative sciences generate practical prescriptions, rules, and technics that regulate decisions and actions of agents, individual and collective. However, the core of such a science is not in the regulation of the will or action of anyone but in a fundamental valuation that allows us to distinguish objects on the basis of their value/disvalue and thus reorganizes the domain of possible objects, delineated by some theoretical science or a set of such sciences.14 Accordingly, Husserl defines normative judgments, constitutive of these disciplines, as follows: [A]s regards the concept of normative judgment, we can […] describe it as follows: In relation to the general underlying valuation, and the content of the corresponding pair of value-predicates determined by it [good/bad, valuable/invaluable], every proposition is said to be “normative” that states a necessary, or a sufficient, or a necessary and sufficient condition for having such a predicate. (Husserl 1975, 56/36, last italics mine)15 This means that the core of a normative science is in judgments that state necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the evaluation of the objects within some theoretically delineated domain of objects. We can encapsulate this pregnant sense of “normative,” crucial to Husserl’s argument, by saying that whatever is normative in this sense – a discipline, a generalization, a judgment – specifies necessary and sufficient conditions of, or criteria for, the evaluation of objects (cf. Husserl 1975, 55/35). So, for example, the “laws of thought,” offered by practical logic, do not command us to think rationally or correctly but rather presuppose the value of rationality and guide those who care for its realization (cf. Husserl 1988, 49). Analogously, the normative principles of aesthetics express criteria that artworks and natural formations must meet in order to be beautiful and to be correctly judged as such. Moral principles and obligations, for their part, specify the conditions for being a virtuous person, or an agent with good will, and to be judged as such. So, in summary, Husserl’s argument proceeds in two steps. First, he disambiguates the meanings of deontic terms by making a conceptual distinction between rules of action, on the one hand, and criteria of valuing, on the other hand. He then contends that it is the latter that are more fundamental to the establishment of normative sciences. So, in Husserl’s analysis, such sciences are first established by the identification and articulation of value-relations within theoretically delineated object-domains, and not by the introduction of any rules of action and obligations of

28  Sara Heinämaa willing. Will-addressing rules and obligations are needed for the realization of values,16 but they are not adequate on their own to establish normative sciences on the basis of theoretical ones. Only values are. In Logical Investigations, Husserl names “basic norms” (Grundnorme) the propositions (Sätze) that identify the general conditions of value or disvalue within some domain of objects delineated by non-normative theoretical concepts (Husserl 1975, 57/36; 1984, 27/27). Examples of such norms can be found in all realms of practical life. The idea of the best possible conscience and the categorical imperative, for instance, are basic norms in Kantian morality (Husserl 1984, 6/7; 1975, 57/36); and the command of neighborly love has the same role in Christian ethics (Husserl 1989, 2013). The so-called “golden ratio” expresses a basic norm in the art of architectonics; and the medical sciences have their analogues expressed in the Hippocratic oath. Basic norms allow identification of valuable instances within domains of objects and comparisons between more and less valuable ones. They establish value-orders within object-domains and value-hierarchies between objects (Husserl 1975, 55–58/35–37).17 Thus they provide standards for evaluations or value-judgements. On the other hand, basic norms and the normative sciences organized around them, also serve or function as grounds for practical disciplines (Kunstlehre) and techniques of different sorts (Husserl 1975, 160– 163/101–103; Mulligan 2004). The norms of the latter address volitional agents and regulate their actions, activities, and practices. Examples of such practical disciplines include: logic as the art of correct thinking, normative and applied ethics, and normative aspects of epistemology. Moreover, basic norms also allow us to identify excellent or outstanding individuals from all possible ones within a domain. Such perfections serve as models or paragons in practical circumstances and situations. Both individual agents as well as individual actions and products can have this function. Galilei’s hypotheses, Darwin’s documentations, Marie Curie’s experiments, and Sigmund Freud’s methods are well-known examples from the sphere of the positive sciences, epitomizing various epistemic values. The phenomenon of models and paragons is not restricted to scientific practices but is central in all dimensions of practical life, from professional to political, artistic, and religious: individual agents, actions, and products do not just exemplify general possibilities of being but can also serve as examples of excellence in axiologically organized domains (cf. Husserl 1989; 2013). Examples of openminded teachers, for example, range from Socrates to Descartes and Brentano. Both fictional and real individuals can operate as paragons. The power of Christ, for example, as the paradigm of caritas, is independent of the issue as to whether he was a real person from Nazareth or just a legend (cf. Husserl 1989, 100). Moreover, we can recognize the function of individuals as paragons without subscribing to the values that they epitomize. One does not need

Varieties of Normativity  29 to be a militarist to distinguish Rommel and Leonidas from the general category of warriors; pacifists, peace-workers, and anti-militarists also recognize their excellences. Our insight into such excellences does not depend on scientific concepts or theorization. However, if we want to measure them in exact terms, Husserl argues, then we need to resort to mathematical transformations (Husserl 2012, 56–76, esp. 63–71). The pre-judgmental basis of all value-consciousness is in valuation and emotion, which are axiological forms of intentionality that posit value rather than being (e.g., Husserl 1952, 8–9/9–10). Emotions include not only sensory feelings, which disclose sensory values, such as pleasure and displeasure, but also the so-called “higher” emotions which allow us to grasp the values of goodness and beauty in their different forms. So, an important element of Husserl’s treatment of norms, goals, and values is the thesis that valuation has a crucial role in the establishment of normative and practical sciences, from logic to ethics. Normative disciplines can only be established by insights into values, and thus are intentionally dependent on value-intuition. Logical Investigations already state this dependency relation in explicit terms: [E]ach normative proposition presupposes a certain sort of valuation or approval through which the concept of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (a value or a disvalue) arises in connection with a certain class of objects: in conformity with this, objects divide into good and bad ones. (Husserl 1975, 55–56/35) In the epistemological lectures from 1902 to 1903, Husserl clarifies this insight further: [T]he laws at which the final goal of the normative and practical disciplines is directed state, rather than a being, an ought to be [Seinsollen]. They say: it should be thus, it must be thus, when it shall be “correct,” or, more precisely, when it shall fulfil the requirements that are decisive or authoritative in the idea of the respective normative discipline. So, the normative laws express rules of measuring on [the basis of] an established normative basic measure, e.g., on [the basis of] the idea of truth, good, beauty, on [the basis of] the idea of a good state, on [the basis of] the idea of a good soldier. (Husserl 2001a, 11) In this analysis, all practical sciences, all their rules and regulations, are dependent on some criteria of evaluation, provided by the normative science(s) which, for their part, depend on some domains of things or objects, delineated by the theoretical sciences. This means, in short, that practical sciences depend on normative ones, and normative sciences depend on theoretical ones (cf. Husserl 1988, 127).

30  Sara Heinämaa These relations of dependency and founding can also be expressed in converse order by the language of transformations (Wandlung, Umwandlung) and becoming: a theoretical science can be said to be “turned into” a normative one by the introduction of criteria of evaluation, and a normative science can be said to be “turned into” a practical one by the introduction of the tasks of value-realization.18 In the lecture course on logic and epistemology from 1906 to 1907, Husserl characterizes the latter transformation – from the primarily normative (axiological) to the practical – by writing: “[A] normative discipline becomes practical when it does not merely aim at criteria for setting standards, but also at rules of practical realization, namely at producing or furthering models conformable to these normative criteria” (Husserl 1984, 27/27, cf. 32–34/33–35; 1988, 48–49; 2001b, 35; cf. Carta 2021a; Mulligan 2021).19 Such turning or becoming is not any form of deduction, derivation, or inference, whether logical, conceptual, or semantic (e.g., Husserl 1975, 160/101). Rather, it is a constitutive step that requires additional intentional activity, and must be understood and analyzed as such. The intentionality needed for the establishment of practical rules and techniques on the basis of axiologically and theoretically organized domains is practical in kind; that is, the intentionality of willing. It is only the will in its different modalities, Husserl argues, which is able to posit what ought to be or ought to be done now and/or in the future, and thus able to constitute situational tasks and duties and concrete actions and series of actions that are able to realize values (e.g., Husserl 1988, 106–112, 225).

3 From Goodness to Beauty Husserl’s basic distinction between the normative (ought-to-be) and the practical (ought-to-do) was expanded from epistemology into the analysis of other areas of practical life already at the beginning of the century, both by himself and by his followers and critics. The distinction was developed further primarily in the realm of moral reflections, but it turned out to have crucial implications for the analysis of all evaluation (cf. Mulligan 2004, 214–222; 2021, 495–496). Scheler and Hartmann both contended that values oblige us but do not regulate our actions directly. More precisely, values operate as obligations of being (Seinsollen) and, as such, they merely determine what ought to be without commanding or dictating what must be done (Tunsollen). Both Scheler and Hartmann argue that this practical “inertness” of values in respect to action is due to their intentional structure: values do not contain in themselves any reference to volitions or acts of willing, integral to action. The value of beauty, for example, “demands” that beauty ought to be, but it does not thereby command any beautiful actions or actions approximating or pursuing beauty. Only when considered by a willing

Varieties of Normativity  31 and reflective subject, Scheler and Hartmann contend, can an ideal value mobilize and direct action (Scheler 1913/1916, 187–188, 214; Hartmann 1926, 154–159, 171–172; cf. Hessen [1952] 1958, 83–84; von Wright 1963, 14–15; Kelly 2011, 110–112). In Hartmann’s analysis, a value essentially involves an obligation of being (Hartmann 1926, 154–156). Scheler, in contrast, contends that, as ideal objectivities, values do not involve any obliging moments whatsoever, neither obligations of being nor obligations of doing. They become obliging, however, when they are considered in relation to a possible reality. In Scheler’s analysis, this does not transform them to rules of action or doing. What is needed for such a transformation or modification, he agrees with Hartmann, is a reference to striving or willing (Scheler 1913/1916, 187). Husserl’s own investigations into values are best known for the argument that axiological acts of valuing are founded (fundiert) on doxic acts of cognizing, believing, or representing (e.g., Husserl 1976, 237–238/231– 232, 285–286/277; 1952, 8–9/9–10, 187–188/198; 1988, 72, 252, 255, 267–268, 338, 411; 2004, 226–227; cf. Drummond 2013; 2019; Jardine 2020; 2021).20 The main point here is that all valuing presupposes something to be valued. Husserl argues for this coherently thorough his work. In the later lectures on ethics and value theory from the 1920s, the thesis is formulated as follows: Valuing acts and acts of willing are founded on the acts of cognition (…), thus their sense contains a sense from the sphere of cognition, and through that [contained sense] meant objects are there for the volitional and willing consciousness and are included in them. What I do not even represent, I cannot value. The perceived or in whatever way (represented), in this or that way thought about or posited object becomes valued in valuing. (Husserl 2004, 274; cf. 1976, 266–275[239–247]/276–285) However, this general idea is specified by distinctions that Husserl makes in the 1920s. First, he carefully differentiates between various kinds of objects that are able to found valuing acts (e.g., external vs. immanent objects, real vs. ideal objects); and, second, he distinguishes between values of goodness and values of beauty, arguing that the latter are not interested in being but operate freely from all positing of existence. I will shortly illuminate both distinctions, and will do so separately: I start with Husserl’s discussion of the differences between various kinds of founding objects and proceed to his conceptualization of beauty as a value of noninterested intending. Husserl’s thesis about the doxic foundedness of axiological acts does not entail that all valuing would be based on realities or material things. On the contrary, he draws attention to a broad class of objects – ­irrealities – that can serve as the doxic foundations of valuing acts

32  Sara Heinämaa equally well as realities. These range from fictional entities and purely immanent objects, such as appearances and units of appearances, to essences of different sorts. In everyday life, we value many kinds of realities given in our environments. Examples of such valued realities include stimulants, such as cigars, wines, and chocolate (e.g., Husserl 1988, 409; 2020, 507–511); utensils, such as scissors and hammers (e.g., Husserl 1952, 186–187/196– 197); and different kinds of valuables and goods, from horses and houses to paintings, books, estates, and even human beings. A horse, for example, can be valued for the sake of its power and aptitude in warfare or forest work, but also for the grace and ease of its gallop, or for the beauty of its shape and coloring (Husserl 2020, 15–17). Husserl’s phenomenology offers philosophical tools for the study of how such valued realities are constituted for us in experience. At the same time, and by the very same means, it also allows us to inquire into the constitution of other kinds of valued objectivities that lack the type of existence that is characteristic of realities (cf. Mulligan 2004, 188ff.). Two cases of irrealities are especially central to Husserl’s analysis of valuing and values: on the one hand, eidetic objects or essences and, on the other hand, immanent objects. The class of irreal objectivities include eidetic objects of different kinds. Husserl calls such objects “essences,” or alternatively “eide,” for the purpose of avoiding traditional philosophical problems associated with the terms “idea” and “ideal object” (Husserl 1976, 9[6]/xxii, cf. 10/8, 40–41/40–41).21 This is not a unified class but entails several different kinds. Husserl distinguishes, for example, between material essences and formal essences; essential types and pure essences; general essence and singular essences; morphological essences and the exact essences of mathematics (Husserl 1976; [1939] 1985; 2012). Moreover, material essences include several different types, for example, colors, such as redness shared by the robes of cardinals, the blooms of carnations, and the flag of revolution (e.g., Husserl 2004, 265–266; cf. Merleau-Ponty 1964, 172/131); geometrical eide, such as an exactly determined circle; and the singular essences that are identifiable in different manifestations of persons (e.g., Herculine Adélaïde Barbin/Abel Barbin, John/Joan). All these irrealities can serve as doxic foundations for axiological acts of intending. To put it more concretely, we may admire, not just red flags and roses, but also Redness as an ideality that covers all red moments perceivable in various realities; and we may appreciate, not just well-cut triangular sandwiches and round cupcakes but also exactly determinable geometrical shapes. In addition to essences of various sorts, the class of irrealities also includes objects that, in one way or another, remain dependent on our own operations. Examples of subject-dependent objects include rainbows, shadows, and phantoms of various sorts, that is, objects that are

Varieties of Normativity  33 causally inefficient but have spatial locations and/or temporal duration, even though scattered or discontinuous (Husserl 1952, 21ff./23ff.). The class includes, as a limit case, purely immanent objects, that is, objects that are completely immanent to consciousness. Examples of such purely immanent objects include appearances and unities of appearances. Illusory and immanent objects can be valued on Husserl’s account, and in a similar manner as realities. Moreover, fictional and imaginary objects may deserve our axiological appreciation (Husserl 2020, 253–253). Even if imaginary characters, such as Gulliver, Sherlock, and Orlando, lack reality, their inquisitiveness may deserve our respect and admiration (cf. Husserl 2020, 248). This entails that Husserl’s thesis according to which all axiological acts are necessarily founded on doxic ones does not imply that all valuing would presuppose and depend on things or realities. Essences, immanent objects, and fictional objects can also serve as the doxic grounds of valuing, and equally well as realities. In everyday terms, this means that we are able to value rainbows and shadowy reflections as well as bridges made of steel and concrete, but also fairies and trolls, and geometrical shapes and topographical structures. On the basis of these reflections, Husserl works out a far-reaching distinction between two kinds of values, differently related to being. He calls them “values of beauty” (Schönheitswerte) and “values of goodness” (Gutwerte). The former are, in his definition, interested in and motivated by appearances as such, independently of the beings which may manifest or “announce themselves” in these appearances. The latter, in contrast, necessarily entail an interest in the appearing being as well as a desire for it (Husserl 2020, 225ff., 507ff.). This is not an empirical psychological distinction but an experiential one: it sets apart two different ways in which axiological intentionality can be motivated and interested. The working manuscripts on emotions and values from the 1920s, articulate the idea as follows: Thus, we need to distinguish in all cases in which appearances and the appearing have a role or where an appearing being can be meant in distinction from the being of appearances: (1) beauty-value as value of the appearance itself and as value transferred from the appearing as such without any consideration of any question of being; (2) goodness-value (desire-value) as value of the appearing as existing. (Husserl 2020, 254) Whereas values of good are concerned with and interested in the being (real or presumed) of the valued objects and are informed by desire (a practical act), values of beauty are non-interested in being and are free from the directions of desire (Husserl 2020, 248–258). Thus, we can genuinely value non-existent objects for their beauty, from fictional objects

34  Sara Heinämaa to units and manners of appearing and to essences and ideas. So not just our fellow men but also purely fictional characters may deserve our axiological appreciation. Gulliver, Orlando, and Scarlett O’Hara have no reality, but we can value their courage, and be educated and guided by their virtues. Moreover, Husserl argues that realities owe their beauty-value to appearances: Thus, I am pleased by the beauty of the reality on the base of its appearance, such as the beautiful outline or coloration of a thing – nothing else than this, not the thing as far as it exists and whatever may belong to it in real truth. To be sure, the real actual thing can be dear to me only since it presents these appearances, and it offers beauty only in a special attitude, in a specific aspect. The thing is then dear to me thanks to the beautiful appearance and is called “beautiful” since it offers a beautiful appearance. (…) [T]he thing itself is beautiful “for the sake of”, in transmission. (Husserl 2020, 251, cf. 253; cf. 1988, 74) The value of persons, central to Husserl’s mature ethics, turns out to be a particular combination of both types of values. What is crucial to such valuing is that the beauty of a particular being – a person – alone determines our desire and interest in her existence. We are, so to speak, not primarily interested in her existence and therefrom turned to the beauty of its manifestations; on the contrary, we are primarily impressed by beauty and then, for the sake of this beauty and its continuous appearing – and only that – also value the related being. Husserl uses the Greek term “καλοκαγαθóν” (kalokagathos) for this special type of the valuing of the good solely motivated by the valuing of the beauty, and contends: [T]he valuing of the good is founded on the belief in existence (and in modalities of belief); in this case the emotive act has the character of the interested, in the broadest sense; and the delight at the real existence is also to be included in this type (namely all satisfied desiring). When a good is good for the sake of its beauty, so when the existence-value is determined through the beauty-value, then we have the case of the καλοκαγαθóν. (Husserl 2020, 12–34; first italics mine) Values of beauty are aesthetic values: they depend on appearances and are “subject-relative.” This does not imply, however, that they would be frivolous. On the contrary, they are crucial to our conscious lives since they participate essentially in the constitution of the most fundamental values: human persons and the infinities of their creations (Husserl 2013, 416–418, 234–425; 2020, 507–512).

Varieties of Normativity  35

4 Conclusion We have seen that Husserl’s reflections on the relations between normative and theoretical sciences led him to draw far-reaching distinctions between different senses of normativity and different types of values. First, he contended that we must keep separate two basically different senses of normativity: on the one hand, the normativity of the practical rules that regulate actions and behaviors and, on the other hand, the normativity of standards of evaluation that also concern being and becoming. Whereas the former necessarily entail a reference to volition or willing, the latter are independent of such practical contents. The distinction is not restricted to epistemological contexts or scientific practices but concerns all domains of life, vocational, professional, political, and moral. On this basis, we can say, for example, that perceptual appearances as such are “normative” but only in the purely criterial sense: we can evaluate them on the basis of their stages of adequacy, but no “rules of perceiving” are built in them or can be derived from them as such. Accordingly, the complete givenness of the percept can be said to serve as a norm but merely in the sense that it operates as a criterion of evaluation, not in any regulative sense. In contrast, interest-driven perception, such as the perception of an architect or a builder, being informed by specific goals and modes of willing, can be said to be normatively regulated in the proper sense of the term. Similarly, we can also say that intentionality as such is “normative” but only in the purely axiological sense: we can transform our intuitions about the teleological structure of intentionality into normative statements that allow us to evaluate individual acts of intending – some being more or better fulfilled than others – but in order to arrive at any kinds of “rules of intending” we would need to introduce interests and volitions, i.e., practical forms of intending. Second, we have also seen that Husserl argues that rules of action are dependent in their intentional sense on valuations, and ultimately, on axiological experiences in which values are given in an intuitive manner. The logical rule that prohibits contradictory statements, for example, makes sense for those who are capable of grasping the values of rationality, but remain frivolous or empty in the eyes of those who see no value in consistence or coherence; the aesthetic rule of the golden ratio presupposes the validity of the experienced value of beauty; and moral commands and imperatives are grounded on the valuation of persons. In Husserl’s analysis, normativity is ultimately grounded, not in the autonomy of the will or the power of the intellect, nor in the structures of existential care, but in value-disclosing intuition and emotion. The most fundamental values are those of interpersonal relations which alone allow us to grasp and realize values in their full richness (e.g., Husserl 2020,

36  Sara Heinämaa 316–317). The universe of interpersonal and intersubjective relations is not understood in terms of the anonymity of the other, as in Sartre, or her unfamiliarity or alienness, as in Levinas, but is articulated by the concepts of empathy, communication, and emotion, which tie us to particular persons in expanding and branching chains of solicitude and care. Importantly, Husserl’s distinctions set his account of normativity apart from all rule-based approaches that assume that normativity is basically a matter of rule-following and that organize the field of normativity by differentiating between types of rules: explicit vs. implicit, autonomous vs. heteronomous (Kant), regulative vs. constitutive (Searle, Dreyfus). Not all normativity is based on rules, and more importantly: the intentional foundations of all normative rules are in original value-experiences.

Notes 1 Neo-Kantian alternatives include, most importantly, Christine Korsgaard’s and John McDowell’s approaches. Neo-Hegelian alternatives include recognition-theoretical approaches as well as Robert Brandom’s inferentialistic neo-pragmatist approach. Naturalistic alternatives include neo-Aristotelian (e.g., Nussbaum 2006), neo-Humean (e.g., Slote 2007; 2010), and neo-Smithian approaches. 2 On Sacha Golob’s readings (2014), however, Heidegger’s analysis grounds normativity on non-propositional but still conceptual experiences. 3 The idea of animal practice is contestable. In the Husserlian framework, we can speak about animal goals, and also about animal practices and traditions, even if only in an anthropomorphizing way or on the basis of dismantling (Abbau) (e.g., Husserl [1907] 1973, 181; cf. Heinämaa 2013; Ciocan 2017; Ferencz-Flatz 2017a, 2017b). In the Heideggerian framework, this seems nonsensical (e.g., Crowell 2017). For the methodological aspects of this controversy, see Tuckett (2018) and Staiti (2010). 4 Husserl calls such ideas “Kantian ideas” and “limit-ideas” (1976, 9[6]ff./ xxiiff.; 1954, 23ff./24ff., 2012, 56–76). 5 Cf. Loidolt 2018, 7; Crowell 2016, 72. In “Why is ethics first philosophy?,” Crowell formulates the same basic idea as follows: “[W]hen he [Levinas] says that the face of the Other is language or ‘expression,’ he means precisely that its first word, that what constitutes it as a face, is a command: ‘thou shalt not commit murder’ (TI 199). A command does not merely resist my freedom but calls it normatively into question by creating an obligation” (Crowell 2012, 578). 6 The results offered by many classical phenomenologists have proven fruitful in this line of investigation; contemporary phenomenologists draw, for example, from the social philosophies of Roman Ingarden, Adolf Reinach, Edith Stein, Max Scheler, Alfred Schütz, and Gerda Walther. 7 Non-normative accounts of the basic layer of intersubjectivity are offered, for example, by Husserl (1950; 1952; 2021) and Stein (1917). In line with these earlier contributions, Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 1993) argues that the basic layer of intersubjectivity is inter-corporeal and affective but not normative in the sense of rules or imperatives. 8 Reasons for this focus on epistemic and cognitive norms are both external and internal to Husserlian phenomenology. An epistemological interest in, and focus on, cognitive intentionality was crucial to Husserl’s philosophy of science, and he only proceeded stepwise to study aesthetic, ethical, vocational,

Varieties of Normativity  37 and personal norms, independently of their roles in the sciences. On the other hand, Husserl’s early distinctions in his Logical Investigations (1900–1901) were more generally accepted by his pupils and early critics than what we find in his later works, after the so-called transcendental turn. 9 This general thesis is supplemented by an argument that concerns the relation between a priori ideal sciences and empirical factual sciences. In a wellknown form, the latter states that every a priori ideal science functions or serves as a norm for an empirical factual science or a set of such sciences (Husserl 1974, 28/31–32; 1976, 11[98]/118, 355[301]/346). On this basis, Husserl is able to argue that phenomenology too – as an a priori ideal science – operates as a norm for factual sciences of consciousness and the mind by providing (vorzeichnet) the possible senses that these sciences presuppose (Husserl 1950, 106/72; 1976, 177/189; cf. Carta 2021a). 10 Husserl, however, argues that Kant’s discussion of logic is ambiguous, entailing problematic formulations but also glimpses of the correct view of logic as a non-normative theoretical science: Kant “did not ultimately wish to regard logic as a normative discipline (in the sense of a discipline which measures adequacy [Angemessenheit] in relation to set goals). (…) Logic, in this Kantian sense can, no more than Aesthetics, count as a regulative discipline guided by goals” (Husserl 1975, 50/315, cf. 218/135–136; cf. Mulligan 2021). 11 The German terms “sollen,” “Sollen,” and “Seinsollen” are translated into English by several different terms. In Logical Investigations, J.N. Findlay translates “sollen” and “Seinsollen” by “shall be” and “should be” (Husserl 1975, 53–54/33–34), and “ought [to be]” (Husserl 1975, 160/317, 231/145). Later translators and commentators have tried to add systematicity by using some of these alternatives consistently; Buckley and Moran, for example, use “ought to be,” and Steinbock operates with “should be.” 12 The argument obviously concerns equally the terms “may not” (darft nicht) and “must not” (muss nicht) as the negative correlates of “shall” and “should” (Husserl 1975, 55/34–35). For a thorough discussion of the relations of axiological and normative concepts in Husserl, see Mulligan (2004, 204–207; 2017, 495). 13 Deontic terms are, of course, not restricted to human beings or persons. We can also use obliging language for aesthetic and epistemic objects, such as artworks and theories. Husserl’s example of an aesthetic statement, “A drama should not break up into episodes,” requires unity and coherence from good literary works (Husserl 1975, 53–54/34). Analogous obligations guide the sciences: “Knowledge claims should be explicit,” “Concepts must be well-defined,” “A proof should be elegant,” and “A theory should be complete.” Husserl himself argues that phenomenology as presuppositionless science demands from us “the best possible intellectual conscience” (Husserl 1974, 6/7). 14 Husserl’s argument concerns the dependence-relations between normative and theoretical sciences in general. The argument does not hinge on the question whether the valuations operative in the establishment of normative science are objectively valid or “merely subjectively” (Husserl 1975, 56/35). 15 In Logical Investigations, Husserl calls “normative” only the value-identifying usage of deontic terms, but elsewhere he includes both rules of action and criteria of evaluation in the broad category of normativity (Husserl 1975, 56/36; cf. 1988, 49). In the lectures on epistemology from 1902 to 1903, Allgemeine Erkentnnistheorie, he summarizes this latter, more comprehensive approach as follows: “Norms are rules of how to do something or criteria of how to judge” (Husserl 2001a, 193, my italics). 16 For volitional intentionality and our interests in ideal and real possibilities, see Jansen (2020) and Jansen (in this volume).

38  Sara Heinämaa 17 Thus defined, a basic norm is the noematic correlate of a definition of goodness/badness with respect of an object-domain. It identifies the basic standard or “measure” (Grundmaße, Grundwerte) on the basis of which all normative assessment, comparison, and ordering – normativization (Normierung), in Husserl’s terms – is to be performed within the domain at issue (Husserl 1975, 58/36–37; cf. 1988, 71, 83–89). 18 Compare to Frege’s formulation in Foundations of Arithmetic: “Every law which says what is can be understood [aufgefasst] as prescribing that it ought to be that one thinks in agreement with it, and is therefore in this sense a law of thought” (Frege 1893, xv). 19 In his introductory lectures to ethics and value theory from 1920/1924, Einleitung in die Ethik, Husserl clarifies his position by arguing that the original sense of “normative,” “normal,” and “anomalous” belongs to certain kinds of posits (Sätze) (Husserl 2004, 268–269), but from there can be transposed or transformed to acts: “The normalization [Normierung] of acts as correct and incorrect does not deliver any new a priori disciplines, since this normalization is only a transformation [Umwandlung] of the normalization that is directed at posits [Sätze] as act-senses. (…) The acts, in which the norm characters genuinely appear and become intuitable, are the specifically rational acts, acts of reason (…)” (Husserl 2004, 272; cf. Staiti in this volume). 20 Scheler famously attacked this analysis arguing that values have their own original manner of givenness independent of all doxic or cognitive forms of intending (Scheler 1913/1916; cf. Kelly 2011; Steinbock 2014; de Monticelli 2021). 21 Husserl wants to avoid both Platonic and Lockean assumptions about eidetic and irreal objects (e.g., Husserl 1976, 49–50/41–42). The additional advantage of using the terms “essence” (Wesen) and “eidos” for eidetic objects is that the term “idea” can then be reserved for technical use in the conceptualization of limit ideas, or “Kantian ideas,” as Husserl also calls them (Husserl 1976, 9/xxii; cf. 1954, 23–36/24–37, 283–292/305–313, 350–362/343–351; 2012, 56–76). This is one particular type of an eidetic object, exemplified by geometrical objects, the physical thing as such, and the stream of lived experiences in toto (Husserl 1976, 185–187/197–199, 330–331/342–343; cf. Carta 2021b).

References Carta, Emanuela. 2021a.“Husserl on Eidetic Norms.” Husserl Studies [Online First]. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10743-020-09284-5 Carta, Emanuela. 2021b. “On the Distinction between Husserl’s Notion of Essence and of Idea in the Kantian Sense.” The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, forthcoming. Ciocan, Cristian. 2017. “Husserl’s Phenomenology of Animality and the Paradoxes of Normality.” Human Studies 40, no. 2: 175–190. Crowell, Steven. 2012. “Why Is Ethics First Philosophy? Levinas in Phenomeno­ logical Context.” European Journal of Philosophy 23, no. 3: 564–588. Crowell, Steven. 2013. Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crowell, Steven. 2016. “Second-Person Phenomenology.” In The Phenomenology of Sociality: Discovering the ‘We’, eds. Thomas Szanto and Dermot Moran, 70–89. London: Routledge. Crowell, Steven. 2017. “We Have Never Been Animals: Heidegger’s Posthu­ manism.” Etudes phénoménologiques – Phenomenological Studies 1: 217–240.

Varieties of Normativity  39 de Monticelli, Roberta. 2021. Towards a Phenomenological Axiology: Discovering What Matters. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Doyon, Maxime. 2015a. “Intentionality and Normativity.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 23, no. 2: 279–295. Doyon, Maxime. 2015b. “Perception and Self-Consciousness.” In Normativity in Perception, eds. Maxime Doyon and Thiemo Breyer, 38–55. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Doyon, Maxime. 2017. “Husserl and Perceptual Optimality.” Husserl Studies 34, no. 2: 171–189. Dreyfus, Hubert. 1995. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. Massachusetts: MIT Press. Dreyfus, Hubert. 2017. Background Practices: Essays on the Understanding of Being, ed. Mark A. Wrathall. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Drummond, John. 2013. “The Intentional Structure of Emotions.” Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy/Philosophiegeschichte und logische Analyse 16: 244–263. Drummond, John. 2019. “Intentionality and (Moral) Normativity.” In Normativity, Meaning, the Promise of Phenomenology, eds. Matthew Burch, Jack E. Marsh, and Irene McMullin, 111–119. London: Routledge. Ferencz-Flatz, Christian. 2017a. “Abnormality and Perceptual Communication: Husserl on Animals.” Paper presented at the international conference, Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology, University of Warsaw, Polish Academy of Sciences, Polish Phenomenological Association, March 23–26, 2017. Ferencz-Flatz, Christian. 2017b. “Humanizing the Animal, Animalizing the Human: Husserl on Pets.” Human Studies 40, no. 2: 217–232. Frege, Gottlob. 1893. Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Stuttgart: Reclam. Hartmann, Nicolai. 1926. Ethik. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co. Heinämaa, Sara. 2013. “Transcendental Intersubjectivity and Normality: Constitution by Mortals.” In The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity. Eds. Dermot Moran and Rasmus Thybo Jensen, 83–103. Dordrecht: Springer. Hessen, Johannes. [1952] 1958. Ethik: Grundzüge einer personalistischen Wertethik. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Husserl, Edmund. 1950. Cartesianische Meditationen: Einleitung in die Phänome­ nologie. Husserliana I. Ed. S. Strasser. In English: Cartesian Meditations. Trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960. Husserl, Edmund. 1952. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomeno­ logischen Philosophie, Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Husserliana IV. Ed. Marly Biemel [Edith Stein edition]. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, Collected Works II. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer, 1993. Husserl, Edmund. 1954. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie. Husserliana VI. Ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Trans. David Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970.

40  Sara Heinämaa Husserl, Edmund. 1966. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926. Husserliana XI. Ed. Margot Fleicher. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Syntheses, Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Trans. Anthony J. Steinbock. Dordrecht: Springer, 2001. Husserl, Edmund. [1907] 1973. Ding und Raum, Vorlesungen 1907. Husserliana XVI. Ed. Ulrich Claesges. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Thing and Space: Lectures of 1907. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997. Husserl, Edmund. 1973. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität: Texte aus dem Nachlass, Dritter Teil: 1929–1935. Husserliana XV. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1974. Formale und transzendentale Logik: Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft. Husserliana XVII. Ed. Paul Janssen. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Formal and Transcendental Logic. Trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969. Husserl, Edmund. 1975. Logische Untersuchungen, Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Husserliana XVIII. Ed. Elmar Holenstein. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Logical Investigations, Volume I. Trans. J.N. Findlay. London, New York: Routledge, 2001. Husserl, Edmund. 1976. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phäno­ menologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Husserliana III/1. Ed. Karl Schumann. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Trans. F. Kersten. The Hague, Boston, Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983. Husserl, Edmund. 1984. Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie, Vorlesungen 1906/1907. Husserliana XXIV. Ed. Ulrich Melle. Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. [1939] 1985. Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik, revised and ed. Ludwig Landgrebe. Hamburg: Felix Mayer Verlag. In English: Experience and Judgement: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. Trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Husserl, Edmund. 1988. Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre 1908–1914. Husserliana XXVIII. Ed. Ullrich Melle. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Husserl, Edmund. 1989. Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937). Husserliana XXVII. Ed. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Husserl, Edmund. 1994. Briefwechsel II: Die Münchener Phänomenologen. Husserliana Dokumente III. Ed. Karl Schuhmann and Elisabeth Schuhmann. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Husserl, Edmund. 2000. Aktive Synthesen: Aus der Vorlesung “Transzendentale Logik” 1920/1921. Husserliana XXXI. Ed. Roland Breeur. Dordrecht: Springer. In English: Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Syntheses, Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Trans. Anthony J. Steinbock. Dordrecht: Springer, 2001. Husserl, Edmund. 2001a. Allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie, Vorlesung 1902/1903. Husserliana Materialienbände III. Ed. Elisabeth Schuhmann. Dordrecht: Springer.

Varieties of Normativity  41 Husserl, Edmund. 2001b. Logik, Vorlesung 1896. Husserliana Materialienbände I. Ed. Elisabeth Schuhmann. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 2004. Einleitung in die Ethik, Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1920/1924. Husserliana XXXVII. Ed. Henning Peucker. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Husserl, Edmund. 2012. Zur Lehre vom Wesen und zur Methode der eidetischen Variation, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1891–1935). Husserliana XLI. Ed. Dirk Fonfara. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 2013. Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie: Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte, Metaphysik, Späte Ethik, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1937). Husserliana XLII. Ed. Rochus Sowa and Thomas Vongehr. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 2020. Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins, Teilband II: Gefühl und Wert, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1896–1925). Husserliana XLIII/2. Ed. Ulrich Melle and Thomas Vongehr. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 2021. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phäno­ menologischen Philosophie, Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution und Wissenschaftstheorie. Husserliana IV/V. Ed. Dirk Fonfara. The Hague: Springer. Jansen, Julia. 2020. “Imagination in the Midst of Life: Reconsidering the Relation between Ideal and Real Possibilities.” Husserl Studies 36, no. 3: 287–302. Jardine, James. 2020. “Edmund Husserl.” In The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Emotion, eds. Thomas Szanto and Hilge Landweer, 53–62. London: Routledge. Jardine, James. 2021. Empathy, Embodiment, and the Person: Intersubjectivity and Selfhood in Husserl’s Ideas II. Dordrecht: Springer. Kant, Immanuel. 1885. Introduction to Logic. London: Longmans. Kelly, Eugene. 2011. Material Ethics of Value: Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann. Dordrecht: Springer. Loidolt, Sophie. 2009. Anspruch und Rechtfertigung: Eine Theorie des rechtlichen Denkens im Anschluss an die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls. Dordrecht: Springer. Loidolt, Sophie. 2018. “Experience and Normativity: The Phenomenological Approach.” In Phenomenology and Experience: New Perspectives. Studies in Contemporary Phenomenology, Vol. 18, eds. Antonio Cimino and Cees Leijenhorst, 150–156. Leiden: Brill. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964. Le visible et l’invisible. Ed. Claude Lefort. Paris: Gallimard. In English: The Visible and the Invisible. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1975. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. [1945] 1993. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard. In English: Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 1995. Mulligan, Kevin. 2004. “Husserl on the ‘Logics’ of Valuing, Values and Norms.” In Fenomenologia della ragion practica: L’ethica di Edmund Husserl, eds. Beatrice Centi and Gianna Gigliotti, 177–225. Napoli: Bibliopolis. Mulligan, Kevin. 2021. “Logic, Logical Norms, and (Normative) Grounding.” In Bolzano and Grounding, eds. Benjamin Schneider and Stefan Roski. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. Nussbaum, Martha. 2006. Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

42  Sara Heinämaa Overgaard, Søren, and Dan Zahavi. 2008. “Phenomenological Sociology – The Subjectivity of Everyday Life.” In Encountering the Everyday: An Introduction to Sociologies of the Unnoticed, ed. Michael Hviid Jacob, 93–115. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Salice, Alessandro, and Hans Bernhard Schmid (eds.). 2016. The Phenomenological Approach to Social Reality: History, Concepts, Problems. Dordrecht: Springer. Scheler, Max. 1913/1916. Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik. Halle: Verlag von Max Niemeyer. Schmid, Hans Bernhard, and Gerhard Thonhauser (eds.). 2017. From Conventionalism to Social Authenticity: Heidegger’s Anyone and Contemporary Social Theory. Dordrecht: Springer. Slote, Michael. 2007. The Ethics of Care and Empathy. London: Routledge. Slote, Michael. 2010. Moral Sentimentalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, William H. 2011. The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity. London: Routledge. Staiti, Andrea. 2010.“Das Eigene, das Fremde und das Husserlsche Einstimmigkeits­ theorem.” In Geist – Person – Gemeinschaft, Freiburger Beiträge zu Husserl’s Phänomenologie, eds. Philippe Merz, Andrea Staiti, and Frank Steffen, 151–168. Würzburg: Ergon. Stein, Edith. 1917. Zum Problem der Einfühlung. Dio., Halle. In English: On the Problem of Empathy. Trans. Walter Stein. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964. Steinbock, Anthony. 2014. Moral Emotions: Reclaiming the Evidence of the Heart. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Tuckett, Jonathan. 2018. The Idea of Social Science and Proper Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer. von Wright, Georg Henrik. 1963. Norm and Action. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Wehrle, Maren. 2014. “Konstitution des Sozialen oder Soziale Konstitution?” Phänomenologische Forschungen 2013: 301–319.

2 Methodological Atheism An Essay in the Second-Person Phenomenology of Commitment Steven Crowell

1 My Way to Phenomenology In this chapter I defend the Heideggerian idea that commitment is a necessary condition on intentionality, where intentionality is understood as the experience of something as something. Understanding commitment requires a dip into second-person phenomenology, the experience of myself as the addressee of a normative claim. The kind of normativity involved here is philosophically prior to phenomenological investigations of norms, goals, and values; it belongs to what Heidegger called “originary ethics” (1998a, 271), the ground of the myriad intentionalities that constitute our everyday moral, ethical, and political life. I will argue that the second-person phenomenology of commitment precludes identifying the addresser of the claim. Put otherwise, while identifying the addresser is always an option, doing so is a subsequent intentional act and so already presupposes commitment. The phenomenology of commitment, then, is what explains what I call the “methodological atheism” of phenomenological philosophy. As I see it, methodological atheism is what binds philosophy to the human condition, and so also to humanistic inquiry as distinct from science, “theory,” and Weltanschauung. Since phenomenology is central to my argument, it would behoove me to explain what it is. I will get to that, but first I will indulge in a few autobiographical remarks that may suggest why I think phenomenological reflection is no less indispensable to philosophy than is logic. Phenomenological philosophy can be understood as a twist on Aristotle’s question of “first philosophy”: what does philosophical inquiry inquire into. As an undergraduate, I was absorbed by this irritating metaquestion, since it seemed to me that everything in the world had already been parceled out to other fields of inquiry. Eventually I learned that two answers, in historical sequence, had been given: “metaphysics” and “epistemology.” Metaphysics inquires into the being of those entities that other inquiries thematize as being in one way or another. However, Aristotelian metaphysics involved a puzzling ambiguity. On the one hand, metaphysics seems to be an inquiry into a particular entity, ho theos, which possesses DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740-4

44  Steven Crowell “being” in an eminent sense; on the other hand, it seems to be a general inquiry into the fundamental determinations of all entities, the categories that make any being a being. Epistemology, in contrast, following Kant, takes our knowledge of entities to be philosophy’s theme. But the Kantian categorial conditions that make knowledge possible also seemed infected with ambiguity: either they are nothing but the cognitive processes of the particular entity studied by psychology, or else they portend a new “metaphysics of knowledge” (Heidegger’s phrase), Hegel’s “logic” of the Absolute Concept. I was at a loss. In this situation, the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger appealed to me. For them, philosophy thematizes meaning (Sinn), the “as” in our experience of something as something. Such meaning is presupposed in both metaphysics and epistemology – that is, in any inquiry into entities and our knowledge of them. As Heidegger puts it, meaning is prior to the search for metaphysical or epistemological grounds, since “a ‘ground’ [Grund] becomes accessible only as meaning, even if it is itself the abyss [Abgrund] of meaninglessness” (1962, 194). This idea was congenial, since it linked philosophy tightly to other humanistic disciplines concerned with meaning. As a graduate student at Yale in the late 1970s, I found a philosophy department that was, like most philosophy departments in the United States, in thrall to philosophy of language. The ubiquity of courses on philosophy of mind, and the resurgence of metaphysics, were still a decade or so away. In one sense this was a boon, since language and meaning are obviously deeply intertwined, but two things gave me pause. First, meaning was understood mainly in terms of Frege’s Sinn/Bedeutung dyad, the “sense” and “reference” of terms and sentences viewed as material for a logical syntactics and semantics. Yes, there was the later Wittgenstein’s phenomenology-friendly idea of “seeing-as,” but it was linked to another idea, the idea that philosophical questions are at bottom “grammatical” ones, which seemed quite alien to me. Second, and more troubling, this was the heyday of Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” which jettisoned meaning altogether – just old-fashioned metaphysical essence “wedded to the word” (1961, 22) – in favor of logic plus a scientistic pragmatism. To my worried mind, this again appeared to leave philosophy with nothing to do. The “underlabourer” conception held no appeal, and so only the phenomenological path still seemed open, according to which linguistic meaning, a kind of intentional experience, shows up in reflection on the correlation between intentional acts and intentional objects. A philosophical account of meaning cannot get by with logic alone but, in addition, demands phenomenological reflection. At the time, Yale was also home to Derrida’s challenge to phenomenology, his deconstruction of the “metaphysics of presence” upon which phenomenology supposedly staked its claim. On this view, the phenomenological approach to meaning is compromised by foundationalism:

Methodological Atheism  45 even though intentional experience is temporal, and so our meaningful involvement with entities always has an anticipatory, merely presumptive, character, Husserl held that our consciousness of such experience is given in reflection with a kind of evidence that renders epistemic doubts about it otiose. Derrida challenged this supposedly absolute “self-presence” in the name of différance, the “spacing” that belongs to time and renders a foundational self-presence impossible. In a nutshell: Husserl distinguishes between the way I re-present myself when I recollect my college years and the way I am continually present to myself in the “living present” structured by retentions and protentions, Derrida denied that there was an essential difference here, since a retention, to be a retention, must already “differ” from the now, while a protention, to be a protention, must already “defer” what is nevertheless supposed to belong to my epistemically foundational self-presence.1 In the late 1970s, Derrida’s arguments were widely embraced. It thus seemed that if the meaning on which phenomenology staked its claim could not be epistemically grounded in the evidence of reflection, then meaning – the “as” – is always “in play,” undecideable, and philosophy takes its place among the literary arts. Derrida extended his critique of Husserl’s phenomenology to Heidegger’s superficially very different version, an inquiry into the “being of beings.” Despite Heidegger’s epistemic anti-foundationalism, Derrida sensed nostalgia for an ultimate meaning (or truth) of being that would eliminate the ambiguity in Aristotelian “onto-theology.” To me, this criticism gained some traction against the later Heidegger but too quickly dismissed Heidegger’s phenomenological reflection on the “understanding of being” (Seinsverständnis) possessed by anyone who inquires into anything at all. Specifically, it did not do justice to the methodological atheism entailed by Heidegger’s approach to the meaning of being. What, then, is methodological atheism?

2 Methodological Atheism and the Phenomenological Project In a moment, I will argue that what distinguishes Heidegger’s phenomenology from Husserl’s, and shields it from both naturalistic and deconstructive suspicions about meaning, is its embrace of second-person phenomenology, an “originary ethics” evident in the categorial structure of commitment.2 Yet this departure from Husserl involves a methodological commitment that Heidegger shares with Husserl, namely, a commitment to metaphysical neutrality.3 As Heidegger puts it in 1928, “the peculiar neutrality of the term ‘Dasein’ is essential, because the interpretation of this being must be carried out prior to every factual concretion” (1984, 136). Metaphysical neutrality means that phenomenology can make meaning (intentionality) its theme only by “suspending” or “bracketing” the concern with entities and their properties that characterizes non-phenomenological philosophy. Under the epoché, in other words,

46  Steven Crowell phenomenology remains neutral with regard to the questions of fact that are at issue in our everyday and scientific practices. Thus, because it is not in the business of deciding on questions of fact (first-order “existence” questions, including metaphysical ones), phenomenology entails methodological atheism. Heidegger highlights this point in a lecture course from 1925, while taking a stand on the ambiguity in Aristotelian metaphysics. Having defined phenomenology as “categorial intuition” – the “analytical description of intentionality in its apriori” – he writes: As long as phenomenology understands itself, it will adhere to this course of investigation against any sort of prophetism within philosophy and against any inclination to provide guidelines for life. Philosophical research is and remains atheism, which is why philosophy can allow itself the “arrogance [Anmaßung] of thinking.” (Heidegger 1985, 80) In what follows, I will be concerned to elucidate only two aspects of what is claimed here: first, that philosophy’s atheism is a consequence of the metaphysical neutrality that Heidegger, as a phenomenologist, embraces; and second, that the specific sort of “arrogance” attributed to thinking is phenomenologically implicated in the second-personal character of commitment. First, then, the atheism of “philosophical research” is methodological because it is entailed by phenomenology’s commitment to metaphysical neutrality, its “bracketing” of existence – refraining from “positing” the entities whose modes of givenness, being, or meaning, it thematizes. For Heidegger, phenomenology is the “true ground” for “research into the categories” (1985, 80), a transcendental inquiry into the being of entities.4 This means that the other branch of Aristotelian metaphysics – positive inquiry into what is posited as the “highest entity,” ho theos – is not a proper topic for phenomenological philosophy. Such inquiry can of course be undertaken – perhaps in theology, on the basis of a canonical tradition; perhaps even cosmologically, comparatively, or ­psychologically  – but it presupposes a “phenomenology of religious life”, which reflects on how the categorial structure of the experience in which what is posited as existing in such inquiries gives what is posited the specific meaning it has in them.5 This point is not limited to theology, of course. Introducing the passage cited above, Heidegger criticizes Husserl for failing to distinguish adequately between phenomenology and “descriptive psychology,” the study of consciousness as an entity (Heidegger 1985, 79). To understand phenomenology as psychology is to take the latter’s categories as authoritative, and this too is a form of methodological “theism,” as is any appeal to authoritative entities or sciences. This idea underwrites Heidegger’s

Methodological Atheism  47 claim, in the cited passage, that philosophy must avoid “prophetism,” the goal of providing “guidelines for life.” But what is the point of philosophy, if it refuses to pronounce on how we ought to live? The context of Heidegger’s “prophetism” remark is his debate with Weltanschauung philosophy, the project of constructing action-guiding pictures of the meaning of life by speculatively extending the findings of the natural, social, and human sciences to their asymptotic point of unification. Whether the resulting world-view is theistic or atheistic, the project as such is methodologically “theistic,” since it helps itself to contingent premises about the way things actually are. Heidegger returns to this theme in 1928. Phenomenological philosophy, like any practice, involves the “existentiell engagement [Einsatz]” of the one who philosophizes, but as an “individual existentiell comportment [Verhalten]” it is “not authoritative and obligatory within the many concrete possibilities of each factical existence” (1984, 140). In short, we are under no obligation to philosophize. Still, if we do philosophize, then we do so concretely; that is, it is my practice, and I am guided by some particular (socially mediated) sense of what I am doing. And this, Heidegger says, “easily misleads” one into “taking [this sense] as an existentiell absolute” (1984, 140). To gird itself against this, the “existentiell engagement of fundamental ontology” adopts a stance of metaphysical neutrality, “which brings with it the semblance of an extremely individualistic, radical atheism” – or at least that’s how things appear when fundamental ontology is (mistakenly) “taken to be a world-view” (1984, 140). Properly understood, however, metaphysical neutrality only entails methodological atheism. It is not a first-order claim about the non-existence of God; nor is it the first-order epistemic stance of agnosticism. Rather, it is the methodological commitment to take nothing as an “existentiell absolute.” And this commitment is precisely what distinguishes philosophy, “thinking,” from the goals and methods of constructing a Weltanschauung. In a later footnote, Heidegger returns to the issue of atheism (1984, 165). The philosophical point of phenomenology’s metaphysical neutrality is to bring the categorial structure of Dasein’s “transcendence” into view, a structure which makes any sort of intentional directedness toward entities as entities possible. Thus all ideas about being “qua superior power, qua holiness,” fall within its scope. Philosophy neither proves nor disproves “the divine ontically, in its ‘existence’”; rather, it clarifies “how the understanding of such a being belongs to the understanding-of-being as such,” i.e., how anything I might “ontically” take to exist in this way (e.g., as a “superior power”) is constituted or encountered (“discovered”) as such within the metaphysically neutral dimension of phenomenological evidence. To this, Heidegger appends his reason for not pursuing such an ontological inquiry into the divine – namely, because today, “here and now,” there is an “enormously phony religiosity” that makes the

48  Steven Crowell danger of “dialectical illusion” particularly acute. Such phony religiosity gives rise to the expectation that philosophy will provide – indeed must provide – a consoling Weltanschauung. In the face of this expectation, Heidegger prefers to endure “the cheap accusation of atheism, which, if it is intended ontically, is in fact completely correct.” That is, when seen from within the ontical or existentiell “engagement” of the philosophical project, as distinct from Weltanschauung, phenomenology’s metaphysically neutral stance is atheism: it takes nothing as an “existentiell absolute.” But this is no more than methodological atheism. It decides nothing about the “existence of God,” nor does it preclude a phenomenology of the religious “life” in which real atheism is precisely what is at stake. This brings us to the second point of interest in our leading passage, namely, Heidegger’s claim that methodological atheism allows philosophy the “arrogance” of thinking. Here “arrogance” might be understood as an insistence on autonomy: philosophy is its own thing and need not take dictation from other cultural formations such as science or religion. However, one might also understand arrogance as “arrogation” – seizing, expropriating, usurping, or assuming – which would suggest that such thinking presumptively appropriates for itself something that is not its own, treating it as though it were. Methodological atheism, on this view, would serve to conceal philosophy’s theft of something to which it has no right, passing itself off as autonomous while living from the exploitation of its “other.” This was Emmanuel Levinas’s take on the phenomenological project. For Levinas, too, phenomenological philosophy starts with methodological atheism: to grasp the intentional structure of meaning requires that the thinker exercise an epoché, a kind of “freedom” that can close itself off to the claims of the world “all the way to atheism” (1969, 181). But such ontological arrogation is only the first step, since for Levinas meaning is sustained by a “forgotten” condition that exceeds freedom and chastens thinking’s arrogant reduction of “the existence of an existent (…) to intelligibility” or a “noema” (1969, 45, 127). Levinas names this condition the “face of the Other.” The face is an interdictory claim on freedom that precedes all intentional correlation and so eludes the ontological categories that make the latter perspicuous. Ethical interdiction is fundamental, the arche; it is not grounded in reason but “founds the true universality of reason” (1969, 201), and it cannot be approached through ontology, since conceiving such an arche must “at each instant think more than it thinks” (1969, 89, 62). In a reversal of Heidegger’s decision concerning the ambiguity of Aristotelian metaphysics, Levinas argues that “of itself ethics is an ‘optics’” (1969, 29) – that is, ethics is first philosophy. Hence, Levinas calls it “metaphysics,” meaning that phenomenological inquiry into the being of entities, ontology, presupposes the philosopher’s avowal of an authoritative command – ho theos – that shatters the arrogance of

Methodological Atheism  49 thinking. Less colorfully, the metaphysical neutrality of phenomenology lives from a metaphysical condition that is occluded under the constraints of its methodologically atheist approach to intentionality. At the same time, this ethical arche is not something that would “limit a mind in a way inadmissable to a philosopher” (1969, 171) – that is, something posited as (for instance) a theological absolute: “The atheism of the metaphysician means, positively, that our relation with the metaphysical is an ethical behavior and not theology, not a thematization, be it a knowledge by analogy, of the attributes of God” (1969, 78). And so, in a certain sense, Levinas remains within the scope of phenomenology’s metaphysical neutrality as I have explicated it here. Unpacking this point brings us to the sub-title of the present essay: Levinas’s argument depends on turning phenomenological attention from the first-person nominative, in which the “ego” is in various ways the agent of the constitution or disclosure of meaning, to the first-person accusative, to the thinker as the “you” who is the addressee of an interdictory demand. The face of the Other is not grasped cognitively, in perception, but as “calling [my freedom] into question,” challenging my “joyous possession of the world” (1969, 76). This experience of being called normatively into question is the theme of second-person phenomenology, and the fate of phenomenology’s methodological atheism hangs on how we understand the structure of such interdictory experience, the categorial conditions that make receptivity to such a normative claim – a “receptivity without passivity” (1969, 201) – possible.6 By way of orientation, consider what distinguishes Levinas’s secondperson phenomenology from Stephen Darwall’s exemplary analysis of the second-person standpoint – namely, his objection to Darwall’s argument that being morally called into question presupposes the “normative felicity condition” of symmetrical authority between addresser and addressee. For Darwall, such symmetry belongs necessarily to the second-person standpoint because without it, the other’s claim on me could not be a valid one – that is, it could not give me a valid “second-person reason” to act on it (2006, 21–22). For Levinas, however, as we saw, the experience of acknowledging the claim is fundamental, and so prior to the question of validity. The Other’s command first inducts me into normative space – the space of meaning – where symmetrical rights and obligations can be negotiated, and are negotiated, without end.7 Such negotiation can be summed up in Derrida’s claim that “justice (…) is not deconstructable” (2002, 243), since any such deconstruction is itself a rendering of the “justice to come” demanded by the interdictory claim.8 However, I shall say no more about questions of validity, justification, and the political, since I want to focus on the prior issue of whether second-person phenomenology – as both Derrida and Levinas, in different ways, insist – requires a break with “ontology,” the methodologically atheist phenomenology of meaning. Drawing on Heidegger’s

50  Steven Crowell phenomenological account of Dasein, I will argue that it does not. Put positively, when the second-person character of Heidegger’s phenomenology of commitment is properly understood (that is, against the grain of Heidegger’s own interpretation), it remains “atheistic” – neutral with regard to the identity of the addresser – and so preserves the arrogance, the autonomy, of thinking. I will frame the argument by idiosyncratically reversing an approach found in the analytic literature: rather than a “reasons-first” account of normativity, I will advance a “normativity-first” account of reasons. Kant’s ethics is an example of a reasons-first approach: moral norms are normative (that is, valid, binding) because they are grounded in pure practical reason. Levinas’s fundamental ethics, in contrast, exemplifies a normativity-first approach: “reason,” and so reasons, is possible for us living beings only when we have acknowledged a normative check on our freedom. Husserl, like Kant, pursues a reasons-first account of the normativity constitutive of all intentional content or meaning – that is to say: it is because a norm is grounded in “praxiological” reason that it validly binds my will, i.e., is genuinely binding.9 Heidegger’s account of commitment, in contrast, follows a normativity-first path. Unlike Levinas’s “metaphysical” version, however, Heidegger’s second-person phenomenology (again, properly understood) remains methodologically atheist, and so has affinities with Darwall’s reasons-first approach. Understanding commitment, then, requires that we consider the difference between Darwall and Levinas in somewhat more detail.

3 Darwall’s Reasons-First Approach to Second-Person Phenomenology According to Darwall, second-person reasons are valid normative claims that we make on “one another’s conduct and will” (2006, 3), and his question is this: what interpersonal conditions must be in place in order for second-person reasons to exist? As a first approximation: “What makes a reason second-personal is that it is grounded in (de jure) authority relations that an addresser takes to hold between him and his addressee” (Darwall 2006, 4). Second-person reasons thus depend on the presupposition that you have the authority to command my will. What can give you that authority? That is, what makes it the case that you have such authority when you (successfully) provide me with a second-person reason?10 Darwall’s analysis of the second-person standpoint is meant to answer this question.11 Quite generally: The other’s normative claim on me can yield a valid second-person reason only if the other and I share “a common second-personal authority, competence, and responsibility simply as free and rational agents” (Darwall 2006, 5). The authority to issue binding commands, then, and to hold someone accountable for carrying them out, must be shared.

Methodological Atheism  51 The demand for symmetrical authority arises from Darwall’s focus on the validity of second-person reasons. If there are valid second-person reasons, then certain “normative felicity conditions” (Darwall 2006, 52–55) must obtain. Absent such conditions, a command lacks the power to constitute a valid agent-relative reason for me to act. But even if this is true, it does not rule out that a command could have other kinds of power, other ways of binding. Darwall identifies one such case, namely, coercion, a command that rests on some non-normative power. But are all asymmetrical commands instances of coercion? And if not, might such a command be a condition for our ability to entertain second-person reasons? Levinas argues for the latter. Levinas’s phenomenology purports to identify a command that is both normative and asymmetrical, one that constitutes a condition on our taking up the second-person standpoint and, more generally, clarifies how we become attuned to the normative force of reasons, second-person or otherwise. Since Levinas’s view involves a distinction between secondperson phenomenology and the second-person standpoint, I will consider two phenomenologically telling aspects of the latter: its holism and its character as a performative attitude. Since second-person reasons are agent-relative, they can appear only to one who occupies what Jürgen Habermas calls the “performative attitude of a person taking part in interaction” (1999, 46–47). My indignation at being trod upon differs from anger at your being the cause of my pain because indignation includes consciousness of “the violation of an underlying normative expectation that is valid” not only for the two of us but, ultimately, “for all competent actors” (1999, 48). According to Darwall, such consciousness is possible only within the second-person standpoint, “the perspective one assumes in addressing practical thought or speech to, or acknowledging address from, another” (2006, 9). That this is a performative attitude is indicated by two phenomenological features. First, “the second-person stance is a version of the firstperson standpoint” – that is, a version of the “I”’s performative character, which Darwall explicates in terms of Fichte’s notion of “self-positing.” Second, “what the second-person stance excludes is the third-person perspective,” where one regards oneself agent-neutrally rather than as the addresser or addressee of a normative claim (Darwall 2006, 9). This illuminates the holistic nature of the second-person standpoint. The performance in question may be conceived as a move in a game whose rules are already in place and to engage in which one must be “second-person competent.” What makes the second-person standpoint game-like is the fact that it consists of an “interdefinable circle” of roles (addresser, addressee), skills (competence), and standing (authority), each of which “implies all the rest” and “can be justified” only within the circle (Darwall 2006, 12–13). The idea that second-person reasons entail symmetrical relations of authority thus arises within the circle of concepts because these concepts

52  Steven Crowell define the kind of entity who can play the game – namely, persons. And since “the very concept of person is itself a second-personal concept,” the essential features of personhood are also defined: “free” and “rational” (Darwall 2006, 80). I cannot have a second-person reason to do something if my will is responsive only to causes, or to motives that have no normative force; that is, I must be free. Nor can I have such reasons (as opposed to there being reasons for me to do something) unless I can be moved by reasons as reasons; that is, I must be rational. Thus, whether I issue a claim or am the recipient of one, the capacities that matter are shared between addresser and addressee. The claim succeeds in providing a second-person reason only because the roles of addresser and addressee are defined by a standing that both share: the authority to address second-person claims. In this notion of authority, we can recognize both the reasons-first character of Darwall’s argument for the necessary symmetry between players and also his commitment to something like methodological atheism. Second-personal reasons exist only from the second-person standpoint in which I am either the addresser or the addressee of a normative claim. The roles are symmetrical because we must presuppose “that those we address can guide themselves by a reciprocal recognition of the second-personal reasons we address and our authority to address them” (Darwall 2006, 75). Thus the normativity of a claim derives from its rationality, and its authority presupposes recognition of the autonomy of both addresser and addressee. As in Heidegger, this condition brings methodological atheism in its train. This is shown in what Darwall calls “Fichte’s Point”: “We can be held morally responsible only for what we can hold ourselves responsible for by making moral demands of ourselves from the perspective of one free and rational agent among others” (2006, 248). If that is so, the symmetrical authority of addresser and addressee belongs to the game because rational beings are interchangeable: a rational being cannot demand of another rational being anything that the latter could not demand of herself. I am not accountable to another for anything that I cannot demand of myself. Darwall reinforces Fichte’s point by considering Samuel Pufendorf’s take on “theological voluntarism.” On the voluntarist picture, “moral obligations are all ultimately owed to God,” but Pufendorf’s Point is that an obligation can arise “only if God addresses us as rational agents.” God can hold us responsible only if God can assume that we can “hold [ourselves] responsible in [our] own reasoning and thought.” Otherwise, the command could move us only “by fear of sanctions that might coerce compliance.” But Darwall goes further, claiming that “holding ourselves responsible in our own reasoning and thought” requires that we must “be able to take up a second-person standpoint on [ourselves]” and hold ourselves accountable from that point of view (Darwall 2006, 23.)

Methodological Atheism  53 But why should this be? Why can I not hold myself accountable for something – say, an obligation to help a person in need – without seeing myself as belonging to a community of free and rational beings? If “being able to take up” a second-person standpoint on myself simply means that it is possible for me to do so, this does not mean that a normative command – say, God’s – can reach me only if I do take up such a standpoint. Pufendorf holds that “each agent forms a [moral] community with God alone, with God being accountable to no one” (Darwall 2006, 114). Thus it might be true that one can form such a community with God only if one can hold oneself accountable to oneself before God. And it might also be true that “one will have this capacity only if one is also capable of entering into a community of mutually accountable persons” (Darwall 2006, 114). But it does not follow that entering into a moral community with God alone requires that one actually consider oneself from the second-person standpoint.12 It could be that the “moral community with God” makes taking up the second-person standpoint on oneself possible. The alternative would be to say that God’s command can obligate me only if I stand in a second-person relation of symmetrical authority with God. Such a view does away with moral asymmetry, to be sure, but it also does away with God, which seems to be Darwall’s point. The presuppositional analysis of the second-person standpoint is methodologically atheist: it can acknowledge no “gods,” no persons with an asymmetrical authority to issue valid commands. But this does not mean that there can be no “gods” at all, addressers of a command for which I hold myself responsible without presupposing that I have reciprocal authority to command such “gods” in turn. And since this is an experiential point, it is not constrained by the “normative felicity conditions” Darwall specifies for the second-person standpoint. Darwall himself acknowledges this distinction. While his analysis is primarily concerned with the performative commitments of persons as players in the game of giving and asking for reasons, he also recognizes the limited scope of the game: it is something that we “assume” or “enter into” (Darwall 2006, 21, 23). The second-person standpoint is neither exhaustive of our lives – hence of our phenomenology – nor automatic: somehow, out of a wider field of experience, it requires uptake. There is nothing necessary about the game – or rather, if there is a certain necessity to it, that necessity must lie “outside” the game, lest the latter prove only a game, “no more than rationally optional, or worse, illusory” (Darwall 2006, 277). If the second-person standpoint is a practice into which we must be inaugurated, this entry move can be understood in two ways: on the one hand, we can approach it as Darwall (2006, 171–178) and Habermas (1999, 98) do, in terms of developmental psychology and the history of moral enlightenment; on the other hand, we can approach it

54  Steven Crowell phenomenologically, as Levinas and Heidegger do, through a reflection on the experiences that make adoption of the second-person standpoint categorially intelligible. Such phenomenology need not take issue with Darwall’s reasons-first approach to the necessary conditions for valid second-person reasons, but if Levinas is right that the second-person standpoint originates in an experience of obligation that constitutes a being as rational, notions like “freedom” and “rationality” must also be understood in a normativity-first way. Darwall regularly appeals to phenomenological evidence – that is, to descriptions that uncover what is essential to the meaning constituted in various kinds of experience. For instance, to say that the second-person standpoint is a performative attitude means that I experience claims as normative and do not merely “consider” them agent-neutrally. In phenomenological terms, the “presuppositions” of such an attitude are the intentional implications, or horizons, of second-person practices that make the meaning experienced in such practices what it is for the agent so engaged. And if the agent, the person, is constituted by engaging in second-person practices, then the person, phenomenologically considered, must be intelligible to herself as the one whose life – be it otherwise as it may – is normatively at stake in what she is doing. The primary phenomenological evidence Darwall draws upon, however, is a description of reactive attitudes. Such attitudes – for instance, indignation that someone has stepped on my toe, or resentment at the absence of an apology – intentionally imply the experience of the violation of a normative claim that I expect the other to acknowledge because I too have the authority to make such a claim, an authority that the other must acknowledge because it belongs to us as free and rational agents. Of course, reactive attitudes do not exhaust moral phenomenology, but by focusing on them, Darwall’s approach foregrounds cases in which I make claims on another. We might wonder, however, whether reactive attitudes must move in a self-to-other direction. Here, Levinas’s moral phenomenology proves instructive.

4 Levinas’s Normativity-First Approach to Second-Person Phenomenology For Levinas, the experience of being commanded is the experience of an interdiction on a freedom I already possess. Freedom is the living being’s “power” to remain the “same” in interacting with its environment – paradigmatically, by assimilating that environment in the form of “nourishment” (Levinas 1969, 110–114). Such freedom is not defined in terms of rational self-determination and includes nothing normative in its exercise. The interdiction on such freedom – the command “Thou shalt not kill” – is the inception of the normative, the feeling of obligation. Because “I” thus initially appear as you-accusative, Levinas’s phenomenology is

Methodological Atheism  55 second-personal. But it is not an instance of the second-person standpoint; it is what “teaches” me that there is such a standpoint. While the living being can assimilate everything “other” to itself through alimentation, labor, and conceptual comprehension, the addresser, the capital-O “Other,” is experienced as resisting such assimilation by its “height” (Levinas 1969, 34).13 The metaphor of height means that this experience is normative, but the normativity involved is not mediated by a presupposition of symmetry: “I, you – these are not individuals of a common concept” (Levinas 1969, 39). If that is so, then I cannot initially claim an equal status to command the Other based on a shared set of characteristics (being free and rational, being conspecifics), and so I cannot exchange places with the addresser. In my singular freedom (ipseity), I do not have any resources for making normative claims. I learn what the normative is through the Other’s command. The Other’s command is “teaching,” an experience of something that could not, in principle, be “maieutically” drawn out of the living being’s freedom (Levinas 1969, 51). We are thus returned to a version of theological voluntarism, but Levinas’s account does not conform to Pufendorf’s Point – namely, that for God’s command to constitute an obligation it must be addressed to me as a free and rational being. Levinas argues that it is through the uptake of the command that I become a being whose freedom is rational. But initially it might appear that the asymmetry between addresser and addressee means that my uptake of the command can be based only on asymmetrical power relations, “the fear of sanctions.” For Levinas, however, the command “puts an end to power” (1969, 51, 198). If the freedom that characterizes life is grounded in the experience of the “I can,” my power to appropriate the world, then the interdict on such experience transforms my factual power into normative powerlessness. The interdict is not a violent imposition on my freedom but attests to the impotence of violence. If I “hear” the command, experience the Other as a “height,” I can still exercise my murderous freedom, but I do not thereby eliminate the obligation not to kill. This is just what normative binding amounts to: even if I violate the command, I am still bound by it. The experience of this powerlessness initiates me into normative space. It might still appear that I can only be coerced into acknowledging the binding character of the command. What other motive do I have for acknowledging the Other’s authority? In addressing this question, Levinas’s second-person phenomenology diverges radically from Darwall’s account of the second-person standpoint. For unlike Pufendorf’s God, the Other has neither the authority to command nor sanctions to impose. The command rests on nothing but itself. It is the “first word” (Levinas 1969, 199). How, then, is the attitude in which I “hear” the command – react to it, take it up – to be described phenomenologically? Levinas names this attitude “desire,” a reactive attitude that does not

56  Steven Crowell address a claim to the Other but acknowledges a claim received from the Other (1969, 34, 42, 62–63). As a reactive attitude, desire cannot be understood in terms of pro-­ attitudes toward things that will satisfy the various hungers that beset the living being. Such things are, of course, goods and give the living being reasons to pursue them. But the living being does not pursue them as its reasons. It “has” them but does not act on them as reasons. Desire, in contrast, embraces the “ethical resistance” to life’s freedom, which “liberates freedom from the arbitrary” (Levinas 1969, 62). By calling freedom into question, the interdict does not “limit but promotes my freedom by arousing my goodness,” opening another path, another standard by which freedom can measure itself (Levinas 1969, 200, 63). As in Plato, then, Levinasian desire aims epekeina tes ousias – beyond the wants and needs of the living being – toward the idea tou agathou. In desire, freedom recognizes its moral vocation, and while entry into normative space is thus “deontological” – resulting from an obligation created through an interdictory command, rather than on the basis of any “ontological” consideration of my welfare – the desire it arouses spreads itself across the whole world of things; the “above being” allows beings to show up as meaningful, and so as what they in truth are (Levinas 1969, 92–97, 204–207). Desire is thus a reactive attitude; it acknowledges a command that arouses an orientation toward what is best. Such an orientation does not presuppose reason but is the ground of reason. In Levinas’s idiom, the “ethical resistance” that awakens desire for goodness moves me to “welcome” the Other, where welcoming means that I have suspended life’s “murderous” freedom to satisfy its wants and needs. According to Levinas, “the principle [of this suspension] is possible only as a command” (1969, 201). And since obligation is “the first word,” desire, welcoming the Other, is above all a kind of answering. Given the asymmetry between addresser and addressee, my answer cannot initially take the form of challenging the Other’s right to command; instead, it is essentially apologia, giving an account of myself (Levinas 1969, 40). Justification, “justice,” begins by owning up to who I am; only then do I experience myself as answerable, as responsible for reasons. Reason – what I think is best in the matter of how to go on – is reason-giving, called forth as an answer to the Other. The phenomenological connection between welcoming the Other and language lies in the way that ethical resistance, which calls my freedom into question, transforms the rapacity and solipsism of freedom into “generosity.” In language, I freely give to the other what was heretofore my possession alone. Language is “primordial dispossession, a first donation,” since the “generality of the word institutes a common world,” that is, constitutes the world as “given,” perceptually and intellectually there for all of us (Levinas 1969, 173). The concept, reason, is the face the world shows to a being whose freedom, invested by the command, has

Methodological Atheism  57 entered into normative space. If that is so, then the second-person standpoint – the symmetry of persons as free and rational agents – is phenomenologically grounded in welcoming the Other: the desire for goodness and the generosity of language aroused in a freedom not initially inclined toward rationality. But who is the Other? Who commands? Rather than tackle this conundrum directly, I propose to follow a Levinasian clue that will lead us back, finally, to Heidegger, and to the phenomenology of meaning.

5 Methodological Atheism, Again: Conscience and Commitment In considering the second-person standpoint, we noted Darwall’s methodologically atheist and reasons-first approach to being the addressee of a valid second-person reason. In Levinas’s second-person phenomenology, in contrast, we found a normativity-first account of how reason, as justification (apologia), becomes possible. But Levinas does not unambiguously embrace the methodological atheism that, for Heidegger, defined the phenomenological inquiry into meaning: the refusal to attribute “metaphysical” authority to any entity. As we saw, Levinas claims that his account “does not limit the mind in a way inadmissible to a philosopher” (1969, 171) – that is, it does not rest on any theological dogma – but he does identify the addresser of the command: it is the other human being. While the Other approaches me from a “height,” and thus the command reaches me without presupposing symmetrical second-personal authority, the Other’s “face” is recognizable in the “widow, stranger, or orphan” (Levinas 1969, 77). Still, there is nothing in the perceptual appearance of such faces that identifies them as the source of the command. By identifying the addresser as the Other person, then, Levinas takes a step into “metaphysics,” invoking an entity that challenges phenomenology’s metaphysically neutral approach to intentionality and meaning. In contrast, as I will now argue, such metaphysical neutrality is preserved in the second-personal character of Heidegger’s phenomenology of commitment. Like Levinas, Heidegger offers a normativity-first account of reason, but his version adheres to the methodological atheism of philosophy, and so preserves the “arrogance” of thinking. In Heidegger’s approach to conscience we learn that second-person phenomenology necessarily precludes identification of the addresser. Levinas himself supplies a guiding clue when he writes that “the Other cannot present himself as Other outside my conscience,” where conscience is “the consciousness of my own injustice – the shame freedom feels for itself” (1969, 86). This, and nothing else, is the phenomenon of “welcoming the Other.” Yet, as we have seen, shame does not abase freedom but elevates it, introducing freedom to the possibility of measuring

58  Steven Crowell itself against what is “better” than being, an ideality without “idealism” (Levinas 1969, 169) that arises with my desire for goodness. This may sound arcane, but such “ideality” – a type of normativity – is ubiquitous in our intentional life; it is a condition on meaning, on encountering something as something. Husserl, for instance, describes how any current perceptual experience is pervaded by normative anticipations of what subsequent perceptions must reveal if the current perception is veridical – that is, if the perceived thing is as I take it to be. Without such normative anticipations, further experience could not confirm or disconfirm my current one but could only replace it with another. Heidegger expands this analysis of perceptual meaning and arrives, with Levinas, at the (originary) “ethical” ground of reason: the second-personal phenomenon of conscience. Beginning with our practical engagement in the world, Heidegger argues that things can show up meaningfully, i.e., as what they are – hammers, nails, lumber – only if I am sensitive to their suitability for the task (1962, 99). Suitability, a normative notion, is relative to what I am trying to do with them – say, make a birdhouse. Whether a certain hammer is “good” or “bad” for the job is determined by what a birdhouse is (“ideally”) supposed to be. But what determines what I am trying to do? Heidegger denies that appeal to what John Searle calls “intention in action” is enough, since such intentions depend on that “for the sake of which” I am doing what I am doing, that is, on what I am trying to be (1962, 116–117). Following Christine Korsgaard, we may call this my “practical identity.”14 For instance, if I am acting for the sake of being a carpenter – if being a carpenter is my practical identity – then my technical manipulation of tools and materials that eventuates in a leaky box with large nails sticking out will be judged a failure. But if I am acting for the sake of being an artist in the style of arte povera, the very same manipulations, with the very same result, may be judged a great success. The phenomenological point is that things do not possess their “ideality” in themselves. For Heidegger, it comes to them from my commitment, my caring about whether I succeed or fail at what it is or means to be whatever it is I am trying to be.15 In being committed to teaching, for instance, what it means to be a teacher is at issue: I measure myself against the “good” in respect of teaching. While this measure is initially sketched out in the norms of teaching that belong to my historical community, such norms provide no recipes; what they require of a teacher is itself at issue in my commitment to teaching.16 Acting in their light, I take a stand on what they should be, and so what I do is exemplary of what I take teaching to mean. Commitment is thus oriented toward a “good beyond being,” and only if (or better: to the extent that) I am committed – that is, bind myself to the measure, care about succeeding or failing at what I am trying to be – can I encounter things as succeeding or failing at being what they are supposed to be. This, in a nutshell, is the argument

Methodological Atheism  59 for the first claim I introduced at the outset: commitment is a necessary condition on intentionality and meaning. Commitment is neither a function of my rationality nor of my animal life. No horse is committed to being a horse; nor can I be committed to being alive: I just am alive and I can try to stay that way. For Heidegger, commitment belongs to the performative character of my being: the being who can say “I” is neither a natural substance nor a rational subject, but a being for whom, “in its very being, that being is an issue for it” (1962, 32). This is an experiential finding whose evidence lies in an experience that teaches me what it means to be I-myself: the call of conscience. For Levinas, as we saw, conscience is a second-personal phenomenon. Can the same be said for Heidegger? For Levinas, conscience is the shame freedom feels for itself precisely as freedom, and so it is not tied to anything I have done. For Heidegger too, the call of conscience neither “warns nor reproves” and does not invoke any antecedent “law or ‘ought’” (1962, 328). While it does give me to understand my “guilt” (Schuld), such understanding is independent of any practical identity.17 But for this very reason, the call might seem merely to convey information, to lack the character of a command, and so also the normative force that Levinas ascribes to the command as arche or principle. Indeed, it might well appear that Heideggerian conscience is not a second-person phenomenon at all. But this appearance is deceiving. First, we must note that the call (“guilty”!) does have the structure of a command. Highlighting the connection between schuldig and verantwortlich, Heidegger interprets the call to mean that I am responsible for “taking over being a ground [Grund]” (1962, 330). As “thrown,” I am “delivered over” to “grounds” over which I have no power – the nonnormative causes and inclinations that move the living being. But since my being is precisely at issue, I stand before such factic grounds as before a choice: I am unable to choose the inclinations or motivations I have, but neither do they necessitate what I do. In conscience, I learn that I “must” take over – assume the status of – being a ground. Since the call reaches the sort of entity who can “be” only performatively, who “is” only for the sake of something, this “must” is experienced in the you-accusative: you must take over being a ground. If Dasein is thus originally (i.e., ontologically, categorially) the addressee of a command – that is, if conscience is to that extent a secondperson phenomenon – we stand before two final questions: What is the phenomenological meaning of “being a ground”? And who commands? Heidegger’s answers show that despite the call’s independence from any prevailing “law or ought,” it is normative in Levinas’s sense. Being a ground cannot mean that I am the absolute foundation of myself. Since I “find” myself already inclined in various ways, I “never have power” over my being “from the ground up” (Heidegger 1962,

60  Steven Crowell 330). Further, “taking over” being a ground, assuming the status of a ground, cannot mean simply that I acknowledge what inclines me; inclinations need no such acknowledgement. Instead, it is to “possibilize” them (Heidegger 1962, 347), to consider them not only for what they are but – to speak with Plato – in light of what is best in regard to what I am trying to be. To do so is precisely to treat them as possible justifications, i.e., reasons (Gründe). In Vom Wesen des Grundes, Heidegger makes this platonic point explicit: in conscience, the “you must” directs me “beyond being” toward the idea tou agathou: “The essence of the agathon lies in its sovereignty over itself as hou heneka – as the ‘for-the-sake-of…’ it is the source of possibility as such” (1998b, 124). Thus, to “be a ground” is to consider the givens of my situation in a normative light, to consider whether their claims ought to be embraced or rejected as “my” reasons. If that is so, then my response to the call takes the form of commitment – “resoluteness” (Entschlossenheit) – and has the phenomenological structure of Levinasian “desire for goodness”: I take responsibility for the “good” or meaning at issue in what I am trying to be – that is, for the normative force of the reasons for which I act. Thus conscience, the call to take over being a ground, is the phenomenological origin of “justification,” accounting for myself by way of reasons (Heidegger 1998b, 130–131). If to take over being a ground is to treat my wants and needs in light of what is best – that is, as potentially justifying reasons – then my response to the call is apologia: responsibility for reasons is answerability (Verantwortlichkeit) to others for what I take to be best. As in Levinas, then, reason is originally reason-giving. Nevertheless, even if we can understand the call of conscience as a command that introduces me to normative space, thereby making the space of reasons and intentionality possible, we might still wonder whether it is really a second-person phenomenon. Who is the addresser? Heidegger specifically denies that the “it” who calls is “someone else who is with me in the world,” and he goes so far as to say that “the impossibility of making [the caller] more definite” is a positive feature of the call (1962, 320, 319). Finally, he describes the call as coming “from me yet from beyond me [aus mir und doch über mich]” (Heidegger 1962, 320). Phenomenologically, we can understand this claim as follows: “from me” means that the call belongs to the first-person, I-myself; “from beyond me,” in turn, signifies that the mode of the first-person at issue is the you-accusative, being an addressee: the call addresses me in a way that “exceeds” all my projects, all my practical identities, and so exceeds whatever “self” I have performatively achieved. We might charitably interpret this “beyond” as the normative “height” Levinas attributes to the face of the Other. However, Heidegger also claims that “the caller is Dasein itself in its uncanniness” (1962, 321). Can we accept this identification of the addresser as I-myself, thereby removing conscience from the field of second-person phenomenology?

Methodological Atheism  61 Heidegger’s argument seems to be, basically, “who else can it be?” On phenomenological grounds, however, I think we must hold fast to the second-personal character of the call and, following Heidegger’s own insistence on “the impossibility of making [the caller] more definite,” understand the phenomenon of conscience as attesting to the fact that second-person phenomenology must remain methodologically atheist, neutral with regard to the addresser. The command thereby loses nothing of its command character or its normativity. What is essential to the call is that I experience myself as you-accusative, and naming the addresser will be a subsequent intentional act that already rests on my commitment, on how I take over being a ground. This was the second claim I promised to address at the outset.18 Of course, this only opens the door to more questions, but I will conclude this reflection on methodological atheism by circling back to Derrida. In his elaborate meditations on Kierkegaard, Levinas, and Heidegger in The Gift of Death, Derrida arrives at the phenomenon we have been exploring: “As soon as a structure of conscience exists,” he writes, that is, as soon as I have within me, thanks to the invisible word as such, a witness that others cannot see, and who is at the same time other than me and more intimate with me than myself, (…) then there is what I call God, (there is) what I call God in me, (it happens that) I call myself God – a phrase that is difficult to distinguish from ‘God calls me,’ for it is on such a condition that I can call myself or be called in secret. (Derrida 1995, 108) I take this to be an echt phenomenological description. The call that informs my commitment, my being a ground, brings methodological atheism with it, since any intentional act in which I identify the addresser will be “secretly” aporetic: To say that God calls me is to call myself God.19

Notes 1 For a concise statement of Derrida’s argument against Husserl, one that takes into account the arguments that Husserlians have levelled against Derrida’s interpretation, see Hägglund (2008, 50–75). 2 The term “originary ethics” is from “Letter on Humanism” (first edition 1949; Heidegger 1998a, 271), but I think it properly describes Heidegger’s project in Being and Time as well, for reasons I will lay out in section 5. An insightful discussion of Heidegger’s originary ethics in relation to Derrida and Levinas is found in Bernasconi (1993). 3 David Carr (1999) develops this idea extensively in his account of phenomenology’s place in the tradition of transcendental philosophy. 4 Both Husserl and Heidegger recognize a version of what Heidegger will come to call the “ontological difference,” whose significance can only be understood phenomenologically. For Heidegger “the being of entities ‘is’ not itself

62  Steven Crowell an entity,” but “being is always the being of an entity” (1962, 26, 29). For Husserl, “ontology” concerns “modes of being” as possible ways for entities to be, and this is distinct from “metaphysics,” the science of “ultimate Fakta” (Husserl 1956, 387–395). During the late 1920s Heidegger too understands the distinction between ontology and metaphysics in this way. For instance, “a ‘metaphysic of death’” – which concerns what “meaning” death can have “in the aggregate of entities [All des Seienden]” – “lies outside of an existential [ontological] analysis of death” and presupposes the latter (1962, 292). For Heidegger’s understanding of metaphysics during this period, see Tengelyi (2014), Schmidt (2016), and Crowell (2018). 5 Already in 1921 Heidegger gave a course on the phenomenology of religious life (Heidegger 2004) and, as Kisiel reports, spent so much time on preliminary considerations of method that the students raised objections with the Dean (1993, 149–150). 6 In the Levinas literature, this question of how a “living being,” in its “atheistic” separation, can at all be receptive to a normative claim – to the interdiction expressed in the face of the Other – has been extensively discussed. See, for instance, Derrida (1978, 125–134); Perpich (2008, 91–108); Morgan (2007, 152–160). Ultimately, as I will argue in Section 5, we must return to Heidegger’s phenomenology of conscience for the answer. 7 As Levinas puts it, “[p]olitics tends toward reciprocal recognition, that is, toward equality” (1969, 64), but “equality is produced where the other commands the same and reveals himself to the same in responsibility” – i.e., in relations of symmetrical recognition – and this “cannot be detached from the welcoming of the face, of which it is a moment” (1969, 214). 8 For a critical commentary on this idea, see Hägglund (2008, 39–43). 9 A concise account of Husserl’s approach, defending it against Heideggerian objections, is provided by John Drummond (2019). Inga Römer’s (2019) discussion of Levinas’s late notion of “an-archic reason” suggests how Levinas himself comes to read Kant in a more normativity-first way. This argument is more fully treated in Römer (2018, 366–413). 10 See Darwall (2006, 4n4) for the distinction between “addressing a claim or demand” (which is not a “success phrase”) and “addressing a second-person reason” (which is). 11 From an experiential perspective, Darwall’s second-person standpoint falls under what Husserl calls the “personalistic attitude,” analyzed extensively in Ideas II (1989, 181–293). 12 Kierkegaard’s reflection on Abraham in Fear and Trembling highlights the problem here: If Abraham adopts the second-person standpoint, he will not be able to hear God’s command as anything but temptation. 13 It might be objected that the living being is already exposed to normative demands about what it ought or ought not to assimilate: it should not eat a poisonous plant, it should seek out what makes it stronger, and so on. But while there is a real philosophical question about how we should understand animal behavior in normative terms (see, for instance, Okrent 2018), this is not Levinas’s approach. Instead, for him, the phenomenology of the living being qua living is of an experience or “consciousness without problems, that is, without exteriority.” He calls this “instinct” and describes it thus: “What a thinking being perceives as exteriority that calls for work and appropriation, a living being as such experiences as its substance, consubstantial with it, essentially immediate, an element and a vital medium.” On Levinas’s view, if “exteriority were to strike” the living being – as it does when the latter eats something that it “should not” eat – “it would kill this instinctual being” (1987, 25–26). In short, Levinas denies that such a being can be described as experiencing a

Methodological Atheism  63 normative “should not” as normative. While I think this view is defensible on phenomenological grounds, if not on ethological ones, I cannot argue for it here. I simply note that it is essential for Levinas’s understanding of the foundational role played by being the addressee of a second-personal command. 14 “Practical identity” designates “a description under which you value yourself, a description under which you find your life worth living and your actions to be worth undertaking” (Korsgaard 1996, 101). For Heidegger, a practical identity (or “for-the-sake-of”) is a possibility of the self as care (Sorge). See Crowell (2013, 239–260). 15 John Haugeland (2013, 194–205) provides a detailed account of this kind of ideality in terms of possibility. “Ontological know-how masters entities as they could or could not be,” i.e., “in terms of a distinction between what is possible or impossible for them” (Haugeland 2013, 196). Considered phenomenologically, such possibility is not a “fact” that can be absorbed into modal logic without remainder; it is a normative notion, a “material essence” (Husserl) that governs my experience in a conditional way: not merely the thought that something could be otherwise but rather an experience governed by the expectation that something should be a certain way if what I take it to be is veridical. For discussion of essence or ideality as a normative concept, see Crowell (2019, 330–334). 16 Thinking of such norms as “recipes” is a mark of the “one-self” (Man-selbst), who “does what one does” because one does it. As Heidegger puts it: “the ‘one’ articulates the referential context of significance” (i.e., the public meaning things have at a particular time), and, in doing so, “deprives the particular Dasein of its answerability” (1962, 167, 165). 17 The argument in this section is fully elaborated in Crowell (2013, chs. 8–9). 18 This might seem, as one anonymous referee for this volume put it, “secondpersonal in a perilously thin sense.” And indeed, as we saw in the section on Darwall, the notion of the second-person typically invokes inter-personal relations and presupposes a constituted social world. My concern in this essay, however, has been with the transcendental ground of such a social world, and my argument has been that not only Levinas, but Heidegger, too, finds a second-personal address at the grounding level. Experiencing myself as an addresse of a normative claim is fundamental; it is the condition of possibility for identifying something as something – and so engaging in religious, ethical, and political disputes over who the addresser is and, for instance, over the authority such an addresser has to make a normative claim on me. 19 Earlier versions of this chapter were delivered as the Franke Lecture (Yale) and at the Workshop on Norms, Goals, and Values (Helsinki). I would like to thank Martin Hägglund and Jensen Suther (Yale), and Sara Heinämaa and Mirja Hartimo (Helsinki), for these invitations, and also express my gratitude to the participants at these events for their stimulating comments and suggestions. Portions of Sections 2.3 and 2.4, lightly revised here, were previously published in Steven Crowell, “Second-Person Reasons: Darwall, Levinas, and the Phenomenology of Reason,” in Levinas and Analytic Philosophy: SecondPerson Normativity and the Moral Life, eds. Michael Fagenblat and Melis Erdur (New York: Routledge, 2020).

References Bernasconi, Robert. 1993. “Deconstruction and the Possibility of Ethics: Reiter­ ating the ‘Letter on Humanism’.” In Heidegger in Question: The Art of Existing, 211–222. New Jersey: Humanities Press.

64  Steven Crowell Carr, David. 1999. The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press. Crowell, Steven. 2013. Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crowell, Steven. 2018. “The Middle Heidegger’s Phenomenological Metaphysics.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Phenomenology, ed. Dan Zahavi, 229–250. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crowell, Steven. 2019. “A Philosophy of Mind: Phenomenology, Normativity, and Meaning.” In Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology, eds. Matthew Burch, Jack Marsh, and Irene McMullin, 327–354. New York: Routledge. Darwall, Stephen. 2006. The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1978. “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas.” In Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1995. The Gift of Death. Trans. David Wills. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, Jacques. 2002. “Force of Law.” In Acts of Religion, ed. Gil Anidjar, 228–298. New York: Routledge. Drummond, John. 2019. “Intentionality and (Moral) Normativity.” In Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology, eds. Matthew Burch, Jack Marsh, and Irene McMullin, 101–119. New York: Routledge. Habermas, Jürgen. 1999. “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification.” In Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen, 43–115. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Hägglund, Martin. 2008. Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Haugeland, John. 2013. “Truth and Finitude: Heidegger’s Transcendental Existen­ tialism.” In Dasein Disclosed: John Haugeland’s Heidegger, ed. Joseph Rouse, 187–220. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row. Heidegger, Martin. 1984. The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. Trans. Michael Heim. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1985. History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena. Trans. Theodore Kisiel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1998a. “Letter on Humanism.” In Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill, 97–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1998b. “On the Essence of Ground.” In Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill, 97–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 2004. The Phenomenology of Religious Life. Trans. Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1956. Erste Philosophie (1923/24), Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte. Husserliana VII. Ed. Rudolf Boehm. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Methodological Atheism  65 Husserl, Edmund. 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book. Trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Kisiel, Theodore. 1993. The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time. Berkeley: University of California Press. Korsgaard, Christine. 1996. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1987. “The Ego and the Totality.” In Collected Philosophical Papers. Trans. Alphonso Lingis, 25–45. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. Morgan, Michael. 2007. Discovering Levinas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Okrent, Mark. 2018. Nature and Normativity: Biology, Teleology, and Meaning. New York: Routledge. Perpich, Diane. 2008. The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Quine, Willard V.O. 1961. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” In From a Logical Point of View, 20–46. New York: Harper & Row. Römer, Inga. 2018. Das Begehren der reinen praktischen Vernunft: Kants Ethik in phänomenologischer Sicht. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. Römer, Inga. 2019. “The Sources of Practical Normativity Reconsidered – With Kant and Levinas.” In Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology, eds. Matthew Burch, Jack Marsh, and Irene McMullin, 120– 136. New York: Routledge. Schmidt, Stefan W. 2016. Grund und Freiheit: Eine phänomenologische Untersuchung des Freiheitsbegriffs Heideggers. Switzerland: Springer. Tengelyi, László. 2014. Welt und Unendlichkeit: Zum Problem phänomenologischer Metaphysik. Freiburg: Alber.

3 What Is Moral Normativity? A Phenomenological Critique and Redirection of Korsgaard’s Normative Question Fredrik Westerlund 1 Introduction It seems clear that morality addresses us as normative in some sense. That is to say, we experience morality as something that tells us what we should do and what me must not do, and in the light of which our will and our actions will come out as morally good or bad. However, in what sense is morality normative? How should we understand and account for the normative character of morality? In her influential and widely discussed 1996 book The Sources of Normativity, Christine Korsgaard raises the question regarding the sources of moral normativity. She asks: What are the sources that account for the normative force of morality? Do these sources justify the normative claims that morality makes on us? Having articulated her guiding question, Korsgaard elaborates her own Kant-inspired theory of the sources and justification of moral normativity. What in my view makes Korsgaard’s book important and likely accounts for much of the interest is that it touches on vital questions regarding the normative character and force of morality, which have generally not received the attention they call for in the tradition of moral philosophy. However, as I will argue in what follows, Korsgaard’s articulation of the normative question is in many ways problematic and insufficient. It presupposes several decisive ideas about the nature of moral normativity that should be questioned and that point to the need for phenomenological investigations of this theme. The central aim of this chapter is to show, through a critique of Korsgaard, that in order to reach clarity about the nature of moral normativity – and morality more generally – we cannot get around the fundamental task of phenomenologically investigating the experiential sources of moral normativity. As I will contend, Korsgaard in raising the normative question presupposes many guiding ideas about moral normativity that refer to and purport to depict our moral experience. However, she does not do enough to demonstrate that they correctly describe this experience. My claim is that in order to achieve an unprejudiced understanding DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740-5

What Is Moral Normativity?  67 of moral normativity, we have to engage in phenomenological reflection on our lived experience of moral claims: How do we experience and understand morality as normative? How do moral claims concern us and motivate us? Moreover, I want to claim that pursuing the question about the experiential sources of moral normativity must include distinguishing between genuinely moral normativity and other kinds of normativity – stemming, for instance, from our desire for social affirmation and sensitivity to social pressure – that are often misinterpreted as manifestations of morality. Also, I believe it is crucial to acknowledge that morality is an existential challenge and that we have strong incentives for repressing and misconceiving its nature and claims. If we review the history of moral philosophy, I think it is fair to say that the above questions have generally not been asked and examined with enough radicality. Still, my contention is that pursuing these questions is a fundamental task for any theory of morality since it is only by doing this that we can hope to get clear about what moral normativity is and distinguish it from its semblances. My methodological approach will be that of phenomenological reflection. By this, I mean that I will go about my task by reflecting on our first-person lived experiences of moral normativity – and other relevant experiences – with the aim of describing and explicating the intentional and motivational structures that make these experiences what they are and give them the meaning they have for us. Korsgaard’s examination of the question of the sources of moral normativity has previously been discussed and criticized from an experiential angle, for example, by Steven Crowell (2007), William Hosmer Smith (2012), and Mark Okrent (1999). However, although offering important criticisms, no one of them uses the resources of phenomenology for questioning the basic setup of Korsgaard’s question. The chapter starts with a critical discussion of Korsgaard’s normative question and an argument for the need to phenomenologically inquire into the experiential sources of moral normativity. After that, I offer a brief outline of my view that the source of moral normativity must be sought in our basic understanding of other persons as absolutely important and valuable, an understanding that essentially involves and demands loving concern for the other. I propose that this genuine source of moral normativity must be sharply distinguished from the normative claims that issue from our desire for social affirmation and from the ways we, paradigmatically through self-esteem and shame, selfconsciously judge our social value. The purpose of the sketch is not to present a fully argued theory of the sources of moral normativity but to substantiate and specify the need to pursue these questions. I end with a brief critique of Korsgaard’s positive account of the sources of moral normativity.

68  Fredrik Westerlund

2 Korsgaard’s Normative Question In The Sources of Normativity, Korsgaard takes on the task of raising and answering what she calls the “normative question” (1996, 10).1 What does she mean by this? Korsgaard starts out by asserting that it is a fact about human life that we have moral values and ideas that address us as normative and make claims on us. The normative question is the question about the sources that account for and, possibly, justify the normative force of moral claims: “We are asking what justifies the claims that morality makes on us” (Korsgaard 1996, 9–10). In her book, Korsgaard offers both a theory of moral normativity and a theory of normativity in general. Here, my primary interest concerns her treatment of moral normativity. However, since her view of the sources of normativity in general centrally determines her account of moral normativity, I will touch on that as well. According to Korsgaard, the normative question is an existential concern for us because moral claims can be demanding and conflict with other interests of ours. The question becomes especially urgent in situations where the demands of morality are hard and require us to sacrifice other things we hold dear, in extreme cases, our own life: “And then the question – why? – will press, and rightly so. Why should I be moral?” (Korsgaard 1996, 9). Korsgaard contends that a philosophical theory of morality should be seen as a response to the moral agent who is confronted with the claims of morality, and, as a result, is led to question the legitimacy of these claims: “Must I really do this? Why must I do it?” (Korsgaard 1996, 16). The task of philosophy is to show why, if at all, the claims of morality are justified, by providing an account of the sources of moral normativity. To be successful, a philosophical justification of normativity must be able to address the first-person position of the agent who is in doubt and who asks about the justification of the moral claims she is facing (Korsgaard 1996, 16). Contrast this with a theory that would explain the workings of morality in a manner that would not support the claims morality makes on us, say, a theory that would reduce morality to its evolutionary function. As we shall see later, in her own constructivist theory of morality, Korsgaard argues that the sources of normativity in general are found in the self-conscious structure of the human mind and in our practical identities. As concerns moral normativity, she offers a transcendental argument to the effect that if we are to value anything at all, we have to value our humanity as such and commit to it as a moral identity. At this point, I want to critically ponder Korsgaard’s very way of articulating the normative question. My claim is that Korsgaard’s way of posing the question involves basic presuppositions that give meaning and direction

What Is Moral Normativity?  69 to the question and determine what can amount to successful answers to it. However, many of these assumptions are questionable and point to the need to redirect the question. I will highlight five presuppositions: 1. Radical doubt. According to Korsgaard, since the claims of morality can be demanding, we have a strong – and, she thinks, justified – motive for doubting the justification of morality and asking: Must I be moral? Why? The task of philosophy is to provide an answer that justifies the normativity of morality and settles the doubt of the agent. Korsgaard remarks that we must suppose that the agent who doubts is “sincere” and “does really want to know” (Korsgaard 1996, 16). However, we should not fail to notice that the kind of situation of doubt portrayed by Korsgaard – hard moral demands inciting doubt in morality – very often is not characterized by good faith but by repression and self-deception. I am thinking of the common situation in which we have no genuine doubt about morality but find doing what it demands of us difficult and, hence, are inclined to repress and explain away its demands. Here, it is precisely because we think we know what is morally demanded of us that we are driven to doubt morality. Moreover, if the doubt is motivated by an unwillingness to know, any attempt to answer it is doomed to failure since it will always be possible for the doubter to deny whatever she does not want to acknowledge. The very commonness and possibility of doubt in bad faith gives us reason to consider the possibility that our elementary moral experience of the world, above all of human beings, gives us an understanding of moral claims that we cannot doubt and that conditions and motivates disingenuous repressive doubt. Korsgaard does not attend to the commonplaceness of doubt done in bad faith or consider the possibility that radical doubt in good faith might be impossible. In fact, as we shall see shortly, her view that doubt in morality is justified rests on her basic constructivist conception of morality and her view that our unreflective experiences do not give us access to the justifying sources of moral normativity. However, we have reason to question the possibility of radically doubting the normativity of morality in good faith. Indeed, below I will argue that Korsgaard’s uncritical acceptance of radical doubt in morality as her point of departure, as well as her constructivist view of the sources of moral normativity, rest on a denial of the moral substance of our unreflective experience of others. 2. Anti-realism and constructivism. Korsgaard’s idea about the possibility of radical doubt and about the urgency and direction of the normative question is ultimately grounded in her constructivist and anti-realist conception of morality (cf. Korsgaard 2008).2 As the presupposition of her book, Korsgaard adopts what she calls the “metaphysics of the modern world” (Korsgaard 1996, 5),

70  Fredrik Westerlund which she deems she shares with all the main philosophers she discusses – Hobbes, Pufendorf, Hume, and Kant – except the moral realists. According to this modern metaphysics, we must abandon the realist belief in the existence of an independent moral reality consisting of moral and normative “entities” that we can “spot” (Korsgaard 1996, 44) or “notice” (Korsgaard 1996, 47) through some kind of moral intuition. Instead, Korsgaard insists that the sources of moral normativity are to be found in the self-conscious structure of the human mind and in the commitment to practical identities that this structure necessitates: “Value is grounded in rational nature – in particular in the structure of reflective self-consciousness – and it is projected on to the world” (Korsgaard 1996, 116). The gist of Korsgaard’s criticism of moral realism is that the thesis that normative entities exist and that we have intuitive knowledge of them is unjustified because our unreflected experience does not give us access to such entities (Korsgaard 1996, cf. 40, 44). Hence, the thesis rests on no more than unfounded “confidence” (Korsgaard 1996, 40). For Korsgaard, it is precisely the alleged epistemic-ontological deficit of our unreflective moral experience that makes pursuing the normative question a legitimate and urgent task. However, as already stated, Korsgaard’s basic conception of the epistemological-ontological lack of our unreflective experience of moral claims is far from self-evident and needs to be questioned. 3. Moral normativity as authoritative obligation. From the outset, Korsgaard assumes that moral normativity must have the character of lawlike obligation and that it must issue from a legislator with the authority to command us. Historically, the roots of this idea stretch back to the JudeoChristian conception of God as the authority that imposes the moral law on us. Kant develops the paradigmatic modern secular version of the idea by arguing that the moral law issues from the dictates of reason as such, which obligates us as an authority that is independent of and stands above our desires and inclinations. Korsgaard’s own theory builds on, yet also modifies, Kant’s view. According to Korsgaard, moral normativity, understood as obligation, springs from the “power” of the self-reflective “thinking self” to “command” the “acting self” (Korsgaard 1996, 165). Since the commands of the thinking self stem from our practical identities, we have to submit to them to avoid being punished with self-loss. However, does morality essentially address us as an authority that obliges us regardless of our desires and inclinations – including our concern for others? Does moral motivation consist in pure respect for or fear of moral authority? Again, Korsgaard’s idea of moral normativity as authoritative obligation is not self-evident and needs to be questioned.

What Is Moral Normativity?  71 4. Practical identities as the source of moral normativity. In her articulation of the normative question Korsgaard includes, as a condition that any successful answer must meet, the notion that the answer “must appeal (…) to our sense of our identity” (Korsgaard 1996, 17). Korsgaard’s argument for this is that the answer to the normative question must be able to explain and justify that morality can ask hard things of us, even that we sacrifice our life in its name. By anchoring moral normativity in our practical identity, it becomes possible to explain its authority and punitive power. The idea is that if we fail to comply with the reasons and obligations that flow from our practical identity, we risk losing our own identity in a way that would be “as bad or worse than death” (Korsgaard 1996, 18). However, why would it be impossible, say for other persons, to appeal to us as morally normative and confront us with moral demands regardless of the values and norms of our practical identity? Moreover, does not anchoring morality in our concern about our moral identity and our fear of losing it risk making our motives for complying with moral obligations egocentric? Yet again, Korsgaard’s assertion that moral normativity must be grounded in our practical identity is far from self-evident. 5. Shame as emotional paradigm. As an experiential background and starting point for articulating the normative question, Korsgaard briefly describes what she calls the “practical and psychological effects of moral ideas” (Korsgaard 1996, 12). When we think of an action as morally right, she writes, we think we “ought to do it” – and this consideration frequently provides us with a “motive for doing it” (Korsgaard 1996, 11). Depicting how morality motivates us emotionally, she continues: “[W]hen you think that a characteristic is a virtue you might aspire to have it, or be ashamed if you don’t. Again this can be very strong: people’s lives and happiness can be blighted by the suspicion that they are worthless or unlovely specimens of humanity” (Korsgaard 1996, 11). Korsgaard states that these psychological effects are “obvious” (Korsgaard 1996, 12) and “familiar” “facts” (Korsgaard 1996, 11). However, her characterization of our emotional sensitivity to moral normativity in terms of shame is not obvious. Neither is it trivial. In fact, I think it is essentially connected to her conception of moral normativity as obligating authority and to her anchoring of such normativity in our concern about our practical identity. However, is it clear that our emotional sensitivity to moral claims is to be found in the shame-family of emotions – in shame, pride, self-esteem, and so on? Hardly. In what follows, I will suggest that our genuine and irreducible receptivity to morality must be sought in our concerned understanding of others.

72  Fredrik Westerlund

3 The Question about the Experiential Sources of Morality Korsgaard’s normative question is the question concerning the source of the normative force of morality. However, as we have seen, Korsgaard’s articulation of this question is limited and problematic and already presupposes a set of ideas about moral normativity: about the possibility and justification of radical doubt as concerns the legitimacy of moral claims; about the epistemological-ontological nature of morality; about the character, source, and emotional grip of moral normativity. These ideas constitute a picture of morality that ultimately refers to our moral experience. However, Korsgaard by and large takes these guiding ideas for granted without showing that they accurately describe and account for our concrete experience of moral claims. The consequence of this neglect is that Korsgaard’s raising of the normative question points beyond itself to the need to phenomenologically pursue the question concerning the experiential sources of moral normativity. By this, I mean the question about how morality addresses and concerns us as normative in our lived experience; moreover, about how we understand and are motivated by moral claims. When raising and developing the question about the experiential sources of moral normativity, it is important to take seriously the fact that both in our everyday moral life and in moral philosophy, the tendency to confuse moral and nonmoral normativity and motivation is pervasive. This suggests that pursuing this question must include distinguishing between genuine moral normativity and other kinds of nonmoral normative force – I am especially thinking about the normative force issuing from our desire for social affirmation and our sensitivity to social pressure and authority – that are regularly misinterpreted as moral. Furthermore, it must be an important part of the task to be attentive to the fact that there are strong motives in us that make us inclined to deceive ourselves about morality. Being moral is a difficult task since it essentially conflicts with other interests of ours, above all, as I shall argue, with our desire for social affirmation. This means that we generally have powerful motives for repressing and covering up the demands of morality and for misconstruing nonmoral claims and motives as moral. In addition, there are always power interests that push toward ideologically exhibiting the dominating social norms and values as manifestations of true morality. In a word, there is a need for philosophy to acknowledge the moralexistential challenges of the very task of understanding morality. We should not assume, as Korsgaard does, that radical doubt as regards morality is possible and that such doubt motivates the need for philosophy. It may be, and I will suggest, that radical doubt of this kind is practically impossible in good faith. Does this mean that there is no existential need for philosophical reflection on the sources of morality? No, it just means that the motives lie elsewhere. Even though we cannot

What Is Moral Normativity?  73 sincerely doubt the justification of morality, this does not imply that our understanding of morality is clear. Given our prevalent everyday and philosophical prejudices about morality, and given the existential challenges and temptations when it comes to understanding morality, our moral life itself perpetually calls for philosophical reflection. Indeed, the philosophical pursuit of the question concerning the experiential sources of morality could be seen as a conceptually disciplined and systematic way of investigating some of the central moral questions that face us as individuals. It seems that in addition to, and as the background for, our practical questions about how we should act in the light of different moral claims and responsibilities, the moral questions that challenge us most deeply and acutely concern precisely which claims and motives are truly moral and which are not. There are endless variations on this theme: Is it God or an idol that is commanding me? Is this my conscience calling me or the pressure of social morality tempting me? Is this loving care about the other or is it my egocentric desire to appear virtuous? Am I being courageous or cowardly? My suggestion is that phenomenologically pursuing the question of the experiential sources of moral normativity is a basic task for any philosophical attempt to understand the nature of morality and the meaning of moral concepts. Insofar as moral philosophy ignores this task it cannot avoid being prejudiced, such that whatever it says about morality rests on a basic lack of clear understanding of what morality amounts to and risks conflating morality with pseudomorality.

4 Loving Understanding versus Desire for Social Affirmation The aim of this section is to outline the basics of a phenomenological account of the experiential sources of moral normativity and motivation. I will suggest that genuine moral normativity springs from our basic understanding of other persons as in themselves irreducibly weighty and important, and that this understanding is essentially constituted by our loving concern for others. Furthermore, I will suggest that moral normativity must be distinguished from other kinds of normative force that are not moral but are habitually confused with morality. In particular, I will focus on the powerful normative force that is rooted in our desire for social affirmation. What I will have to say will be provisional and not yet a fully argued account of loving understanding and desire for affirmation.3 The purpose of the outline is to further motivate the need to phenomenologically pursue the question about the experiential sources of moral normativity and to suggest a direction for elucidating this question. My perspective is influenced by philosophers who view our secondpersonal relating to other persons as the source of morality – such as Levinas ([1961] 1969), Knud Ejler Løgstrup (1997, 2007), and Stephen

74  Fredrik Westerlund Darwall (2006) – and by philosophers who stress the essential role of love in our moral relation to others – such as Scheler ([1913/1916] 1973, [1913/1923] 2008), Raimond Gaita (2000), and David Velleman (1999).4 As we have seen, Korsgaard follows Kant in assuming that moral normativity must have the form of an authority that obligates and commands us regardless of our de facto desires and inclinations. However, the notion of moral normativity as obligating authority also guides the thinking of many philosophers who believe that the source of moral normativity must be sought, not in God or in the principles of practical reason, but in other human beings. The idea is that we experience the other person as such as possessing a moral authority that obligates us and that we must obey if we are to act morally. This kind of idea governs Darwall’s moral philosophy, and it also arguably plays a central role in Levinas’s account of our ethical relation to others. By contrast, Løgstrup has directed sharp criticism at the notion that morality is as a matter of submitting to authoritative obligations and commands (Løgstrup 1997, 127, 146–147, 291–292; 2007, 129–130).5 In line with Løgstrup, I think the conception of moral normativity as obligating authority does not capture the nature of genuine moral normativity and needs to be questioned. If the other is present to us as an authority that we must obey regardless of whether we care about her at all, what, then, makes our motive for acting moral and distinguishes it from egocentric fear, say, of being judged by others as morally flawed? Can we account for our experience and understanding of moral normativity – including our sense of the point and meaning of morality – if we envision it as loveless submission to authority? My suggestion is that we are basically open to the possibility of understanding others and caring about them – and in analogous ways about animals – as important in themselves. It belongs to our interpersonal experience that we experience and understand others as living human subjects who look back at us; who experience others and the world; who feel, think, and desire; who have great potential for goodness, happiness, and pleasure but also for evil, unhappiness, and suffering. We are also aware of others as sensitive, vulnerable, and mortal, and of our power to help them or hurt them. I also want to suggest that our understanding of others as living subjects from the outset engages and appeals to our ability to be concerned about and feel for them. In fact, it seems to me that understanding others and caring about them essentially hang together. It is only our concern for the other and our readiness to let ourselves be touched by her that gives us our sense of the existential weight and significance of her experiences and life. Without any such concern, our understanding of others would be very limited and morally lacking. We could, of course, through basic empathy – in contrast to sympathy (cf. Scheler [1913/1923] 2008) – have a certain sense of what others are feeling and thinking, and we could also have various degrees of understanding of the

What Is Moral Normativity?  75 workings of their psyches. However, we would lack an understanding that would be sensitive to the import that their lives have for them and for others. If we reflect on this basic concerned understanding of others, we can see that it is the source of a distinct kind of moral normativity. Given that we always have an understanding of the irreducible significance of others, this understanding in itself places a normative demand on us to acknowledge others in their significance. It confronts us with a basic choice: either we acknowledge the other person in her personal reality and weight by relating to her with understanding and concern or we let her down and deny her reality by depersonalizing or dehumanizing her in some way or other.6 Notice that this moral normativity cannot be understood on the model of an authority that stands above and obligates us regardless of our desires and concerns in relation to others. Our understanding of the moral significance and normativity of others in itself involves caring about them and desiring to help them. To be sure, our moral understanding may conflict with other desires and motives of ours, such that we may be disinclined to endorse it and act on it. However, if my analysis holds, then basic conflicts in morality should not be understood as conflicts between authoritarian obligation and desire but as conflicts between our own understandings and desires in relation to others. I think reflection on our concrete encounters with others suggests that we are always and essentially open to understanding others and caring about them. Contrary to what Korsgaard presumes, it seems in effect impossible to radically doubt the moral significance and normativity of others in good faith. The ever-present possibility of moral understanding shows itself in the impossibility of relating to others as nonpersons without repressing or suppressing our primary understanding of them, and depersonalizing or dehumanizing them in an emotionally charged manner. As far as I can see, it is not possible for us to conceive of another person as morally insignificant and as having no moral claim on us out of sheer ignorance. Rather, to do this, we would have to repress our moral understanding of her, and conceive of her in terms of some depersonalizing or dehumanizing image – racist, classist, sexist, or whatever – that would cover up her personal humanity. In this, our conception would not be one of good faith, such that we would calmly treat the other as a nonperson while being open to and curious about the possibility of her being a full human being after all. Because we would at a certain basic level be denying her humanity, our attitude to her would be laden with some blend of bad conscience and hostility. So, what should we think about the fact that very often we fail to relate to others with understanding and love? What about the fact that world history, including the present, is full of societies and groups that collectively and routinely dehumanize certain kinds of people? In themselves, such facts are no proof that moral understanding of others is not always

76  Fredrik Westerlund possible. Rather, it seems that in order to correctly describe and make sense of the experiences and attitudes in question we need to conceive of them in terms of repression of always available possibilities of understanding. What, I want to propose, the record of our moral failures really attests to is the difficulty of moral understanding and love, and the easiness of repression. What makes moral understanding difficult is, above all, that it stands in a conflictual relationship to our desire for social affirmation. From the point of view of this powerful desire, the possibility of loving understanding basically appears dangerous and unsettling because it requires that we relate to and care about others regardless of how this affects our sense of our social worth. Indeed, the desire for social affirmation can in itself be a motive for devaluing certain groups of people in order to assert or promote one’s own value, and for further dehumanizing these others to cover up the moral corruption of one’s devaluations. Moreover, our repressive and dehumanizing conceptions of others can become normalized and institutionalized, such that they might govern the understandings and values and norms of societies for centuries. So, clearly, moral understanding is a difficult, sometimes a highly difficult, task. Nevertheless, it is always present as the possibility that explains both our possible goodness and our moral failures. According to the analysis just presented, our loving understanding of others as significant is nothing less than the ultimate source of moral normativity and motivation. It is precisely this moral understanding that makes it possible for us to apprehend and judge various values, norms, goals, and actions in terms of their moral significance. A value or an action may strike as morally good or true insofar as it expresses or serves what our loving understanding of others gives us to see. Conversely, it may strike us as evil and untrue if it distorts or counteracts this basic understanding. However, although our moral understanding provides the light that guides our moral deliberation and choosing, it does not in itself supply any specific directives for how we ought to act and choose in our lives with others (cf. Løgstrup 1997, 44–45), for instance, for how we should choose our life paths and central responsibilities, or for how we should act in relation to specific others in specific situations. These are and remain open questions that each individual has to answer for herself and that can only be answered in a morally responsible way by reflecting, with moral understanding, on the given realities and possibilities of our relations to particular others, of our society and the world at large, and of our own self and life. What I have here described as moral normativity must be sharply distinguished from another kind of normative force with which it is regularly confused: the normative force issuing from our desire for social affirmation. Philosophers have in general agreed that our concern for what others think about us and for our social standing is not a moral motive in the proper sense of the word. However, as a rule, they have

What Is Moral Normativity?  77 failed to recognize and scrutinize how deep this motive tends to extend into our self-understanding and identity. I think there can be little doubt that our desire for social affirmation to a great extent underlies our experience of communal values and norms as normatively pressing. It is one of our most basic and strongest desires. We long for being accepted and affirmed by others in our reference groups; conversely, we dread the prospect of being met with hostility, contempt, hatred, and violence by others. The urge for affirmation goes deep in us and accounts for much of the emotional charge that normally accompanies our self-perception and self-evaluation. As humans, we have a basic capacity for social self-consciousness; that is, we have an ability to sense – more or less accurately – how other people see us and judge us, and how we appear in their eyes. Even when no others are present, we can perceive and evaluate our self in terms of the social worth and affirmability of our appearance. And what we experience in this respect is prone to engender powerful emotions in us. When we see ourselves as affirmable and admirable, we feel pride and self-esteem. However, when we perceive ourselves as socially worthless and despicable, we are overcome by painful feelings of shame and self-loathing.7 As said, the desire for affirmation is a primary motive that accounts for why the values and norms of our community tend to wield strong normative force on us. From the perspective of this desire, communal values and norms appear as the standards that we have to follow if we are to gain social affirmation. Hence, we are also inclined to appropriate them as measures that determine our emotionally charged evaluation of our social worth. Furthermore, the urge for affirmation tends to be a central motivating force in our formation of our identity: our conception of who we, ideally, are. To the extent that it drives our identity-formation, we develop our identity by appropriating values and ideals, which, if realized in real life, promise to make us socially affirmable and respectable. Our identity, understood in this sense, functions as the bearer of our trust in our ability to gain social affirmation. Hence, we strongly feel that we need to live up to the values and ideals of our identity in our actual actions and attitudes. When we manage to do this, we feel pride and confidence in our capacity for achieving affirmation. By contrast, when we fail to do – or do the opposite of – what our values demand, our trust in our capacity for achieving affirmation is undermined and we see ourselves as shameful losers (cf. Westerlund 2019a; 2019b). We can now see that our urge for social affirmation is indeed a powerful motive that makes us responsive to the normative force of the values of our communities and identities. However, is this motive a source of genuine moral claims? No. What makes our desire for social affirmation fundamentally deficient from a moral point of view is that insofar as we are only moved by this motive, our attitude is fundamentally egocentric.8 What we care about in

78  Fredrik Westerlund caring about social affirmation is ultimately ourselves: our own prospects for achieving affirmation and the affirmability of our appearance. At the same time, the attitude is collectivist in the sense that we are concerned about how others think about us and judge us, and we are prone to succumb to the judgements and values of our social groups in order to achieve affirmation from them. However, in caring about what others think about us we do not care about them as concrete persons. Rather, we only care about them in their capacity as the audience that judges us and that we feel we must win over. Let me illuminate the difference between moral understanding and the desire for affirmation by way of an example. Say that a colleague of mine is being bullied. Out of fear of how my other colleagues might react, I  refrain from intervening and try to bypass or suppress what is going on. However, let us say that I am overcome with bad conscience, and that I approach the situation with moral understanding: I recognize and care about the plight of my colleague – and hopefully also about the bullies – and try to help out the best as I can. Compare this with a scenario in which I react with shame rooted in my desire for affirmation. Given that I have invested this desire, for example, in my sense of myself as a good and courageous person who intervenes in situations like this, I feel shame over my failure to live up to these values of my identity. In this, I perceive myself as a non-affirmable moral failure. The crucial thing to notice is that if no moral understanding and concern is involved in the latter scenario, my shame-inducing perception of my moral worthlessness is egocentrically motivated and lacks any sense of the moral significance of the situation. Clearly, both our concerned moral understanding and our desire for affirmation may be present in us at the same time and interact with each other in complex ways. However, they are radically different motives that fuel different kinds of emotional states. Whereas the former motivates emotions in which we are concerned about the other and our relationship to her, such as bad conscience, remorse, and sympathetic sorrow and joy, the latter motivates emotions in which we are concerned about the affirmability of our self, such as shame, self-esteem, and self-respect. Finally, the above reflections raise the question regarding the possible extent to which Neo-Kantian – and other – conceptions of morality in terms of obligating authority unwittingly presuppose the desire for social affirmation and shame as their attitudinal-emotional setting. Notice that from the viewpoint of the desire for affirmation, morality typically addresses us precisely as a judging authority that – whether in the form of judging others or in the form of our own self-judgment – assesses our worth and tells us what we must do if we are to avoid shame. To what extent is this the unclarified attitudinal-emotional setting of philosophies that conceive of morality in terms of authority – even when the authority in question is thought to derive from God, reason, or the other person?

What Is Moral Normativity?  79 Although the question cannot be answered here and must be left open, I want to announce that I do believe that this is very commonly the case. As already mentioned, Korsgaard recurrently refers to shame as the emotional backdrop of her conception of normativity as authority. However, insofar as our experience of morality as an obligating authority is determined by the urge for social affirmation, it will be egocentrically motivated and morally empty.

5 Korsgaard’s Theory of Moral Normativity: A Short Critique Let me end with a very brief critique of Korsgaard’s attempt to answer the normative question in The Sources of Normativity. Following Kant, Korsgaard contends that the human will can only be obligated by its own laws, laws that derive from the principles of practical reason. However, in contrast to Kant, who grounds obligation in the universal concepts of pure reason, Korsgaard holds that all normativity stems from the practical identities that we are committed to (cf. also Korsgaard 2009, 18–25).9 By practical identity, she means “a description under which you value yourself” and “find your life to be worth living” (Korsgaard 1996, 101). Typically, people have many such identities, such as being a parent, a member of a certain profession, a member of an ethnic group, a good friend, a moral person. Our practical identities tell us what we have reason to do and what we must not do if we are to be a person with the identity in question. According to Korsgaard, our most important conceptions of ourselves give rise to unconditional obligations that we cannot violate without “loss of identity” (Korsgaard 1996, 102). As Korsgaard is aware, the argument given so far does nothing to establish the ground of moral normativity in particular (Korsgaard 1996, 103). It only aims to show that normative obligations in general derive from our practical identities. To establish the source of moral normativity, Korsgaard provides a transcendental argument that purports to show that we must value our humanity as such. She articulates the argument as follows: To have any reasons to act and to live at all, “you must be governed by some conception of your practical identity” (Korsgaard 1996, 120). However, “this reason for conforming to your practical identities is not a reason that springs from one of those particular practical identities.” Rather, it springs from “your identity simply as a human being, a reflective animal who needs reasons to act.” Hence, “it is a reason you have only if you treat your humanity as a practical, normative, form of identity, that is, if you value yourself as a human being” (Korsgaard 1996, 121). Since we cannot act without reasons, we have to value our humanity as such, and, on pain of contradiction, the humanity of others, too (cf. Korsgaard 1996, 121, 131–166). According to Korsgaard, to value our humanity is to commit to a moral identity as “one who values her humanity”

80  Fredrik Westerlund (Korsgaard 1996, 129), an identity that carries with it its own reasons and obligations and “exerts a kind governing role” (Korsgaard 1996, 130) over our other identities. Let us, before proceeding, notice that Korsgaard’s formulation of her argument for the necessity of valuing one’s humanity is ambivalent and in fact contains two arguments that are not clearly distinguished. On the one hand, we have the argument that our human nature as self-reflective animals makes it necessary for us to have some practical identity in order to have reasons to act. However, this argument – even if correct, which is doubtful (cf. Cohen 1996, 185) – says nothing about why we are to value our humanity or commit to it as a practical identity. The argument does not say that we must value our humanity in order to have reasons to act. According to the argument, any identity, regardless of its specific content, can supply such reasons. Moreover, the argument can be understood and accepted without any commitment to our humanity as a practical identity. Indeed, the structure of human nature that the argument claims to establish is not something we could commit to as another practical identity that would furnish us with particular normative reasons and obligations that we would be required to comply with in order to live up to that identity. Whatever we would do, we would act according to this structure (cf. Crowell 2007, 325; Smith 2012, 30–34). On the other hand, Korsgaard advances the argument that everything we value is somehow derived from and dependent on the value we place on our humanity. Referring, affirmatively, to Kant, she writes: “we take things to be important because they are important to us”; hence, “we must (…) take ourselves to be important” (Korsgaard 1996, 122). Or, as she also puts it: “You must value your own humanity if you are to value anything at all” (Korsgaard 1996, 123). This argument exceeds and is independent of the above argument that rational action requires practical identities. Still, since for Korsgaard all reasons have to be anchored in our practical identities, our valuing of our humanity must also become part of an identity in order to have a normative grip on us. This then warrants Korsgaard to conclude that to value anything at all we must commit to a moral practical identity as persons for whom valuing humanity is the central task. So, does Korsgaard’s theory account for the sources of moral normativity? Here, I can only gesture towards what I see as the main problems of her theory. From the perspective outlined above, Korsgaard’s attempt to find the sources of moral normativity in the self-reflective structure of the human mind must be seen as predicated on a denial of the genuine source of moral demands: our understanding and concern about others as important. Hence, we can expect it not to lead us to the sources of morality but only to other nonmoral reasons and motives. Let us look, first, at Korsgaard’s idea of practical identity as the source of all normativity, and, second, at her argument that we must value our humanity.

What Is Moral Normativity?  81 As concerns the question of moral normativity, the basic problem with Korsgaard’s grounding of all normativity in our practical identities is that it makes our motivating reasons for being moral egocentric and amoral.10 The analysis developed above helps us see the problem by allowing us to distinguish between two different ways in which we can be motivated by the possible moral values and norms of our practical identities. On the one hand, we can be motivated by genuine moral reasons and motives: by our moral understanding of others, and, in the light of this understanding, by our grasp of the various moral reasons and demands facing us in our life and by our effort to pursue tasks and responsibilities that we believe will make for a good moral life. Such reasons may to varying degrees motivate us to want to be, say, a good parent, an honest person, or a doctor. Insofar as this is the case, we are motivated by the moral reasons informing our identity without this involving any further concern about living up to the identity for its own sake. Here, our practical identity is morally important to us only as a way of and means for pursuing moral goals that are independent of that identity. On the other hand, we can be motivated by a desire to preserve and live up to our practical identity as an end in itself. However, to the extent that this is our motive, and no moral understanding is involved, we are only egocentrically concerned about maintaining a certain image and view of ourselves. Of course, these different motives can be – and typically are – at work in us at the same time. However, morally speaking, they are essentially different. The problem with Korsgaard’s theory is that her grounding of moral normativity in our practical identity appeals only to the amoral motive above. Having denied the possibility of unreflectively experiencing others as morally important and normative beings, she is forced to claim that the normative grip of morality must stem purely from our concern about preserving – and our fear of losing – our practical identity: “An obligation always takes the form of a reaction against a threat of a loss of identity” (Korsgaard 1996, 102). However, what this means is that our motives for succumbing to what Korsgaard portrays as the normative force of morality are in effect nonmoral. Korsgaard does not say anything about our motive for being concerned about – and fearing the loss of – our practical identity for its own sake, over and beyond our identity-transcending moral motives for living a morally good life. This is no surprise, given that the persuasiveness of her theory depends on her not clearly distinguishing between these motives. However, as previously maintained, Korsgaard’s descriptions of the emotional charge and effects pertaining to our experiences of moral normativity strongly indicate that shame – and, more generally, the shame-family of emotions – functions as the unclarified emotional paradigm guiding her theory of normativity: the emotional price we pay for moral failure is to be “ashamed” of ourselves and to see ourselves as “worthless and unlovely specimens of humanity” (Korsgaard 1996, 11). In fact, both Korsgaard’s notion of morality as obligating authority and

82  Fredrik Westerlund her idea of our practical identities as the source of normativity depict features that are characteristic of our experience of shame. However, as argued above, the shame-family of emotions is essentially rooted in our desire for social affirmation, which means that the perspective of shame is in itself egocentric and morally sightless. What about Korsgaard’s transcendental argument that we must value our humanity and adopt a moral identity? Korsgaard’s claim is that “[y]ou must value your own humanity if you are to value anything at all.” From this, she states, “it follows (…) that human beings are valuable” (Korsgaard 1996, 123). However, nothing of the kind follows.11 If one were to ask Korsgaard for a reason for why we should value anything at all, and, hence, value our humanity, she would have no answer to give. In fact, she admits as much in her discussion of suicide, where she describes the basic choice to value life instead of committing suicide as a choice that in a sense takes place prior to good and evil, and which is the “condition of all value” (Korsgaard 1996, 162). Remember that the starting point of Korsgaard’s argument is that we supposedly lack any unreflective experience of human beings as morally valuable and normative. Hence, it remains incomprehensible why we should value our humanity or how such a groundless act of valuing – whatever this might mean – could generate anything like moral understanding of others. Nothing of what Korsgaard says demonstrates, or points to any experience that would give us to understand, that human beings are morally important and normative. Moreover, even supposing that Korsgaard’s argument for why humans are valuable would be successful, her insistence that all normativity is grounded in our commitment to our practical identities would ego-centricize our motives for being moral. It would imply that in order for our valuing of humanity to have moral normative force for us, we would have to be motivated, not by the value of human beings but by our concern about our moral identity as moral persons who value such beings.

6 Conclusion The primary aim of this chapter has been to open up a set of questions rather than provide conclusive answers to them. By way of a critique of Korsgaard, which exposed the underlying and problematic presuppositions of her normative question, I argued for the need to phenomenologically pursue the question about the experiential sources of moral normativity: How do we experience and understand morality as in some sense normative? This kind of inquiry, I argued, must include reflection on the difference between genuine moral normativity and other kinds of nonmoral normativity that tend to get confused with morality. It had also better attend to the moral-existential challenges involved in the very task of explicating the normativity of morality.

What Is Moral Normativity?  83 To further motivate the need to pursue these questions, and to suggest a direction for clarifying them, I outlined a phenomenological alternative to Korsgaard’s account. I suggested that the source of genuine moral normativity lies in our understanding of other persons as irreducible significant beings, an understanding that essentially involves and demands our concern for others. I contrasted genuine moral normativity to the kind of normative force that issues from our desire for social affirmation, suggesting that our susceptibility to the latter sort of normativity is egocentric and morally blind. Finally, I offered a critique of Korsgaard’s theory of the sources of moral normativity, arguing that it fails to account for the sources of truly moral normativity and understanding.

Notes 1 In this text, I will primarily focus on The Sources of Normativity. In her more recent book, Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity from 2009, Korsgaard further develops her argument for her conception of moral normativity by focusing on the question of agency, of how we constitute ourselves through our actions. 2 In addition to this, Korsgaard offers an argument to the effect that the normative question is enabled and prompted by the self-conscious nature of the human mind. She contends that our capacity to distance ourselves from and reflect on our unreflective beliefs and motives implies that we can always call them into question and ask whether they are true and justified: “We can (…) always ask: but is this really true? and must I really do this?” (Korsgaard 1996, 47). However, this argument does not show that it is possible to sincerely doubt the normativity of morality (cf. Crowell 2007, 321). Even though our capacity for self-reflection opens up the possibility of critically interrogating the reasons and justifications for our various beliefs and inclinations, it does not as such say anything about what we can seriously doubt. Generally speaking, the grounds that determine what we can believe and doubt in good faith lie in the relevant experiences and understandings that support and justify our different beliefs about the world. 3 In Westerlund (2020, 195–205), I treat these issues through a critique of Heidegger. 4 My perspective on loving understanding of others as the source of morality has also been significantly influenced by the work of my colleagues Joel Backström (2007) and Hannes Nykänen (2002). 5 Robert Stern has argued, I think convincingly, that Løgstrup’s criticism is applicable to Darwall and, to some extent, to Levinas (Stern 2019a; 2019b). Smith, in his phenomenological critique of Korsgaard, attempts to overcome the “solipsism” (Smith 2012, 36–39) of her account by following Darwall and Levinas in arguing that the ground of moral normativity lies in the “moral authority of other persons to make demands on us” (Smith 2012, 5). In this, Smith does not question and remains bound by Korsgaard’s notion of normativity as obligating authority. The Kantian conception of morality in terms of law-like imperatives and obligations that compel us regardless of our inclinations has also been extensively criticized by Scheler ([1913/1916] 1973). 6 For a recent treatment of different phenomenological approaches to and analyses of dehumanization, see Heinämaa and Jardine (2021).

84  Fredrik Westerlund 7 In Westerlund (2019a), I provide a phenomenological analysis of shame as rooted in the desire for social affirmation and conditioned by our capacity for social self-consciousness. For kindred approaches cf., Sartre ([1943] 2003); Zahavi (2014); Montes-Sánchez (2015); Rochat (2009). 8 For an excellent critique of the moral problems linked to the desire for social affirmation, see Frederick Neuhouser’s (2008) book in which he explicates and elaborates on Rousseau’s critical view of “amour-propre.” However, although Neuhouser lays bare many of the destructive tendencies of the drive for recognition and affirmation, it seems to me he does not quite capture what I suggest is the fundamental egocentrism and moral blindness of this drive. Shame has been criticized for being an egocentric and morally deficient emotion by, e.g., Adkins (1960), Nussbaum (2004), Tangney (1991). 9 For arguments as to how Korsgaard’s view differs from Kant’s, see Cohen (1996, 170–174), and Geuss (1996, 189–194). 10 A similar criticism to the effect that Korsgaard’s anchoring of the normative force of morality in our practical identities makes our motive for being moral egoistic has previously been put forward by Nagel (1996, 206–207). 11 Korsgaard’s transcendental argument for the necessity of valuing humanity as such – our own and that of others – has been criticized from many different angles (see, e.g., Cohen 1996, 185–186; FitzPatrick 2005; Cohon 2000). For some – partial – defenses of Korsgaard’s argument, see Gibbard (1999); Stern (2010).

References Adkins, Arthur W.H. 1960. Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Backström, Joel. 2007. “The Fear of Openness: An Essay on Friendship and the Roots of Morality.” Doctoral dissertation. Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press. Cohen, G.A. 1996. “Reason, Humanity, and the Moral Law.” In Christine M. Korsgaard: The Sources of Normativity, 167–188. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cohon, Rachel. 2000. “The Roots of Reason.” The Philosophical Review 109, no. 1 (January): 63–85. Crowell, Steven. 2007. “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein? Heidegger and Korsgaard on the Sources of Normativity.” European Journal of Philosophy 15, no. 3 (December): 315–333. Reprinted as “The Existential Sources of Normativity” in Steven Crowell, Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger, 239–260. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Darwall, Stephen. 2006. The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. FitzPatrick, William J. 2005. “The Practical Turn in Ethical Theory: Korsgaard’s Constructivism, Realism, and the Nature of Normativity.” Ethics 115, no. 4 (July): 651–691. Gaita, Raimond. 2000. A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice. London: Routledge. Geuss, Raymond. 1996. “Morality and Identity.” In Christine M. Korsgaard: The Sources of Normativity, 189–199. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gibbard, Allan. 1999. “Morality as Consistency in Living: Korsgaard’s Kantian Lectures.” Ethics 110, no. 1 (October): 140–164.

What Is Moral Normativity?  85 Heinämaa, Sara, and James Jardine. 2021. “Objectification, Inferiorization, and Projection in Phenomenological Research on Dehumanization.” In The Routledge Handbook on Dehumanization, ed. Maria Kronfeldner, 309–325. London: Routledge. Korsgaard, Christine M. 1996. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Korsgaard, Christine M. 2008. “Realism and Constructivism in TwentiethCentury Moral Philosophy.” In The Constitution of Agency: Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology, 302–326. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Korsgaard, Christine M. 2009. Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Originally published in 1961. Løgstrup, Knud Ejler. 1997. The Ethical Demand. Trans. Theodor I. Jensen and Gary Puckering. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Løgstrup, Knud Ejler. 2007. Beyond the Ethical Demand. Trans. Susan Dew and Heidi Flegal. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Montes-Sánchez, Alba. 2015. “Shame and the Internalized Other.” Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics 17, no. 2: 180–199. Nagel, Thomas. 1996. “Universality and the Reflective Self.” In Christine M. Korsgaard: The Sources of Normativity, 200–209. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Neuhouser, Frederick. 2008. Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2004. Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nykänen, Hannes. 2002. “The ‘I’, the ‘You’ and the Soul: An Ethics of Conscience.” Doctoral Dissertation. Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press. Okrent, Mark. 1999. “Heidegger and Korsgaard on Human Reflection.” Philosophical Topics 27, no. 2 (Fall): 47–76. Rochat, Philippe. 2009. Others in Mind: Social Origins of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 2003. Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. London: Routledge. Originally published in 1943. Scheler, Max. 1973. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Trans. Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Originally published in 1913/1916. Scheler, Max. 2008. The Nature of Sympathy. Trans. Peter Heath. London: Routledge. Originally published in 1913/1923. Smith, William Hosmer. 2012. The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity. London: Routledge. Stern, Robert. 2010. “The Value of Humanity: Reflections of Korsgaard’s Transcendental Argument.” In Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism, eds. Joel Smith and Peter Sullivan, 74–95. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stern, Robert. 2019a. The Radical Demand in Løgstrup’s Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

86  Fredrik Westerlund Stern, Robert. 2019b. “Levinas, Darwall, and Løgstrup on Second-Personal Ethics: Command or Responsibility.” In The Oxford Handbook of Levinas, ed. Michael L. Morgan, 303–320. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tangney, June P. 1991. “Moral Affect: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 61, no. 4 (October): 598–607. Velleman, J. David. 1999. “Love as a Moral Emotion.” Ethics 109, no. 2 (January): 338–374. Reprinted in J. David Velleman, Self to Self: Selected Essays, 70–109. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Westerlund, Fredrik. 2019a. “To See Oneself as Seen by Others: A Phenomenological Analysis of the Interpersonal Motives and Structure of Shame.” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 50, no. 1 (May): 60–89. Westerlund, Fredrik. 2019b. “Who Wants to Be Understood? The Desire for Social Affirmation and the Existential Challenge of Self-Understanding.” In Moral Foundations of Philosophy of Mind, eds. Joel Backström, Hannes Nykänen, Niklas Toivakainen, and Thomas Wallgren, 309–327. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Westerlund, Fredrik. 2020. Heidegger and the Problem of Phenomena. London: Bloomsbury. Zahavi, Dan. 2014. Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

4 Husserl on Specifically Normative Concepts Andrea Staiti

[T]hus, we have found the place of origin of all normative concepts and the originary field of all normative judgments and assertions: it is the field of ideal meanings, of posits. (Husserl 2004, 273)

1 Introduction In the past few years, the topic of normativity has gained sustained attention among phenomenologists. This new development followed the publication of Steven Crowell’s seminal study Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger (2013), where the author articulates a broad and ambitious conception of the significance of normativity for phenomenology as a theory of meaning. The scholarship that emerged in the wake of Crowell’s book variously responded to the “normative turn” that he advocates (Burch, Marsh, and McMullin 2019), and explored, among other things, the role of normativity in perception (Doyon and Breyer 2015; Doyon in this volume), the foundational relation between the theoretical and the normative (Iocco 2016), and the possibility of interpreting essences and eidetic laws as norms (Carta 2021). One missing reference in the debate, however, is a key text in which Husserl presents at some length a theory of what he calls “specifically normative predicates” (spezifisch normative Prädikate) and in so doing outlines a highly original conception of normativity in general. Given that predicates are the objective correlates of concepts, I will henceforth privilege the meaning-side of the correlation and talk about specifically normative concepts. Specifically normative concepts are concepts, such as true, good, and beautiful, that seem to lack descriptive content and express a pure evaluation. In contemporary metaethics they are often referred to as “thin” concepts, as opposed to “thick” concepts such as generous, harmonious, elegant, etc. Significantly, however, Husserl includes among specifically normative concepts existent, thus exploding the received characterization of normative concepts as involving at least implicitly an ought. Already at first glance, then, Husserl’s treatment of DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740-6

88  Andrea Staiti normativity is highly original and departs from standard conceptions in the contemporary debate. The text upon which I will focus has been published (oddly enough) as an appendix to Husserl’s lectures Introduction to Ethics from 1920 and 1924 (Einleitung in die Ethik, Husserl 2004) with the misleading title “Nature and spirit” (Natur und Geist). As a matter of fact, however, this text is an integral part of Husserl’s lectures, and it focuses on the distinction between the normative and the non-normative, from which the ensuing distinction between spirit and nature is derived. Perhaps it is due to the lack of prominence of this and other Husserlian texts that deal explicitly with normativity that Crowell, whose analyses draw on an impressive range of primary sources, writes about Husserl (and Heidegger): “[E]ach contributed phenomenological analyses to the elucidation of meaning’s normative aspect, neither formulated the issues in precisely this way” (Crowell 2013, 3). By contrast, I will argue in what follows that Husserl formulates the issue precisely in terms of normativity and the condition of possibility of a normative stance on the world. Husserl’s analysis does not however seek “the normative conditions on meaning or intentionality” (Crowell 2013, 3) but rather the reverse. It is intentionality and its transcendental structure that create the conditions for normativity to arise and meaning to have a purchase on the world. Normativity is not a transcendental condition of intentionality. Rather, it is a derivative phenomenon, whose origin can be traced back to more elementary phenomena, in particular, the structure of empty and fulfilled intentions in the context of positional consciousness. A response to Crowell on normativity and intentionality that takes intentionality to be the fundamental phenomenon has been proposed by John Drummond (2019) and in this respect the line of argument in the present chapter is consistent with Drummond’s. In a similar vein, Sara Heinämaa argues that, from a Husserlian standpoint, normativity is grounded in “the idea that all intentionality involves acts of intending that necessarily are either fulfilled or disappointed” (Heinämaa 2019, 9). However, both Drummond and Heinämaa spell out this idea in terms of the teleology of intentional acts, i.e., the fact that intentionality is “ordered toward fulfillment” (Drummond 2019, 107), such that the possibility of norms is traced back to the “anticipatory structures of intending” (Heinämaa 2019, 9) that are involved already at the most basic level of sensory perception. These remarks bring to light an important feature of intentionality, but for the sake of precision one should hasten to add: of positional intentionality, i.e., of a modality of consciousness that posits something as being. Only in a positional context, ranging from the passive exposure to a sensory salience, to simple perception, and all the way up to judgment, does the ideal ordering of intentionality toward intuitive consciousness take on a genuine anticipatory structure beyond mere protention. A commitment to things being a certain way needs to be in place in order for intentional

Husserl on Specifically Normative Concepts  89 consciousness to be ordered toward actual fulfillment, i.e., toward evidential seeing that things are the way they were taken to be. The opening epigraph already anticipates in a nutshell Husserl’s position: the place of origin (Ursprungsstätte) of all normative concepts and forms of predication is the field of ideal meanings qua posited, i.e., qua constitutive parts of posits or “Sätze” as Husserl calls them.1 In particular, specifically normative concepts do not pick out predicates of ordinary objects, but of posits or Sätze. Satz is a concept that features prominently in Ideas I and whose relevance to clarify the origin of normative concepts will be discussed in the next sections of the present chapter. For introductory purposes, let us just note that Husserl’s insistence on posits as the place of origin of normative concepts and predications rules out from the sphere of normativity all those forms of intentional consciousness that do not include posits or, to be more precise, only include neutralized posits. Despite its undeniable intentional structure, non-positional consciousness, such as pure imagination, is non-committal about being and thus it does not and cannot have an anticipatory or teleological structure that creates the conditions for normativity. Non-positional intentional consciousness is not ordered toward anything, therefore it cannot involve any kind of normativity based on emptiness and fulfilment.2 The centaur that I freely fantasize about cannot be held up to normative standards, it cannot “succeed or fail” at being a centaur, or actually turn out to be a satyr. What can happen is that I can stop imagining a centaur and start imagining a satyr, instead, or else imagine a protean creature that turns from centaur to satyr. To be sure, an imaginative act can be more or less intuitive, i.e., the imagined object can be more or less richly characterized, and in that sense the act can have more or less fullness to it. In imagination, it is also possible to produce semblances of anticipation and confirmation of a given intention, but in none of these scenarios can there be a question of legitimacy of our intending the object as being in a particular way, i.e., in a certain perspective of meaning (Sinn) that further experience can potentially enrich or dissolve. In non-positional consciousness emptiness and fulfilment do not involve confirmation or disappointment, and hence there are no normative standards against which to measure the success or failure at grasping a certain object. To put the point in a slogan: no positing, no norms.3 If these considerations are correct, then they have significant consequences: normativity cannot be a feature of intentionality in general, but only of positional intentionality. Consequently, there has to be something specific about positional intentionality that creates the conditions for normativity to arise: the possibility of normativity is to be located in the difference between the posit (Satz) and the actual object or state of affairs intended through the posit. Intentional teleology and the norms that guide it only exist by virtue of the gap between the posit and the actual object. Specifically normative concepts (such as true, good, and beautiful,

90  Andrea Staiti and cognate terms such as “existent”), do not pick out real properties of actual objects (and states of affairs), but rather express properties of posits (Sätze), and, in particular, of objects considered purely as intended and posited through posits (Sätze). Such specifically normative concepts express the fact that the object which is meant and posited is also intuitively given in precisely the way it is posited. The most remarkable aspect of this analysis is that it involves a redrawing of the received lines of demarcation of normative theory, such as fact/norm, being/ought, and value/reality. First, on Husserl’s account, norms are not merely juxtaposed to facts but are also conceptually distinguished from eidetic necessities (the concept of Sache, which Husserl counterposes to Norm, encompasses both empirical facts (Tat-Sachen) and eidetic relations). Second, existence itself is a specifically normative predicate. Third, values are real, i.e., they can be apprehended in a purely non-normative (sachlich) manner as much as physical or psychical realities. Thus, values do not automatically imply normativity, unless we consider them purely qua value-posits and measure them up against actual values that the value-posits under scrutiny claim to capture. In what follows, I will take up Husserl’s painstaking analyses, in order to establish the three points just mentioned. I will start with a brief consideration of Husserl’s first treatment of normativity in the Prolegomena and argue that it is insufficient, because it is restricted to normative judgments. Husserl needs to take normative concepts into account. In the second section, I will turn to Husserl’s text in Introduction to Ethics and elucidate his analysis of normative concepts as expressing predicates of posits (Sätze). In the third section, I will then conclude with some considerations about the originality and promise of Husserl’s theory of normative concepts for metanormative theory in general. Normativity is a highly contested concept, and it is unclear that its various and partly equivocal usages can be traced back to one fundamental idea or distinction.4 The focus of this chapter is on the origin of basic normative concepts according to Husserl. It does not rule out more informal ordinary usages of the concept of norm, but if Husserl’s analysis does capture an important basic feature of the kind of intentionality involved whenever normative claims are made, then it does aim to replace undisciplined usage of the concept of norm at least among phenomenologists.

2 Normative Judgments and Normative Concepts The most prominent text in which Husserl tackles the problem of normativity is arguably Chapter 2 of the Prolegomena to a Pure Logic (Husserl 2004). Here the focus is on those disciplines that present themselves as sets of rules that are meant to guide a certain human activity, i.e., Kunstlehren. Husserl’s critical target is the widely spread idea of logic as a Kunstlehre, that is, a practical discipline whose function is to provide

Husserl on Specifically Normative Concepts  91 orientation to human thinking. Husserl defines the normative sciences as the sciences whose laws “tell us (…) what shall or should be” (Husserl 2004, 33), as opposed to the theoretical sciences that “merely tell us what is” (Husserl 2004, 34). Husserl’s argument is that all normative sciences are necessarily grounded in corresponding theoretical sciences and this thesis is established through an analysis of normative judgments and their form. Normative judgments express a demand, even when they do so impersonally. The legitimacy of such a demand, however, necessarily refers back to a value-judgment whose validity is independent of any consideration of demands. Husserl’s example is as follows: If we say “a soldier should be brave”, this does not mean that we or anyone else are wishing or willing, commanding or requiring this. (…) “A soldier should be brave” rather means that only a brave soldier is a “good” soldier (…). Since this value-judgment holds, everyone is entitled to demand of a soldier that he should be brave (…). (Husserl 2004, 34) On the basis of this consideration Husserl argues that all valid normative propositions, i.e., ought-propositions, depend on corresponding valid theoretical propositions, i.e., is-propositions, as their foundations. In his words: “Every normative discipline demands that we know certain non-normative truths” (Husserl 2004, 39), i.e., truths of the form “Only an A that is B has the properties C” (Husserl 2004, 38), where C is supposed to specify the content of “good” for the sphere of reality or being under scrutiny. While this analysis has some undeniable plausibility, it is far from providing a satisfactory solution to the problem of normativity. It merely shows the convertibility of ought-propositions into corresponding ispropositions, but it fails to indicate the principle that makes that convertibility possible. Let us consider proposition (1n) “A soldier should be brave” and convert it into its theoretical counterpart (1t) “Only a brave soldier is a good soldier.” It is plain that the normative element in (1n), is merely relocated in (1t)’s content, i.e., it is transposed in the adjective “good.” The complete translation of the normative element in (1n) into a non-normative truth would only succeed if, as Husserl seems to believe, we could really specify the content of “good” in (1t) in non-normative terms as “having the properties C.” In this case, “good” would only be a shorthand term for a bundle of properties that presumably already includes property B, thus giving us a surprising and hardly convincing result that all normative judgments are, to some extent, tautological. For if we could specify non-normatively the content of “good” when it is referred to soldiers, then “brave” would certainly have to be included in the list of specifications and, as a result, (1t) would have to be reformulated as “Only a brave soldier is a brave (and obedient, and selfless, and patriotic, etc.) soldier.” This is evidently not the thought that the proposition (1t) expresses.

92  Andrea Staiti We thus have to conclude that “good” in (1t) is not specifiable in terms of a non-normative set of properties C, as Husserl would have it, and that, consequently, the normative nature of (1t) remains unaffected by the switch of the judgment form.5 Pace Husserl, both (1n) and (1t) are normative propositions: (1n) has a normative form (“should”), whereas (1n) has a theoretical form (“is”) and a normative content. The convertibility of normative judgments into theoretical judgments thus turns out to be understandable, but ultimately trivial. It does not amount to grounding the normative in the theoretical. When we convert normative judgments into theoretical judgments as Husserl does, we merely transpose their normative element from form to content, and, provided that the meaning of the adjective “good” cannot be specified through a list of non-normative properties, such transposition is far from constituting a philosophical grounding of normative propositions in non-normative, theoretical propositions. In light of this result, we need to turn our attention from normative judgments to normative concepts. What is required in order to ground normativity is a theory that clarifies the meaning of “good” in (1t) and similar propositions whose content includes cognate normative notions, such as beautiful, rightful, correct, etc. All these notions are purely evaluative, i.e., for instance, when we say that “Only a brave soldier is a good soldier,” we do not mean that a soldier who is brave also has, in addition to that property, a second property necessarily connected with it (Geach 1956), as we would if we said, for instance, “Only a brave soldier is a reliable soldier.” It seems that what we are saying in (1t) is that a brave soldier conforms to the ideal of a soldier, again, he is the way a soldier should be. But what does that mean? And how can this rather perplexing thought receive phenomenological clarification?

3 Specifically Normative Concepts as Predicates of Sätze Let us now turn to the text from Husserl’s lectures on ethics where he introduces his account of specifically normative concepts. Husserl begins by highlighting the difference between two ways of issuing judgments about objects, relations, and properties. The first he dubs “material” (sachlich), or, as he renames it in a footnote “ontic” (ontisch) (Husserl 2004, 259), the second he refers to as “critical” (kritisch) (Husserl 2004, 259). In the first mode of judging, we set out to determine (bestimmen) things (Sachen) in the broadest possible sense (including also the psychological and the ideal), we thus operate with what Husserl calls “Sachbegriffe,” a difficult term to translate, but perhaps, following Husserl’s suggestion in the abovementioned footnote, best rendered as “ontic concepts.” In the second mode of judging, we operate with rational concepts (Vernunftbegriffe) and we set out to criticize, i.e., to subject whatever claims we stake out in the first mode of judging to critical

Husserl on Specifically Normative Concepts  93 scrutiny. It is crucial to note that Husserl here is not reiterating with different labels his well-known distinctions between facts and essences. Ontic concepts (Sachbegriffe) are not employed to determine just facts (Tat-Sachen), but also eidetic relations. The distinction between ontic and rational concepts and, correspondingly, between ontic and rational attitude thus cuts across the distinction between facts and essences, and the corresponding attitudes.6 Husserl is explicit on this point, he writes that such “ontic [sachliche] manner of consideration and judgment” can be “either empirical or a priori” (Husserl 2004, 260), and he asks how it is possible for there to be, beside the ontic, another way of considering and judging things: “how is it possible for objects to fall into the sphere of influence of such non-ontic [außersachliche] concepts and how is it ultimately possible for all sorts of objects to be subject to normative judgmental evaluation [Beurteilung]?” (Husserl 2004, 260). In order to answer this question Husserl starts by sketching out a complex picture of the correlation between subjectivity and objectivity. Objects of all kinds are a priori relatable to ego-subjects that judge about them, evaluate them, pursue them practically, etc. But in addition to this familiar correlation, Husserl goes on to argue that we need to recognize an a priori correlation holding among “objects in general, Sätze in general, and Sätze as pure meanings” (Husserl 2004, 260). In so doing he introduces the key concept of Satz, which, as I anticipated above, in ordinary German simply means proposition or sentence, but in Husserl’s phenomenology takes on a technical meaning that goes beyond the scope of “proposition” as a linguistic and predicative unit.7 What is, then, a posit (Satz)? Husserl introduces the term “posit” in paragraph §133 of Ideas I, in order to designate “the unity of sense and the thetic character” (Husserl 2014, 263), and although he presents this notion as a reformulation of the unity of act-matter and act-quality in the Logical Investigations, it is important to note that posits are “located” on the object-side of the intentional correlation. The most straightforward way to clarify the concept of posit is to define it simply as “that which an intentional act posits.” Thus, there can be simple “posits with one member” in simple perceptual acts or value-ceptions (Wertnehmungen) as well as “synthetic posits” (Husserl 2014, 263) with several members in categorial acts such as judgments and deliberate willings. Let us first focus on posits that belong to the sphere of judgment. The posit of a judgment is the ideal component that is common to multiple acts of judgment having the same ideal sense (Husserl 2009, 144). If I judge that the cat is on the mat and you judge that the cat is on the mat, we have two distinct acts of judgment but one and the same posit: the complex of ideal meanings the cat is on the mat (Husserl 2009, 180).8 It is not enough merely to set the posit conceptually apart from factual acts of judgments. It must also be distinguished from the state of affairs (Sachverhalt) that the judgment posits. One and the same state of affairs

94  Andrea Staiti can be intended, so to speak, in terms of different posits (Husserl 2019, 45). If I judge that the cat is on the mat and thereupon judge that the mat is beneath the cat, the two judgments are directed toward one and the same state of affairs, though they have different posits. Since we do not posit things only through judgment, but also through simple perception, when, for instance, we just see the cat, we can extend the fourfold eidetic structure “I-act-posit-object” to simple intentional acts, as well. Therefore, Husserl goes on to argue: “We say of every judgment and of every act in general that it relates to objects; on the other hand, it relates to the object ‘through’ its meaning-content, that is, the posit, which, in turn, relates to the object in its own way” (Husserl 2004, 261). To recapitulate Husserl’s distinctions, every act of consciousness harbors within itself an ideal meaning. The act’s ideal meaning determines what the act posits, i.e., the posit. The posit, however, is not a really inherent component of the act (the noetic component): it is part of the act’s intentional correlate (the noematic component). The posit relates to the object by way of determining it as having such and such properties and standing in such and such relations, i.e., the properties and relations that the act’s meaning-content entails. Through the posit, the act stakes out a meaning-claim, as it were. It purports to determine the object (or state of affairs) as it actually is.9 The next step in the analysis is to note that while acts of simple perception or judgment are intentionally directed toward the object itself, and not toward the posit, at any time we can make the posit thematic and thereby turn it into an object in its own right, one about which true or false predication is possible. This move does not amount to a reflective turn: when we make the posit thematic, our gaze is still oriented objectively, rather than subjectively, and whatever we say about the posit, we do not thereby assert anything about the actual mental states involved in judging and perceiving. Making the posit thematic amounts to a shift of attention on the noematic side of experience. When such a shift happens, a new, key distinction emerges: “We need then to be more precise and distinguish between the ‘actual’, ‘true’ object and the intended [vermeinten] object, the object in quotation marks” (Husserl 2004, 263). The object in quotation marks need not be actual: Husserl gives the example of somebody judging about the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli. Even if we have good reasons to believe that Huitzilopochtli is not real, judgments about him refer to one and the same object and posit it according to certain perspectives of meaning, for instance, if somebody says that Huitzilopochtli is a great god and thereupon adds that Huitzilopochtli is also a feathered god. Both posits determine the same (non-real) object.10 Another phrase Husserl uses to elucidate these distinctions, drawing again on a common expression in ordinary German, is “Gegenstand im Sinne,” literally, the object standing in a certain sense, i.e., the object

Husserl on Specifically Normative Concepts  95 determined in a certain way, according to a certain perspective of sense or meaning. About such an object, Husserl writes: “This object standing in a certain sense (as well as the posit’s whole state of affairs) has an essential relation to the object of ordinary speech, to the real object: if the posit is true, then the objective component meant in the posit has the value of being actual [wirklich]” (Husserl 2004, 263). This point already adumbrates the normative perspective whose possibility Husserl endeavors to clarify, but first another distinction needs to be introduced. Husserl notes that there is a thoroughgoing difference between a science of acts and a science of meanings (Husserl 2004, 264). Based on the foregoing analyses, we can envision a science that is solely concerned with meanings as ideal entities, i.e., a pure logic and grammar. It would study the possible combinations of meanings into posits in their logical, semantic, mereological, and grammatical dimensions. Such a science would not need to be concerned with acts of judging, perceiving, etc., nor with the subjects of such acts. The reverse, however, does not hold. A pure science of acts would be inconceivable independently of meanings. It is meanings in their multiple configurations that grant to acts their phenomenological unity as intentional states. Acts, too, can be studied in ideal terms, but the meanings (or senses) in which objects and states of affairs on the noematic side of the correlation stand enjoy an autonomous status vis-à-vis the acts that intend them. If we focus on the ideal realm of meanings, including the objects that they determine considered purely as meant, we can, first, explore such a realm in a pure ontic attitude. This is, according to Husserl’s self-interpretation, the attitude that characterizes, for instance, his fourth Logical Investigation, which is devoted to the idea of pure grammar, i.e., a purely logical grammar that studies the possible combinations and functions that meanings can take on within complex formations such as propositions, inferences, etc. However, logic is not exhausted by pure grammar. In addition to the ontic perspective on meanings, logic requires a perspective that is concerned with the truth or falsehood of meanings and posits, and this is where normativity takes hold. Husserl writes: As long as we have a mere ontic interest for the realm of meanings and we follow purely the ontic characteristics and connections of meanings, i.e., as we said, as long as we engage merely in an ontic investigation of meanings, predicates like truth and falsehood do not appear, and neither do other predicates related to truth and falsehood that we call specifically logical predicates, such as the predicates “necessary ground” and “necessary consequence.” This fact does not pertain merely to the so-called logical predicates, but also to the axiological and ethical predicates, with regard to their characteristic domains. (Husserl 2004, 268)

96  Andrea Staiti Predicates, such as “true” and “false,” in the sphere of logic are what Husserl calls “specifically normative predicates” (Husserl 2004, 268) and, in line with the above analysis, they are characterized by the fact that “their subjects are meanings and posits and, conversely, normative predications are defined by the fact that they assert something about meanings, with regard to their legitimacy, their truth” (Husserl 2004, 269). Specifically normative predicates thus arise when we take a normative stance toward the realm of meaning. When we say of a posit that it is true, for instance, we are not merely spelling out another meaning-component in it: “such assertions are not ontic assertions about meanings, that is, one can never run into the legitimacy or illegitimacy of a posit through its analysis, and even less by looking at the posit according to its content with regard to other posits” (Husserl 2004, 269). But what are they then? The first step toward a clarification of the origin of normative concepts is the shift of focus from ordinary objects to posits, though a mere ontic contemplation of posits that studies their meaning-components and the laws of their possible connections does not suffice. The attribution to a posit of normative predicates such as truth and falsity in the sphere of judgment is a function of the posit’s intuitive fulfilment: In this case I myself must really issue a judgment and I must judge with insight and evidence. Under the heading “givenness of truth” I certainly still have the same posit in terms of meaning, but I have it as the content of a consciousness that lends to all meaning-components (according to their sense) intuitive fulness and affords the posit as true. When this is not the case the same posit is given in the mode of a corresponding emptiness and distance from the things themselves [Sachferne]. (Husserl 2004, 269–270) To sum up: For Husserl, specifically normative predicates arise when we implement in the sphere of ideal meanings an attitude that attends to their intuitive fulfilment, or lack thereof. In other words, by attributing truth to a posit, we claim that we have registered (or at least that we can register) the coincidence between the posit and the actual object or state of affairs that the Satz posits as standing in such and such a sense (i.e., the object or state of affairs qua determined by such and such meaning-components).11 Furthermore, in line with Husserl’s understanding of valuations and willings as positing acts, the general notions of truth and falsehood can be extended, with the appropriate modifications, to the spheres of axiology and theory of practice: If we recognize that evaluative and practical consciousness has its peculiar posits, too, which, in turn, have their formal structures, their specific eidetic laws and forms of connections with their

Husserl on Specifically Normative Concepts  97 corresponding modes of intuitive exhibiting [Ausweisungen], then we need to establish a systematic investigation of the normative laws that regulate the lawful eidetic connection of the axiological and practical normative predicates (beauty, goodness, etc.) to the corresponding forms of positings. (Husserl 2004, 271) There is thus a sense in which the logical predicates “true” and “false” can be viewed as general headings for all sorts of posits, including those that are not, strictly speaking, doxic or logical.12 A value-posit can be designated as correct or true if the value that it posits is also given intuitively. Similarly, the positing of a goal, as well as the necessary means to attain it, can be designated as true if the goal is posited on the basis of underlying intuitive consciousness of the value associated with it. If this holds, then beauty is a kind of truth, namely, the specific kind of truth of aesthetic experience, and goodness, too, is a kind of truth, namely, the specific kind of truth of practical and moral experience. All these predicates attach originally to posits and assert that their objects and states of affairs are given intuitively besides being emptily intended through the posit. As far as values are concerned, it is remarkable that in Husserl’s account values and value-consciousness are not identified tout court with normativity. When Husserl uses the word “Wert,” he sometimes refers to the things and states of affairs that possess value,13 and sometimes to values as ideal entities that things and states of affairs instantiate. In both cases, values are first and foremost objects, that is, Gegenstände in the formal logical sense. Accordingly, they can be apprehended in both a purely ontic attitude and in a normative attitude, as much as all other sorts of objects. When I enjoy a landscape or contemplate a painting in a museum, or when I admire a friend’s generous action, there is no distinctive normativity in place in the corresponding consciousness. There can be something like a simple value-ception (Wertnehmung) that does not entail a focus on the intuitive fulfilment of the value-posit at hand. By contrast, when I see the landscape as beautiful or the action as good, and even more explicitly if I form the corresponding judgments, I direct my gaze onto the posit and register its intuitive fulfilment. In other words, beautiful in the original sense is the landscape-posit; the attribution of beauty to the landscape-posit indicates that its aesthetic qualities are given in intuitive consciousness precisely as they are intended. The fact that normative predicates attach originally to posits does not imply that they attach exclusively to posits. In the following sections Husserl describes a twofold transposition (Übertragung) that goes (1) from the posit to the corresponding act and (2) from the posit to the corresponding object. Such transpositions are fully legitimate and a correct understanding of the intentional shifts at their origin is key to vindicating

98  Andrea Staiti our ordinary normative talk about objects and acts without any explicit reference to posits. The focus on such transpositions also helps attach definite meanings to an array of cognate terms whose ordinary usage tends to be undisciplined. The first transposition goes from posits to acts, e.g., from the judgment-posit to the act of judgment, from the perceptual posit to the act of perception, from the value-posit to the act of valuing, etc. Acts whose posits are true are best characterized as correct or right (richtig) (Husserl 2004, 271), while acts whose posits are false are erroneous. Husserl argues that at first this kind of transposition does not seem to give rise to any new discipline or line of inquiry, since the normative perspective on acts is merely a modification of the originally normative perspective on posits; however, the acts entailing such normative predicates delineate a strictly demarcated sphere of conscious acts, the “specific acts of reason” (Husserl 2004, 271). Such acts of reason deserve a thorough examination in terms of their eidetic structures and the complex motivational nexuses that underpin the attribution of normative predicates to posits. A science of reason would be a task in its own right, and it arguably constitutes the very heart of transcendental phenomenology (see Cimino 2020 for a thoroughgoing elucidation of this issue). The second transposition goes from posits to objects and states of affairs and it is a direct consequence of the determining function that pertains to posits. Positing an object or state of affairs as standing in a certain sense amounts to determining the objects as having such and such properties. At the very core of a posit, then, there must lie a simple Gegenstandssetzung, the simple positing of an object. Husserl argues that since we generally use the word “truth” as a specifically normative predicate for judgment-posits, “we then need a word to express the parallel normative concept for positings of objects and that is what talk of existence is needed for” (Husserl 2004, 276). On Husserl’s account, then, “existence” is not a real predicate of objects but rather a normative predicate of “intended objects as such” (Husserl 2004, 276). As he goes on to explain: “What we call existent or non-existent is the object in quotation marks, meaning by that, as we explained above, the object-posit with its positing of being [Seinsthese]” (Husserl 2004, 276). Let us underscore the most remarkable point in these passages, which we anticipated in the introductory section of this chapter. Existence is a normative concept. It expresses the fact that the object-posit is intuitively fulfilled. Elsewhere Husserl argues that if this were not the case and existence expressed a property of the real object (its being), then an existential judgment such as “this table exists” would amount to a “pure ridiculous tautology” (Husserl 2019, 198). This is because the nominal expression “this table” in the judgment would already entail a positing of being, which the verb “exists” would simply reiterate in a redundant way. If, by contrast, “this table” is taken to be an

Husserl on Specifically Normative Concepts  99 object in quotation marks, i.e., an object-posit, then the verb “exists” non-trivially expresses the legitimacy of such posit, the fact that the being that is attributed to the object is also given in an act of intuitive consciousness.14 An object whose corresponding object-posit has been recognized as legitimate, hence, as existing, takes on the enduring property of being real, and that is the most basic example of a normative property “wandering over,” so to speak, from the realm of meanings and posits to the realm of objects and states of affairs. But there is more: “[A]ctual objects that have already been recognized as such in cognition take on normative predicates insofar as they have received a meaning-content through valuation or through logical or otherwise determining posits” (Husserl 2004, 286). In other words, the registration of a posit’s intuitive fulfilment that goes along with the attribution of a specifically normative predicate has an impact on the enduring stock of meaning-contents that are attributed to the corresponding object or state of affairs. A landscape that I have judged as beautiful carries that property as attaching to it, as it were, even though its original attribution has to be ideally traced back to the registration of the intuitive fulfilment of the landscape-posit with its aesthetic qualities. It is telling, for instance, that a landscape cannot be beautiful, full stop. If somebody asks why we judge that a particular landscape is beautiful, we will likely start to spell out the distinctive and concrete aesthetic qualities that it possesses. By saying that it is beautiful we are registering the fact that all those aesthetic qualities are actually given in the flesh, that the aesthetic posit is legitimate in such and such meaning-components. Something similar can be said about logical posits and ethical posits. Through our normative evaluations, the things in our world take on a new layer of meaning, as it were, that we can at any time subject to critical scrutiny. In so doing, we can reactivate the original perspective on posits and their intuitive fulfilment which, for Husserl, is the true source of normativity. At this juncture Husserl’s text turns to the distinction of nature and spirit mentioned in the (misleading) title attributed to it: the spirit is the realm of the normable (normierbar), whereas nature is the lowermost layer of concrete reality, which resists all normative evaluation. Following Husserl along this further path of inquiry would exceed the scope of this chapter, but it is noteworthy, to conclude this section, that Husserl’s wellknown distinction between nature and spirit is derived from the distinction between the normative and the non-normative, and not the other way around.15

4 Conclusion If Husserl’s analysis is correct, it has a whole host of consequences having a direct bearing on contemporary discussions in metaethics and

100  Andrea Staiti metanormative theory more generally. Let us mention three, and thereby indicate further lines of research that will have to be explored in other papers. 1. There is some consensus in the literature that normativity arises as the product of a kind of distancing between us as the subjects of our actions and beliefs, and the inclinations, desires, etc. that happen in us. Such distancing has been variously interpreted in terms of reflection (Korsgaard 2009, 116), as the breakdown of absorption in everyday practices (Crowell 2013, 249 rendering Heidegger’s view), or as the ability to have second-order desires (Frankfurt 2006). For Husserl, the distance involved in the origin of normativity is the gap between the posit and its corresponding object or state of affairs. It is not the product of some special ability or capacity that we have, but rather a distance that is rooted in the a priori structure of positional intentionality as such. If that is the case, then any being who is capable of positional intentionality is a priori capable of a normative stance, no matter how rudimentary or implicit it might be. It seems perfectly reasonable, then, to attribute the possibility of a normative stance to non-human animals, too. 2. Husserl’s take on specifically normative concepts ought to usher into a redefinition of the received distinction between thin and thick concepts. This terminology suggests a difference of degree between concepts such as generous (thick) and concepts such as good (thin). In Husserl’s analysis, by contrast, the point is that concepts such as “generous” are predicated of ordinary objects, whereas a specifically normative concept such as “good” is predicated originarily of posits, and only mediately of ordinary objects. 3. On Husserl’s construal, the concept good does not describe anything about ordinary objects and its specific, original function is to predicate the intuitive fulfilment of an axiologically (in this case: morally) laden posit. This seems to offer the possibility to reinterpret Moore’s famous Open Question Argument accordingly. The reason why questions such as “X is Y, but is it really good?” are always open is not narrowly semantic. Rather, Moorean questions are always open because they ask whether the object (in quotation marks) (X) which is posited as having the purportedly moral property (Y) is really given intuitively in such a way as to confirm to the moral quality that is attributed to it (see Staiti 2020 an extensive presentation of this argument). On all three counts, Husserl’s theory seems worthy of serious consideration and it promises to contribute a highly innovative perspective to the growing field of metanormative theory.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Andrea Cimino and Niall Keane for their perceptive comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. I am much indebted to Sara

Husserl on Specifically Normative Concepts  101 Heinämaa and Mirja Hartimo for inviting me to a conference in Helsinki back in 2017 where many of the ideas in this chapter took shape.

Notes 1 I will follow Daniel Dahlstrom in translating “Satz/Sätze” as “posit/posits” (Husserl 2014, 330). Even though “Satz” in ordinary German just means proposition or sentence, Husserl exploits the etymological derivation of this noun from the active verb “setzten,” which means to posit and gives it a broader meaning that goes beyond the scope of propositions as linguistic and predicative constructions. I will address this point when I discuss the ­introduction of Satz in Husserl’s text under scrutiny. 2 I have already made this point in a short review of Crowell’s book (Staiti 2014b). 3 This point about free fantasy does not rule out the possibility for the imagination to work in the service of positional consciousness, for instance, when we imagine how things would be like if we acted a certain way or another. In this case, however, we are no longer fantasizing freely, rather, the fantasized objects and sceneries are endowed with the positional qualification of the possible, which is already a departure from the non-positionality of free fantasy. In a similar vein, complex acts can feature imaginative acts as ancillary, for example, when I imagine how my old sofa would fit in the living room of my new apartment, while the overarching, ruling (archontic) act is and remains the perception of my new living room. 4 See Baker (2018) for a helpful orientation in the contemporary scholarship and Heinämaa (2019) for an attempt at disentangling the various meanings of normativity discussed in phenomenology. 5 Readers familiar with G.E. Moore’s Open Question Argument may have noticed the problem that Moore calls the “naturalistic fallacy” in Husserl’s reasoning and in my response to it. 6 For this reason, the putative puzzle discussed in Carta (2021), i.e., whether essences and eidetic relations are normative, is unwarranted. Husserl rules out explicitly the possibility of interpreting essences in normative terms when he characterizes the eidetic attitude as ontic (sachlich). Carta argues that for Husserl essences are not intrinsically normative, drawing on the chapter from Prolegomena discussed in the previous section of the present chapter to substantiate her claim; however, in the Prolegomena Husserl’s distinction between theoretical and normative judgments does not appeal to the distinction between facts and essences. Carta concludes that essences can have a normative sense (i.e., they can be extrinsically normative) because they prescribe rules for corresponding acts of judgment, such that, if A’s essence is B, then I ought to judge that A is B (if I am concerned with A’s essence). This, however, is true of facts as well and it does not seem to be a specific property of eidetic judgments. If it is a fact that A is B, then I ought to judge that A is B (if I am concerned with facts about A). It follows that essences are not normative, neither intrinsically, nor extrinsically, but as much as any other type of object, empirical or otherwise, they can be subjected to normative scrutiny, in a sense to be clarified in what follows. 7 See Brainard (2002, 199–200) for a helpful explanation of Husserl’s extension of the notion of Satz. Brainard chooses to translate positum/posita, a good option, indeed, to translate Satz in romance languages. Given the availability of the less arcane-sounding word “posit” in English, it seems that Dahlstrom’s choice is preferable.

102  Andrea Staiti 8 This is the context in which the translation of the term “Satz” as “proposition” would be apropos: both acts of judgments entertain or articulate the same proposition. 9 Steven Crowell is thus right in arguing that for Husserl experiences have “the structure of a claim” (Crowell 2013, 150), even though, to be precise, this is only true of positional experiences, i.e., those where the noema’s thetic character is non-neutralized. As I pointed out in the introduction, imaginative experiences do not have the structure of a claim, but at best just a semblance thereof. 10 Note the difference with the imagined centaur mentioned in the introduction. If I say “Huitzilopochtli is a feathered god” I am staking out a positional claim, namely that the property of being feathered determines correctly the object Huitzilopochtli. If I merely imagine Huitzilopochtli as feathered, by contrast, I posit nothing, as much as in the centaur’s case. 11 I wish there were a more elegant way to formulate this recapitulation, but any other formulation would lack the required phenomenological precision. 12 I talk more extensively about the concept of truth in Husserlian phenomenology in Staiti (2018). 13 For valuable things and states of affairs the word “Güter,” i.e., “goods,” would probably be a better fit, but Husserl restricts the use of Güter to things and states of affairs whose value depends on their being actual, which excludes things and states of affairs that possess aesthetic value. On Husserl’s account aesthetic value is indifferent to the reality of its carriers, therefore aesthetically valuable objects, which he calls Schönheiten (beauties), are not goods. See Husserl (2004, 187–190). 14 This is an elegant and thoroughly innovative solution to an old problem. Existence is not taken to be a real predicate of ordinary objects, as in preKantian metaphysics, but it is also not taken to be a relational property that expresses the relation of a concept to something outside itself, as in Kant. Nor is existence taken to be the property of a Vorstellung as a mental item, as in Bolzano (see Husserl 2019, 202–207). Rather, existence is interpreted as a predicate of something that stands on the object-side of the intentional correlation, the posit, but, as in Kant, it is not a real, but rather a normative property. I would argue that considering existence as a normative, rather than a real property is the mark of transcendental philosophy in general, but I cannot substantiate this claim here. I have discussed some of these issues with respect to Husserl’s theory of existential judgment in Staiti (2017, 201–202). 15 For an extensive treatment of the nature–spirit distinction, see Staiti (2014a).

References Baker, Derek. 2018. “The Varieties of Normativity.” In The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, eds. Tristram McPherson and David Plunkett, 567–581. New York: Routledge. Brainard, Marcus. 2002. Belief and Its Neutralization: Husserl’s System of Phenomenology in Ideas I. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Burch, Matthew, Jack Marsh, and Irene McMullin (eds.). 2019. Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology. New York: Routledge. Carta, Emanuela. 2021. “Husserl on Eidetic Norms.” Husserl Studies 37, no. 2: 127–146. Cimino, Andrea. 2020. “Husserl’s Project, Critique, and Idea of Reason.” Journal of Transcendental Philosophy 1, no. 2: 183–217.

Husserl on Specifically Normative Concepts  103 Crowell, Steven. 2013. Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doyon, Maxime, and Thiemo Breyer. 2015. Normativity in Perception. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Drummond, John. 2019. “Intentionality and (Moral) Normativity.” In Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology, eds. Matthew Burch, Jack Marsh, and Irene McMullin, 101–119. London: Routledge. Frankfurt, Harry. 2006. Taking Ourselves Seriously and Getting it Right. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Geach, Peter. 1956. “Good and Evil.” Analysis 17, no. 2: 33–42. Heinämaa, Sara. 2019. “Constitutive, Prescriptive, Technical, or Ideal? On the Ambiguity of the Term ‘Norm’.” In Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology, eds. Matthew Burch, Jack Marsh, and Irene McMullin, 9–28. London: Routledge. Husserl, Edmund. 2004. Einleitung in die Ethik, Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1920/1924. Husserliana XXXVII. Ed. Henning Peucker. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Husserl, Edmund. 2009. Untersuchungen zur Urteilstheorie, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1893–1918). Husserliana XL. Ed. Robin D. Rollinger. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 2014. Ideas I: Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomen­ ological Philosophy, First Book: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom. Indianapolis: Hackett. Husserl, Edmund. 2019. Logic and General Theory of Science, Lectures 1917/18 with Supplementary Texts from the First Version of 1910/11. Collected Works XV. Trans. Claire Ortiz Hill. Dordrecht: Springer. Iocco, Gemmo. 2016. “Husserl E La Fondazione Della Normatività.” In Tra corpo e mente: Questioni di Confine, ed. B. Centi, 151–172. Firenze: Le Lettere. Korsgaard, Christine M. 2009. Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Staiti, Andrea. 2014a. Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology: Nature, Spirit, and Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Staiti, Andrea. 2014b. “Review of Steven Crowell, Normativity and Phenome­ nology in Husserl and Heidegger (Cambridge University Press 2013).” Journal of the History of Philosophy 52, no. 2: 387–388. Staiti, Andrea. 2017. “Urteilstheorie.” In Husserl-Handbuch, eds. Sebasttian Luft and Maren Wehrle, 196–204. Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag. Staiti, Andrea. 2018. “Fenomenologia, Intenzionalità E Verità.” Paradigmi: Rivista di Critica Filosofica 36, no. 1: 65–76. Staiti, Andrea. 2020. Etica naturalistica e fenomenologia. Bologna: Il Mulino.

Part II

From Perception to Imagination

5 On the Phenomenology and Normativity of Multisensory Perception Husserlian and Merleau-Pontian Analyses Maxime Doyon Sense interaction is ubiquitous. All sensory experiences involve at least some interaction between the senses. From the first-personal point of view, various types of manifestations of sensory interaction can be distinguished. In the contemporary scientific literature on multisensory perception, two kinds of conscious unities are typically distinguished: phenomenal unity and object unity. Right now, I hear music and other background noises coming from the street, I see the text I am writing on my computer screen, and I feel the weight of my body on the chair I am sitting on. This first-personal description captures an aspect of what is commonly called “phenomenal unity,” which corresponds to the experience of various sensory happenings as being harmoniously lived through in consciousness despite the fact that they are triggered by different objects and events. Often, however, our senses are not only simultaneously exercised and unified in consciousness, but they are, in addition, directed at the same worldly object or event. Neuroscientists then talk of object unity, and the label is meant to highlight the fact that there is something it’s like to experience various sensory cues as belonging to the same object. Throughout the chapter, I will be concerned solely with the latter unity. In this context, one of the most intriguing topics in recent scholarship on perception concerns the proper way of characterizing the phenomenology of multisensory experiences. According to contemporary psychologist Charles Spence and philosopher Tim Bayne, the phenomenal character of multisensory integration is reducible to the co-conscious sum of modality-specific features. Tim Bayne (2014) has dubbed this the “decomposition thesis.” While we are often concurrently conscious of various thingly properties (like, say, the taste, the smell, the look, and the texture of the fruit we are eating), Bayne and Spence (2015) contend that each perceived property is instantiated by a specific sense modality. Since the senses run in parallel and yield their own representational content, our perception of the fruit cannot, on their view, amount to more DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740-8

108  Maxime Doyon than the sum of modality-specific contents.1 Casey O’Callaghan calls it “the thesis of Minimal Multimodality”: “The phenomenal character of each perceptual episode is exhausted by that which is associated with each individual modality, along with whatever accrues thanks to mere co-consciousness” (O’Callaghan 2015, 555). The first objective of this chapter is to make a case for the opposing view and argue that the effect of multisensory integration is reflected in experience in a way that is not exhausted by (the sum of) modalityspecific phenomenal features. One of the upshots of this claim is that it allows to appreciate from a novel angle how the conscious experience of sense integration impacts the normativity of perception. Since perception is understood here as a form of practice or as action-oriented, the second and main objective of the paper is to explain how operations of sense integration and coordination affect what I will call “perceptual agency,” viz., our embodied capacity to respond in appropriate ways to the affordances of the perceived environment. Without broaching the topic in plain normative terms as I do, O’Callaghan defends a view that is close to mine in many ways. In a series of recent papers, he argues that perception is enhanced through sense coordination (O’Callaghan 2017). Much like my own argument in what follows, his argument rests on a refutation of the thesis held by Bayne and Spence about the phenomenology of multisensory perception: “certain forms of multimodal perceptual experience are incompatible with the claim that each aspect of a perceptual experience is associated with some specific modality or another” (2015, 552, italics added). This sounds right. There seems to be little doubt that at least some perceptual experiences constitutively depend on multisensory interaction. O’Callaghan pleas his case by considering flavor perception. The experience of flavors constitutively depends on multisensory interactions of touch, smell, and taste in the sense that flavors are irreducible to what these senses can provide individually. Mint provides an excellent example: “There is a distinctive, recognizable, and novel quality of mint (…) that is consciously perceptible only thanks to the joint work of several sensory systems” (O’Callaghan 2017, 174). This is how perception comes to be enriched or enhanced thanks to sense integration: “Flavor experiences may have entirely novel phenomenal features of a type – even a qualitative type – that no unimodal experience could instantiate and that do not accrue thanks to simple co-consciousness” (O’Callaghan 2015, 567f.). On the basis of this and like evidence,2 O’Callaghan argues that the thesis put forward by Bayne and Spence cannot be generalized: “not all ways of perceiving are modality specific” (O’Callaghan 2014, 73). The phenomenal character of multisensory interaction does not always amount to the mere accumulation of unimodal experiences. Some experiences are, as he puts it, “constitutively multisensory”

Normativity of Multisensory Perception  109 (O’Callaghan 2015, 569); whence the normative conclusions he draws concerning perceptions enhanced epistemic power. I think O’Callaghan is largely right about this, and the distinction he draws between the minimal and the constitutive theses of multimodality is a welcomed one. I will refer to it throughout the chapter. At the same time, O’Callaghan adopts the conception of phenomenality that Bayne, Spence, and most actors of this debate work with. It is a definition that is aligned with what Anglo-American philosophers of mind typically call, following Thomas Nagel (1974), the qualitative features or the “what it’s likeness” of experience. In essence, the expression is meant to capture something like the “raw feel” of sense experience – what it is like to have sensations of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, or a combination of any of those sensory feels. In spite of its widespread use and apparent extensiveness, the paper provides a number of reasons to think that the phenomenal character of multisensory experience cannot be adequately captured by what this locution is standardly taken to mean. By drawing conceptual resources in the classical phenomenological repertoire of Edmund Husserl (Section 1) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Section 2), the chapter looks at the blind spot of this discussion and argues that a vast array of bodily cues and sensations makes a fundamental, but still largely underestimated contribution to the experiential makeup of our conscious lives. More specifically, it will be argued that the phenomenology of multisensory experience does not only include various forms of bodily self-experiences but often also contains felt possibilities of actions and behaviors. Building on these and like insights, the paper outlines an alternative account of multimodal perception and sensory interaction and draws three conclusions from it. The first one suggests that both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty would reject the thesis of Minimal Multimodality and endorse the Constitutive Thesis that O’Callaghan (2014) and now also Briscoe (2019) rightly defend. Second, and perhaps more controversially, it will be shown that the widening of the concept of phenomenal consciousness that Husserl and MerleauPonty advocate allows for the generalization of the Constitutive Thesis, thereby showing that not only certain forms, but all forms of perceptual experiences constitutively depend on the interplay of two or more senses. Spelling out the details of these claims will bring me, third, to address more directly the main topic of this volume and specify the intrinsic relation between normativity and perceptual experience (Section 3). In short, I will argue that the mechanisms responsible for multimodality make a phenomenological difference evaluable in normative, but non-epistemic terms. While the impact of sense cooperation on perceptual judgements is already well documented in psychology, the argument I am defending here is more general and concerns the impact of the inseparability of inner and outer perception on agency.

110  Maxime Doyon

1 Husserl on Multisensory Awareness Although multisensory perception was never, for Husserl, a central topic of phenomenological research, he did write on the topic on a few occasions. In Ideas II, we find some of Husserl’s most sustained reflections on the senses and their central contribution to the constitution of the self and intentional life as a whole. With regard to perception, Husserl makes the seemingly trivial claim that perceptual objects (or some of their properties) are accessible through diverse sense modalities. The “thing of perception has but one spatial corporeality” (Husserl 1991, 39/42), but it can be apprehended in a manifold of ways, “as a corporeality that is both seen and touched,” for instance (Husserl 1991, 38/41). Perceptual objects have but one materiality or corporeality; they occupy one space because they are ontologically one. Nevertheless, this unity conceals a phenomenological complexity: not only can these objects be experienced from a variety of perspectives and by various egos, but they are also structurally open for a variety of sense-experiences. Phenomenologically, these experiences can be classified in a number of ways. With regard to the five traditional senses, it is possible to distinguish between their capacity to individually apprehend identical objective properties and their capacity to jointly perceive these properties. Upon perceiving a blanket in bright daylight, I could, say, haptically recognize that its texture, which I now experience as being smooth, is also responsible for its brightness. In this situation, Husserl contends that “[i]t is the same objective property which announces itself in the brightness and in the smoothness” (Husserl 1991, 38/41). That a single objective property can be perceived as identical through different sensory channels has important implications for our purpose, for it suggests that it is in principle possible that it be multimodally perceived, that is, simultaneously perceived by the ego in the two or more modalities. If I can identify the smoothness and the brightness of the blanket in a succession of unimodal experiences, then I can, presumably, haptically and visually experience the texture of the blanket at the same time as well. The possibility of simultaneously exercising our sense modalities upon an object still does not exhaust the ways of cashing out the phenomenology of multisensory perception, however, for some perceptual events depend on the interplay of two or more senses. (O’Callaghan 2015, 2017) sees this as evidence that the decomposition thesis held by Bayne and Spence cannot be generalized: the experience of flavors, he suggests, shows that at least some perceptual events are constitutively multimodal in the sense that the joint exercise of taste, smell, and touch yields an experience that transcends their specific individual contribution. Even though Husserl never seemed to be particularly interested in this specific theoretical question, I think that he would also be clearly committed to the Constitutive Thesis too.

Normativity of Multisensory Perception  111 Take vision. As Husserl describes it, visual perception is not perspectivally limited to any given profile but integrates further possible perspectives. When seeing a football, for instance, we do not just see its visible side, but we also co-perceive its currently non-visible backside, which we anticipate to see by rotating the ball or effecting certain bodily movements. Husserl explains the integration of the ball’s implicitly given content in perceptual consciousness by appealing to the so-called “law of motivation,” according to which visual appearances are dependent upon kinaestheses.3 Simply put, Husserl’s idea is that perceptual content is expected or anticipated in intentional consciousness thanks to the sensations that accompany bodily movements. In virtue of its motivational power, the flow of kinaesthetic sensations is deemed necessary for constituting temporally extended objects, and therefore for having perceptions at all. While this view surely has its limitations,4 we can still appreciate the truth it conveys, namely that Husserl’s conception of visual consciousness is indissociable from the consciousness of our embodied being.5 Clearly, Husserl never conceived of visual perception in exclusively visual terms. The synthetic unification of intentional contents in visual consciousness is rather the outcome of the integration of visual inputs (or sensory content) and kinesthetic sensations. It is true that the inclusion of bodily forms of self-experience does not make visual experience any less visual, but it shows that Husserl never regarded vision as a unisensory experience. Since Husserl believes that the perception of visual objects and their properties transcends what vision and kinaesthesis can individually ­provide, it follows that he is committed to the Constitutive Thesis. But there is more. It is not only that kinaesthetic sensations generate expectations about how the phenomenology of things would change with respect to movement, but Husserl also thought that perceptual features such as distance, orientation, and direction, too, are always experienced in relation to one’s bodily consciousness, which serves as the reference point (cf. Husserl 1991, 165f./158f.). Even if these spatial properties, too, are experienced as belonging to visual consciousness, their apprehension still relies on bodily self-awareness as well, for their perceptual meaning can only become manifest within an egocentric frame of reference. The point holds for every phenomenally experienced spatial property: they all depend on an embodied frame of reference, which is the indexical “here” relative to which they become manifest. Since the lived body can only assume this indexical role insofar as it is also self-aware, it follows that with respect to properties like distance, direction, and orientation, Husserl unambiguously endorses the Constitutive Thesis: their perception constitutively depends on both proprioceptive and exteroceptive signals.6 At this point, one may wonder whether the point about vision can be generalized. Are all perceived things and events multimodally constituted, or does this apply only to a specific number of items of visual experiences?

112  Maxime Doyon No doubt, Husserl’s thesis can be generalized. But this move requires that we enlarge our conception of phenomenal consciousness beyond its typical “what-it’s-like” character to include bodily forms of self-experiences such as proprioception.7 And the reason why we should do this is that we ought to recognize that perception cannot be reduced to outer perception. As we perceive outer objects, we also sense (or co-perceive) our position and posture, and we feel the movements and the velocity of our body and body parts. Perception is never unilaterally directed at the world: it always also involves a concomitant perceptual knowledge of the location of our body or body parts in space, the relation of our body parts to one another, and the extent to which they change their position (Gallagher and Zahavi 2020). This is something that Husserl clearly saw. At least since Ideas II, he thinks that tactile, cutaneous, and kinaesthetic sensations are pervasive in all forms of intentional experiences. Every intentional experience includes an unthematic, pre-reflective form of bodily self-reference: “Here it must also be noted that in all experience of things, the lived-body is co-experienced as an operatively functioning lived body” (Husserl 1991, 14/57). In short, Husserl thinks that bodily self-awareness and intentionality are interdependent features of consciousness.8 As a result, it is impossible, on Husserlian grounds, to explain any type of perceptual experience without a reference to the background functioning of the body.9 I take this to imply that all perceptual experiences are multimodal,10 for even understanding the role of touch – which Husserl considered as the fundamental sense – hardly seems possible without a reference to the whole somatosensory system, and therefore to proprioception as well.11 Given that proprioception is a sense modality and its contribution not isolable from that of the other senses, it follows that Husserl is committed to the constitutive view: perception is multimodal, and not only in the minimal sense of co-­consciousness, but in the constitutive sense.12 In the third section, we will see how important this insight is for Husserl’s conception of perceptual agency, which acquires its normative character precisely therein.

2 Merleau-Ponty on the Ontological Structure of Perception In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty espouses a number of theses that are very close to those put forward by Husserl in Ideas II, like these two, which play a pivotal role in his conception of multisensory perception. First, Merleau-Ponty agrees with Husserl that visual experience depends on some forms of bodily self-experience, or, as he puts it, that vision and touch “communicate directly” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 269/232) with one another in the normal adult. Second, and again very much in the spirit of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty draws attention to the permanence of bodily self-awareness in all perceptual experience. “My body is constantly perceived” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 119/92) and

Normativity of Multisensory Perception  113 “remains on the margins of all my perceptions” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 119/93). Merleau-Ponty specifies what this means by explaining the essential role of bodily awareness in the constitution of perceptual gestalts: “one’s own body is the always implied third term of the figurebackground structure, and each figure appears perspectivally against the double horizon of external space and bodily space” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 130/103). Given this, it is fair to say that Merleau-Ponty sides with Husserl as he, too, takes every perception to be constitutively multisensory. Again, the point is not that we are merely co-conscious of our bodily selves as we perceive, but rather that the body is something like the central organizing principle of the sensory field. Beyond this point of convergence, there are, however, a few notable differences between Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’s views on multisensory perception. Two seem particularly noteworthy. First, Merleau-Ponty has, for one, formulated clear arguments against the classical view about the distinctness of the senses, which is for him part and parcel of the empiricist picture of the world. This criticism opens up onto a positive, but also very radical view according to which the senses are ultimately indiscernible. In Section 2.1, I will briefly explain what the Indiscernibility Thesis amounts to and what it entails in the context of this chapter. In Section 2.2, I will lay emphasis on what separates Husserl from MerleauPonty’s view of agency. In short and to anticipate: while Husserl thinks that bodily forms of self-relations have the singular capacity to generate expectations with regard to the ongoing flow of appearances, for Merleau-Ponty, these expectations more explicitly take the enactive or practical form of readiness to act on the part of the subject. While there is no real opposition between the two views, I will show how the shift of emphasis effected by Merleau-Ponty led him to explicitly endorse a second argument in favor of the Constitutive Thesis, one that is at best implicit in Husserl’s work. 2.1 The Indiscernibility Thesis In the chapter “Sensing” of the Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty unequivocally rejects the traditional view on the separation of the senses, pointing out in passing its internal contradictions. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological analysis aims to show that the pure sensible qualities that the empiricist attempts to find simply do not exist; they are rather “merged into a total experience in which they are ultimately indiscernible” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 263/226). Merleau-Ponty justifies this claim in three interrelated ways, stressing what he calls the unity of the world, the unity of the lived body (or the body schema), and the unity of the things themselves. First, Merleau-Ponty repeatedly stresses, throughout the Phenomenology, the “primordial unity” of the world, which he regards as “the horizon

114  Maxime Doyon of all horizons” ([1945] 2012, 386/345) and “the unique term of all of our projects” ([1945] 2012, 454/493). The claim, which takes inspiration from Kant and Husserl, means that the world ensures that my experiences have a meaningful unity. Merleau-Ponty’s account of multisensory perception is the immediate consequence of this insight, for he considers the “sensory spaces” or domains to be the “concrete moments” of this “overall configuration” ([1945] 2012, 267/230). The critique of the empiricist position is thus clear: Merleau-Ponty thinks that investigating perception like the scientist or the empiricist does by claiming or simply assuming the separation of the senses and their corresponding regions of experience amounts to “cutting oneself off” ([1945] 2012, 267/230) from this primordial unity of the world. From a first-personal or phenomenological point of view, however, it is precisely this meaningful unity of experience that needs to be retrieved and described. For this reason – and pace Bayne and Spence – the phenomenology of experience is not reducible to a mere assemblage of qualitative qualities (or qualia) produced by the senses. We perceptually encounter things in situations, and the significance and value of perceived objects depends not on an ensemble of sensory qualities, but on the total context in which they are inscribed. The term “unity of the world” refers to this unsurpassable horizon of meaning that constitutes perceptual consciousness. Second, Merleau-Ponty’s insistence on the crucial importance of the meaningful unity of the world has another consequence, for it goes hand in hand with what he calls “the unity of the lived body.” Essentially, the point is that the body, too, forms a unity and functions holistically. Contrary to the empiricist’s belief, the “body is not a sum of juxtaposed organs, but a synergetic system of which all of the functions are taken up and tied together in the general movement of being in the world” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 280/243). Correspondingly, in action, “the various parts of my body – its visual, tactile, and motor aspects – are not simply coordinated” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 280/243); the body rather “gathers itself together, and carries itself through all of its resources” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 279/241) in order to “perform a single gesture” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 188/153), namely the action itself. If one may very well grant that our senses appear to be distinct from the perspective of the objective world, the phenomenological attitude does not admit this kind of separation: “the experience of isolated ‘senses’ takes place only within an abnormal attitude” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 271/234), namely the naturalistic or empiricist attitude. But as such, it “cannot be useful for the analysis of direct consciousness” (Merleau-Ponty [1945 2012], 271/234). From the first-personal or phenomenological point of view, the body functions as a unified whole, and the senses are, in that loose sense, indistinct. Specifying the latter claim necessitates, third, that we turn our attention to Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of what he calls “the  inter-sensory

Normativity of Multisensory Perception  115 unity of the thing” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 286/248). His basic idea is nicely encapsulated in this beautiful, even if somewhat lengthy, passage: If a phenomenon – such as a reflection or a light breeze – only presents itself to one of my senses, then it is a phantom, and it will only approach real existence if, by luck, it becomes capable of speaking to my other senses, as when the wind, for example, is violent and makes itself visible in the disturbances of the landscape. Cézanne said that a painting contained, in itself, even the odor of the landscape. He meant that the arrangement of the color upon the thing (and in the work of art if it fully captures the thing) by itself signifies all of the responses that it would give to the interrogation of my other senses, that a thing would not have that color if it did not have this form, these tactile properties, that sonority, or that odor; and that the thing is the absolute plenitude that projects my undivided existence in front of itself. The unity of the thing, beyond all of its congealed properties, is not a substratum, an empty X, or a subject of inherence, but rather that unique accent that is found in each one, that unique manner of existing of which its properties are a secondary expression. For example, the fragility, rigidity, transparency, and crystalline sound of a glass expresses a single manner of being. (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 374/332) Merleau-Ponty elaborates on this description by explaining how perceived things call for our engagement and interaction with them while speaking indifferently to all our senses. Therein lies their inter-sensory unity. In return, the senses are indistinct in their response to the perceptual scene, that is, in the way they jointly respond to the thing’s solicitation. This is how Merleau-Ponty famously came to endorse the neighboring claim about the synesthetic character of all perceptions: Synesthetic perception is the rule and, if we do not notice it, this is because scientific knowledge displaces experience and we have unlearned seeing, hearing, and sensing in general in order to deduce what we ought to see, hear, or sense from our bodily organization and from the world as it is conceived by the physicist. (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 275/238) The claim is strong: Merleau-Ponty holds that synesthetic perception is not an exceptional state, but rather the normal perceptual condition. Taken literally, this is a shocking, if not downright false assertion, for synaesthesia is standardly taken to be a rare and abnormal condition. It is abnormal since it results from an atypical and contingent sensory wiring, and it is rare since it occurs in only roughly 1 in 2000 persons

116  Maxime Doyon (O’Callaghan 2012; Bayne and Spence 2015). Merleau-Ponty thus seems to commit a category mistake when he extends the synesthetic condition to everybody. As Abath (2017) rightly points out, Merleau-Ponty’s analyses are at times difficult to follow, since he quickly and seamlessly moves from proper cases of synaesthesia to related, but still qualitatively different kinds of multisensory experiences (cf. Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 275f./238f.). Still, his descriptions are crucial with regard to his overall project, for they tell us something true of perception in general. The described experiences – which, to avoid any confusion, I prefer to qualify as multisensory13 – show, namely, that perceptual experience involves what he calls “an opening on to the ontological structure of the thing” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 276/239). Thanks to its ontological depth or complexity, the perceptual thing solicits me across multiple sensory registers. The “indistinctness thesis” refers to this basic experiential feature, which Merleau-Ponty thinks is constitutive of all perceptions. In the next section, I will pursue my reflection on this and analyze in more detail how the perceiving agent responds to the thing’s solicitation by analyzing Merleau-Ponty’s description of the dialectics between perceptual expectations and readiness to act. While sketching out his view on perceptual agency, a second argument in favor of the Constitutive Thesis will be put forward, thereby justifying in a new way why the analysis of multisensory experience requires a widening of the phenomenology beyond the standard “what it’s like” definition still commonly assumed in the literature. This will have important implications, for the normative motif at the heart of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception will also begin to shine through. 2.2 Readiness to Act The key to understanding how Merleau-Ponty’s claim about the universality of the synesthetic condition impacts his view on agency lies in the normative dialectics of solicitations and responses at the heart of his theory of perception. The perceived world solicits me, and it calls forth certain movements or actions, understood here as answers to worldly solicitations. However, the world does not speak to one sensory modality; it rather “speaks directly to all of the senses” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 275/238), like when one sees something one could also touch, smell, or taste (say, a fruit). One could even experience a thingly feature with a modality normally experienced by another, like when one sees the fluidity of water or the viscosity of syrup (cf. Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 275f./238f.). These are, to be sure, properties normally revealed by touch, not by vision; but “the senses communicate among themselves” (MerleauPonty [1945] 2012, 275f./238f.), Merleau-Ponty contends, such that “it becomes difficult to restrict my experience to a single sensory register: it

Normativity of Multisensory Perception  117 spontaneously overflows toward all the others” ([1945] 2012, 273/236). It is true that objects often catch our attention by affecting us through one specific modality. And yet, objects are “poles of actions,” and as such, they open up a field of possible interactions that is not limited to the potentialities of that specific modality. Since we are not mere spectators, but rather existentially engaged in the perceptual field, the spectrum of possible actions and perceptions is open, as it were, and these possibilities are felt or experienced as such. This is why Merleau-Ponty holds that more senses than one are typically involved in experience, and that multisensory perception (not synaesthesia) is the rule rather than the exception. This argument rests on the idea that the phenomenology of multisensory interaction is not limited to actual manipulation and interaction but is also reflected in our readiness to act or explore things through various senses. In responding to the objects’ demands, viz., in interacting with them in suitable or meaningful ways, our senses are intertwined and mutually dependent. They are, in this specific sense, jointly responsible for the overall phenomenal character of experience. This is what he explains when he stresses the fundamental role of movement, or rather, virtual movement: “Movement, not understood as objective movement and shifting of locations in space, but rather as a movement project or as ‘virtual movement,’ is the foundation of the unity of the senses” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 272/243). In perceiving things as offering certain opportunities for action, the body prepares itself to take up these opportunities, and this, in turn, triggers a virtual experience of the thing, one in which the thing’s various objective properties are virtually experienced, or quasi-experienced (Abath 2017). In Merleau-Ponty’s eyes, this is by no means rare or exceptional; on the contrary, it is true of perception in general. On this score, Merleau-Ponty undoubtedly went further than Husserl, and thus came to endorse very explicitly a second argument in favor of the Constitutive Thesis. To be sure, Husserl clearly saw that we do not only perceive actual content and properties (like colors, forms, and textures), but that perception is also always linked to a horizon of possibilities of action, conceived in terms of expectations, anticipations, fulfillment, and disappointment. In Experience and Judgment and Analyses Concerning Passive Synthesis, Husserl explains that these perceived possibilities derive from earlier experiences. What is sedimented and reactivated in perception is the result of our previous encounters with the same and/or similar objects. This intentional reference to past experiences is not limited to a single modality, however; it cuts across the sense-fields. Perceptual consciousness passively draws intentional resources in a reservoir of past experiences with a multimodal history, thereby accounting for the fact that our expectations are usually rich and not limited to any single modality (cf. Husserl 1991, 39f./42f.). In Husserl’s view, however, this passive reference to past experiences does not in and of itself suffice

118  Maxime Doyon to make perception multisensorial in the relevant sense. (I am leaving aside the question of bodily sensations discussed in the previous section.) While he demonstrated that perception generates expectations, which are experienced as possibilities of fulfillment, he never thought that these possibilities are standardly experienced as multisensory possibilities. It is true that passive consciousness opens up a field of potential actions and interactions that may be realized by multiple sense modalities, but this openness is not lived through (erlebt) as a multisensory openness in the sense discussed here. This, however, is a formulation that exactly corresponds to Merleau-Ponty’s view, who thus gave himself the means to endorse much more explicitly than Husserl a second argument in favor of the Constitutive Thesis: perception is multisensory not only because it relies on bodily self-awareness, but also because it includes felt possibilities of action and behaviors that are not restricted to any single modality, but rather engage my whole sensory-motor being.

3 The Normative Impact of Sense-Coordination on Perceptual Agency In the first two sections, I have argued for two conclusions, namely that both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty endorses the Constitutive Thesis on multisensory perception, and that the thesis can be generalized viz. applied to perception in general. To support these two conclusions, I have insisted on the necessity to widen our conception of phenomenal consciousness beyond its typical definition in order to include bodily self-awareness and felt possibilities of actions. In this third and last section, my goal is to exhibit the normative impact of this enlarged conception of phenomenal consciousness on perceptual agency viz. our embodied capacity to respond to and act in accordance with what we perceptually take in. To put it bluntly, I want to argue that, for the healthy perceiving agent, perception and perceptual actions are norm- and situation-sensitive only to the extent that she is bodily self-aware. Since I want to make the point in Husserlian terms first, I will start by sketching out in very rough strokes Husserl’s normative conception of intentionality. Very generally, to affirm that intentionality is normative means that it has accuracy conditions or conditions of satisfaction. From the phenomenological point of view, perceptual experience is normative in the sense that every perceiving act triggers a series of motivated expectations, which may or may not be fulfilled by the further course of experience. An experience that unfolds harmoniously, that is, in accordance with our implicit expectations, is normal or coherent, whereas one that takes an abrupt and unforeseen turn is experienced as abnormal or incoherent. In that specific phenomenological sense, the former experience can be said to be “successful,” while the latter is lived as a disappointment (Enttäuschung).14

Normativity of Multisensory Perception  119 In Husserl’s eyes, the normative status of perception is not an all or nothing affair, however. In most circumstances, perception can be optimized or improved. By moving around or modifying elements of my perceptual situation (say, the lighting), I can get a better look at things. While what exactly needs to be done in order to improve or even optimize my experience depends on contextual factors, including chiefly my interest or the overall orientation of my intentional project (cf. Husserl 1973, §36–39), Husserl still thought that perception has a teleological structure such that the possibility of being adjusted in light of certain norms is constitutive of all perceptual episodes. This possibility, which is built in perceptual expectations, is teleologically oriented toward what he calls “the ideal of perceptual givenness,” which for Husserl corresponds to a multisensory experience of the thing, that is, one in which every sensory channel is systematically connected to the others such as to yield a continuity of optima (eine Kontinuität von Optima) (Ms. D 13 II 26a). For Husserl, only such a multisensory experience of interconnected optimal points of view would bring the thing to this limit of ideal givenness, that is, to its maximum of clarity. This led Husserl to draw the ontological conclusion that “all senses must accord” for there to be an experience of “what is Objective” (Husserl 1991, 68/73).15 While he conceives the optimum as a conscious experience of the thing unified across sensory modalities, Husserl was well aware that this is just an ideal possibility. In normal, everyday contexts, the senses do not all need to accord to experience objects optimally, since optimality is a matter of practical interest and contextual factors.16 But since we stand in a motivational context in which things exercise a normative pull on us,17 perception is always accompanied by an awareness of (more or less specific) movements I could do in order to gain a better perspective on things and optimize my experience.18 We thus arrive at the crux of the matter, for if bodily awareness plays such a crucial role in Husserl’s normative conceptions of perception, it is because bodily forms of self-referential intentionality provide crucial information about how my experience unfolds and fits in the larger intentional context. The point is that bodily self-awareness builds a fundamental aspect of intentionality and is thus a constitutive part of every perception. The idea is simple: since perception, from the phenomenological perspective, is action-oriented, it is not decoupled from the movement and the proprioceptive/kinesthetic feedback it generates. On the contrary, perception unfolds by steadily updating incoming kinetic, postural, articular, vestibular, and equilibrial information (Gallagher 2005, ch. 2). While being strictly speaking non-conscious, these “processes nonetheless contribute to a conscious sense of agency by generating a pre-reflective embodied awareness of our action” (Gallagher 2020, 59). As such, they assume an important normative function in our perceptual

120  Maxime Doyon lives for they allow the agent to keep her actions (Pacherie 2007) and perceptions (Doyon 2015) on track. We find similar ideas in the work of Merleau-Ponty, who describes our capacity to skillfully move our bodies and alter our points of view depending on what our perceptual situation affords. In Merleau-Ponty’s eyes, we perceive our surrounding world as something that has practical significance and in terms of our capacity to skillfully navigate through it. This capacity in turn rests on the set of control mechanisms, sensory-motor abilities, skills, and habits that constitute our body schema. Importantly, the normal functioning of our body schema relies on the constant update of the cues about bodily position and posture provided by kinaesthetic and proprioceptive forms of self-experiences. This means that our sense of perceptual agency – that is to say, our bodily disposition to respond in suitable ways to what we perceptually register – is pre-reflectively experienced and rooted in a series of body schematic and intentional processes. The phenomenology of perceptual agency is phenomenally manifest in the ways these bodily forms of self-relating automatically trigger motor control adjustments in light of the perceptual situation; this is how perceptual agents can keep track of the relative success of their own practices without ever having recourse to reflective consciousness. The hockey player literally feels that he did not slap the puck quite right and immediately knows (approximately) where it is going to land. He can, on this basis, put himself into motion to pick up the return even before he visually confirms the mishit. Similarly, it is late and I have just spilled my glass of IPA, but still I know, because I am proprioceptively self-aware, exactly what to do to avoid further damage (say, quickly stepping back and rapidly picking up my book along the way). Thanks to this pervasive self-referential sensitivity that structures my perceptual space, I can adjust to the unfolding of the situation. In short, the input of bodily selfawareness plays a fundamental role in perceptual consciousness in that it allows perception to be goal- or norm-sensitive and, if needed, to initiate a process of optimization or self-correction, depending on whether the experience progresses in accordance with her intentional goal or not. It seems, then, that if O’Callaghan was absolutely right to notice an “enhancement” (2017, 109) of perception thanks to sense integration and coordination, the thesis is even stronger than suspected. It is not only the case that each of the five traditional senses does better and yield richer, more accurate and more reliable perceptual judgements when they cooperate (de Vignemont 2014; O’Callaghan 2017; Matthen 2017; Navajas et al. 2017), say, like when seeing objects improves our hearing of the sounds they make (Man et al. 2020). For the normally functioning body, the integration of bodily forms of self-referential intentionality also contribute to sharpen our sense of perceptual agency. The key here is to recognize how bodily forms of self-relating inform the phenomenological conception of the “I can.” As the bearer of all intentional relations,

Normativity of Multisensory Perception  121 the  “I  can” is itself a product of multisensory integration: the loop of bodily sensations, perception, and movement that co-constitute the subjective space of the body is an intermodal achievement of intentional consciousness (Fuchs 2016) that has, I contend, a powerful normative impact on our perceptual lives: together, they play nothing less than a necessary function for the satisfactory performance of any perceptual action.

4 Conclusion This chapter aimed to show that both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty think of normal perception as being constitutively multisensory, that is, as always requiring the involvement of two or more senses. In support of this view, I have offered a series of reasons as to why we ought to enlarge our conception of perceptual consciousness such as to include forms of bodily self-experiences and felt possibilities of action. To a large extent, the argument I defended throughout the paper rests on the accuracy or plausibility of the descriptions provided. In presenting them, it has been shown that the dominant views in the current debates on multisensory perception – those of Tim Bayne, Charles Spence, and Casey O’Callaghan especially – fall prey (to varying degree) to two important prejudices: (1) first, these views disregard in important ways how bodily forms of self-relation informs what I have called perceptual agency; and second, (2) by restricting the analysis of phenomenal consciousness to qualitative features, these analyses also fail to fully appreciate normative dimensions of normal perceptual experiencing. Whereas O’Callaghan certainly fares better than his contemporary counterparts on both scores, the paper provides a certain number of reasons to think that the classical analyses of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty still contain largely underexplored resources that make the argument for the normative character of multisensory perception even stronger.

Notes 1 Here’s a passage that supports this reading: “When philosophers and psychologists suggest that consciousness is multisensory, what they typically appear to mean is that a subject’s overall conscious state can, at a single point in time, include within itself experiences that can be fully identified with particular sensory modalities – i.e., that sense-specific experiences can be co-conscious. At any rate, this is what we mean by MSV. This claim is importantly different from the claim that there might be perceptual experiences that are not sensespecific” (Bayne and Spence 2015, 99). By the latter, Bayne and Spence mean the constitutive view held by Casey O’Callaghan (2014; 2015; 2017). 2 More examples can be found in O’Callaghan (2012). Additional support for this view is provided by Briscoe (2019), who makes a similar point concerning haptic (viz., explorative or active) touch and egocentric space. 3 See Husserl (1966, 12–14/49–51) and Husserl (1991, 56/61). For a more detailed analysis, see Drummond (1983) and Doyon (2019).

122  Maxime Doyon 4 The problem, in short, is that kinesthetic sensations cannot on their own motivate perceptual content (Drummond 1983; Crowell 2013). Minimally, the contribution of our proprioceptive sense is also required (see Doyon 2015). In this context, the difference between kinesthesis and proprioception is not insignificant: whereas Husserl uses the term “kinaesthesia” to refer exclusively to the sensations of one’s own bodily movement (direction, speed, rhythm, etc.), proprioception registers our own self-movement by collecting “information from kinetic, muscular, articular, and cutaneous sources,” and the contributions of our “vestibular and equilibrial functions” (Gallagher 2005, 45). Hence, our proprioceptive system includes kinesthetic sensations, but is not limited to them. 5 This idea was not only massively at work in Merleau-Ponty (see Section 2), but it lies at the heart of sensorimotor enactivism as well: “On the enactive view, one should expect that visual content requires integration with kinesthesis and proprioception; after all, visual content depends on sensory effects of movement” (Noë 2004, 95). 6 Considering spatial location, Briscoe recently developed a robust and empirically informed argument that leads to the same conclusion: “Location in egocentric space is novel relative to the representational powers of any modality working by itself” (2019, 5). 7 There is a fairly large consensus in the scientific literature around the necessity of revisiting the traditional (viz., Aristotelian) list of the senses, and proprioception seems – and by far – to be the best candidate to join the group. Arguments for its inclusion can be found in Fridland (2011), Schwenkler (2013), and de Vignemont (2020). On the absence of widespread assent on this question, see Durie (2005), Macpherson (2011), and Matthen (2017). 8 More details on the development of this idea in Husserl’s work and its consequences in the larger context of its reception are provided in Doyon and Wehrle (forthcoming). 9 In fact, we could even go further, since for Husserl, even my perception of time depends on the body. The point is that both objective and subjective time would be impossible without experiencing a flow of changing appearances, which are themselves motivated by bodily intentionality. Since I need to experience change to experience time, and change depends on the body, it follows that even the perception of time constitutively depends on the body. 10 The claim that I am making here is not an eidetic, but a descriptive one, that is, it does not belong to the essence of perception that it is multisensory. That’s why there could be exceptions. Merleau-Ponty, to whom we will turn our attention in the next section, seems to be holding the same when he writes that “the unity of the senses” is nothing “but the formal expression of a fundamental contingency: the fact that we are in the world” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 266/229). 11 This is incidentally the reason why some philosophers and scientists treat touch and proprioception as constituting a single sense. See, for instance, Fulkerson (2014). 12 This quote from Ideas II confirms that Husserl would reject Bayne and Spence’s thesis about consciousness being the mere sum of modality specific features: “The thing (…) is constituted in unitary apperception. (…) It makes no sense to assign to each sense its property-complexes as separate components of the thing” (Husserl 1991, 70/75). 13 I am aware that there is a cost to this terminological change, for it invites back in the “separation” of the senses that Merleau-Ponty wanted to avoid. Still, I think that the conceptual distinction I make (and which reflects the current scientific consensus) between synesthetic and multisensory

Normativity of Multisensory Perception  123 experiences is necessary to appreciate the universality of the claim that Merleau-Ponty advances. 14 I explain this view in detail in Doyon (2021). 15 For a detailed analysis of Husserl’s conception of perceptual optimality, see Doyon (2018). 16 To illustrate: what counts as an optimal visual experience of a flower for the botanist and the layman differs because their interests in flowers differs (cf. Husserl 1973, §36). 17 In a well-known passage from Analyses Concerning Active and Passive Syntheses, Husserl explains how the systematic interconnection between appearances is kinaesthetically lived-through (erlebt) as forming a practical horizon of possibilities of action. It is almost as if the thing were calling out to us “there is still more to see here, turn me so you can see all my sides, let your gaze run through me, draw closer to me, open me up, divide me up; keep on looking me over again and again, turning me to see all sides. You will get to see me like this, all that I am, all my surface qualities, all my inner sensible qualities, etc.” (Husserl 1966, 5/41). 18 Husserl argues for this reason that the kinaesthetic paths themselves have their own laws and should therefore be regarded from the point of view of the optimum as well: “Nun sind aber auch die Wege selbst unter optimalen Gesichtspunkten zu betrachten: derjenige Weg ist das Optimum, auf dem in jedem Differenzial die Klarheitssteigerung die größtmögliche ist, oder auf dem, was dasselbe [ist], die schnellste und geradeste Steigerung gegen das absolute Optimum sich vollzieht” (Ms. D13 I, 63a).

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Normativity of Multisensory Perception  125 Nagel, Thomas. 1974. “What It’s Like to Be a Bat.” Philosophical Review 83 (October): 435–450. Navajas, Joaquin, Chandni Hindocha, Hebah Foda, Mehdi Keramati, Peter  E. Latham, and Bahador Bahrami. 2017. “The Idiosyncratic Nature of Confidence.” Nature Human Behaviour 1, no. 11 (November): 810–818. Noë, Alva. 2004. Action in Perception. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. O’Callaghan, Casey. 2012. “Perception and Multimodality.” In Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, eds. E. Margolis, R. Samuels, and S.P. Stich, 92–117. Oxford: Oxford University Press. O’Callaghan, Casey. 2014. “Intermodal Binding Awareness.” In Sensory Integration and the Unity of Consciousness, eds. David J. Bennette and Christopher S. Hill, 73–104. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. O’Callaghan, Casey. 2015. “The Multisensory Character of Perception.” The Journal of Philosophy 112, no. 10 (October): 551–569. O’Callaghan, Casey. 2017. “Enhancement through Coordination.” In Current Controversies in Philosophy of Perception, ed. Bence Nanay, 109–120. London: Routledge. Pacherie, Elisabeth. 2007. “The Sense of Control and the Sense of Agency.” Psyche 13, no. 1: 1–30. Schwenkler, John. 2013. “The Objects of Bodily Awareness.” Philosophical Studies 162, no. 2: 465–472.

6 Normativity in Perception Frode Kjosavik

1 Introduction In this chapter, I shall look into a manifestation of normativity in perception that I take to be underexplored in phenomenology. In doing so, I shall build on work that does not belong to the phenomenological tradition as such but which has the potential, I think, to enrich phenomenological approaches. The entry point shall be shapes – in particular letter shapes. In intuiting a shape, e.g., “A,” on a printed book page, I perceive ink on a sheet of paper as an occurrence thereof. An abstract form is imposed upon what is concretely given and acts as a norm for sensory perception. This abstract form is itself perceivable, for it is as if it is present in locations in space or time given by its sensory occurrences – as that letter shape, or the letter shape there, as well as quasi-perceivable in mere memory or imagination. The same abstract form can occur anywhere and again and again. The abstract form is a type, and each of its concrete occurrences is a token thereof. It is abstract in the sense that it is not in space or time, as opposed to what is concrete, i.e., it is what Husserl calls “irreal” or “ideal,” not “real.” Apart from letter shapes, constructed forms include, e.g., geometrical figures, flags – with their colors and patterns – and even abstract works of art, like poems or operas. All these abstract forms will be called “types” in the present account. Notably, the constitution analysis is different for different kinds of such abstract objects, e.g., for linguistic signs, for geometrical shapes, or for aesthetic objects. Husserl provides different accounts of the acts and orders of constitution in each case – and rightly so. Still, in so far as types are constituted as abstract or “ideal” objects they manifest themselves to the perceiver with normative force and in similar ways, or so I shall claim. In a phenomenological approach, it is the givenness of types and tokens to the perceiver that is central. We therefore need to address the following issues: How is it possible to “mean” or “intend” repeatable abstract forms? And for which activity contexts are such abstract forms needed? This brings us to a constitution analysis of perceptions of types DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740-9

Normativity in Perception  127 and tokens. In this analysis, types will be seen to fulfil two conditions: (1)  They act as norms for structuring what is concretely given to the senses – as such they are forms of perceiving; (2) they are perceivable or quasi-perceivable in their own right, i.e., they are objects of perception. Thanks to this duality, types make certain cognitive and cultural achievements possible. Types are thereby related to both epistemic and non-epistemic values and goals, as we shall see. Such types should not be confused with the “types” of “pre-predicative” experience in Husserl (cf. 1973, §§80–85). The account in Dieter Lohmar (2003) is instructive when it comes to “types” of this kind, which are similar to procedural “schemata” in Kant in important respects. As Lohmar puts it, a “type” in Husserl “has the task of guiding the combinatory formation of an intuitive exhibition” (2003, 107). Such exhibition takes place in perception itself, through recognition in accordance with the “type.” By its means, there are “typifying apperceptions,” or similarity groupings. My perception may be as of an animal, as of a dog, as of a terrier, as of Fido, etc., with recognition in accordance with general or individual types of various grades of determinacy. On this basis, I shall speak of “Husserlian types.” Perceiving a letter shape is not the same as seeing a physical mark both in its individuality and its typicality. I perceive the letter shape itself as an abstract type. To take in that very same letter shape through its occurrences in multiple locations on the printed page is very different from a similarity grouping of individual physical marks akin to a similarity grouping of individual dogs. In the following, what is called a “type” simpliciter purports to fulfil conditions 1 and 2.

2 Types and Tokens The type-token distinction is drawn in C.S. Peirce (1933, 4.537). Types are “laws,” as established, e.g., through conventions. Tokens are “objects” or “events” that are said to be “replicas” of types. Note, though, that tokens can only be identified with concrete occurrences of types. Types can also occur in types, e.g., the letter type “e” occurs twice in the word type “Peirce.” These occurrences are not inscription marks – or the outcome of inscription events – but as abstract as the letter type itself. Letter types act as inscription norms, and letter tokens are inscription marks that fall under them. Inscription as such is an activity that is regulated by these norms for shaping inscriptions. Inscriptions – as well as acts of taking in what they inscribe – can therefore be assessed as performances. A letter can be inscribed more or less well and taken in more or less easily. We can think of tokens as distributed around a type. The proximity to the type varies with how well they are inscribed or how easy they are to take in. This parallels a construal of phonemes as discrete norms of utterance (cf. Quine 1960, §18). At the periphery, we have borderline

128  Frode Kjosavik cases, i.e., inscriptions that might just as well have been inscriptions of other types, or perhaps mere physical marks and not inscriptions at all. In discussing the ontological status of types, one often tends to overlook the potential difficulties there might be in determining the ontological status of tokens. One also tends to treat tokens as if they were all ontologically on a par. However, tokens can differ widely in ontological status, from solids or holes to mere shadows or flashes of light. Some tokens are individual objects in their own right, whereas others, like inscription marks, are not. A token can either be independent – or what Husserl calls “concrete,” or it can be non-independent – or what Husserl calls an “abstract moment” (cf. §17 of the Third Logical Investigation in Husserl 2001a). The manner in which particular tokens are identified as tokens of particular types cuts across such ontological differences. This indicates, I think, how types – in their normative way of structuring – manifest themselves uniformly over diverse ways of being. For a token to be a token, it has to fall within the scope of a norm or prescription. A mere description of what is concretely given to the senses does not capture its status as a token. In terms of mere resemblance, we cannot even claim that all tokens are of the same shape. The relation x is of the same shape as y is not well-determined for inscription marks. That is precisely why there are also borderline cases in token identification. In terms of mere similarity and difference, there is no sharp demarcation line between what may be taken to be of the same shape and what may not be so. Due to poor print quality or sloppy handwriting, a mark for one letter type may even be mistaken for a mark of another letter type in visual perception. There is, of course, a limit to how poor the generation of a token can be if a reader is still to be expected to take in the relevant type, i.e., the one that was intended by the author. Since the relation x is of the same shape as y is not transitive, it cannot be used to lay down an identity criterion for types. More generally, tokens of a type are similar to each other but a relation of resemblance – as opposed to exact similarity – is not an equivalence relation since it is not transitive. This is a well-known point in Wittgenstein’s family resemblance argument. From the fact that x resembles y, and y resembles z, it does not follow that x resembles z. Moreover, apart from potential vagueness in token identification, there is also context-dependence. What is taken as a token of a particular type in one context might be more similar to what is normally taken as a token of another type than to what is normally taken as a token of that particular type (cf. Wetzel 1989, 187).

3 Familiarity Schemes and Gestalt Qualities Two phenomena add to the variation in possible shapes that come with linguistic types.

Normativity in Perception  129 First, type composition – e.g., from phonemes, letters, or gestures – extends the range of what can be taken to be tokens of the same type. Just as word forms can be poorly uttered or mispronounced, they can be poorly inscribed or misspelt, or poorly signed or “mis-signed” in gesturing. Bad performances do not necessarily undermine the tokening of the type. In communication, bad performances might be overridden by the sender’s intention or by the larger context. Second, stylistic and related kinds of variation expand the stock of both simple and composite types ad indefinitum. For example, letter types can come in many different fonts, in italics or boldface, in uppercase and lowercase, etc. In typography, there are fixed parameters for this variation. Even the simple linguistic types are thus typographically complex – they are composed on the basis of macro-features that can vary independently, and also from micro-types, like “serifs,” which themselves come in various versions. It is easy to realize, on the basis of this, that there need not be any geometrical or topological features that all tokens of, say, the first letter in the alphabet have in common and that set them apart from tokens of other letters. Indeed, there are no nomological principles that can capture the resemblance that any two tokens of the same alphabetical letter bear to each other. Nelson Goodman comments on this: None of this should be taken as suggesting that character-­ indifference – or syntactical equivalence, or being a true copy or a replica of – between marks is any simple function of shape, size, etc. The letter-classes of our alphabet, for example, are established by tradition and habit; and defining them would be as hard as defining such ordinary terms as “desk” and “table.” Plainly, having the same shape, size, etc., is neither necessary nor sufficient for two marks to belong to the same letter. (…) Furthermore, two marks of identical shape and size may, as a result of context, belong to different characters. (Goodman 1976, 137–138) What underlies all possible variation within one and the same “letterclass” is complex. Goodman refers to tradition and habit, which are very important in Husserl as well (cf. Lohmar 2016 on habits and Husserlian types). I shall speak of familiarity schemes through which we recognize familiar shapes. As already noted (cf. Section 1 above), these are not themselves objects of perception but play a part in the as of character of a perception. They have affinity to Husserlian types of attribution. In an attempt to identify a letter type for the nth letter in the alphabet in a less common style, a familiarity scheme may be applied by the perceiver – the one for being as of the nth letter in the alphabet. Whereas types are those that shape inscriptions as determinately as possible, a familiarity scheme

130  Frode Kjosavik is open to a wide range of stylistic and related variation. A perceiver may not even be able to identify a particular letter shape – e.g., one in Gothic style – in isolation from other letter shapes in the same style. Ingarden makes the following apt observation: When we hear a certain word, what we are prepared for is not certain specially selected parts or features of the concrete phonic material, which we then hear – features which are as concrete and individual as the material itself – but a typical phonic form [Gestalt]. (Ingarden 1973, 36–37) Likewise, Ingarden suggests that in inscription, there is “a certain vague type of Gestalt quality which is concretized in a real sign (…)” (1973, 35n). I take it that such Gestalt qualities are identifiable across a range of different styles. Still, a particular type has to be sharp enough to determine even the stylistic variant that one is currently inscribing or uttering, and so as to be perceivable by others as belonging to that stylistic variant. A graphical or phonetic norm is determinate enough, but a familiarity scheme is not. Rather, it has to trace out Gestalt aspects of letters or words across a wide range of stylistic variation. Moreover, it is never firmly fixed but always open to expansion, as the perceiver becomes familiar with more stylistic variants.

4 The Quasi-Concrete, Its “Embodiments,” and Intuitive Evidence To provide a phenomenological account of types and of how these are given to us, we shall rely on the notion of “quasi-concrete” object that can be found in Charles Parsons: Some abstract objects are distinguished by the fact that they have an intrinsic relation to the concrete; they are determined by their concrete embodiments. I shall call such objects quasi-concrete. Sensequalities and shapes, among the objects prominent in traditional discussions of universals, seem to count as quasi-concrete. They “occur” in the world as the qualities and shapes of whatever objects have them. (…) What makes an object quasi-concrete is that it is of a kind which goes with an intrinsic, concrete “representation,” such that different objects of the kind in question are distinguishable by having different representations. (Parsons 2008, 33–34) Such objects make up a subcategory of objects that are not in space and time, namely, those abstract objects that have concrete occurrences. The remaining abstract objects are the “pure abstract” ones. Among the

Normativity in Perception  131 quasi-concrete objects, the perceivable ones – or those with “concrete representations” that are perceivable – are taken to be “the most important examples” (Parsons 2008, 35). Sign types are perceivable and quasi-concrete, as are Euclidean shapes. An approach by way of types is possible even to a field as abstract as arithmetic if we turn to quasi-concrete numerals, in particular to strings that are composed from a single stroke type by iterated concatenation, like the finitary numerals in Hilbert. This is precisely the use to which Parsons puts the quasi-concrete objects. Of course, such types may come in different styles, like those that are tokened by “| | |,” “///,” and “111,” but there is a familiarity scheme for recognizing stroke triplets that applies to all three tokens. Indeed, each of them would seem to be alike in a certain aspect – each of them has a Gestalt quality, or a “figural moment,” as Husserl would put it, namely, the configurational “shape” of a stroke triplet, which is perceivable in its own right. Husserl did address perceptions of “shapes” of organized pluralities in his Philosophy of Arithmetic of 1891 (Husserl 2003, ch. 11; cf. also Husserl 2001a, Third Logical Investigation; Husserl 2001b, Sixth Logical Investigation, §51), but it should be kept apart from perception of shapes as abstract types. It follows from Husserl’s account that in perceiving a row of strokes, I also perceive a “figural moment,” or Gestalt quality, namely, the unity and “shape” of the row. Each multiple stroke token is alike in a certain aspect, namely, in its “figural moment,” e.g., that of being such a triplet of strokes. However, Gestalt qualities are clearly not what Parsons is after here. After all, string tokens of sufficient length have the same Gestalt quality, whether we append another stroke or not. Parsons’s main interest lies in the role strings of strokes can play as mathematical objects. For example, one of the axioms in Dedekind-Peano arithmetic says that any natural number has a successor. It can now be intuitively justified in the following way. To any inscription of a stroke string of the form “|…|”, another stroke can be added: “|…||.” Here, we are relying not merely on perception of actual stroke inscriptions but on quasi-perception – or imagination – as well, namely, that of arbitrary inscriptions and their extensions. What is crucial in the present context is that for each particular choice of numerals we are dealing with quasi-concrete linguistic objects, and that such objects can have concrete embodiments. The finitary numerals are wholly or partially set before our eyes. They are not familiarity schemes, i.e., they are not akin to Husserlian types, which are merely applied, not intuited. And there must be a way of keeping the strokes distinct – they cannot simply fuse into the vague Gestalt of a long row. Thus, it is only qua perceivable and abstract and sharp that stroke strings can offer the kind of intuitive evidence that Parsons demands. Felix Mühlhölzer has criticized Parsons on these points. He agrees that types can be perceived: “In spite of the abstract nature of a string of

132  Frode Kjosavik strokes, we can nevertheless legitimately talk about our perceiving it” (Mühlhölzer 2010, 279). However, he disagrees with Parsons’s claim that such objects are properly mathematical. This is due to vagueness problems pertaining to the types themselves, he claims. Thus, are “||||” and “||| |” inscriptions of one and the same type or not? According to Parsons, there is no vagueness here with regard to the types, only ambiguity. Perhaps the second inscription is a token of the same type as the first inscription, or perhaps it is a token of two types, namely of those also tokened by “|||” and “|”, respectively, or perhaps it is not a token of any type at all, i.e., it is not well-formed. For Mühlhölzer, this will not do, as long as Parsons has little to offer on how to decide between the options. This should after all not be done in terms of mere theory, since Parsons’s approach is “descriptive” – or effectively what we would call “phenomenological,” and the quasi-concrete objects are not purely theoretical. Mühlhölzer thus proposes to shift from the object-oriented approach in Parsons to one of rule-following. As for the symbols that are used in the formal systems of mathematics, these should be considered as merely “formal”: Letters of Peano arithmetic, like “N” and “S,” with their characteristic, perceivable shapes, are, of course, totally arbitrary (…) It is rather the role of these letters in the axiom system which is relevant. Let us call the linguistic objects identified with such a role, i.e., conceived as invariant when only their shape is changed but the role remains the same, formal symbols. (Mühlhölzer 2010, 272–273) “Formal symbols” would be what Parsons regards as “pure abstract objects,” and, thus, on a par with sets or numbers. The strings of strokes, on the other hand, are according to Mühlhölzer to be individuated on the basis of a well-ordering rule for their generation, which includes repeatable reproduction of a full stroke. The distance between two strokes in a string is not relevant as such. It could be “a thousand miles” for that matter. The determination of their identity hinges on our actions and becomes highly context-dependent, “and it obviously breaks down when the strings become too long” (Mühlhölzer 2010, 283). Still, it is possible to bring an approach by way of quasi-concrete objects together with an approach by way of rule-following – if the quasiconcrete objects can themselves act as rules. Whether the two inscriptions above are of the same stroke string type or not depends, then, on the particular context, but it is not as if we need additional rules for the identity of the types. Rather, the rules that Mühlhölzer puts forth for strings of strokes cannot themselves be stated without quasi-concrete objects in the first place, e.g., “Start with the object |, then add this same object…,” etc. and “In order to know whether a given collection of objects has the

Normativity in Perception  133 cardinality ||||| (called “five,” for short), try to put the objects in one-onecorrespondence with the strokes of |||||…,” etc. (Mühlhölzer 2010, 282). It is precisely due to the normative force of the stroke string types for perception – the fact that they act as standards for organization of sensory material – that they can offer the kind of intuitive evidence for arithmetic that Parsons is after. Indeed, type perception can even be said to be “a priori” in a weak sense. As “forms” of perception, they constitute a standard that is present in perceptions themselves – they are not merely approximated by what is given in perceptions. We see, then, that such norms can be important resources in scientific contexts where epistemic values like truth and evidence are central. That is how they are utilized by Parsons as far as elementary arithmetic is concerned. Furthermore, as we shall see below, we can realize epistemic goals by way of perceivable types in a diversity of fields – and the goal need not be a scientific one. It might just be that of accurate perception in its own right. Moreover, perceivable types and their tokens are instrumental when it comes to practical, social, and aesthetic goals – in contexts ranging from everyday communication to performing arts.

5 Phenomenal Vagueness and Perception as Performance The types we just looked into are linguistic types of the simplest kind. Those of a natural language that we started out with are more complex. Common to all linguistic types is that they are cultural constructs, as already noted. Like in Husserl, we may consider them to be “bound” rather than “free idealities” (cf. Husserl 1973, §65.) Ingarden thinks the type-token distinction for language use is called for when Husserl states the following: “[W]e are naturally not referring to the sound-pattern uttered here and now (hic et nunc), the vanishing noise that can never recur identically: we mean the expression in specie” (Husserl 2001a, 195). According to Ingarden, an expression cannot be meant “in specie” in the form of an ideal “species” for utterances, in Husserl’s technical sense. Indeed, typical phonic forms may change over time, under cultural conditions. Hence, “it would naturally be an error to see an ideal ontically autonomous object in a word sound, in the sense of a phonic form, and to place it on the same level as, for instance, mathematical objects” (Ingarden 1973, 37). The contrast with mathematical objects is important. They are said to be “omnitemporal” in Husserl, i.e., they are discovered rather than invented. Still, unlike Husserl I maintain that some abstract or “ideal” objects have a special status that is of relevance to a phenomenology of perception. They are perceivable, i.e., they can be taken in in close proximity to what is concretely given to the senses. They are not just intuitable in less direct ways and with some remoteness to sensory

134  Frode Kjosavik experience – through what Husserl calls “categorial” intuition (cf. Logical Investigations) or “eidetic” intuition (cf. Ideas). (I shall return to this topic in Section 7.) This applies in particular to strings of strokes and to Euclidean shapes. Against this background, I shall now attempt to generalize the notion of a sign type so that normative “types” can be seen to include other kinds of quasi-concrete objects as well, of varying degrees of complexity. Common to all these normative “types” is that they have a prescriptive or regulative role to play in perception. We are thereby moving well beyond linguistic types – including the linguistic signs of an artificial language. Color shades are types that are not cultural constructs as such. A human perceiver with normal color vision can normally see millions of distinct colors. The ease with which some colors are discerned may partly depend upon which color distinctions that are made in the perceiver’s language. But color discrimination tests in which subjects are presented with chips of closely resembling colors do show that humans in general are capable of very fine discrimination. The chips token color types that are maximally determinate shades, just as particular geometrical figures, e.g., a circle or an equilateral triangle, are maximally determinate shapes. While there are certainly labels in English for what is more determinate than “red,” e.g., “scarlet,” phenomenal discriminations can still be made, e.g., between shades of scarlet. We might pick one of those finer shades to serve as our example, and perhaps introduce a label for it, say “scarlet*.” A circle, on the other hand, is only constructible as a determinate shape, albeit of arbitrary size. This is in accordance with Postulate 3 in Euclidean geometry, which says that a finite line segment of arbitrary length can be rotated around an arbitrary fixed point in the plane so as to generate a circle. The postulate neatly captures the only ways in which circles vary, namely, in position and size. The question of whether we might need a label for something more determinate than what is labelled a “circle” simply does not arise here. A determinate color shade or a geometrical shape can in principle also be treated more or less like a letter or phoneme type in the following respect. It can have inexact “embodiments,” which can still function as representatives of types. A perception of a scarlet* shade or a circle may thus come with a certain ambiguity or vagueness, just like the perception of a linguistic sign. A range of sense qualities or geometrical shapes might be suggested or hinted at. One color shade, say, that of scarlet*, might be mistaken for another, say that of scarlet#. Or an elliptical shape might be mistaken for a circular shape. The scarlet* shade may not be given with sufficient contrast, or there might be slight variation in color shades over an extended patch. Or, it is as if more or less round shapes are clustered around an exact shape. I can choose to attend to the vagueness, or I can choose to attend to a norm that fixes this as vagueness, and which is therefore itself sharp.

Normativity in Perception  135 In Crisis, Husserl speaks of ideal forms that are filled with sensuous content (sinnliche Fülle; cf. Husserl 1970, §9). These are “limit-Gestalts,” which are said not to occur in the material world. At most, what can be found or made can be arranged in a sequence of ever closer approximations to the ideal forms. This does not accord well with the role that I have ascribed to types in perception. Strictly speaking, it makes no sense to claim that a sequence of perceivable shapes are ever closer approximations to an unperceivable shape that is yet to be constituted, as when one technically makes the “straight straighter and the flat flatter” (Husserl 1970, 25). Whatever is perceived as an approximation to a perfect shape is already subjected to the normative force of that exact shape itself, and it is only against the background of the ideal form that it can be perceived as an approximation, or as an imperfect embodiment that represents it. What we can observe here are in fact typifying idealizations at work. I  cannot perceive a determinate scarlet* shade or a perfectly circular shape without imposing a normative standard upon what is concretely given. The phenomenal vagueness is itself a manifestation of deviations from a perceptual norm. A minimal degree of idealization is arguably integral to perceptual experiences, insofar as they are to be experiences of anything stable, which can be re-identified from one occasion to another. Without it, we would be left with what is merely fleeting or transient, not with tokens of repeatable types. The idealization sweeps over unique details that belong to the experience. The typifying idealizations have to be performed by the perceiver, by attending to the perceived scene according to goals, like that of accuracy in color perception or that of exhibition of exact shapes in geometry. Without such constitution on the part of the perceiver, through superimposition of norms upon what is concretely given, determinate shades or shapes cannot be perceived, nor can anything be perceived as mere approximations to these. To be sure, normative pulls in perception towards typification may be overridden by other normative pulls, and, thus, towards what is optimal for some other purpose than that of fine color discrimination or that of distinct shape recognition. Thus, we are not normally interested in the particular color shade of a red traffic light, nor in the exact circular shape it might be taken to exhibit – if only by approximation. Its color contrast with yellow and green suffices for all practical purposes.

6 Phenomenal Intimacy and the Normative Force of Types To account for the normative force of quasi-concrete types, we have to look at their “phenomenal intimacy” with tokens. I think the unique relationship has been brought out very well by Richard Wollheim. His main concern is abstract works of art, like a novel or a piece of music. Ulysses and Der Rosenkavalier are types, whereas my copy of Ulysses or tonight’s

136  Frode Kjosavik performance of Der Rosenkavalier “are tokens of those types” (Wollheim 1980, 75). Now, Wollheim goes on to provide a very general account of the type-token distinction, which extends well beyond works of art: Let us introduce as a blanket expression for types, classes, universals, the term generic entity, and, as a blanket expression for those things which fall under them, the term element. Now we can say that the various generic entities can be distinguished according to the different ways or relationships in which they stand to their elements. These relationships can be arranged on a scale of intimacy or intrinsicality. At one end of the scale we find classes, where the relationship is at its most external or extrinsic: for a class is merely made of, or constituted by, its members which are extensionally conjoined to form it. The class of red things is simply a construct out of all those things which are (timelessly) red. In the case of universals the relation is more intimate: in that a universal is present in all its instances. Redness is in all red things. With types we find the relationship between the generic entity and its elements at its most intimate: for not merely is the type present in all its tokens like the universal in all its instances, but for much of the time we think and talk of the type as though it were itself a kind of token, though a peculiarly important or pre-eminent one. In many ways we treat the Red Flag as though it were a red flag (cf. ‘We’ll keep the Red Flag flying high’). (Wollheim 1980, 75–76) Sharing of properties and transmission of properties are then defined as follows: If a and b are both F, F is shared by a and b. If a is F because b is F, or b is F because a is F, F is transmitted between a and b. (Here the direction of transmission is ignored, and it may not even be possible to determine this.) There are properties that only tokens can possess, like location in space and time. At most, types have an imaginary position or virtual presence in space and time. There are also properties that only types can possess, like “was invented by.” Our primary concern, however, is with properties that both types and tokens can possess. The following now obtains: A class may share properties with its members, like the class of big things, which is itself big, but this is rarely the case. In addition, if it is, it is only contingently so, i.e., there are no transmitted properties. In the case of universals and types, on the other hand, there are

Normativity in Perception  137 such shared properties, many of which are also transmitted: “Red things may be said to be exhilarating, and so also redness. Every red flag is rectangular, and so is the Red Flag itself. Moreover, many, if not all, of the shared properties will be transmitted” (Wollheim 1980, 77). With respect to the transmitted properties, Wollheim thinks that, first, there is a “a far larger range [of them] in the case of types than there is with universals.” Second, in the case of universals no property that an instance of a certain universal has necessarily, i.e. that it has in virtue of being an instance of that universal, can be transmitted to the universal. In the case of types, on the other hand, all and only those properties that a token of a certain type has necessarily, i.e. that it has in virtue of being a token of that type, will be transmitted to the type. Examples would be: Redness, as we have seen, may be exhilarating, and, if it is, it is so for the same reason that its instances are, i.e., the property is transmitted. But redness cannot be red or coloured, which its instances are necessarily. On the other hand, the Union Jack is coloured and rectangular, properties which all its tokens have necessarily: but even if all its tokens happened to be made of linen, this would not mean that the Union Jack itself was made of linen. (Wollheim 1980, 77) The notion of a type in Wollheim is thus very broad indeed. Importantly, for his purposes, it includes abstract works of art as well as other abstract artefacts. The Red Flag is an example of the latter, and a bit similar to a linguistic type in being invented. We also see that while a linguistic type is not of any color as such, there are types that are colored, like the Red Flag or the Union Jack. Furthermore, essences in Husserl are universals, not types. Even “eidetic singularities,” i.e., maximally specific essences, are not normative types that are phenomenologically present in perception. In accordance with Wollheim’s account, this might be brought out as follows. Just as the essence redness is not itself red, so the essence scarletness* is not itself scarlet*. Similarly, the essence circularity is not itself circular. Hence, essences are not quasi-concrete, and they are not normatively ideal for perception in the manner we have looked into, i.e., by superimposition on what is concretely given. Scarlet* as type, on the other hand, is itself scarlet*, just as a circle as type is itself circular. Notably, abstract works of art come with a potential for rich variation in their range of tokens, unlike types that are strictly correlated with essences. Thus, various performances of a piece of music also constitute interpretations thereof. As Wollheim puts it, an interpretation “may be regarded as the production of a token that has properties in excess of those of the type” (1980, 82). Were we to conceive of a “universal notation” that lays down firmly the very performance as itself a type, there

138  Frode Kjosavik would no longer be any performing arts. If “the whole of the execution would have been anticipated in the notation,” these arts would be reduced to “mere mechanical skills” (Wollheim 1980, 83–84). However, I do not take such a universal notation to be feasible in any case – for the same reason as in the case of letter and word types. There are no nomological principles that can capture the familiarity schemes in question, and such schemes cannot be all-inclusive. How, then, are types that are cultural constructs introduced? Wollheim claims that this is done exclusively by way of concepts or the structure of language. What is required for the introduction of a type covers a wide range of possibilities, though. At one end, there is the production of a concrete particular, which is then copied ad indefinitum. At the other end, there is the generation of instructions for producing particulars ad indefinitum. Wollheim mentions as an example of the former the Brigitte Bardot looks, and as an example of the latter, the Minuet. Then there are intermediate cases, like concrete particulars that are produced with the purpose of being copied or “a mould or matrix which generates further particulars (…)” (Wollheim 1980, 78). The concern here is not with cultural objects as such but only with that subclass of cultural objects that are abstract types. A painting or sculpture or building is not a case in point, for these are not abstract objects. There may be many copies or versions of them, but as works of art and architecture they remain concrete. A piece of music or a poem, by contrast, is itself an abstract type. In The Origin of Geometry (cf. Husserl 1970, 357), Husserl draws a distinction between cultural objects that have “a repeatability in many like exemplars,” like tools and “architectural products,” and “ideal” objects. The former, e.g., a hammer or a house, are precisely not abstract objects. Wollheim’s concern, however, is with abstract types that are repeatable through their tokens, in particular those which are themselves abstract works of art. His concern is not with serial production of cultural objects. In The Origin of Geometry (cf. again Husserl 1970, 357), concrete cultural objects, which can be copied ad indefinitum, are taken to contrast with “ideal objectivities,” which “exist only once,” but have “sensibly embodying repetitions.” The latter include geometrical shapes and linguistic expressions. Husserl thereby seems to overlook the fact that abstract objects or “ideal objectivities” – like the Red Flag – can themselves be introduced through mere repetition anchored in a concrete prototype, as when a red flag was used for the first time to signal the revolution (cf. Wollheim 1980, 75). He also does not consider the possibility of the copying – finitely or ad indefinitum – of abstract objects. In an icosahedron, an equilateral triangle occurs twenty times. In the word type “Husserl,” the letter type “s” occurs twice. A stroke string may repeat a single stroke ad indefinitum: “||||…,” thereby composing types that are too long to be inscribed physically but whose existence is

Normativity in Perception  139 demanded by Dedekind-Peano arithmetic. So complex abstract objects come with their own repetitions, which is why we cannot identify occurrences with tokens. There is a sense, then, in which “ideal objectivities” do not “exist only once.” Whatever the limitations of both Wollheim’s and Husserl’s approaches may be at a more detailed level, we see that in addition to epistemic values, like accuracy, truth, and evidence, various practical, social, and aesthetic values are also involved in the ways in which repeatable types are utilized over a broad range of activity contexts. And the interplay between type and token perception can be quite complex, and itself involve recognition of imitative or procedural aspects.

7 Phenomenological Presence and Normative “Type Constancy” This leads us to inadequacies in Husserl’s own account of how both abstract and concrete objects can be phenomenologically present to us. Perceiving types is not a mere matter of seeing as, or of Gestalt perception. Types are abstract objects in their own right, which cannot impinge upon our sensory surfaces. However, the route to their intuitive givenness does not accord well with Husserl’s general accounts of intuition of abstract or “ideal” objects. Husserl offers two such accounts. One is by way of founding on “sensuous intuitions,” as in Logical Investigations (cf. Husserl 2001b, Sixth Logical Investigation, on “categorial intuition”). The other one is by way of variation, as, e.g., in Ideas (cf. Husserl 1982, §§67–70, on “eidetic intuition”). While these accounts are interesting in their own right when it comes to intuition of ideal “species” or pure essences, they do not seem to be accurate when it comes to intuition of types. Let us look briefly at the account in terms of founding first. If intuition of a type is to be a founded one, there can be only a single intention directed towards that type. There cannot also be an intention directed towards a token, so that the token is co-intended, and so that type and token perception are intertwined. The intuition of such an abstract object is monothetic, not polythetic. Husserl says explicitly that in intuition of abstract or “ideal” objects of the relevant kind, “the objects of the founding acts do not enter into the intention of the founded one, and would only reveal their close relation to it in relational acts” (Sixth Logical Investigation, §52, in Husserl 2001b, 292). There is a base of “primary intuitions” here, and then there is ideational abstraction that leads to intuition of the abstract object itself. This account cannot do justice to the intimacy between a token and a type. The intuition of a token is intertwined with the intuition of the type, but we may focus either on the token or the type. The type or the token are pushed into the background, as are the properties that cannot be transmitted between the two but which belong to the type or the token,

140  Frode Kjosavik respectively. Thus, let the Red Flag be a type that is both rectangular and colored. I may now either intuit a red flag, where the focus in on a particular token made of linen, and the type is pushed into the background. Or I may intuit the red flag, where the focus is on the type, which is repeatable and normative, and the token is pushed into the background. These considerations are also congenial to a brief critical remark made by Parsons, as far as perception of linguistic types is concerned. Thus, Parsons suggests that “we should be careful in talking, with Husserl, of ‘intuition’ of a type as founded on perception of a token” (1980, 155). Parsons’s point is that normally there is no focus upon the physical reality that occasions the type perception. Many properties of tokens are also not relevant for taking in a type. Still, some of these properties are important in their own right, as when we seek to locate or date inscriptions or utterances. Interest in such properties may motivate a shift in focus from type to token. Due to the intimacy and interplay between token- and type-perception, Husserl’s variation account of intuition of abstract objects does not fare much better as far as intuition of types is concerned. What can be varied is either a concrete or an abstract object. I may reach possible variants of an individual cup by modifying it in imagination. Some variants are cups, whereas others are not. This brings out both a range of variation and the limits to this variation. In this way, I intuit the essence of being a cup. Similarly, I may vary a triangle to determine both a range of variation, e.g., obtuse, right, and acute ones, and the limits to this variation – at some point there is a collapse to a straight line. In this way, I intuit the essence of being a triangle, or triangularity. Such variation requires that an initial concrete or abstract object can be intuited independently of intuiting the essence that it instantiates. If not, the account would be viciously circular. Thus, it cannot be the case that to intuit a cup or a triangle I also have to intuit the essence of being a cup or the essence triangularity in the first place. Intuition of individual objects that instantiate essences is independent of intuition of these essences in their own right. But types are not like essences in this way. They are not instantiated but tokened. And a token is not perceived prior to perception of a type that it tokens. Nor is token cum type perception independent of the perceiver’s context. Which account can be given, then, of perception of types? In perception, a lot of structure is added by the perceiver. There are mechanisms for differentiating between figure and ground, for property instantiation, for reification, etc. I shall suggest that, similarly, structure is added by the perceiver when what is concretely given is taken as a token of a type. This type comes very close to the token in perception, as we have noted above. Indeed, it is as if the type is co-located with the token – as if it has an imaginary location or a virtual presence. I can demonstratively identify this or that type, or the type here or there, as it were. This is so even though the property of having a location is not transmissible.

Normativity in Perception  141 This addition of structure to what is concretely given turns type perception into a kind of “type constancy” phenomenon, or so I shall suggest. There is a well-known class of constancy phenomena – those of ordinary perceptual constancy. For example, one and the same size, shape or color can be perceived across shifts in distance, angle or illumination, respectively. Similarly, an object can be tracked over time under shifting conditions. Constancy phenomena of this kind are considered as what distinguishes perception from mere sensation in Tyler Burge (2010). Such perceptual constancies are also important in the phenomenological tradition starting with Husserl. I think it is possible to identify a normative pull in perception here, namely a pull towards objectification, i.e., towards perceiving one and the same attribute or one and the same object despite normal variations in the conditions of perception. However, in addition to this pull towards perceiving an invariant across variation, it has been argued that there is a pull towards optimality in perspective as well. Sean Kelly has made this claim, drawing his inspiration from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (Phénoménologie de la perception 1945): Let p be the property of being square, and let q be the property of being better seen thus. By better seen thus, I mean to indicate a direction in which the angle of presentation could be changed that is such that, if it were so changed, the perceiver would get a better view of the squareness of the object. (Kelly 2010, 150) He goes on to argue that to see an object to be p the perceiver must necessarily see the object to be q. There is a normative pull in a perceptual experience towards its own improvement. I do not find this construal of a normative pull related to perceptual constancies very plausible. To perceive an object to be square the perceiver must necessarily be able to perceive the object to be so from various perspectives. The pull is towards perceptual constancy, and not towards, say, perceiving the square straight on. In verifying that the object is indeed square, I may imagine that I see it straight on, but that is only because the perceptual experience is modalized: Is what I see really a square, or is it rather a trapezoid? We are, of course, used to taking in shapes from different angles, and it just does not seem to be a phenomenological fact that we experience any pull in the direction that Kelly postulates. Thus, even if I may focus upon the way a square appears from an angle, if I choose to do so, it would be wrong to consider these appearances as approximations to that of a square. They are rather how a square appears from those angles. To appear as a square is precisely to appear in these ways under those conditions. While there is a sense in which it is true that the square appears most square-like straight on, it would be

142  Frode Kjosavik wrong to consider other viewing angles as deviations from a norm for optimal viewing – as if nearly all our shape perceptions – be it in our daily lives or in science – are suboptimal for the very reason that we do not get the viewing angle right. Husserl’s own view seems to tie in with this: (…) in accordance with my practical interests, a certain appearance has a certain primacy as the normal appearance: in the concert hall and at the “right” spot I hear the tone “itself” as it “actually” sounds. (Ideas, §44; Husserl 1982, 96) The normality in question is said to be interest-relative. Husserl is here focusing on mere tones, rather than on a piece of music, and, hence, on mere sense qualities. He goes on to state that we can speak of normal appearances when it comes to colors and shapes as well, e.g., “in normal daylight” and “in normal orientation relative to us,” respectively. No optimality is ascribed to certain perspectives on tones, colors or shapes as such, apart from all practical interests. The same no doubt holds for type constancy phenomena. There are no optimal perspectives on types as such – only a wide range of variation in concrete occurrences, which token the types with more or less accuracy, with more or less richness, etc. Within certain limits set by the normative type, any privileging of some tokens over others in perception is entirely interest-relative.1

Note 1 I am grateful to the editors for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

References Burge, Tyler. 2010. Origins of Objectivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goodman, Nelson. 1976. Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis: Hackett. Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Trans. David Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1973. Experience and Judgment. Trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1982. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. Trans. Fred Kersten. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Husserl, Edmund. 2001a. Logical Investigations, Vol. I. Trans. J. N. Findlay. Ed. and revised by Dermot Moran. London, New York: Routledge. Husserl, Edmund. 2001b. Logical Investigations, Vol. II. Trans. J. N. Findlay. Ed. and revised by Dermot Moran. London, New York: Routledge.

Normativity in Perception  143 Husserl, Edmund. 2003. Philosophy of Arithmetic. Trans. Dallas Willard. Dordrecht: Springer. Ingarden, Roman. 1973. The Literary Work of Art: An Investigation on the Borderlines of Ontology, Logic, and Theory of Literature. Trans. George G. Grabowicz. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Kelly, Sean D. 2010. “The Normative Nature of Perceptual Experience.” In Perceiving the World, ed. Bence Nanay, 146–159. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lohmar, Dieter. 2003. “Husserl’s Type and Kant’s Schemata: Systematic Reasons for Their Correlation or Identity.” Trans. Julia Jansen and Gina Zavota. In The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, ed. Donn Welton, 93–124. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lohmar, Dieter. 2016. “Types and Habits: Habits and Their Cognitive Background in Hume and Husserl.” Phenomenology and Mind, no. 6: 40–51. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mühlhölzer, Felix. 2010. “Mathematical Intuition and Natural Numbers: A Critical Discussion.” Erkenntnis 73, no. 2: 265–292. Parsons, Charles. 1980. “Mathematical Intuition.” Proceedings of Aristotelian Society 80: 145–168. Parsons, Charles. 2008. Mathematical Thought and Its Objects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peirce, Charles S. 1933. Collected Papers, Vol. 4. Eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Quine, Willard V.O. 1960. Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Wetzel, Linda. 1989. “Expressions vs. Numbers.” Philosophical Topics 17, no. 2 (Fall): 173–196. Wollheim, Richard. 1980. Art and Its Objects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

7 The Role of Instincts in Husserl’s Account of Reason Julia Jansen

1 Introduction Almost three decades ago, Nam-In Lee published his Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie der Instinkte (1993), a monograph that details reflections by Husserl that were mostly preserved in research manuscripts and in this monograph for the first time made accessible to a wider public. In this book Nam-In Lee also delivered what he considered a continuation of Husserl’s research on the matter and advanced his own position on a transcendental phenomenology of instincts and its broader systematic implications. We can only speculate why the impact of this excellent study, despite wide-held recognition for his scholarly merits, was relatively limited in its impact on mainstream understandings of the scope and orientation of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and of his overall view of rationality, including axiological and practical rationality. One important, and philosophically “innocent,” factor surely was the fact that the text material that Nam-In Lee was mostly relying on in his study were only published in the Husserliana edition 10 to 20 years after the publication of his book, namely largely the so-called “C-Manuscripts” Husserliana Materialien X (2006), and further relevant research manu­ scripts in the “Lebenswelt” volume, Husserliana XXXIX (2008), and the volume on the so-called “Grenzprobleme,” Husserliana XLII (2013). However, the fact that even the most recent publication of texts by Husserl on instinct is now dating back almost ten years and that they have remained largely unexplored still,1 is likely also due to the strength of the still dominant perception of Husserl as an ultimately “rationalist” thinker – a perception that has become an obstacle to a serious consideration of reflections he made not only on the topic of instincts, but also on the impact of a phenomenological clarification of them, even on his own views on rationality and normativity. That what is understood as “rationalist,” in this context, is also linked to more generally held views about rationality in contemporary philosophical debates – views that are significantly, even within phenomenological circles, influenced still by, in DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740-10

Role of Instincts  145 the broad sense of the word, Kantian, or rather neo-Kantian picture of rationality and normativity – can only add to this difficulty. In what follows, I outline the general trajectory of Husserl’s reflections on instincts in order to show that instincts can not only become subject to norms but also be constitutive of norms. My position relies on a reading of Husserl’s notion of normativity that does not coincide perfectly with what has been called the “space of reasons.” This correlates with a respective Husserlian notion of of reason that I take to be, despite some overlap, significantly different from more Kantian notions. I thus highlight those differences that I take to be most relevant to a richer understanding of instincts within the context of normativity. Finally, I conclude by addressing some methodological concerns regarding the susceptibility of instincts to the phenomenological method, including the objection that the talk of “instincts” within phenomenology constitutes an illegitimate “naturalization” or, conversely, a “speculative mythologization,” which would contaminate a proper phenomenological understanding of normativity.

2 Instincts within the Scope of Genetic Phenomenology Husserl mentions instincts once already in the fifth Logical Investigation, when he briefly discusses the “sphere of desire and volition” and observes that “desire does not always seem to require conscious reference to what is desired” and that “we are often moved by obscure drives or pressures towards unrepresented goals” (Husserl 1984, 409/228). Husserl here concedes that in certain cases it might indeed be legitimate to speak of non-intentional experiences. This is the case, he remarks, “if one points especially to the wide sphere of natural instinct, where goal-consciousness is at least absent at the start” (ibid.) However, he still seems to favour an alternative framing that would leave intact his general claim that “all consciousness is consciousness of…”: Alternatively one may say: Here we are dealing with intentional experiences, but with such as are characterized by indeterminateness of objective direction, an ‘indeterminateness’ which does not amount to a privation, but which stands for a descriptive character of one’s presentation. The idea we have when ‘something’ stirs, when there is a rustling, a ring at the door, etc., an idea had before we give it verbal expression, has indeterminateness of direction, and this indeterminateness is of the intention’s essence, it is determined as presenting an indeterminate ‘something’. (Husserl 1984, 409/228) In other words, it seems that, for Husserl, even natural instincts are properly described as “non-intentional” only in a manner of speaking, namely insofar as they lack a determined conscious intention. In the context of

146  Julia Jansen the static analyses of the Logical Investigations, Husserl does not get further than this with respect of instinct. He leaves – while giving the distinct impression that he believes further analyses might lend additional support to his alternative framing – the matter undecided, pointing also to the fact that its complexity hinders disambiguation. Our one concept of desire might fit many cases, and our other concept others, and we might have to allow, not a relation of generic community between intentional and non-intentional urges or desires, but one of mere equivocation. We must observe, also, that our classification is oriented to the concretely complex, and that the total character of such unities may at one time seem to depend on sensational features (e.g., pleasure on urge-sensations), at another on act-intentions which rest on these. The formation and use of our expressions will at times therefore point to sensory contents, at times to act-intentions, so giving rise to the equivocations in question. (Husserl 1984, 410/228) The subsequent transcendental turn of Husserl’s phenomenology affords new methodical capacities. For one, it highlights the non-naturalistic understanding of “drives” and “instincts” that is relevant to phenomenological research. As Husserl explains in a text from 1930: In internal observation [Innenbetrachtung] – which is not the [same as the] one of the researcher of physical nature and of his inductivetheorical tendencies and interests, but the [manner of] observation of placing oneself into psychical subjectivity [des sich in die psychische Subjektivität Hineinversetzens] and, qua transcendental, of placing oneself in it through a transcendental turn – we have the animal subject. We [thus] have it [as subject] of its pregiven surrounding world and have it as subject of its drives, its drive-habitualities [Triehabitualitäten], of its acquired directions-towards [Richtungenauf ] and their2 correlate acquisitions [ihre korrelaten Erwerbe], in which lie identical objects. (Husserl 2013, Text 6, 97)3 Moreover, it sets into motion equally non-naturalistic genetic analyses that bring into view “the concretely complex” and traces the intertwined motivational threads of drives and instincts. The phenomenologically reappropriated search for “conditions of possibilities” of intentional acts as they are described in static analyses, leads Husserl to the discovery of the “passive sphere,” whose depths ultimately disclose dimensions of which Husserl himself said, in his Lectures Concerning Passive Syntheses, that they brought him the closest he could get to a phenomenology of the

Role of Instincts  147 “unconscious.” “Unconscious” is here kept in italics – just as Husserl’s uses of “instinct” or “instincts” often is – in order to set his phenomenological understanding of the problem pointed to by that “title” apart from already available “natural,” or “naturalistic” (e.g., biological or evolutionary) senses of that same term. This means that instincts can, within transcendental phenomenology, never be used to answer a question concerning causal explanation.4 What remains of Husserl’s early remarks in the Logical Investigations is the understanding of “instincts” or “drives” as lacking “a determined conscious reference.” The reference is undetermined, or at least underdetermined; while there is an intentional “reach,” the intentional object, i.e., what would “fulfil” it, is not conscious. In a text written in 1930, Husserl speaks of the “undisclosed drive” as an “empty intention” that, unlike other empty intentions, is bare of “prefigured familiarity” (vorgezeichneter Bekanntheit) (Husserl 2008, “Beilage XLIX,” 585, fn. 1; cf. Beilage XVIII, 229). The disclosure (Enthüllung) of the “target” of an instinct occurs, thus Husserl, not through reflection but through its fulfilment. It is the eventual satisfaction itself that discloses, in retrospect, what the instinct was aiming at. For this, Husserl coins the technical term of a “disclosure by fulfilment [Erfüllungsenthüllung]” (Husserl 2006, 273). However, while the “object” of an instinct, or drive, tends to be unconscious, the instinctual striving itself, if you will, the “driving” of the “drive,” is sensed as being driven, as striving for something that is either underdetermined, unspecific (e.g., the need to eat something, anything) or entirely undetermined (i.e., an experienced need that leaves in the dark altogether what would satisfy it). Moreover, as Husserl observes in a text from 1926, we can methodically distinguish, with respects to objects, “active valuings [Wertungen], active pleasing or displeasing, active appreciation [Schätzen], evaluating [Werten] as beautiful, attractive, etc.” from valuings that occur “without any active participation of experiencing subjects,” among them “all characters of drive, instinctual and other allure [Reiz]” these objects exert (Husserl 2008, Text 26, 267). It is because instincts are – even though, in the qualified sense just explained, “non-intentional” – lived through (erlebt) as well as, in retrospect, identifiable in their fulfilments that they are accessible to phenomenological reflection: “Drive precedes the determinateness of the towards, and the presentation of a determinate towards is something ‘subsequent’ [Der Trieb geht der Bestimmtheit des Worauf vorher, und die Vorstellung eines bestimmten Worauf ist ein ‘Nachkommendes’] (Husserl 2013, Text 5, 86). It is possible to become explicitly aware of experiences of “striving,” or “being driven;” it is possible to become explicitly aware also of the “pull” of attraction or aversion, and of the force of “tendencies” and “allures” one feels subject to. All these dynamics are extensively treated in Husserl’s genetic phenomenology of passivity, mostly without referring to instincts or drives explicitly, and with good reason. The risk looms

148  Julia Jansen large of unduly “naturalizing” the analysis by referring to a concept that is commonly understood to be part of a naturalistic (e.g., psychological,5 biological) conception of the psyche. And yet, when Husserl pushes the analysis to its ultimate depths (and to the limits of the phenomenological method), he needs a “title” for the pre-active dynamic, the pre-telic teleological thrust of consciousness that opens up the arc of intentionality. “Instinct” and “drive” are already available as “titles” for related phenomena, albeit – considered from a phenomenological perspective – illegitimately reduced to, for example, biological “causes” or evolutionary “origins.” Husserl seems uninterested in distinguishing instincts from drives in a technical manner, and generally equivocates, instead focusing on some basic dynamics and teleological tendencies that, by phenomenological means, cannot be identified as causes or ultimate origins, but can be identified as the simplest patterns of directedness in the “concrete complexity” of consciousness.6 As basic patterns of passivity, they are deeply pre-egoic (Merleau-Ponty would have said “anonymous”) and, from a phenomenological perspective, with regards to the dimensions affecting them, ambiguous (or better, polyvalent) since it is by means of phenomenological analysis not determinable whether these are biological, evolutionary, genetic, individual, historical, individual, social, etc. What can be said is that instincts are, in principle, open to influences that might, in the various empirical sciences, be investigated as biological, evolutionary, and so forth. Husserl himself tentatively distinguishes between so-called “primordial instincts” (Urinstinkte)7 from instincts that quite obviously have come already under socio-cultural influences, all the while distinguishing, however, drives from “cravings [Sehnsüchte]” that already crave something particular. In a relatively early text, stemming from the 1916–1918, Husserl clarifies this with the example of the distinction between a craving for a particular dish and the hunger instinct which is precisely not the craving for something particular: “The craving [Sehnsucht] for a dish is no instinct. It is a determined desire [bestimmtes Begehren]. The craving in hunger, the hunger-drive is instinct” (Husserl 2013, Text 5, 86). However, even “primordial instincts” are understood by Husserl as part of the intentional nexus of the life of consciousness; they are not mechanical forces: “Urtriebe, Urinstinkte sind keine mechanischen Kräfte” (Husserl 2013, Beilage X, 102). In fact, they live on in conscious life and continue to exert their force, even if in much more complex historical and cultural modulations. Husserl is quite clear in this context that conscious life is a highly complex whole which intertwines, at any one moment of its ongoing flow, with multiple intentional and nonintentional acts as well as a much larger number of respective passive experiences. Already in the Logical Investigations, within the context of static analyses that do not reach for the constitutive depth that only

Role of Instincts  149 genetic analyses disclose, Husserl already notes that his analyses of acts (Aktanalysen) should not deceive us into thinking of the “stream” of consciousness as a sequence of discrete acts. On the contrary, most, “if not all, acts are complex experiences, very often involving intentions which are themselves multiple” (Husserl 1984, 381/96); they “intertwine,” “fuse,” and become “moments” of more complex wholes.8 In fact, as Claudio Majolino (2020, 92) has recently brought again to our attention (albeit in a different context), Husserl makes this point in writing as early as 1894: “Each current global consciousness [Gesamtbewusstsein] is a unity in which everything is connected with everything else” (Husserl 1973, “Psychologische Studien zur elementaren Logik,” 92). Husserl appreciates that phenomenological research is made a more complex and challenging task by this too; “by the manifold interweaving of theoretical and other acts, essential phenomenological distinctions arise which can be seen more easily than they can be clearly marked off” (Husserl 1952, §5, 11/13). In the light of this, a better understanding of “instincts” is all the more important; for it is these complex intertwinements that draw instincts into the scope of rationality and normativity. Leaving instincts aside would create, as Husserl remarks, “a refuge of phenomenological ignorance” (Husserl 1973, 2). He is therefore convinced that he cannot operate with inexplicable instincts: “Mit unerklärlichen Instinkten kann ich nicht operieren” (Husserl 1973, 242).9

3 Instincts and Norms The sphere of practical rationality, of willing and of evaluating, is in fact permeated by drives, or better by “drive intentionality [Triebintentionalität]” that is continuously “effective [wirksam].” “Instincts acquire modifications, but they are always there” (Husserl 2013, Beilage X, 102). As Husserl observes: The life-process is a process of constantly being driven [Getriebenseins], desiring (=wishing), of conscious striving towards [Hinstrebens] and conscious acting according to goals [bewussten Handelns nach Zielen], a process of giving in to blind inclinations [Neigungen], of giving in or succumbing [Sich-Hingebens] to incentives [Antriebe] of desires, wishes…, and of spontaneous valuing and free deciding [freien Sich-Entscheidens] for values and against what is not valuable [Unwerte], for higher values against lower values etc. – thus a process of free actions ‘from duty’ interwoven with a process of blind and un-free activities that are bare of reason. (Husserl 2013, Text 5, 87) In an important text written only one year after the publication of Ideas I, in 1914, Husserl explicitly addresses the passive sphere not just of doxic

150  Julia Jansen acts, which he will discuss in detail in his Lectures Concerning Passive Synthesis of 1920s, but also of acts of willing. We have a sphere of tendency, which is a sphere of passivity – one that is generally ‘unconscious’, one that lies outside the pure Ego and its acts that originate from it –, and a sphere of Ego-acts, specifically of ego-volitions [Ichwollungen]. As far as the tendencies reach and the respective intertwinings of positive and negative tendencies and occurrences of self-triggering [Selbstauslösung], self-discharging [Selbstauslösung] of tendencies, so far reaches the sphere of possible acts of the will. (Husserl 2020, Text 6, 80; my emphasis) This general structural dimension of instincts and drives becomes, as Husserl explains, “intelligible correlatively [korrelativ verständlich] out of intentional analysis of sense attribution [Sinngebung] and of the figures of sense belonging to the different basic kinds of intentionality, which built on and intertwine with each other” (Husserl 2013, Beilage XXIV, 244). That is, instinct is “even though veiled in mundane objectification, still possible to uncover through ‘questioning back’ [obschon in mundaner Objektivierung verhüllt, aber durch Rückfrage doch freizulegen]” (Husserl 2013, Text 2, 31). However, while the dimensions of this passive sphere of willing is identifiable in general, just as it is possible to gain insight into the intertwinement of instinctual and other passive incentives with free acts of valuing and willing in concrete living consciousness in general, it remains difficult, impossible even, to dissect and clarify the different threads and dimensions of this complex whole in any particular case. This is especially the case because whatever instinctual continues to be “effective” or “in force” (in Kraft) is always already modulated by a social history as well as taken up by an individual in their personal style: Normal life in its traditionality, which intertwines the individually personal with that which is historically-socially passed on, constantly has the primordially instinctive in force, but always in the milieu of traditionality, which is individually appropriated and as such has subjective modes. [Das normale Leben in seiner Traditionalität, das IndividuellPersonales und historisch-sozial Überkommenes verflicht, hat das Ur-instinktive ständig in Kraft, aber ständig in dem Milieu der Traditionalität, die selbst individuell zugeeignete ist und als das individuelle Aspekte, subjektive Weisen hat.] (Husserl 2013, Beilage XVI, 130) None of this changes the demonstrable fact, however, that drives reach into our valuing and purposeful actions. Even if it is difficult, for reasons

Role of Instincts  151 belonging to their essence, to bring even partial light into how they do that, they nonetheless are “normatively important.” They belong to those experiences “on whose basis we evaluate objects, actions, events, and states of affairs as good, right, praiseworthy, or their opposites” (Hopp 2019, 273), and on whose basis we act, at least partially, often while we believe we act from free will. However, they, or better their “effects,” are also – albeit inadequately – “subject to normative reflection.” When I am, for example, inclined to do something, or driven to enjoy something, I can very well ask myself whether it is reasonable to do so, even when it is not altogether transparent to me how I came to be inclined, or compelled (instinctually, conventionally, by a more complex feeling, from free will, etc.). What is unsettling about this picture is that I therefore can never be entirely sure of my “motives.” At the same time, however, even if I am driven by instincts in a particular case, what I am driven towards is not thereby eo ipso “unreasonable” (unvernünftig). Blind “instinct can turn out to refer to something intrinsically reasonable or generally purposive, namely indirectly to something intrinsically valuable” just as “it can be perverse, sick, aimed at something without value” (Husserl 2013, Text 5, 87). Instincts are, in other words, constitutive of norms, which, in turn, can become subject to normative reasoning (whereas it makes no sense to want to subject a drive itself to such assessment): “(…) at first it is instinctive, direct, irrational, valued and demanded without reason. In the end, there is disclosive experience [enthüllende Erfahrung] and rational deliberation. Soon they go hand in hand. Experience, instinctive demand” (Husserl 2013, Text 27, 383). This means that it is, according to what we can learn from Husserl’s reflections, quite unreasonable, even irrational, to ignore (or repress) one’s inclinations and urges, tendencies one feels subject to and driven by. Their striving might indeed reveal something to us, and so might experiences of their fulfilment (and disappointment). To the contrary, what is reasonable, or rational, is to become, as much or little as possible, reflectively aware of them in order to subject their “effectiveness [Wirksamkeit]” to normative assessment, according to values we hold, and according to actions and purposes we will. However, there is yet another sense in which instincts are “normatively constitutive.” They do not merely inform our valuings and actions, and at least co-constitute them, they also, on the most basic level, first of all make possible – not as ultimate causes, but as simplest such dynamic, teleological patterns – the teleology of consciousness that constitutes consciousness as striving, not only for food, reproduction, and self-preservation, but for repetition and fulfilment, including intuitive fulfilment that is basically driven by a cognitive or rational striving for evidence (Erkenntnisstreben, Vernunftstreben). Husserl here speaks of a “transcendental teleology” to which instincts belong as its “basic concepts [Grundbegriffe]” (Husserl 2013, Text 8, 121), even of a “transcendental

152  Julia Jansen instinct – in a sense the universal tendency that runs through the totality of intentionality of the Ego – the continuous universal teleology” (Husserl 2006, Text 61, 260). This does not so much explain why consciousness is striving for anything, but clarifies that and how it does, essentially, even in its simplest forms, its most basic processes. The striving for re-gaining that which as datum disappears, is striving to perceive again ‘the same,’ and is qua ‘instinct’ primordial tendency towards ‘transcendent’ constitution, or rather towards object as constitution as such, by which constitution of thematic unities, unities of ‘existing’ objects. (Husserl 2008, Beilage I, 17) Without such primordially instinctive teleological dynamics, consciousness could not set itself into motion, normatively, axiologically, doxically; it would not be consciousness. “These primal urges supply the motive force, the energy which pushes the process forward” (Mensch 1997, 222). However, they are not merely causally necessary, but they also constitute the most basic modes of salience to which consciously formed values, norms, or reasons are irreducible and from which they also remain inseparable.10 “In the impact of drives in the shape of awake, ego-centric intentionality, unities constitute that are for the ego and are on levels of ‘salience’ [Bedeutsamkeit] with a core that must accord with our mere nature [der unserer bloßen Natur entsprechen muss]” (Husserl 2013, Beilage XXIV, 244), namely with our embodied sensuality and connected empathetic connections to “animalistic (animal) realities” (ibid. 243).11

4 Concluding Remarks: Husserl’s Notion of Rationality and the “Space of Reasons” In light of the elucidations above, Nam-In Lee’s claims regarding instinct and its systematic role in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology appear a lot less surprising than they must seem to someone unfamiliar with the relevant research manuscripts. Instinctual intention is the basis [Grundlage] of all passive intentions and at the same time the original piece [Urstück] of transcendental teleology. It pervades the whole sphere of passive constitution, and it does not simply disappear in the transition from passive to active constitution. It continues to be effective insofar it has not been fulfilled. (…) We can thereby regard active constitution as the means of fulfillment of instinctual intention (…) Instinctual intention as genetic basis [Grundlage] thus pervades not only the sphere of p ­ assive constitution, but also the entire sphere of active intention. (Lee 1993, 141)

Role of Instincts  153 We can only speculate why Husserl did not make his phenomenology of instinct an explicit part of his Lectures of Passive Synthesis, of which he after all said that they could “be given the famed title of the ‘unconscious’” and that they at the very least concerned “a phenomenology of the so-called unconscious” (Husserl 1966, 154/201). Especially Husserl’s reflections on the “enigma of association” are relevant here and are, in his view, immediately connected with “all enigmas of the ‘unconscious’ and of varying modes of ‘becoming conscious’” (Husserl 1966, 165/214). Moreover, even though his “transcendental aesthetic” as he lays it out in these lectures, is focused on the passive underbelly of cognitive, doxic acts and is ultimately part of a “transcendental logic,” Husserl does speak not of instincts but of their effectiveness, the striving that is inherent to such acts and is, already in the simplest perceptual activity, two-fold. It is, on the one hand, a strictly speaking epistemic striving (Erkenntnisstreben) and, on the other hand, a striving after realization (Verwirklichungsstreben). That is, it is pulled towards a “verified intending [bewährte Meinung]” and towards a “grasping the object itself” (Husserl 1966, 88/132). In the case of these “strivings” it is especially clear that it does not make sense to regard instincts themselves as contrary to reason. To the contrary, they are part and parcel of how reason works, not as a faculty or a rigid set of rational operations, but as a reflective practice that aims at evidence, understood in the technical Husserlian sense, namely as a distinctive synthetic (passive or active) activity that drives towards the gradual intuitive fulfilment of empty significations. This fulfilment is not – note here again the importance of the “internal” perspective – properly captured as an objective “match” between a proposition and a corresponding state-of-affairs (although it can also be described as such), but requires at least a latent awareness of the coinciding of the respective correlates “intending-intended” and “intuiting-intuited.” As active cognitive achievement it even requires an explicit, reflective “synthesis of identification,” that is, an explicit awareness of said coincidence. Husserl here speaks of the experience of “insight” (Einsicht) as opposed to an experience of mere “seeing” (Sehen) or “intuiting” (Anschauen). I take it that this is distinctive of Husserl’s notion of reason – including its axiological and practical dimensions – as a “reason of insight” (eine Vernunft der Einsicht) or “an insightful reason” (eine einsichtige Vernunft). As we have seen, several drives propel this reason – Husserl even speaks of a “drive of reason” (Vernunftstreben). In turn, the reflective practice of reason – qua “sich besinnende Vernunft” – assesses what the ego experiences as compelling, whether these are reasons or other motivation, including non-transparent urges, and takes a stance towards it. Its power is the power to assent or to dissent, in belief, valuing, or action. Its “insights” are not mere propositions (although they are expressible in them) nor mere justified true beliefs (although they can be described as them), but lived experiences of truth. It is at least questionable whether

154  Julia Jansen they can be appropriately captured by a normatively neutral description, or whether they are not rather eo ipso normative – immediately demanding assent, perhaps even already manifesting it, in doxis, axiological, and practical matters.12 This would explain why Husserl at least considers the idea that the concepts “‘drive of reason [Vernunfttrieb]’ and ‘reason’” are intrinsically “normative concepts [Normbegriffe]” (Husserl 2013, Beilage XXIV, 243). And it would at least go some way to explain why, for Husserl, a life of reason approximates a life of bliss (Glückseligkeit) understood “as a life in pure and consistent satisfaction” (Husserl 2002, 43) and why he believes that “a universal philosophical doctrine of reason” is also “a science of rational or truly good life in general, or of blissful life” (Husserl 2002, 45).

Notes 1 For a long time, James Mensch (1997) had been the only widely known response to the material beside Nam-In Lee’s monograph. Very recently, strong contributions on the topic have been made by Satne and Ainbinder (2019) and Ainbinder (2020). 2 It is a minor issue, but for the sake of precision, note that Ainbinder in his translation of the same passage mistranslates “ihre korrelaten Erwerbe” as “its acquired directions-toward” (which would be “seine korrelaten Erwerbe”). The identical objects are correlates of directions-toward, not of the subject. This only strengthens the point made by Husserl in this in other texts that drives are co-constitutive of objects (see Section 3). 3 In what follows, where standard English translations are not indicated, the translations of passages from Husserl’s manuscripts are mine. 4 For this reason, it is somewhat misleading to say, as Mensch does, that instincts are the answer to a “why” question (cf. Mensch 1997, 222). 5 “This psychological concept of instincts (…), which is supposedly inborn (…), is of course a constituted formation and belongs to the constituted world” (Husserl 2013, Text 8, 120). 6 Where, in line with Husserl’s own use of words, I say “most basic,” “lowest,” or “primordial” (Ur-), I mean “simplest” in relation to “more complex” (or “higher”) forms of consciousness, such as acts. I emphasize this here in order to counteract the tendency to understand “basic” and “lowest” (and similar expressions) in terms of a foundationalist picture, which, in my view, correlates with static, but not with genetic analyses of consciousness. For a more detailed discussion of this point see Jansen (2021). 7 Amongst the simplest of said “Urinstinkte,” Husserl counts the drive for preservation and the drive for repetition. For a detailed and very clear discussion of both these instincts, as Husserl considered them, see Ainbinder (2020). 8 I address the complexity of conscious life in the conclusion to Jansen (2020) and, more extensively, in Jansen (2021). 9 Husserl makes this remark in direct objection to Theodor Lipps who had characterized instincts “inexplicable” (unerklärlich). 10 In this light, instinct appears to do for Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology must of what “care” does for Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein. 11 For a detailed and thought-provoking discussion of the implications of Husserl’s reflections on instinct for a phenomenological integration of human subjectivity with nature, see Sade and Ainbinder (2020).

Role of Instincts  155 12 I do not want to make too much of a linguistic detail that would require much more investigation. Nonetheless, I only want to note here that in German the opposite of “einsichtig” is “uneinsichtig,” which refers not only to a cognitive deficit but also to a failure to assent to the truth. For example, a patient can be “uneinsichtig” when they fail to acknowledge their evident illness. Or somebody involved in an argument can be said to not “einsehen” whatever is taken to be obvious, meaning, that the “uneinsichtige” party stubbornly refuses to concede a demonstrated point.

References Ainbinder, Bernardo. 2020. “Questions of Genesis as Questions of Validity.” In Husserl, Kant and Transcendental Phenomenology, eds. Iulian Apostolescu and Claudia Serban, 303–332. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. Crowell, Steven Galt. 2013. Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heinämaa, Sara. 2019. “Constitutive, Prescriptive, Technical, or Ideal? On the Ambiguity of the Term ‘Norm’.” In Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology, eds. Matthew Burch, Jack Marsh, and Irene McMullin, 9–28. New York, Oxon: Routledge. Hopp, Walter. 2019. “Normativity and Knowledge.” In Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology, eds. Matthew Burch, Jack Marsh, and Irene McMullin, 271–289. New York, Oxon: Routledge. Husserl, Edmund. 1952. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phäno­ menologischen Philosophie, Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Husserliana IV. Ed. Marly Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer, 1989. Husserl, Edmund. 1966. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungmanuskripten, 1918–1926. Husserliana XI. Ed. Margot Fleischer. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. Trans. Anthony J. Steinbock. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001. Husserl, Edmund. 1973. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass, Erster Teil, 1905–1920. Husserliana XIII. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1979. Aufsätze und Rezensionen (1890–1910). Husserliana XXII. Ed. Bernhard Rang. The Hague, Boston, London: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1984. Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, Erster Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. Husserliana XIX/1. Ed. Ursula Panzer. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Logical Investigations, Vol. 2. Trans. J.N. Findlay. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Husserl, Edmund. 2002. Einleitung in die Philosophie, Vorlesungen 1922/23. Husserliana XXXV. Ed. Berndt Goossens. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 2006. Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934), Die C-Manuskripte. Husserliana Materialien VIII. Ed. Dieter Lohmar. Dordrecht: Springer.

156  Julia Jansen Husserl, Edmund. 2008. Die Lebenswelt: Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937). Husserliana XXXIX. Ed. Rochus Sowa. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 2013. Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie: Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte, Metaphysik, späte Ethik, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1937). Husserliana XLII. Ed. Rochus Sowa and Thomas Vongehr. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 2020. Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins, Teilband III: Wille und Handlung, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1902–1934). Husserliana XLIII/3. Ed. Ulrich Melle and Thomas Vongehr. Dordrecht: Springer. Jansen, Julia. 2020. “Imagination in the Midst of Life: Reconsidering the Relation between Ideal and Real Possibilities.” Husserl Studies 36, no. 3 (December): 287–302. Jansen, Julia. 2021. “Grenzprobleme and Husserl’s Complexity Model of Consciousness.” In The Limits of Subjectivity in Husserl, special issue of Paradigmi 3, eds. Mariannina Failla and Gabriella Baptist. Lee, Nam-In. 1993. Husserls Phänomenologie der Instinkte. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer. Majolino, Claudio. 2020.“Husserl and the Reach of Attitudes.”Phänomenologische Forschungen 1: 85–108. Mensch, James. 1997. “Instincts – An Husserlian Account.” Husserl Studies 14, no. 3 (October): 219–237. Satne, Glenda, and Bernardo Ainbinder. 2019. “Normativity with a Human Face: Placing Intentional Norms and Intentional Agents Back in Nature.” In Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology, eds. Matthew Burch, Jack Marsh, and Irene McMullin, 174–194. New York, Oxon: Routledge.

8 The Normativity of the Imagination Its Critical Import1 Andreea Smaranda Aldea

1 Introduction Husserlian and Husserlian-inspired studies and discussions of the normativity of experience broadly construed and, more specifically, of the normativity of perception and embodiment abound.2 Not the same could be said about phenomenological studies of the imagination. The reason for this lacuna: of Husserl’s own making. Time and time again, across studies spanning his career, he has dismissed the view that the imagination exhibits any normative dimension. This chapter addresses the oversight as well as the root of the problem – Husserl’s misguided analysis. Only by shifting the framework of analysis (away from Husserl’s) in a manner that attempts to do analytic justice to the imagination in its own right, not privately by comparison to other forms of experience (such as perception, image consciousness, or memory), can we tackle the question of the normativity of the imagination anew. This is the overarching motivation for my discussion here. My goal in this chapter is twofold: to show that the imagination exhibits both a broad, or what I refer to as an “overarching” normativity, and a narrow normativity since it can engage a wide array of different kinds of norms (epistemic, practical, valuative, etc.).3 I contend that given its overarching normativity, the imagination is able to explore and evaluate the habituation of commitments across attitudes and registers – a habituation that entails a certain “stagnation” of experiencing. As a result, the imagination can shed light on sedimented concepts, types, styles, and norms of all kinds pertaining to natural and theoretical attitudes alike. It can also lead to new possibilities of being, doing, and knowing. In explicating these structures of the imagination, I seek to shed light on what I deem to be two key modes of imagining consciousness: its “open” (exploratory) mode and its “critical” (evaluative) one. Clarifying the critical normativity of the imagination holds significant import if we are to understand both everyday forms of self- and world-critique (and transformation) as well as the specific critical methods of theoretical thinking, including those of phenomenology itself. DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740-11

158  Andreea Smaranda Aldea

2 The Telling Tale of Phantasiemodifikation One of the key concepts Husserl relies upon, from his earliest (1904/1905) to his most complex analyses (1918/1924) of the imagination, is modification: Phantasiemodifikation. We know that the concept of modification takes center stage in Husserl’s genetic constitutive analyses of consciousness as unified whole (Husserl 1966). This umbrella concept covers many different kinds of modification: memorial, expectational, associational, modality modification, and so on – all pertaining to positional (i.e., ontically and doxically committed) forms of consciousness, which are largely perceptual or perception founded. Beyond this, however, Husserl’s reliance on the language of modification, and, in the case of imagination, on “radical” modification, has much to do with his understanding of the imagination as qualitatively distinctive kind of consciousness. This emphasis on qualitative differences among distinctive intentional acts goes back to his incisive critique of British empiricism in the Second Logical Investigation. What the concept of modification is tasked with capturing in Husserl’s analyses of the imagination is precisely what structurally sets the imagination apart as an intentional act. Husserl accomplished clear explications of positional kinds of modification, for example certainty, presumption, doubt (e.g., Husserl 1966, §22). The same cannot be said, however, about his analyses of Phantasiemodifikation as key structure of imagining consciousness. There is no shortage of discussions – be they in lectures, research manuscripts, or programmatic texts – of this structure of consciousness. Paucity of account is not the problem here. What clouds the analyses in question is an overarching ambiguity, which stems from Husserl’s choice of methodological approach to the study of the imagination. The ambiguity in question: Husserl’s vacillation between equating Phantasiemodifikation with neutrality modification or deeming it a sub-type of the latter and analyzing it as a self-standing, distinctive kind of modification (not a mere sub-type of neutrality modification). At the heart of Husserl’s manner of study of the imagination lies a crippling tension, one he left unresolved despite extensive work – namely, the tension between doing justice to the imagination on its own terms and analyzing it in terms of perception (Aldea 2019).4 First, a look at Husserl’s claim that Phantasiemodifikation is a kind of neutrality modification (Husserl 1976a, §111, 250).5 Both modifications are qualitative; they involve a shift from positionality (a commitment to the reality and actuality of the object) to non-positionality (the lack of such an ontic-doxic commitment). Husserl offers little evidence here and elsewhere for his position. The only point Husserl makes in support of this 1913 claim is that neutrality modification is non-iterative, whereas Phantasiemodifikation is iterative: there are “phantasies in phantasies,” whereas neutrality modification, as a sweeping shift, does not involve nesting (Husserl 1976a, §112; Husserl 1980, 184, 193, 229–232).

Normativity of Imagination  159 What I am interested in stressing here, however, is that Husserl’s penchant for unpacking the structure of imagining consciousness in terms of neutrality modification unnecessarily limits the structural explication of this kind of consciousness. The qualitative distinction of the imagination is reduced to non-positionality minimally understood as doxic and ontic neutrality. As a result, further attempts at developing Husserl’s later insight to the effect that the imagination involves distinctive possibility-opening processes likewise unnecessarily suffer (Husserl 1980, Nos. 18–20). Finally, challenging deeply-seated commitments permeating Husserl’s analyses and scholarly literature alike proves difficult – commitments such as the parallelism between the perceptual and imagining consciousnesses, their mutual exclusion and non-coordination, the purity of imagining possibilities and their arbitrariness as disinterested and disconnectedness from lived, everyday possibilities, not to mention the lack of any motivational and teleological orientation in imagining consciousness (Aldea 2020a). All of these claims are direct or indirect implications of an otherwise apparently innocuous claim about Phantasiemodifikation, which in its turn, is the result of Husserl’s chosen methodological course: an overwhelmingly privative one, amounting to what imagining consciousness “is not” or “does not” exhibit in comparison to perception and positional forms of consciousness. Phantasiemodifikation thus provides a privileged vantage point into the universe of Husserlian analyses of imagination. The main claim Husserl makes in Ideas I regarding the distinction between neutrality modification and Phantasiemodifikation is that the latter is type of the former: “What is confusing [Verwirrende] and actually difficult to disentangle [Auseinanderwirrende] consists here in the fact that phantasy itself is, indeed, a neutrality modification; that, in spite of the particular character of its type, it is of universal significance, applicable to all experiences; and that, while it also plays its role in most configurations of ‘thinking to oneself,’ it must nonetheless be distinguished thereby from the general neutrality modification, along with the latter’s manifold configurations, following every kind of positing” (Husserl 1976a, 250/215). This claim, which Husserl strongly emphasizes in §111 of Ideas I, receives additional attention in §§109–114 (see also Husserl 1980, 513, 525ff., 558–560). A couple of key points for our purposes here. First, according to Husserl, neutrality modification is a radical departure from realizing positionality, i.e., from experiences that take their objects as actual, real, and factually knowable. This radical departure is nothing short of a dramatic shift in attitude: non-positional experiences fall outside of what Husserl refers to as “the authority of reason” (Husserl 1976a, §110). They are not epistemically motivated and unlike all realizing ­experiences  – be they protodoxic or modally modified doxic experiences – their correlates are not subject to evaluation in terms of validity

160  Andreea Smaranda Aldea and invalidity. Thus, unlike assuming, supposing, negating, doubting – all modality modifications of experiences intending and intuiting their objects under a motivation toward certainty –, neutralized acts do not follow realizing demands.6 Of all modifications, neutrality modification presents itself as being overarching in the widest sense (Husserl 1976a, §114), non-coordinate with any vacillations troubling our protodoxic ease. It renders powerless modalizations such as doubt: “The character of positing has lost all force” (Husserl 1976a, 248/214).7 Any positional act becomes “mere thought” – an experience without ontic, doxic, and epistemic commitments (Husserl 1976a, §§110, 114). The imagination is thus an “emasculated” (entmannt) form of consciousness for Husserl (1980, 505); it is disinterested (Husserl 1980, 560), disconnected from the lifeworld (Husserl 1973a, §89, 1973b, §§34–36, 55, 1959, 148, 1980, 443, 534, 548–550, 561–563, 578), detached and fully free from the epistemic and normative constraints of positional consciousness (Husserl 1980, 514). I have argued elsewhere against this emphasis on the “world-purity” of imagination and studied its implications in terms of negative freedom (Aldea 2020a). Positiontaking (Setzung) – or lack thereof – does not refer solely to epistemic commitments. Axiological, teleological, praxiological, and all normative commitments broadly construed likewise fall under its purview. For the purposes of our focus on the normativity of the imagination, suffice to stress here Husserl’s sweeping take on dis-interestedness, as late as 1921–1924:8 I produce no belief, I take no position, I am not interested in being, and consequently I am also not interested in being-likely, being-­ questionable, being-probable, and being-null. This must be stipulated: I  as Ego, as subject of genuine ‘acts’ – positional acts, acts of ­interest  – have in certain respects no interest. I comport myself without interest, whether with or without voluntarily inhibiting my interest and turning it in a different direction. (Husserl 1980, 583–584/701) On Husserl’s model, the imagination is both epistemically and normatively disconnected, “mere thought,” irrelevant to and for everyday lived experience. It is likewise clear that Husserl’s 1913 approach to explicating the imagination remains central to his later work as well. Despite his extensive work on this form of consciousness well into the mid-1920s (see Husserl 1980, esp. Nos. 18–20), he did not develop alternative, nonstatic approaches, not even in the face of rich evidence pointing elsewhere, namely toward a non-comparative account of imagining possibilization (see footnote 6; also Aldea 2020a; Aldea and Jansen 2020). Second, Husserl is keen on emphasizing that the scope of neutrality modification is sweeping – it can neutralize any and all acts falling

Normativity of Imagination  161 under its aegis. Husserl undoubtedly wanted to establish this claim as an a ­priori principle of consciousness as a whole, one exposing a radical rift (radikale Scheidung) at the very heart of consciousness: Corresponding to this relation of parallel acts is the radical difference of correlates: on the one side, the constituted noematic accomplishment that has the character of the unmodified, actual accomplishment; on the other side, the “mere thought” of the exactly corresponding accomplishment. The actual and modified correlates correspond to one another ideally in an absolutely exact way and yet they are not of the same essence. They are not of the essence since the modification carries over to the essence: corresponding to the originary essence is its counter-essence as a ‘shadow’ of the same essence. (Husserl 1976a, 259/223) This is precisely what he also comes to stress time and time again in his later analyses of the imagination: its non-coordination with the positional attitude pertaining to perception, that is, their being mutually exclusive (Husserl 1980, 48–49, 376, 451ff., 557–560). Thus, “for any” positional correlation there is a parallel non-positional one. Neutrality modification not only doxically neutralizes all acts of positional consciousness, but also neutralizes their noematic correlates and their intended ontic status. It affects consciousness generally and without exception (Husserl 1976a, 258–259). Husserl feels so strongly about this point that he ventures into the metaphorical realm for maximum effect: non-positional acts are veritable doubles, inevitable shadows (Schatten) of positional acts (Husserl 1976a, 259). So, following Husserl’s line of thought here, Phantasiemodifikation exhibits this sweeping character as well, one that Husserl stresses in his discussions of non-coordination and mutual exclusion (see above). While there may be a stance-taking (Stellung) at work in imagining acts, there is no positing (Setzung). Imagination is a nonpositional, presentifying act9 – an act under the full and sweeping aegis of neutrality. Its traction in how we make sense of ourselves and of our lifeworld – entirely lacking. The world of actual experience (…) designates a fixed system, constantly expanding automatically, though in a prescribed way. Within this system there is only a small sphere of freedom, delimited in a manner specific to it, and accordingly only a small sphere of voluntary alterability. The worlds of phantasy, however, are absolutely free worlds, and every phantasied thing posits a phantasy world in the mode of the quasi-: (…) What is peculiar to phantasy is its optional character. And therefore, speaking ideally, its unconditioned arbitrariness. (Husserl 1980, 535/641–642, italics mine)

162  Andreea Smaranda Aldea What we thus learn from this explication is that an entire noetic dimension of the imagination, including its normativity, even if loosely construed as a certain broad motivation or teleology, is foreclosed by the apparently innocuous claim that Phantasiemodifikation – what grants Phantasie its qualitative distinctiveness – is a type of neutrality modification or perhaps co-extensive with it. The gulf or distance between our sense of lifeworld and the arbitrary worlds of the imagination is absolute. Imagination is incompatible with our efforts of making sense of ourselves and of our world (Husserl 1980, 394–395, 580–581). And yet…in explicating the specific egoic split or Ichspaltung at work in the imagination (Husserl 1980, 197ff.; also, Husserl 1959, 93–94), that is, the doubling of the ego at work in every presentification or as-if consciousness irrespective of whether the “absence” made “present” is given as real or irreal, Husserl cannot help but gesture at evidence that points to a very different analytic picture. First, there is conflict between the imagining ego (this here, now, personal ego) and the imagined ego (Husserl 1980, 173–174). This conflict is not an indifference between my concrete sense of self and a self so utterly arbitrary, so alien from me, but one made possible and conditioned by tensions and discrepancies laden with ontic, epistemic, practical, valuational, and normative content. Second, as with all as-if forms of consciousness, their egoic doubling involves an intentional doubling or implication (Husserl 1959, §47): in imagining, memorial, and expectational experiences alike there is a co-presentified ego (imagined, past, or future). This is significant in at least two ways for our discussion here: (a) the cogiven self, even if latent, can be “awoken” (Husserl 1959, 148, 152), brought to light through reflective processes (Reflexion, Wiedervergegenwärtigung) whose focus is the presentifying act and manner of givenness rather than its correlate – an experience of the presentation “again” (Husserl 1980, 177, 184–185, 187, 290; cf., also Husserl 1959, §44), and (b) the “orientation” (Husserl 1959, 115–116/319) this imagined ego exhibits toward its object and world is not merely a spatio-temporal orientation, but one thickly informed by my historical, communalized, and habituated concrete sense of self (the imagining ego). Thus, all imagining – however playful or “dis-interested” (say, when rereading Lord of Rings in an attempt to leave the world of deadlines or health worries behind) – is, implicitly and as a result, always already open to explicitation, a self-imagining (see also Husserl 1973b, 106, 110–111). The rift, as I will argue below, between the doubled egos and their correlates is not an absolute disconnection, but an anchored distance instead. The tensions, epistemic and normative alike, that I experience in this doubling do not leave my concrete sense of self unmarked. Imagining leaves traces in the concrete. It is self-constituting and lifeworld-constituting and thus transformative. Husserl’s analyses of “reflection in memory” exhibit the analytic sophistication able to shed light on this very point. He holds back from

Normativity of Imagination  163 employing the same framework when it comes to the imagination, however, given his dogged commitment to Phantasiemodifikation as neutrality modification. What Wiedererinnerung sheds light on, even beyond the specific act-focused intentional implication, is the implication of a “whole former self” (Husserl 1980, 196), a latency that could become patent. Deeply intertwined and sedimented experiences and their traces is what experiencing “once more” or “once again” (Husserl 1980, 260–261) also recovers in the “total consciousness of the now” (Husserl 1980, 232). This form of “experiencing again” is “a putting ourselves in the past via leap – retracing ourselves back up till now” (Husserl 1980, 258/313; see also 295–296, 356). The “again” of Wiedererinnerung is positional, seamlessly bound with and by my concrete sense of self. How does reflection in Phantasie look like? For Husserl, a sterile experience still (Husserl 1959, 208, 1980, 258). Husserl’s analyses of memorial “experiencing again” hold valuable clues we must develop if we are to uncover the ­reservoir of normative richness at work in imagining experiences. In order to overcome the analytic obstacle of as-if neutrality, whose direct implication is that the imagination, as a neutral kind of presentification, entails no motivation or teleology of its own, or any form of normativity for that matter, we must rely on a different framework of analysis, thus leaving Husserl’s behind.10 I have argued elsewhere that phenomenologically considered, in light of evidence, the imagination is not merely one presentifying act among many (Aldea 2019, 2020a). Instead, I propose that we understand the imagination as a basic stance of consciousness, one with two distinctive modes: one “open” and one “critical,” as I will explicate below. My main aim here is to unearth the imagination’s own normative dimension and thus contend that the imagination does, indeed, exhibit such a dimension, as well as to unpack how we should conceptualize and analyze this form of consciousness in its own right. For this purpose, I will focus primarily on the imagination’s overarching normativity or what I refer to as its “normative orientation,” which extends across its two modes. This, in turn, will shed light on how the imagination as a basic stance of consciousness gives access to norms of different kinds (be they operative, constitutive, customs/habits, axiological or praxiological, specifically moral, etc.). What will transpire is a veritable normative “richness” pertaining to the imagination – a richness heretofore overlooked in phenomenology given Husserl’s widely accepted neutral as-if framework of analysis. But first, a note on the imagination as “basic stance” of consciousness. Departing from Husserl, I contend that the imagination, as a basic stance that cuts across attitudes (natural, theoretical, phenomenological) exhibits its own positionality (Setzung) (Aldea 2019, 2020a). Rather than pure, neutral, disinterested, aloof, and thus sweepingly “free from” ontic and doxic commitments (Husserl 1980, 253–254, 379, 443, 461ff., 513– 514, 534, 548–551, 561–563, 578–579, 585; also, Husserl 1973a, §§39,

164  Andreea Smaranda Aldea 65, 74, 89, 91; Husserl 1973b, §34; cf. also Aldea 2020a, 305–307), the imagination is, in its “open” mode, an exploratory kind of consciousness. As such, it is a form of consciousness that engages its objects (i.e., possibilities) as provisional rather than “free” and “neutral,” as Husserl would have it (Aldea 2020a, 310–316). In its “critical” mode, the imagination engages its correlates in an evaluative manner: their heretofore taken-for-granted givenness is put into question with an eye for the otherwise. The critical imagination (i.e., the imagination in its critical mode) is a “fissuring” or “displacing” kind of consciousness. It gives access to possibilities in a distinctive manner, provisionally and valuationally, and this manner of opening possibilities sheds light, as we shall see, precisely on the conceptual and normative principles that undergird entire systems of interrelated possibilities of being, doing, and knowing, both everyday and theoretical. What the imagination exposes in its evaluative modalization is precisely the merely apparent ineluctability of naturalized necessities which are exposed for what they are: deeply sedimented contingencies parading as necessities. Illuminative examples of such historical necessities include the many prescriptive and practical norms and guiding values surrounding a blind commitment to dichotomous sex/gender binaries. Beyond this “diagnostic” dimension, but yet very much in light of it, the critical imagination is also able to open radically new fields of possibilities. It has an innovative and creative dimension. This structural “ability” stems from the imagination’s exploratory orientation critically and self-reflectively informed by its diagnostic insights. To better capture how the imagination deals – in its own qualitatively distinctive way – in these self-constituting and lifeworld-constituting historically sedimented principles, I briefly turn to a discussion of the other basic stance of consciousness: the normalizing one.

3 Immersion and the Thickness of the Given – Inconceivability and Resistance The normalizing stance of consciousness exhibits a harmonizing, stabilityseeking, and totalizing kind of teleology. Husserl’s analyses of the everyday practical and personalistic attitudes (Husserl 1952, §34) reveal how experiences in these attitudes are structurally geared toward inscribing the unfamiliar into the familiar (Husserl 1966, §20). This happens through their passive orientation forward, concordance, and harmony, both temporally and intersubjectively. It is here that habituation, sedimentation, familiarity, and typicality govern meaning-constitution (Steinbock 1994; 1995a; 1995b; Wehrle 2015; 2018).11 In his generative Crisis work as well as his 1920s synthetic-genetic analyses, Husserl clearly showed that we experience possibilities in specific ways (not purely), given our epistemic, practical, and valuational backgrounds. These “lived” possibilities are intricately intertwined with our interest-laden life projects – their

Normativity of Imagination  165 conceivability/inconceivability depends on these very backgrounds. By (re)affirming epistemic, practical, and valuational commitments, establishments and institutions (Stiftungen; Husserl 1976b, 72–73), we are continuously, in a habituated and sedimenting manner (Husserl 1976b, 71ff.), delineating and delimiting entire systems of lived possibilities. These general styles of intending (Husserl 1976b, 28–29) exhibit their own lively teleology (lebendige Fortarbeit) (Husserl 1976b, 366; see also 103–104). We – and our situations – are under their “spell” (Husserl 1976b, 59). Their seductive character (Husserl 1976b, 372) seeps into (and shapes) who we are, what we do, how we navigate our lifeworld, how we pursue our tasks and projects (Aldea 2020b). Since these habituated and sedimented styles of being (everyday as well as scientific) orient us in welldelineated manners toward certain possibilities as opposed to others, they do not hold expectational import solely in an epistemic sense (Husserl 1980, 548), but in a normative one as well (Husserl 1976b, 22–23). There are two main modes of normalizing possibilization or possibility constitution (which involve what Husserl refers to as “real” possibilities). Normalizing possibilization is largely anticipatory – its primary indeterminacy is a determinable one. This possibilization is either problematic: experiencing possibilities that deviate from the field of commitments and their expectations, or confirming: involving possibilities that fall within the expectational range as well as the enticing possibilities (anmutig) in whose favor some evidence speaks (Husserl 1973a, §79). Problematic possibilization involves considerations of difference, the otherwise, the novel, and the unexpected. It is normatively telling for our purposes since difference here is disclosed through conflict: Conflict is the overarching manner in which we experience difference in the normalizing stance (Aldea 2020a, 307–310). According to Husserl, we experience something unexpected as “out of the ordinary” (ausgezeichneit) and as such “problematic,” entailing issues to be resolved. The unexpected constitutes here a modal departure from our anticipated field of possibilities (e.g., possibilities of action in certain given circumstances). Our responses to these modal departures involve processes that seek to resolve the deviation in our expectational flow – a deviation that comes with doxic or epistemic as well as axiological and praxiological discomfort. Husserl’s analyses of doxic modifications, such as doubt, uncover the extent to which resolution drives them (Husserl 1966, 83–84): they must terminate in some form of harmonious reinstatement of stability and familiarity (Husserl 1973a, §67). These processes of modality modification (Husserl 1976a, §105; Husserl 1966, 30), through their orientation toward epistemic, practical, and valuational stability and normality, ensure the all-important maintenance of the unity of sense: how we make sense of ourselves and of our lifeworld. They play a key role in our ability to adapt to our situated engagements with others and our former selves. There is some room for

166  Andreea Smaranda Aldea normative flexibility here, but there is also a strong structural penchant toward resisting that which could potentially undermine the stability of the given, be it epistemic, practical, or valuational. In this normalizing stance, what I experience as impossibilities, that is, concretely lived limits that “I cannot” negotiate (say, for example, certain modes of behavior given my strong commitment to the sex/gender binaries – this is just an example, a pervasive one still – not my view) often also garner the patina of decision: “I will not.” Thus, the inconceivable for me – what falls “outside” the modal scope of my passively habituated style of being – assumes the guise of decision as refusal and resistance. This happens mainly passively but may have an active dimension and also an active disguise. What seems an active and self-reflective decision is largely the result of passive processes of habituation and sedimentation. Oftentimes refusal and resistance are themselves passively taken for granted, without the semblance of decision. In short, the normalizing stance is not conducive to change, to any “radical” self-transformation and lifeworld-transformation beyond adapting largely within the confines of the acceptable and the familiar. It is also largely unreflective, if by “reflective” we mean something along the lines of “taking stock,” including in a self-reflexive manner. The overarching normativity of the normalizing stance is just that, normalizing. The commitments in place, both personal and interpersonal, keep a tight hold on what we deem possible, conceivable for us. Such overarching normativity is also naturalizing: we experience otherwise contingent limits – our “impossibilities” – as necessary, insurmountable. That which falls outside the conceivable modal scope, the scope strictly regulated by settled standards as well as baselines of minimum acceptability, is to be re-inscribed into this established fold. Normalizing normativity is thus also totalizing. As such, it is self-forgetting and lifeworld-forgetting and immersed in the given as pre-given. Its temporality is frozen: proceeding in the vein of “the way things have always been.” Normalizing normativity is thus both relaxed, at ease in the familiar world, and tensed in its guarding of it. In short, normalizing normativity does not suffer difference, difference not merely understood as variation on “accepted themes,” but that which defies the acceptable. A firm, often irrevocable “I cannot” and “I will not” is at work here. Moreover, the line between “inability” and “unwillingness” becomes blurred.12 Thus, the specific norms regulating our styles of being in the normalizing stance all function under the aegis of overarching normalizing normativity. There is a “thickness” to the given as pre-given – a thickness difficult, but not impossible, to fissure. Again, gender norms illuminate the phenomenon amply, for example the unspoken rules of comportment regarding postures or gestures pertaining to “femininity” and “masculinity.”13 In order to briefly map out the broad sense of normativity or normative orientation at work in the normalizing stance, I have here relied on

Normativity of Imagination  167 the language of conceivability and of conceivable possibilities.14 In the broadest sense, conceivability and inconceivability refer to my basic sense of I can (and its inverse I cannot) pertaining to any experience: it is the experiential quality of my possibilities. The conceivable colors, for the most part passively, the manner in which I experience possibilities. The conceivable “I can” determines, for example, where and how I sit in a chair at a tensed faculty meeting and how I introduce difficult subjects to a diverse group of freshmen, such as the topics of police violence and racial profiling. Furthermore, conceivability spans all forms of possibility constitution, across attitudes, stances (and their modes), projects, acts, etc. Conceivability is thus a privileged analytic lens for explicating the normativity of the two basic everyday stances.

4 Spaltung, Fissures, and Imagining Modification Anew – Imagination’s “Open” Normativity In its “open” mode, the imagination exhibits an exploratory orientation. It thus not only gives access to its correlates as provisional possibilities, but it orients itself toward them in an exploratory manner – therein lies its own specific Setzung. This “openness” is not dis-interest, but interest of a certain kind, an interest into alternatives. Whereas normalizing normativity expresses itself as an overarching orientation toward stability, harmony, and the familiar, imagining “open” normativity is an overarching orientation toward exploration. The imagination is a “curious” kind of consciousness. It holds its correlates at a distance. “Rendering provisional” here does not merely amount to modifying possibilities by “distancing” oneself from them, that is, holding specific possibilities at arm’s length. The modification at work here is a distancing from the very commitments – conceptual, practical, and valuational – that undergird these possibilities themselves. Only this “systemic” form of modification, one that targets what conditions entire fields of interrelated possibilities, can make possible provisionality as a radical form of distancing. As such, it is not merely a temporary affair within the confines of deeply seated commitments, the way modality modifications such as doubt work, but is a large-scale and permanent stance in its own right. This rendering of systemic commitments provisional unfolds for the most part passively in the open mode of the imagination. Thus, when reading Woolf’s fictional accounts of women street walkers – veritable flâneuses oblivious to the normative framework surrounding their gendered embodiment, free, unencumbered – my goal need not explicitly be to undermine the concepts and norms that delineate certain fields of possibilities, here possibilities of being and doing as a gendered streetwalker. My “open” and “exploratory” approach always already requires a certain distancing myself from my own sedimented commitments. Needless to say, what happens passively – in virtue of the very structure of this modification as

168  Andreea Smaranda Aldea rendering provisional – can also happen actively, by decision, where the exploration itself is my chosen goal. While systemic, this distancing is not untethered, loose, or aloof. It is anchored in our very situatedness, which has historical and communalized parameters (Aldea 2020a, 2020b). The distancing at work in “open” imagining possibilization (Ermöglichung) involves a distinctive form of Verfremdung, of rendering “strange” or “unfamiliar,” which structurally has the ability to fissure the immersed manner in which we experience possibilities, which I referred to as “normalizing possibilization” in the analysis above. The distancing at issue here is a twofold hermeneutical gesture: rendering the principles sustaining entire systems of possibilities provisional allows us to explore specific possibilities as provisional; in turn, this exploratory exercise involving specific possibilities sheds light on what principles (concepts, types, styles of being, customs, values, goals, etc.) indeed undergird them. What this revelatory dynamism at the core of imagining possibilization reveals is the indexicality of the imagination.15 Imagining-exploratory engagements of specific possibilities as provisional throws the subject beyond herself in a refractory, multivalent manner. Imagining experiences thus function as indices pointing systemically beyond the given as pre-given. What emerges with such explorations is a consciousness of sedimented institutions (Stiftungen) – covered over establishments and commitments. Importantly, the indexical movement is not only both vertical (from surface to depths and vice versa) and horizontal (a horizonal forwardbackward mapping of possibilities as historically and temporally situated); it is also “double” in the sense that it is revelatory with respect to both self and world. All imagining is a self-imagining. “Reflection in the imagination” takes a whole new meaning in terms of its self-critical and world-critical potential. What imagining possibilization can bring into view and render into relief are precisely the tensions between the imagining and imagined self historically understood. Intentional doubling and egoing doubling take a whole new meaning here. What for the most part unfolds as an exploratory, open exercise can motivate and shift into a critical-transformative one. The imagination is thus able to motivate itself into becoming critical, in virtue of its modifying structure. Also, other experiences can motivate it toward a critical orientation – subversive and transformative. Take for example witnessing police brutality, whether in person or “live” on social media. Such an event can motivate imagining exercises that are no longer merely “exploratory” in terms of what “could be” in principle but in terms of what “could be” concretely. Many other kinds of experience can motivate the imagination to become critical. But the key point here is that in its open mode, the imagination can motivate itself: its teleology and orientation toward subverting the given as pre-given need not be borrowed; they could very well be home-grown, so speak.

Normativity of Imagination  169 In its “open” mode, the intentional focus of the imagination is patently the field of provisional possibilities to be explored and latently the imagined self whose correlate this field is. The imagined self is intentionally implied in a manner similar to memorial implication, as Husserl describes it in Erste Philosophie (see above), with the proviso that here the implication unfolds under the modifying umbrella of provisionality. What latently emerges regarding this imagined self can “bubble up” or come to the fore patently in a manner fueled by a sense of unease, discomfort, tension between the imagined holistic sense of self (and its correlate fields of possibilities) and the imagining self, anchored and situated in this, here and now world. This in turn can translate into a veritable lack of patience with how things are and with the self as it relates to them. A new interest, an interest into how things “could be,” concretely, in a realizable manner, replaces the curious, exploratory exercise. This shift from the “open” to the “critical” mode of imagination entails a shift in types of modal correlates in play here: the critical mode is not only exploratory but also interested in change and transformation. Possibilities are not merely provisional, to be curiously explored, but veritable potentiabilities (Vermöglichkeiten)16 – realizable possibilities that also require self-­ transformation. I will call “potentiabilities” those types of possibilities that can or could go beyond what I heretofore have experienced as limit, as lived impossibility (the correlate of my “I cannot/I will not”), and I contend that they are the correlates of the critical imagination. Let me delve a little deeper into the additional modifying layers at play in the critical mode of the imagination and its potentiabilities. These layers will in turn aid us in explicating the broader normative orientation at work in critical imagination as well as shed light on the extensive range of norms, goals, and value types that the critical imagination can sustain and engage. For now, let us stress that even in its “open” mode, the imagination exhibits an overarching orientation or broad normativity toward the exploratory. It is neither dis-interested nor dis-connected from our concrete senses of self and world. More specifically, however, in and through this overarching orientation – already teleologically charged  – the imagination is able to engage, passively or actively, any all kinds of values, goals, norms, and epistemic commitments. To build on one of the examples above, in exploring gendered streetwalking possibilities, the imagination can implicitly or explicitly modify and render provisional (and therefore “game” for exploring) pervasive commitments that otherwise govern practices and institutions (Stiftungen). In what follows, I will clarify this by studying the case of street walking, so pervasive and central to everyday life. The case is revealing since it is invested with goals of various types, some more personal and others more deeply embedded in communal histories. Moreover, studying normalized gender relations shows that goals vary greatly according to gender: for women, the goal of “staying safe,” for example, overwhelmingly figures as more important

170  Andreea Smaranda Aldea than any other conceivable goal, such as “simply enjoying the streets of a foreign city, alone, at twilight.”

5 Thresholds, Points of No Return, Imagining Absence – The Import of the Imagination’s “Critical” Normativity The shift from the “open” exploratory mode of the imagination to the “critical” evaluative one entails another kind of modification: in this latter mode, the imagination engages its correlates (possibilities) as subversive or as explicitly capable of shedding light on what principles and commitments undergird and delineate their articulation, such as it is. While the vertical, surface-depths dynamic is mostly latent in the open mode of the imagination, this specific dynamic is patently at work in the critical mode. This is so because the critical mode is primarily active rather than passive. Subversive modification involves an active moment of decision. The “distancing” at work here aims at rendering the familiar “alien” or “strange” and in so doing already sets for itself a new goal: the goal of transformation. Naturalized contingencies, only seemingly necessary, emerge for what they are. These contingencies refer both to specific lived impossibilities (e.g., the correlates of my “I cannot” as a gendered street walker) and to the institutions (Stiftungen) and commitments that condition these very impossibilities. This structure is central to normalization and de-normalization: institutions and commitments are inherently normative since they regulate our negotiation of the lifeworld (e.g., the habituated and communalized customs and mores pertaining to gendered streetwalking) and this regulation is historically sedimented. Thus, the subversive “de-naturalization” works across the surface-depths dynamic. In all of its operations, the process is revealing since it discloses sedimented “necessities” for what they are – not insurmountable limits but what could be otherwise. How does this subversive possibilization work? The evaluative and re-evaluative dimension of the critical imagination transforms limits, lived impossibilities, and historical aprioris alike, into thresholds. “Limits” can give themselves under different guises in the imagining stance – as lost (past), foreclosed (aporetic/future), forgotten (assumed/pre-given), even irrelevant (invisible) possibilities. The list is not exhaustive, but it does make the point: what marks our experience of limits (the correlates of my “I cannot” and “I will not”) in the imagining mode is absence – an absence that is indexically revelatory in all of the ways mentioned above and more. This absence is twofold. It is both the absence of possibilities as possibilities for me and the absence of what heretofore I have taken for granted as pre-given: their impossibility. What the subversive dimension of the critical imagination accomplishes is both the unsettling of modal indelibility and the encouraging of modal courage, to speak metaphorically.17 Imagining absence is thus both suspicious (of impossibilities) and desirous (of what could be) (Aldea 2020a). What

Normativity of Imagination  171 used to be a limit is now a threshold, a point of no return, a transformative steppingstone from whose vantage point the modal view will never be the same. As I read about Woolf’s flâneuses, the field of my own possibilities and impossibilities as a gendered streetwalker begins to unravel, along with the assumptions and commitments that delineate and sustain it. The potential for self-transformation is now in the air. The desire for this transformation emerging. As such, imagining possibilization anchors itself in my sense of self and world anew – it now works toward transformation. Its exploratory orientation is thus “heavier:” I am not merely “curious” about new possibilities, I am committed to innovative new possibilities for me: possibilities that could innovate, that is, transform my style of being, doing, acting, knowing. These innovative possibilities are not “aloof” (the correlates of an imagined self in an alternate imaginary world). They are historically anchored, realizable possibilities for me. Thus, what the critical imagination patently focuses on is precisely the potentially transformative relation between the imagining self and the imagined self along with its possibilities. The Spaltung between the imagining and the imagined self along with the tension between what is and what could be are both part and parcel of my holistic, concrete senses of self and lifeworld, as Husserl stresses in the case of positional “experiencing again” (see Wieder-erinnerung above). This orientation toward “what could be,” toward potentiability, can carry an even heftier normative weight. Depending on my commitment to self- and lifeworld-transformation, my overarching critical orientation could attain an imperative quality – what “should” or “ought” to be. This, too, imagining possibilization can encourage and sustain. A far cry from the disinterested “mere play” Husserl painted for us in Ideas I and elsewhere.18 In closing, a quick point here on matters of distance: I have used the terminology of distancing, of alienation (Verfremdung) in an overtly Brechtian way in my attempt to explicate how provisional and the subversive imagining modifications work. Rather than deeming the immersive dimension of the imagination one of its core noetic dimensions the opposite is the case. Imagining experiences are, if anything, “awakening” given their multivalent indexicality, through which rifts and fissures emerge, along with new possibilities. This critical awakening – as opposed to an immersive self-forgetting (Ichverlassenheit)19 – is genealogical in a broad sense of the term: it is able to trace what conditions and institutes possibility fields. It is thus a Wieder-holung, a re-collection, looking back and looking forward, very much reminiscent of Husserl’s description of Besinnung and Selbstbesinnung as zig-zag (in the Crisis and elsewhere). However, the de-distancing movement at work especially in innovative possibilization is likewise key here. It is this re-anchoring (anew) of possibilities in my situation that sustains the shift to possibilities as potentiabilities for me. This is the “forward looking” part – teleologically oriented

172  Andreea Smaranda Aldea toward transformation and normatively laden, that is, sustaining of critical reflection on a wide gamut of norms and values. Thus, the diagnostic (subversive) and the prescriptive (innovative) dimensions of the critical imagination exhibit a broad normativity and teleology, what I have referred to as “overarching normativity” across both of the imagination’s modes. But in addition to this, the imagination also exhibits a narrower sense of normativity – one that pertains to the correlates of the imagination, the different kinds of principles and commitments it explores, evaluates, and transforms. One might rightly ask: does the broad, self-transformative and worldtransformative normativity at work here have an ethical dimension? Insofar as the process of possibilization evaluates shared norms and values, it involves a communalized, a socially, culturally, and politically constituted self. The ethical dimension is thus implicit here. The prescriptive dimension of the imagination can become ethically charged in a narrower and more explicit sense. Noteworthy here is the explication of critical possibilization as involving the transformation of naturalized limits into thresholds. While this alone does not carry much ethical weight (it does not suggest a set of criteria for distinguishing between right and wrong, for example), it nevertheless does orient one toward transformative processes that are possibility-opening, and this re-orientation in turn exhibits crucial ethical potential. I would add that the evaluative dimension of the critical imagination exposes foreclosed possibilities for us as well as for others. As such, it is a powerful revelatory tool when evaluating various forms of oppression and marginalization, especially in its prospective, “forward looking” orientation. It is precisely this kind of process at work in the kind of reflection (Besinnung) that Husserl thought could break “the spell” of our times (Husserl 1976b, 58) as well as the renewal (Erneuerung) that he is calling for in the Kaizo articles (Husserl 1988).20 There is much to develop and explore here, once we crack open what is nothing short of a rich field ripe for phenomenological investigation: the normativity of the imagination.

Notes 1 I would like to thank Sara Heinämaa, Fredrik Westerlund, James Jardine, Mirja Hartimo, and the participants of the Helsinki Phenomenology Research Seminar for their invaluable feedback on many versions of this chapter. The chapter grew with our sustained dialogue. I would also like to thank the participants of the Norms, Goals, Values conference held in Helsinki in Spring 2019 and organized by Sara Heinämaa and the researchers in her Academy of Finland project. Finally, I would like to thank the Kone Foundation, the Fulbright Finland Foundation, and the Kent State University Research Council for funding that made possible my research leave and stay in Finland during the 2019–2020 academic year.

Normativity of Imagination  173 2 For normativity, see Crowell (2001; 2013); and for normality, see Steinbock (1995a; 1995b). More specifically for the normativity of perception (see Doyon 2015; 2016; 2018; Wehrle 2010; 2015; 2018); and for the normativity of embodiment (see Wehrle 2016; Taipale 2012; 2014; Heinämaa 2013). 3 For an illuminating discussion of the ambiguity of the term “normativity” and the ways in which we could dis-ambiguate this conceptual “jungle,” see Heinämaa (2020). 4 Some have not failed to note this tension (Kuspit 1968, 17, 28; Saraiva 1970, 252). Others have sought to address it by explicating this “reproductive” aspect of the imagination (Volonté 1997; Jansen 2005; Bernet 2002; Elliott 2005) in a manner meant to preserve the imagination’s creative, free, and productive powers. 5 This claim involves several misconceptions, such as the claim that the imagination is an act whose presentifying ability stems from its reliance on mental images or the claim that what the imagination accomplishes is solely the neutralization of perception or of the memory of perceptions. Those interested in Husserl’s work on the imagination have largely followed Husserl’s account of Phantasiemodifikation (cf., Saraiva 1970; Marbach 1989; Caeymaex 1996; Volonté 1997; Brainard 2002; Elliott 2002; 2005; Jansen 2005; Mohanty 2008; Rizzoli 2008; Shum 2015). 6 The claim here is that non-positional experience in this sense falls outside the authority of all reason – be it epistemological in the narrow sense, axiological, praxiological, etc. It is not just the realm of knowledge that is left behind, but that of willing and valuing, too. There is no motivation, no teleology, no interest of any kind at work here. This is precisely the claim that Husserl ends up making about the imagination, since the latter is either co-extensive with or a sub-type of “mere thinking” in this sense. Here is Husserl in his own words: “That there is an incomparable peculiarity of consciousness actually at hand here is obvious from the way that the authentic, non-neutralized noeses, in keeping with their essence, are subject to ‘reason’s jurisdiction,’ while the question of reason and unreason makes no sense for the neutralized noeses. Something similar holds, correlatively, for the noemas. Thus, everything chararacterized noematically as being (i.e., as certain), as possible, presumable, questionable, null, and so forth can be ‘validly’ or ‘invalidly’ so characterized, it can ‘truly’ be the case, it can be possible, it can be nothing, and so forth. Merely thinking to oneself, by contrast, ‘posits’ nothing; it is not a consciousness that takes a position. The ‘mere thought’ of actualities, possibilities, and so forth ‘makes no pretensions’; it is neither to be recognized as correct nor to be dismissed as incorrect” (Husserl 1976a, 249/214). 7 “Der Setzungscharakter ist kraftlos geworden” (Husserl 1976a, 248/214; cf. also §114). 8 This is the view Husserl holds in later 1920s texts as well, for example in his Experience and Judgment (Husserl 1973a, §§39–40). In a 1923 text pertaining to his analyses of passive synthesis, Husserl claims: “All our analyses operated within the positional sphere. In the pure life of phantasy there is no belief, but only quasi-belief, belief-imagination, just as there is no volition, no valuing there, but only a phantasizing into something of the kind” (Husserl 1966, 365/450; this in an appendix to §20). In his Crisis, however, a nuanced ambiguity ensues: Husserl seeks to retain both his ‘purist’/neutral view of the imagination (Husserl 1976b, 22) and make the case that in imagining a possible (future) world we draw on our historical, sedimented style of being, knowing, and doing (Husserl 1976b, 28). Husserl’s historical generative method reveals here the untenability of his “purist” view (see also Aldea 2020a; Aldea and Jansen 2020; and Jansen 2020).

174  Andreea Smaranda Aldea 9 As presentification (Vergegenwärtigung), the imagination makes present that which is absent. Unlike positional presentifications (such as memory), however, the absence it gives access to is an irreality. Here is how Bernet captures Husserl’s position: “Memory is the modification of an earlier perception which it bears within itself as reality in the manner of an intentional implication. Phantasy, by contrast, is the modification of a perception that is implied as a possible and not an actual act” (Bernet 2002, 339). 10 I view the shift in framework of analysis as necessary. However, as in the point above about the important clues Husserl’s analyses of Wiedererinnerung hold, we need not shy away from building on and further developing Husserl’s insights if they are grounded in rich experiential evidence. 11 Husserl extensively explicates the harmonizing structures of perceptual consciousness both in his synthetic-genetic analyses of positional constitution (Husserl 1966), communalization and intersubjectivity (Husserl 1973c; 1973d; 1973e), and in his historical and genetic Crisis discussions of lifeworld-constitution. His important work on concordance (Übereinstimmung; cf. Husserl 1952, §18c–d) is here particularly illuminating. 12 In the Analytic literature on imaginative resistance, the strict distinction between inability and unwillingness to engage certain imagining possibilities is assumed. A synthetic-genetic phenomenological approach can complicate their relationship, especially when explicating first and second order passivities (Gendler 2010). 13 To reference Foucault’s Discipline and Punish formulation, norms emerge here as “the limits that will define difference in relation to other differences” (Foucault 1995, 183). This holds, in my view, both with respect to what I am referring to as “overarching” normative orientations (which both the normalizing and the imagining stances exhibit) as well as with respect to specific norm kinds (operative, enabling, prescriptive, etc.) at play in specific styles of being (e.g., concepts such as “feminine” or “gender non-conforming” exhibit distinctive normative constellations). 14 While it is true that the German term for “conceivability” (Denkbarheit) Husserl opted for does suggest a predicative reading, we should avoid an intellectualist interpretation; the scope of conceivability is much broader than predicative thought, which is clear from Husserl’s reliance on the term in his analyses of practical and kinesthetic capacities (Husserl 1980, 548, 559, 566; Husserl 1966, 40ff.; Husserl 1952, 56) as well as our passive habits of thought (Husserl 2002, 27f., 42, 242, 254; 1952, §56; 1976a, §33; 1962, 142; 1973a, §80; 1976a, §§33, 108). The term also refers to a certain holistic unity (order) of meaning – intelligibility broadly construed as “system of referential implications” (Husserl 1966, 5, 291). The conceivable and inconceivable are the overarching manners in which we experience all possibilities, whether in the normalizing or imagining stances. The conceivable is thus not synonymous with the imaginable (pace Husserl 1980, 547) nor is the imaginable coextensive with the thinkable (in the sense of Husserl’s “mere thought” (Husserl 1980, 338) or in the narrower, predicative sense). Furthermore, the conceivable is also not synonymous with the realizable (understood as the practically fulfillable, the probable, the feasible in different registers (be they practical or theoretical), or with the potentiable (what “I could” accomplish)). All of these concepts refer to noematic layers pertaining to possibilities as correlates of our normalizing or our imagining experiences. For an expanded, non-predicative/nonintellectualist development of the notion of conceivability, see Aldea (2019). 15 I am here not using the term “index” in Husserl’s narrow deictic sense (i.e., pertaining to pronouns, temporal or spatial adverbs, and demonstratives, which are context-dependent), see the First Investigation of Husserl’s Logical

Normativity of Imagination  175 Investigations, §26 (cf. Mulligan and Smith 1986). There is, of course, a broader, synthetic-genetic and generative horizonal dimension to Husserl’s notion of indication (Anzeige), which he comes to stress in his later work (Husserl 1974, 177). This sense of horizonal situatedness – spatio-temporal as well as historical and socio-cultural – is at work in my notion of indexicality as I discuss it here, though my notion is not co-extensive with horizonality in Husserl’s sense either. For an insightful discussion of Husserl’s notion of indexicality as it relates to his key notion of “horizon,” see Geniusas (2012). 16 Husserl, too, uses the term “potentiability” (Vermöglichkeit); however, these possibilities are “realizable” (practically, kinaesthetically, or as far as our capacities for action are concerned) insofar as they pertain to my committed or positional (setzend) consciousness in the sense discussed above (Husserl 1952, 258ff.; Husserl 1973b, 109; Husserl 2003, 96; Husserl 2008, 73, 79, 82, 109; and esp. Husserl 1973e, 94, 96ff., 207, 246ff., 305ff., 328ff, 470, 495ff., 518, 539). As a result, potentiability is not a correlate Husserl’s imagination as “pure” or neutral can sustain. Also, it is noteworthy that the range of potentiabilility on the Husserlian model is restricted (see my discussion of normalizing possibilities above). 17 The critical normativity of the imagination is thus a necessary condition for the possibility of self- and world-critique (Aldea 2020a, 2020b). For a notion of “critical normativity” as involving explicit dimensions of justification, ­evaluation, and responsibility see Loidolt (2019) and Aldea (forthcoming). 18 A far cry, too, from Sartre’s notion of imagination as de-realization or negation – a “hollowing” of reality (Flynn 2006, 107; see also Sartre 2004, 120, 125, 130, 136, 144, 180ff.). 19 For a discussion of “self-forgetting” as well as “awakeness” in the context of Husserl’s notion of absorption (Versunkenheit), see Jacobs (2010). For Husserl, absorbed consciousness is not a form of as-if consciousness or presentification, as it is, for example, for Fink (for Fink’s view, see Fink 1966; Geniusas 2020); it refers, rather, to “unconscious consciousness,” which entails something akin to the absence of an (interested, affected) ego, for example, dreamless sleep (Husserl 1952, 107, 181, 253). What I seek to capture here through my notion of “immersion” refers not to absorption in Husserl’s sense, but to an ossified lack of self-reflective awareness. The structural potential for Ichspaltung is thus not gone but covered over. 20 In a forthcoming piece I go into an in-depth explication of the relation between the imagination’s critical-evaluative normativity and Husserl’s method of Besinnung as well as his important notion of renewal (Erneuerung).

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Normativity of Imagination  177 Husserl, Edmund. 1952. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Husserliana IV. Ed. Marly Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1959. Erste Philosophie (1923/24), Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phä­ nomenologischen Reduktion. Husserliana VIII. Ed. Rudolf Boehm. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. In English: First Philosophy, Lectures 1923/24 and Related Texts from the Manuscripts (1920–1925). Trans. Sebastian Luft and Thane M. Naberhaus. Dordrecht: Springer, 2019. Husserl, Edmund. 1962. Phänomenologische Psychologie, Vorlesungen Sommerse­ mester 1925. Husserliana IX. Ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1966. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten, 1918–1926. Husserliana XI. Ed. Margot Fleischer. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1973a. Experience and Judgment. Trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1973b. Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. Husserliana I. Ed. S. Strasser. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1973c. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass, Erster Teil, 1905–1920. Husserliana XIII. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1973d. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass, Zweiter Teil, 1921–1928. Husserliana XIV. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1973e. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass, Dritter Teil, 1929–1935. Husserliana XV. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1974. Formale und transzendentale Logik: Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft. Husserliana XVII. Ed. Paul Janssen. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1976a. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phä­ nomenologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch. Husserliana III/1. Ed. Karl Schuhmann. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. Trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2014. Husserl, Edmund. 1976b. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie. Husserliana VI. Ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1980. Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung: Zur Phänomenologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1898–1925). Husserliana XXIII. Ed. Eduard Marbach. The Hague, Boston, London: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925). Trans. John B. Brough. Dordrecht: Springer, 2005. Husserl, Edmund. 1988. Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937). Husserliana XXVII. Eds. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Husserl, Edmund. 2002. Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1926–1935). Husserliana XXXIV. Ed. Sebastian Luft. Dordrecht: Springer.

178  Andreea Smaranda Aldea Husserl, Edmund. 2003. Transzendentaler Idealismus, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1921). Husserliana XXXVI. Eds. Robin D. Rollinger with Rochus Sowa. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 2008. Die Lebenswelt: Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937). Husserliana XXXIX. Ed. Rochus Sowa. Dordrecht: Springer. Jacobs, Hanne. 2010. “I Am Awake: Husserlian Reflections on Attention and Wakefulness.” Alter: Revue de Phénoménologie 18: 183–201. Jansen, Julia. 2005. “On the Development of Husserl’s Transcendental Phenome­ nology of Imagination and Its Use for Interdisciplinary Research.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4, no. 2 (June): 121–132. Jansen, Julia. 2020. “Imagination in the Midst of Life: Reconsidering the Relation between Ideal and Real Possibilities.” Husserl Studies 36, no. 3 (October): 287–302. Kuspit, Donald B. 1968. “Fiction and Phenomenology.” Philosophy and Phenome­ nological Research, 29, no. 1: 16–33. Loidolt, Sophie. 2019. “Experience and Normativity: The Phenomenological Approach.” In Phenomenology and Experience: New Perspectives, eds. Antonio Cimino and Cees Leijenhorst, 150–165. Leiden: Brill. Marbach, Eduard. 1989. “Phänomenologie der Anschaulichen Vergegenwärti­ gungen.” In Edmund Husserl: Darstellung seines Denkens, eds. Rudolf Bernet, Iso Kern, and Eduard Marbach, 131–153. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. Mohanty, J.N. 2008. The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl. New Haven: Yale University Press. Mulligan, Kevin, and Barry Smith. 1986. “A Husserlian Theory of Indexicality.” Grazer Philosophische Studien 28, 133–163. Rizzoli, Lina. 2008. Erkenntnis und Reduktion: Die operative Entfaltung der phänomenologischen Reduktion im Denken Edmund Husserls. Dordrecht: Springer. Saraiva, Maria Manuela. 1970. L’Imagination selon Husserl. La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 2004. The Imaginary. New York: Routledge. Shum, Peter. 2015. “The Evolution and Implications of Husserl’s Account of the Imagination.” Husserl Studies 31, no. 3 (October): 213–236. Steinbock, Anthony. 1994. “The Project of Ethical Renewal and Critique: Edmund Husserl’s Early Phenomenology of Culture.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 32: 449–464. Steinbock, Anthony. 1995a. “Phenomenological Concepts of Normality and Abnormality.” Man and World 28: 241–260. Steinbock, Anthony. 1995b. Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Taipale, Joona. 2012. “Twofold Normality: Husserl and the Normative Relevance of Primordial Constitution.” Husserl Studies 28, no. 1 (April): 49–60. Taipale, Joona. 2014. Phenomenology and Embodiment: Husserl and the Constitution of Subjectivity. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Volonté, Paolo. 1997. Husserls Phänomenologie der Imagination. Munchen: Karl Aber Verlag. Wehrle, Maren. 2010. “Die Normativität der Erfahrung – Überlegungen zur Beziehung von Normalität und Aufmerksamkeit bei E. Husserl.” Husserl Studies 26: 167–187.

Normativity of Imagination  179 Wehrle, Maren. 2015. “Normality and Normativity in Experience.” In Normativity in Perception, eds. Thiemo Breyer and Maxime Doyon, 128–140. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wehrle, Maren. 2016. “Normative Embodiment: The Role of the Body in Foucault’s Genealogy, a Phenomenological Re-Reading.” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 47, no. 1: 56–71. Wehrle, Maren. 2018. “‘There Is a Crack in Everything.’ Fragile Normality: Husserl’s Account of Normality Re-Visited.” Phainomenon 28: 49–75.

Part III

Social Dimensions

9 Feckless Prisoners of Their Times Historicism and Moral Reflection David R. Cerbone

This chapter concerns the interplay between the historically situated character of norms and their availability for critical reflection. More specifically, my interest lies in a certain way of conceiving of that historical situatedness that makes their availability for criticism problematic or even impossible. On this conception, the normative force of such norms is a matter of their, in Anna Boncompagni’s apt phrase, “going without saying” (see Boncompagni 2014).1 That what is proper and improper, suitable and unsuitable, permissible and impermissible involves a kind of pre- or even non-reflective sensibility whose force is taken for granted by those whose sensibility it is precludes gaining a critical perspective on that normative force except by attaining a perspective external to that historical situation. My aim in this chapter is to challenge this conception without denying the basic idea of norms as historically situated.

1 Fecklessness Envisioned I should probably begin by saying something about the title of my chapter. The source is not a work of philosophy or literature, but a piece of popular journalism, an article published a while back on the online site, The Daily Beast (Jones 2016). The article concerned the pervasiveness of racism in works of children’s literature often deemed to be “classics” of the genre. While not wishing to excuse the authors of these works – and the original audiences that consumed them and first secured their popularity – the author emphasized the commonplace character of these depictions. What I mean here is that the use of such stereotypes was, for the authors and the original audience, entirely unremarkable. After all, these were not works designed to be racist screeds, written to forward explicitly or self-consciously a white supremacist agenda (compare works that are written and circulate today for that purpose). Such an “agenda” was not even that, but simply part of the prevailing Zeitgeist in which such works emerged. While we can see – and very often wince at – the cruelty of these depictions, and so appreciate the injustice of them, those DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740-13

184  David R. Cerbone who lived in the time when these works emerged were, in the author’s words, “feckless prisoners of their times.” The author’s choice of the adjective “feckless” is an interesting one, as it can be understood as an ethically charged characterization, but not always. The Oxford English Dictionary provides the following definition: “Of a thing: valueless, futile, feeble. In later use chiefly of a person (or a person’s actions or attributes): lacking vigor, energy, or capacity; weak, helpless; (now more usually) irresponsible, shiftless.” Notice that the definition follows a historical trajectory, tracking the shift, first, from things to persons, but then to different attributes or characteristics of a person. The second shift is more interesting for our purposes, as the characterization takes on more ethically charged connotations as we move into the present. It is one thing to be weak or helpless, neither of which need involve any kind of blame or censure, but quite another to be irresponsible or shiftless. The latter pair more than suggests a morally blameworthy attribute. But the combination, “feckless prisoners,” would appear to cut against the more morally charged and more current meaning, as the idea of being a prisoner pairs more naturally with the idea of being weak or helpless. By being paired with “prisoners,” the notion of being feckless seems to lose much of its moral weight, or, at least, what moral weight it carries becomes more difficult to determine. The indeterminacy or instability in the pairing mirrors how our judgments about the past are themselves unstable, oscillating between forthright moral condemnation and a more lenient attitude fueled by the idea that “things were different back then.” To tease out a bit this image of imprisonment, the thought about the historical case goes something like this: the people who lived then treated various things that we would now regard as morally repugnant (such as all those images and depictions in children’s books) as perfectly ordinary and acceptable forms of entertainment and literature, including literature deemed suitable for children. They did not, and perhaps could not, see anything objectionable in such things. Their sensibility functioned like bars on a cage, only they were invisible to those confined within it. What the historical case is meant to motivate is the idea of invisible bars, a way of being confined where those who are imprisoned do not – and maybe even cannot – recognize this to be their predicament. It takes later generations to see the bars for what they are and in that way see past them. Applied to past generations, the author’s characterization of such literature’s original audience is apt to sound condescending and in some ways it surely is. In calling the people of those earlier times “feckless prisoners,” the author thereby depicts us – those who read The Daily Beast, for example – as liberated from the prejudices and biases that imprisoned earlier writers and their readers. They suffered from various moral “blind spots” from which we, who have a superior vantage point or perspective, no longer suffer. Such judgments might seem to license a feeling of smug self-satisfaction, as we congratulate ourselves for having attained a more

Historicism and Moral Reflection  185 enlightened, morally superior perspective. I should note, however, that the author’s standpoint is a bit more sophisticated than I have yet made it out to be. That is, the author does not shy away from a further thought that rescues the view from a simple and condescending contrast between them-as-prisoners and us-as-liberated. That further thought involves the reflexive application of that figure of imprisonment to us, denizens of our current times. Just as those earlier promulgators of racist stereotypes were feckless prisoners of their times, so too are we feckless prisoners of ours. Here is the relevant passage from the article: [T]he authors in question were almost surely clueless about their casual or unthinking racism. They were the feckless prisoners of their times, and much as we’d like for people in the past to share our enlightenment, especially people we otherwise admire, it’s just not going to happen in an unfortunate number of cases. And a couple of centuries from now, when people look back at us, they too surely will be thinking, how could they? (Jones 2016) The reflexive application the author suggests here would appear to be relatively straightforward: just as people of the past were confined by invisible bars, so too are we currently confined in a similar manner by a network of biases and assumptions. These biases are so deep-seated that we do not feel ourselves to be assuming them, and so the idea that there might be something morally problematic or compromised about them cannot even begin to register. But again, later generations may succeed in bringing those biases to light and giving them the criticism they deserve. The danger of such thoughts is that they may appear to encourage a kind of moral complacency. The thought, “I am confined in ways that I cannot recognize to be morally repugnant,” invites a kind of inertia. Since I do not see the “bars” that imprison me, i.e., since I do not feel myself to be imprisoned in any way, the idea that I can in some way ferret out and eliminate these biases is in danger of fading away into nothing, and that is what encourages a sense of complacency. Notice that in the historical case, there are specific failings we can recognize and articulate so as to give content to the idea that these earlier people were indeed “feckless prisoners of their times.” Now if I begin to wonder about that charge when applied to my own case, I might ask, “What are the problematic assumptions and biases that confine me so as to restrict and contaminate my moral judgment?” If I take seriously this trope of invisibility, so that I cannot see what these might be, the idea that I am genuinely confined does not afford me much traction for doing anything. If there is nothing I can specify or point to in a manner analogous to the way I can specify what holds in the historical case, then I am confined by I-know-not-what and my gesture toward some kind of limit does not point in any particular direction.

186  David R. Cerbone I want in this chapter to consider more closely this idea of feckless imprisonment. I will first try to deepen this imagery of “invisible bars,” drawing upon Hubert Dreyfus’s influential reading of Heidegger. Dreyfus’s appeal – in his commentary on Heidegger and elsewhere – to the idea of a background understanding of being may be understood as implying both the inevitability and the desirability of fecklessness. That is, Dreyfus argues that not only are we to a large extent condemned to being feckless prisoners, but that we are better off that way. While Dreyfus’s arguments are generally framed in all-or-nothing terms, i.e., his arguments are primarily directed toward the idea of making the background totally explicit, the limits he places on the idea of “critical reflection” concern even more restricted or selective applications. Switching from issues of race to gender, these limits are especially evident in his brief but telling remarks about the feminist practice of consciousness-raising. In the latter part of the chapter, I will suggest that the way Dreyfus conceives of the limits of critical reflection should be seen as an improper extrapolation from the “total” case. Nothing like that is needed in order to engage in even radical critique. But I want to suggest more than just this kind of bare possibility: while the idea of confinement appears to encourage a kind of moral complacency or inertia, the effect should really be just the opposite. Reflection on the historical case, along with extrapolation to our own situation, serves to make vivid both there being a kind of background understanding that is operative in ways that go unnoticed and the sometimes morally fraught dimensions of that idea. Rather than encouraging inertia, such an insight creates instead a kind of obligation to look harder to figure out what those things I do not currently see might be. If that is so, however, then I may still be in some way confined or even imprisoned, but I am not fecklessly so. Rather, I am enjoined by the historical analogy to develop my capacities of reflection to a greater degree. I will try to develop these last ideas with a brief consideration of a conception of the background suggested by Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, which is adjacent to, but crucially different from, the kind Dreyfus develops from Heidegger’s philosophy.

2 Fecklessness Validated: Dreyfus on the Background This imagery of “invisible bars” finds a philosophically more sophisticated articulation in the work of Hubert Dreyfus. As Dreyfus reads Heidegger,2 one of his key insights concerns the presence and role of a background understanding of being. As he writes at the beginning of his commentary on Being and Time, Heidegger introduces the idea that the shared everyday skills, discriminations, and practices into which we are socialized provide the conditions necessary for people to pick out objects, to understand themselves as

Historicism and Moral Reflection  187 subjects, and, generally, to make sense of the world and of their lives. He then argues that these practices can function only if they remain in the background. (Dreyfus 1990, 4) For Dreyfus, Heidegger’s introduction of this idea marks a radical shift away from the prevailing attitudes and aspirations of the Western philosophical and intellectual tradition, which has centered upon a quest for some form of total theoretical transparency with respect to the conditions of intelligibility: whatever it is that allows us “to make sense of the world and [our] lives” must itself be something of which sense can and should be made. Dreyfus for his part rejects both of these last ideas, arguing instead that the background – these everyday skills, discriminations, and practices – neither can nor should be made explicit. On the contrary, “what is most important and meaningful in our lives is not and should not be accessible to critical reflection” (Dreyfus 1990, 4). Let us consider both of these claims in turn. Dreyfus offers several arguments to bolster the idea that the background is inaccessible. A fundamental consideration has to do with the pervasiveness of the background and our location with respect to it. Because we “dwell” in our understanding of being, we cannot get the right kind of perspective on “it” in order to make it explicit. Any such perspective would involve being positioned outside our background practices, but because these are the practices that enable us to make sense of anything, we would from such a perspective not be able to make sense of anything, including our background practices. The aspiration to such a perspective is in that way self-defeating, as its “achievement” could not be recognized as such. What would have been achieved is not so much a perspective as the forfeiture of any possibility of a perspective. In other places, Dreyfus argues against the idea of making the background (totally) explicit by appeal to a kind of regress argument,3 which, as Dreyfus acknowledges, is more generally associated with Wittgenstein than Heidegger: In explaining our actions we must always sooner or later fall back on our everyday practices and simply say “this is what we do” or “that’s what it is to be a human being.” Thus in the last analysis all intelligibility and all intelligent behavior must be traced back to our sense of what we are, which is, according to this argument, necessarily, on pain of regress, something we can never explicitly know. (Dreyfus 1997, 57) Another way to think about the threat of regress is to consider the activity of making anything explicit. Such an activity would no doubt enlist the shared “skills, discriminations, and practices” the background comprises.

188  David R. Cerbone It would seem to follow that if what we were trying to make explicit are those very skills, discriminations, and practices, we would need to enlist another, different set of skills, discriminations, and practices. If what we are after is making our understanding totally explicit, that latter set would again need to be made explicit, which would enlist a third set, and so on. The ideal of total explication is thus a kind of ever-receding goal. This last way of understanding the difficulty still leaves in place the idea of making explicit as a kind of Husserlian “infinite task,” but Dreyfus is unhappy even with that way of understanding the impossibility at issue here, as it misconceives the nature of the background. Dreyfus thus offers a different kind of argument against the possibility of making the background explicit. This further argument does not involve any kind of regress, but instead concerns a kind of mismatch between what the background consists of – skills, discriminations, and practices – and the “output” of any activity of making explicit. That output would be propositional, whereas the background understanding at issue is not itself propositional in nature. It does not consist of rules, principles, or beliefs that might be captured in the form of propositions. “There are no beliefs to get clear about; there are only skills and practices. These practices do not arise from beliefs, rules, or principles, and so there is nothing to make explicit or spell out” (Dreyfus 1990, 22). The “nothing” here is not absolute – there are, after all, skills, discriminations, and practices in the background – but rather nothing of the right kind to spell out. As noted above, Dreyfus does not just claim that it is not possible to make the background explicit, but also notes that it is not desirable either. Not only is making the background explicit something that we cannot do, it is also something that we should not want to do. While this second claim may strike a discordant note for some – why care about whether something is desirable if it is not possible anyway? – it should be noted that desirability does not neatly track possibility. There are things that we cannot do where doing them – or being able to do them – might be understood as desirable. If my car gets stuck in a snowbank, it is not possible for me to correct my situation merely by snapping my fingers. It would, however, be desirable in that case to be able to correct my situation in that manner, fantastical though it is. Since I know that to be impossible, it makes no sense for me to try, but trying and desiring are not the same thing, as the latter can include various forms of wishing that we know to be futile. I may wish – and therefore desire – to go for a long walk with my dog who passed away last summer, even though I know that doing such a thing is impossible. And of course, there are other things that we know are not possible that are also not desirable: it is not possible for me to make my house collapse merely by snapping my fingers, but it is not desirable either. It is not desirable simply for the reason that I do not want my house to collapse by any means (I leave aside the dangers that might attend having that kind of power at my fingertips). It should

Historicism and Moral Reflection  189 be noted as well that even if Dreyfus is right about the impossibility of making the “conditions of intelligibility” fully intelligible or explicit, the impossibility of doing so is not obvious in the manner of my finger-snapping examples. That explains why the Western philosophical tradition is littered with so many failed attempts. For this reason, it is worthwhile to show why we should not want to do what cannot be done, as it will further encourage our ceasing to try. But what is it about making the background explicit – per impossibile, as it happens – that makes it undesirable? The reasoning here turns on an idea common to the first two considerations for why making the background totally explicit is impossible: our location “within” the pervasive background and the regress argument. In both cases, making explicit “our” shared skills, discriminations, and practices requires that we adopt a perspective external to them. This in turn implies that making the background explicit requires detachment from it – indeed, complete detachment if the background is to be made fully explicit – such that those shared skills, discriminations, and practices would no longer be ours. These skills, discriminations, and practices “can function only if they remain in the background,” and so foregrounding them, as it were, renders them inert (at least for those of us who have now managed to foreground them). We would – again, per impossibile – have attained to a perspective from which what we endeavored to make explicit would feel alien and strange, as we would no longer dwell in those practices but instead behold them from without. “If all were clear about our ‘presuppositions,’ our actions would lack seriousness” (Dreyfus 1990, 4) because we would no longer be able to undertake them wholeheartedly or with genuine commitment: any such commitments would have been foregone in our taking up the kind of outside perspective needed to gain the kind of clarity we sought. Wittgenstein in one place describes this kind of detachment, likening it to viewing events on a screen: To be sure, one could imagine seeing human life in a film, or being allowed merely to observe life without participating in it. Anyone who did this would then understand human life as we understand the life of fish or even of plants. We can’t talk about the joy and sorrow, etc., of fish. (Wittgenstein 1980, §29) Although these considerations about detachment – both its possibility and desirability – appear to concern the human inability to attain to a fully extra-human perspective, Dreyfus sees these considerations as operative at the level of particular cultures. “Each Dasein must understand itself within some culture that has already decided on specific possible ways to be human – on what human beings essentially are” (Dreyfus 1990, 24), which means that for any given human being there is no getting outside

190  David R. Cerbone their culturally-specific background understanding. As Heidegger himself puts it in Being and Time, “[i]n no case is a Dasein, untouched and unseduced by this way in which things have been interpreted, set before the open country of a ‘world-in-itself’ so that it just beholds what it encounters” (Heidegger 1962, 213). Heidegger makes this remark within a passage that concerns more broadly the “dominance of the public way in which things have been interpreted.” Indeed, Heidegger goes so far as to say: This everyday way in which things have been interpreted is one into which Dasein has grown in the first instance, with never a possibility of extrication. In it, out of it, and against it, all genuine understanding, interpreting, and communicating, all re-discovering and appropriating anew, are performed. (Heidegger 1962, 213) Heidegger’s rather dark-sounding remarks about “never a possibility of extrication” would indeed appear to make the kind of fecklessness described above inevitable. Indeed, Dreyfus characterizes Heidegger as the “first philosopher of finitude,” where this involves acknowledging – but of course not seeing – “unknowable limitations” (Dreyfus 1990, 23).

3 Fecklessness Mitigated Notice that Heidegger’s remarks about “extrication” are framed in terms of a contrast between the inevitability of working “in,” “out,” and “against” the “everyday way in which things have been interpreted,” on the one hand, and being “set before the open country of a ‘world-in-itself’ so that it just beholds what it encounters,” on the other. Heidegger’s rejection of the latter would only condemn us to fecklessness if critical reflection required that kind of (impossible) perspective. While Dreyfus allows for some forms of critical reflection, his estimations of its reach tend to be colored by his disparagement of the project of making the background totally explicit. That is, Dreyfus’s reasoning appears to be that because we cannot do the latter – because we cannot (and should not) get outside our practices altogether and view them from without – then critical reflection has little to offer by way of promising anything more than superficial changes in our cultural self-understanding. Fecklessness would thus appear to be endemic to the human condition. Dreyfus allows that critical reflection can be “necessary in some situations where our ordinary way of coping is insufficient” (Dreyfus 1990, 4). But he insists that “reflection cannot and should not play the central role it has played in the philosophical tradition” (Dreyfus 1990, 4). It is at this juncture that he claims that achieving full clarity would undermine the “seriousness” of our actions. Instead, “what is most important

Historicism and Moral Reflection  191 and meaningful in our lives is not and should not be accessible to critical reflection” (Dreyfus 1990, 4). Dreyfus does not say here just what kind of “insufficiency” in “our ordinary way of coping” warrants critical reflection. Generally speaking, on his reading of Heidegger, what prompts a changeover from “coping” to any form of deliberative reflection is a breakdown in whatever it is we are up to. In such breakdown cases, the standard pattern is to get things back on track as quickly and efficiently as possible, to resume the kind of circumspective “flow” that Heidegger describes in Division One. If I discover that the head on my hammer has become wobbly, thereby impeding my driving in nails, I either figure out how to tighten it up or replace it with another, better hammer so I can get back to what I am doing. Understood in this “back to work” way, critical reflection is quite limited; indeed, reflection in this vein is inherently conservative, oriented as it is toward resuming whatever it is one is doing as easily as possible. Dreyfus of course allows that critical reflection can be more expansive than just fixing or replacing a broken tool, but the inertia and conservativism inherent in the practical case lingers. To see what I mean here, consider Dreyfus’s discussion of the phenomenon of consciousness-raising, which emerged within the radical feminist movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s: In consciousness-raising groups, for example, one learns that the understanding one can make explicit is just the tip of the iceberg. Our most pervasive interpretation of being masculine and feminine, for example, is in our bodies, our perceptions, our language, and generally in our skills for dealing with the same and the opposite sex. (Dreyfus 1990, 21–22) Consciousness-raising makes something explicit, but it is only “the tip of the iceberg.” For Dreyfus, the activity of consciousness-raising primarily serves to call attention to its own inherent limits: one might become more aware of there being a “pervasive interpretation of being masculine and feminine” while coming to understand that most of it lies out of reach. Dreyfus continues the above passage: We can to some extent light up that understanding, that is, point it out to those who share it, be we cannot spell it out, that is, make it understandable even to those who do not share it. Moreover, what we can get clear about is only what is least pervasive and embodied. Heidegger has the sense that the more important some aspect of our understanding of being is, the less we can get at it. (Dreyfus 1990, 22)4 While generally in accord with his cautionary tone when it comes to the prospects of making the background explicit, the contrast Dreyfus

192  David R. Cerbone makes here between “lighting up” and “spelling out” has the air of a non sequitur when it comes to the ambitions of consciousness-raising. That is, whether or not whatever it is consciousness-raising is after can be made “understandable even to those who do not share it” is hardly a primary concern. And even if it is the case that the “pervasive interpretation of being masculine and feminine” cannot be spelled out in this way, i.e., to “those who do not share it” – to the Martians, computers, and generic rational beings Dreyfus often appeals to – that leaves so far untouched the idea that it can be spelled out to and for those who do share it, the ones whose bodies, perceptions, language, and skills they are. After all, in paradigmatic consciousness-raising sessions, it is women who are trying to get clearer about being a woman in their own historical, social, and cultural situation. They are not trying to articulate what being a woman means in terms that can be conveyed to a Martian, whatever exactly that would mean, but, initially, to one another and thereafter to members of their broader community or culture. Compare what Kathie Sarachild, one of the leading proponents of consciousness-raising within the radical feminist movement, says about being “radical” on this front: Before we go any further, let’s examine the word “radical.” It is a word that is often used to suggest extremist, but actually it doesn’t mean that. The dictionary says radical means root, coming from the Latin word for root. And that is what we meant by calling ourselves radicals. We were interested in getting to the roots of problems in society. You might say we wanted to pull up weeds in the garden by their roots, not just pick off the leaves at the top to make things look good momentarily. (Sarachild 1978, 144) The “depths” Sarachild and others wish to limn contrasts sharply with Dreyfus’s tip of the iceberg conception of what consciousness-raising can achieve. When Dreyfus returns to the idea of consciousness-raising a few pages later, he characterizes it as only aspiring to “clarify the interpretation in the culture” (Dreyfus 1990, 24). While feminists may “try to become conscious of what it means to be feminine in our culture in order to modify our practices,” any such modifications stop far short of getting “clear about our sex roles” in a way that allows us to “get over them and simply be persons” (Dreyfus 1990, 24). Dreyfus does not here specify what kinds of modifications to current or prevailing practices are possible, but he is clear that whatever they are will leave the idea of “sex roles” firmly in place. Such sex roles are doubly entrenched on his account: there is, first, the “fact that like any other animal, Homo sapiens is either male or female” (Dreyfus 1990, 24). Second, that fact “is transformed into a social interpretation of human beings as either masculine or feminine”

Historicism and Moral Reflection  193 (Dreyfus 1990, 24). This dual entrenchment is something we can maybe get clearer about, but there is no getting clear of it. Whatever kinds of “modifications” feminists may envision or aspire to implement, the basic dynamics of these differentiations – of “the same and the opposite sex” – will be left largely in place. “We can only give an interpretation of an interpretation already in the practices” (Dreyfus 1990, 24). The implications of this last claim are not entirely clear. Or, to put it differently, there is one very clear implication whose ramifications are less obvious. What I mean here is that this claim may be understood as underscoring the situated character of critical reflection. Recall Heidegger’s remarks about “extrication” and his rejection of the idea of being set before an “open country” of the “world-in-itself.” What Heidegger is rejecting here is the idea of adopting an entirely neutral vantage point from which to assess one’s current practices or devise new ones: there is no possibility of extrication in that sense. Critical reflection always has a starting point, namely, the current understanding embodied in the practices. All critical reflection will be in that sense “an interpretation of an interpretation,” but it is not at all clear what kind of limits that sets on the extent to which the second, more critically oriented interpretation revises or otherwise alters the initial one. Any critical reflection on gender and sexuality such as the kind of reflection encouraged by radical feminism begins in and with a culture with an understanding of gender already up and running. In the culture within which consciousness-raising takes place, gender differences are marked and treated as in many ways of fundamental importance; such differences are generally understood as tracking underlying biological facts; they are policed and enforced in a variety of ways on matters ranging from appropriate color palettes to clothing and hairstyles to the division of household labor (including the raising of children) to career paths. Those are, we might say, some of the interpretive facts on the ground. The pervasiveness of those facts means that effecting change through critical reflection is not easy, but it should not thereby be ruled out as impossible. Moreover, what reflection reveals and the changes it suggests will no doubt meet with resistance: questioning something that had until then gone without saying is apt to be summarily dismissed by many who would rather such things remain unexamined. Sarachild is clear on this point: Some people said outright they thought what we were doing was dangerous. When we merely brought up concrete examples in our lives of discrimination against women, or exploitation of women, we were accused of “man-hating” or “sour grapes.” These were more efforts to keep the issues and ideas we were discussing out of the realm of subjects of genuine study and debate by defining them as psychological delusions. (Sarachild 1978, 146)

194  David R. Cerbone Contrary to Dreyfus, “getting clear about sex roles” is only a kind of necessary first step – one must, after all, clearly discern the facts on the ground before trying to do something about them – but there is no reason why it must be the last step as well. If consciousness-raising involves being “forced to take off the rose-colored glasses and face the awful truth about how grim my life really is as a woman” (Hanisch 1970, 76), simply getting clear about that hardly seems like a stable stopping point; such a “grim” discovery thereby prompts the question of how to bring about change, of how to make things less grim. If the “interpretation of an interpretation already in the practices” re-interprets that interpretation as, say, arbitrary, unjust, oppressive, or degrading, that may well usher in a transformation with respect our understanding of what “sex roles” are and what, if anything, they should be.5

4 Concluding Remarks: Of Icebergs, Rivers, and Riverbeds Dreyfus’s image of “the tip of the iceberg” suggests something both immovable and inaccessible, unfathomable depths whose presence can only be intimated. Consider, however, another image, drawn from Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. In that work, Wittgenstein also emphasizes the idea of an “inherited background,” a “picture of the world” whose possession is not a matter of my or our being “satisfied of its correctness.” Indeed, Wittgenstein says in On Certainty that “my life consists in my being content to accept many things” (Wittgenstein 1969, §344), which would appear to encourage a similar sense of fecklessness: contentment and acceptance do not suggest much in the way of motivation to change anything. However, Wittgenstein’s figuring of background and foreground in On Certainty is not in terms of an iceberg’s tip and hidden depths, but that of a river and its riverbed.6 The presence and specific contours of the riverbed are undeniably important: for water to be channeled in a stable and definite direction, there must be a riverbed in which the water flows. This captures imagistically Wittgenstein’s interest in the way our forms of thinking – our making sense of the world and to one another – always involves something’s “holding fast.” As with Dreyfus’s cautionary remarks about making the background “totally explicit,” there is for Wittgenstein no doubting of everything all at once; instead, “the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt” (Wittgenstein 1969, §341). Despite these affinities, the change in imagery is telling. Recall the discussion above of what I referred to as the entrenchment of masculinity and femininity: on Dreyfus’s conception, there is a specific order of determination from material facts to cultural interpretation, neither of which can be substantially altered by any form of critical reflection. Critical reflection can primarily call attention to that entrenchment and

Historicism and Moral Reflection  195 perhaps facilitate minor modifications, but all of that concerns the “tip,” which leaves the bulk of the iceberg unaltered. Wittgenstein’s river imagery again suggests a kind of determination from below, as the shape and contour of the riverbed do indeed affect the coursing of the river’s waters. While this is indeed the case, we should not overlook there being determination in the opposite direction, as the flow of the water alters and shapes the contours of the riverbed as well. This latter direction of determination is emphasized when Wittgenstein says that “what stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it” (Wittgenstein 1969, §144; my emphasis).7 This last remark suggests the possibility of alteration from above, in contrast to Dreyfus’s entrenchment from below: shifts and changes in the water’s ebb and flow can affect the riverbed, altering its contours, dislodging bits and pieces that may then dissolve into the stream.8 This duality of determination – bottom-up and top-down – is further reinforced by another lesson of On Certainty, at least on one reading. Although Wittgenstein’s river imagery exploits the material difference between the river’s water and the rock making up the riverbed, we should not be misled by this contrast into thinking of what “holds fast” – the empirical propositions that function as certainties – as intrinsically different, as though there were a determinate set of propositions whose form or subject-matter mark them out as part of the riverbed. That something holds fast at any given time is for the Wittgenstein of On Certainty part of the “logic” of knowing, doubting, questioning, investigating, and so on. But exactly what holds fast is not a matter of there being a set of inherently indubitable propositions. This is a point emphasized by Rush Rhees. Indeed, Rhees refers to the idea that there is such a determinate set that Wittgenstein in On Certainty either tries to delineate or at the very least encourages us to try to determine as the “most commonly made” misunderstanding of the work. Rhees explains: When Wittgenstein says there are certain propositions which have the form of empirical propositions, which are never called in doubt; and that unless this were so we could not speak with one another, we should not have a language – he is saying that there is a specific set of propositions (with the form of empirical propositions) which cannot be doubted. Of course he is not saying this. He is denying it. This is the chief point of his discussion. (Rhees 2005, 92) Taking this perspective on the idea of a background emphasizes the dynamic, reciprocal character of the interplay between river and riverbed, in contrast to the fixity of the Dreyfus’s unfathomable depths. If critical reflection is prompted by breakdowns – disturbances in the “flow”

196  David R. Cerbone of everyday coping – there is no reason in principle why that reflection cannot reach to, and even dislodge, what had until that point held fast. What I have tried to show in this chapter is that critical reflection need not aspire to the kind of totalizing that dominates Dreyfus’s wariness of it in order to be effective. “Working from within” – to use Quine’s famous slogan – can work well enough to bring to light, examine, and question what have until then functioned as taken-for-granted, and in that sense invisible, attitudes and assumptions in one’s own life and in one’s society more broadly. Such an examination may be inevitably piecemeal and selective, but that is not enough to discredit its workings altogether. While Wittgenstein does indeed write that “my life consists in my being content to accept many things,” it does not follow from this that such contentment cannot give way to discontent. I may be content to accept many things, but then again, I need not be. I may be a feckless prisoner of my times, but then again, I need not be.9

Notes 1 While I came across Boncompagni’s work on this aspect of Wittgenstein’s philosophy only after writing the first version of this chapter, I have found it extremely illuminating for later revisions and for thinking about these matters more generally. See also Chapter 5 of Boncompagni (2016) for further discussion of similar themes. 2 In my exposition of Dreyfus, I will not be concerned with assessing the strengths and weaknesses of his view as an interpretation of Heidegger. I do have misgivings, however, particularly when it comes to the relation between Dreyfus’s general pessimism about making our understanding explicit and what appear to be Heidegger’s ambitions in Being and Time. The tension between these two ideas is on display in the opening chapter of Dreyfus’s commentary. Despite the kind of pessimism that I will be exploring here, Dreyfus also attributes to Heidegger the view that the background “has an elaborate structure that it is the job of an existential analytic to lay out” (Dreyfus 1990, 7). Dreyfus reiterates this claim a few pages later: “The understanding of being is in our background practices; an account of this sense of being is what our investigation is to produce. It must lay out the structure of our access to entities and account for our ability to make sense of making sense” (1990, 11). “Lay out” sounds awfully close to “make explicit,” and “account for” sounds awfully close to “explain.” It is thus not entirely clear what Dreyfus understands Heidegger to be doing that is different from what he claims cannot be done. 3 For critical discussion of Dreyfus’s use of regress arguments in connection with the background, see McManus (2008) and Chapter 4 of McManus (2016). 4 I discuss this contrast between “lighting up” and “spelling out” in a different but related way in Cerbone (2019). 5 Hekman (1999) contains a brief discussion of consciousness-raising as a tool for revealing aspects of the background. See especially 438–440. 6 See Wittgenstein (1969: §§95–99). 7 Crary (2005) puts considerable emphasis on this passage in her criticisms of what she terms “inviolability” readings of On Certainty. I am grateful for her discussion for drawing my attention to this passage and its significance.

Historicism and Moral Reflection  197 8 I am indebted to Christensen (2011) for appreciating the significance of these passages for the issues discussed in this chapter. See also Hekman (1999), who appeals to the dynamics at work here for a “subversive” theory of the background. 9 Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at a workshop on reflection at the University of Tampere, as well as the annual meetings of the International Society for Phenomenological Studies and the American Society for Existential Phenomenology. I am grateful to the audiences at all three for stimulating discussion and criticism. I would also like to thank the editors of this volume, especially Mirja Hartimo, for pushing me to reflect more critically on an earlier draft.

References Boncompagni, Anna. 2014. “On Trying to Say What ‘Goes Without Saying’: Wittgenstein on Certainty and Ineffability.” Journal of Theories and Research in Education 9, no. 1: 51–68. Boncompagni, Anna. 2016. Wittgenstein and Pragmatism: On Certainty in the Light of Peirce and James. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Cerbone, David R. 2019. “Ground, Background, and Rough Ground: Dreyfus, Wittgenstein, and Phenomenology.” In Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology, eds. Matthew Burch, Jack Marsh, and Irene McMullin, 62–79. New York: Routledge. Christensen, Anne-Marie Søndergard. 2011. “‘What Matters to Us?’ Wittgenstein’s Weltbild, Rock and Sand, Men and Women.” Humana Mente 4, no. 18 (September): 141–162. Crary, Alice. 2005. “Wittgenstein and Ethics: A Discussion with Reference to on Certainty.” In Readings of Wittgenstein’s on Certainty, eds. Danièle MoyalSharrock and William H. Brenner, 275–301. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1990. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1997. What Computers Still Can’t Do. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Hanisch, Carol. 1970. “The Personal Is Political.” In Notes from the Second Year, eds. Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt, 76–77. New York: Radical Feminism. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row. Hekman, Susan. 1999. “Backgrounds and Riverbeds.” Feminist Studies 25, no. 2 (Summer): 427–448. Jones, Malcolm. 2016. “The Unbelievably Racist World of Classic Children’s Literature.” The Daily Beast, January 30. McManus, Denis. 2008. “Rules, Regression, and the ‘Background’: Dreyfus, Heidegger and Mcdowell.” European Journal of Philosophy 16, no. 3 (December): 432–458. McManus, Denis. 2016. Heidegger and the Measure of Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rhees, Rush. 2005. Wittgenstein’s On Certainty: There – Like Our Life. Ed. Dewi Z. Phillips. Oxford: Blackwell.

198  David R. Cerbone Sarachild, Kathie. 1978. “Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon.” In Feminist Revolution: An Abridged Edition with Additional Writings, ed. The Redstockings of the Women’s Liberation Movement, 144–150. New York: Random House. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1969. On Certainty, ed. E. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. Trans. Denis Paul and E. Anscombe. New York: Harper and Row. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1980. Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. II, eds. G.H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman. Trans. C.G. Luckhardt and M.A.E. Aue. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

10 (Re)turning to Normality? A Bottom-Up Approach to Normativity Maren Wehrle

1 Introduction Normativity is not only a central topic within ethics, philosophy of law, or critical theory but it also has gained traction in the philosophy of mind and perception. However, these approaches understand normativity in diverging ways. While the first focus on moral imperatives, natural or juridical laws or justified reasons, the latter discuss the presence of conditions of validity, not only with regard to judgements and concepts about perception but for perception itself. In the latter line of argumentation, phenomenological approaches to normativity have gained more attention in recent years in their attempt to demonstrate that there is a normativity immanent in perception and action (cf. Crowell 2013; Doyon and Breyer 2015). In this chapter, I will argue that normality, understood as consisting of self-evident feelings of orientation and familiarity, can be theorized as the experiential dimension of normativity. Steven Crowell can be credited for introducing phenomenology to the recent debate on normativity in perception. He argues that phenomenological analyses (typically, Husserl’s and Heidegger’s approach to it) show that experience is first and foremost a space of meaning and therefore normative. The concepts of intentionality, meaning, and normativity are as such necessarily intertwined. Intentionality is “individual, non-symbolic, and pre-predicative” (Crowell 2013, 131) and thereby characterized by the structure of intention and fulfillment. In his “minimal” definition, a norm is “anything that serves as a standard of success or failure of any kind” (Crowell 2013, 2). Normality, the feeling of coherence, self-evidence, constancy, and orientation, is in this sense the result of a successfully established norm that guides our perception of the world. At the same time, normality represents an “optimality” as the intentions or passive associations and appresentations match perfectly with our surrounding world and the actions that we want to realize in it. By elaborating on these notions, I will develop a phenomenological, bottom-up approach to normativity. It starts not from what should guide behavior but from DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740-14

200  Maren Wehrle a description of what kinds of norms do guide behavior and how these norms develop typically. In the first section, I will explain how experiencing normally (in a normal, that is, concordant and optimal way) can be interpreted as the result of an operative normativity. I will then show how to apply this analysis systematically on different genetic levels, namely perceptual, bodily, and finally social normality in Sections 3, 4, and 5.

2 Turning to Normality to Understand Normativity Experience can be called normative in two ways: (1) in a qualitative sense and (2) in a formal (or modal) sense. Such an operative normativity is thereby concretely expressed by an experiential dimension of normality or abnormality. Normality, in the first sense, can be experienced as more or less optimal and thus normative for the respective needs and projects of an individual. The experience can also be determined as concordant or discordant with established patterns of experience that guide future perceptions and bodily practices and create implicit expectations in the process of experiencing, rendering normality normative in the second sense. Transcendentally speaking, concordance and optimality are necessary conditions for experience. For Husserl experience needs to be (at least minimally or overall) continuous and coherent in order to count as the experience of something. At the same time, experience always aims at the optimal givenness or disclosure of the world. While concordance is thus a formal condition, optimality is a genetic condition of experience. Concretely speaking, to experience normally as a bodily subject means (a) that my impressions or actions are mostly in coherence with the prior ones or part of an overall concordance (this includes temporary deviations or discordances); and (b) that every concrete experience has a qualitative character and aiming structure: my experience is always felt as more or less optimal with regard to my interests, practices, goals, and my relation to the respective environment. In concrete experience, both aspects of normality typically overlap: when one experiences in a concordant way one mostly also experiences this as optimal and vice versa. However, the sense of concordance and optimality can also temporarily and partly depart from each other. Indeed, one might become accustomed to living in a pandemic situation and thus experience the social distancing and lockdowns as “normal” in terms of experiential concordance but still deem it to be less than optimal. Alternatively, one might achieve a sudden glimpse into an optimal movement for a particular project (e.g., the height of a jump in a ballet sequence), and yet experience this movement as something discordant rather than concordant with prior movements. The qualitative sense of normative normality points to the fact that there is no such thing as a neutral experience, but each concrete experience always already involves an evaluation of a situation as more or less optimal. The

(Re)turning to Normality?  201 formal sense of normality, however, requires at least some sense of prior or overall concordance, from which a current experience (as new, unusual, disrupting) can deviate. For this reason, following a deviation or disruption of normality, the experiencing subject often wants to re-establish the former state and “return to” normality as quickly as possible. Normality (or the experienced deviation from it) thus renders explicit the individual’s concrete relation to the world, including their past experiences, projected aims and interests, and relationships with and to others. By these relations normality is related to the phenomenon of attention, which structures one’s experience individually in a selective and preferential manner. Every concrete individual experience has a selective and qualitative dimension to it, which is more or less intense (that we “live” in some experiences or are engaged in some activities more than in others, cf. Husserl 1973a, 80ff.), more or less concordant or optimal for the subject in question. We are not indifferent to what we experience, we are interested in and care for it. In phenomenological perspectives, normality can be studied from within as lived normality. This approach focuses on manners of experiencing, and it allows phenomenologists to investigate how individuals experience something as normal or abnormal (individual normality) and how this individual experience relates to those of others (intersubjective normality). Often placed in contrast to the first-person perspective of phenomenological investigations, historical or discursive approaches study normality mostly from without via genealogical or critical approaches,1 which can be found in the domains of philosophy, sociology, disability studies, gender, queer, and critical race studies. In these approaches, normality is largely defined as the result of discursive or power processes of “normation” (cf. Foucault 1990; 1995; 1997; Butler 1993). These genealogical approaches demonstrate that concrete ideas of normality operate as implicit and explicit norms for experience and judgement. In this sense, normality is a contingent social category that masks itself as something universal, natural, or essential, which leads to the marking, negating, or violent exclusion of anything that deviates from the standard. Thus, critiques of the operation of normality in its historical realizations are of the utmost and urgent importance. And yet, I want to propose and argue that, in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding and critique of normality, one needs to complement such accounts of normality as historically constituted with an account of lived normality and its very constitution in and between subjects. In this regard, it is useful to differentiate an immanent or operative nor­ mality that characterizes manners of experiencing – the “how” of experiencing – from an external and (more) explicit normality that characterizes what one is experiencing. In the first case, I experience something as normal or not normal with regard to what I have experienced before; these are my immanent standards. In the latter, I am perceived or evaluated “as normal or not normal” according to external standards, i.e., standards

202  Maren Wehrle that do not depend on me and which I may reject. In what follows, I will call “operative (immanent) normativity” the kind of normality that is established within practices themselves, that is, the kind of normativity that internally guides the practice and is acquired through repeated practice. The respective norms are constituted and retained within experience and they function as internal regulations that guide experience (cf. Basso 2012, 168f; cf. Merleau-Ponty 2012, 62). The norms are immanent, in the sense that one experiences something as “concordant” or “optimal” in relation to one’s former experience and one’s overall needs, interests, and projects; they are operative because their regulation is not rendered thematic for the experiencing subject but can remain implicit or completely “hidden.” Normality can thus be seen as an indicator of the operation of underlying norms. These operative norms are, however, not (yet) established in any strict or explicit sense but they can serve as a motivational foundation for higher forms of normativity. Operative normativity can therefore be made explicit when the subject’s experience is disrupted by a discordance or her otherwise normal experience conflicts with the experience of others. An experienced tension between an individual and an intersubjective normality render the underlying operative norms thematic and can lead to a critical appreciation of them. Only at this stage can we say that norms are consciously employed and that they (through volitional affirmation) explicitly guide one’s behavior (Loidolt 2019).2 Normality, including deviations from it, is therefore, phenomenologically speaking, the experiential dimension of normativity. In other words, one cannot experience operative norms in themselves precisely because they are the conditions and regularities that govern experience. Nonetheless, one can and does experience normality or, at the very least, deviations from what presents itself as normal (as concordant and/ or optimal). An experience of normality can take the form of a short moment of surprise but also of a lasting and severe irritation or suffering. Such implicit feelings of the familiar and usual or the optimal can in turn motivate value judgments over what we regard as fitting or non-fitting, ugly or beautiful, good or bad, etc. Moreover, these immanent norms that develop through what we do and have done repeatedly, and the experiences that match and concord between oneself, the respective world and others, can turn into institutionalized forms of imperative normativity that then set a moral or cultural standard to regulate what we should (or should not) do now and in the future. In this sense, the formulation of explicit rules, which can then take the form of social mores and even laws, could be understood as the “singling out” and “making explicit” of operative norms that guide our experiencing, for example, norms characteristic of specific political or social groups who are sufficiently powerful to retain and stabilize their desired state of normality. If we consider the formal sense of normativity, which relates to normality as concordance, these immanent and operative norms appear inscribed

(Re)turning to Normality?  203 into experience and thereby function as internal regularities that guide experience. Further, they are constituted and retained within experience by way of repeated interactions with the environment that result in skills or habits. But if one’s experience and habit formation was only guided by concordance (formal coherence of impressions or movements) then it would be enough to preserve and repeat the usual regularities, that is, past ways of motricity and perception. However, as Merleau-Ponty pointed out, habit is not a mere repetition but the “motoric acquisition of a new signification” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 143). In this sense, I would like to argue, that the fact that experience is normative in a qualitative way, makes it inherently dynamic and open to future change. Bodily subjects aim at an optimal equilibrium with their environment and thereby experience respective concordances or discordances as more or less optimal. Here, the possibility arises that an unusual perception or movement, although discordant, is felt as more optimal and thus operates as motor for the development of different regularities, finally leading to a new normality. If we thus consider the qualitative sense of normativity, which is related to the experience of optimality, we can see the dynamic and constitutive side of experience. Here, one can imagine how new norms could develop as a result of mutual changes and relations between subjects and the environment. In this case, experience is not merely conditioned by pre-existing norms, but also the place where new norms are born (cf. Merleau-Ponty 2012, 62). The creative or dynamic side of normativity is crucial when we reflect on experiential normality and experiences of normality. Before there can be a measure for success and failure (e.g., a set of expectations), norms have to be established first via exploration. Indeed, this creative aspect of normativity is necessary in order to make normal experience sustainable with regard to future experiences. Hereby, ruptures, breaks, irritations, or surprises motivate one to vary or adapt one’s behavior. A lack of norms or concrete experiences of failure and disappointment can thus be said to be necessary to gain information about an ever-changing environment and the experiencing subject herself. Normality, in this sense, does not mean the status quo or the ideal essence of experience but rather refers to individual and intersubjective experiential achievements and practical “deliberation.” Thus, normality refers not only to the felt result of already-established norms (static conception of normality) but also to processes where something “becomes normal” (genetic conception of normality). In this sense, not every form of experience can be analyzed as involving a (established) epistemological or practical “ought.”3 Many practices and thoughts are not directed or guided by any determinate goals but proceed as practical improvisations or imaginative explorations that vary and transform the familiar and usual in a playful way. Such explorative practices and thoughts are not normative in the sense that

204  Maren Wehrle they are guided by an already-established norm, but are normative or norm-instituting in the sense that through these practices existing norms and meanings are taken up, transformed, varied, up to the point that new norms develop (cf. Merleau-Ponty 2010). A phenomenological approach to normativity can thus offer a bottom-up approach to normativity. It starts not from what should guide behavior but from the description and analysis of those norms that guide behavior internally and it asks how these norms develop typically and what necessarily conditions that development. Normality is thus not only the result of an already-established (external or immanent) normativity that in turn “normalizes” behavior and experience but is an active performative product of this very experience. Normality, in this regard, is dynamic: it has to be established, remained, or modified within shared experience and practices. This means that normality is not only an indicator but also the experiential foundation of norms and normativity. Only when circumstances change and the respective practices and beliefs of a subject or subjects no longer work seamlessly does room open up for reflection, deliberative reason, and critique – normality requires thematization. In turning to the levels and expressions of normality from within, one can describe normativity at work. It is only in concrete cases, wherein associations, practical anticipations, and expectations appear to succeed or fail, where we can uncover the underlying norms at play in perception, skilled behavior, and social interaction. In the following sections, this analysis will be carried out on three genetic levels of normality. The aim is to show how in each of them, norms can be stabilized or changed. On each level, normality is studied in the two above distinguished senses: (1) the concordance of the contents of experience and (2) the inherent relation of every ongoing experience to an ideal or to a relative optimum (cf. Heinämaa and Taipale 2018). Moreover, we also can, and need, to pay attention to variance on individual and communal levels of experiencing. Namely, Husserl differentiates between normality on an individual level (i.e., concordance and optimality with respect to the course of individual experiences) and normality on an intersubjective level (i.e., concordance between the experiences of an individual and those of the intersubjective community). I will argue that normality in a full and stable sense is deemed possible only when the intersubjective dimension of experiencing is taken into account. On an individual level, normality permits a coherent and familiar experience, while the intersubjective level of normality establishes a common ground or “world” as the basis for all social interaction and communication.4 All three genetic levels of normality – perceptual, practical-bodily, and social – entail both individual and fully intersubjective processes. However, the relations between the individual and the intersubjective play out in different manners on different levels of analysis. The level of social normality is crucial for the

(Re)turning to Normality?  205 analysis of lived intersubjective normality, while bodily normality and perceptional normality are crucial for the experience of individual normality. However, as we will see, perceptional normality must be intersubjectively valid since this is necessary for objectivity and our individual sense of reality.

3 Perceptional Normality Perception is said to be phenomenologically normal when its contents are concordant (einstimmig) and thereby “match” with previous contents. This means that every new sensual input has to fit within the larger temporal and thematic context of perception. Perception, in aiming at its object, carries an operative assumption that the intended object is as intended, for example, that a house is three-dimensional when we only see its front side. Within the course of a perception, singular perceptions and inputs must temporarily and qualitatively match to form a coherent and stable object-perception. Concordance is thus necessary to establish a stable reference to an object: actual and potential as well as empty and fulfilled intentions are bound together in a regular way, which confirms the continuity and coherence of the object over time. Perception has to successfully complete the not-yet or not-actually seen aspects of the perceiver’s environment as well as their bodily actions and movements that contribute to the perception, and it does so on the basis of past experiences and established “types” or “typical” experiences. Concrete perception is therefore only possible with regard to the normative interplay between my potential bodily movements (kinaesthesis) and appearances that are conditionally related to them. In other words, on the basis of prior experiences and their habituation, my body knows that “if I move my eyes this way, the respective object will appear in that way” (Crowell 2013, 141). This connection of actual and potential (past and future) perceptions and movements establishes the so-called “weak transcendence” and “normality” of the perceptual object. Concordance, which appears in different regular perspectives, is experienced as evidence for its objective existence and thus as transcendent. However, if something we automatically anticipate does not show up or if it were to suddenly vanish, then disappointment of intention occurs in form of surprise or irritation. Here, further employment of attention and or reflection is needed in order to find out “what is wrong.” When one’s present experience stands in conflict with one’s prior experiences, a resolution must be found in one way or another. Several alternatives are possible in principle: we may declare our perception to be an illusion (or an exception to the rule); or we may ignore the transgression and thus stick to the prior normality; or we may, quite simply, have to establish a new sense of normality. If there is just a minor deviation, the perceptual system is able to pass through it immediately and go back to

206  Maren Wehrle normal. This phenomenon of ignoring inconsistent inputs finds its psychological explanation in studies of inattentional or change “blindness” (cf. Mack and Rock 1998; Simons and Levin 1997; Simons and Chabris 1999). Alternatively, one can treat the respective deviation as a temporary exception and thereby retain one’s state of normality with all its implicit assumptions intact, which finds its expression in certain psychological phenomena such as confirmation bias. Finally, one might be able to retain one’s system of normality while slightly broadening and adapting it to a changing situation. Only in very radical cases, for example, when the interruption appears long-lasting, does one have to establish a new normality, whereby prior experiences will be re-labeled as exceptions or nonnormal states. Consider, for instance, the situation in which you first notice a mannequin in a shop window, but then realize that what you witness is in fact a human person who is decorating the window. Or consider a more elaborate case: You are meeting your friend, whom you take to be a human being by default but discover later that what you encountered was in fact an exact robotic replica of your friend. In this case, you may retain the assumption that an object that looks and behaves like a human being is a human being. And yet, this scenario will likely cause you to doubt and adapt that assumption under certain circumstances: for instance, your friend does not appear to recognize you, or they suddenly appear to be experiencing some kind of network breakdown. If these circumstances arise, you assume that your friend could be a robot replica. If this robot replica turns out to be the friend you always had, then you may be inclined to totally overthrow what you perceived as “normal.” With this, a new normality must be established, one in which all human beings could in fact be robots.5 This overthrow of prior experiences (and of one’s assumptions about the world) would likely be accompanied by an initial sense of disturbance, but, if this experience was one that endured and repeated itself over time, a new normal would also come to be established. However, mere concordance would not be enough for experience of normality; appearances and appearance systems must also be optimal in order to render experience normal. As already mentioned above, situation such as the “the covid-19 pandemic,” with the lockdown and social distancing measures, might after two years be experienced as concordant, familiar, or even usual. Nonetheless, it is highly unlikely that the majority of people who have been subjected to it would experience the situation as optimal, that is, matching their needs, aims, and interests. While normality as concordance is the condition of coherent experience, normality as optimality refers to the intentional aims of perception. Moreover, Husserl differentiates between relative optimum, which depends on the interests and goals of the experiencing subject, and absolute optimum, which refers to the epistemological ideal of a complete perception of a thing

(Re)turning to Normality?  207 or the world.6 Relative optima change with regard to the interests, skills, and professions of perceivers. What would count as the optimal perception for a philosopher who visits the city of Helsinki would likely not be the same for an architect or a city planner. Both the relative and absolute optima call for either subjective conditions or objective circumstances that allow for the best suited or the best possible perception of an object. That normal experience inherently aims at an optimum renders normality dynamic. In order to guarantee the sustainability of normal perception, it is not enough to ensure concordance. Instead, perception must be directed at an optimal grip of one’s environment, that is, of a better, more practical, more intense, interesting, or enjoyable experience, even at the cost of current concordance. Optimal perception is thus not to be equated with adequate perception or a maximum grip. Quite the contrary, optimality as a qualitative dimension is in need of interest, engagement, and curiosity. As Husserl notes, if we see too much of one thing, we tend to get bored and experience it as less optimal, and then pay less attention to it (cf. Husserl 2004, 108; Wehrle 2010; 2013; 2015a, 52). This inherent preference for the new in perception seems to be in tension with Husserl’s epistemological concept of optimum, which begets the most distinctive and evident description of the world. This is to say that for normality to be durable, in the sense of optimacy, it would require sensory interruptions and causes for attention that provoke reflection on and even the modification of the current course of experience. Another reason for the dynamic of individual normality is its dependence on the normality of other subjects. To guarantee a proper normality or a “strong transcendence” (cf. Carr 1973, 18; Husserl 1950, 123f./91f.), a perceived object must not only be concordantly visible for me, but for everyone else as well. That means, the object must transcend not only my actual intention, as is the case with every external perception of say a house, where my past perspectives of the house have to be in accordance with current and anticipated perspectives, but also my experience as a whole. That is to say, there must be a concordance not merely within my system of appearances, but also within and between a plurality of other systems of appearances. For normality to be sustainable and stable, it has to be intersubjectively shared, making it in turn a necessary ingredient for the objective validity of objects and of the world as well as a pre-condition for every form of concrete empathy. The fact that all human subjects share (at least, in principle) the same experiential and perceptional systems guarantees that things and, on a broader scale, the world can be described as objective. Given that we potentially and in principle have similar bodies, including kinesthetic, psychological, and mental functions, I can legitimately claim that what I experience is experienced by others as well (although by no means necessarily in the same way). This implies, in principle, that I could have the same perceptions and experiences as other subjects:

208  Maren Wehrle were I to sit where you sit now, I would see to a certain extent the same things (e.g., a table, computer screen, keyboard, page, words, etc.) that you see. Indeed, to guarantee the objective validity of the world, our possible perceptions must in principle be interchangeable. This is only possible as long as we have some common physical and mental constitutions and conditions. Everyone has sense experiences and embodied access to world, albeit differently, and thus the possibility to make sense of one another. Therefore, it is problematic when one’s perception of the world radically differs from that of others, whether this difference is incurred due to a sudden change or because one is born with a different bodily or sensory constitution. This might well be experienced as concordant from the perspective of the individual, but it would deviate from an intersubjective concordance and, indeed, from an intersubjectively-defined optimality. While, on an individual level, the day-to-day experience of a blind person is as concordant and stable as that of a person who can see, it is discordant with the average perception of a community of (predominantly, seeing) subjects. More importantly, being blind is discordant with optimal visual perception (but not tactual or auditory perception), which operates as an epistemic norm, that calls for certain subjective-bodily conditions and abilities that allow for the most differentiated unified view as well as for the best “objective” circumstances (such as lighting conditions and perceptual distance). Therefore, normality is not only to be defined as intersubjective concordance but also entails the scale of the ideal of an intersubjectively optimal perception of the world. However, when dealing with optimality in the relative sense specified above, one always has to study carefully which subjects determine what counts as the optimal perception or as adequate behavior. Optimality is not just an ideal concept but also a relative concept that cannot be defined without the context of a concrete environment, certain aims, practices, interests, or values. There can be several reasons why deviations and ruptures occur within my (former and current) individual normality or between my normality and intersubjective normality, both in terms of concordance and optimality. For example, research in phenomenological psychopathology on schizophrenia and depression has demonstrated that the disturbances of temporal experience that such conditions involve have both individual and intersubjective origins (cf. Fuchs 2013; Ratcliffe 2012; Bovet and Parnas 1993). The alterations identified in experiencing can thus be explained along both lines: these psychopathologies are characterized by disturbances within individual temporal concordance as well as tensions between individual temporal experience and intersubjective temporal experience. This is because the individual and the intersubjective, in phenomenological analysis, are not two alternative grounds or separate levels of explanation but are mutually dependent constituents

(Re)turning to Normality?  209 of experiencing. Questions also follow: Do patients experience a basic fragmentation of their individual experience or rather a lack of engagement and intensity? Is their individual experience the primary concern or, rather, the mismatch with the respective intersubjective normality?

4 Bodily Normality (Bodily Habit) Although Husserl does primarily speak of normality with regard to perception, one can also apply his concepts of normality in the analysis of the more concrete level of bodily or practical experience. Here, individual concordance and optimality manifest through habituation or habituality. The processes of habituation are analyzed by MerleauPonty on the level of bodily skills: In the course of a life, which consists of returning impressions and interactions, one acquires skills, practical knowledge, and motor habits that help orientate and familiarize a subject with their environment. The experience of an overall concordance or lack of concordance is the result of the development of a constant habitual style of interaction with one’s environment as well as with other subjects. This typical habitual behavior allows one to execute a selfevident routine wherein one automatically knows what to do and how (best) to go about it. In terms of optimality, normality is thus experienced either as an “I can” or an “I cannot,” respective to the circumstances, which implies a match between the acquired individual habits and the environment in which one is embedded. When I have a normal experience of and with my body, this suggests that I have specific abilities that match the respective environment, thereby facilitating a smooth interaction. In such a concordant bodily experience, my body (or own movements) disappears into the background, allowing me to direct all my attention towards my interests in the world and so to lose myself in my activities. In order to achieve such a practical concordance and optimality, repeated interaction, exploration, and learning of skills and movements are necessary. Only when activities, such as walking, biking, driving, or keeping a 1.5 meters distance from others, turn into skills or habits, they are no longer explicitly experienced, prompt surprise or irritation, or require any special effort. These acquired habits, with their implicit regularities of daily routines, can therefore be understood as an operative practical normativity of experience. Moreover, if we share a common environment with other individuals, we develop similar skills and habits as our fellow subjects, which makes it easier to anticipate their behavior in typical situations (Husserl 1952, 268/280). Through repeated interaction and shared practices, an intersubjective normality or common sense can be concretely established, which facilitates in turn cooperation and understanding. The development of habits as individual, common (alike), or shared (acquired or practiced together) can therefore be understood as a form of practical

210  Maren Wehrle constitution, whereby a new motoric or practical sense (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 143–148) is acquired by the bodily subject. Such an embodied practical possibility (Husserl 1952, 273/261) is not bound to the conditions of its acquirement but rather can be applied in multiple and variable ways. This can be seen in developed skills such as typing (say, on a typewriter or smart phone), piano playing (on an organ or accordion), which can also be personalized, transformed, or taken out of context. The possibility of acquiring bodily habits, and thus of developing a typical and identifiable style of behavior, is necessary for every practical normality. But this also means that one cannot reduce habit to automatic behavior that produces mere concordance. For bodily habit to maintain current behaviors and guarantee future normality, it must not only repeat previously learned bodily behaviors but also be open to adjustments in light of new circumstances. Indeed, no practical life functions purely out of bodily habit nor can it always be concordant. In fact, practical normality is a daily achievement characterized by a numerous minor failures and adaptions due to changes in one’s environment or embodiment. This highlights the dynamic adaptability of the habitual normality of embodiment. However, radical disruptions or a break-down of habitual bodily action that disturb an overall concordance and optimality of experience can occur, for example, in sickness, bodily injuries, or violations (Carel 2016; Scarry 1985; Svenaeus 2017). Studying cases of experiences of illness, Havi Carel argues that a feeling of bodily doubt is primary in them, and that it renders difficult any concordant and optimal experience through the body (Carel 2016, 86f.). No longer can our bodies operate as a silent medium, one that serves our interests and projects; instead, it becomes an obstacle for us, pushing its way into the center of our concerns. This suggests that the conceptual framework of individual normality and intersubjective normality could promote phenomenological studies of illness and disability. For example, one could differentiate how specific types of illnesses or disabilities affect individual and intersubjective concordance/optimality respectively. While the first refers more to the ways in which one is in relation to the world through their body (sensorymotor body-schema), the latter concerns how one’s body and behaviors are evaluated by others or in comparison to others (intersubjective bodyimage). While short-term interruptions of the habitual use of the body are experienced as a disturbance with respect to previous experience and activity (i.e., individual normality standards), longer-term or repeated interruptions could ultimately lead to the establishment of a new normality. For instance, congenital disabilities are not experienced by the respective individuals as discordant or abnormal per se (cf., Martiny 2015), they may only appear as such in relation to the standards and terms of intersubjective normality. A study on congenital or long-term disabilities also raises the question of whether they are always experienced by the subjects as simply lacking optimality (with regard to their interests and

(Re)turning to Normality?  211 projects) or whether the experience is rather that of being robbed of all possibilities of developing optimality due to the necessity of living in an alien society of ableism, one that makes a lived normality impossible for people who deviate from a certain intersubjective optimum. Similarly, lived normality can be made impossible when one’s body is externally defined as not normal, such as not white (Fanon 1952), not cisgender, not heterosexual (Ahmed 2006), not healthy, thin, young, or male (Young 1980). Such normative social frameworks have an impact on how I evaluate myself as a body (body-image) and how I am bodily directed at the world (body-schema).

5 Social Normality With Husserl, one could understand social normality as that which concretely characterizes our “natural attitude” or lifeworld, this is, one’s “homeworld” (Husserl 2008, 154–178). This world, in which I was born and into which I was socialized, is the starting point and interpretive framework to which I relate everything else. Accordingly, the individual has not only an individual optimum (or an objective optimum of whatever kind) but also a social or cultural optimum, which operates as the standard for his or her individual opinions, actions, and values. In this context, deviations from what is perceived as usual (i.e., in concordance) and as optimal can occur within (a) the individual and the overall social normality, (b) within one’s social normality, or (c) in contrast to another, alternative social normality. With regard to (a), from the perspective of a social normality, every individual experience is preceded by a “social a priori,” as Alfred Schutz describes it (Schutz and Luckmann 1973, 244). The social is thereby the result of an intersubjective, cultural, and historical inheritance. This inheritance can be acquired implicitly through imitation or incorporation of behavior, through the acquisition of conventions and mores, and it can also be acquired explicitly through education and supervision in the family, school, and other institutions. Habits are therefore never purely acquired by the individual but always also operate as socialized habits. The daily routines of coping with life are thus socially objectified in typical ways for all members of societies or communities. However, the way we adopt, realize, and perpetuate this “social a priori” is in fact unique for each individual and established in concrete interpersonal interactions. The homeworld is thus not just a normative framework in which one is situated but is also a framework that has to be and can be constantly appropriated, actualized, and realized, as well as renewed. In this sense, social normality is necessarily dynamic: it has to be made our own as it is “constantly in the making through appropriation” (Steinbock 1995b, 227). Therefore, the social or common homeworld cannot be assumed as prior to any concrete interpersonal encounter. To be in any way meaningful and

212  Maren Wehrle intelligible for us, social norms or rules need to be appropriated and actualized by us as well as other members involved. Within this gradual process of appropriating the operative social norms, there is plenty of room for variation, transformation, and “failure.” For example, as Judith Butler notes in Bodies That Matter (1993), even though gendered subjects are constituted by the heterosexual norms, some individuals necessarily fall outside this framework of normality because they are unable to appropriate these norms in terms accepted by social mores. In contrast, those who easily adopt and match well with social normality, this social normality becomes their “comfort zone” or perhaps we can also say “homeworld.” In this sense, one can state that social “normality is comfortable for those who can inhabit it” (Ahmed 2014, 147) even as it remains a constant cause for concern, interruption, irritation, and thematic reflection for those who cannot. In terms of (b), members who seamlessly belong to one homeworld share a common style of habits, routines, patterns of interpretation, and relevancy. In social relations, such similarities, shared knowledge as well as values, are taken for granted until revoked. They form the basis for everyday communal understanding. The implicit social rules refer back to prior concrete interactions that have proven themselves in the past and have thus, in the course of time, acquired the status of general routines of action. In this way, the individual brings a certain socially acquired habi­ tus (or stock of knowledge) into every new interaction, direct or indirect, with fellow human beings, and this generates in turn specific expectations about what can or cannot be done (cf. Schutz and Luckmann 1973). The intersubjective concordance is thus dependent on such practices, knowledge, routines, and functions as well as institutionalized roles that have been socially established. For example, upon meeting people in institutionalized social settings, we perceive them according to their types (e.g., as postal worker, bartender, etc.). While this might be unproblematic in the case of minor transactional encounter, it certainly becomes problematic if we begin to address individuals and make decisions about their lives in terms of such general types, be they those of “the refugee,” “the migrant,” or just “the stranger.” In these cases, such typification is an overall reduction of a unique individual to the representation of a specific group, and this can happen with regard to the individual’s gender, race, nationality, or transnational status, which most often goes hand-in-hand with a devaluation of the identified group. These underlying operative norms of social normality are only questioned when they no longer function as a matter of course or can no longer be applied without facing problems, such as when an actual experience contradicts or opposes the typification. For example, if the function or status of the postal worker changes accordingly due to technological developments (e.g., the mail is now delivered by drones and postal workers have to digitally coordinate them) or if the person no longer behaves

(Re)turning to Normality?  213 according to their professional type (e.g., they do not deliver the post directly to someone’s door), then our assumptions about them and their social role are challenged. The same fracture in experience can occur when one encounters a so-called “foreigner” whose appearance and behavioral patterns do not cohere with a socially accepted stereotype (e.g., speaks Bavarian instead of broken German or is a renowned lawyer rather than a cleaner). One experiences a temporary or lasting deviation within one’s social normality that leads to a felt irritation or surprise. This can be the occasion for a renewed interpretation and, if necessary, adaptation of the type, which attempts to integrate the supposedly inappropriate information and, accordingly, expand social normality. However, the stubborn adherence to the familiar type seems to be the more common response in such situations: there is usually an initial attempt to tone down the conflicting or inappropriate information, to declare it an exception, or to ignore it altogether. Only if the overall familiarity of socialized forms of knowledge, situations, and roles begins to falter, they have to be reinterpreted and renegotiated. A type is usually only adapted when the use of the type is no longer socially optimal, indeed, when a situation can no longer be easily accommodated. Only when social circumstances have changed, do we have to strive again for interpretation and coherence such that the prior social norms can be assumed under the “grip of consciousness” (Schutz and Luckmann 1973, 101) and their limitations made visible. In the case of (c), we are confronted by an “alienworld” that implies a different system of concordant and optimal experiences and, hence, of social normality. Although the homeworld and the alienworld share the same essential features of worldliness (i.e., temporality, spatiality, embodiment) and sociality (i.e., rule-like and institutionalized intersubjective interaction), the socially operative norms of the alienworld are not immediately accessible or comprehensible for the homeworld. From a generative perspective, these two cannot be interchangeable for at least two reasons. First, the asymmetry of the homeworld–alienworld relation: the respective homeworld will always be privileged by subjects; after all, it is their starting point and horizon of life. Second, the obligation to respect what is different: “[t]o treat the home as interchangeable with the alien would be to presuppose that the alien is at my disposal” (Steinbock 1995b, 253), and, as such, fully accessible, transparent, and controllable. In the encounter with an alienworld, members of the homeworld discover the possibilities and the limits of the knowledge and practical abilities within their homeworld. In seeing and experiencing, for instance, how other cultures and people born and living within them behave, think, and organize things in their surrounding world (presumably differently from ours), we are faced with the relativity and changeability of our own norms and values. Social normality fails when we enter a new and unfamiliar cultural environment, wherein we must adapt and learn anew the implicit rules of everyday interaction and routines.

214  Maren Wehrle This can motivate critique and change but it can also trigger fear and the desire to protect one’s homeworld against everything that is alien or different in one way or another. A widely used strategy for avoiding a genuine encounter with the alienworld is to universalize one’s own homeworld, i.e., conceptualize it as the general framework that encompasses or is able to encompass all others. This is often accompanied by attempts to usurp and annex the alien in order to control and dominate it (cf. Waldenfels 1997, 48ff.). However, since home and alienworlds are essentially co-constitutive and co-dependent, this, somewhat paradoxically and even comically (if it is not life-threatening), leads to the destruction of both the homeworld and alienworld. Because homeworlds and their normalities need to be constantly renewed and enacted, and because this is only possible through an encounter with the alien, such strategies of dominance end up in a world that claims to be universal but is actually emptied of significant difference and meaning. Such a world would neither have a past, nor would it have a future, because every generativity and, hence, every homeworld, internally refers to the alien and from the very start.

6 Conclusion We have seen that normality as a dimension of experience best manifests in the form of possible deviations, irritations, or surprises, which suggests a break-down of habits or beliefs rendered no longer self-evident. These felt deviations thereby indicate an underlying operative normativity, that is thereby temporarily, partly or lastingly interrupted and thereby can get thematic as such. Furthermore, these deviations occur on different genetic stages of experiencing. As I have demonstrated, deviations and divergences can emerge (1) within individual normality, (2) between the individual and the intersubjective normality, and (3) between intersubjective normalities. Moreover, I have also argued that concordance is necessary for the establishment of any form of normality, while at the same time also emphasizing that deviations and interruptions from concordance play an important role in the constitution of the optimality of perception, skillful action, and common sense. Deviations and interruptions, experienced as negations of concordance, allow us to “update” our automatic anticipations (including perceptional beliefs, bodily, or social know-how). These negations of normality provide us with significant evidence about the transcendent and changing world. This is especially important for sustaining an optimal fit between individuals and their environment, and between individuals and social groups. One could therefore state that the instability and dynamism of normality ensures the sustainability of normal experiences, that is, future normality. Thus, normality is not only a preserving force but a motivation for the development of new norms.

(Re)turning to Normality?  215 Nonetheless, while the instability and dynamism of current normality is necessary for sustaining future normality, there is an inherent desire to quickly re-establish normality. Indeed, a lack of normality is accompanied by feelings of disorientation, anxiety, and even suffering, as can be seen on the part of the individual and also, by an erosion of a common ground (i.e., common norms), on the part of a social (intersubjective) community. The desire to “return to normality” can be reactionary, often representing a subjective longing for a familiar and secured state which can be defended in an absolutizing and violent way as “natural” or even “god-given.” Such a retreat into, and defense of, a presumed “normality” hinders debate on and critique of the underlying norms. In claiming normality for oneself, one tries to immunize oneself against critique and subsequently deny any obligation to justify one’s values and opinions and engage in dialogue. For this reason, the task of describing, explaining, and justifying the underlying norms at work requires that one (re)turns to lived normality. This does not mean, of course, that one would equate any established or (inter)subjective preferences to what is morally good. Instead, it means that we need to trace the operation and failure of norms in lived experience in order to make them explicit and negotiable. This is indeed the first step that one needs to take in order to proceed to an ethical reflection of what kind of community is good (for all) and what one can and should do to make it possible.

Notes 1 On methodological grounds, the concept of historical genealogy, in Nietzs­chean and Foucauldian senses, must be kept separate from the genetic-phenomenological approach that studies the temporal aspects of meaning-constitution in intersubjectivity. 2 According to Loidolt, a critical normativity is only developed with regard to the other, that is, because of the second-person perspective and accompanied matters of responsibility. 3 See Doyon (2015) for an elaborative critique of this assumption by Crowell. 4 Husserl’s reflections on normality as concordance and/or optimality can be found most prominently in the D-Manuscripts (Ms. D-13, IX–XIV, (1910– 1923)) and the following volumes: Husserl 1973b, 364–366; 1973c, Nr. 3, 16, 26, Beilage XIII, XIV, XXIX, LXV; 1973d, Nr. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 14, 27, 30, 35, Beilagen I, II, IV, VII, XIII, XXIV, XXVI, XLVII; 2004, 204ff., Text Nr. 55/56/57/58, 637–673; 1976, 146ff./143ff., 163ff./161ff., 284ff./306ff., 487ff./343ff.; 1950, 125/154; 1968, 128–130, 198–200, 431, 499; see also Steinbock 1995a, 1995b, 123–148; Taipale 2012; Heinämaa 2013; Wehrle 2010; 2015b; 2019. 5 This is by no means a contribution to debates on personal (human) identity vs. artificial identities, but merely serves as an example for a case where one’s sense of normality is radically challenged. 6 This is not to be understood in the sense that we ever could get an adequate evidence or a maximum grip of a perceived thing. For Husserl as also for Merleau-Ponty, perception is necessarily perspectival and thus excludes a view from nowhere as well as from everywhere by principle. Cf. Lajoie (2018) for a critique on S. Kelly’s interpretation of the maximum grip.

216  Maren Wehrle

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(Re)turning to Normality?  217 of Constitution. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1989. Husserl, Edmund. 1968. Phänomenologische Psychologie, Vorlesungen Sommerse­ mester 1925. Husserliana IX. Ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1973a. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. Trans. Spencer Churchill. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Originally published in 1936. Husserl, Edmund. 1973b. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass, Erster Teil: 1905–1920. Husserliana XIII. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1973c. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass, Zweiter Teil: 1921–1928. Husserliana XIV. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1973d. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass, Dritter Teil: 1929–1935. Husserliana XV. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1976. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Husserliana VI. Ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. David Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Originally published in 1936. Husserl, Edmund. 2004. Wahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1893–1912). Husserliana XXXVIII. Eds. Thomas Vongehr and Regula Giuliani. Dordrecht: Springer Verlag. Husserl, Edmund. 2008. Die Lebenswelt: Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937). Husserliana XXXIX. Ed. Rochus Sowa. Dordrecht: Springer. Lajoie, Corinne. 2018. “A Merleau-Pontian Account of Embodied Perceptual Norms.” Itaque 22: 1–19. Loidolt, Sophie. 2019. “Experience and Normativity: The Phenomenological Approach.” In Phenomenology and Experience: New Perspectives, eds. Antonio Ciminio and Cees Leijenhoorst, 150–165. Amsterdam: Brill. Mack, Arien, and Irvin Rock. 1998. Inattentional blindness. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Martiny, Kristian Moltke. 2015. “How to Develop a Phenomenological Model of Disability.” Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy 18: 553–565. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2010. Institution and Passivity: Course Notes from the Collège de France (1954–1955). Trans. Leonard Lawlor and Heath Massey. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2012. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Donald A. Landes. New York: Routledge. Ratcliffe, Matthew. 2012. “Varieties of Temporal Experience in Depression.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 37, no. 2 (April): 114–138. Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The Body in Pain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schutz, Alfred, and Thomas Luckmann. 1973. The Structures of the Lifeworld, Vol. 1. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Simons, Daniel J., and Christopher F. Chabris. 1999. “Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events.” Perception 28, no. 9: 1059–1074.

218  Maren Wehrle Simons, Daniel J., and Daniel T. Levin. 1997. “Change Blindness.” Trends in Cognitive Science 1, no. 7: 261–267. Steinbock, Anthony. 1995a. “Phenomenological Concepts of Normality and Abnormality.” Man and World 28: 241–260. Steinbock, Anthony. 1995b. Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Svenaeus, Fredrik. 2017. Phenomenological Bioethics. New York: Routledge. Taipale, Joona. 2012. “Twofold Normality: Husserl and Normative the Relevance of Primordial Constitution.” Husserl Studies 28: 49–60. Waldenfels, Bernhard. 1997. Topographie des Fremden. Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden 1. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Wehrle, Maren. 2010. “Die Normativität der Erfahrung. Überlegungen zur Beziehung von Normalität und Aufmerksamkeit bei E. Husserl.” Husserl Studies 26: 167–187. Wehrle, Maren. 2013. Horizonte der Aufmerksamkeit: Entwurf einer Dyna­ mischen Konzeption der Aufmerksamkeit aus Phänomenologischer und Kognitionspsychologischer Sicht. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Wehrle, Maren. 2015a. “‘Feelings as a Motor of Perception’? The Essential Role of Interest for Perception.” Husserl Studies 31: 45–64. Wehrle, Maren. 2015b. “Normality and Normativity in Experience.” In Normativity in Perception, eds. Maxime Doyon and Thiemo Breyer, 128–139. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wehrle, Maren. 2019. “‘There Is a Crack in Everything’. Fragile Normality: Husserl’s Account of Normality Re-Visited.” Phainomenon: Journal of Phenome­ nological Philosophy 28, no. 1: 49–76. Young, Iris Marion. 1980. “Throwing Like a Girl.” Human Studies 3: 137–156.

11 Phenomenology of Culture and Cultural Norms Timo Miettinen

1 Introduction The debate on the nature of cultural norms is one the most pressing issues of contemporary political and social theory. Despite the centrality of the concepts of norms and normativity in contemporary social sciences, we still lack a comprehensive framework for their analysis (cf. Gutmann 2003). The different approaches to normativity, however, turn on certain fundamental questions that have a specific philosophical core: Are cultural norms something that we choose, or are they simply constitutive for our existence? Is the multiplicity of cultural norms a universal problem or a fundamentally historical phenomenon related, for instance, to the emergence of modern societies? And lastly, what is the relation of cultural norms to other political divisions such as class, gender, and generation (see e.g., Deveaux 2006; Fraser and Honneth 2003; Fukuyama 2018)? In the current literature, I believe we can distinguish between at least three alternatives to this set of questions. In the liberal approach, represented by philosophers such as Charles Taylor (1994) and Will Kymlicka (1989), the multiplicity of cultural norms is accepted as a fundamental feature of modern, multicultural, and multiethnic societies. This line of argumentation can be characterized as predominantly normative as it has sought to clarify what kinds of concepts of freedom, individual, and group rights are necessary in order to accommodate the multiplicity of norms within a liberal society. Following the key issues of the liberal tradition, this question has focused primarily on the role of state in this process: Should the state remain neutral with regard to the multiplicity of norms? Should it actively promote this multiplicity through affirmative action? The second line of interpretation could be characterized as a constructivist one, denoting the idea that cultural norms are human-made artifices that result from social practices. Quite often, this idea has been linked to a power-centered analysis of social hierarchies as the end-result of this construction. According to Foucault, a culture is “a hierarchical organization of values, accessible to everybody, but at the same time the occasion of a DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740-15

220  Timo Miettinen mechanism of selection and exclusion” (Foucault 2001, 173). Culture is a normative framework that not only denotes a set of things we hold as valuable; it also structures the relations of actors by privileging a particular group of people on the basis of ethnicity, language, or other qualities. Cultural norms are an inextricable part of how state exercises its power. A third alternative, the Marxist one, is very close to the constructivist point of view. The key difference is that cultural norms are seen as being a part of the societal superstructure whose point is to draw our attention away from the economic base (Poulantzas 1973; Williams 2020). To use the Marxist expression, culture is primarily an ideology that seeks to present the existing societal relations as natural and inevitable, as if they had always been this or that way. According to the view of Antonio Gramsci (1992), this type of cultural hegemony relies on constant persuasion and is thus closely linked to such modern institutions as mass media. More than an instrument of state per se, culture is a tool of organization that goes well beyond state institutions. In this chapter, I argue that phenomenological philosophy, particularly Husserlian phenomenology, helps us articulate a fourth alternative to questions concerning cultural norms. To be more exact, I will demonstrate that there are conceptual and methodological resources in phenomenology that allow us to provide a more accurate and a more comprehensive descriptive account of the historical constitution and institution of cultural norms and norm-systems. I will also show that this fourth alternative sheds light on the normative aspects of this constitution: How can the different normatively constituted frameworks be put in a hierarchy, that is, evaluated? Although Husserlian phenomenology is perhaps best known for its emphasis on the individual experience, for the problem of culture this is simply not enough. At the heart of Husserl’s approach to the question of cultural norms, I claim, was not so much the question of the individual but rather of the community. With the help of new theoretical and conceptual innovations of 1917–1921 – including ideas such as genetic phenomenology and the concept of the lifeworld – Husserl was able to approach the problem of culture from the point of view of a new phenomenological correlation between the community and the world. Culture, according to this new approach, is more than a specific type of ideality. Instead, it is to be understood as a process through which communities constitute their normative specificity, their sense of uniqueness, on the basis of a shared lifeworld. As this process is inherently temporal and relies on a reactivation of tradition, it is often characterized by a unique incompleteness and a forgetfulness of origins. Second, what distinguished Husserl’s position from some of the competing views was his emphasis on the peculiar intertwining of culture and nature, of spirit and matter. Cultural norms are not simply ideal constructions that are constituted in interpersonal relations such as

Phenomenology of Culture  221 language (or other practices). Instead, the constitution of cultural norms was to be seen as an integral part of our shared relatedness to the world, a way of projecting the lifeworld as a sphere of familiarity. Culture is as much about a space as it is about a discourse or an ideology. In his later works, Husserl articulated this idea with the concepts of homeworld and alienworld, suggesting that the constitution of our “own” culture is in an essential relation to the constitution of the culture of the other. Philosophy, in Husserl’s view, turned out to be one way of responding to this relation – an attitude that hinges on a peculiar relativization of one’s own homeworld.

2 Lifeworld and Genetic Phenomenology Husserl’s work is often divided into different stages according to methodological transitions from early logical analyses to the transcendental approach of Ideas (1913) and the later teleological-historical reflections of the 1930s. For the question of culture and cultural norms, however, it was particularly the years 1917–1921 that turned out to be crucial for Husserl’s understanding. The first new idea to emerge around this period was Husserl’s concept of a “communal person” or a “personality of a higher order” (Husserl 1952, 357–358; 1976, 182ff.). Although the concept of sociality (and of social ontology) had been introduced already in 1905, it was not until the preparation of the manuscripts for Ideas II from 1912 onwards that Husserl began to discuss communities as personal wholes that have a temporal continuity despite the leaving or joining of individual members. Although we might be tempted to read these notions primarily as metaphors or analogies, Husserl was quite insistent that this was not the case. As he put it, the analogy of the individual and the community was not to be understood as merely heuristic but as “real” (Husserl 1992, 21). Communities were to be understood also as personal totalities that can be characterized through such attributes as “personal act,” “style,” “memory,” and “collective will” (Husserl 1973a, 205). They constitute for themselves a life that cannot be simply reduced back to individual consciousnesses – communities “have their own lives, preserve themselves by lasting through time despite the joining or leaving of individuals” (Husserl 1973a, 182). Culture, in this regard, is not only about cultural objects and accomplishments. It is also about a community of subjects living under a shared horizon of thinking, doing, and striving. This communal dimension was particularly important for normative considerations. Although the theory of communal person was originally introduced as a theoretical problem, it developed quite quickly into a broader theory of social ethics dealing with the problem of ethical community. With this concept, Husserl meant primarily an idea of communal co-existence defined by a shared

222  Timo Miettinen sense of self-responsibility. As Husserl put it in a manuscript: “It belongs to the categorical imperative of the individual subject, that it must strive towards this higher form of community and this higher form of individual existence and individual life as a functionary of an ethical community” (Husserl 1997, 220). Second, it was during these years that Husserl began to develop what he called a genetic approach as complementary to his earlier, static view of phenomenology (Husserl 1973a, 34–43). This distinction was also expressed in terms of “a genetic and a static method” (Husserl 1966, 336). Alongside the “universal doctrine of consciousness” and the “constitutive phenomenology” studying “the general structures and modalities that encompass all categories of apprehensions” – static phenomenology – Husserl felt the need to add “a universal theory of genesis,” which would investigate these structures with regard to their origin as well as the process of origination (Husserl 1966, 340). Husserl wanted to understand how different forms of constitution and meaning follow and presuppose one another, how ideas and forms of apprehension are constituted in temporal succession. Although Husserl had discussed the character of cultural ideas and norms in his earlier works, the genetic approach brought about a fundamentally new approach to this question. From the perspective of temporality, cultural ideas and norms do not differ from other ideas and norms solely based on their content but on their mode of givenness: they are given or “transmitted” to us by previous generations as essentially “empty” intentions. Culture, in other words, is essentially something that we inherit rather than create – something whose original meaning is not completely evident to us. It belongs to the constitution of cultural ideas that their original act of institution (Stiftung) is often permanently gone. Just think of language, social hierarchies, or techniques of manufacturing – all of these are based on a set of ideas and norms that we have inherited as being a part of a cultural community, but whose original intentions or acts of creation are not present. But it is exactly this partiality that constitutes the unique character of “communal genesis” (Gemeinschaftsgenesis) as distinct from individual genesis (Husserl 1973a, 221). This is what Husserl captured by his concept of generativity (Generativität) (Husserl 1976, 191–192). It referred to those types of meaning-constitution that take place in the interpersonal and intergenerational associations that are defined by a more or less unified tradition. In its most general sense, the idea of generativity denoted simply the “unity of historical development in its widest sense” (Husserl 1992, 63), that is, those structures of temporality that constitute the unified character of traditionality and historicity in general. It belongs to the essence of cultural ideas and norms that they are constantly “appropriated” (übernehmen, aufnehmen) or re-instituted in their sense through processes of “intentional agreement, conversion, concealment, and even

Phenomenology of Culture  223 transformation through this concealment” (Husserl 2006, 436). Culture involves an element of partiality or asymmetry in regard to the original institution of sense (Husserl 1973a, 222). But it is exactly this partiality that endows the human traditions with their unique character as something “passed forward.” As Merleau-Ponty suggested in his lectures on institution and passivity (2010), it was exactly due to this essential incompleteness that Husserl went on to develop a phenomenology of culture instead of spirit. In his scattered remarks, Merleau-Ponty writes: “The traditionality of consciousness [means] forgetfulness of origins (…) and correlatively, there is the tradition received, i.e., the possibility of reactivation. (…) Not philosophy of participation in the one, of intellectual creation, of Spirit, but philosophy of culture” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 52–53). Against the Hegelian idea of universal history proceeding through the development of spirit, Husserl did not conceive generativity primarily as a universal, formal principle of historical development (Staehler 2017). Instead, generativity was to be approached through its particular instantiations in individual traditions. In addition to these considerations, there were also concrete motives. Particularly in the 1930s, Husserl became increasingly interested in the discipline of anthropology and followed the work of authors such as Lucien Lévy-Bruhl on the differences between European and non-European cultures (see Moran 2011). Lévy-Bruhl was particularly known for his studies on preliterate tribes, although his work relied heavily on secondary sources. Husserl praised Lévy-Bruhl particularly for his efforts in creating a “rigorous scientific ethnology” (Husserl 1994, 161), that is, a systematic science of the development of cultures. In Husserl’s view, it was particularly Lévy-Bruhl’s work that pointed towards the need of a “pure human-scientific anthropology” that focuses on the eidetic structures of cultural development. In a similar fashion as in the case of “pure psychology,” pure anthropology concerned itself with general forms of social co-operation that provide the foundation for the constitution of cultural accomplishments such as language or the economy. The problem with anthropology, however, was that it relied heavily on an essentially relativistic conception of human rationality. In his groundbreaking work La mentalité primitive (1923), Lévy-Bruhl articulated the difference between European and non-European rationality in terms of the “primitive mentality” of the aboriginal tribes and the “civilized thought” (of Western peoples). Even though the mentality of “primitives” was not completely without coherence, it lacked some of the central elements of abstract reasoning, for instance, an idea of causality and the law of the excluded middle. According to Lévy-Bruhl, it was exactly this “pre-logical” character of the primitive mind that allowed for contradictions to appear: for instance, an object could be said to be in two different places at the same time. Moreover, the primitive mind was in some respects unable to distinguish between subjective and objective reality as

224  Timo Miettinen it did not clearly distinguish between dreams and reality. In the light of these findings, many anthropologists were giving up on the idea of universal reason altogether. As Husserl himself put it in a letter to Lévy-Bruhl, “historical relativism does have an undisputed justification,” but only as “an anthropological fact” (Husserl 1994, 163). In addition to the psychologist and naturalist critiques, the threat of cultural and historical relativism appeared as yet another example of the kind of “false objectivism” that was characteristic of the modern natural sciences. Instead of reducing the idea of rationality into Galilean physics, it reduced this idea into culture. In this regard, cultural ideas and norms did not constitute merely a domain of sense among others. Culture itself turned out to be one of the key challenges to the universality of transcendental phenomenology. For this reason, Husserl needed to pay attention to the problem of how cultural norms are constituted within the transcendental attitude. To do this, he paid particular attention to the correlation between community and the world.

3 Community and the Lifeworld Another concept that turned out to be important for the turning point of 1917–1921 was that of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt). Although the concept is primarily known from works such as the Crisis, the idea itself was first introduced in 1917 in a manuscript that was designed to be included in Ideas II (see Carr 2014). In its most general sense, the lifeworld denoted the realm of “originary evidence” (Husserl 1976, 130) that serves as the foundation for all meaning and sense. Instead of an intentional correlate of consciousness, the lifeworld functions as the necessary background of sense through which individual things acquire their meaningful character. This is why Husserl called it a “horizon” (Husserl 1976, 141–146, 2008, 99–105). In this regard, the lifeworld is “constantly pre-given, and constantly valid in advance” (Husserl 1976, 461) – it is a structural condition of experience, something for the sake of which things have a sense of familiarity (Bekanntheit) and habituality (Gewohnheit) (Husserl 1973a, 623–624). With these concepts, Husserl meant the process whereby the surrounding world acquires for itself a sense of unexpectedness whereby things have their default value. Another way of analyzing the concept of the lifeworld is to say that it filled a necessary gap in Husserl’s analysis of empathy. From early on, Husserl rejected the kind of theories of empathy that were based on ideas of simulation or projection of another subjects’ consciousness, a mindreading of sorts (Zahavi 2010). Because the relation between self and other is defined by a fundamental discrepancy – I have no direct access to the experience of the other (Husserl 1952, 198) –, empathy is needed for the constitution of the “expressive unity” of the other. We understand (and not simply imitate) the other through gestures, expressions, and

Phenomenology of Culture  225 appearances. Consequently, this means that our relation to others is fundamentally defined by the existence of a shared world. As Husserl put it in a manuscript: We are in a relation to a common surrounding world – we are in a personal association: these belong together. We could not be persons for others if a common surrounding world did not stand there for us in a community, in an intentional linkage of our lives. Correlatively spoken, the one is constituted essentially with the other. (Husserl 1973a, 191) This argument was important from the point of view of the constitution of communities. As Husserl argued, the individuation of a community is not only a matter of collective consciousness or group identity, but it is fundamentally tied to the constitution of a common world. Communication and other forms of interaction do not take place only between minds, but they create and shape our joint environment as well by imbuing materiality with meaning. Words interpret and organize things on the basis of common agreement, and practices shape the natural qualities of landscapes, places, and spaces. Accordingly, the concept of the lifeworld pointed towards a crucial feature in the constitution of cultures. Husserl wanted to refute the idea according to which the generative unity of communities would reside merely in the acceptance or construction of a common narrative. Although stories and myths may have a special role in strengthening the sense of unity within different communities, these narratives have their foundation in the idea of the lifeworld that functions as the indispensable horizon of communal activity. Instead of a mere doctrine of spirit, Husserl’s notion of lifeworld entailed a necessary relation to the material, concrete conditions of the geo-social environment. Cultural communality, rather than being merely a question of spiritual unity, must be understood in relation to a particular territoriality. It is a matter of the phenomenological correlation. In his manuscripts of the 1920s and 1930s, Husserl invoked the concepts of homeworld and alienworld to describe this process of territorialization of particular communities (Husserl 1976, 302, 1973a, 214–218, 1992, 145ff.). In its most general sense, the idea of homeworld designated the sphere of familiarity involving a consciousness of its normative specificity or “domesticity.” As Husserl put it, “home and alien designate a difference in understanding” (Husserl 1992, 42): the familiarity of a particular lifeworld is based on its intelligibility in distinction from that which is unfamiliar and strange. In this sense, homeworlds can also be characterized as “geo-historical horizons” (Husserl 1973b, 411). Unlike purely spiritual accomplishments, they constantly project the division of familiarity and strangeness to the

226  Timo Miettinen lifeworld and its geographical features. Cultures and their traditions cannot be conceived without any relation to earthly, material conditions but are constantly localized through different borders, sites, monuments, and scenes. For this reason, homeworlds can be described in terms of a “cultural territory” (Kulturterritorium) involving a consciousness of its uniqueness with regard to its outside. Instead of being a mere contingent feature of communality, Husserl conceived the division between home and alien as a “permanent structure of every world” (Husserl 1973b, 431). However, because the limit between home and alien is based on familiarity and normality, these limits are often ambiguous and gradual. Instead of a single homeworld, we are a part of several overlapping homeworlds from families and local communities to nations and peoples; ultimately, to very broad ideas of cultural worlds or civilizations (Husserl 1973b, 604). The limits of one’s homeworld, however, are not always fixed. For instance, two cultures exercising intellectual or commercial exchange may undergo a process of “absorption” whereby they are merged into a completely new homeworld. In the case of a “nomadic people” (Nomadenvolk), Husserl notes, these limits may be permanently on the move (Husserl 1973b, 206). Not all forms of alienness, however, are fundamentally cultural by character, that is, defined by a communally shared tradition – a history. Husserl distinguished between what he called the “inauthentic” (uneigentlich) form of alienness that is characteristic to foreign objects (e.g., plants) from the essentially “mythical” (mythische) type of otherness that is essentially tied to an idea of a foreign tradition (Husserl 1973b, 432). A certain sense of familiarity characterizes even the very basic experiences of the surrounding world – even animals have a sense of “nearworld” –, but genuine homeworlds acquire a lasting character only within a framework of spiritual meanings. In this regard, the uniqueness of Husserl’s position with regard to culture relied on a fundamental intertwining of nature and spirit.1 For Husserl, culture is a spiritual phenomenon insofar as it is grounded in a tradition and a sense of communal identity through it. More importantly, however, culture is a process of normative specification that is essentially tied to the constitution of a sphere of familiarity within the lifeworld. Culture is neither about norms or a personal identity – it is neither purely objective nor purely subjective – but it can only be understood thoroughly on the basis of a phenomenological correlation between community and its environment.

4 Normative Implications: Theory of the Other The key question for Husserl, then, was the ethical implications of this idea. If, indeed, cultural norms and traditions are constitutive for the being of communities, how should we understand or approach situations

Phenomenology of Culture  227 where these norms and traditions are in conflict with each other? Can traditions be criticized or dismantled without destroying the communities as such? To this day, Anthony Steinbock’s work Home and Beyond – Generative Phenomenology after Husserl (1995) is still the richest available discussion on the topic of home and alien in Husserl’s work. According to its key claim, although some of Husserl’s formulations point towards an understanding of the home–alien distinction as analogical to the self-other distinction, this should not prevent us from considering the essential difference between these. Instead of a “foundational relation” between self and other where the “I” functions as a constitutive ground, the difference between home and alien is constituted from the start as “co-generative” and “non-foundational” (Steinbock 1995). Home and alien are fundamentally interdependent and equal structures that cannot be conceived without each other. On the basis of this liminal formation, these structures are “mutually delimited as home and as alien, as normal and as abnormal” (Steinbock 1995, 179). Home, Steinbock maintains, should not be understood in terms of a “one-sided original sphere,” but as “being co-constituted as home by encountering an alienworld” (Steinbock 1995, 182). In Husserl’s works, there is some evidence for this argument. As he put it in a manuscript: “An alien humanity or humankind is constituted as an alien people, and at the same time, there is constituted for me and for us ‘our own’ community of homecomrades, community of a people in relation to our cultural environment as the world of our human validities that are unique” (Husserl 1973b, 214, emphasis mine). However, it is not clear that this argument expresses anything new in regard to the constitution of the individual. As Husserl emphasized on several occasions, without the confrontation of interaction with other subjects the individual remains a pure ego, merely an empty pole of acts (Husserl 1973a, 43). We acquire a sense of uniqueness, a sense of self-identity only through an encounter with others (Husserl 1973a, 175). There is also another reason why the characterization of the home– alien division as a non-foundational relation appears to be problematic. Unlike in the case of self–other distinction, which takes its point of departure from two individual consciousnesses, the division between home and alien is based on a normative demarcation on the basis of a shared lifeworld. With normative demarcation, I simply mean the process through which communities create their personal character, their sense of being unique. Unlike in the case of “private” individual consciousness, particular homeworlds and generative traditions have their roots in the natural world or in what Husserl sometimes calls the “totality of nature” (Allnatur). The objectivity of the natural world is a necessary point of departure for the constitution of individual traditions (Husserl 1973b, 215).

228  Timo Miettinen This idea, however, does not go against Steinbock’s normative conclusion according to which the relation between home and alien should be understood in terms of an “axiological asymmetry” (Steinbock 1995, 184). As in the case of individual consciousness, the relation between self and other is defined by an “abyss”: there is no immediate access to the tradition of the other. But even more importantly, it is the existence of an alien generativity that is able to produce the sense of being home in the first place. Because of this constitutive significance of the home and alien, Steinbock claims, the destruction of this difference through “transgression” or “occupation” would entail a destruction of generativity as such. To put it simply: In a world without traditions, we would be homeless. In my view, however, this does not mean that Husserl would have simply accepted the thesis on the absolute irreconcilability of cultural differences. Particularly in his late works on the idea of Europe, Husserl began to sketch an approach that would have accommodated both axiological asymmetry and philosophical universalism, the idea that there is a sense of rationality and a way of seeing the world that is common to all (Miettinen 2020). The generative gap between home and alien does not prevent us from reflecting critically the genealogies of individual traditions. Instead, philosophical universalism was to be understood as a way of uncovering the historical becoming of individual traditions with regard to the universal lifeworld. As Husserl put it, all historical communities are related “to the surrounding world which is communal for them (the personal ‘world’), and this surrounding world has relative actuality for them – and a changing actuality for different personal communities and their personal times.” He continues by arguing: [T]his [fact] does not exclude the possibility that personal communities, each of which has its personal surrounding world, can, by entering into or already being in relation with one another, have or attain an overlapping, common surrounding world or that they know themselves in their interrelations to be related to the same “real” world, only finding that each community views the world in quite a different way, accords it a completely different kind of actuality. (Husserl 1976, 299) As Husserl argued in his late essay “Teleology in the History of Philosophy” (Teleologie in der Philosophiegeschichte), the critique of cultural myths played a key role in the emergence of the “theoretical attitude,” the attitude of the philosophizing individual aimed at permanent features of the surrounding lifeworld. “The Greeks were keen to despise the barbarians,” Husserl wrote, “the alien mythologies that signified such an important dimension of the practical environment in the alien as well

Phenomenology of Culture  229 as in the own people, and [they] considered them even as barbaric, stupid, or profoundly wrong” (Husserl 1992, 387). However, even the mockery and ridicule that the Greeks leveled at foreign mythologies failed to remove the Greeks fascination for their similarities and analogous ways of seeing the world, “the same sun, the same moon, the same earth, the same sea, etc.” (Husserl 1992, 387). Alongside the “territorial myths” characteristic of particular homeworlds, there emerged a novel sensitivity towards “universal myths” that referred to universally shared features of the lifeworld such as the earth, the sky and the heavenly bodies (Husserl 1992, 43–44). Accordingly, through the emergence of the theoretical attitude and the idea of philosophy, there emerged a novel idea of “political historicity” (politische Geschichtlichkeit) that aimed at overcoming the generative gap between home and alien. Instead of a one-sided transgression, this idea of universal generativity was founded on a specific relativization of home and alien whereby no single tradition has a privileged access to truth. This philosophical generativity was to be conceived as a reciprocal mediation of individual homeworlds that is based on an idea of scientific objectivity. Instead of a ready-made accomplishment, Husserl understood this objectivity in terms of a process articulated by the ideas of repeatability, harmony, and radical openness for future generations (Miettinen 2020; Hartimo 2018; Heinämaa 2014; Moran 2011; Steinbock 2003; 1995). In this regard, philosophy also created a new idea of cultural community. It sought to address all rational subjects despite their cultural, ethnic, or social backgrounds. This “supraspatial and supratemporal sociality” (Husserl 1992, 395) was thus universal in a new, emphatic sense: it was potentially inclusive of all rational beings, including those who had yet to be born. In contrast to “political” communities, which relied on the difference between friend and enemy, the philosophical community knew only friends. Its defining characteristic was a fundamental openness towards not only all living human beings but also towards future generations. In this regard, philosophy was by no means indifferent to the multiplicity of cultural norms. Instead, it affirmed it as one of its key points of departures. Instead of an insurmountable gap between the home and alien, however, philosophy aimed at visioning a world of scientific objectivity that would have been able to overcome the limited perspectives of individual cultures. It should be emphasized here that this world of universality was not in any case a ready-made accomplishment. Husserl himself thought of it as an ongoing task that necessarily involves an element of critical self-reflection. Its true goal was not so much the destruction of traditions but their relativization: a world in which no single tradition holds a monopoly with regard to truth.

230  Timo Miettinen

5 Conclusion In this chapter, I have described what I consider the uniqueness of Husserl’s approach to the problem of cultural norms. As I have argued, the uniqueness of the phenomenological approach in regard to the liberal, constructivist, and Marxist approaches rested at least on three things. First, it did not conceive the problem of cultural norms primarily as a normative or political problem but as a descriptive issue. Cultural norms and ideas were to be understood with regard to their essential features in distinction from other norms. Second, it emphasized the disjointed character of cultural traditions as something that rely on a partial transmittance of sense through processes of reactivation. Husserl wanted to understand how different types of institutions of meaning acquire for themselves a temporally lasting character, and how these institutions are constantly transformed, renewed, and layered – but also forgotten. From the perspective of culture, this meant that Husserl was able to develop a conception of cultural development that relied not only on the accumulation of knowledge or the succession of different practices but on a variety of processes such as concealment, forgetting, remembering, and renewing. As Merleau-Ponty put it, it was a phenomenology of culture and not of spirit. Third, the phenomenological approach to culture aimed at overcoming the classical contrast between objective values and subjective identity. Instead, the problem of culture was to be understood from the point of view of the correlation between the community and the lifeworld. Instead of a purely idealistic or purely materialistic theory of culture, Husserl laid out a theory of homeworld that focused exactly on the intertwining of nature and spirit, of materiality and ideality. Culture is solely neither about “values” nor a sense of personal identity; it is about the constitution of a communal sphere of familiarity on the basis of a shared lifeworld. Finally, Husserl also paid attention to the normative or ethical implications of this idea. Against the kind of relativistic idea according to which cultures are defined by an “axiological asymmetry,” Husserl’s theory pointed towards an idea of a shared, universal lifeworld as the foundation of all cultures. Philosophy, particularly for late Husserl, was inextricably tied to the overcoming of the multiplicity of normative frameworks. Although the universality of philosophy did not entail the dissolution of all cultural limits, it nevertheless aimed at a certain relativization of individual traditions and their perspectives to the world. Instead of a readymade accomplishment, this relativization was understood as a perpetual task that calls for constant self-critique. In the beginning of this article, I pointed to the formative years of 1917–1921 for the rearticulation of Husserl’s project. During these years, Husserl introduced a number of theoretical and methodological ideas that turned out to be particularly important for the question of culture.

Phenomenology of Culture  231 But these years were also important because they marked the end of the First World War that led Husserl to question some of his earlier, nationalistic ideas on the eternal justification of nation-states. During the last years of the war, Husserl’s political reflections moved from Fichtean nationalism towards Kantian republicanism, and what almost seems like a mixture of Stoic cosmopolitanism and socialist internationalism: in his Kaizo essays, he introduced the ideal of Übernation in connection to a “communistic unity of will” as distinct from unjust and unilateral imperialism (Husserl 1988, 53). In this regard, the question of cultural norms was not an abstract, theoretical problem but essentially tied to a transformation and a reimagining of political institutions. From today’s perspective, I believe Husserl’s most important lessons have to do with his emphasis on the communality and partiality of cultural norms. Against the liberal approach that often focuses on the individual, Husserl emphasized the inextricably intersubjective character of cultural norms as something that are tied to the self-constitution of communities and their lifeworld. Culture is not something that is produced solely through intellectual acts but rather something that is constantly localized in concrete materiality. Moreover, cultural norms are dependent on the constitution of a shared tradition. This tradition, however, is not one of simple accumulation but one of appropriation – of memory, reactivation, and forgetting of origins. Instead of an absolute or self-contained image of culture, Husserl’s analysis points towards a fundamentally open and transitory character of cultural norms as something whose “true” meaning is often permanently lost. It is exactly this process of constant reactivation, however, that gives human traditions their unique character. Culture is neither a thing in the world nor a personal identity – it is communal endeavor aimed at a reproduction of a sense of familiarity and ownness.

Note 1 As such, this interest in the problem of nature and spirit was not completely new: it had become an important topic for the Neo-Kantian tradition of Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert and their immediate successors such as Wilhelm Dilthey. Unlike the Neo-Kantians, however, Husserl did not proceed from the dualist presupposition according to which human and natural sciences constitute two separate domains of research (Husserl 1952, §48ff.; 2001, §15–16). Neither was he happy with Dilthey’s historicist conclusions and the reduction of nature and spirit to “life.”

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232  Timo Miettinen Deveaux, Monique. 2006. Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Foucault, Michel. 2001. L’hermeneutique du sujet, Cours au College de France, 1981–1982. Paris: Gallimard Seuil. Fraser, Nancy, and Axel Honneth. 2003. Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-philosophical Exchange. London: Verso. Fukuyama, Francis. 2018. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Gramsci, Antonio. 1992. Prison Notebooks. New York City: Columbia University Press. Gutmann, Amy. 2003. Identity in Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hartimo, Mirja. 2018. “On the Origins of Scientific Objectivity.” In Husserl’s Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity: Historical Interpretations and Contemporary Applications, eds. Frode Kjosavik, Christian Beyer, and Christel Fricke, 302–321. London: Routledge. Heinämaa, Sara. 2014. “The Animal and the Infant: From Embodiment and Empathy to Generativity.” In Phenomenology and the Transcendental, eds. Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo, and Timo Miettinen, 129–146. New York: Routledge. Husserl, Edmund. 1952. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomeno­ logischen Philosophie, Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Husserliana IV. Ed. Marly Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1966. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten, 1918–1926. Husserliana XI. Ed. Margot Fleischer. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1973a. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass, Zweiter Teil: 1921–1928. Husserliana XIV. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1973b. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass, Dritter Teil: 1929–1935. Husserliana XV. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1976. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie. Husserliana VI. Ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. 1988. Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937). Husserliana XXVII. Eds. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp. The Hague: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Husserl, Edmund. 1992. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, Ergänzungsband, Texte aus dem Nachlass, 1934–1937. Husserliana XXIX. Ed. Reinhold N. Smid. The Hague: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Husserl, Edmund. 1994. Briefwechsel. Husserliana Dokumentenband VII. Ed. Karl Schuhmann. The Hague: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Husserl, Edmund. 1997. “Wert des Lebens. Wert der Welt. Sittlichkeit (Tugend) und Glückseligkeit .” Husserl Studies 13, no. 3 (January): 206–235. Husserl, Edmund. 2001. Natur und Geist, Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1927. Husserliana XXXII. Ed. Michael Weiler. Dordrecht: Springer.

Phenomenology of Culture  233 Husserl, Edmund. 2006. Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934), Die C-Manuskripte. Husserliana Materialienband VIII. Ed. Dieter Lohmar. New York: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 2008. Die Lebenswelt: Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937). Husserliana XXXIX. Ed. Rochus Sowa. New York: Springer. Kymlicka, Will. 1989. Liberalism, Community, and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien. 1923. Primitive Mentality. Trans. Lilian A. Clare. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2010. Institution and Passivity: Course notes from the Collège de France (1954–1955). Trans. and eds. Leonard Lawlor and Heath Massey. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Miettinen, Timo. 2020. Husserl and the Idea of Europe. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Moran, Dermot. 2011. “Even the Papuan Is a Man and Not a Beast: Husserl on Universalism and the Relativity of Cultures.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 49, no. 4 (October): 463–494. Poulantzas, Nicos. 1973. Political Power and Social Classes. London: New Left Books. Staehler, Tanja. 2017. “The Possibility of a Phenomenology of Cultural Worlds in Hegel and Husserl.” Hegel Bulletin 38, no. 1 (May): 85–103. Steinbock, Anthony. 1995. Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Steinbock, Anthony. 2003. “Generativity and the Scope of Generative Phenomenology.” In The New Husserl, ed. Donn Welton, 289–325. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1994. “The Politics of Recognition.” In Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann, 25–73. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Williams, Alex. 2020. Political Hegemony and Social Complexity: Mechanisms of Power after Gramsci. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Zahavi, Dan. 2010. “Empathy, Embodiment and Interpersonal Understanding: From Lipps to Schutz.” Inquiry 53, no. 3 (June): 285–306.

12 Epistemic Norms and Their Phenomenological Critique Mirja Hartimo

1 Introduction: From Value Freedom to the Plurality of Epistemic Values At the beginning of the century, philosophers strongly disagreed about the value-freeness of the sciences: The logical positivists defended a view that scientific statements are value-free and Max Weber insisted on the value-freedom of social sciences. In contrast, the Frankfurt school critical theorists held that scientific research is necessarily guided by economic and political interests and hence value-laden. For example, Jürgen Habermas viewed science as an ideology that reduces practical questions about the good life to technical problems by experts. In his Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), Habermas developed a theory of “knowledge-constitutive interests,” which comprise the technical, practical, and emancipatory interest that structure different types of scientific inquiry. In the 1970s, when responding to the criticism directed at his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn gave these debates a new direction by arguing that sciences are guided by objective, epistemic values. In this respect, Kuhn’s “Objectivity, value judgment, and theory choice,” a lecture delivered in 1973, but published in 1977, was highly influential. To counter the claim that a choice of a paradigm or a theory is in his analysis necessarily arbitrary or irrational, Kuhn formulated a list of characteristics that a good scientific theory should exhibit. These were: (1) agreement with experiments and observations, (2) consistency (the internal consistency of the theory and its agreement with other, already accepted theories), (3) scope (the theory should extend beyond the particular observations, laws, and/or subtheories that it initially was designed to explain), (4) simplicity (i.e., the theory should be simple and able to order and unify phenomena), and (5) fruitfulness (the theory should be able to disclose new phenomena or previously unnoted relationships among those already known) (Kuhn 1977, 321–322). In the same essay, Kuhn called these characteristics “values” (1977, 331f.), and he went on to explain that their application is not univocal and that they may conflict with each other: he wrote that when used together “they DOI: 10.4324/9781003179740-16

Epistemic Norms & Phenomenological Critique  235 repeatedly prove to conflict with one another. Accuracy may, for example, dictate the choice of one theory, scope the choice of its competitor” (Kuhn 1977, 322). This discussion of epistemic values allowed Kuhn to argue that while the rational choice between the theories is guided by objective criteria, it may also depend on idiosyncratic subjective factors such as the scientist’s individual biography and personality (1977, 324–330). Arguably, much more can be said about the reasonability of the theory choice, especially if the list of considered epistemic values is developed into a more nuanced one (cf. Douglas 2013, esp. 805). I will return to this issue at the end of this chapter, but now I want to draw attention to the way the dichotomy between value-laden and value-free science came to be reformulated in terms of the internal values that guide scientific research and their independence from, vs. dependence on, personal, social, or cultural values after Kuhn. Accordingly, in the 1980s, philosophers started to realize that supposedly value-free science is laden by constitutive values (Longino 1983, 7–8, 1990, 4–7), epistemic values (McMullin 1982), or cognitive values (Laudan 1984), all terms used to refer to internal values that guide scientific research as opposed to the contextual personal, social, or cultural values. While Kuhn held his list of values to be fixed once and for all (1977, 335), feminists and social epistemologists have since the 1970s argued for the importance of alternative cognitive values, such as novelty, ontological heterogeneity, applicability to human needs, and complexity of interaction. For the purposes of the present chapter, Helen Longino’s further argument is especially crucial, namely that the existence of alternative lists of epistemic values demonstrates that any choice between constitutive values made in scientific research is social. While Longino holds that the role of contextual values can never be completely eliminated, she thinks that the objectives of the value-free ideal, for example impartiality, are better achieved if the role of values in science is openly recognized and critically examined. This can only take place in a properly structured scientific community, which is open to the possibility of incompatible sets of values (Longino 2004, 134, 140). In this chapter, I will relate Edmund Husserl’s evolving view of the sciences to these debates in the twentieth century philosophy of science. My aim is to demonstrate that by focusing on the various epistemic values operative in Husserl’s view of science, a particularly rich and subtle view of it can be obtained. I will argue that Husserl’s examination of Galileo’s contribution to physics in The Crisis operates as a criticism of the unquestioned dominance of a certain set of inherited epistemic values, such as the values of accuracy and universal applicability. In contrast, his The Origin of Geometry endorses another set of epistemic values, most importantly that of ontological heterogeneity. Husserl’s analysis demonstrates that the choice of any set of epistemic values is influenced

236  Mirja Hartimo by historical and social factors. Moreover, Husserl argues that we can only avoid biases due to “spells of the time” by continued reflection – Besinnung, in his terms – on the role of values in science. Thus Husserl ends up with a view that resembles Longino’s urge to pay attention to the role of values in science. I will proceed in a historical-exegetic manner showing how Husserl’s view of scientific attitudes and epistemic values evolves, starting from Logical Investigations (1900–1901) and ending with his last publications in the 1930s. I will do this twice. I will first establish the way in which Husserl’s view of science embodies most of the values listed in Kuhn’s traditional list and are represented especially in Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929). After this, I will trace the development of the discussion of alternative epistemic values, which I argue culminates with The Origin of Geometry written in 1936. This way of proceeding allows me first to establish Husserl’s basic conceptualizations and then refine this treatment with the discussion of the alternative epistemic values. I will focus on Husserl’s view of the theoretical natural sciences, physics in particular, but the main claim of the chapter, that the set of epistemic values that guide the discipline in question should not be naively adopted but has to be reflected on, is readily generalizable to other theoretical scientific disciplines, including those in the humanities and the social sciences.

2 Husserl and the Value-Freedom of Science Originally Husserl belonged among those who think that all true science is value-free. His famous argument against psychologism in Prolegomena (1900) to his Logical Investigations (1900–1901) was motivated by the need to grant objectivity to science and to ensure science’s independence from personal, social, and cultural-historical factors. Respectively, in 1911, he distinguished between the ontology of being which science seeks to uncover and the ontology of valuing which is constituted in valuejudgments. In his account, these two spheres must not mix. Thus, when emotions have a role in how we see the world, in Husserl’s view this can happen only insofar as we operate outside of the theoretical attitude presupposed by science. Husserl distinguishes between emotional attitudes and the theoretical attitude and discusses their differences in detail in his research manuscripts. For example, in a passage from 1911, we read: When I am angry, urgently annoyed by the behavior of a person, then seeing this annoyance should consist in the irritations [Gefühlserregungen] themselves and in the ray of noticing [Aufmerksamkeit] (appropriation [Zuwendung]) that goes through them. By focusing on it, seeing it, I “judge” and express it by saying something like: “that is disgusting!”. But I am not in a theoretical attitude. I do not observe, I do not make any theoretical claims.

Epistemic Norms & Phenomenological Critique  237 Should we say that the theoretical interest, the striving, the bias [Tendenz] is guided by the objective justification? But what if I, when angry, itemize the reasons for my annoyance? “This was bad of you because, etc.” This is what we often do. The reasons would concern our annoyance, and would nourish it in this case, and everything that nourishes it, remains as its property, and is not a “theoretical consideration, theoretical activity” and so on. (Husserl 2020, 128–129) Here Husserl distinguishes between, on the one hand, the states of being angry, expressing one’s anger and giving reasons for one’s anger and, on the other hand, the theoretical attitude that is free from all personal interests and emotions. He concludes that the theoretical attitude should not be identified with the requirement of giving justifications for the claims, but by the neutrality obtained by looking at the situation as an impartial observer (unbeteiligter Zuschauer) (Husserl 2020, 129). A few years later, in Ideas I (1913), Husserl continues to consider theoretical acts separately from axiological and emotional acts and sees logic (theory of science), axiology, and praxis as forming parallel disciplines (e.g., 1976a, 58/53, 272/282, 339–340/350–351). When outlining his phenomenology of reason, in paragraph §139 of Ideas I, Husserl, however, raises the question about the interwovenness of theoretical, axiological, and practical truth. But, rather than suggesting a mixture, this interwovenness indicates complex relations of dependency between these areas of investigation, which must be clarified by careful analyses. Furthermore, the interwovenness of different areas of investigation does not compromise the primacy and autonomy of the theoretical reason: for Husserl, “the solution of the problems of reason in the doxic sphere must precede the solution of those of axiological and practical reason” (1976a, 343/336). In subsequent research manuscripts meant to be published as the second volume of Ideas I,1 Husserl distinguishes between several kinds of attitudes in more detail. In general, by an attitude, Husserl means a habitually persisting direction of the will toward something or other. The theoretical attitude is an intentional attitude in which one is directed “with an active focus to what is objective” (1952, 3/5). In a theoretical act, we grasp and posit a being as a judgmentally determined objectivity, and in the theoretical attitude we accordingly direct our activities persistently to such objectivities. The theoretical objectivities are constituted as categorial objectivities, i.e., as states of affairs, relations, subjects and predicates, and collections. In the theoretical attitude, we are interested in and care for objects only insofar as they exist in themselves, irrespective of our needs and desires. Husserl develops this analysis to speak of one specific kind of theoretical attitude, namely the attitude of the natural sciences (physics), from

238  Mirja Hartimo which the objectivities “to whose constitution valuing or practical acts have essentially contributed” (1952, 25/27) have been excluded: “Thus, in this ‘pure’ or purified theoretical attitude, we no longer experience houses, tables, streets, or works of art; instead, we experience merely material things” (Husserl 1952, 25/27). Husserl thinks that in such an attitude epistemic valuing takes place: To be sure, it is a subject that is indifferent to its Object, indifferent to the actuality constituted in appearances; that is, this subject does not value such being for its own sake and thus has no practical interest in the transformations such being might undergo and so no interest in fashioning them, etc. On the other hand, this subject does value the knowledge of appearing being and the determination of that being by means of logical judgments, theory, science. Thus it values the “It is so,” the “How is it?” (…) The correlate of nature is thus not a subject that in no way strives, wills, or evaluates. That is unthinkable. Knowledge of nature abstracts only from all other values besides the epistemic values [Wissenswerten]. (Husserl 1952, 26/28) Reaching the natural-scientific attitude requires disengaging the values other than the epistemic values in an act that resembles epoché, not a phenomenological epoché, but “a sort of epoché.”2 It strips the objects of the natural sciences from the values other than the purely epistemic ones. Consequently, the objects of natural science appear as the “true things,” not as the value-objects or practical objects of ordinary life (Husserl 1952, 27/29, 82/87). Indeed, even the perceived object as seen by a community of normal subjects is still relative to the interests and values of the community, which is not the case with the physical thing. This kind of objectivity has “no index of a dependency of its truth-content upon the subject or upon anything subjective” (Husserl 1952, 82/87). It is related to the “physical world-view or world-structure, i.e., to an understanding of the method of physics as a method which pursues the sense of an intersubjectively-objectively (i.e., non-relative and thereby at once intersubjective) determinable sensible world [Sinnenwelt]” (Husserl 1952, 84/89, translation modified). In this worldview, the world is a world of physical things themselves. Husserl then defines the thing itself (of physical nature) as follows: [T]he thing itself in itself consists of a continuously or discretely filled space in states of motion, states which are called energy forms. That which fills space lends itself to certain groups of differential equations and corresponds to certain fundamental laws of physics. But there are no sense qualities here. (Husserl 1952, 84/89)

Epistemic Norms & Phenomenological Critique  239 Ordinarily, however, we are in a personalistic attitude, which is [t]he attitude we are always in when we live with one another, talk to one another, shake hands with one another in greeting, or are related to one another in love and aversion, in disposition and action, in discourse and discussion. Likewise we are in this attitude when we consider the things surrounding us precisely as our surroundings and not as ‘Objective’ nature, the way it is for natural science. (Husserl 1952, 183/192) Husserl then argues that the personalistic attitude is more primary than the naturalistic theoretical attitude and that the naturalistic attitude is in fact subordinated to the personalistic, and that the former only acquires by means of an abstraction or, rather, by means of a kind of self-forgetfulness of the personal Ego, a certain autonomy – whereby it proceeds illegitimately to absolutize its world, i.e., nature. (Husserl 1952, 183–184/193) In the second volume of Ideas, Husserl does not elaborate on what he means by “illegitimately absolutizing the world,”3 but it is a theme he discusses in The Crisis, to which I will return later in this chapter. Here I merely wish to highlight the fact that the attitude discussed already in 1911, as we saw above, is in Husserl’s view more immediate to us than the abstractively produced theoretical attitude. The personalistic attitude is our immediate, natural attitude towards the world and the people and things in it. Whereas it is laden by various values, the scientific naturalistic theoretical attitude is guided only by epistemic values. The change between the two takes place in what Husserl calls “an apperceptive shift” (einer apperzeptiver Wendung) (Husserl 1952, 185/195), which effects a disengagement of all personal and social values from the objects studied. The natural scientific, that is, naturalistic attitude involves suppressing the personalistic attitude, and the very idea of the natural scientific attitude is that the personalistic attitude should not influence its judgments. The development of this discussion of values and sciences culminates in Husserl’s Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929), which is about logic understood as a theory of science and hence about the norms and values guiding science. The formal knowledge of logic “provides the standards for measuring the extent to which the ostensible science conforms to the idea of genuine science” (Husserl 1974, 35/31). Goals and values are discussed as “senses” or “final senses,” and they are conceived as final goals of inquiry towards which the scientists have been aiming over generations (Husserl 1974, esp. 13/9).

240  Mirja Hartimo Among the values, Husserl discusses most importantly truth (as an adequation to the affairs themselves, i.e., empirical adequacy) and noncontradiction. These are the two first epistemic values on Kuhn’s list of traditional epistemic values. Husserl also discusses grammatical clarity, which is not on Kuhn’s list. He also identifies some normative goals specific to the development of mathematics. One of these is the “Euclidean ideal” (Husserl 1974, 98/94), by which Husserl refers to the axiomatic form of theories. This goal promotes the value of simplicity that we find on Kuhn’s list, that is, the value that demands systematizing, ordering, and unifying the phenomena. Husserl also introduces an “idea of an allembracing task: to strive toward a highest theory, which would comprise all possible forms of theories (correlatively, all possible forms of multiplicities) as mathematical particularizations – accordingly, as deducible” (Husserl 1974, 102/98). This goal can be said to embody a theoretical value of generality (cf. scope on Kuhn’s list). Note that Husserl explicitly embraces all the traditional epistemic values listed by Kuhn, except for the last one, fruitfulness. Furthermore, in line with his earlier hints about illegitimate “absolutizing,” Husserl has reservations about the scope: he thinks that one cannot and must not assume general applicability but must, in each case, carefully examine whether a given theory, principle, or a concept is really applicable to a new set of phenomena (Husserl 1974, 207/200). In addition to the explicit treatment of the epistemic values that guide science, Husserl, in Formal and Transcendental Logic, also develops his earlier treatment of a theoretical attitude in which these values are pursued. He now draws attention to the “spirit of critical self-justification” (Husserl 1974, 6/2) that belongs to the scientific theoretical attitude. This criticism is twofold: First, logic as a theory of science is not about everyday judgments, but about the judgments of a scientist who “lives a ‘theoretically interested’ life, with vocational consistency” (Husserl 1974, 129/124). This, Husserl explains, entails that the scientist should strive to capture the truth about the affairs themselves under investigation: That is to say, his vocational judging is always ruled completely by intentions aimed at knowledge [Erkenntnisintentionen]; and these themselves have their synthetic unity, namely in the unity of the epistemic interests directed to the scientific domain in question [in der Einheit des auf das jeweilige Wissenschaftsgebiet gerichteten Erkenntnisinteresses]. In the strict sense (which, to be sure, is an ideal one), knowing [erkennen] his field is nothing else but accepting no judgments as scientific results except those that have shown their ‘correctness’, their ‘truth’ by an adequation to the affairs themselves and can be repeated originally at any time, with this correctness – that is to say, by a re-actualization of the adequation. (Husserl 1974, 129–130/124, translation modified)

Epistemic Norms & Phenomenological Critique  241 Characterizing the attitude as a “’theoretically interested’ life, with vocational consistency” suggests that the scientific theoretical attitude requires commitment to living a certain kind of life directed at obtaining knowledge of certain specific matters. In addition to the previous characterization of the purely theoretical attitude, this account brings into account the value of “repeatability.” Furthermore, whereas an everyday judger “merely looks and sees” what is given, the scientist is constantly aware that the evidence may be deceptive, and consequently his judgments must be verified by maximally perfect evidence. The scientist thus makes judgments about the givenness of something itself but then goes back to critically evaluate the correctness of the obtained results. Further, such self-criticism “must also be subjected to criticism” (Husserl 1974, 130/125). The scientist’s ultimate aim is that her results become abiding truths “capable of again becoming accessible to insight at any time, and accessible in this manner to everyone as a rationally thinking subject, even as they were before their ‘discovery’” (Husserl 1974, 130–131/125). The results of science are social; they have to go through endless processes of being reviewed by peers: This idea [idea of an interest of theoretical reason] (…) is conceived relatively to the idea of a community of scientific investigators, which goes on working ad infinitum, a community united in respect of activities and habitualities of theoretical reason. Here we shall mention only the working of investigators for and with one another and their criticizing of one another’s results, those obtained by one investigator being taken over as works that pave the way for others, and so forth. (Husserl 1974, 36/32) Logic as a theory of science is concerned with judgments made in such a social critical attitude. This attitude is directed at the existent itself and is not only interested in making mere judgments, but, more fundamentally, in the question whether the established judgments are true (Husserl 1974, 135–136/130). Second, criticism also involves a transcendental dimension. Husserl discusses it in the second part of Formal and Transcendental Logic. This dimension of critique requires that one directs the critical regard to the constitutive activity of the scientists’ judgments and examines, clarifies, and fixes the kinds of evidence related to them (Husserl 1974, 184–185/177). This inquiry into the constitutive origins of scientific judgments aims at identifying the internal shiftings of intentionalities and correcting verbal equivocations in judgments. By disclosing such factors, these examinations reveal various kinds of presuppositions characteristic of scientific activity (Husserl 1974, esp. 191–209/184–201). This allows

242  Mirja Hartimo the critic to ask questions about the proper scope of principles and concepts as well as questions about relatedness of scientific judgments to the perceived reality. These are transcendental conditions of the possibility of scientific research. I have discussed them in length elsewhere (e.g., Hartimo 2020a; 2020b; 2021), but for the present purpose, it suffices to notice that the main point of both scientific and transcendental criticism (which are ultimately interrelated) is to guarantee that science truly serves the correct epistemic values, which are independent from personal, social, or cultural interests. I will return to these two separate forms of criticism at the end of this chapter where I briefly compare Husserl’s and Longino’s approaches. Before engaging in that, I will show that the theoretical approach elaborated in this section is not the only one Husserl develops.

3 The Crisis of the Values on Kuhn’s List and the Need for an Alternative List So, Husserl seems to be a firm advocate of the traditional epistemic values that he thinks should not be influenced by contextual values of any kind, individual or collective. But how, then, should we understand the arguments that Husserl develops about the crisis of science in the 1930s, arguing that “nothing less than that its [science’s] genuine scientific character, the whole manner in which it has set its task and developed a methodology for it, has become questionable” (1976b/1970, 1/3)? The motivation for developing this new form of critique comes from the crisis of the European culture and the role ascribed to the sciences in it. In Husserl’s analysis, the problem, in short, is that the natural scientific rationale that brackets the values as described above overtakes all reasoning about the values, which results in the crisis of humanity. He argues that despite their success, the natural sciences fail to address “questions of meaning or meaninglessness of the whole of this human existence” (1976b, 3/6). Husserl claims that in their value-freeness the naturalized sciences are mute in respect to the problems related to human existence. Yet, Husserl does not want to sacrifice the main sense of the theoretical attitude that studies things as themselves objectively, independently of our preferences and interests. My claim is that Husserl consistently argues for rational deliberation (Besinnung) on and critique of values, even the epistemic ones. In his analysis, the choice of any particular set of epistemic values is a historically conditioned choice. To break free of the imprisoning influence of the “spells of our times” phenomenological reflection on the various values is needed. The ultimate choice has to be free and a matter of responsible reasoning; that is, it has to be made with knowledge of the alternatives and with an understanding of the demands of the situation. Thus, I will argue, Husserl’s basic analysis comes near to Helen Longino’s recent

Epistemic Norms & Phenomenological Critique  243 position of contextual empiricism. But, before doing so, I will complement the previous analysis of Husserl’s account of the traditional epistemic values with a similar analysis of what he says about the possible alternative epistemic values.

4 Towards a Plurality of Epistemic Values A brief indication of the possibility of plurality of incompatible sets of theoretical values can be found already in Husserl’s Prolegomena (1900). In this early contribution, Husserl distinguishes between “nomological,” which is his term for “axiomatic” sciences, and the concrete ontological sciences, characterized by their relation to the described objects, and not by the way they instantiate abstract theoretical structures. The latter sciences include, in his account, “geography, history, astronomy, natural history, anatomy, etc.” He then explains that in these empirical sciences diverse theoretical systematizations of the subject matter may be needed: “[s]ince it is possible that explanation which is directed towards empirical unities, leads to widely divergent, or quite heterogeneous theories and theoretical sciences, we rightly call the unity of the concrete science an ‘extra-essential’ one” (1975, §64). This indicates a possibility for a plurality of theoretical approaches. The source of such plurality lies in the differences in the subject matter, which allows for combination and arranging into “unities” in ways other than on the basis of the ideal offered by the axiomatic sciences. However, at this point Husserl adds that, nevertheless, the abstract sciences are the only genuine basic sciences, “from whose theoretical stock the concrete sciences must derive all that theoretical element by which they are made sciences” (1975, §64). Thus in 1900, to him, the kind of unity obtained by axiomatization is the only truly “scientific” account of unity. In Ideas I, Husserl does not hold axiomatization as a self-evident, general model of “truly” scientific theoretization anymore, but restricts it to the disciplines whose domain is “exact,” i.e., mathematically determined. He continues to divide the scientific theories into the axiomatic ones as opposed to the descriptive sciences. He explains that the axiomatic theories presuppose that the examined essences are exact, whereas in the descriptive sciences the examined concepts are essentially vague. Husserl calls the latter ones “morphological” essences, and he points out that the exact sciences and purely descriptive sciences cannot take the place one of the other, and in particular that “no exact science (…) can perform the original and legitimate tasks of pure description” (Husserl 1976a, 155/166). In contrast to the Prolegomena, Husserl thinks that the question whether the investigation is exact or descriptive depends “entirely on the peculiar nature of the province in question” and he writes that, for example, the subject matter of the humanities does not admit exact conceptualization and hence is necessarily descriptive (Husserl 1976a,

244  Mirja Hartimo 154/165). In 1912, Husserl explains that the descriptive approach in the natural sciences describes concrete objects and organizes them into species (Arten), and then coordinates them into genera (Gattungen) with an aim to give a systematic classification of the objects of nature (Husserl 2012, 56–57). In contrast, in the abstract and explanatory natural sciences, such as physics and chemistry, the usage of symbols and purely formal mathematical laws allow scientists to construct any given course of appearances. The explanatory sciences are guided by the idea that for all domains of the sensuous world, such symbolism can be found, and thereby the entire course of the actual experiences can be calculated (Husserl 2012, 58). Later Husserl suggests that adoption of the exact or the descriptive theoretical attitude can be a matter of choice. This is already indicated in Ideas II where Husserl briefly considers an alternative constitution of an “Objective nature,” one that is carried out on the level of intersubjective experience (1952/, 89–90/94–95). This idea is developed further in a manuscript from 1926 where Husserl holds that the world can be regarded in two alternative ways: as the world of exact realities and exact wholes (Ganzheiten) and as the world of morphological realities and morphological wholes. He argues further that the world is divided into two different types (Typen) depending on whether holistic behavior (Verhalten) is seen as decisive. These two kinds of experiencing the world belong to two different attitudes, between which one can switch.4 As an example of such a switch of attitude, he gives the zoological reasoning in which animals are first characterized morphologically as living organisms but then, after a change of attitude, they are studied as physico-chemical objects. Or, as he further specifies, while the animals remain morphologically real units, the scientist can proceed to investigate the exact realities contained in them (Husserl 2012, 263). To characterize the differences between these two attitudes Husserl states that the attitude of the exact sciences reveals a theoretical a priori determined structure of the infinite world,5 while the morphological descriptive sciences conceive reality as finitely verifiable, bound to historical situations (Husserl 2012, 286–287). Ultimately, in line with his statements in Ideas II about the primacy of the personalistic attitude, Husserl realizes that all scientific disciplines are primarily descriptive. This is because all empirical sciences of the world start with natural experience, that is, observation, and natural experience is morphological as such (2012, 263). He gives up the opposition between axiomatic and descriptive, between nomological and morphological sciences and starts to argue that all theoretical disciplines are fundamentally descriptive. But some disciplines, namely physics and chemistry refer to exact axiomatic structures (2012, 24). This view then develops into Husserl’s above described social account of the theoretical attitude of Formal and Transcendental Logic. According to it, all scientists in their self-critical practices aim at disclosing truths about their subject matter, and in some and only some of them, this means being guided by an axiomatic ideal.

Epistemic Norms & Phenomenological Critique  245 In Husserl’s view, each theoretical discipline is characterized by a specific theoretical attitude unique to it. To a certain extent, the choice between the kinds of attitude is dictated by the subject matter. However, it is often also a matter of interests and goals: even when looking at nature alone, two different attitudes can be distinguished, namely the physicalistic one that has a reference to the underlying axiomatic structure and the (merely) classificatory morphological (e.g., in zoology and botanic). Indeed, Husserl even raises a question whether, on the basis of intuition, one could come up with two different geometries if one was guided by different kinds of ideals of exactness as a norm.6 This question will be answered in Husserl’s writings in the 1930s, to which I will turn in the next section.7

5 Galilean Science: The Crisis vs. The Origin of Geometry Two texts, both written in the same year (1936), in fact within a few months of each other, are particularly poignant for the present argument. These are the long paragraph §9 of The Crisis, that discusses Galileo’s achievements in physics, and a manuscript titled The Origin of Geometry that discusses the historical development of geometry. The former was inserted into The Crisis manuscript in September 1936, whereas the latter was eventually published as one of the appendices of The Crisis. Both texts provide a genealogy of a normative ideal of science, that is, of a constellation of epistemic values. Whereas the paragraph on Galileo discusses the physicalistic approach dominant in the modern sciences, the model of geometry discussed in The Origin of Geometry seems to derive from Husserl’s sketches on the morphological scientific approach to reality. The Galileo paragraph provides an interpretation of the mathematization of nature as a transformation of the prescientific world into a mathematical manifold, that is, the physicalistic world in itself, as described above. This process of mathematization is guided by the values of (i) exactness (“perfecting ‘again and again’” (Husserl 1976b, 23/26)); (ii) abstractness (obtaining “an ideal praxis of ‘pure thinking’” (Husserl 1976b, 23/26)); (iii) fruitfulness or universal applicability (they can “always be applied to something new” (Husserl 1976b, 23/26)); (iv) generality and completeness, “the possibility emerges of producing constructively and univocally, through an a priori, all-encompassing systematic method, all possibly conceivable ideal shapes” (Husserl 1976b, 24/27). In the search for exactness, even sensory qualities become mathematized, even though “indirectly,” so that the whole of infinite nature becomes a peculiarly applied mathematics (Husserl 1976b, 36/37). The process results in an “emptying of meaning” in which the actual spatio-temporal value-objects are transformed into numerical configurations. For Husserl, this leads to “technization” and the tendency to superficiality (zu veräusslichen) (1976b, 48/48), so that “[t]he extraordinarily far-reaching

246  Mirja Hartimo practical usefulness became of itself a major motive for the advancement and appreciation of these sciences” (1976b, 378/368). Husserl’s discussion of the Galilean idea of science embodies all the values we find in Kuhn’s list: (1) agreement with experiments and observations; (2) consistency (internally with itself and externally with currently accepted theories); (3) scope (it should extend beyond the particular observations, laws, or subtheories that it was initially designed to explain); (4) simplicity (i.e., ordering and unifying the phenomena); and (5) fruitfulness (it promises to disclose new phenomena) (Kuhn 1977, 321–322). In addition, it emphasizes the emptying of meaning by way of transforming the objects and their determinations into numerical configurations. This is arguably in service of ontological simplicity or homogeneity. It also promotes practical usefulness, which is a pragmatic value, not an epistemic one. The contrast to The Origin of Geometry is striking: in it, Husserl is likewise interested in accounting for the objective world, but one which is the world for all (Husserl 1976b, 369/359). Objectivity arises, not by mathematization, but in communication: “as soon as we take into consideration the function of empathy and fellow mankind as a community of empathy and of language” (Husserl 1976b, 370–371/360). He argues that science is thinking directed at the attainment of truths and the avoidance of falsehood and that it presupposes univocality of expressions, so that they are repeatable with self-evidence (Husserl 1976b, 373/362). New acquisitions are added to the established body of geometrical truths, which is handed down to new generations in the form of written sentences. Yet, geometry should have a built in (ausgebildete) “capacity for reactivating the original activities contained within its fundamental concepts” (1976b, 376/366). This means that it should carry its original meanings and values, even if only implicitly. This account of geometry investigates the world, not as the Galilean mathematized physicalistic world, but as the historical cultural world (Husserl 1976b, 378/369), which has an inner structure of meaning that can and should be disclosed (1976b, 380–381/371–372). Generality in this approach is not conceived as an emptying of meaning or unhindered application (homogeneity), but by the idea of free variation: “And precisely in its activity of free variation, and in running through the conceivable possibilities for the life-world, there arises, with apodictic self-evidence, an essentially general set of elements going through all the variants; and of this we can convince ourselves with truly apodictic certainty” (Husserl 1976b, 383/375). Originally, geometry is about the practical, finite surrounding world of things, from which new constructions grow. And only by disclosing this a priori, Husserl argues, “can a science as aeterna veritas appear” (Husserl 1976b, 385/377). The Origin of Geometry offers an alternative model for scientific knowledge and rationality.

Epistemic Norms & Phenomenological Critique  247 Whereas Galilean science embodies the traditional epistemic values listed by Kuhn, The Origin of Geometry emphasizes especially “ontological heterogeneity,” which is mentioned in Longino’s “feminist” list of epistemic values.8 Indeed, seeing objects as something, as belonging to types or kinds within the morphological attitude, suggests sensitivity to the ontological differences among the researched objects. In contrast, the Galilean science that mathematizes all objects into numerical configurations conceals the ontological differences. Likewise, the respective notions of generality are different: The Origin of Geometry account based on free variation respects the ontological differences, whereas the generality obtained through mathematization unavoidably loses the ties to the particular natures of the objects under investigation. These differences arguably carry over to how the two models value the complexity of relationships. While Galilean science reduces all relationships to formulae, this is not the case with The Origin of Geometry. The “absolutizing” tendency of the Galilean science is tied to the universal applicability obtained by ontological simplification. It is a built-in tendency to apply that particular theoretical attitude across the board. In The Crisis, Husserl then examines its harmful effects on human culture and our sense of ourselves. A thorough examination of the epistemic values of these two Husserlian models of scientific rationality has to be left for another occasion. Important for the present argument is to note the relevance of the competing sets of epistemic values even when we theorize about the physical nature alone. While both of these constellations of epistemic values purport to be independent of the contextual values of their practitioners, Husserl’s The Crisis argues that even the Galilean idea of science is historically and socially constituted. Whereas he earlier insisted on the ability of the nomological sciences to reveal the structure of the reality, he now thinks of them as useful techniques. This change of mind necessitates a thorough examination of the historically developed grip they have on the modern human being. Thus, Husserl’s exposition has a purpose of showing how the Galilean values have started to dominate the other values, and how this development has led to an “irrational” simplification of the model of rationality. By exposing this development, Husserl opts for the epistemic values that are chosen fully consciously and, hence, rationally. To be sure, Husserl does not suggest that in place of Galilean values we should adopt the epistemic values of the science discussed in The Origin of Geometry – his repeated claims about the legitimacy of Galilean science make that clear enough.9 Instead, he advocates for full consciousness about the role of values in science. For him, this involves recognition of shifts of meaning and noting the concealments of the original value-ladenness. Similarly to Longino, his claim is that “[the method of Galilean science] must be freed of the character of an unquestioned tradition” (Husserl 1976b, 47/47). Husserl’s aim is to overcome the

248  Mirja Hartimo philosophic naiveté related to the adoption of any one single model of rationality and to propose reflection, Selbst-Besinnung, which “will serve to liberate us” (1976b, 60/59).

6 Conclusion – Husserl and the Question of Value-Freedom of Science Like logical positivists and Weber, Husserl was originally a firm believer of the value-freeness of science. In his view, all theoretical attitudes aim at uncovering truths in themselves. Husserl further singles out the natural scientific theoretical approach, which abstracts from all values other than epistemic ones, as especially emblematic of this aim. However, Husserl also identifies a descriptive theoretical attitude, which aims at intersubjective truths and, hence, is not as purified as the natural theoretical attitude. In the Formal and Transcendental Logic, Husserl argues that all theoretical attitudes, also the natural theoretic one, are ultimately selfcritical and social, which he seems to think guarantees the impartiality of the theoretical attitude in question. In The Crisis, Husserl shows that the adoption and shaping of these theoretical attitudes is a social and historical matter, which seems to speak against Husserl’s original view of their impartiality. However, I argued that, in contrast, transcendental phenomenology, together with the historical reflection, Besinnung, of science, aims at safeguarding the objectivity of scientific method. It does so by revealing the presuppositions of these approaches and, hence, the possible distorted interests and ideologies (such as those of the Galilean science), so that the confusions and shiftings due to them can be corrected. As a result, any particular choice among the theoretical attitudes and epistemic values embraced by them should be a matter of conscious deliberation. In contrast to what Kuhn seems to think, the choice of paradigms is then not a matter of personal taste but a matter of reason, that is, weighing pros and cons of different alternative constellations of epistemic values in the given situation. The sociality and the historicity of the choice of epistemic values makes Husserl’s view resemble Helen Longino’s view. Both hold that the “scientificity” of science requires explicitness and openness about the role of values in science. This facilitates critical reflection about them, which, in the terms discussed above in the context of Husserl’s Formal and Transcendental Logic, can be either internal to the scientific communities or also involve the transcendental point of view. Both, Husserl and Longino call for the former. Longino further focuses on the structural features of scientific communities as prerequisites of this kind of criticism. Whereas Longino urges reflection about the norms, goals, and values of sciences, she does not explicitly evoke the transcendental point of view to do so. Husserl in turn develops a method for systematic transcendental

Epistemic Norms & Phenomenological Critique  249 reflection and criticism of the presuppositions, norms, goals, and the kinds of evidence related to scientific practices to facilitate the needed, explicit deliberation about the rationales germane to individual scientific disciplines and the roles of various constellations of epistemic and other values within them. Husserl also analyzes the nature of the crisis that ensues when such reflection is missing.

Notes 1 The texts meant for Ideas II were written between 1912 and 1928 but only posthumously published. 2 Husserl’s exact phrase is “eine Art epoché” (Husserl 1952, 27/29). 3 To be sure, a provisional explanation can be found in Ideas I (§55), where he refers to “universalizing” the idea of natural reality to all there is: “If one derives the concept of reality from natural realities, from unities of possible experience, then ‘all the world’ or ‘all of Nature’ is, of course, equivalent to the all of realities; but to identify the latter with the all of being, and thus to absolutize it itself is a countersense” (Husserl 1976a, 120/129). 4 “Two kinds of experiencing can be transposed by a mere alteration of the ‘attitude’, of the determining interest; and when this transition happens, then a coincidence, a consciousness of the unity passes through the apperceptive switch, and this grounds what was said above.” In German: “Zwei Erfahrungsarten sind durch einen bloßen Wechsel der ‘Einstellung,’ des bestimmenden Interesses ineinander überzuführen; und wo dieser Übergang erfolgt, dort geht durch den apperzeptiven Wechsel eine Deckung, ein Bewusstsein der Einheit hindurch, welche die obige Rede begründet” (Husserl 2012, 263). 5 Husserl writes that “[t]o the essence of the world in general belongs a systematic mathematical structure, an infinite but systematic-mathematical structure.” In German: “Zum Wesen einer Welt überhaupt gehört eine systematische, eine infinite, aber systematisch-mathematische Struktur” (Husserl 2012, 386). 6 Husserl asks: “Kann nicht einem und demselben System der Anschauung als einem ’ungefähren’ verschiedene Ideen der Exaktheit als Normen untergelegt werden?” (2012, 255). His answer at this point (i.e., in 1927) is that this has to be given deepest consideration: “Das muss also fürs Tiefste durchdacht werden” (Husserl 2012, 255). 7 Husserl’s characterization of his Natur und Geist lectures in 1919 demonstrates his descriptive approach to the scientific disciplines: “[A]s philosophical they [the lectures] do not want to interfere with the scientists’ work, not even to show that the scientist, the master of her own discipline is mistaken, but to clarify and to find the principles of clarification” (Husserl 2012, 179). In German, “[a]ls philosophische wollen sie [diese Vorlesungen über Natur und Geist] in die werktätige Arbeit der Wissenschaften nicht hineinreden, etwa gar um den Forscher und Meister seines Fachs eines Besseren (zu) belehren, sondern sie wollen klären und Prinzipien der Klärung suchen” (Husserl 2012, 179). 8 Longino listed as the “feminist” epistemic values empirical adequacy, novelty, ontological heterogeneity, applicability to human needs, complexity of interaction, etc. (Longino 1995, 386–389). 9 E.g., “[a]ctually the process whereby material mathematics is put into formallogical form, where expanded formal logic is made self-sufficient as pure analysis or theory of manifolds, is perfectly legitimate, indeed necessary; the same

250  Mirja Hartimo is true of the technization which from time to time completely loses itself in merely technical thinking. But all this can and must be a method which is understood and practiced in a fully conscious [vollbewusst verstandene] way” (Husserl 1976b, 46/47).

References Douglas, Heather. 2013. “The Value of Cognitive Values.” Philosophy of Science 5 (December): 796–806. Habermas, Jürgen. 1968. Erkenntnis und Interesse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. In English: Knowledge and Human Interests. Trans. Jermey J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971. Hartimo, Mirja. 2020a. “Husserl on ‘Besinnung’ and Formal Ontology.” In Metametaphysics and the Sciences: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives, eds. Frode Kjosavik and Camilla SerckHanssen, 200–215. New York: Routledge. Hartimo, Mirja. 2020b. “Husserl’s Phenomenology of Scientific Practice.” In Phenomenological Approaches to Physics – Historical and Systematic Issues, eds. Harald A. Wiltsche and Philipp Berghofer, 63–78. Dordrecht: Springer. Hartimo, Mirja. 2021. Husserl and Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1952. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Husserliana IV. Ed. Marly Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer, 1989. Husserl, Edmund. 1974. Formale und transzendentale Logik: Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, Mit ergänzenden Texten. Husserliana XVII. Ed. Paul Janssen. The Hague: Martinus.Nijhoff. In English: Formal and Transcendental Logic. Trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969. Husserl, Edmund. 1975. Logische Untersuchungen, Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Husserliana XVIII. Ed. Elmar Holenstein. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Logical Investigations, Vol. I. Trans. J.N. Findlay. London, New York: Routledge, 2001. Husserl, Edmund. 1976a. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch. Husserliana III/1. Ed. Karl Schuhmann. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. Trans. F. Kersten. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer, 1982. Husserl, Edmund. 1976b. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie. Husserliana VI. Ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. David Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970. Husserl, Edmund. 2012. Zur Lehre vom Wesen und zur Methode der eidetischen Variation, Texte aus dem Nachlass 1891–1935. Husserliana XLI. Ed. Dirk Fonfara. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, New York: Springer.

Epistemic Norms & Phenomenological Critique  251 Husserl, Edmund. 2020. Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins, Teilband II: Gefühl und Wert, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1896–1925). Husserliana XLIII. Eds. Ulrich Melle and Thomas Vongehr. Cham: Springer. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1977. “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice.” In The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change, ed. Thomas S. Kuhn, 320–339. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Laudan, Larry. 1984. Science and Values. Berkeley: University of California Press. Longino, Helen. 1983. “Beyond ‘Bad Science’: Skeptical Reflections on the ValueFreedom of Scientific Inquiry.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 8, no. 1 (Winter): 7–17. Longino, Helen. 1990. Science as Social Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Longino, Helen. 1995. “Gender, Politics, and the Theoretical Virtues.” Synthese 104, no. 3 (September): 383–397. Longino, Helen. 2004. “How Values Can Be Good for Science.” In Science, Values, and Objectivity, eds. Peter Machamer and Goreon Wolters, 127–142. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. McMullin, Ernan. 1982. “Values in Science.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 2: 3–28.

Subject Index

abnormality, abnormal 12, 114–116, 118–119, 200–201, 210–211, see also normality action 4–5, 8–9, 13n5, 24–35, 47, 58, 71, 76–80, 83n1, 97, 108–109, 114–121, 133, 149–153, 175n16, 187–190, 199–214; regulation of see regulation agency 83n1, 108, 112–113, 116, 118–121 alienation 168, 171, 213 alienness 23, 57, 162, 170–171, 189, 210–214, 221, 225–229 alien-world see world alienanimality, animals 36n3, 59, 62n13, 74, 100, 146, 152, 226, 244 antirealism (moral) 69–70 approximation 30–31, 133, 135, 141–142, 154 atheism see method authenticity 23–24 background 11–12, 112, 135, 139–140, 164–165, 186–195, 209, 224–225, 229; figure-background structure 112–113, 134–135; as understanding of being 186–192 bad vs. good faith 69–75 beauty, value of beauty 4–7, 13n6, 29–35, 97 Besinnung 171–172, 235–236, 242–243, 247–248 body 109, 111–121, 122n9, 168–169, 200, 203–205, 208–211; -schema 113–114, 120, 210–211 categorical imperative 3, 28, 83n5, 221–222

choice 6, 59, 82, 234–235, 242–248; theory of 12 command 3–4, 23, 26–31, 35, 36n5, 48–63, 70–74, 83n5, 91, 171, 202–203 commitment 5–6, 10, 43–61, 68–70, 79–82, 157–160, 164–172, 189, 240–241 community 53, 77, 220–230, 235 concept, conceptual 2–3, 8, 20–21, 28, 44, 55, 87–93, 138, 208, 240, 243, 246; moral 73, 78–79; normative 37n12, 63n15, 87–93, 96, 99–100, 151–152, 154 concordance 174n11, 200–214, 215n4, see also optimality conscience 23, 57–61 consciousness, conscious 29–33, 37n9, 47, 88–99, 107–121, 145–153, 157–168, 202, 213, 221–228, 247–248; animal see animals; human 69–70, 79–80, 83n2, 187–190, 207, 227; positional 88–97; -raising 12, 186, 191–194; self- 67–70, 77, 83n2, 183–184 constancy 141–142 Constitutive Thesis 109–113, 116–118 correctness 27–29, 38n19, 92, 97–98, 173n6, 240–242 correlation 44, 93, 161 criterium, criteria 24–30, 35, 37n15, 172, 235 Critical Theory 200, 234 critique, critical 11–13, 83n2, 90–92, 99, 157, 163–164, 168–172, 175n17, 183, 186–187, 190–196, 200–202, 215n2, 228–229, 240–241, 244, 248

Subject Index  253 culture, cultural 12, 48, 127, 133–134, 138, 148, 189–190, 194–195, 202–203, 211, 219–231, 235–236, 242, 246 custom see norm: social Dasein 45–62, 189–190 dehumanization 75–76 deliberation 1, 6–7, 9, 12, 76, 93, 151, 191, 203–204, 242, 248–249 desire 8, 10, 20, 33–34, 55–60, 67, 70–83, 100, 145–149, 214–215 direction, directedness: intentional 145–146, 154, 185–186, 194–195, 238; of interest 160, 238–239; normative see normative guidance; spatial 111, 122 disinterested see interest drive see instinct ego, egoic: -act 148–150; bodily 120–121, see also body; habituated 146, 162, 165–166; human 59, 70, 77; personal 151, 162, 239; -pole 227, 150; -split (Ichspaltung) 162–163, 170–171 eidetic 13n2, 32, 87, 90, 93–98, 101n6, 134–139; intuition 134, 139; laws 90, 96–97; structures (and relations) 90, 93–94, 98, 101n6, 223 eidos, eide see essence embodiment 130–135, see also body emotion 29, 33, 35–36, 71–72, 75–82, 236–237 empathy 23, 36, 74–75, 208, 224–225, 246 epistemology 44 epoché 21, 45–46, 48, 238 essence 32–34, 38, 63, 93, 101n6, 137, 139–140, 161; exact vs. morphological 32, 243–247; vs. fact 37n9, 45, 47, 93; formal vs. material 32, 63n15; general vs. singular 32, 137; metaphysical 38n21, 44; as norm 35, 38n19, 87, 101n6; pure 139, 203; vs. type 137–138 ethics, ethical 13n2, 22–25, 28–29, 31, 34, 43–45, 48–50, 61n2, 67, 87–88, 90, 92, 99–100, 215, 221–222, 226–227, 230

evidence 7, 8, 24, 45, 54, 89, 133, 153, 205, 222, 224, 246 face of the other 22–24, 36n5, 49, 57, 60, 62n6 familiarity 12, 147, 164–170, 200–215, 224–226; of the lifeworld 221, 230–231; -scheme 129–131, 138 feeling (sensory) 29, see also emotion feminism 12, 186, 191–193, 235, 247, 249n8 foundationalism 45–46, 154n6 foundedness: of the cultural world 223, 227–230; of modalities 158; of normativity 8, 29–36, 48–49, 202, 204; of positionality 158; of propositions 91; of the self 59–60; of sensory unities 117; of types 139–140; of values and axiological intentionality 31, 33–34 free, freedom 48–50, 54–59, 160–161, 219; of the epoché 48–49; from doxic/existential positing 31–33, 163–164; idealities (vs. bound) 133; of phantasy 89, 101n3, 161, 246; variation 246–247; of the will 149–151 fulfilment 2, 21–22, 88–89, 96–100, 147, 151–153, 174n14, 199 Fülle (sinnliche) 135 gaze (Sartrean) 23–24 Geisteswissenschaft see science: human gender 164–171, 186, 191–194, 201, 211–212 genealogy: Foucauldian 215n1; phenomenological 12, 171–172, 201, 215n1, 228, 245 generativity, generative 172n1, 214, 222–229 Gestalt 113, 128–139 goal 4–9, 43, 97, 120, 133, 136, 145, 149, 168–170, 188, 203–204, 239–240, 245, see also intentionality: practical good faith see bad faith goodness, value of the good 13n6, 33–34, 56–60, 74–76, 82, 87–89, 92, 97, 100 goods 32, 56, 102n13 habituation, habitual 9, 23, 146, 157, 162–166, 205, 209–210, 224–225, 241

254  Subject Index history, historical, historicity 184–186, 211, 219–225, 228, 235–236, 244–248; of experience 117–118, 151–152; necessity and possibility 164, 168, 170–171; of normativity, norms 3–6, 9, 11–12, 58–59, 150–151, 183, 201, 219–220, 236; of the self 162, 167–171; teleology 228–229; universal 223 home-world see world: home horizon, horizontal horizontality 113–114, 117, 123n17, 168, 174–174n15, 214, 221–222, 224–226 idealism 230 identity: group- 225–226; moral 68–69, 82; personal 71, 77–78, 226, 230–231; practical 58–59, 63n14, 71, 79–81; type- 128–129, 132 imagination 11, 89, 140, 157–172, 174n9, 203–204; critical 170–172 imperative see command; categorical indexicality 111, 168, 170–171, 174n15 Indiscernibility Thesis 113 instinct 11, 62n13, 144–154 institution (of meaning/sense) (Stiftung) 164–165, 168–170, 222–223, 230 intentionality, intentional 2, 8, 10–11, 21–22, 30, 35–36, 43–61, 88–90, 93–100, 102n14, 107, 111–112, 117–121, 139, 145–152, 158, 162–163, 168–169, 199–200, 205–207, 224–225; axiological 25, 29, 35–36, see also value; perceptual 110–114, 206–207, see also perception; volitional 30, 37n16, 237–238, 240–241, see also goal interest, interested 22, 26, 31–34, 36n8, 72, 95–96, 119, 123n16, 135–136, 140–142, 146, 160–171, 201–202, 206–210, 234, 237–248 intersubjectivity 9, 23, 36, 36n7, 201–205, 207–215, 238 intuition 96–100, 126–127, 139–140, 153–154, 160, 162, 245; categorial 46, 134; eidetic 139–140; moral 28–29, 70; of types vs. abstract objects 127, 140; value- 29, 93, 97–98 irreality see object: irreal I-Thou see self-other

judgment 7–8, 91–94, 98, 101n6, 237, 240; evaluative, value- 25, 91, 202, 236; normative 27, 91–92, 202, 236 kalokagathos, kalokagathía 7, 14 Kantian idea 22, 36n4, 38n21, 119 kinaesthesis, kinesthetic 111–112, 120, 122n4, 175n16, 205 Lebenswelt see world: lifelimit 159–172, 174n13, 185–186, 190, 226–230; -idea see Kantian idea; -Gestalt 134–135 logic 25, 37n10, 97, 238, 240; deontic 13n4 love 6–7, 14n8, 28, 71–76, 81, 239 materialism 12, 230 meaning 23, 26, 44–60, 61n4, 67–68, 87–99, 101n1, 111, 114, 164, 174n14, 199–200, 203–204, 222–226, 230–231, 242–247, see also sense; linguistic 44, 56–57, 133–134, 138, 220–221 metaphysics, metaphysical 2, 43–50, 57, 61–62, 69–70 method, methodological: atheism 10, 43, 46–49, 52, 57, 61; of fantasymodification (Phantasiemodikation) 158–159; genetic 145–148, 154n6, 158, 164–165, 174n11, 174n12, 200–204, 215n1, 220–222; phenomenological 2, 13n2, 19, 23, 45–50, 57, 61, 67, 145–148, 248–249; of reflection see Besinnung Minimal Multimodality Thesis 108–109 modality, modalities 30, 63n15, 88, 107–112, 116–118, 121, 141, 159–160, 165–166, 170–171, 222 model, modelling 3–4, 28, 30, 243–248 morality, moral 10, 22, 27–28, 50–52, 66–83, 97, 100, 183–186, 199, 203, 215, see also ethics motive, motivation 7, 20, 24, 33, 52, 59, 67, 69–79, 81–82, 98, 111, 118–119, 151, 159–160, 168, 202–203, 205, 214 naturalism, naturalistic 19, 24, 45, 101n5, 114, 146–148, 224, 239

Subject Index  255 nature 99, 227, 238, 245, 249n3 neutrality: metaphysical 2, 45–49, 57– 58; -modification 157–163, 173n6 neutralization see neutrality-modification noema, noematic 2, 19, 38n17, 48, 94–95, 161–162, 173n6, 174n14 noesis, noetic 2, 19, 94, 161–162, 171, 173n6 nomological 129, 138, 243–247 norm: basic 6–7, 28–29, 38n17; constitutive 8–9, 36, 50, 119, 145, 151, 174n13, 187, 220, 226–227, 235; cultural 12, 133–134, 138, 148, 202–203, 211, 219–224, 229–231, 235–236; deontological 3, 13n4, 56; enabling see constitutive; epistemic 4–9, 12, 20, 28, 127, 133, 139, 153, 208, 234–248; heterosexual 211–212; professional 4–8, 26, 79, 206–207, 212–213, 240; moral see morality; racial 75, 167, 183–184, 185, 201, 212; social 3, 23–24, 67, 72–83, 150, 201–206, 211–214, 235–236 normality, normal 9, 12, 22, 38, 115–121, 134–135, 140–142, 150, 199–215, 226–227, 238 normalization 76, 164–170, 174 normativity, normative: of action 3–5, 8, 24–31, 35, 37n15, 58, 71, 76, 100, 117–118, 149–151; background see background; basic 6–7, 21, 28–29, 38n17, 82, 90; of being 3, 5–6, 8, 25–26, 29–31; of commitments see commitment; of concepts 10, 37n12, 87–93, 96, 99–100, 154; of criteria see criterium; of essence 63, 87, 101, 137; -first approach (vs. reasonsfirst approach) 50–54, 57, 62n9; guidance 1, 3–5, 25, 27, 29, 33, 170, 202, see also regulation; of intending 10, 21, 88–89; of judgments 9, 27, 91–93; juridical 23, 199; moral 10, 22–23, 66, see also morality; of perception 11, 21–22; of posits 10, 88–89, 100; of rules see rules; sources of 9–11, 24, 57, 66–68, 72–73, 76–83, 99 object 21–33, 38n17, 44–45, 87–90, 93–101, 107–119, 126–141,

145–147, 152–153, 154n2, 205–207, 238–239, 244, 246–247; axiological 25, 29, 31–34, 245–246; eidetic 23– 33, 38n21, see also essence; fictional 33, see also imagination, phantasy; human being as 13n3; irreal 31–33, 138–139; material or physical see thing; perceptual 110–114, 127– 129, 205–207; quasi-concrete vs. abstract 130–134, 138–141 objectivity, objective 93–94, 110, 122n9, 205–208, 223–224, 227–230, 234–239, 241–248 obligation 5, 13n4, 23–31, 36n5, 37n13, 49, 52–56, 70–75, 79–83, 186, 213–214, 216 optimality, optimum, optimal 22, 119, 123n18, 199–214, see also concordance orientation: feeling of 12, 199–200, 215; in imagination 159, 163–172; perceptual 111–112, 142; toward the best 22, 28, 56, 60, 207–209 origin of normativity see sources of normativity other 23, 35–36, 49, 55–58, 74, 78–79, 170, 214, 226, see also alinness, self-other passivity 49, 147–150 perception 94, 98, 107–121, 131–135, 139–141, 199, 205–208; interested 22, 35; model of multisensory 107–114, 117–118, 121 person, personal 6–8, 34, 51–52, 54–55, 150–151, 162, 221, 239 personality of a higher order 221 phantasy 159, 161, 173n8 Phantasiemodifikation 157–163 phenomenality 109, 112 plena see Fülle pluralism 12, 243 political 219, 229–231 position, positionality, positional 88–90, 93–99, 157–163, 173n6 possibility 60–61, 63n15, 165–172, 186, 190, 209–210; practical, “I can” 52–53, 120–121, 166–167, 169–171, 212 practical identity 58–59, 63n14, 79–80 practice 22, 28, 36n3, 45–47, 53–54, 96–97, 100, 108, 153, 186–194, 202–204, 219–221

256  Subject Index pre-: -conceptual 8, 20; -egoic 148; -judgmental 8–9, 20, 29; -logical 223– 224; -predicative 8, 20, 127, 199–200; -reflective 112, 119–120, 183 prescription 26–27, 128 proprioception 111–112, 119–120,122n4 protention 45, 88–89 rationality 144–145, 223 realization 3–6, 13n5, 25–28, 30, 35–36, 133, 153, 159–160, 169, 171, 174n14, 175n16, 201 reason 1, 7–8, 10–11, 13n6, 25, 38, 48–60, 70–81, 98, 144–154, 159–160, 173n6, 204, 223–224, 237, 249; axiological 153, 237, 242, 249; vs. instinct see instinct; normative 10, 38, 50–52, 60; practical 11, 60, 70–71, 74, 78–81, 144–145, 149–154; theoretical 223–224, 237, 241 regulation 27, 29, 170, 202 retention 45 rule 3–4, 8–9, 13n4, 24–25, 27–31, 35–36, 51, 90–91, 101n6, 132–133, 166–167, 187–188, 202–203, 212–213 science, sciences 14n9, 25–30, 37n9, 47, 90–92, 223, 236, 238–248; human 13n3, 43–44, 236, 242–247; theoretical 12, 25–30, 35, 37n10, 91–92, 228–229, 236–248 second person 10, 22–24, 43–61, 73–74, 215n2 sedimentation 117–118, 164–170 Seinsollen see norm of being self 12, 43, 45, 52–54, 59–61, 63n14, 67–71, 77–79, 82, 109–114, 118–121, 122n4, 146, 150, 162– 166, 168–172, 175n18–175n19, 189–190, 228–230, 239–241, see also ego self-deception see bad faith self-other 22–23, 49, 52–55, 61, 202, 211, 215, 221–222, 228–229 sensation and the senses 107–121, 122n4, 122n7, 122n10, 122n12, 122n13, 127–128, 130, 134, 142, 238–239 sense 47, 93–98, 161–162, 186–187, 194–195, 202, 205, 208–210, 225–231, 239, see also meaning;

constitution of 2, 21, 150; final (of goal) 239–240; institution of 222–224 sense data 11, see also sensation shame 57–59, 67, 71, 77–82 sociality 213, 221, 225–226, 229, see also community, intersubjectivity source of normativity see normativity spatiality, spatial 32–33, 110–111, 122n6, 229 spirit 99, 225–226 subject 23, 30–34, 59, 74–75, 93–96, 100, 146, 150, 160, 168, 184–187, 200–215, 221–230, 238 subjectivity 9, 11, 13n6, 93–94, 122n9, 146–147, 207–208, 223–226, 234–235, 244 substratum, substrata 114–115 technique 28, 222, 247 teleology 88–89, 151–152, 164 temporality 11, 32–33, 45, 88–89, 111, 122n9, 127, 130, 133–134, 161–162, 166, 174n15, 205–209, 220–222, 229–232, 235–236, 241–242 theoretical attitude 157, 163, 228–229, 237–248 theoretical vs. normative sciences see science thing 21–22, 58, 92, 238 time see temporality truth 4–5, 7–8, 24, 26, 29, 34, 91, 94–98, 133, 139, 153–154, 229, 237–248 Tunsollen see norm of action type-token distinction 126–142 Umwelt see world: environing valuation 27–34, 93–94, 97 value 3, 4–7, 13n6, 27–35, 76–77, 79–80, 90, 97, 102n13, 139; of beauty 30, 97, 102n13; epistemic 4–5, 7–9, 24, 29, 133, 139, 234–249, see also of truth; -free 12, 235–248; of human/humanity (person) 34, 79–82; of goodness 29–33; love14n8; moral see morality; objective 234–235; -predicate 26–27; of truth 4–5, 7–8, 24, 26, 133, 139 value-ception (Wertnehmung) 93, 97 value-intuition 29, 93, 97 variation 129–142, 246–247 virtue 3, 26–27, 33–34, 71–73

Subject Index  257 vision, visual perception 111–112, 134, 208 vocation 8, 35, 56, 240–241 volition see will Weltanschauung see world-view Wertnehmung see value-intuition will, willing 4, 26–28, 30–31, 35, 37n16, 91–96, 145, 149–150, 202

world: alien- see home-; environing 54, 120, 146, 200–214, 224–226; home- 211–214, 221, 225–229; life- 211, 220, 224–231; surrounding see environing; -view 43, 47–48 zig-zag 171–172

Person Index

Aristotle 13n5, 36n1, 43–48, 122n7 Bayne, Tim 107–110, 114, 121 de Beauvoir, Simone 13n2 Boncompagni, Anna 183, 196n1 Brainard, Marcus 102n7 Brandom, Robert 7, 36n1 Brentano, Franz 28 Briscoe, Robert E. 109, 122n6 Burge, Tyler 141 Butler, Judith 212 Carta, Emanuela 101n6 Crowell, Steven 7, 10, 21, 67, 87–88, 102n9, 199 Darwall, Stephen 49–55, 57, 74, 83n5 Derrida, Jacques 44–45, 49, 61 Descartes, René 28 Dilthey, Wilhelm 231n1 Dreyfus, Hubert 11, 186–196 Drummond, John 88 Fanon, Franz 13n2, 211 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 51, 52, 231 Fink, Eugen 13n2, 175n19 Foucault, Michel 174n13, 219 Frege, Gottlob 38n18, 44 Gaita, Raimond 74 Galilei, Galileo 28, 224, 235, 245–248 Golob, Sacha 36n2 Goodman, Nelson 129 Habermas, Jürgen 51, 53, 234 Hartmann, Nicolai 13n2, 24–25, 30–31 Haugeland, John 63n15 Hegel, G.W.H. 19, 36n1, 44, 223

Heidegger, Martin 2, 8–13, 20, 23–24, 43–54, 57–63, 88, 186–187, 190–193, 196n2, 199 Hilbert, David 131 Hobbes, Thomas 70 Hume, David 70 Husserl, Edmund 6–14, 20–38, 44–46, 50, 58, 61–62, 87–102, 109–114, 117–123, 126–154, 157–165, 169–175, 188, 199–200, 204, 206–211, 220–231, 235–249 Ingarden, Roman 36n6, 130, 133 Kant, Immanuel 3, 7–9, 19, 25, 28, 36–37, 44, 50, 70, 78–79, 102, 127, 145, 231 Kelly, Sean 141 Kierkegaard, Søren 62n12 Korsgaard, Christine 10, 58, 66–75, 79–83, 100 Kuhn, Thomas 234–236, 240, 242, 246–248 Kymlicka, Will 219 Landgrebe, Ludwig 13n2 Lee, Nam-In 144, 152 Levinas, Emmanuel 13n2, 20–24, 36, 48–51, 54–63, 73–74, 83n5 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien 223 Lipps, Theodor 154n9 Locke, John 38n21 Lohmar, Dieter 127 Loidolt, Sophie 19 Longino, Helen 12, 235–236, 242, 247–248 Løgstrup, Kund Ejler 73–74

Person Index  259 Marx, Karl 220, 230 McDowell, John 7, 36n1 Mensch, James 154n1 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 13n2, 109, 112–122, 141, 148, 203, 209, 223, 230 Moore, G.E. 100, 101n5 Mulligan, Kevin 28, 30, 32, 37n10 Mühlhölzer, Felix 131 Nagel, Thomas 84n10, 109 Neuhouser, Frederick 84n8 Nietzsche, Friedrich 215n1 O’Callaghan, Casey 108–110, 120–121 Okrent, Mark 67 Parsons, Charles 130–133, 140 Peirce, Charles Sanders 11, 127 Pfänder, Alexander 13n2 Plato 13n5, 56, 60 Pufendorf, Samuel 52–55, 70 Quine, Willard Van Orman 44, 196 Reinach, Adolf 13n2, 36n6 Rhees, Rush 195

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 84n8 Römer, Inga 62n9 Sarachild, Kathie 192–193 Sartre, Jean-Paul 13n2, 20, 23–24, 36 Scheler, Max 7, 13n2, 24–25, 30–31, 36n6, 38n20, 74 Schütz/Schutz, Alfred 211, 36n6 Searle, John 36, 58 Smith, William H. 23, 67 Socrates 28 Spence, Charles 107–110, 114, 121 Stein, Edith 7, 13n2, 36n6 Steinbock, Anthony 227–228 Taylor, Charles 219 Velleman, David 74 Walther, Gerda 36n6 Weber, Max 234, 248 Windelband, Wilhelm 231n1 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1, 7, 12–13, 44, 128, 186–189, 194–196 Wollheim, Richard 135–139 Woolf, Virginia 167, 171