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Objectifying and Nonobjectifying Acts
Abstract
This chapter examines the distinction between objectifying and non-objectifying acts. The latter, in reacting to the objects presented in objectifying acts, reveal further, nonmaterial determinations of objects, most notably, the value of the objects or states of affairs presented, which values, in turn, motivate desires and choices. The chapter explores the distinction and relations among the three classes of experience (logical-cognitive or intellective, evaluative, and practical) in order to reveal how Husserl tried to navigate between two theories of reason, a pure intellectualism on the one hand and a pure emotivism on the other, and how these two views of reason affected Husserl’s accounts of the three domains of reason (logical-intellective, axiological, and practical), each with its own form of justification. Husserl envisioned these three domains of reason in a determinate relationship: axiological reason is grounded in and dependent upon logical-cognitive reason, and practical reason is grounded in and dependent upon axiological reason.
... All these states and acts belong to what Husserl addresses as the realm of Gemüt, which also includes drives and volitions. 4 Engelsen (2018); Melle (2019Melle ( , 2012Melle ( , 2015; Vongehr (2004). 5 A valuable analysis of joy in Husserl's phenomenology has been recently developed by Crespo (2022). ...
In the texts collected in the second volume of the Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins, Husserl extensively discusses experiences of joy (Freude). By considering Husserl’s examples related to joy not as mere illustrations, but as a guiding thread for the identification of experiential structures, this article shows how these examples are not only significant for the general theory of intentionality of affective and emotional non-objectifying acts, but also provide valuable insights into the specific phenomenon of joy itself. Specifically, the article demonstrates how the distinction between joy, sensory pleasure, and liking provides insights into the intentional structure of joy as a responsive affect. On the basis of these distinctions, the article raises the normative question about the appropriateness of affective and emotional responses. It argues that the appropriateness of joy should be assessed from two perspectives: in relation to the value that justifies an affective response and in relation to a personal motivational nexus. From the former perspective, joy can be normatively assessed. However, when only considering the latter perspective, joy cannot be assessed according to objective normative standards. Finally, building on these findings, the article explores how the phenomenology of joy and motivation may be connected to the specific experience of depth and discusses the role of joy for a phenomenological investigation of the personal self.
... Drawing on the distinction between objectifying and non-objectifying acts, two types of intentionality are distinguished (cf. Melle, 2019, Vargas Bejarano, 2006: 51-57, and Spano, 2022c. Objectifying acts provide objective positings, such as perceptions, judgments, and memories, and thereby the objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit) of the intentional object; thus, they relate to the being of the object and are the primary form of intentionality in that they make all conscious activities "intending objects" (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2012: 129), which can be either spatiotemporal or ideal. ...
When Husserl discussed the phenomenology of willing, he concluded that the sole theoretical foundation of the intentionality of consciousness is insufficient to account for voluntary acts as they do not primarily represent their content as given entities, but instead create the willed during their performance. Nonetheless, Husserl did not suspend the theoretical foundation of intentionality, meaning that the theoretical concept of objectual intentionality juxtaposes a practical concept of performative intentionality. Recent results from the field of robot-assisted gait rehabilitation provided experimental findings that may clarify this relationship, to the effect that the foundational structure of consciousness builds upon a heterarchical model of objectual and performative intentionality. A combination of phenomenological interview results, neural motor control, the functional design of the robot, and clinical data qualifies gait initiation as a non-objectifying act that creates its intentional object (i.e., the willed movement). In sum, the experimental findings support Husserl’s proposal of a genuine practical or performative intentionality that points to a heterarchical understanding of the relationship between representational and performative foundations of action consciousness.
... 19 'No perceptual act serves as fundament for an act with an empty slot, that is no content instantiates any of the species which are characteristic for meaning acts, but it may cause one to mislead if one concludes at this moment, however, as Husserl already noted, a perceptual act, is not something that is simply inarticulate' (Mulligan and Smith, 1986: p. 154). 20 'An objectifying act is that which presents the object in an evaluative meaning [Meinen], and there the valuing is still present with it' (Drummond and Höffe, 2019: 203;Melle, 1990). 21 According to presentism, 'time-lapse between the event causing the perception of an object and the actual perception. ...
This article looks at Husserlian ideas as an analytical tool to explain the cognitive aspects of experiences that range between knowledge acts in inferences and Mulligan’s contemporary perspective of meaning formation, through reflections of relations. The essay also takes into consideration the views of Levinas and Hintikka, for whom experiences form the foundations of intuitive capacity. These perspectives are essential concerning epistemic evidence to self (I/me-ness): mental objects and spatiotemporal relations are the structural notions of episteme on their own; their dynamics were tightly coordinated at an intentional process to strengthen episteme; this coordination appeared to be a state change caused in epistemic evidence.
Experience is a process that continually gives us new material to digest; Experience leads ever on and on, and objects and our ideas of objects may both lead to the same goal. (James, 1909/1975: 208, 258)
Can an emotion be unconscious? The aim of this paper is to answer this difficult question. Is it possible for an emotion to be a fully lived experience and at the same time remain unknown to the subject? Or, in clearer terms, how can one have a feeling without actually feeling it? At first sight, it seems impossible to imagine the existence of unconscious emotions. If, unlike ideas and other cognitive experiences, the essence of an emotion does not lie in its content but in the way it is experienced, in “the way it feels like,” then the expression “unconscious emotions” itself seems to be a contradiction. However, if we place ourselves from the point of view of the psychoanalytical theory of the unconscious, this statement creates a problem. Most of the unconscious processes revealed in the course of an analysis have strong emotional connotations. A phenomenology of emotions cannot ignore the results and theories brought forth by Freud and his psychoanalysis, whose most important discoveries concern emotions and their impact on the rest of the psychological life of the subject. If unconscious emotions question the limits of phenomenology, my aim in this paper is to show the way phenomenology can take in order to push these limits further. I will start by explaining the way phenomenology traditionally conceives emotions and their relation to other mental phenomena, using mainly Brentano and Husserl’s view on emotions. However, I will show further that there is a way that allows us to conceive the possibility of emotions that do not belong to consciousness. It is the way of a dynamic phenomenology, inspired by the works of Theodor Lipps, which constitute the main philosophical reference in the works of Sigmund Freud.
In this paper, I explore Husserl’s view on the normativity of intentionality and its neutralization. Husserl reaches his mature, normative-transcendental conception of intentionality by way of critical engagement with Brentano’s position. As opposed to Brentano, Husserl does not conceive of the normativity of intentionality as deriving from the more basic character of polar opposition. Normativity comes first and it is an original, though not universal determination of intentionality which is expressed in the identificatory achievement of constitution. Even where it is absent, this absence makes itself felt since neutrality is never the simple omission of normativity but essentially its neutralizing modification. The discussion of neutrality-modification in Ideas I is, however, problematic, as I will argue by drawing upon Husserl’s research manuscripts. I aim to show that neutralization is not a single but a group of closely related intentional modifications and that ways of neutralization are best conceptualized as changes of attitude. I will then examine phantasy and aesthetic consciousness as involving two such neutralizing attitudes. What they have in common is a spirit of playfulness in contrast to the serious commitment to truth that characterizes original intentionality. The neutralization of normativity takes place in play.
The aim of this chapter will be to reconsider a central aspect of Husserl’s analysis of the experiencing subject that many subsequent phenomenologists have regarded as unfounded: namely, his claim that a non-mundane ego-structure can be ascertained as pervading the life of consciousness as it is thematised in phenomenological reflection. Drawing not only upon Husserl’s best known presentation of this view in Ideen I, but also the critical edition of Ideen II, as well as Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins and the recently published Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins, I will argue that Husserl’s phenomenological account of the pure ego is supported and further articulated by the results of his concrete analyses of time-consciousness, attentive engagement, and emotional valuing. Beginning with the pure ego will not only enable us to make explicit the methodological context of Husserl’s analysis of empathy and the self. Getting a clear grip on the presence of the pure ego within conscious experience – and its intimate relationship to self-consciousness – will also allow us, in the chapters that follow, to elucidate the variety of foreign subjectivity manifest in various forms of empathy, as well as to ultimately appreciate the specificity of the personal self.
In this paper, I sketch an account of emotion that is based on a close analogy with a Husserlian account of perception. I also make use of the approach that I have limned, viz., to articulate a view of the kind of “conflict without contradiction” (CWC) which may obtain between a recalcitrant emotion and a judgment. My main contention is that CWC can be accounted for by appeal to the rationality of perception and emotion, conceived as responsiveness to experiential evidence. The conflicts in question can be regarded as obtaining between different strands of evidence, and our perceptual and emotional experiences can be thus conflicted even among themselves, not only in the special case of a conflict with a judgment.
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