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"PHENOMENOLOGY"

BRITANNICA ARTICLE (1927),

FOURTH DRAFT

TRANSLATED BY RICHARD E. PALMER

The term "phenomenology" designates two things: a new kind of

descriptive method which made a breakthrough in philosophy at the turn of the

century, and an a priori science derived from it; a science which is intended

to supply the basic instrument (Organon) for a rigorously scientific

philosophy and in its consequent application, to make possible a methodical

reform of all the sciences. Together with this philosophical phenomenology,

but not yet separated from it, however, there also came into being a new

psychological discipline parallel to it in method and content: the a priori

pure or "phenomenological" psychology, which raises the reformational claim to

being the basic methodological foundation on which alone a scientifically

rigorous empirical psychology can be established. An outline of this

psychological phenomenology, standing nearer to our natural thinking, is well

suited to serve as a preliminary step that will lead up to an understanding

of philosophical phenomenology.

PURE PSYCHOLOGY:

ITS FIELD OF EXPERIENCE, ITS METHOD, AND ITS FUNCTION

¤1. Pure Natural Science and Pure Psychology.

Modern psychology is the science dealing with the "psychical" in the

concrete context of spatio-temporal realities, being in some way so to speak

what occurs in nature as egoical, with all that inseparably belongs to it as

psychical processes like experiencing, thinking, feeling, willing, as

capacity, and as habitus. Experience presents the psychical as merely a

stratum of human and animal being. Accordingly, psychology is seen as a

branch of the more concrete science of anthropology, or rather zoology.

Animal realities are first of all, at a basic level, physical realities. As

such, they belong in the closed nexus of relationships in physical nature, in

Nature meant in the primary and most pregnant sense as the universal theme of

a pure natural science; that is to say, an objective science of nature which

in deliberate onesidedness excludes all extra-physical predications of

reality. The scientific investigation of the bodies of animals fits within

this area. By contrast, however, if the psychical aspect of the animal world

is to become the topic of investigation, the first thing we have to ask is

how far, in parallel with the pure science of nature, a pure psychology is

possible. Obviously, purely psychological research can be done to a certain

extent. To it we owe the basic concepts of the psychical according to the

properties essential and specific to it. These concepts must be incorporated

into the others, into the psychophysical foundational concepts of psychology.

It is by no means clear from the very outset, however, how far the idea

of a pure psychologyÑas a psychological discipline sharply separate in itself

and as a parallel to the pure physical science of natureÑhas a meaning that is

legitimate and necessary of realization.

2. The Purely Psychical in Self-Experience and Community Experience.

The Universal Description of Intentional Experiences.

To establish and unfold this guiding idea, the first thing that is

necessary is a clarification of what is peculiar to experience, and especially

to the pure experience of the psychicalÑand specifically the purely psychical

that experience reveals, which is to become the theme of a pure psychology.

It is natural and appropriate that precedence will be accorded to the most

immediate types of experience, which in each case reveal to us our own

psychical being.

Focussing our experiencing gaze on our own psychical life necessarily

takes place as reflection, as a turning about of a glance which had previously

been directed elsewhere. Every experience can be subject to such reflection,

as can indeed every manner in which we occupy ourselves with any real or ideal

objectsÑfor instance, thinking, or in the modes of feeling and will, valuing

and striving. So when we are fully engaged in conscious activity, we focus

exclusively on the specific thing, thoughts, values, goals, or means involved,

but not on the psychical experience as such, in which these things are known

as such. Only reflection reveals this to us. Through reflection, instead of

grasping simply the matter straight-outÑthe values, goals, and

instrupsychicalitiesÑwe grasp the corresponding subjective experiences in

which we become "conscious" of them, in which (in the broadest sense) they

"appear." For this reason, they are called "phenomena," and their most general

essential character is to exist as the "consciousness-of" or "appearance-of"

the specific things, thoughts (judged states of affairs, grounds,

conclusions), plans, decisions, hopes, and so forth. This relatedness <of the

appearing to the object of appearance> resides in the meaning of all

expressions in the vernacular languages which relate to psychical processÑfor

instance, perception of something, recalling of something, thinking of

something, hoping for something, fearing something, striving for something,

deciding on something, and so on. If this realm of what we call "phenomena"

proves to be the possible field for a pure psychological discipline related

exclusively to phenomena, we can understand the designation of it as

phenomenological psychology. The terminological expression, deriving from

Scholasticism, for designating the basic character of being as consciousness,

as consciousness of something, is intentionality. In unreflective holding of

some object or other in consciousness, we are turned or directed towards it:

our "intentio" goes out towards it.

The phenomenological reversal of our gaze shows that this "being

directed" <Gerichtetsein> is really an immanent essential feature of the

respective experiences involved; they are "intentional" experiences. An

extremely large and variegated number of kinds of special cases fall within

the general scope of this concept. Consciousness of something is not an empty

holding of something; every phenomenon has its own total form of intention

<intentionale Gesamtform>, but at the same time it has a structure, which in

intentional analysis leads always again to components which are themselves

also intentional. So, for example, in starting from a perception of something

(for example, a die), phenomenological reflection leads to a multiple and yet

synthetically unified intentionality. There are continually varying

differences in the modes of appearing of objects, which are caused by the

changing of "orientation"Ñof right and left, nearness and farness, with the

consequent differences in perspective involved. There are further differences

in appearance between the "actually seen front" and the "unseeable"

<"unanschaulichen"> and the relatively "undetermined" reverse side, which is

nevertheless "meant along with it." Observing the flux of modes of appearing

and the manner of their "synthesis," one finds that every phase and portion

<of the flux> is already in itself "consciousness-of" but in such a manner

that there is formed within the constant emerging of new phases the

synthetically unified awareness that this is one and the same object. The

intentional structure of any process of perception has its fixed essential

type <seine feste Wesenstypik>, which must necessarily be realized in all its

extraordinary complexity just in order for a physical body simply to be

perceived as such. If this same thing is intuited in other modesÑfor example,

in the modes of recollection, fantasy or pictorial representationÑto some

extent the whole intentional content of the perception comes back, but all

aspects peculiarly transformed to correspond to that mode. This applies

similarly for every other category of psychic process: the judging, valuing,

striving consciousness is not an empty having knowledge of the specific

judgments, values, goals, and means. Rather, these constitute themselves,

with fixed essential forms corresponding to each process, in a flowing

intentionality. For psychology, the universal task presents itself: to

investigate systematically the elementary intentionalities, and from out of

these <unfold> the typical forms of intentional processes, their possible

variants, their syntheses to new forms, their structural composition, and from

this advance towards a descriptive knowledge of the totality of psychical

process, towards a comprehensive type of a life of the psyche <Gesamttypus

eines Lebens der Seele>. Clearly, the consistent carrying out of this task

will produce knowledge which will have validity far beyond the psychologist's

own particular psychic existence.

Psychical life is accessible to us not only through self-experience but

also through the experience of others. This novel source of experience offers

us not only what matches our self-experience but also what is new, inasmuch

as, in terms of consciousness and indeed as experience, it establishes the

differences between own and other, as well as the properties peculiar to the

life of a community. At just this point there arises the task of also making

the psychical life of the community, with all the intentionalities that

pertain to it, phenomenologically understandable.

3. The Self-Contained Field of the Purely Psychical.ÑPhenomenological Reduction and

Genuine Experience of Something Internal.

The idea of a phenomenological psychology encompasses the whole range of

tasks arising out of the experience of self and the experience of the other

founded on it. But it is not yet clear whether phenomenological experience,

followed through in exclusiveness and consistency, really provides us with a

kind of closed-off field of being, out of which a science can grow which is

exclusively focussed on it and completely free of everything psychophysical.

Here <in fact> difficulties do exist, which have hidden from psychologists the

possibility of such a purely phenomenological psychology even after Brentano's

discovery of intentionality. They are relevant already to the construction of

a really pure self-experience, and therewith of a really pure psychical datum.

A particular method of access is required for the pure phenomenological

field: the method of "phenomenological reduction." This method of

"phenomenological reduction" is thus the foundational method of pure

psychology and the presupposition of all its specifically theoretical

methods. Ultimately the great difficulty rests on the way that already the

self-experience of the psychologist is everywhere intertwined with external

experience, with that of extra-psychical real things. The experienced

"exterior" does not belong to one's intentional interiority, although

certainly the experience itself belongs to it as experience-of the exterior.

Exactly this same thing is true of every kind of awareness directed at

something out there in the world. A consistent epoch_ of the phenomenologist

is required, if he wishes to break through to his own consciousness as pure

phenomenon or as the totality of his purely psychical processes. That is to

say, in the accomplishment of phenomenological reflection he must inhibit

every co-accomplishment of objective positing produced in unreflective

consciousness, and therewith <inhibit> every judgpsychical drawing-in of the

world as it "exists" for him straightforwardly. The specific experience of

this house, this body, of a world as such, is and remains, however, according

to its own essential content and thus inseparably, experience "of this house,"

this body, this world; this is so for every mode of consciousness which is

directed towards an object. It is, after all, quite impossible to describe an

intentional experienceÑeven if illusionary, an invalid judgement, or the

likeÑwithout at the same time describing the object of that consciousness as

such. The universal epoch_ of the world as it becomes known in consciousness

(the "putting it in parentheses") shuts out from the phenomenological field

the world as it exists for the subject in simple absoluteness; its place,

however, is taken by the world as given in consciousness (perceived,

remembered, judged, thought, valued, etc.)Ñthe world as such, the "world in

parentheses," or in other words, the world, or rather individual things in the

world as absolute, are replaced by the respective meaning of each in

consciousness <Bewu§tseinssinn> in its various modes (perceptual meaning,

recollected meaning, and so on).

With this, we have clarified and supplemented our initial determination

of the phenomenological experience and its sphere of being. In going back

from the unities posited in the natural attitude to the manifold of modes of

consciousness in which they appear, the unities, as inseparable from these

multiplicitiesÑbut as "parenthesized"Ñare also to be reckoned among what is

purely psychical, and always specifically in the appearance-character in which

they present themselves. The method of phenomenological reduction (to the

pure "phenomenon," the purely psychical) accordingly consists (1) in the

methodical and rigorously consistent epoch_ of every objective positing in the

psychical sphere, both of the individual phenomenon and of the whole psychic

field in general; and (2) in the methodically practiced seizing and describing

of the multiple "appearances" as appearances of their objective units and

these units as units of component meanings accruing to them each time in their

appearances. With this is shown a two-fold directionÑthe noetic and noematic

of phenomenological description. Phenomenological experience in the

methodical form of the phenomenological reduction is the only genuine "inner

experience" in the sense meant by any well-grounded science of psychology. In

its own nature lies manifest the possibility of being carried out continuously

in infinitum with methodical preservation of purity. The reductive method is

transferred from self-experience to the experience of others insofar as there

can be applied to the envisaged <vergegen-wŠrtigten> psychical life of the

Other the corresponding parenthesizing and description according to the

subjective "how" of its appearance and what is appearing ("noesis" and

"noema"). As a further consequence, the community that is experienced in

community experience is reduced not only to the psychically particularized

intentional fields but also to the unity of the community life that connects

them all together, the community psychical life in its phenomenological purity

(intersubjective reduction). Thus results the perfect expansion of the

genuine psychological concept of "inner experience."

To every mind there belongs not only the unity of its multiple

intentional life-process <intentionalen Lebens> with all its inseparable

unities of sense directed towards the "object." There is also, inseparable

from this life-process, the experiencing ego-subject as the identical ego-pole

giving a centre for all specific intentionalities, and as the carrier of all

habitualities growing out of this life-process. Likewise, then, the reduced

intersubjectivity, in pure form and concretely grasped, is a community of pure

"persons" acting in the intersubjective realm of the pure life of

consciousness.

4. Eidetic Reduction and Phenomenological Psychology as an Eidetic Science.

To what extent does the unity of the field of phenomenological experi-

ence assure the possibility of a psychology exclusively based on it, thus a

pure phenomenological psychology? It does not automatically assure an

empirically pure science of facts from which everything psychophysical is

abstracted. But this situation is quite different with an a priori science.

In it, every self-enclosed field of possible experience permits eo ipso the

all-embracing transition from the factual to the essential form, the eidos.

So here, too. If the phenomenological actual fact as such becomes irrelevant;

if, rather, it serves only as an example and as the foundation for a free but

intuitive variation of the factual mind and communities of minds into the a

priori possible (thinkable) ones; and if now the theoretical eye directs

itself to the necessarily enduring invariant in the variation, then there will

arise with this systematic way of proceeding a realm of its own, of the "a

priori."

There emerges therewith the eidetically necessary typical form, the

eidos; this eidos must manifest itself throughout all the potential forms of

psychical being in particular cases, must be present in all the synthetic

combinations and self-enclosed wholes, if it is to be at all "thinkable," that

is, intuitively conceivable. Phenomenological psychology in this manner

undoubtedly must be established as an "eidetic phenomenology"; it is then

exclusively directed toward the invariant essential forms. For instance, the

phenomenology of perception of bodies will not be (simply) a report on the

factually occurring perceptions or those to be expected; rather it will be the

presentation of invariant structural systems without which perception of a

body and a synthetically concordant multiplicity of perceptions of one and the

same body as such would be unthinkable. If the phenomenological reduction

contrived a means of access to the phenomenon of real and also potential inner

experience, the method founded in it of "eidetic reduction" provides the means

of access to the invariant essential structures of the total sphere of pure

psychical process.

5. The Fundapsychical Function of Pure Phenomenological Psychology for an Exact

Empirical Psychology.

A phenomenological pure psychology is absolutely necessary as the

foundation for the building up of an "exact" empirical psychology, which since

its modern beginnings has been sought according to the model of the exact pure

sciences of physical nature. The fundapsychical meaning of "exactness" in

this natural science lies in its being founded on an a priori form-systemÑeach

part unfolded in a special theory (pure geometry, a theory of pure time,

theory of motion, etc.) Ñfor a Nature conceivable in these terms. It is

through the utilization of this a priori form-system for factual nature that

the vague, inductive empirical approach attains to a share of eidetic

necessity <Wesensnotwendigkeit> and empirical natural science itself gains a

new senseÑthat of working out for all vague concepts and rules

their indispensable basis of rational concepts and laws. As essentially

differentiated as the methods of natural science and psychology may remain,

there does exist a necessary common ground: that psychology, like every

science, can only draw its "rigor" ("exactness") from the rationality of that

which is in accordance with its essence"." The uncovering of the a priori set

of types without which "I," "we," "consciousness," "the objectivity of con-

sciousness," and therewith psychical being as such, would be

inconceivableÑwith all the essentially necessary and essentially possible

forms of synthesis which are inseparable from the idea of a whole comprised of

individual and communal psychical lifeÑproduces a prodigious field of

exactness that can immediately (without the intervening link of

Limes-Idealisierung <apparently meaning idealization to exact, mathematical

limits>) be carried over into research on the psyche. Admittedly, the

phenomenological a priori does not comprise the complete a priori of

psychology, inasmuch as the psychophysical relationship as such has its own a

priori. It is clear, however, that this a priori will presuppose that of a

pure phenomenological psychology, just as, on the other side, it will

presuppose the pure a priori of a physical (and specifically the organic)

Nature as such.

The systematic construction of a phenomenological pure psychology

demands:

(1) The description of the peculiarities universally belonging to the

essence of an intentional psychical process, which includes the most general

law of synthesis: every connection of consciousness with consciousness gives

rise to a consciousness.

(2) The exploration of single forms of intentional psychical processes

which in essential necessity generally must or can present themselves in the

mind; in unity with this, also the exploration of the syntheses they are

members of for a typology of their essences: both those that are discrete and

those continuous with others, both the finitely closed and those continuing

into open infinity.

(3) The showing and eidetic description <Wesensdeskription> of the total

structure <Gesamtgestalt> of psychical life as such; in other words, a

description of the essential character <Wesensart> of a universal "stream of

consciousness."

(4) The term "I" <or "ego"> designates a new direction for investigation

(still in abstraction from the social sense of this word) in reference to the

essence-forms of "habituality"; in other words, the "I" <or "ego"> as subject

of lasting beliefs or thought-tendenciesÑ "persuasions"Ñ(convictions about

being, value-convictions, volitional decisions, and so on), as the personal

subject of habits, of trained knowing, of certain character qualities.

Husserl, Edmund - Phenomenology (1927 Britannica Article).pdf

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