Dorion Cairns - Conversations With Husserl and Fink

'
PHAENOMENOLOGICA-
'
E DES CENTRES DAl(CHIVES-HUSSERL
PATROBAG
COLLECTION FQNDEE PAR H. 1.. van BREDA ET PUBLIEE. sous

LE
DORION CAIRNS
Conversations with Husserl and Fink
IN LOUVA11\.
EDITED BY THE HUSSERL-ARCIIIVES
WITH A FOREWORD BY
RICHARD M. ZANER
Comit de rdaction de la collectio HI

Prsideni: S. Ijsseling (Leuven);
Membres: M. Farbcr (Buffalo), E. Finkf (Freiburg i. Br.),
L. Landgrebe, (K6111), \.V. Marx (Freiburg i. BL),
]. .\T. Mohanty (New York}, P. Ricocur (Paris), E. Strfjkcr {K6111},
]. Tammaux {Louvain}, K. H. Vulkmann-Schluck (K6111);
SBC1'1.iI'Bl
'lanlinaux
DQRIQN (jAIRI\
|
Corwersatzons war/2 Husserl and Fm/r
EDITEIJ RY THE1-{USSERL-ARC'IIIVli5
IN LOUVAIN.
WITH A FOREWORD BY
RICHARD M. ZANER
F
4 '1} o.|.'D3_+
0 '(-1
0 _
'
I
_
_ T __ T
_
_
_
MA R rII\ [J E) N I] H O I F fl FHE HAG UE J." 1976
I
"2 if
. 21 . /I/9 4
I976 by .Martnus Nijko_f,=, The Hague, NeHzer'Ia1cds

All rights reserved, inciuding the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
"L
._
ISBN 90 247 1531 8
l
I
<-
I E R S;
5e
'7
BIBLIUTHEK
O/Vs! Fe
PRINTED IN THE nnrnnatnnns
Foreword
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Conversation with Fink, 24,|'8/'31
Conversation with Fink, 17f8/31

Conversation with I-Iusser] and Fink, rZ,|8j31
Conversation with Husserl, Fink and Miyake, IqI8,*'31
Conversation with Husserl and Fink, 22,r8,?31
13.18/31
Notes on Husserl conversation, 27l6;'3r

Conversation with Husserl, 1I,f7f3I
Notes on conversation with Husserl, I8/W31
Conversation with Husserl and Fink, I1{8[3r
Conversation with Hnsserl and Malvine Husserl,
27)6!3I
Conversation with Husserl, I6f7j26

Conversation with Husserl and Becker, 24f6,I3I
Conversation with Becker and Kaufmann, 25 (26 or
Editor's preface
I.
II.
III.
V.
IV.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
X.
IX.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
Conversation with Husserl, 2818131

Conversation with Husserl and Fink,
Conversation with Husserl, 6]9;'31
Conversation with Fink, I6f9)'3I (?)
Conversation with Fink, 21jgI31
Conversation with Hnsseri and Fink,
XIV.
XXII.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XX.
XIX.
XXI.
afwfar
ZZI9/31
239!3I
17/9lsI
IIf9f3I
If9f3I
XXIII.
XV.
XXIV.
Conversation with I-Iusserl and Fink, 9!II/31

Conversation with Husserl and Fink, 12;r1,(31
Conversation with Hnsserl and Fink, 18;11;'31
XXV.
XXVI.
"-lU\UJNN
11
I6
I7
2o
24
27
28
30
31
32
32
33
34
36
37
37
38
4I
VI
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Conversation with
Conversation with
Conversation with
Conversation with
Conversation with
Conversation with
Conversation with
Conversation with
Conversation with
Conversation with
Conversation with
Conversation with
Conversation with
Conversation with
Conversation with
XXVII
Conversation with Husserl and Fink, 511132
XL
XXXIX
XXXVIII
XXXVII
XX XVI
XXXV
XXXIV
XXXIII
XXXII
XXXI
XXX.
XXIX.
XXVIII
XLI
Husserl and Fink, 20111131

Fink, 24111131
Fink, 7112131
Husserl, 8112131
Fink, 14112131
Fink, 19112131
Husserl and others, 26112131
Husserl, 28112131
Husserl and Reiner, 31112131
XLII
Conversation
Conversation
Conversation
Conversation
Conversation
Conversation
Conversation
Conversation
XLIII
XLIX
XL VIII
XLVII
XLVI
XLV.
XLIV
LI
XL

LI II
Husserl, 1311132
Fink, 1811132
Fink, 2011132
Husserl, 313132
Husserl, 713132
Husserl, 1113132
LII
with
with
with
with
with
with
with
with
LV
1516132
2316132
1517132
2019132
Conversation with Fink, 2319132

LIV.
LVI
LVII
LVIX
LVIII
LX
LXI
LXII.
LXIII.
LXIV.
LXV.
LXVI
LXVII
TABLE or CONTENTS
v11
Works by Hassert mentioned in the Conversations
Appendix
1. Topics, Husserl conversation, 2416131
11. Conversation with Husserl, 2516131
111. Conversation with Husserl, 2716131
109
107
103
104
105
99
100
Index 01 names
III
Lxvrrr. Conversation with Husserl, 2111132

LXIX. Conversation with Husserl and Fink, 15111132
Index of subjects
FOREWORD
This is an unusual volume. During his periods of study with Ed-
mund Husserl first from 1924 to 1926, then from I931 to 1932
- Dorion Cairns had become immensely impressed with the striking philosophical quality of I-lusserls conversations with his
students and co-workers. Not unlike his daily writing (five to six
hours a day was not uncommon, as Husserl reports herein, the
nature of which was a continuous searching, reassessing, modifying, advancing and even rejecting of former views}, Husserls
conversations, especially evidenced from Cairns's record, were
remarkable for their depth and probing character. Because of
this, and because of the important light they threw on I-IusserI's
written and published works, Cairns had early resolved to set
down in writing, as accurately as possible, the details of these
conversations. Largely prompted by the questions and concerns

of his students, including Cairns, the present Conversations (from
the second period, 19311932, except for the initial conversation)
provide a significant, intriguing, and always fascinating insight
into both the issues which were prominent to Husserl at this time,
and the way he had come to view the systematic and historical
placement of his own earlier studies.
Cairns had often insisted principally in his remarkable lectures at the Graduate Faculty of the New Schooll that attaining
a fair and accurate view of Husserls enormously rich and complex
1 Cairnss lectures between 1956 and 1964 are especially important. He addressed
himself to such topics as: Hl1sserl's Theory of lntenticmality {a tour-semester
course); "Tine Phenomenology of Thinking"; ]:lpiste|nology"; as well as several

courses dealing with ethics and value-theory, and major figures i|1 the history of
P11i10s0phY (especially Locke, Kant, Hume, and rgth century thought). These lectures, most of which were written out in full, form an important part of Cairnss papers
which, it is expected, will be prepared for publication over the next years.
FOREWORD
body of work required that one begin ones studies with those
works which were written at the peak of Husserls philosophical
powers, and then one could sensibly turn to the rest of the corpus, always reading it, however, in the light of the former. This order, Cairns maintained, placed the Cartesian Meditation-$2 first, followed by the Formal and Tra-nscemieatal Logic,'3 only after mastering these, could one meaningfully study Ideas, I4 (with a focus
on Part II, since t-lusserl rightly had serious reservations about
Part l, which he regarded as too unclear). After this, one could
then turn to the largely pre-philosophical (and certainly pretranscendental) Logical Irioesti'gati'or-is,5 and then the rest of
Husser1s works, published and unpublished. The present Conversations confirm precisely this interpretation, and moreover
give the rationale for it: as is amply clear herein, it was only in
the light of his labors in the r92os culminating in the first two
works mentioned above, that Husserl came to a level of genuine
philosophical maturity from the perspective of which the earlier
studies and inquiries could be viewed systematically and assessed
as to their approximation to, or failure fully to achieve, a genuinely philosophical significance. Hence, if for no other reason,
these Corwersah'ons have both historical and systematic importance for understanding llusserl's own views of his work. Coming
3 Edmund Husserl, Carcsiam'sri;e .-lfetiritatitmen mid Parriscr I'ortr&gc. Herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Prof. llr. S. Slrasser. Hnsserliana Band I. Hang: Martinus
Nijhoff, I950. Eng. tr. by Dorion Cairns. The. I-lagne: Marliiius Nijhoff, I960.
3 Edmund Husserl, Formals and trait-szcndentale Logiic. Vrrsuch eincr Kritik def
Iogischm Vrrrmm. Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, I929. ling. tr. by Dorion Cairns.
The Hague: Martinus Nijliuff, 1969.
4 Edmund Husserl, Idem zu einer reimm 1' Iaa11onie:mngi: and piiiiuomcsmiogilscken
Pkilosophie. lirstes Buch: Allgenieine lilinltihrung in die reine Phanornenologie. Herausgegeben von Walter lliemel. Husserliaiia Band lil. Hang: l\-Iartinus Nijhofi, 1950.
5 Edmunrl l~ll1sserl,Logisr:.Fze L-ntersacJ;:m_.r,'m. Hnlle: f\lH.X Niemeyer Verlag, 1900,
or {Vierte Auflage, 1:325). ling. tr. by _I. N. Findlay {in two volumes], from the 2nd
edition of I913. Ne\v York: The llunianities Press, 1970.
'5 Such as "Philosophie als strenge Wissensel-rail, Logos, 1 {191o1911}, pp. 289341 (Eng. tr. by Quentin Lauer, published along with another of Husserl's articles
under the title: II1sn-nrncnology and the Crisis of Ihi-fosopky. New York: Harper
Torchbooks, The Academy Library, 1965, pp. _71:47]. Other works by llusserl have
been carefully edited and p11lJli5hP(l under the auspices of the Husserl Archives, in the
series entitled Husserliana, published by Marlinlis Nijhofi.
These other works, Cairns often insisted, must he read in the light of the Formal
and Transcendmtal I.o;;,-ic and the ffartesian .~'l-feditatrfmi-s; especially is this the ease
with Erlalirimg and L-lrtsil, R'n's:'s o'er zuropaiscken lrl"i$$'n$t;kafi6B mid die transzerr
dentafc Pkrinoriicnologic, and all the studies left unpublished by Husserl during his
lifetime.
FOREVVORD
XI
soon after the completion of his seminal Formal and Transcendental Logic, and his lectures in France, the present volume records
his substantial effort to find a clear way of presenting this basic
conception of phenomenology, his evident concern to set his earlier studies in their proper context, as well as what he sees as the
major thrust of his immediately forthcoming work. Thus, not
only the major themes of the logic and their extension in further
logical studies, but also an important extension to the Cartesian
Mzdiitatziorz-s (in as many as three additional Meditations, as
mentioned in this work), and some of the important themes later to
be taken up in the Crisis, are all addressed herein. One of the most
striking features of Husserls lifelong effort to establish a truly
foundational discipline of philosophical criticism is here exhibited
quite dramatically and often to both Cairnss and Fink's surprise, if not dismay. Hardly any insight or result is regarded by
Husserl, even at this late date in his career, as definitively establi shed: He [and perforce his readers), finds it necessary continually to re-examine, research again and again, terrain which most
of his followers and critics would like to regard as Husserls established views, but which Husserl himself is never wont to
accept as established and closed to further discussion. Thus, not
only his views of the ego, constitution, embodiment, intersubjectivity, time-consciousness, Passiv-ia't, and other well known
themes, but even intentionality itself are submitted to renewed
and probing questioning in these Conversations. Nothing as he
emphasizes again and again can be taken as definitive; in the
words of the Formal and Trait-scerideuia! Logic, the j>oss1Tbiliy
of deception is inherent in the evidence of experience and does not
annul either its fundamental character or its effect . . ." Indeed,
he quite explicitly denies that evidence of any kinds can yield
an absolute security against deceptions . . .9 The present Corioersai-ioas give ample evidence that Husserl meant precisely what
he said: every effort, and claim, to know inherently require phenomenological explicative criticism, and that itself necessitates
continuous transcerrdenial self-criticism.
This volume is the last which Cairns had himself prepared for
7 Formal and Transcendental Logic, op. cit, p. 156.

8 Ibtd-. pp. 284-39.
9 Ibii, p_ 157_
XII
FOREWORD
publication. It was, however, by no means the only work which

he had hoped to publish, the plans for which were cut short by his
sudden and tragic death in january, 1973. Conversations with
him earlier on, as a result of which I had agreed to assume legal
and philosophical responsibility for his philosophical writings,
clearly indicated that among his vast and extensive writings,
spanning a period of forty years, Cairns believed that there were
between ten and twelve volumes which could be manageably
edited for publication over the years. With the great assistance
of Professor Fred Kersten, who is currently engaged in completing
a catalogue of Cairnss papers,1" it is hoped that others of his
seminal writings will appear sequentially in the near future. In
the meantime, it has been decided to place his papers, as they
are catalogued, with the Centre for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, under the directorship of Professor _]'os HuertasJourda at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Can ada, along with the papers of other scholars in the phenomenologi-
cal tradition.
RICHARD M. ZANER
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, Texas
january, I975
1" Most immediately, Prof. Kersten is preparing a new translation of l-iusserI's

Idea I, based on Cairnss wort-:. It is anitinipaterl that this will be complete by late
1976. Others of Cairnss works, especially his own original writings, can then be turned
to.
EDITOR'S PREFACE
In I968 the manuscript of the present work reached the HusserlArchives owing to the good offices of Professor H. Spiegelberg.
To prepare the manuscript for press we then, in agreement with
the author, assumed the responsibility for carrying out all the indispensable editorial compilation. Unfortunately Dorion Cairns
was not granted the scrutinizing of the submitted wording nor
the elaboration of his projected preface.
As with Cairnss G-aide for translating Hasserl the editors aimed
at preparing for press a text faithful to the original manuscript.
In doing so their interventions were limited to the correction of

the orthographical and grammatical mistakes, to the elimination
of disturbing stylistic irregularities and also to the completion of
rather a lot of abbreviations. Through his repeated reviewing of
the manuscript Professor Richard M. Zaner kindly contributed
thereto. Also he added the elucidative completions which went
beyond mere linguistic mistakes. These additions are all indicated
by the use of square brackets [ ].
In order to facilitate the reading of this work, to all German
terms and expressions was added a translation, which has been
put between angular brackets < >. These translations were if
possible made according to Cairns's Guide. If one and the same
expression was repeatedly used in one conversation the translation
was indicated only upon its first appearance.
All the numbered footnotes were supplied by the editors. These

footnotes chiey comprise biographical and bibliographical references, referring to names of persons and works mentioned in
the text, which today might be familiar only to a small group of
persons. The references bearing an asterisk were included by Cairns
himself.
XIV
EDITOR'S PREFACE
In order to facilitate the scientic utilization of this rather

unusual work, the editors finally thought it useful to add a table
of contents, an index of names, an index of subjects and moreover
a list stating all the works of Husserl referred to.
The editorial work was done by R. Bernet, G. de Almeida and
R. Parpan, scientific collaborators of the Husserl-Archives, working for the most part under the direction of Professor Herman
Leo Van Breda (T1974). The correction of the proofs was accomplished by Brian Maguire and Professor Richard M. Zaner.
Louvain, August I975.

Husserl-Archives
Conversation with Husserl, I6/7/26
Today I called for the last time on Husserl.

The reins Grammatik (pure grammar), he said, is a more inclusive science than one might assume from the Logis-the Uratersuckimgerz. Every language must a priori figure forth the form of
the assertion "A is B; furthermore, it 111ust set forth the model
forms: A is, perhaps, B. This setting forth may be done by the
tone of voice, if not expressly by special words. The word that

expresses the modality may figure in an asserted whole. A is
perhaps B may be asserted. Thus, in general, the modality may
become part of the matter.

Furthermore every language must set forth the distinctions,
found in the natural Einsteliaag (attitude), of subject and object,
Ich and Umwelt (Ego and surrounding world) quality, relation,
etc.
II
Conversation with Husserl and Becker, 24/6/31
Yesterday at eleven-thirty I saw Husserl for the first time since

my return to Freiburg. He seemed much the same as ve years
3g); hair a little grayer, a11d hearing a little less keen, especially
fol my low-pitched voice. Beckerl was there when l arrived.
1 Oskar Becker (:88g1964), phenomenological philosopher, co-editor of Husser]s

J""l"'b"c"1 (See note 8, p. 4], contributed :1 small supplement to l-Iusserls Formal: and
lranszamierxlalz Logik.
CONVERSATIONS
Apparently he was seeing Husserl for the first time since the
WITH HUSSERL AND FINK
Instructed to work through, first, the Mditations Cartsiennesa,

then the latter part of the Logik, then Idem, etc.
Conuersation with Husserl, 11/7]31
V
III
latters return from lecturing in Frankfurt, Berlin, and Halle.

After a few friendly inquiries, Husserl continued to speak on the
general theme of that trip.
Comlersat-to-n with Becker and Kaufmami, 25 (26 or 27) /6}31'

Becker, beim Tee, bezwe-ifelt, ob es cine allgemeine Interesse fair
Husserl jeizi gebeu refirde - ob sogar der Nachlass publiziert sein
wiirde.
Kaufmannz thinks that in the Stimmemg <mood>3 one has a
relation to the whole world that is not based on Erfakmng (experience). Also that acts of certain sorts acts of drinking, etc.,
cannot be e-ingeklammert <parenthesized>. (See Finl<s4 reply to
this objection, infra, conversation of 17/8/31, pp. 11-16).
IV
Notes on Husserl! conversation, 27/6/31
bl Cairns.
' The original German text was published in I950 as the first volume of Ilusserl's
Collected Works. At the time Cairns met Husserl, only a French translation by
G. Pfeiffer and E. Lvinas had been published. See index oi Husserl's works mentioned
Husserl proceeded to develop his idea of kinaesthesis. The constitution of an object in perception depends not only upon a certain Verlauf (course, flow) of sensationalhyletic data, but also
upon a certain correlation with a certain type of kinaesthesis. The
latter is not primordially grasped as revelatory of motion. Motion
operation no longer seems so simple.
I tried to statc my difficulty in finding the hyle as immanent

datum, whereupon Husserl explained it in a way which would
lead me if I were consistent in using terms as before to call it
transcendent. It is somehow "out there. The objects, the {objective) aspects of the object, are given as the continuity in a
multiplicity of hyletic Abschatt-rmg.-m <adumbmtons>. The latter
are primarily hylctic, and have the quality of being A bscimttmigen
only by virtue of the continuity which runs through a group of
them. This continuity is such as to constitute the basis for the
perception of an enduring object, or object-aspect. The esse of
the object is as a unity in such a multiplicity. All of the
qualities of the hyletic stream do not go into the unity. E.g.,
variations in visual sensation which are correlated with variations
in the focus of the eyes do not "go into" the color-form aspect of
the object. The result is, for me, a readjustment of the sense in
which objects are transcendent, and a concomitant widening of
the extension of the term immanent. What I had formerly
taken to be the whole field of immanence did not contain what
Husserl means by hyle. Thus it was small wonder that I did not
find it there.
Furthermore, I have gained further insight into the way in
which perceived things constitute themselves in perception. The
Idem orders the problems in a fortuitous manner since Husserl

had not yet thought the subject through.
Fink's work5 to be read; comes largely from Husserl.
Importance of phenomenological studies of English philosophy:
to show that phenomenology has special significance for English
philosophy as being that toward which English philosophy was
striving. Husserl gave me notes on history of philosophy.
3 Fritz Kaufrnann [1391-1958} was Husserl's student at Gt-ttingen and Freiburg,
took his doctors degree under Husserl in 192 3.

3 Kaufmann means Heidegges philosophical interpretation of the Stimmimg. Ci.
Sein mid Zeit, 29, pp. 134-140 {TE1bingeu: Niemeyer, I963}.
4 Eugen Fink (born I905) studied and took his cloctors degree under Husserl. He
was l-luss/.:rl's research assistant from 1930 until 1937. As Landgrebe before him (see
note 5?), he collaborated intimately and extensively with Husserl. For his works on
HusserIs phenomenology, cl. bihliograph y in L. Landgrebe {ed.), B.-zispiele. Festsclarift
[fir Eugen Fink sum 60. Gcburtsing {The Hague: Nijhoif, I965).
5 Cairns probably refers to Finks doctoral dissertation Vergegemirrirtigsmg umi Bald.

The first part of this work was republished in Stmiien zur Pl1<inomenotog1':: I930-1939,
(The Hague: Nijhoff, I966).
CONVERSATIONS
can be grasped only when space has been constituted. Kinaesthesis
differs from Einpfindnng (sensation) by having an intimate relation to subjective potentiality. The I can works directly on or
with kinaesthesis, and brings about sensational and hence objective changes only indirectly. The identity of an object depends
on a certain relation to the "ich kann (I can).
The body constitutes itself through perceptions of itself, and
the constitution of the body as a real object is a necessary condition for the constitution of a real world beyond the body.
I asked Husserl whether, if, were it impossible for the body to
have reflex perception of itself (one hand touch the other, the
eye see the hand, etc.) there would then be the possibility of the
constitution of a world, or of a body. If, e.g., our only sense organ
was the eye, would we have any sort of world? He answered no.
I told him about Becker's recent lectures, wherein he contrasted
what he stated to be Husserls notion of possibility, as "pure
possibility alone, with Heideggers7 notion of possibility as
potentiality, Vermogen (ability). Naturally Husserl was astonished that anyone could attempt a distinction between him and
Heidegger along this line. For fifteen years at least, he had been
operating with the notion of Mogliciikeit als I/'ermo'gen (possibility
as ability) - he had even been using the term Vermfiglichkeii
(facultative possibility) to express the egos free potentiality.
He spoke of phenomenology as the attempt to make understandable that which presents itself as brute fact, by making
evident its (rational) constitution. This in the end will give man
a life he can honestly and fully accept in a world he can accept,

in spite of brute facts like wars and death.
The next jahr/bucks is to contain not only the German of the
Mditaiions Cartsiennes but also further time-lectures and a
further work of Fink's and a short thing by a Munich jurist.
Husserl may give a seminar next winter.
7 Martin Heidegger, {born r889], Riekerts student at Freiburg, assistant in Hus-
I930. rt volumes were published. Co-editors were Moritz Geiger, Alexander Pliinder,
serls philosophical seminary from 1916 until 1922, editor of Vart.-zsungen zur Platinumenologie a'es irmeran Zeitbewutseins, co-editor of I-lusser|s jaltrbnck.
3 jakrbuck Mr P.-hlosofikie and phanomwsoiogrische Forscimng: this Annual for
philosophy and phenomenological research" was edited by Husserl from 1913 until
Adolf Reinach and Max Schelcr. These were later on substituted or joined by Martin
Heidegger and Oskar Becker.
Husserl characterized Heideggers Aristotle interpretation as a

reading back into Aristotle of an attempt to answer a question
which first arose in Husserls philosophy.
I forgot above to mention an all-important widening of the

meaning of kinaesthesis. Husserl spoke of the free possibility of
turning to" an object in memory as involving kinaesthesia.
Pursuing the strain indicated by the idea of potentiality, I
asked him whether feelings connected with the beating of the
heart or the processes of digestion were kinaesthesia in the same
sense as the feelings connected with hand or eye movements, and
as the kinaesthesia involved in memory. He replied that an express act of volition was by no means necessarily involved when
there is a connection between kinaesthetic and sensational data.
The idea of kinaesthesis expresses primarily a functional connection. Thus the essential distinction between sense data and kinaesthetic data remains unclear for me.
VI
Notes on conversation witli Hnsseri, 18/7]31
I began by stating that I was not clear about the nature of kinaesthesis, and this started Husserl on an analysis of perception,
much of which was familiar. To the perception of a physical object
there is necessary not only the constitution of a certain Einsiim-
migke-it (harmony, accord, accordance, agreement) in the Verlanf
(course, flow) of Empfind-ange-n (sensations), but also a correlated

kinaesthetic structure. Along with the sphere of nrspringlick-er
Passiuitcit (originary, primitive passivity) there is not only a
sphere of A ktivitit (activity) but also a sphere of secondary PassiW-'5iI'5 (passivity). The latter term indicates what necessarily follows of itself once we have actively brought about a certain situation. E. g., once I have turned toward perceiving an object a certain sort of Verlanf findet notwendig stair (course {or flow) necesSarily occurs). Really it is a Wessnsznsaniinenhang (essential
interconnection).
The sphere of activity is one of freedom and inhibition the

sphere where there is some sense in saying I can or I can't.
CONVERSATIONS
WIT!-I HUSSERL AND I-INK
is correlated an "organ", a perceptive organ, given as an object

through sensations correlated with the kinaesthesis or some other
organ. (This is the original phenomenological concept of an organ,
and it is not to be confused with the physiological concept, though
it is mitbestinimend (co-determining) for the latter.) The body as
organism is made up of the organization of such organs objects
Husserl asked if I had questions. I mentioned two problems: I)

the sphere of kinaesthesis in the wider sense and 2) association.
The meaning of kinaesthesis is widened in a way which has
little or nothing to do with aesthesis, so I gather. The basis is the
general quality of being a range of freedom for Ich-A kte (acts of
an Ego). The field of kinaesthesis in the narrow, common, sense
is one of freedom, of Vorderstitze (antecedents, preconditions) for
Wahrnekmnng (perception). If I move my head so, I bring about
certain changes in the perceptual field. So also there are Verde?sdtze for remembering and other acts within the realm of freedom:
If I do so and so, I can remember such and such. I did not get
much further than this in this matter, which formed the subject
Conversation with Husserl and Fink, I1/8/31
VII
with correlated kinaesthetic fields.
I have a world.
Activity goes out from a certain passivity, a certain given. This

is true in the case of memory. I try to remember a name. Ich beschciftige mick mi! den Namen mid dock nermag ion nicht es zn erinnern9. Vihen the process goes further toward its goal, there is
a Hemninng (inhibition).
The perception of an object involves the presence of a body as
organism. Only because I am as body a thing in the world, may
referring to Beiiage 2.1)
These analyses, or something connected with this general problem, Husserl wanted to give as Beilage II (supplement II) (Really
as Beiiage I) to the Log-ische Untersnchungen but he saw that the
analysis of kinaesthesia was insufficient and accordingly he suppressed the Beifage. The other Beiiage had already been printed,
and hence it stands as "Beilage 1 though there is in fact no
further Be-ilage. (In fact it has no number. Husserl got things a
bit twisted here. Really the thing that had already been printed
and that stands in the 2d edn. as a footnote (II, p. 364) [was]
As the field of kinaesthesia is the original field of potentiality

and activity, so the body as organism is the field of immediate
activity in the world of objects.
The field of potentiality and activity admits of varying degrees
of application of energy. One can attend, e.g., with more or less
energy. (Locke, remarked Husserl, had noticed these variations
in energy and, as ekriicher ilfe-nsch (an honest man), had described
them. Locke got on fine as long as he stuck to description. Only
when he tried to bring in the outside world is the Sachs
(matter) sckwankend (vaci1lating).)
Husserl brought in the notion of the I-iktines Kind (fictitious
child) to illustrate that there are developmental problems as well
as static analytic problems. In particular, the developmental
problem of the connection of certain kinaesthetic connections
with their corresponding perceptive variations.
The constitution of my body for me is by virtue of the fact that

each organ is in one or more ways object of another organ.
In the case of the kinaesthesia of touch (not the Empfindungen
(sen sations)) we ha ve the 2dimensional kinaesthetic field localized
on the surface of the body. But the two are not identical. When
I move the body, the surface is deformed but the field of kinaesthesiais not. Indeed, it has no sense to speak of the kinaesthetic
field being deformed.
The eye does not see the eye, and the relation of the visual
kinaesthetic field to the eye as physical object is therefore different.
There is no generic similarity between kinaesthetic data and
sensations. The latter ~ all of them, but in different degrees and
ways according to the field to which they belong are capable
of mediating the perception of an object. The kinaesthetic data
are not.
But kinaesthetic data form among themselves various systems
which in turn are interrelated and form a unity. \Vith each system
9 "I occupy myself with the names and, Yet, I cannot recall them".
1 Logische Untersucimngen, 2nd volume, rst part, p. 364 (2nd ed.}.
convsnsnrrons
of our previous conversation. Fink agreed with me (after we left

Husserl) that the term kinaesthesis was unfortunately extended
to cover the field of spontaneity, of the {ch-kann (I can).
For the rest, Husserl mostly restated already familiar matters:
the constitution of an objective world, of intersubjectivity, of the
transcendental consciousness. The freedom of return to the same
object he emphasized as being important for the constitution of
objectivity. The transcendental ego itself is not, in its activity,
temporal but rather temporalising (zeitigend). It lays down acts
which become temporally identifiable. It acquires habitus, but as
Ich-Pol (Ego-pole) it is not in time the way the Objekt-Poi (object-pole) is. (Fink pointed out that whereas the Di-ngerscheinungen (physical-thing appearances) and their Einstimmigkeit
(harmony, accordance) are the necessary conditions for the existence of the Objekt-Pol, it is the Snbjekt-Pol which is the necessary
condition for the existence of the acts, the "Snb;iektersckeinnngen"
(appearances of the subject).) This about the atemporality of the
pure ego was new to me. In speaking of habitu-s, Husserl spoke of
Habe (having, possession), which made clear that he was aware
of the etymological significance, and on that account chose the
word nab-itns.
VIII
Conversation with Husserl and Maloine Hnsseri, I3i8/31'
(Margaret and I at dinner at Husserls)
Present-day culture [is] characterized by an over-development of
technic. Tech-nik is something which can be learned without
learning the culture behind it. Tecknik [has] advanced further in
America because [there is] less culture there to hold it back. Our
culture [has been] determined fundamentally by the ideal of
science, which first appearedin Greece and continued, though mixed with other elements. Today the ideal has become lost, though
the technic which is the result of science remains. But the culture
itself must find its renewal in a rediscovery and thorough working
out of the idea of science: phenomenology. The crisis, the impasse,
of culture [is] shown by the fact that the young today are dissatisfied. Before it has been the old. This dissatisfaction [was] recorded
- [and] by Hergesheimenlz
by Huxley - [in] Point Counterpoint (Husserl read a passage

where science is compared to drink as being likewise a flight from
the harder job of living. He seemed pleased with the exposition
as an indictment of presentday non-phenomenological science),
(Pitkinl was in Diltheys seminar, became interested, and
He spoke of an optimism which he has because of the interest

of Wertheimer,13 Gelb,14 and the Wertheimer groups in Berlin,
Haile, and Frankfurt.
Previously he had been for a long time pessimistic - since a
careful reading of Heidegger, which showed him how far Heidegger was from him. He laid this to Heidegger never having
freed himself completely from his theological prejudices, and to
the weight of the war on him. The war and ensuing difficulties
drive men into mysticisms. This too accounts for Heidegger's
popular success. But [is not] Heidegger by far the most important
of the non-Husserlian philosophers today? His work bears the
mark of genius.
Before thus reading Heidegger he had often said to Heidegger:
"You and I are die Phiinomenoiogie".
At first, Husserl thought he was working only for himself, and
leaving the big tasks to the Herrn Pkiiosopnen (philosophers).
Then he saw that what he had at last found had universal validity. With the publication of the Logische Untersnchungen there
came great results. Students came from all over, and the group
worked night and day.
Diltheyl in Berlin gave a seminar on the Logische Uninsuchnngen and published a small paper in which he speaks of their
importance as epoch-making.
came to Gottingen, where he received permission to translate the

Logiseke Untersucfinngen. Later the prospective publisher was
.l"59P11 Hergesheimer (1830-1954), US author, novelist.
E Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963), British author.
1 Walter Broughton Firkin (1878-1949), US philosopher.
1" Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), German psychologist, together with K. Koffka

3113 W. Kohler one of the founders of Gestalt psychology.
15 ddhmar Gelb (188?-1936), German psychologist.
H _ Willhelnz Dilthey (r833-rgr 1} German philosopher, chief representative of the
h15tF1C1!~\t" trend in philosophy, which was criticized by Husserl in Philosophie als
strange Wissenschaft".
IO
CONVERSATIONS
I am to go to him at 11:30 Monday with definite questions.
advised by William James" not to publish. Husserl thinks that

James saw only the Proegomemz,13 and that its anti-Psychoogz'smus was very unsympatisck (unattractive) to James.)
The great result made Husserl optimistic but he soon saw that
the group did not progress with him. Already when he first read
on the phenomenological reduction, many did not come along.
After the publication of the Idem, Reinachlg and, following him,
others, broke away from the new developments.
He stated in this connection that there are many difficulties with
the phenomenological reduction, difficulties he had not seen at
the time of the Idem.
He advised reading the young English and American authors
to get in touch with the cultural situation there, spoken of above.
Frau Husserl seems doubtful of the advisability of devoting so
much time to the re vision of the German Mdz'ta.-ions Cartsiennes.
This a propos of my saying I found the French quite good as
showing that all philosophy which stops short of transcendental
constitution is inadequate, naive. She said the work of revision
stood in the way of so much other work. I replied that I thought
the French was not czusfiihrlick (complete, detailed) enough, because people were in the habit of reading fast and would overlook the real sense of the compressed sentences. Husserl said the
Mditations Canfsiemzes must be read like a mathematical work.
He spoke of phenomenological work as even stricter than mathematical work.
I told him of Whitehead's2'3 time-analysis, how with all its
similarity to Husser1s, it failed to distinguish between objective
and inner time, and did not see the constitutional problem.
Husserl said that the theory that was to come to correct views
here had to come to the problem from psychology, and through
Brentanozl. He spoke of Stout as one who, being influenced by
Brentano, might have done so, but did not.
'7 William James {1842~rgro], American psychologist and philosopher.
1" Prolegoruena zur reinen Logik" (Prolegomena to pure logic") is the title of
the first volume of Husser]'s Logis.-sire Lintersu-chungen.
W Adolf Reinach (rS831gr;'), German philosopher of law, phenomenologist.
2" Alfred North Whitehead (r36r1g.1.7), British philosopher and mathematician.
21 Franz Brentano (r8381gr7), 1-Iusserls teacher in Vienna, exerted a great influence upen Husserl and inspired his theory of iutentionality.
*2 George Frederick Stout (1860-1944), British psychologist and philosopher.
II
He said nothing gave the evidence of phenomenology like ac-
tual work on a special problem. His prize Schrift <work>23 saved

Fink, because it set him to work intensively on the problem of
Neutralittsmodifztation (neutrality modification).
Becoming historically conscious of its tradition is not adequate
to the salvation of present-day culture, because in history that
tradition is not itself conscious of its own meaning.
He spoke of his own inclination, always to inquire where things

were most distressing and uncertain, as important in determining
the nature of his discoveries.
IX
Conversation with F-ink, I7/8/31
I began by asking him what Husserl had meant at the end of my

last visit when he suggested that I ask him questions concerning
the phenomenological reduction, and he added that he had become aware since the publication of the Idem of many difficulties
in the reduction. To which Fink:
The phenomenological reduction is no longer regarded by Husserl as merely a step which frees the transcendental field for investigation. Its significance as making possible a naive sort of
act-analysis, such as one has in the Idem, remains; but phenomenological investigation cannot, after the phenomenological reduction, proceed as if in a homogeneous field, but must continuaily
exercise further reductions such as those involved in the problems
of genesis. The phenomenological field is not there at all,
but must first be created. Thus the phenomenological reduction
is creative, but of something which bears a necessary relation to
that which is there.
The phenomenological reduction has frequently, even at first
by Husserl himself, been confused with certain epochs which
may be exercised in the natural attitude. An example which
Husserl earlier used to illustrate the phenomenological reduction
H V-"8-lgenwzirtigursg and Bd (see note 5, p. 2), which received a prize in an

academic contest in 1929, before being submitted and accepted as a doctoral disser-
tation.
I2
CONVERSATIONS
but which he now uses to illustrate a differential character of an

epoch in the natural attitude, is as follows:
Two persons having a difference of opinion agree to sus;:end
judgment until they can appeal to the facts. Each however retains his own opinion, not only as a content, but also as an opinion,
he "suspends judgment" only in the sense that he no longer makes
use of his opinion, pending verification. This epoch is not phenomenological rcduction, since the real (world-) background of the
opinion remains posited by the persons in our illustration. The
epoch concerns a detail of the natural world, whereas the phenomenological epoch concerns the entirety of existence.
But it is important to see that the phenomenological reduction
does not involve a suspension of thetic activity. This characteristic it has in common with the above-described "suspension" of
judgment. The naive setting of the world still goes on. The epoch
is one exercised by the ego, not as directly lie-ivig its intentionallties, but as reflecting on them. As phenomenologically reecting
upon itself and its acts, the ego does not participate in the doxic
element involved in its acts.
Thus one has a doubling of the ego in the phenomenological
attitude: the simple, believing ego is distinguished from the
reflective ego which exercises the phenomenological epoch. Still
the two egos are essentially identical, and this distinction
within the ego becomes a phenomenological problem. A necessary
step in its elucidation is the analysis of the doubling of the ego
that takes place when, in the natural attitude, one reflects on and
exercises epoch concerning an act. In this case it is the psychic
ego which reflects, since it continues to execute the thesis of the
world in general, and continues to regard itself as in the world.
The consideration that the phenomenological reduction does
not inhibit the naive thesis keeps us from erroneously supposing
that analyses in the phenomenological attitude are analyses of
pseudo-acts and a pseudo-world. It should make it easier to understand what the phenomenological reduction is with respect to
non-doxic acts, such as decisions. In such cases it would seem
that any direct epoch would inhibit all there was of the act, or
change it essentially. An epoch in reflection, however, lets the
act proceed as it naturally does.
Having once carried out the phenomenological reduction, one
I3
comes upon acts which can be described with respect to their

noetic and their noematic aspects (as in the Idem), but which bear
within themselves indications that they have been established
(gestiftet) historically or genetically. This genetic establishment is not to be confused with the phenomenon of founding
(Fundiermig) such as is exemplified in the erecting of a valuing
on the basis of a perceiving. The latter (founding) is not historical
in the way that establishing is: i.e., it does not, like the latter,
involve a iiabitiis. The perceiving of a tree, for example, refers
back" to previous perceptions of trees, to the establisment of a
liabiius which determines that one sees certain things as trees.
This applies to every sort of obj ectivation.
Thus one has the further phenomenological task of exercising
an epoch concerning the effect (Leislimg) of the habitus and describing the structure which bears evidence of its genesis. One has
then the problem of whether or not every habitats necessarily
refers back to an event which is its original establishing (Urstiftimg).
This problem leads naturally to the transcendental problem
of childhood. The approach to this problem is by the way of investigating the way in which my childhood is given me. I find
that , although formally my past extends without end, it becomes
quite empty beyond a certain extent. Knowledge of the earlier
periods of my life-in-the-world is necessarily obtained from
society, either from persons who remember my childhood, or
from observation of others who are now children. As the being of
other persons for me is a genetically developed affair involving,
among other things, the previous apperception of myself in the
"world-as-miue,* a very complicated process is involved in the
original awareness of my childhood.
The same would be true about birth and death. These seem to
involve the ego as psyche, on one level, and on another to involve
the ego as bearer of habit-us.
To a question, Fink replied that Heidegger had not worked on
Husserl in this matter, but vice versa. Everything which Heideg* See the Medimtiomin
M 44: P. 124 ff.
14
convnnsarrons
ger takes over from Husserl loses the methodological sense
which it has for Husserl.

Wrhen speaking of the problem of continually laying bare the
transcendental field, Fink spoke of the phenomenological investigator's peculiar difficulty with language due to the fact that ontological positing is taken up into the very essence of the terms of
everyday life, so that every description involves verbal hypostatization. This difficulty is added to the difficulty of a tting description of phenomena, a difficulty present, however, in the
essence of every natural description.
The activity of the ego is the setting of being. In self-awareness it sets its own being. Such positing is involved in the sense
of every act. Phenomenology is the coming to self-awareness of
the ego over its own activities. As such, [it is] an infinite task.
The term God is used occasionally by Husserl in private conversation to mean the community of transcendental egos which "creates" a world, but this is for Husserl a "private opinion.
Phenomenology has only comparatively lately come to awareness of its own goal or program. To say that Husserl has been
guided by the ideal of science and then to assume that criticism
of the goal of the factual sciences is likewise criticism of the goal
of phenomenology is the result of misunderstanding the sense in
which the goal of science is the goal of phenomenology. The goal
of science becomes greatly transformed and its significance
deepened, it is but a ctne to the goal of phenomenology, to the
goal of true science itself, which is phenomenology.
I asked a question about the fields of sensation and the type
of unity which they have, remarking that it might be interesting
to analyse the key to which data are spatially outside each
other and come to motivate the corresponding qualities of seen
objective aspects, whereas there is a different structure for, e.g.,
aural sense-fields.
He took occasion to indicate first that the sensory fields appear
only when we stop short of the motivated apprehension of the
corresponding objective sensory aspects, and that this stopping
short was difficult. Next, that the analysis had to take place as
static analysis of the total perceptual phenomenon. We ought to
be very careful about speculations as to, e.g., the conceivability of a conscious stream in which there was no motivation for
I5
the apprehension of identities either immanent or transcendent

(although Husserl speaks in the ldeen of a possibility of such a
breakdown of the elements in the stream that there would be no
more world for n1e25).
The ontological status of an ego which did not express itself
psychophysically for others and did not apperceive itself psychophysically would be a riddle. One may well doubt that such questions havc a legitimate meaning when asked about the transcendental ego.
Sense fields are, in general, connected with kinaesthetic fields,
which latter, by apperception, are in the world".
Fink himself intends to turn next to the problem of the apprehension of totalities, such as the whole of nature, the whole of
time, and the whole of real spacc*.
This problem is in close connection with the Kantian problem
of the solution of the antinomy of pure reason. Kant's solution
is characterized by Fink as negative. Space is neither finite
nor infinite.
In Husserl one finds a tendency to explicate the awareness of
infinite space as an awareness of the infinite iterability of the
extension of ones own environment ever further. Fink doubts
that infinite space for us is obtained by such a process. It must
be already there for the process of endless extension of my near-
space to take place in.
He remarked on the regrettable fact that such matters as the

deeper nature of the phenomenological reduction are not in final
form anywhere in Husserls manuscripts. For the most part Fink
has learned of these later developments only in conversations. It
does not seem likely that Husserl himself can still have time to
write an authoritative development of them.
The second part of the Ideen, which contains analyses of the
development of the ego through the acquisition of habitus, and
the third part, although both [are] in finished ( P) manuscript form,
are not destined for publication.
The time lectures that are to appear in the next volume of the
L
I14 f-
This Problem seems opportune because of the stress Heidegger puts upon the
awareness of wholes.
25 cf lags I14~9:
16
convnnsarrons
jahrlmck are from the years 1915-1919 and, instead of dealing

chiefly with acts of memory, anticipation, and the like, as do
the already published analyses develop further the analysis of
the passive association which forms the stream.
In the volume for the following year are to appear separate
investigations connected with problems outlined in the Meditation-en. The great point of getting the Meditationen out beforehand
is to provide a framework for orienting the separate investi-
gations.
The difficulty of seeing the place of the earlier time-lectures in
the whole system is the chief source of Husserls dissatisfaction
with their publication at the time with Heideggers insufficient
introduction.
X
Conuersat-ion- with Husserl and Fink, 17/8/31
After talking together, Fink and I called for Husserl, who expressed approval when told we had been talking about the deepening of the understanding of the phenomenological reduction*.
Fink supplied the information that we had gone out from the
problem of the reduction of non-doxic acts, such as decisions.
A decision, said Husserl, is one of many volitional modi. There
is a volitional "doubt", and there are degrees of volitional "certainty. All such modi are closely connected with the doxic modi.
I do not remember how he went on from this point. The conversation turned to the nature of habitus, and to the nature of an
originally establishing act. Husserl looked for an example. At
first he took a mountain, but rejected it because it was a particular
object, and hence not a good instance of what he wanted to show.
Instead he said, suppose I see an albatross for the first time and
learn the nature of the bird for the first time as albatross. Ever
after I see albatrosses when I come upon such individuals.
Again the thread of the conversation escapes my memory.
* Insight into the nature of phenomenology, constitution, fills us with wonder, yet
not vulgar wonder, since we have insight. The phenomenological problems present
themselves as riddles, but it is the essence of :1 riddle to have the clue to its answer
in itself. l\'o impossible riddles.
I7
Husserl came to the analysis of the inner time-consciousness. I
raised the doubt whether the now-point as point was perceivable,

whether it was not an ideal limit of the narrowing down of the
specious present, something indicated (angedeutet) by the specious
present, but not strictly perceived.
In this sphere, said Husserl, there is nothing like an ideal. True,
to every experienced continuity a mathematical continuity can
be fitted, but this process of mathematization, of logicizing, is a
secondary one. It is likewise not simple. He returned to the analysis of the time-consciousness, and developed its characteristic of
being more than a mere boundary between past and future, since
out of it the past springs and in it the future is actualized. It
is interesting that in the latter process something like habitats
plays a role: the future is realized according to a pattern determined by the past.
He then proceeded to develop the idea of logicizing, first as a
process applied to the objects of the outside world. One must
there distinguish two forms, one of which never leads to mathematization, but remains descriptive of types (genus and species).
The other form of logicizing involves the application of mathematical formulations true to a certain number of decimal
places". In the first, quantity has a place; but it is the quantity
with which we deal in everyday life,
XI
Conversation with Husserl, Fink, and Miyake (japan), I9/8/31
Bliyakeas started reading a paper on Die Intersnbfektinitat and

die Konstitution tter objective-n Welt97. The paper began with a
resume of the account in the Med-itationen of the primordial sphere
of the ego23. Concerning this he attempted to develop the thing
fuffhfif, saying quite incorrectly "In tier prirnordialen Sphere gibt
es keinen komogenen Ranrn, sondern tier primordiate Ranm ist ein
2,
-. .
.
I
burg Gmchl Mlyk (born 1895), Japanese philosopher, a student of Husserl at Frei-
2? 1-Clntersnbjeetivity
. .
_
,
_
_
:8
the constitution
of the objective
world".
arteswamsclie Medztatwncn, 44-47, pp_ ;;>4_135_
I8
CONVERSATIONS
speziffsck zenfrierter Rcmm29. Incorrectly, since the motivation to

the constitution of a homogeneous space lies already in the
primordial sphere. Fink jumped on this point immediately. Husserl took the occasion for general considerations on phenomenological method, as the constitution-problems in general, and in
particular the constitution of homogeneous space.
[We must] start always with the given world and proceed by the
method of Leitfdden (clues) to disclose the various levels of constitution. (Already we have made abstraction from the Unstimmigkeiten (discordancies, inconsistencies) of experience. But Unsttmmigkeiten are auffallend (conspicuous, striking), and unless
they are to be seen, all may be said to flow on in Einstimmgkeit
(harmony, accord).) This is the sense of the Abbas (unbuilding)
of the physical world, misunderstood by Heidegger.
[A] charge of abstractness [was] made against transcendental
phenomenology, [with the] reply that opponents don't know what
real concrete method is. We are really concrete since we always
are but reading off what is in the full presented phenomenon.
The points in the objective time of the primordial sphere
correspond one to one with the points of time of the immanent
flow of Erlebmsse (mental processes or occurrences).
Motion is founded on rest. Each point of movement is essentially a point of possible rest.
Kinaesthetic systems [are regarded] as necessary to the founding
of rest and motion.
Kinaesthetic Rube (rest) is Still-bieiben (standing-still).
B25 Still-bleiben tier Kinaesthesz's3 provided I am unmoved by
other bodies (I as ordered in the sphere of physical causality by
the possibility thereof) other objects constitute themselves as at
rest in a synthesis of unvaried aspects.
A certain given change of aspects may constitute moving objects
or my own movement in "world" or both according to the
accompanying kinaesthesia.
(In early work before Logische U-ntersucimngen Husserl confused
Erlebms (mental process) and Aspekt-Erscheinung (appearance of
*9 There is in the priornordial sphere no homogeneous space, but rather primordial
space is a specifically centered space.

5 While the kinaesthesia is at a standstill."
WITH HUSSERI. AND FINK
I9
an aspect), whereas it is the case that Einstimmigkeit (harmony,
accord) of one sort constitutes A spekte (aspects), and Ei-nstimmgken! of aspects, objects. His errors and oscillations were due to a
complicated problem, not to some fortuitous stupidity. Nothing's
fortuitous.)
The synthetic system of possible points of rest, as all outside
of each other and correlated with the various synthetic systems,
founds the oriented space.
My body is the null-oriented object. When an object is attached
to my body (as when I carry it, or it me) it maintains with me a
null orientation as I may perambulate space. Similarly, parts of
my body may take on perspective when cut off. (Problem of losing
the whole body bit by bit until all is gone.) Then [there is] no basis
for a psychophysical apperception of the sensation and kinaesthetic systems as Grenzf-all (borderline case). Assimilating an
object to my body (giving same null orientation), moving with it
etc., as all processes founded in certain kinaesthetic syntheses.
Perception is a bodily activity, involving kinaesthesis.
Problem of phantasying myself in another place [is] quite difficult, but its solution [is] an important step in making understandable that analogizing association which makes intelligible the experience of other minds. Association is by likeness. I here, and
another body there, is not sufficient unless I have phantasied myself as there.
But such phantasy may be itself based on experience of others,
it will be objected. Such would seem certainly to be the case when
one sees a mirrored reflection as of oneself. These questions indicate [the] difficulty of problems here.
After one has analyzed the constitution of the other mind
in general one may proceed to consider the higher, founded,
structures of intersubjectivity and the various forms of social relation - marriage, family, etc. in Wese-asallgerrie-miaeit (eidetic universality) ; then the problems of abnormalities, of non-human subjects, blind, deaf, idiots, etc., and the problems of a ge-rmine life
under ethical laws. Each problem in its place.
Birth and death we know only on the basis of intersubjectivity.
Death appears as a pause in other life. In this it is analogous to
Sleell But sleep appears in the prirnordial sphere, too, likewise

R5 11 pause and its analysis is very difficult.
20
CONVERSATIONS
Fink tells me the manuscript I had of the Mditations Camisiennes is an exact duplicate of the one from which the French
was done. If so the translators are guilty of errors and omissions,
as I have indicated in my copy at the beginning of the 5th Mediration.
XII
Conversation with Husserl and Fink, 22/8/31
I had sent Husserl on the previous day a list of the worst omissions
and errors I had found in the early part of the French translation
of the Fifth fldeditation. So thats the way the two translations
are, he said in effect. They will be hindrances rather than helps
to an understanding in England and France.
He then passed on to speaking of what he had recently been
doing. The morning he had spent in putting his recent manuscripts
in order. He gets into an A rbeitsfieber (work fever) and does not
even number his pages so that afterwards he has a job straightening them out.
Recently he has been working on a problem which he developed
as follows. Starting from the fully concrete situation one comes
through abbauende Analytik (unbuiiding analyses) and then the
oppositely directed synthetic or constitutional work to distinguish
several Sckichten (strata) in the structure of the concrete phenomenon. Assuming, for example, that we have come always from
the concrete! to consider the fields of sensation as lowest
levels of constitution of objects, we may isolate, say, the field of
vision as a synthetic unity through association. We may further
abstract from all systems of kinaesthesis save the system belonging (in apperception) to ".4ugenbewegung (eye-movements).
We may then observe how, other kinaesthetic systems being held
still, there constitute themselves unities within the field of vision,
correlated with the eye-kinaesthesia. In general thereis constituted
an "A ugmbewegungsraum (space of eye-movements). Then there
constitute themselves identical plane surfaces within that space
identical, however the eye-kinaesthesis may take place. In the
simplest case we have the constitution of a stationary surface,
but there can also be constituted identical surfaces as moving, as
2I
changing their shapes and colors. Within this simple space there
may even be constituted something like causal relations.

Wlien, now, other kinaesthetic systems, instead of remaining
still, are brought into play, these identical plane "objects" may
show themselves to be aspects of three-dimensional objects. This
is most obviously the case when the kinaesthetic systems of locomotion are brought into play.
Then again, with reference to intersubjectivity these private
3 dimensional space-objects become aspects of intersubjective
3 dimensional space-objects. For simplicitys sake assuredly, Husserl omitted the syntheses of the several objects of the several
fields of sensation to the constitution of one object.
Now the analysis up to here has been carried through (roughly)
for the constitution of the present. But the private present is
extended by the inclusion of the private past and future, to which
we have Zugangsweisen (ways of access) in the forms of recollection and anticipation. Objects constitute themselves as going
beyond the present, may even constitute themselves as going beyond the reach of individual recollection. For a certain stretch
back my past accompanies the past of my objects, but not all the
way.
In intersubjectivity I find that there is a corresponding extension into past and future, not only through the inclusion of the
past and future Leistungen (productions, products) of the present
members of the intersubjective society, and the correlated objects also objects of their memories and anticipations, but through the
Le-isttmgen of past and future members of the same intersubjective
group. The world as it gives itself on this intersubjective level
bears characteristics due to the Leistunge of the "cultural" group
back through the ages.
There are two ways in which such an intersubjectivity can
widen itself. First, through coming in contact with another historical intersubjectivity, as when, e.g. two races with no past connections (perhaps though probably not exactly - Europe and
China?) come together making a common intersubjectivity with
two separate pasts.
The other way is through the extension of the past of the interSubjective world back beyond the furthest reaches of the intersubjective past, as through the study of palaeontology. This is
22
CONVERSATIONS
the analogy on the intersubjective level of the extension of the

private worlds-past back beyond birth of the individual. The
result is that the intersubjective world itself with its objects is
seen as an Erscheinung (appearance) of some more basic world,
to which we have, however, some sort of access, even experiential
access, through present geological strata e.g.?
There arises now the problem whether this process of relativizing the world could proceed further; if so, whether it could proceed without limit.
I remarked that I could not conceive of a further relativization,
and Husserl said he could not either, but that did 11ot answer the
question, not show that it couldnt be asked.
Fink remarked that in NeoKantianis1n the development of the
world is in a way considered as parallel to the development of
reason in history, but that a closer parallel, though still naive, of
course, is to be found in Hegel.
This impelled Husserl to say that the great difference was that
in phenomenology one has to come to these questions from the
bottom up, and is not impelled directly by any historical Anregmag (suggestion, incitement). Hegel, he said he had never read.
He used to give (or once gave) a course on Kant and his successors,
but never got beyond Kant.
Yet is it so that the study of the history of philosophy offers
the phenomenologist many A m/egzmgen, once he has progressed a
certain way. It is of interest to see in what Schichten (strata) the
older philosophers ask their questions. One finds them of chief
interest precisely where they come into difficulties because of
their naivet.
Kant (particularly where he is dealing with the E-iabzTldungskmft (imaginative facu1ty)) is working at problems of phenomenological significance, although he is involved in a "faZsrrhe L0g:'f1'z-iemng (false logicizing) and is not quite clear.
(During the war Husserl turned to Fichte's speeches and read
with great Uberraschmzg (surprise) for the first time.)
History of philosophy must be interpreted from the point of
view of the systematic insight primarily. That insight itself makes
as it were a "cut in history of philosophy. Sets everything in
motion.
The problem of transcendental constitution, said Husserl in
WITH I-IUSSERL AND FINK
23
effect, is, as I have said to Herrn Dr. Fink, none other than the
problem of how God created the absolute world, and continues
to create it, even as the transcendental intersubjectivity creates
its world". The phenomenological form of the ontological argument is the conclusion from the absolute constitutive consciousness. (The last stage of the process of relativization of objects
which Husserl spoke of at the outset.)
But all these are last questions, questions of such great interest,
that one is tempted to go into metaphysics in an "Aarfsci1wung
(soaring) a phrase by which Scheler31 actually characterized
metaphysics. However one must creep before one can fly; one
must do a lot of dirty work (schmutzige Arbert) on the ground
before one can get into ones airplane and fly.
The earlier problems of phenomenology are much the most
complicated.
Husserls dirty work was largely done in the Logische Uutersuckrmgen and the first workings out of the rough outline of the
constitution of the objective world.
In Giittingen it was fine the way the students discussed and
developed their phenomenological problems albeit they got a
bit too solidly settled in a Hei-mwelt (familiar world) of their own
so that they would listen not to anything which was strange to
it, such as the lectures Husserl gave at the time.
By 1907-8 (P) when he came to give a certain series of lectures
(on phenomenology as a whole?), he was surprised to see how
wide and systematic a knowledge of the field he had already
gained.
But as it is today so difficult for him to write a zusammenfassende

Arbeit (summarizing work) (the German riled-r'tatons)32, so it
was then impossible, as he was in doubt about the total picture.
Still the lack of a general orienting work would have made his
Special studies liable to misunderstandings that would have
hindered a later understanding of their true significance. So he
did not publish anything for a long time.
With Fink he then talked of the necessity of a careful introductory exposition of the relations of the about-to-be-published
31 Max Schdef f13?4r928J, German phenomenological philosopher.

3 See note 6, p. 3.
24
CONVERSATIONS
Time-Lectures to the general scheme, as it is to be outlined in the

Medttations which the same volume of the jahrbnch is to contain.
Also the relation of these later Time-Lect ures to the earlier ones
must be made clear.
XIII
Coneersatto-n with Fink, 24/8/3r

I began by asking whether the Gedanken-gang (train of thought)
of last Saturday brought anything new, and Fink said it did not.
Then I asked whether or not it was an oversimplification on
Husserls part to speak of the ocnto-motomsche-n Ramn (oculomotoric space) as bless zwetztt-rne-nstonat (merely two-dimensional).
Again he recalled the importance of bearing in mind the fact that
one is always confronted with an experience wherein the world
is already fully constituted, and that it is difficult to isolate a lower
level of that constituted phenomenon. When one does so and considers such a level as is oculomotor space, then it is incorrect not
only to speak of such a space as three-dimensional, but even to
speak of it as two-dimensional, since two-dimensionality is itself
a quality of surfaces in a fully constitntert world space.
In proceeding to distinguish the various levels of constitution
of objectivity he mentioned what Husserl speaks of as the Phantom, the identical object of the several sensefields, but without
causal qualities. The Phantom is accordingly not the full object
of the world.
The procedure from level to level in the constitution of objects might well. be spoken of as a Wantttnng (change). That
word suggests that there is an identical element in the several
levels, as is the case: they are not outside each other.
He distinguished two sorts of genetic analysis, one the sort
that we can perform on certain cases of apperception, where the
-nr-sttftenrte Erfanrnng (primally instituting experience) lies within the sphere of Origincirgegebenneit (originary givenness) and We
can accordingly go through the process intuitively, the other the
sort that we can perform on an apperception such as we have
when the world is constituted and the ego is constituted as
Mensrh (human being). Here the earlier stages are not origins?!
WITH I-IUSSERL AND FINK
25
gggnglich (originarily accessible), and must accordingly be term-
ed constructions, though as constructions they are still not arbitrary.

The notion of Origtndrgegebenktnt, like rnost phenomenological
concepts, differentiates itself. The other mind in the present situation is not or-tg-tncir zngtinglick in the same sense that my own
mind is. On the other hand, the other mind in the past, e.g. julius
Caesar, is not ortgintir zngiingltch in the same sense that the other
mind in the present is.
The Mean analyzes acts in the realm of the U1/modns (primitive
mode) of givenness: presence. But whereas it is correct to begin
with an analysis of whatever the Urmodns may be, one must then
consider the modifications thereof. Such relations of Urmottns and
modification are found in every sphere.
The great advance of phenomenology beyond all traditional

philosophy will show itself more clearly when the problem of the
constitution of the ego as in-the-world is shown more clearly as
progressing parallel with the constitution of the world. It is not
the transcendental ego pure and simple that has the world, but
the ego as eerweltt-tent (secularized, made worldly). (The word
made flesh, Gods son made Man.) This fact is not seen by the traditional idealistic schools.
Likewise the awareness that fn-der-Wett-Setn (being-in-theworld) is constftntect, that it offers constitutional problems and
is not merely a basic situation is lacking for Heidegger.
I asked how he understood the relation of Heidegger and Husserl, saying it was hard for me to believe that Heidegger "misunderstood" as simply as, say, Schlick33. Neither Heidegger nor
Husserl sees the other without a certain "foreshort ening. Schlick
misunderstands out of stupidity; Heidegger rather because he
came to Husserl with the fundamental idea already that all knowledge is to be interpreted from the basic fact of human finitude.
Like Kierkegaard in the latter's attitude to Hegel, Heidegger
Pmbably finds in Husserl a certain hybrts, a certain "superbity,
f1'EB'EfiI1g the limits of humanity, and fleeing from certain
Problems, such as those of death, etc.
as Moritz Schlick (1382-1036), Gernzrau philosopher, leader of the group of neoP5lll"'i-~l-5 Wllich came to belknown as the Vienna Circle.
26
CONVERSATIONS
The development of the problem which Husserl undertook day
before yesterday led in the end, as I have stated in my account

of that conversation, to the question of the possibility of a further
the case of knowledge of other minds.
relativization of the word as given in science.

Fink thinks that a further relativization could have no meaning.
But the nature of the world as ultimate could well lead to an
ontological* argument for the existence of God. The argument
for God would be indeed but an argument or proof, since there
is no possibility here of Ei-n-fitittitng (of expo?-iencing God), as in
The situation for phenomenological idealism is not the same as
for a realism. For the latter, a consciousness must be set to oversee the whole sphere of being in itself.
The problems of particularity, of facticity, appear to fall outside the sphere of phenomenological achievement when one judges
that sphere by what Husserl has published. The sixth and seventh
meditations shall give (I) some account of this type of problem
and (2) the concrete working out of some particular problem of
this sort. For the possibilities and the facticities of constituted
objects find their basis all in the higher facticity of the transcendental consciousness. Here we find the basis for both essence
and fact.
Husserl was working on another, larger, all-embracing book
when he interrupted that work to finish up the German Meditations. This was to bring much that the existent manuscripts do not
contain among other things, methodological elucidations of the
way one approaches and develops a phenomenological problem.
The constitution of geisteswissensctmftticlie Gegenstiinde (objects
of the socio-cultural sciences) is worked out in some detail in the
manuscript, but not the constitution of the objects of physics.
Husserl devoted himself more to the problem of the constitution
of the natural world of everyday life, in which the physicist finds
motivations for the constitution of his world.
He has, however, considered such problems as the geometrizing
of the everyday world, the setting of a geometrical triangle in the
place of a seen triangle, for example.
* I probably meant teleological, 7 Feb. 1949.
XIV
Coiwersation to-tth Hnssert, 28,18/3r
27
But the phenomenological method, though it overcomes this
Husserl began by asking me if I had any questions, to which I

answered that I had recently been attempting to get a general
idea of phenomenology, and that I was feeling it very difficult to
know where to begin, as everything which came later seemed to
have a bearing on what had gone before.
This circumstance, he replied, was what had kept him so long
doubtful about the proper introduction. A first attempt, destined
not only to introduce other people to phenomenology but also to
provide himself with guidelines, was the series of lectures he gave
in London, a later attempt the Paris lectures, a still later the
German Meditations on which he is now engaged.
The form of phenomenological investigation is a zig-zag, as he
stated already in the introduction to the Logische Untorsnchnngen
{which is otherwise very primitive, ipse dixit). One starts out, goes
a certain distance, then goes back to the beginning, and what
one has learned one applies to the beginning.
I observed that I thought the discussion of the obtaining of the
ideal of science from living through the tendencies of science
was inadequately set forth at the beginning of the first French
Meditation. One would want to know more precisely new an ideal
or purpose is given to one.
Husserl said that from the point of view of phenomenology it was
indeed natural to want to have further explanation, but that, up
to the introduction of the phenomenological reduction, there is no
glimmer of phenomenology in the meditations. He is seeking a
way from the everyday life that would motivate. a going over into
the transcendental sphere, and he is accordingly speaking quite
naively at the outset of purposes as something given in the natural
attitude.
first naivet of the natural attitude, only leads us first into a new
naivet, that of simple descriptive act analysis. This in turn must
be overcome by progress to the deeper constitutional analysis.
Constitutional analysis is not the same as descriptive analysis.
In the latter, one explicates objective moments of the object, its
28
convnnsarrons
qualities, its relations to other objects. In constitutional analysis

one considers the act in which the objects and the objective
moments are given.
For example, consider :1 Han-deln (acting, action). We may
analyze it in a naive way, distinguish each phase as relative to an
end, find in a piece of work such characteristics as half finished,
as objective characteristics. Concepts of entelechy and dynamis
have their exemplifications in such connections. But constitutional
analysis makes these descriptions, these qualities, understandable by relation to the act syntheses in which they are constituted.
Such naivet as is present in the natural sciences and such ontology is bad when it thinks that it is philosophy. So also a logic
may be naive. Husserl attempts to show a way from naive logic
to phenomenology in the Formals and tra-nszendentale Log-ik.
Such naivet is present also in Heidegger so far as he takes
Dasein (human existence) as basic, instead of as having its constitution, its genesis parallel to the world~genesis. Yet Heidegger
feels that problems of constitution have their place somewhere.
That place they find in the problem of sezkndem Satin (existent
being). But this is the problem of Erfit-Elna:-g (fulfillment), really.
Further note on conversation, 28/8,31
Husserl sorry the time lectures were published as they were. If
Fink had been here then, they could have worked them together
with the later time lectures.
XV
Conoersatio-n with Husserl and Fink, A. M., I/9/3I
I asked Husserl about Paarnn-g (pairing), which is spoken of in
the Fifth Merlitation as the basis of all apperception.
Paamng or pairing is a fundamental passive association, in
simultaneity, and then in succession. There is pairing of objects,
separated from each other. There is a pairing of Verschmolzanheit
(fusion, character of that which is fused). In pairing, the similarities corne to Aufnebnng (annulment) (though this is not yet conceptualization, not even typification}, the differences tend to be
verdrngt (repressed). Each object is given not only as the unity
29
of its own constitution. but as having the meaning of the other

object carried over upon it. The similarities are not universals,
nor is there anything like conceptualization here. The similarities
are there, in the objects. Typification is a further step toward
to be confused with active comparison.
conceptualization, but the notion of the Uberha-up! (Whatever,

Any-Whatever) comes in with conceptualization. Nor is Paarung
how far the acts of which Heidegger speaks are essential ways of
Husserl asked Fink about his last conversation with Miyake,

and was told that the latter had already worked out for himself
the relation between Husserls time analysis and Heideggers.
Heidegger's analysis, went on Husserl, is ontological, not constitutive. The acts he speaks of are not zeitigende Ante (temporalizing acts), but possible ways of coming to a temporality which
is already "there" as otherwise constituted. It is a question of
relating oneself to time.

Husserl went on to rehearse the various characteristics of human
existence which are l'.e:'tf'iden (clues) to constitutional problems,
but which are by Heidegger described naively-ontologically without phenomenologically (constitutively) claried concepts. Such
descriptions, even in mathematics and natural science, are in
danger of revealing self-contradictions before one is through.
Problems of the higher structure of the individual, of social relations, must indeed be studied. The human being has many possible characteristics, according to his various goals in life, and the
various phases of his activity. Some goals are temporary, others
permanent. Some are pursued intermittently, some continuously.
The life not only as present and future, but also as past is characterized according to one's present goals. The individual is not only
say, a scientist, but a member of a family, of a society, nation,
etc. Certain goals and activities are not compossible. Further, not
every man need enjoy such things as a permanent life goal, by
which he measures his life, nor need he he member of a society
01' family. It is hard to see necessary connections here, but we
have pushed constitutive analysis far enough to have some notion
of the formal constitution of intersubjectivity and if we proceed
Strip by step in the same way, we shall then be able to reveal the
1-Pfiori in the higher fields of my constitution.
Ispoke of my own increasing conviction that an English trans-
30
CONVERSATIONS
lation of the coming German Meditations would be a better introduction for English and American readers than any I might
write, and Husserl agreed with me. He said that for years he had
been under the illusion that it would be a comparatively easy
matter to write a popular introduction, but that in reality his
constant attempts throughout the last ten years, attempts which
resulted in the London and Paris lectures and the Fae-nan Meditations, had all been without satisfatory results. He hopes, however,
that the German MeaT:Ttat.ions will be more successful. He thinks
such mediating work as Salmon did in his study of Hume, work
on the tradition of British empiricism, would be of greatest value
in introducing phenomenology to the English-speaking public.
XVI
Conoersaz'on with Husserl, 6,-lg/31
Husserl, instead of directly answering a question I asked about
the evidence of recollection, began an exposition of the primitive
phenomenological situation, the awareness of something, of the
ego as attentive to something i11 a Gcgemoart (present) with a
certain doxic modus. The ego as actively attentive is anonymous,
and we are aware of it only in reflection as not active but as
objectified, still as the same as the active ego. The rays (Straklen)
of attention are multiple in time, but the ego is not thereby multiplied. Hence we speak of a single, anonymous Ego-pole behind the
entire stromende Gegenwart (flowing present). In the Gegenzoari
we have, however, Aits-n-tzTonsstrakZe-n (rays of attention) which
relate back to a "past". There are a variety of modi of attention,
of which the simple immediate directedness to the present perceived is the Urmodo:-.s (primitive mode). Then there is not only
a simple dropping from attention, but also phenomena such as
the attention being called away by some other stimulus. Further,
there is the abstractive focusing of attention upon a certain aspect
of an attended object, whereby the latter is still attended, but in
the modus of secondary attention. Again there is the paying
attention still to a thing but holding it still in attention, and
3 Christopher Verney Salmon (horn rigor], British philosopher, took his doctor's
degree under Husserl in 1928 at Freiburg.
3I
attending to both objects. Explication of an object proceeds by

attentive fixation of aspects of the object, with attention still
directed to the totality. These modi of attention are not limited to
perception, but are to be found in every ego-activity. E.g., I may
be as ego primarily interested in writing, have my attention
called away, but still continue to write the rest of the sentence,
I being thereby secondarily attentive to it.
We may then ask whether, when we have reviewed all the objects of attention, in all its modi, including the objects which
have been dropped from attention, we have then reviewed all the
objects of consciousness. The answer is no. Certain objects give
themselves as there before attention is directed to them. Indeed,
the work of passive synthesis, and the passivity of the ego, are
necessary presuppositions for the activity of the ego. They are
presupposed in the genetic order. This means, not that they temporally precede the acts of the ego, but that they are in a peculiar
way taken up into those acts, so that they are still present in
them.
XVII
Conversation with Husserl and Fink, Ir/9/31
Husserl started expounding the nature of the Zcbendige Gegenwart

(living present), and asked Fink to bring him around the manuscript on this subject. All being except the leben-digs Gcgenwart is
relative to the latter, which is absolute, even metaphysically absolute, and one has, proceeding from the lebendige Gegenwart, various
levels of Ontij-:72-z'ernng (ontifying). For example, one has the
constitution of the oculomotor identical objects. These objects
then are relativized as appearances when the other kinaesthesia are
brought into consideration. On each higher level the objects of
the lower level are thus relativixed. Eventually one reaches the
ultimate level of constituted being. In the Ideen certain constitutional problems are still spoken of as if they belonged to the
Primordial sphere, whereas they are really problems of the interflbjective sphere. The ego itself is ultimately constituted in the
lntersubjective sphere, so that it can truly be said that each
monad implies and presupposes all the other monads.
32
CONVERSATIONS
When Fink and I took our leave I went on to speak of the

problem of the constitution of the world as existing before men
existed. Fink observed that such a constitution involved the already executed apperception of the ego as in the world, as limited
in the world finite , as even a fortuitous phenomenon in the
world.
This is a course of analyses which Husserl has hardly carried
out in detail. But to suppose that the pre-human physical world
was ever constituted as a present for some spirit is quite gratuitous, and to absolutize it is quite erroneous. It has its highly
complicated structure as a past constituted for the present.
Husserl compared the simple obviousness of the earliest steps
of transcendental phenomenology (an d correlatively, of intentional
psychology) to the simple obviousness of the earliest steps of
mathematics. One must begin with such trivialities as a +1 = I +a
and proceed patiently step by step.
XVIII
Co-nversation with Fink, I6/9/3;" (P)
Husserl had been inclined to proceed with a large logic after
finishing the Formals mid transzendeataie Logik, but Fink says he
persuaded him rather to undertake the sketching of a whole phenomenology, since such a sketch is absolutely necessary to making
Husserls Einzelanalysen <single analyses) in (manuscripts) intelligible.
XIX
Conversation with Hosserl and Fink, I7/9/31'
Upon my arrival Husserl asked me what I had been doing, and
I replied that I had been working on the first part of the Logik.
He asked if I had difficulties there, and I told him no. Then you
are quite advanced, he said. He proceeded to say that he no longer
remembered what was there, that he always had to have Fink
tell him what was in his books.
WITH HUSSERI. AND FINE
XX
Conversation with Fink, 21/9/31'
33
I remarked that the account of the splitting of the ego, etc. in
Finks Entwmf <project, plan, draft) for a new rst Meditation did
not clear all difculties, in particular, the transcendental reflective

ego is still the psychological ego the phenomenologist is a man.
He replied that this was true, but could hardly be considered
at the outset. Husserl has written a great deal on this problem,
but the manuscripts exist only in shorthand.
He suggested that the problem of the self-constitution of the
ego was a very interesting concrete problem. The levels of egoconstitution are not simple parallels of the levels of object-con-
stitution.
He warned against taking literally Husserls phrases on Geburt
and Tod <birth and death) in the transcendental sphere; Husserl
means to indicate the transcendental problems of the constitution

of these phenomena for the ego.
I suggested that it was perhaps not correct to regard an undying
and unborn life as a fiction. Death and birth, for all that I could
see, are factual but not necessary. At least their necessity is not
as immediately obvious as the necessity of, say, the structure of
perception. Fink seemed to consider the immortal life as a notion
of the same order as the infinitely extended body: the precise
limits are arbitrary facts, but the presence of limitation is necessary.
He drew the analogy with Husserls speculation in the Idem
as to the possibility of the hyletic data no longer being an adequate basis for the constitution of transcendent objects, stating
Query possibility has its horizon of actuality, and that the actuality of a world was necessary to the possibility of a no11-world.
_5lI'nilarly the actuality of death, of the time of birth and death,
18 the necessary horizon for a possible immortality that immortality is only a possibility in view of the actuality of death.- Or
$0I11etl1ing to this effect. I am not quite clear as to how the
thought runs.
He continued that an immortality of the transcendental ego
after a possible break-up of the world-experience and the self-
34
CONVERSATIONS
apperception as in the world, was absurd. The temporalization

(Zeitignng) of the ego is equivalent to its Verweiii-iciinng (secularization, mundanization). If you wish: nirvana, without time. Yet
it is true that, for the transcendental ego, death is no possible
Gegenwariserlebnis (mental process in the mode of the present).
Even the possibility of a Vorsieii-nng (mental objectivation) of
death as gegenwiirtig (present) was disputed. Further he questioned the legitimacy of regarding Greeks and Romans as transcendental egos.
XXI
Husserl said he had been working yesterday and this morning on
the nature of the Zeitignng (temporalization) of the ego. Each
ego constitutes itself a private time as its own structure. Here,
as everywhere, the particulars precede the Ganzheit (entirety,
whole). (Another example is the precedence of the visual data
over the visual field.) Beyond the private times which are the
forms of each ego for itself, there is not only the time of the
intersubjective natural world (wherein the egos, as psychologicall11.11Tl8.H, are ordered by their physiological correlates) but also an
intersubjective, psychological time, independent of natural time,
though in Deckung (coincidence, overlapping) with it. Fink suggested that the generalization, each totality presupposes its individuals, was open to misunderstanding, unless one said beforehand that two constitutive strata were here involved.
Later Husserl complained of the objectional etymological
meaning of individual, objectional when one uses the term to
mean das Einmaiige (the one-time affair, never repeatable).
He then said Fink had told him the topic of our conversation
yesterday, and suggested that we carry the same conversation
further. Fink said that the most interesting question we had considered was that of the relation of the transcendental ego to the
psychological ego.
The exercising of the phenomenological epoch is indubitably
an act of the transcendental ego, yet I may say, X exercised the
epoch at such and such a time".
35
Husserl proceeded to elucidate. I as human being besinne mick

(meditate, investigate the sense of), I consider that the identity of
objects for me is an identity through appearances for me and by virtue of the latter's Einsti'mmigkeiten (harmonies, accordances). I
recognize the possibility that Unstiinmigkeiten (discordancies) appear and that then the object would not be constituted as they are.
In the end, I recognize that every objective Geiinng (something accepted or posited) is a Geitnng for me, and that my body, mypsychic
acts, etc. are all such. Then I ask, who is this self for whom all Geitnng is? It is the same ego, yet it is the transcendental ego. Onemust
say that even in the natural Einsteiinng (attitude) the ego is the
transcendental ego, merely that it is not aware of the fact. One has
indeed a sort ofdoubling of the ego in the transcendental Einstelinng,
sincethereis an egowhich looks at what the other ego docs, and does
not do the same as the latter ego. Here are tremendous problems.
Yet it is so that the individual, once he has gained the phenomenological Einstelinng, never can go back actually into the
natural Einsieii-nng, but achieves it only in phantasy.
Fink suggested here that the individual still had to live in the
world of naive Geitnng (acceptance, position, validity), as a
practical being had to. Husserl replied that this was not true as
regards the highest goals of life, which are the goals of the
transcendental ego.
The whole of life and the activity of self-constitution and the
constitution of objects, is guided by a telos, is directed toward
the achievement of consistency or harmony. The unethical is that
which is contrary to this telos. In the individual, Ehrlichkeit
(honesty) is a characteristic of this self-consistency. Acts of all
sorts that I cannot affirm genuinely are unethical. This is applicable not merely to the individual b11t also to society. The harmony
of rnonads is something to be striven towards. I must be able to
affirm the acts of others as well as my own acts. Husserl quoted
Dostoievsky as saying each is guilty for the guilt of all.* There are
" "For know, dear ones, that every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all
men and everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of creation,
hut each one personally for all mankind and for every individual man. This knowledge
15 the crown of life for the monk and for every man. For monks are not a special sort
of me", but only what all men ought to be. Only through that knowledge, our heart
EYOWS soft with infinite, inexhaustible love." The Brothers Kommazov, Part II,
Bk IV, Chapter I. Translated by Constance Garnett. Macmillan, 1915. P. 17o.
36
CONVERSATIONS
various levels of Einstimmigkeit (harmony). The ultimate goal

may be called Seeligkeit (bliss, blessedness).
In addition to our common goal as human beings, we have,
each of us, a special calling, Bern), that we must hearken to.
(Here and elsewhere the religious formulation is to he taken as a
symbol.) The universal harmony reckons on me and on my free-
dom. It is easy to say, be ekriich (honest), but it is a frightening

task to carry out the injunction. Even in the scientific field, in
phenomenological description one finds in spite of the best will
in the world that there creep in little things that one cannot
back completely, that are nnehriick (dishonest).

In I894 Stumpf35 called Husserls attention to James Psychology, and Husserl felt on reading it that James was on the same
track as he. The notion of horizon and many others he found
there. He had planned to publish a series of articles in the Phidecided to wait to see what _]ames had done.
Zosophische Monatshefte, but he published only the first, and
XXII
Conversation with Hnssenl and Fink, 28/9/31
Husserl has been working on what he calls the Doppel-Zeitignng
(double temporalization) of the Eriebnisstrom (stream of mental
processes). In the first place we have the objective temporalization,
in the hyletic data and the objects which appear through them.
This is a matter of retention and Erfiiinng (fulfillment) of

anticipation. In the second place we have the Zeitignng (temporalization> of the acts, the Ia}:-Strains (streams of the ego) which
are directed to the objects. These entities are indeed extended in
time, and are related to their temporal objects, but may be said
to stretch out as the objects do not. Husserl gave as an example
the carrying out of an act of inference. The prerniss as object is
past when the conclusion has become the object. Still the act of
positing the premiss remains present, temporally unmodified. The
=5 Carl Stumpf (18431g36), German theoretical psychologist and philosopher.
37
egesacts and the ego as personalized become temporalized, but
over against the stream with its past-present-future structure,

and distinguished from the acts as similarly though not precisely
Similarly temporalized, we find the ego as Nuncstelkf (minclocus, now-locus), which is always "present" and has its whole
life over against it in a variety of modalizations. Even the "now"
is to be distinguished, as part of the time stream, from the ego as
Nuncstelle. The latter is not temporalized, is always there, has no
past.
Fink pointed out anticipations of this point in Fichte and Kant,
Fichte saying the ego is not a temporal object, that the notion
of substance is not applicable to it, etc.; [or,] Kants transcendental unity.
After we left Husserl, Fink was speaking of dreams, which he
understands as Vergegenwrtigungen (presentations, non-original
presentations) rather than as Wahrnehmnngen (perceptions), as
I am inclined to do.
XXIII
Conversation with Husserl and Fink, 3/10]31
I took up most of the time criticising or objecting to Finks

theory that all psychic activity in sleep is Vergegenwdrtignng.
Husserl added a bit here and there, but so far as I could see,
we did not g -t very far.
XXIV
Conversation with Hnsserl and F-ink, 9/Ir/31
Husserl has again changed his plan for the publication of the
Meditat-ionen. He now suggests that Fink as editor publish the
text from which was made the French translation, and that any
Changes be in the form of expansion or notes. There is to be added
an introduction and two further meditations. The First M'edizfa-non is, furthermore, to be changed, at least if Fink has his way.
The time-lectures are then to be published as they stand, with
38
33
cexvxnsarrexs
convsnsarrons
an introduction
intreductien by Fink, showing
shewing where they stand. The whole
whele
te be ready for
fer the printer by the first week in Mareh.*
March.*
is to
ef the I905
r9e5 tirneiecturc5
time-iectures he had
Husserl said that at the time of
net yet come
ceme upon
upen the phenomenological
phenemenelegical reduction,
reductien, but that
not
en to
te think of
ef the phenomenophenemenethese lectures were what urged him on
legical reduction.
reductien. This first came to
te paper
- in a primitive form
ferm
logical
fellewing summer in Seefeld. He spoke
speke of
ef publishing the
the following
five lectures ef
of 19e8
I908 in the next but ene
one ef
of the issues ef
of the
jehrlateh.
jahrbncii.
questien of
ef publication
publicatien he said he had been
After leaving the question
aleng the following
fellewing line: The individual in the
thinking recently along
phenemenelegical Einsteiinng
Eeestelferrg (attitude) has his world
werld there
phenomenological
fer him and has himself likewise as in the world"
werld as a being
for
whe has a world".
werld. He has furthermore
furthermere his fellow
fellew men, not
net only
enly
who
werld but as, like himself, transcendental egos.
eges.
as beings in the world
Frem the point
peint of
ef view of
ef psychology
psvchelegy one
ene has a similar situation
sit uatien
From
ege has his Vorstelinng
Ve-rsisihseg ((mental)
<(mental) objectivation)
ehjectivatien> of
ef the
since each ego
world
werld and the other
ether egos
eges appear in each Vorsteiin-ng
Verstsll-it-eg as beings,
each of
ef which has his Vorsteiiung
Verstsllaut-g of
ef the world
werld (including his
fellew men etc.). On the naive psychological
psvchelegical level one
ene distinguishfellow
es between the world
werld as created by
lijv man, i.e., as made up of
ef
cultural qualities, and the world
werld as it is in itself, in the transcendental reduction
reductien one
ene sees that the world
werld in itself has its consticenstitutien.
tution.
XXV
Conversation
Ceueersef-fee with
taith Husserl
Heisssrl and
arid Fink,
Fats, I2/rr/31
I2firf31
Husserl has been looking
leeking over
ever manuscripts from
frem the year 1918 and
ef himself to
te see how
hew he lost
lest track of
ef some
seme
says he is ashamed of
of
ef what was already started in the Ideen,
Ideas, notably,
netably, I gather, the
doctrine
dectrine of
ef the pertinence of
ef constitutional
censtitutienal analysis to
te the nature
* He spoke
spelte of
ei publishing the Berlin lecture"
lecture in the jelirlm-:31,
jelirh-ash, instead of,
ef, as promispremis-
LL
km
Herttsltirlisn.
ed, in the Kantsticdiem.
5
5 The Berlin lecture, Pknormznoiogie
Phrinereruelegie and
an-ti Anthropologie,
Ant.-Erepeiegis, was held _]u.ue
June 10,
t, I931
in the liiantgesellschaft
liautgesellschaft Berlin". The typewritten text is available at the HusserlArchives at Louvain
Leuvain (classification:
{cIassificatien: M
hi II 1).
1]. It was published in Philosophy
Fhilesephy MI-4
EH5
Phenomenological
Pesaemreelegieai Research, II (:94:-1942},
[1941-1 5-as}, pp. 1-14.
WITH HUSSERL AND PINK

FINE
39
of
gf logical
Iegical {and experiential?) evidence. He attributes this retroretregressien to
te the effect of
ef the war upon
upen him, or
er rather the effect
gression
of
ef Germanys defeat. He says he was able at the time to
te work
werk
enly on
en isolated
iselated problems,
prehlems, not
net on
en the larger aspects of
ef phenomenophenemeneonly
lggy. Only after I920
Igae was he able to
te treat these fruitfully once
ence
logy.
mere. But he spoke
speke of
ef a feeling of
ef inadequacy to
te his task as having
more.
(even
{even before
befere 1918?) made it impossible
impessible for
fer him to
te finish the
secend volume
velume of
ef the Ideen.
Ideas. (Often he is disquieted about
abeut the
second
velume, but Fink, he says, reassures him. Otherwise he
first volume,
vveeld not
net have permitted the publishing of
ef an English transwould
latien.} He turned to
te problems
preblems of
ef the nature of
ef personality
persenalitjv and
lation.)
of
ef society.
secietv.
VVhen
llien Husserl asked me if I had any questions
questiens I brought
breught up
questien of
ef how
hew convincing
cenvincing a mot-ioation
:.wef-ieetieat to
te the performance
perfermance
the question
ef the phenomenological
phenemenelegical epoch
epeche can be before
hsfere that epoch
epech itself
of
and the development
develepment of
ef phenomenology
phenemeneleg}; itself, with its insight
inte the nature of
ef evidence.
into
develuping certain considerations
censideratiens which can
Husserl replied by developing
eccupv us in the natural attitude: I am in the world,
werld, the world
werld
occupy
appears to
te me in a multitude of
ef experiences and other
ether acts, and
what the world
werld is for
fer me is always
alwajvs a world
werld which is valid
{gsffseal} in my own
ewn subjectivity. Existence of
ef objects
ebjects in them(geitenal)
ef validity for
fer me through
threugh certain experiences
selves is itself a kind of
ef the object
ebject which is, as so
se experienced, said to
te exist in itself.
of
This leads us to
te the realization
realisatien that all being is constituted
censtituted for
fer
a subject, and to
te the consideration
censideratien of
ef objects
ebjects as so
se constituted
censtituted
witheut preliminary consideration
censideratien of
ef the nature of
ef evidence.
without
en to
te outline
eutline the motivation
metivatien as I have been working
werking it
I went on
out
eut recently:
recentlv: the way from
frem the consideration
censideratien that objects
ebjects are,
strictly, largely preientions.
prssetier-rs. Fink carried it immediately
iirunediately through:
threugh:
ebject with pretended existence, pretended other
ether
The physical object
dimensions;
dimensiens; the given surface itself as pretended enduring unill =1 The given as a "kernel"
kernel of
ef hyle
l1}l'lE: with these pretensions
pretensiens variousvarieusty;
ly
ljv about
abeut it. He doubted
deubted that one
ene could
ceuld come
ceme directly
rlirectljv to
te a phepomenological
Hemenelegical reduction
reductien in this way. He characterized
characterised it as a way
ber die
irt
ti-is Psj-'ckologie
Psj-'eIre.Zegi's" (via
<via or
er through
th reugh psychology).
psvehelegj. But I pointed
peinted
out
eut that the psychic itself could
ceuld be subjected to
te such a reduction.
reductien.
Theugh it is not
net given in /lbsciiotinngen
Ahsehettteegse (adumbrations)
<adumbratiens> it is
Though
nevertheless given as the object
ebject of
ef a reflective act, and as such
40
CONVERSATIONS
has a perhaps certain claim to existence; but still its existence
is given only a titre de "claim".

We had left Husserl and I reverted to the question. Fink said
that he was not satisfied when Husserl treats the reduction of
the psyche as if it were a close parallel to the reduction of nature
particularly when Husserl speaks as if the reduction of the
psyche consisted merely in the reduction of its Einordnung
(finding a place), via the body and the sensory and kinaesthetic
fields, in the natural world. Even after such reduction, says Fink,
a specifically human Geltu-ng <acceptance, validity) of the transcendental consciousness remains un reduced. Namely, the finitude
of consciousness as passive, recipient. This must be reduced
before one reaches the transcendental pure consciousness. This
was not convincing or clear to me.
Husserl said that in the Gtittingen days he used to describe
"orgz'mire" Gegebenkeit <originary givenness> as the object
calling out, "Ich bin def" (Here I am!>.
Another matter of which Husserl spoke was the passage in the
Idem where he speaks of the conceivability of such a chain of
hyletic data that there would be no constitution of an objective
world. With Fink's help he tried to make clear to me that,
whatever its value there, the non-being of the world was really
impossible. It is valid only, so to speak, in the primordial sphere.
But the primordial sphere is an abstraction: within the allegedly
primordial sphere appear necessarily the motivations for the constitution of transcendental intersubjectivity.
intersnbjectivity. But the world is the
necessary form of intersubjectivity. Hence the being of the self
or the stream requires the being of a world. Ultimately it is a
matter of the interpretation of the monads. The Leibnizian figure
of speech, wherein the monads are spoken of as "reflected" in
each other, Husserl considers unfortunate. He thinks that in
Leibniz's monadology as in Hume's philosophy the phenomenoLeihniz's
logical reduction may have been contained -implicate.
At the end of our conversation Husserl spoke of the broad
general distinction in the field of geltende (accepted, valid) Objects: The stream of consciousness so runs that it constitutes a
i" Idem I, 49, p. 114 f.
41
stream, of identifiable psychic states. Then, wonderfully, it constitutes geltende objects outside itself, for itself!
Earlier in the conversation, when, in fact, I first spoke of evidence, Husserl spoke, as often before, of the importance of the
phe1'10I11enOn of "Fortgeltung" (continuing acceptance, continuing
phenomenon
validity>, that what I hold valid today, or this minute, continues
in validity the next minute. Or can be returned to as valid.
The motivation through a critique of the Cartesian method oi
doubt was also mentioned as another, more historically bound
way to the transcendental Einstelirmg (attitude).
XXVI
Conversation with Husserl amt Fink, 18/11]31'
Husserl had been thinking of the problem of what binds one when
one undertakes a "free" variation. The variation of the given
object is the traversing in phantasy of a range of possibilities. By
virtue of habituality we have the object given, not only as it is
but as standing under a genus, indirectly, as exemplification
of one of several species, subordinate to the genus. There is thus
a horizon of possibilities about each actuality. These given possibilities are, like the given actuality, essentially the deposits of
Urstifungen <primal institutions). As such they may be spoken
of as "factual" possibilities and are to be distinguished then from
the range of pure possibilities. Fink suggested that, since the pure
possibilities are not the deposit (Sedime-nt-iemng) of Urstiftungen,
we may speak of them as "innate". Husserl then said there was
nothing worse than a recourse to the innate.
Various other senses of possibility were considered during the
course of the conversation. Husserl spoke of the as yet nonactual future as the field of volit-icmal possibilities. He also considered the general relation of possibility to futurity, asking
whether all possibility were not really a temporal matter. A past
Possibility, it could have been otherwise than it was, is, for
Bxmple, given by a thinking back in time to the moment from
which the event in question was not actual, when there was still
3- Sfeitum <open range, scope) of possibility.
Again Husserl pointed out that the ego, the self, figures as being
42
couvnnsarrous
couvensarrons
in the world and acting in the world so as to determine the realization of certain possibilities. But the very constitution of the
world (phenomenological constitution) betrays at every step a
certain Interesstertne-it
Interessierthe-it (interestedness, interest) on the part of
the self, and a corresponding selectively.
Toward the end of the conversation Husserl pointed out to me
the general method of making coarse distinctions and rening
upon them. This he said was of general applicability.
Fink spoke to me alone of the Fornmte
Formals nnd
and Tmnszenztentale
Tmnszendentale
Logik as having been intended as an introduction to the Logtsche
Logische
Studien, but as having outgrown that function. The manuscript
Stndten,
of the Logische Stndten
Studrle-n is practically complete.
When Husserl was speaking of a horizon of possibilities about
the actual object of perception he took occasion to point out that
there were other sorts of horizons. One example was the horizon
of further determinations that the object would be experienced
as having in case it were to be seen from nearer or further away.
Another horizon is that of aspects which it would present if it
were turned around or if I went around it.
XXVII
C0-1-wersation with Hnssert

Conaersation
Husserl and F-ink, 2o/1r/3r
20/Ir/31
While Husserl was putting on his shoes I spoke to Fink of what
Kaufmann had said last night about the phenomenological reduction and the nature of Wesen
Wesea (essence). Kaufmann had said
that "tier
der Menscn
Me-nsch ntcht
nicht nnr
mar etn
eta Wesen
Wesen. habe sender-n
sender-it cinch
cmck ein
sin Wesen
sei38. I had objected that this was absurd if we used the word
Wesen to mean what Husserl means therewith. Fink agreed that
Kaufmann was using the word Wesen in another sense, namely
the Heideggerian sense. Kaufmann had maintained that there
was a good I-Iusserlian sense in which der
dz? .-"I/Iensrzh
.-"|/Iensch ein
eta Wesen tst"39.
st"39.
He had said that in so far as man knows his essence he not only
has but is his essence. Fink suggested that Heidegger speaks of
5 "Man not only has an essence, but also is an essence '
"9 Man is an essence.
43
man as being an essence in that man contains within himself the

possibilities of an eigenttiches
eigentliches (authentic>
(authentic) and an nnetgenttickes
uneigentlickes
(unauthentic) being.
I repeated to Husserl that Kaufmann had treated the phenomenological reduction as if it were primarily or exclusively a means
of getting an apodictically necessary realm of being. Husserl replied that this was rather an interpretation of the reduction. Of
course it had a grain of truth in it. But the apodicticity of the
transcendental consciousness is not the same as mundane apodicticity. He said that neither Heidegger nor Becker nor Kaufmarm
Kanfmarm
understood the phenomenological reduction. Of Heideggers analysis of the Se-in ales Setenafen
Seiendm (being of what exists) he said that
he was tempted to use Kant's title, of a Discovery Which Is
Supposed to Make the Transcendental Philosophy Unnecessary"
(?)*. But it is his conviction that the most important thing about
his whole philosophy is the transcendentalreduction. lie repeated
what Fink had told me before, that the phenomenological reduction is something which must be continually repeated in phenomenological work.
Fink observed that it (the following) had been a criticism based
upon the assumption that the search for apodicticity determined
the phenomenological reduction: Husserl sacrifices the most
fundamental for the sake of the most certain. Whereas of course
the we-tnes
we-nes Bewnsstset-n
Bewusstsei-n (pure consciousness) is likewise the most
fundamental, in that all other being is constituted in it.
I asked what he meant day before yesterday, when he spoke
of the Interesstertke-it
Interessiertize-it (interestedness, interest) of the ego playing a role in every Schick-t der Konstitnt-ion
Konstitut-ion (stratum of constitution).
tion>.
He began an analysis of givenness with its horizons. The l1oriZOTIS may be geweckt (awakened) or not. The Week-1-tn-g
zons
Week-1-m-g (awakening) is a matter of Habitual-itzit
Habitual-Mt (habituality>,
(habituality), of
oi I-nteressiertheit
I-nieressiertheit
<interestedness, interest>.
<interestcdness,
interest).
Husserl spoke of the paradoxical fact that though each individual consciousness, as made worldly, undergoes birth and death,
and though each particular society likewise comes into and goes
1 Ulnar
Uber zine Entdecfeung,
Entdecleung, mack tier nth:
ails new Kritik tier
de.=' reinen
rsimm Vcmuuft
Vcmunft dnrch cine
aim:
oc tare enlbekrtr-ck
entbekrh-ck gemeclit
gemocht rnerdem
warden sott,
soil, was Kants title.
44
CONVERSATIONS
out of being, yet the transcendental intersubjectivity as a whole

is not subject to such finitudc.
XXVIII
Conversation with Husserl! and Fink, 24/11]3r

\Vhen I came in, Husserl was telling Fink how, when one has
attained the phenomenological Einstellu-ng (attitude), the phrase
"I was in the natural Einstell-rmg" has a totally different sense
than it would have were it possible to be said in the natural
Einstelhmg. Furthermore when one has once attained the phenomenological Einstelitmg, one can never fall back completely
into the natural E-instellung.
The basis for the evening's conversation was a paper by Dr.
Usui4 on the transcendental reduction.
Husserl brought out the point that the universality of the
transcendental reduction distinguished it from the epoch exercised on the natural world that epoch is but a step to the
phenomenological reduction. Even greater is the difference between transcendental reduction and cpoch with respect to a single
limited thesis. The epoch is hut a step to the winning of the
transcendental consciousness. In addition to not carrying out the
thesis of the naive act, the transcendental ego has that act, with
its thesis and its intentional object, as its (the transcendental
egos) intentional object.
Again he pointed out that it is wrong to consider the acts
{which are the intentional objects of transcendental reflection)
as posited in the transcendental reflection. The latter is a neutralized consciousness. As soon as the transcendental consciousness
is considered as something posited the whole sense of the reduction
is lost.
He also indicated the paradoxical nature which knowledge
seems to have when considered in the natural Einsteilung (attitude): the knowledge is in the mind, and the mind in my body.
Yet the object is spatially outside the localized mind or some
such paradoxical relation of immanence and transcendence. Ideal" Jisho Usui {born igoo], Japanese philosopher, a student of Husserl at FreiblI1'S-
45
i51'[1 has failed to remove the paradox. Idealists have seer: that
the transcendent must be somehow "in" the immanent; all of
them have maintained that for them reality in the ordinary sense
was not lost. But this claim has never been substantiated; they
have never shown how the transcendent is in the immanent. The
reason for this shortcoming is that idealists have never understood the nature of the phenomenological reduction. But when
this is understood, it is also understood in what sense the world
is constituted in consciousness. The human being himself, his
psyche included, is likewise constituted as phenomenon along
with the world, to which he is necessarily related. This consti-
tution is the work of the transcendental consciousness which is

realiter absolute, but phenomenaliter relative (to itself qua absolute) and human. For men are indeed transcendental egos who
have never become aware of themselves as such.
The question, What is the table? has two different senses,

one in the naive attitude, the other in the phenomenological attitude. In the former attitude, the table is from the beginning somethin
'ven, something which is there, and we inquire as to its
objeitigire nature, its (natural) history, and relations. In the phenomenological attitude the chair is merely the identical pole of
certain transcendentally reduced acts and we ask as to the
noetic-noematic constitution of the chair-experience. The answer to the phenomenological question would include an answer to
the naive question, but is in itself more radical, indeed absolutely
radical.
Similarly, the question, "Was ist der MenschP"41 (Kant), has
two senses. Only the answer to the phenomenological question is
a radical. i.e., a philosophical answer. But always there has been
a naivet in other philosophers understanding of the question.
Man has been taken, like the table, as something "there", given
a being who has the peculiarity, perchance, of at least potentially
including all other beings in the range of his consciousness. The
question is then answered, as is the naive question about the
table, by a description of the nature of man, his world history,
his relations to other (naively given) objects ~ real or ideal. But
the question, when understood phenomcnologically, is one of the
' What is man ?"
couvnnsanons
He also spoke of every finitude as something which we delimit
by the individual.
Husserl also spoke of the deeper sense in which the world is
innite: not only is the world as already "there" unlimited, but
through our new experiences, our new insights, our decisions, our
activity, new reality is being constantly and forever created.
46
transcendental constitution of man. Man as identical intentional
pole of various noemata of transccndcntally reduced "acts" directed to man the acts of self-perception, self-phantasying,
remembering, valuing, etc. which give "man" to the transcendental consciousness as a psychic (conscious, intentional, active
- knowing, willing etc.) "person" with a necessary relation to
"body," to a world and to other persons given him through
Einftihltmg (empathy). In principle then the answer is of the
same sort as the answer to the phenomenological question, "What
is the table? Only the intentional structure of the acts whose
objective sense refers to the ontic kernel man is more complicated than the intentional structure of the acts which mean the
"table".
All sciences which are not developed in the phenomenological
Eiustellung (attitude) are abstract sciences logic is abstract,
physics is abstract, descriptive anatomy is abstract. They are abstract because they abstract irom the subjective Leistmtg (production, performance) by virtue of which their subject matters
are there for the scientists. As abstract they are naive. Only
phenomenology is a concrete science - the concrete science. All
phenomenology is furthermore metaphysics.
Husserl pointed out that strictly we do not have the acts
(which are the acts of the man) in the phenomenological Einsteiltmg (attitude). The "acts" which we study are not anything
which can be posited, since they are neutralized.
Afterwards, when the conversation became more general (Frau
Husserl and Margaret came in), Husserl said that at the age of
43 I-lldwig Buckner (r8zi,rSgg), German philosopher, one of the most popular

9Xpon.ents oi materialism in the zgth century.
within a given infinitude. These infinitudes it is our duty to examine with respect to their constitution.
To recur to the more general later remarks, I add that he said
he had early (at I3 or I4 P) rejected dogmatic religion.
The first philosopher he had ever read was Schopenhauer. In
his rst semesters at the university he had read Berkeley, and
remembers how he had defended Berkely against the other
students. Still he feels that Berkeley, for all his primitiveness, is
not taken seriously enough. ]3iichners42 Kraft mid Staff 1 which
but also by the acknowledgement (acceptance) of these conditions
any clear meaning. God as the principle of good is still essentially

worldly. Only when the nature of a transcendental consciousness is
understood, can the transcendence of God be understood. Thus all
religion has been naive and therefore unintelligible, but in the
phenomenological attitude the naive theses of religion receive not
only intelligibility, but also a certain validity, as do the naive
theses of our experience of nature, or of anything else. The
ethical-religious questions are the last questions of phenomenological constitution.
I forgot to mention earlier the further indications of the nature
of personality which Husserl gave. The structure of personality is
basically volitional, decisional". Logic has its validity for me
through my subjecting of my will and thought to it - a recognizing
of its authority. (Also natural laws.) So for each member of a
Sprachgemeinschaft (language community), the laws of the syntax
of the given language are recognized volitionally by its members. Such subservience may be conscious, as in the educated, or
it may be unconscious. Similarly the servant acknowledges (accepts) the sway of the masters will over his own. The personality
as a member of a community of any sort village, family, state
is determined not only by the imposed conditions of the group,
13 or I4 he had been deeply concerned concerning religious questions not konfessionelle (confessional) questions, but such
questions as that as to the existence of God. (Earlier in the evening he had illustrated the hopelessness of gaining a radical understanding short of the phenomenological E-instelltmg had illustrated this by describing the progressive development of the conception of God. First many gods, and then one, but first and last
gods or God is in the world as are human beings, only unseeable.
God is conceived as more and more tenuous, is spoken of then 9.5
outside the world, but outside and inside are mundane conceptions and a being outside the world either means something
which is really a part of the world (inside it) or else is without
48
CONVERSATIONS
he characterizes as "schreckZtch" (awful), he had read early in life

and also the earlier work of I-Iaeckel43. Likewise Mach, for whom
he has a higher appreciation. Spencer he says is, with Wundt,4
the most unsympat-iscker (unattractive) philosopher he has ever
read boresorne, without any sense for philosophical problems.
XXIX
Cones-rsation with Fink, 24/11/31

I asked Fink to repeat what he said the other evening, namely
that simple iteration was impossible, save in the reflective
iteration Ich denke, dass ich dmke usw.4? He amplified by
saying that "ich
ich gkantasiere, dass ink ghantasrfere usw.48 is no
iteration, but rather a Phantasieren (phantasying) in the Phantasie (phantasy).
He said that he does not agree with Husserl when Husserl speaks
of Phantasie (phantasy)
<phantasy') as Neutmlittsmodif-ikation sitter Vergegenwrirtigung (neutrality-modification of a presentation) and of
the Neutraiitritsbewusstsein ales Bildobjcktes (neutrality-conscious
ness of the picture-object) as being Neutralisierts Wakmekmung
(neutralized perception). Husserl has not made the necessary
Einzei-zmtersuchtmgen (detailed or particular investigations) concerning Neutralitit (neutrality). Pfumtasie has the Als-Ob (quasi,
as-though) character of a neutralisierte Modikatirm mu durch

Abkeb-mtg mm eimem wahmehmungsmtissig Gegebenen (neutralized
modification only through distinguishing it from a perceptual
datum). "111- dam Grenzfall des Tran-mes hat alas Phcmtasiaren eben
cine doxische II/I0daltrit49. He thinks Husserl still confuses Phantasie with Abbiidbewusstsein (consciousness of a depicturing)
43 Ernst Heinrich l-laeckel (IS34rgr9], German philosopher, supporter of U18
"4 Ernst Mach (1838-1916), Austrian positivist philosopher, supporter of em-
doctrine of evolution.
piricism and phenomenalism.
45 Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), British philosopher, formulated an "evolutionist"
philosophy of nature.
*5 Wilhelm Max Wundt {1332rgzo), German psychologist, founder of the first
4" "I think that I think etc."
institute for experimental psychology.

*9 "l phantasy that l phantasy etc."
4 "In the border-line ease of dream, phantasying has a doxic modality."
neutralized content. Neutralized activity is present in every
though not crudely. Crucial for the study of Neutralitrit is the

distinction between neutralized activity [Sp1'eltdtgket}5" and
sphere. For example, I can play at being in love.

He distinguishes four kinds of iteration. I. Modal. 2. [P] 3. [P1
Returning to the question of [the] lnteressierthe-it (interested-
4- [?l
activity. I asked whether this could be said of the level of Ur-
ness) entering into every phase of constitution, he pointed out that

it is a mistake to think of passive constitution as universally preceding active constitution. Passivity is only nerborgeme (hidden)
konstituon (primal constitution), the level wherein the hyletic
datum is supposedly constituted as an identifiable moment. He

replied that it is doubtful that the hyletic datum is supposedly
He pointed to the tendency of Husserl to interpret analysis of
constituted as self-identical prior to an (active) Wiederholung (repetition) of it.
the levels of constitution as if they could be regarded not only

as distinguishable in the given concrete noetic-noematic structure
but also as phases in a temporal or quasi-temporal genetic constitution of world-constitution.
He pointed to the question of a first perception and indicated
that there were others which, like it, seemed to lead to paralogisms.
He questioned the legitimacy of even Husserls reformulations

of the old problems of the "0mTgn of our notions (perceptions?)
Vorstallungen (mental objectivations) of space and time.
There seem to develop paralogisms when we treat such Gtmzker'tsfmgen (questions about wholes) in that way. Similarly when we
try in the same way to consider the transcendental problems of
birth and death which are also Ganzheitsfmgen.
I spoke of the difficulty of a phenomenological approach to
such problems, save through a consideration of the situation of
those ranges of the stream of consciousness, of space, of time,
which are immediately given. We can, it seems to me, gain insight
into the essential natures of the stream, space and time through
abstraction. If it is indeed insight into the essential nature, then
5" Literal translation: play-activity".
50
CONVERSATIONS
it is insight into what must be true of any given range of these

objects. This does not mean, Fink pointed out, that this is a method
whereby one can gain insight into the nature of consciousness
space, and time as wholes. I questioned the legitimacy of applying
the idea of wholeness to such seeming infinitudes. But he replied
that the stream of consciousness, for example, is given as fading
oft into the past, as having thus essentially

off
esseatialiy a horizon of emptiness.
He denied that God himself could retain his past experiences in
full retentional liveliness. Such limitation gives to the transcendental consciousness an essential horizonal character. It is peculiar
to horizons of this type that they are essentially horizonal, i.e.,
that they are not possibly to be traversed, to be brought to givenness and so made clear. The ordinary phenomenological method,
11ess
the ordinary description of essence as directly given, is accordingly
inapplicable here. But, he said, these problems come after the
usual ones.
Il turned the conversation to Husserls
llusserls ethics, as I had in mind
a letter to .\lcGill51 (who is to write on ethics). Fink thinks that
Husserls ideal of a world which one can befalten
befaiien (affirm) is not
a necessary result of his phenomenological investigations, but a
matter of personal feeling, an expression of a hard-won optimism.
Fink is more inclined to think of the relativization of the absolute
as an Aussckweifung (digression, excess) of the absolute (Hegel).
As such it is glaickg-iilttg
glaickg-iiltig (indifferent) and yet necessary. I suggested analogies with Indian speculation. He seemed reluctant,
but advanced the idea that the various phases of Buddhistic
Bnddhistic
self-discipline were esssentially phases of phenomenological reduction.
The phenomenological reduction is not to be regarded as merely
an event in the history of the world, it is essentially a catastrophic
event, a Weltnern-islet-ung
Welteern-icht-ung (annihilation of the world). This Vermlcht-un-g is the purpose of philosophy. He cited Hegel's phrase:
n-icht-un-g
Philosophy is Zugrundegehenw.
"1 Vivian jerauld

jeranld Mctlill (born 1897),
1897], American philosopher, studied at Freibur
under Husserl
I-lusserl in I926.
52 Zngrundegel:-an
Zngrundegei:-an nieans
Ineans ordinarily: to go to ruin, perisli, be shipwrecked or suffl
shipwreck. In :1a philosophical context, however, it can be used as meaning: to go 110
the basis or foundation (G1/amd)
{G1/imd) of something.
51
But in the end he holds these views of his own to be, like Hus5er1s optimism, unjustified by phenomenological investigations.
He spoke of the pathos of phenomenology as a philosophy subordinated to the ideal of cooperative labor toward a goal which
must be beyond the range of every finite and any finite
nite social
continuity. Every phenomenologist must always, qua phenomenologist, be able clearly to distinguish between his "scientific"
work and his personal speculations. Yet the Einzeluntersuchungm
(single, detailed investigations) of philosophy have in themselves
no sense, save as guided by the larger, "speculative" ideals. Philosophy is essentially a speculation inhibited by the urge to E1'nzeluntersuchu-ngen. Unless we assume a speculative urge, the painful
working over and over of seemingly trivial points which has occupied years of Husserls
Husserl's life, would be psychologically inexplicable as well as pointless.
pointiess. It is not always those who speak most
of "em'ste?tzielle
"exi'stenzie.Je Ergrffem'ieit" (existential state of being moved,
touched by something or someone) who are most ergriffen (moved,
touched).
XXX
Corwersat-ion with Husserl

H-usserl and Fink, 25/11]31
I asked Husserl to say something about Teteologrle.

Teieologie. Teleologie, alas
st Zukunftsmusk,53
tst
Zukunfsmusk,53 he replied. He described again the various
levels of constitution which phenomenological analysis finds and
he emphasized the fact that, though analysis proceeds by abstraction, still the concrete whole is always before the phenomenologist.
Though his first results are an understanding of more general and
of formal structures, he may always return to what is given and
by comparison make clear what he has overlooked. He may, for
example, come to see that when he has described the mind merely
according to its structure he has left out the higher level of purposiveness which is present in the mind.
All levels of constitution have however the marks of this higher
53 Teleology, that means dreams

dreanis of
oi the future". {Z-nkunflsmosik
{Z-nkimflsmusik means literally:
music of the future, and it referred originally to Wagnerian

Waguerian music.)
52
CONVERSATIONS
teleology, and we can characterize the latter as a tendency toward
executing acts that one can abide by. This means, on the one
hand, the constitution of an enduring world (of being, of values,
of purposes), on the other hand, a self-preservation of the individual who executes acts.
The higher levels of phenomenological analysis lead us to problems of phenomenological construction, the construction of phenomenological hypotkeses. These are, however, to be distinguished
from the undisciplined constructions of non-phenomenological
philosophers. Phenomenological constructions are necessary

wherever the object of study is not to be brought to se1f-given-
ness, e.g., in the cases of the study of the mind of the child or of
the study of death. Husserl also drew an analogy between phe-
nornenological hypotheses and the hypotheses of science as indicators of the line of further investigation.
Animals he characterized as Vorsiiifen dew Mensckheif (preliminary stages of mankind).
He described the teleological process as one of the reconciliation

of opposites, as a dialectic process. Though he recognizes Hegel
as a forerunner and a genius, he will not consider the dialectic in
the constitution of reality as ground for supposing a new formal
logic.
He emphasized the fact that reality is an eternal becoming, and
the constitution of reality is therein a continuous process, a
XXXI
struggle with ever new problems.
C0vit:ersatio:i with Husserl and Fink, 30/II/31'

Husserl spoke of the phenomenological establishment of pre-phenomenological evidences: even the most primitive theories of
primitive man have some evidential basis, a core of truth. This
applies also to religious belief. The world is conceived as the W014!
of a good God, and therein lies the truth that the world tends
toward such a constitution. Tolerance then for religions, but illtolerance for theologies.
WITH ausszsnt AND I-INK
XXXII
Conversation with Hiisseri and Fink, 4/I2/31
53
Husserl suggested that I review the Mditations Carisiemies for

some American periodical. I said that I had thought of writing
an exposition of the Fifth Meditatio-ii, as the narrower subject
would have the advantage of allowing greater detail. Even so it
seemed to me, I said, that such points as the nature of the Pcmrimg
(pairing) which is at the basis of our experience of other minds
should be elucidated in such an account, and such an elucidation
would involve an exposition of the general nature of passive
association.
This launched Husserl on an exposition of the nature of association, and of passivity in general. Every active comparison of
two objects presupposes a passive association of the two. In the
activity of following this association I may become aware of
similarity and difference. I asked whether one were to understand
the difference between activity and passivity as an absolute or
relative difference, and in trying to make myself clear I spoke of
the intensity of activity. Husserl said that there were such variations of activity as are indicated by the phrase striving, but that
one ought to be very careful in determining the place of striving in
relation to activity in general.
The difference between activity and passivity is present on the
level of perception. I am affected by certain things, they stimulate
me, and I answer them with an active attention. Before that the
objects are given as on the border (korizomfmriss-ig) of the active
(when I actively attend them) as having been there before my
perceptive field. When I attend them, I am aware of them

attending.
The horizon admits of further detailed description. There are

many objects as it were "seeking my ear but only one at a time
gains it.
Not all fiorizm-itm.:is.sige objectivity is waiimelimungskori'z0iitm-55558 <0l1 a perceptual border or horizon). There are inner and
outer horizons. The non-given aspects of objects, even of teak?ttkmimgs-horizontmzissige objects, are likewise there in pas5"itY awaiting my active attention.
54
CONVERSATIONS
Whenever I indulge in an Aiisiegimg

Ausiegimg (explication) of a perceived
object
obj
ect I am active, and there arise various modes of Abgehobeiiheit
Abgehobmheit
(salience, contrast) corresponding to the nature of my Besch&ftiBeschaifti-
gimg (occupation, being busied with) with the (passively consti-
Active remembering is conditioned as a Weckimg that goes
tuted) object. When, for example, I turn to contemplation of a

certain aspect of a perceived object, the totality of that object
is still an object of active attention, but is modalized as neck
im Griff behalteii"
behaten" (still-keeping-in-one'sgrip). Again, if I turn
from one aspect of an object to another, the rst aspect remains
an object of an active act, but in certain modalization. The object
too is given as already i11 one aspect known.
He also spoke of the temporal horizon, and of the loss of
Anschauiickkeit (intuitiveness) which every moment suffers as it
Aiischauiickkeit
sinks in retention. There can be a similar loss of Anschaulickkeit
Anschauiickkeit in
the case of a Wiedererimierimg
Wiedererinnemmg (recollection). In these cases we
may speak of Kiarheit (clarity), while the object remains as dentdeutiich (distinct, plain) as ever: the structure remains evident though
the content becomes empty. There can, however, be a Weckimg
(awakening) from an actively attended phase of the remembered
object to a previously peripheral phase, say, to a phase which,
even when the object was in a lebemiige Gegenwart (living present)
was never other than peripheral, was never the object of an active
perception.
from a present Imferesse (interest) out toward a past similar object, already passively associated. Normally attention is directed
to the iebemiige Gegsmwrt,
Gsgsnwart, and, within the latter, to the UrgimHpmiki (primal-source point), but it may be called to past passively associated contents, either those that are retentional
retlentional lee?
leer
(empty), or those that are retentional aiischaiiiich
anschauiich (intuitive).
I asked if it were not so that even every peripheral object,
so far as it is a determinate object, waist anf
auf sine soiche aktive
Ausiegimg"5'4 of which the object is the Sad-iment-ierimg
Aiisiegimg"5'4
Sad-imentierimg (sedimen'f'Ei0I1>- Husserl agreed that this was so, but pointed out that not
on every level of passivity was one to find objects or Ob]'ek$Schick-ten (strata of objects) as the results of activity.
I asked specifically whether one could find an activity in the
5 "Indicates such an active explication."
constitution of the self-identity of a phase of inner time as abgeschatief (adumbrated) in a retention and a retention of the
first retention.
Hnsserl said that in the first place it must not he forgotten that
Husserl
the iirspr-iingiiches
W575?-iingiiches Zeitbcwicsstsein (original consciousness of time)
is a coiiiimmm,
coniimmm, and secondly that identity can never mean only
identity throughout phases of a continuum. Identity is essentially a quality only of intentional objects. There is no identity
in the flux.
{Apparently the answer to my question is that intentionality,
but not activity, is necessary to the constitution of identity. I had
been assuming unconsciously that it was the fact that the ego
meant the same object in two different Ersche-inimgeii
Ersche-immgen (appearances) of the object which constituted the identity of the obohject. But now it appears that Husserl
Husscrl considers the ego activity
non-essential thereto.)
l-Iusserl recalled his statement i11 the Ialeen,
Husserl
Irieen, to the effect that
Erieb-m'sse sckmften
sckmfrferi sick nickt
ii.-ickt ab"-55. The Irteen,
Ideen, he said, take no
account of the iirsprii-iigiiciies
ursprii-rigiiciies Zeitbewusstsein (original consciousness of time) in which Eriebiiisse
Eriebnisse (mental processes or occurrences)
are, through passive intentionality (retentionality), constituted
in a sense through Absckattimgen
Absckattungen (adurnbrations).
Later, Fink (Husserl we left at his house) pointed out the difference between the problem of identity throughout a series of
Urimpressionen (Dane-r) (originary impressions (durati0n))
Urimpressiomm
(duration)) and
the problem of identity throughout a series of retentional modifications (self-identity while sinking ever further into the past).
The former is at least a matter of qualitative Erfiiliimg (fulfilment) of protention.
He spoke of the constitution of
oi simultaneity and advanced the
view that there is nrspr-iin-giicke
rirspr-iin-giicke (original) sinlultaneity
simultaneity only
where the two hyletic
hylctic data koiifigiir-riereii
kO1t]'igt?"i6?6?t sick (are configurated).
The simultaucity
simultaneity of a tone and a color is a fiirtiier
fwtiier Leisiimg (production, performance) beyond the urspriingiiche
ursjzriingiiche Sim-iiltaneitdt
(Original simultaneity).
He pointed out the necessity of following the tirsprii-iigiickes
ursprii-ngiickes
Zeitbeteiissisein (original time-consciousness) through for all levels
Zeitbewiissisein
5 5 "Mental processes (or occurrences) are not adumbratcd.
56
convnnsarrons
of constitution. The Time Lectures do so only for the hyletic

hyletie
stratum.
Husserls use of a tone instead of a color as example of a constituted hyle is motivated by an awareness of the temporality
of a tone. But the reduction of the tone is not so clear as the reduction of the color, and again, the examples almost everywhere
else are visual rather than auditory.
He questioned the possibility of an adequate motivation to the
transcendental reduction, since in any case what is found is other
than what the natural man seeks.
Nevertheless he thought that the way from an explication of
the essence of man, with his essential boundness by the idea of
his own incompleteness, or his own shortcoming, was a better way
than Husserls preferred one from the idea of science.
XXXIII
Conversation with Fink, 7/12/3r

Fink pointed out that Husserl had indicated the danger of
characterizing the transcendental consciousness as a Feld (field)
as a Seiendes (an existent).
The difference between the facticity of transcendent objects and

the facticity of the transcendental consciousness is paralleled by
Wesen of a transcendent object is there before the Wesensschau,
a difference between the Wesensschan (seeing (of) an essence) as

exercised on transcendent and on transcendental objects. The
which merely discovers it. But the transcendental Gegenstand
does not precede the experience of it as the transcendent object
does, and similarly the essence of the former does not precede its
Hemnsscka-nan (visual abstraction) but is therewith constituted.
The possibilities of a stone are not inherent in the stone, neither
is the stone conscious of them. The possibilities of a man are not
inherent in the man, though he may be conscious of them. Yet
the possibilities of the transcendental consciousness must be inherent in that consciousness. Unless the whole distinction be-
tween possibility and actuality is aufgehoben (annulled) in the

transcendental sphere, even as the notion of being is anfgehobem
Fink himself is inclined to speak of the transcendental as meontic

rather than ontic.
XXXIV
3/12/31', Conversation wi.l'i Husserl but no essential additions.
XXXV
Conversation with Fink, I4/I2/31'
Landgrebe was present, and walked with Husserl. Fink told

me that the term "Schenm as used in idem II was a voriibergekender (provisional) term, and that Husserl now uses the term
"Phantom". He pointed out that the Ideen II lacks methodological Sanberke-it, <cleanness, neatness) in that progressive and
regressive analyses are mixed indiscriminately.
XXXVI
Conversation with Fink, 19/I2/31
Finks own view is that with the transcendental reduction one
I asked what Fink would say to a person who agreed that phenomenology was the only truly scientific philosophy and who saw
that on this road he would never come to a solution of ethical
problems, but who, in spite of this, felt that he must attempt
some sort of solution of such problems.
has already a release from the pressingness of ethical questions.

Husserl surely believes in the legitimateness of the idea of a
transcendental ethics. Fink doubts this.
5 Ludwig Lanclgrebe {born 1902}, studied and took his doctc-rs degree under
Hl-155BT1, was his assistant until 1930, edited Erfaimmg and Urteii, and collaborated
intimately and extensively with Husserl in ordering, transcribing and editing his
manuscripts,
58
convnnsarrons
XXXVII
I brought Husserl the letter he had left word for me to write to

an American in Munich, who had written inquiring about Scheler
and phenomenological philosophy of religion. He will look it over
before I go to see him tomorrow.
He asked what I had spoken with Fink about last Saturday,
and said that ethical problems are not immediately approachable.
There are only certain questions to which at any stage of our
investigations we have a right. When, however, we have gained
a certain amount of phenomenological insight we see, both that
no problem is lost to phenomenological treatment and that only
phenomenological treatment can provide a real solution to any
problem.
XXXVIII
Conversat-ion with Husserl and Fink, 23/I2/31
Husserl suggested that I add something like the following to my
letter to Mr. Welch5?:
"In Vorbereitnng isi die P-nbiikation der vieijrihrigen kenkreten Untersncknngen Edrnnnri Hnsseris znr Begriindung einer
eckten Psychologies (cine-r rein inteniionaien Psychoiogie) ferner
eines systeniatischen Gm-ndwerks, in darn die Meikode nnd Problernatik einer Phanomenologist-hen Pkiiosopk-is znr Darsteiinng kernrnen soii. Vorher erscke-i-n-t, voranssichtiick irn Somme? I932, sine
erweiterte dentscke Bearbeitnng der Cartesianiscken Meditationen."
"War i-Mr. Tudor _]ones53 bei tier Londoner Voriesnng I922
(I920 P) anwesend.P5"
5 We are preparing the publication of the concrete investigations, which Edmund
5" E. Perl Welch {born 1905), American philosopher, author of works about Husserls philosophy.
5 William Tudor Jones (1865ro46), a Unitarian minister born in Wales, lecturer,
author of works about German philosophy.
Husserl has undertaken for many years, towards laying :1 solid foundation for a genl1'
ine psychology {a purely intentional psychology), further of a systematic, fundamel-31
work in which the method and problernaties of a phenomenological phil050PhY 5-T9
Husserl spoke of the aesthetic contemplation of a landscape

as involving a neutralization of the normal doxic or thetic comprehension of the landscape. It is not the phantom of the land-
scape but the natural objective landscape-aspect which is the
aesthetic object. But the natural landscape aspect is considered

beautiful as phenomenon, not as existent object. In passing he
noted that the appreciation of goodness was not so based on a
neutral phenomenon-perception. Vlfhen one says, What a fruitful
landscape ! one is expressing a valueappreciation which involves
the positing or the quasi-positing (?) of the existence of the landscape. Concerning the ahove-given theory of aesthetic experience
Husserl admitted that there was this difficulty: The aesthetic
contemplation is an act executed while the contemplater is executing an unneutralized perception of the world in general. He
is aware of himself as standing in a certain place in the world,
and this awareness is non-neutralized. But the landscape which
he contemplates aesthetically is a continuation of his non-neutralized immediate environment and as such is itself non-neutralized. Thus we have, if we accept the above-given theory, one
and the same landscape as at the same time neutralized and
non-neutralized.
The notion of oneself as a psychic subject involves an apperception of oneself as an example of the type, psychic subject. This
in turn involves the constitution of a world in which there are
potential, and perhaps actual, other subjects. It involves worldconstitution and a mundanization of oneself. Except on the basis
of such constitutive strata, the self-apperception as a subject is
impossible. The transcendental ego, when stripped of its selfapperception, is not a subject, but sui generis "ine" subject.
Fink pointed out that the exposition in the Ides-n of the transcendental reduction does not make sufficiently distinct the difference between the neutralization of several separate acts, e.g.,
all the acts in which things are intended, and the total phenomenological reduction. He expressed the opinion that, unless the
l-0 be set forth. Before that presmnably in Summer r932 --, a Gerrnan enlarged
redratting of the Cartesian Mt-d:'mnons will appear.
"Was Mr. Tudor Joues present at the London Lecture of rgaz [1920 ?) ?" - In th
preface to his book, Contemporary Tkongka of Gernrrmy, Tudor Jones refers to rllies
he made at Husserls London lecture {which was held in I922).
6o
CONVERSATIONS
transcendental observer is already established before the phenomenological reduction, one is left with absolutely nothing, since
the acts in which the acts are given are reduced too, i.e., the acts
all become phenomena oi acts in which phenomena of acts are
intended. Husserl replied that he sought, in describing the steps
of the reduction, to show how, at the same time as the reduction
is carried out, the transcendental observer is established.

Returning to our theme of the day before, I suggested that for
some people existential problems were so burning that those

people cannot wait, have not the capacity to begin at the beginning, renouncing perhaps for all their days any attempt at clarification of these problems, and engaging themselves in the in-
vestigation of problems essentially prior to the ones in which

their interest Lies. Husserl replied that this was the same as saying
these people had no capacity for philosophical investigation, and
agreed that there were such people.
He went on to say that this does not mean that for the philosopher there must be no interest in "existential" problems. (Parenthetically he objected to this new usage of the word existential
as unnecessary and confusing.) They must see, however, that the
long road of phenomenology is the only one that can lead to real
answers to such problems.
Up to the time of the war he was, he agreed, tkeoretissh singestellt (set in a theoretical attitude>, but since that time "existen-
aroused his lively interest in his youth.
tial" problems have been of primary interest to him too. Nevertheless Schopenhauer and the earliest writings of Nietzsche
XXXIX
Crmversat-ion with Hassert and oz-hers, 26/I2/31'
One of a group at Husserls for Christmas asked him how he went
about it to write a book. Although he writes a tremendous amount
almost all day every day , the smallest part is written with any
book in mind. Rather is the product in the form of rneditat-ions
not destined for other eyes. After the pauses at noon or in the
evening he writes recapitulations or goes through the analyses of
6I
the previous working period anew, so that the manuscripts contain many repetitions. These meditations he reads over many
times, whenever the same subject arises again, and on re-reading
he often corrects the earlier manuscripts. The subjects of the
meditations are always determined by his own current interest,
which is largely undetermined by what interests other people.
Vifhen it is a matter of writing a book he brushes aside all these
manuscripts and writes freely and uninterruptedly, in a sort of
trance. Thus the Idem and the Form-ale and tmnszendentale
Logik were each written in six weeks. Certain additions to the
additions are inferior to the main text.
Idem were made in proof, and Husserl can see today that these
XL
Conoersaiion with Husserl, 28/12}31'
Husserl said he has been working on the carrying out of a universal voluntarism. He objects to regarding such classifications
of acts as Brentano:-a as representing true iundamentai distinctions. Every act as carried out by the ego is a decision, a Bejnkung,
(affirmation) and there is furthermore a volitional aspect in the
background phenomena of the mind. There is a sort of Hintergrundsentsciieiriung (background decision>, which is not a full
ego-decision.
As elsewhere in phenomenology, so here the method is one of
description of the most obvious phenomena of the sort one is
interested in and Riickfmge (asking back, regressive inquiry) to
their constitution. Disregarding the phenomenological reduction
one may say that we live continuously in an already constituted
world of reality, and that we are continuously mixing into this
world, changing it, as a result of voluntary decisions. The world
or rather some part of it is given as really so-and-so. We decide to
make it otherwise. When we make such a decision the desired
state schwebt nor HMSEU as a practical possibility which by a vol-
untary fimf we decide to realize. This awareness of a ZMSIF-fimi
(state) as a practical possibility is to be distinguished from a mere
" "Is in suspense, hovers in front of us."
62
couvnasarrons
awareness of a possibility in phantasy. The word "fiat" Husserl
owes, he said, to William _]ames, who had an ability to nose out

important phenomenological data, but who did not do much
with intentionality and so missed the essential thing in the mind,
The most obvious volitional phenomena are those of present
decisions. A first distinction that we can make among present

decisions is the distinction between those which are immediately
carried out, e.g., a decision to smoke a cigarette, and one which is
carried out in the future, e.g., a decision to meet a friend tomorrow at the station at five o'clock. In the latter class of decisions the once-made decision remains i11 force during the intewal
even though there be no active carrying out of the decision during
the interval. The interval is an essential part of the volitional
process.
I had misunderstood the sense of .Jkis division between mediately and immediately carried out decisions, and so I objected that
such a process as deciding to take a cigarette and thereupon
taking it, was not an -irn-rnerate carrying out of a decision, since it
involved the execution of arm and finger movements before the
actual taking. Strictly the only -in:-rnediate executions of decisions
were movements of our bodily organs. Even these are not, I
maintained, immediate in a strict sense since they are the mediate
results of our more truly immediate control of the order in which
certain series of kinaesthesias proceed. Husserls distinction had
been between processes which include an -i-named-iateiy initiated
activity toward realizing a decision and processes where realizing
activity is preceded by an interval in which there is no activity
toward realizing that particular decision.
Husserl replied that, as we live in the natural attitude, we have
no immediate awareness of the already beherrschte (governed,
controlled) kinaesthetic fields. In our decisions we do not direct
our conscious active will to the bringing about of certain trains of
kinaesthesias but rather to the changes in nature which we desire
to bring about. Only through Riickfrage (regressive inquiry,
asking back) do we come upon the kinaesthesia.
When one has carried out a decision there is no further activity
with respect to that decision. This does not mean that the act
has become no longer an act of willing, but rather that it has
become a peculiarly modalized act of willing, a precipitate whih
63
remains as an enduring attitude and may be reactivated. As react-
ivated it may be cancelled by a new act of will, in which case it is

thereafter retained as cancelled. Here belong phenomena of remorse.
XLI
Conversation zm7tk- Hassert and Rainer, j'Ij'I2/31'
Reine;-51 spoke of the different worlds" of primitive and civilized
men. Husserl said that although the phrase might have a good
sense it is dangerous. Strictly speaking, it is absurd to speak of

two or more actual worlds. The conditions for even the phenomenal being of other minds are sufficient to guarantee that all
minds have an identical world with an identical forrnal-ontological structure.
Husserl objected that Heidegger did not mention either Avenarius'52 or Husserl when speaking of the natural world-picture,
but treated it as a matter of common knowledge rather than
something developed by these two philosophers. Husserl acknowledges his own debt to Avenarius.
After we left Husserl Reiner objected that Husserl is unjustly
skeptical about Reine1"s acceptance of the transcendental reduction. Reiner says that in this he sides with Husserl rather than
Heidegger, but that he inclines more to I-leideggers view of the
nature of the natural world. (Vorhande-nkeit nnd Zuhandenheit
(Being on hand (or presence) and being at hand)) He thinks
Husserl over-emphasizes the striving for Bewiiirrmg (verification,
confirmation).
XLII
Conversation with Husserl and Fink, 5/1132
Speaking on the general theme of universal voluntarism which he

had opened on 28,I2/3;, Husserl observed that each act as we
empiriocriticism.
Hans Rainer (born 1896}, German phonoinenological philosopher, studied and

took his doetors degree under Husserl.
5* Richard Avenarius (1843-1896}, German philosopher, developed a posivitist
theory of knowledge known
64
convnnsarrons
come upon it is a doing (Hamieln) which presupposes a situation

which itself results from previous acts, previous doings. This
would seem to lead us to an endless regress, but in fact it leads to
the necessary construction of situations wherein there is an activity, a doing, which did not presuppose previous doings. Such situations are those wherein the ego, let us say in early infancy, is
confronted with the self-constituting hyletic flux, but has not
yet actively constituted objects, has not yet constituted any
of the objective strata which are presupposed for the consti-
tution of objects. The child has, over and against the hyletic
flux, a more or less organized kinaesthetic flux which evinces
correlations with the kinaesthetic* flux. Though originally
uncontrolled, the kinaesthesia is essentially a subjective, volitional matter. What Husserl means by kinaesthesia is not the
bodily sensations accompanying movement or muscular tension, or the inner sensations, but rather something volitional or
quasi-volitional that remains when one abstracts from such sen-
sations. This had not been clear to me before, as my reports of

previous conversations on this subject probably show. The infant, like the adult, is impelled to evoke actively those kin-
aesthetic sequences which show themselves to bring about the

endurance or recurrence of something valued, in the first instance
something pleasant. Yet not a pleasant "object" in the full sense
such objects are not yet constituted but a pleasant feeling.
The whole psychic life is determined by a tendency to evoke or
constitute the enduring, the self-identical, the recurrent.
XLIII
wrrn nussnnr. AND FINK
65
By the method of Abban <unbuiiding) we are led not only to
differentiate structural levels but also to "reconstruct" an actual

1;e1np0Ia.l process in which the lower levels preceded the higher
ones. Thus we reconstruct a period in the life of the individual
when as yet he had effected no stiftende <instituting) acts but
when there was an objective self-constituting hyletic stream on
the one hand, and on the other hand a subjective "kinaesthetic"
striving which was instinctive, unconscious of a goal. There were
also primitive feeling elements, unattached to objects, since there
were no objects. This conative activity is directed to the hyletic
flux, and is determined toward identifying and prolonging the
pleasant. When by chance it establishes a successful (pleasure
inducing, retaining, enhancing) Verlaufstypns <type of courses or
processes), it then becomes zielbswnsst (deliberate, purposeful),
and is a striving more like the sort we know.
The distinction of hyle and morphe appears to the already
self-constituted man in the world which he has constituted, as
the distinction between nature and mind. Phenomenology, by
revealing the work of mind in the constituting of nature and
mind, pushes the distinction back to the more primitive level
spoken of above, but there the distinction must remain as basic.
XLIV
Conversatio-n with Fink, 18/1]32
Husserl would not let Fink and me come in, nor would he come
for a walk, because his wife was ill.
ular the noematization of the apperception of the psyche as a
Fink spoke of the danger of regarding a noematization of the
Conversation with Husserl, .r3/r/32

S{ck anskenne-n <to know all about something, to be an expert on
psycho-physical object is not a complete reduction of the psyche.

He did not seem to think that the reduction of the psyche to a
transcendent construct of the immanent temporal flux was adequate. Presumably he was looking for the reduction of all Setznng
(position), even the Setzung of the flux in the last analysis.
world as a complete transcendental reduction thereof. In partic-
or well~trained in something), as, e.g., in piano-playing, is not a

matter of mere nerve-habits, but is rather a matter of precipitated
voluntary acts, all united in a complex structure to which, as a
whole, I lend my fiat when I start playing. I do not need to lend
my fiat directly to each of the subsumed acts.
" I probably meant hyletic.
66
convansarrons
wrrn nussrznr. AND PINK
67
XLV
process of traversing and discovering would be constitutive of a

Ranmoorstetiang ((mental) objectivation of space), but not of
stitution of a (mental) objectivation). If he distinguishes be-
I spoke of the passage in the Id-sen ( I30) where Husserl speaks

of expressions which apply to the objective sense of a noema as
having a noematically modified sense. Fink agreed that this
means only that they have a phenomenologically reduced sense,
not that we can find another, phenomenologically reduced sense
for such expressions; which sense is not noematically modified,
but directed to a non-noematic, transcendent object. Fink considers that the fact that in thinking out the Ideen Husserl took his
point of departure from psychology has resulted in a directing
of attention on the phenomenological-noetic constitution of
\Velt-vorstetiiing" (idea of the world, (me-ntal) objectioation
of the world"), and a neglect of "Welt-konstitutio11 ("worZd-c0nstitution"); i.e., an essential noematic moment is neglected. The
psychologist never comes beyond Vorsteitn-ngs-konsiitntion (con-
Wett-an-sich-Vorstetinng ((mental) objectivation of a wor1d-in-
tween Vorsteitang and Weft-an sick (world-in-itself), the distinction is within a Vorstetinng, and the alleged We.-It-an-sick is a
I told Husserl I had been working on an exposition of the natural

attitude as a preliminary to an exposition of the phenomenological reduction. He said that he thought that everyone would have to
undertake such a work, quite independently, and with due regard
to his own personal difficulties a detailed, written work. My exP95iEi0I'1, if intended for publication, will have to be much more
Conversation with Hassert and Fink, 26/1]32
XLVI
Conversation with Fink, 20/I/32
Ranm-an-sick (space-in-itself). The latter is always presupposed

for the process of constituting a Raamoorstetiang. Roam (space) is
the condition for the constitution of Orientierangsraam (orientation space). This presupposedness of transcendental objectivity
for the constitution of subjectively conditioned Vorstetlangen
(mental objectivations) of objectivity does not argue that transcendental objectivity is not itself constituted, but rather that its
constitution lies in other Leistiingen (productions, performances)
of the transcendental Bewiisstse-in (consciousness). These constitutive Le-istan-gen are -oerborgen (hidden) so long as the transcendental ego remains befangsn (entangled) in the natiirlicke Einstettnng (natural attitude).
Again he spoke of the continuous and unavoidable danger of
misunderstanding the sense of analyses of transcendental constitution, the danger, namely, of interpreting it as a seiende
(existing) constitution. This danger is further increased by
but does not arise solely from ~ the fact that in our explications
we use terminologically fixed concepts which apply normally to
that which exists. Strictly, however, analyses of transcendental
Sei-nskonstitntion (constitution of being) do not have a thematic
region of being, of objects, even in the widest sense of object in
general. The logic of object-relations does not apply in this
"sphere" Fink terms it the "meontic sphere. There is required
an analysis of meontic logic, as a means of making clear the
"Seins weisen (modes of "being") of this sphere of non-being
and correlatively the meaning of propositions about it.
itself), which is further to be contrasted with a real Welt-an-sick.

And so on, in an infinite regress. Husserls preoccupation in the
Ideen with Wettoorstett-nngskonstiintion (constitution of an idea
or (mental) objectivation of the world) makes it possible to interpret certain passages realistically. Consequently Gerda Walther,
in her Aiisfii-lirtz'ciies Sacltregister (detailed subject-index) distinguishes passages in the Ids-en as Pro and Contra a phenomenological idealism.
Fink spoke of the necessity of a phenomenological explication
of the natural conception of the world, an explication which would
show how the human self contrasts his Wait-oorsteitang (idea or
(mental) objectivation of the world) with the world itself, h0W,
e.g., he distinguishes his means of traversing and discovering space
from a space independent of his traversing and discovering. The

55 Gerda Walther (born I897), German philosopher; belonged to the Munich P115"
nomcnological group led by A. Pfander. Her "Aus|'E1hr|iches Sachregister" appeared

in the second reimpression of Idem I (1-lalle: Niemeyer, 1922).
68
CONVERSATIONS
elementary than if it were written just for myself. For America he

thought that an Ankniipfnng (exposition relating to) on (1)
_]amess Radical Empiricism, (2) other elements in _]arness
thought, and (3) J. S. Mill, might be helpful.
XLVII
Conversation with Husserl and Fink, 29/r/32

Husserl began by saying that he had been thinking recently about
the complex: association, tradition, sleep, death, birth, inheritance.
Every person is an enduring transcendental individual through
identication in primary retention and in recollection. He stands,
so to speak, in Gemeinschaft (community, communion) with
himself, and he has his own egological tradition. Furthermore

every transcendental person stands in Gemeinschoft with other
transcendental egos through Einfiihinng <empathy>, and has a
common tradition, i.e., the tradition of others can be taken over
directly without being originally established by the ego in question, and the latter can transfer his tradition in the same way to
others.
The transcendental ego which stands in Gemeinschafi with itself, which constitutes and has a world, is a wakefni ego. Its tra-
dition points back to a Stijtiing (institution) through wakeful life,

either its own life or that of some other self. The world is constit-
uted in wakefni transcendental intersubjectivity. Now waking life

is perhaps broken by pauses of sleep, when the ego is no longer
active (dreaming is itself a break in sleep, a sort of wakefulness,
when sleep is taken in this sense). But the tradition is still
destroy the tradition?
there in the sense that it can be awakened. Death, however,

makes awakening impossible, but the question arises, does death
We are faced with the fact that a new born child (a newly
waking transcendental ego) may have determinations of
character, i.e., traditional determinations, which are awakable in
him, though he may never have acquired them himself nor gained
them through communication with other subjects with whom he

has a common world intercourse, either through his actual 3-5'
5OCl3.llBS or through reading of history etc. A child may, e.g., re-
perhaps essential necessities.
semble an ancestor who has died before the child's birth and of
whom he never hears directly or indirectly. This would seem
to be a direct awakening of that dead individuals tradition.
Husserl pointed out that these considerations were in themselves
merely indications for a direction in which one may work further,
through concrete analyses revealing essential possibilities and
Fink pointed out the necessity of a clearer preliminary analysis

of mundane intersubjectivity.
XLVIII
Conversation with Husserl, 3/3/32
Givenness of cultural qualities other than that of natural qualities.

Cultural unity a volitional unity [in wide sense).
Development of cultural values did not await the constitution
of nature before it began. Both run together, but nature a little
ahead. One level must be there, for the culture to arise.
Cultural categories
Useful object
Spoiled object (useless)
Useless object
Law of absorption
Goods of utility
Laws of [P]
Absolute goods (love)

No law of absorption
But competition in sense that one must be often chosen at
expense of other. This choice itself an absolute good.
Intersubjectivity of absolute goods.
XLIX
Husserl said that what he had told me at our last meeting was
nt 0Cl- When I am tired I fall back into old ways of thinking."
7O
CONVERSATIONS
I had spoken of Schapp, and Husserl lent me the earlier

edition.
L
Conversation with Husserl, 11/3)32
act of identification? Something besides that? I am not clear on
I told Husserl how Levinas'5*5 begins his book, namely by distinguishing between (I) the givenness of natural objects through
Absckattnn-g (adumbration), a fact which determines the kind of
being peculiar to natural objects, and (2) the givenness of acts
in reflection without the multiplicity of Abschaiiung, as objects
which have absolute being.
Husserl observed that omitting consideration of the Zeitbe~
rvnsstsein (time-consciousness) in the Ideen had been dangerous,
and that when one took into consideration the temporal modalizations of acts one had in deed something like Abschaitung, an identity throughout a multiplicity of disparate moments.
The thread of the conversation escapes me.
He spoke, however, of an idealization present in all scientific
description, an idealization which was a Log-ifiziemng (logicizing),
which brought in the infinite. I suggested that arithmetic as applied when I count, e.g., leaves, was not a11 idealization in the
same way that the application of geometry was. He replied that,
to be sure, the latter involved the notion of a limit, whereas that
was not the case with the application of arithmetic. However,
not every idealization involves the notion of a limit. The application of arithmetic is an idealization and involves the infinite.
Every one involves the infinite. (Infinite reiterability of the
this, and must inquire further.) He spoke of every finite object as
being primarily a limitation of the infinite, and of every free
variation as involving the infinite.
"4 Wilhelm Schapp (1884), German phenomenological philosopher, a student 01

Husserl at Gottingen. The book mentioned by Cairns is probably: Beiinige sur PREMmenoiogie tier Wehmeiimimg (Isl. edition: 1910).
"5 Emmanuel Levinas (born I906), French philosopher, Husserls student at F1361-
burg, translator - together with G. Pfeifter of Husserls Cartesian Meiiitiuions. Author

of La Tinforie its Pfntu-ition dons In Plrnomnoiogie dc Husser! (1930).
_\
-. .r_9,-'_-;
LI
71
Fink was absent - that he would study it through, but the book
Husserl took care particularly to emphasize the importance of the

phenomenological reduction. Apparently with the llfeditaiions in
mind, Husserl said he had given up the idea of a short introduction to phenomenology, by which he meant a short exposition of
the phenomenological reduction. Concerning Finks A nsarbeitnng
(working out, development) of the 1|/{editations Husserl said -
would be ganz onders" (quite different).

From the topic "phenomenological reduction" he passed to the
Cartesian method of doubt, which he characterized as an attempt to give a positive twist to the arguments of the ancient
skeptics. The more radical skeptic of the two, Protagoras and
Gorgias, was the latter, because he said, "Es isi niclits (nothing
is). The Greeks had distinguished doxa from episteme. The
skeptical tendency led to a denial of episteme. Episteme was denied, because it was seen that our alleged knowledge never gets
beyond doxa.
Husserl mentioned the arguments of Augustine against the
skeptics, but seemed to regard those arguments as having merely
the function of refuting the unbeliever, not ~ as in the case of
Descartes similar arguments the function of founding a philosophy. I doubt whether Husserl does justice to Augustine.
LII
Con-versaiion with Husserl, 6/5/32
Husserl read to me from a stenographic manuscript on the constitution of natural objects in perception, primarily on their
constitution in visual perception. The first portion considered the
series of appearances of an object, as nearer or further away.
Each appearence of the object as further away is not only
H11 appearance of the object but also an appearance of the
3-Ppearance of the object as nearer. Thus there is, in the series in
question, an analogy with the series of temporal instants in in-
72
CONVERSATIONS
ner time, each of which is not only itself but also a retention of
each of its predecessors. The series of appearances of the object
has (I) a distant limit, beyond which the object no longer appears
at all, i.e., beyond which there are no more appearances, and (2)
a near limit, the limit of optimal clarity and distinctness. The
latter is a factual limit primarily, and not an ideal one. It is
conceivable that the object appear as still nearer, i.e., clearer,
than it does at the point where it is factually maximally clear.
Microscopes are instruments for bringing the object even "nearer".
Now all the appearances in such a series are appearances of the
object, and the object itself is the ideal to which they approach or shall we say that there is no object, no ideal limit? Husserl
rejects the latter, presumably because, as each appearance gives
itself as an appearance of, there is an object, not itself giveable in
the same way, but rather precisely as a Kantian ideal.
The second portion undertook to distinguish between objects
which are constituted in our immediate environment through
series of appearances as far and near, and objects which are
constituted without such variety in their appearances, e.g., the
heavenly bodies. We assimilate the latter to the type constituted
in our immediate environment, and think of a factually impossible
but conceivable approach (of the body to us, or of ourselves to the
body) which would give the body more clearly and distinctly
which would give it as nearer.* In the case of the sun, moon, and
planets, this approach is actually effected with telescopes.
A distant mountain is constituted for us in essentially the same
way; unless we go great distances, there is no change in the appearance, or rather no change of the sort which approach brings
about in the appearances of near objects. But still great distances
travelled (lo bring about such changes, and so here the important
element is the te-in-pa of change. I said that really it was a matter
but added that the notion of tempo was not to be avoided. In
of how much kinaesthesia has to be run through to get a certain

quantum of change in the appearance, to which Husserl agreed,
immanent time one instance of a given type of kinaesthetic pI0cess may be run through more quickly than another instance
which is, except for its tempo, identical.
* Whereas, if we had not first constituted mm: objects, we could not constitlli-3
objects at all.
.-_.,_.,. _
73
I then asked whether the distinction noesis - hyle was a real
processes or occur:-ences>, or whether perhaps kinaesthesia formed
dichotomy of the immanent constituents of Erlebnisse <mental
a third class. He replied, first of all, that although he had tried

to distinguish kinaesthesis sharply from hyle, yet there are in
certain cases hyletic concomitants which necessarily accompany

the kinaesthesia. I said, suppose we leave these out of account.
He said, then all one can say is that the kinaesthesia is the orig-
inal form of the I do.

He went on with the manuscript, and then digressed with an
account of the formation of identical patches in the hyletic field.
<pairing>, and the Abhebtmg (standing out, salience) of the patch
This presupposes the synthesis of the field on the basis of Pacmmg
on the basis of a secondary diversity: secondary in that it

presupposes the preliminary constitution of a field on the basis
of similarity. In each field is constituted, with its data, the
temporal form of each datum, and thereby the temporal form
of that field. He sees it as a special problem how simultaneity is to be established between data in separate fields. There
is complete heterogeneity as far as content is concerned. Visual and tactual hyle form their separate fields which are not
parts of some higher hyletic unity, some field which includes both
these fields. But the temporal forms, identical in both fields,
form a basis for Paammg, and, because there is no basic similarity
(as between red and blue, or between rough and smooth) ; hence
between visual and haptic, there can be no inconsistency either
they may coalesce in an object. {It may be red and smooth in one
place, but not red and blue.)
LIII
Conversation with Husserl, 9/5f32
Husserl had intended to go on with the manuscripts on the constitution of nature, but never got beyond the introductory remarks, because of my interruptions.
I asked him if it were not so that on the primordial level one
could carry out all the idealizations necessary to the constitution
of the region with which physical science deals. He questioned the
convnnsarrons
wrrn nusssnr. AND FINK
75
other, but more historical, motivation from the idea of science.
Instead of proceeding with the phenomenology of nature, Husserl

outlined to me the approach or motivation for phenomenology
which he is thinking of putting in the new First Meditation, an-
74
possibility of constituting infinite time on the primordial level.
The recourse to earlier and earlier memories brings a diminution
in the content, and moreover does not bring any guarantee that
we can go back without limit. Rather does the style of our life
indicate that there has been a finite number of Urstiftungm
(primal institutions). {Here I may be more precise than Husserl.)
Vtfhen we pass to the higher levels of intersubjectivity, first to the
Historically, geometry had developed as an apriori science,
One lives in the world, and more specifically, in world-situations,

where one has certain interests and needs a knowledge adequate
to one's interests. As merely adequate, this knowledge has a greater or less degree of accuracy, according to the exigencies of the
situation.
With Heraclitus a11d Parmenides, then more clearly with Plato,
one has an attempt to realize the ideal of a knowledge that is not
merely pragmatic, but absolute. The difficulties in the way of such
knowledge were recognized: the relativity of sense experience
made the Sophists even deny the possibility of absolute knowledge,
valid for everybody, regardless of the situation. With Parmenides and Plato we find that the world of experience is actually
rejected, as a field of mere doxa; and for Plato a supersensiblc
world, a realm of ideas, is held to be the field of episteme.
Aristotle was not content thus to reject the world of experience,
but emphasized the connexion of the universal with the experiential. But he did not do justice to the idealization which
Plato had seen was essential to a gaining of the subject matter of
absolute, of a priori, knowledge.
Coiwsrsation with Husserl, Ir/5/32
LIV
level of contemporaries, then to the level of predecessors, we widen the temporal horizon of world-constitution. I objected that
this finite extension availed nothing i11 the way of gaining an infinite time. The whole thing remains obscure to me.
When talking about animals Husserl distinguished Menschew
tiers (man's animals), e.g., dogs and elephants, from e-igemtiiche
Tiers (authentic animals), as differing degrees of abnormality,
and spoke of a continuous decrease of the possibility of Einfiikiimg (empathy) as one descends the scale. I asked, VVhat
about plants? Can we say that we have Einfiililimg here, or is
the plant merely a special sort of pliysimi object, not a psychophysical? To begin with, replied Husserl, one must distinguish
two sorts of physical unities, those in which the form remains the
same but the material may change and those in which the identity
of material constitutes the unity. The latter is the fundamental
unity of physical science, the basis for its idealizations. Physical
science tries to explain unities of the other sort (I think Husserl
spoke of these as typical unities) according to causal laws of
the behavior of unities of the other sort. Plants are typical unities,
as are men and animals. I interpolated that a waterfall was also
a unity of the same sort, to which Husserl agreed.
In the end I got no clear idea whether l-lusserl thinks of plants
as limiting cases of Einfiililung, or not. Though he did say perhaps Leibniz was right in saying that the only conceivable being
was spiritual being, and that the things of the world are really
sleeping monads.
He also touched again on the problem of heredity, which I have
recorded in an earlier report.
primarily an apriori science of the space-form of the real world,

of the necessary nature of real space. In reaching this stage it had
advanced beyond the stage of a mere descriptive, situational,
"science", had made this advance through idealization. A still
further stage was reached when geometry was seen to be an apriori science of all possible "spaces", of all possible worlds.
Logic, with Aristotle, advanced to the second stage, that of
being regarded as the necessary form of all possible being in this
actual world. Aristotle saw that, as such, it preceded the material
sciences and, with other formal disciplines, formed a first philos-
ophy.
76
CONVERSATIONS
The Platonic tradition reached its culmination in Leibniz,

who saw that the rational in every region was the universal, the
apriori, and sought to work out the apriori for law and grammar
even as the Greeks had worked it out ior space.
Thus we have, throughout the history of philosophy, a striving
for a universal ontology as the science of the necessary nature of
objects of the world and its various regions, and then as the science
of the necessary nature of objects in general, regions in general, whereof the actual world, actual objects, actual regions, are
but possible examples.
Such an ontology makes use of evidence, lives in it, but does
not question it. Yet, from the time of the Sophists, the right of
evidence had been questioned. How does one know that the knowledge claimed is not mere doxa? It claims to be knowledge of the
necessary nature of all possible worlds. But what I have given me
is this world alone, and this world even is given me only in part.
Where is the evidence for my ontology? Ontology, all science, is
a subjective product. I am thrown back upon the world of doxa
as the source of all episteme, and among doxa I distinguish empty
and intuitive doxa as two sorts. The latter is exemplified in perception. But perception is essentially afipercefitioii, i.e., is not
completely perception at all. Apperception is anticipation, and
the anticipated, when realized, contains ever more apperception,
so that in this way the progress of experience gives only corroberation or discrediting of doxa, and never episteme. [This is the
reason why we cannot be content merely to describe the particular.) I may, however, vary the perceived object in phantasy. If I
do so I come to see that certain determinations are necessary to
the object, however much it may vary in other respects. This is a
sort of anticipation of the whole infinite series of future perceptions: all of them must, as perceptions of the same object, perceive it as having the invariable determinations. These determinations are then essential to the object, and to all possible objects
of the same type. But here again, what is the evidence for all this
that I have just been saying? Again, it is an isolation of the essential in evidence, by a process of free variation.
Thus one comes to a first philosophy that is prior even to ontology and which consists in an analysis of the necessary structure of
a subjectivity wherein is given evidence, the presumptive evidence
|__,'
of the experienced particular, and the apodictic evidence of the
universal gained through free variation.

But what is this subjectivity? At rst we take it to be the psy-
Chglogical, the worldly subjectivity. But the worldliness of this
subjectivity is then seen to be itself a doxa, a Geltung (acceptance,

position, positedncss, validity), a (necessary) apperception of the
transcendental subjectivity which is in itself prior to all Geltimgen,
for whom all doxa, all Ge.-Etimg is, including its own Geltung as in the
world, as psychological.
LV
Husserl spoke of the constitution of nature.

In the world as given us we can distinguish a fundamental
ontic stratum called mere nature. This is given us in sense perception, and more particularly a natural object is given us in a.
particular sense perception, a natural object with a background
of other natural objects. This object is either unchanging while
given us, or changing. Unchangingness we may conceive as the
null of changingness. As changing (actually or potentially) the
object has several dimensions of change: It may change its posi-
apparence of new surfaces through splitting of the object. Nor is
tion, it may change its configuration (may grow, shrink, be distorted, divide), or change any one of its perceived qualities. But
we shall consider first the null state, unchangingness. As unchanging the objcct is perceived as having a surface and an inner. The
inner is not apparent {Ap1>m'enz), but is the possibility of the
the actual surface as a whole apparent. VVhat is apparent is an

aspect of the object, a perspective. The other aspects or perspectives are potentially given, apperceived, as becoming appaf_BI1t
through possible rotation or circumvention of the object. Slinilarly the qualities of the apparent surface are given each In
perspectives, as otherwise giveable when the object is nearer of
further (an optimal distance as null) or otherwise illuminated
(an optimal illumination both as to intensity and color of light).
And the same with the apparent shape and size. So far our an1Y51-5
is of ontic qualities, object determinations and their given-
73
CONVERSATIONS
ness in appearances which are themselves moments of the object.

Let us take some apparent moment of the object, the null
object. Let us say the apparent shape of an unchanging object,
and in the null form of homogeneity; further, a visual appearance
as homogeneously colored appearance. (Optimally oriented.)
We now ask back to the structure of the perception in which this
appearance appears.
Vile find that this perception has a material side, the constitution in immanent time of a certain homogeneous flow within
the wider flow of the "visual field. This hyletic flow is of momentary data that are qualitatively alike and, in so far as simultaneous, outside of" each other. But as hyletic flow, it is not a
unity but the basis for the constitution of an enduring unity,
just as the "outsideness with respect to each other of the simultaneous instants is not spatial, but the basis for the constitution of spatiality (enduring). To the constitution of the enduring
object there is necessary a peculiarly psychic moment which
takes the hyletic flow as the A bsciiottimg <adumbration> of an
enduring being, the apparent aspect. However, this taking of the
hyletic flow is possible only because of certain other moments in
the phenomena, which we are about to mention.
There is an actual or potential flow of kinaesthesis which has as
its accompaniment a change in the total visual hyletic flow, such
that the homogeneous group changes qualitatively without losing its homogeneity: the group is characterized as "at the edge"
or the "center of the field". (This is an inaccurate way of designating the change, a phrase borrowed from the perception of objects
as at the edge or center of the visual perceptiial "field". What we
mean is the hyletic change which is the A bscliattu-rig of this change
in the mode of appearance.) Actually we may set the kinaesthesia
at null ("look right at the obj ect"). But the unchangingness of the
hyletic stream in certain respects, which correspond to the potential kinaesthetic change, is an essential condition for the grasping
of the hyle as an Absckattimg of an object.
We may illustrate by the case of a perception of a moving oblect. Here the possibility of keeping the hyletic Abschattimgen
centered (i.e. making them flow with center qualities) of following the object with our eyes is the condition for grasping the
79
continuous qualitative change of the hyletic stream as the Ab-
schattimg of the movement of a visual object. But this is the possibility of a certain kinaesthetic flow.
Negatively, we may say that, but for kinaesthesis (changing or
constant), the hyletic flow would exhibit its own qualitative
changes but never possibly be grasped as A bschattn-rig of an ident-
ical obj ect.
All identity belongs to the A bgesck-attet-e <a(lunibrated (object)>,

not to the hyletic flow. (Hence it were better to avoid speaking of
the hyletic field.)
So far we have analysed the structure of the perception so far
as it takes the appearance as an ob;-ect, but have not considered
the further elements which are the basis for taking as an appearance
of an object which actually appears in it but might appear in
other appearances.
These elements are, like those already mention ed, both hyletic
and kinaesthetic. Confining ourselves still to the visual sphere,
we may say that certain changes (actual and possible) in the hyletic
flow are connected with further (actual and possible) changes in
the kinaesthetic flow, in such a way as to make possible the taking of these hyletic changes as Absch-aim-rigen of a change of presented aspect of an object which gives itself in aspects. Here again,
the hyletic stream must manifest a certain continuity in the way
it changes. The kinaesthesia in question are directly connected,
however, not with the hyletic flow which is grasped as Absolutitimg of the object-appearance in question, but rather with the
hyletic flow which is grasped as A bscliattmig of the appearance
of my body, more particularly, with the change (in the Absc!iatdung of my bodily appearance) which is t.aken as the Absckattmzg
of locomotion. This latter connection gives ine the basis for grasping space as the continuum of loci my body can occupy, and then
as the loci of other things with reference to my body.
There are further steps that must be analyzed here. Indeed I
have tilled in the analysis so that here and there it is fuller than
Husserl gave it_
We must when we speak of the appearance (which Husserl

08-lied earlier the full phantom and now calls, I think, the phansis)
35 3 being, distinguish between being as a transitional stage
(such as we have in this case) and being as telos (such as we have
8o
convansarrons
in the case of the real object, of which the phansis is but an appearance). The possibility is left open that what is now a Derekgangsse-iemies <a transitional being) was, at some earlier genetic
era, a telos, i.e. that at that time e.g. constitution did not go
beyond the constitution of the phansis.
Husserl regards the present exposition as better than that in
Idem II, as it clearly shows the respective roles always played
by kinaesthesis and by the changes in hyle at all levels of constitution. Everything that "goes beyond" hyle we can attribute to
noesis, to mind.
After we left Husserl, Fink attacked Husserls tendency to
explicate the constitution of space purely as a function of the
spatiality of objects, and his neglect of all but solid bodies in his
analysis of nature air, and light especially. Space as the Spielnmm (open range) of bodies, their medium ("light as a medium
too?) is, says Fink, the condition for the spatiality of objects,
their loci and configurations. He spoke of Stills <stil1ness,
silence, quietness) as, analogously, the condition, the Spielmum
for sound. I gather that "Spe3mum in general, as openness to
perception of objects of a given region, l1e regards as the intentional correlate of the psychic state of being awake in some, or all
fields. (So we may say, perhaps, the blind man is visually asleep, though, if once he was not blind he may now dream
visually, i.e. phantasy visually while he is "awake", open to
impressions in other fields.)
LVI
Conversation saith Hassent, 2/6/32
Husserl asked me what I thought of the Entw-urf (draft) for the
Ist Meditation that I have been reading. The conversation took
the form of a discussion as to the relative value of a motivation
under the guidance of the ideal of science, as we find it phenomenologically the ideal of factual scientific activity, and [on the
other hand] a motivation under the guidance of the ideal of
Hedi.-l:al <radical) knowledge, as each individual may find it in
his own factual knowledge activity, whether or not he stands in a
81
Phenomenal cultural situation where science is a phenomenal

datum. Or rather, the question was which motivation is the best
subject for such an exposition as the Ist llfeditation is intended to

be. I defended the desirability of the motivation from the general
ideal of radical knowledge, as being a motivation independent of
cultural situation, and [thus] universal. Husserl defended the

first motivation as admitting of a simpler exposition. The second
would require a long analysis of the nature of knowledge and be-
lief. This must be given eventually in either exposition, but can

be deferred in the exposition of the motivation through the ideal
of science. But he has also considered the motivation through the
ideal of knowledge and developed it in his I923 lectures.
I questioned the thesis that the motivation he prefers to follow
in the meditations can be expounded as simply as it is in the

French Meditations and still be convincing. The ideal of absolute
scientific truth is not universally admitted to be the telos of

scientific activity. Many maintain that the true goal, the factual and the valid goal is a "higher" situation-truth, still relative to
an inelectable element of brute fact in the situation (i.e. not merely
relative to the necessary structure of all possible situations).
Husserl admitted this was true, but evoked the fact that from the
beginning in Greece there has been a continued allegiance to the
ideal of absolute truth. Alongside this continuous scientic
would defer too long the introduction of the phenomenological
tradition there has run a continuous skeptical tradition, which

questions and even denies the validity of that ideal. It is this
tradition which is exhibited now in the tendency to reduce science
to an essentially situational affair.
For the same reason that he would avoid beginning with the
idea of knowledge, Husserl would also avoid beginning as Fink
does in the Emlwmf (draft), with the idea of philosophy. Knowledge and philosophy are not such precise concepts to the reader
as is science. Consequently they would have to be first rendered
precise by an elaborate phenomenological explication, and that
reduction. As for the greater generality, that is not an essential

desideratum because only the scientifically eingestellter (orientated) man is capable of bringing understanding to the reading of an
introduction to phenomenology. Vi-"ith this l disagree. The reader
might first through phenomenology come to see the importance
82
convunsarrons
for him of science (as phenomenological science), and so become a

"scientific" man. But the conversation was at an end.
LVII
Co-noersation with H-assert, 416/32
Vi-"hen one reverts to oncs own transcendental subjectivity, I saidone finds it as preceding all constituted objects and as apodicticThe other transcendental subject is also intended as preceding
all constituted objects it is that or nothing. But whereas the
alternative, nothingness, is excluded for my own subjectivity, it
is not excluded for the other subject, even when he is given in the
highest possible evidence of harmonious einf-tints-rider (empathizing) perception. That is to say, the transcendental other self is
not apodictic. (This would apply to any identifiable, alleged other
self. It is a further question, whether the existence of some other
self is apodictic. lf so, however, then it must be as the necessary
consequence of some ontological argument.)
Husserl replied as follows: The analogy between the givenness
of my past awareness and the givenness of other subjectivity is
instructive here. The evidence of any particular alleged past

awareness does not have full apodicticity. But it is an apodictic
character of the present to have intentional (here specifically
retentional) relation to some past, as somehow determinate. The
past is a necessary intentional object of the present awareness.
Similarly it is an apodictic transcendental fact that my subjectivity constitutes for itself a world as intersubjective. The other
self is therefore a necessary intentional object of the absolutely
evident structure of my awareness. Furthermore this other self
is necessarily coequal with my self. My transcendental self, by
virtue of its evident structure, perceives itself as without any
superiority over the other self. (I am an intentional object for
him, as he is for me; he is an absolute constitutive consciousness,
as I am.) This is all part of the apodictic facticity of my transcendental subjectivity. It does not depend on the fortuitous constitution of a particular object of valid Einfiilttang (empathy) ill
perception, but is simply an explication of the fact that I do intend a world as necessarily intersubjective. (That is what I mean
5-_l|u_
wrrn uussenr. AND PINK
83
by calling it a world. If it were not intersubjective, it would not

be a world.) Strictly it is an (open?) infinity of other subjects
which is required by the apodictic factual structure of my
transcendental consciousness, not one other subject.
(But are the other transcendental selves necessary existents or
necessary potentialities? Is the world given me as factually constituted by other selves, or as potentially constituted by other
selves? Or, more precisely, is the world as world, i.e. as inter-
subjective, itself a constituted fact, or a constituted ideal?
This is what the question comes down to.)

Husserl reversed himself on the subject of kinaesthesis. He
would now distinguish between the process of willing and the
kin aesthetic process. A voluntary recollection is a process of willing, but has no specific kinaesthetic accompaniment. On the
other hand, a voluntary movement is a process of willing, which
has a specific kinaesthetic accompaniment, and a specific hyletic
(sensational) accompaniment. The voluntary recollection and the
voluntary movement are similar in having each a volitional process as a component. But there is no kinaesthesis in recollection.
([Do] I control the phantasrnic modification of the sensation-hyle
directly, as I control the body kinaesthcsis directly? Or is there a
phantasmic modification of kinaestie-esis, and is it this I control
directly? flow about the volition to attend to memory? To "go
over" from attending the perceived to attending the remembered?) The character of kinaesthesis is that it is a directly controlled
or rather controllable process and that it has an invariant connexion with hyletic processes so that we gain a certain mediate control over them, or the style in which they change.
Husserl expressly recognized that this was different from what
he had said before about hyle, kinaesthesis, and will.
LVIII
Co-noersatio-n with H-assert, A..-'lf., 8,l'6f32
The natural attitude is an attitude of the tra-nscendental ego, just

as is the transcendental attitude. (In the natural attitude the transcendental ego, wheu it reflects, sees itself, not as transcende-ntal
ego but as natural ego.)
84
convsnsarrons
P.M.
The pretended future is given in a way which is not "symmetri-
cal" with the way in which the retained and recollected past is
given. Whereas the past is given directly, the future is given in a
representation. The past is an intentional modification of a present; the future is an intentional modification of a past, i.e. a
second degree modification of a present. [What will be past

present P)
Husserl said he was inclined to reverse himself once more on the

subject of kinaesthesis.
LIX
Conversation with Husserl, 13/6]32

The theme was in the eld of the phenomenology of passive constitution (association, Sckmelzung (fusion, blending), Abkebamg
(salience, standing out), Weckmzg (awakening), affectivity and
interest). A new concept, that of the affective "power" of the

passively constituted, was introduced. The phenomenology of
[dream1ess) sleep and awaking was treated in this general
theme.
We study sense perception. When we do so, Riickfrage (asking

back, regressive inquiry) from the abstracted, passively constituted natural object leads us to thematize the immanent hyletic
stream, by means of which the ego perceives the aforesaid object. We find then, in the hyletic stream, processes which are the
bases for the Abhebzmg of natural objects, for their perceived
interrelations, etc. These hyletic phenomena and others may be

described as they are in themselves, apart from the abschattemier
<adumbrating) function of hyle. These processes are phenomena of
passive constitution, and we have the further problem of their
relation to the ego, their affective power upon it and the resultant
phenomena of interest.
As basic mode of the flow of hyle, and of its simultaneous con-
tent, we find the modus complete homogeneity. The sensory

field exhibits throughout one hyletic "co1or, unchangingly in
"space" and time. It is however only through its contrast with
'
'r
-"=-;:-* ;-'
1*. .
if I
wrrn nussnnr. AND FINK
85
to a decided red. Such a gradual change is the origin of the
a heterogeneous field that this eld is characterized by us as homogeneous.

The first rnodalization of this basic mode is a gradual, continuous change, from point to point in the simultaneous field, e.g. a
gradual "pinkening from center to circumference, from white
time or space
Its rate may be plotted thus:
concept of similarity. The change may be quite gradual, but nevertheless (in comparison with other processes?) more or less rapid.
e.g.
"pinkness"
or thus:
or again we may have a maximum:
86
or several maximal
convnusarrons
In the latter case, the maxima, the peaks, come to Abhebung

(salience, standing out) (still passively), and each peak as abgehoben (outstanding, salient) brings its sides with it to Abhebung.
We have a first stage of individualization. (Not complete individualization, since we have not yet identification.)
In all the cases described, association is present as V.erschmelztmg (fusion, blc11dir.g) in the unity of a homogeneous stream.
In the iast case we have not only I/krsohmeizung but also Weclaung
(awakening) still passive. Each peak wakes the other, and
pairs with each other.
Another case possible is that of sudden change:
_lL_|_|_
Here likewise we have an Abgehobe-nlzeit (outstandingness, salicncy, contrast).
Now, every Abgelzobe-nheit as such exercises an affective power
on the ego, in waking life. It commands interest. And every
Abgekobe-eke-it that is paired with it (all the other peaks) gains
likewise an affective power. Once it has gained that interest, it
receives thereby an accretion of power. In dreamless sleep the
passive constitution of A bgehoben-he-riten must be said to continue,
but the affective power of the Abgehobeu (what is made outstanding or salient) is lessenened or reduced to zero, so that only 3-
sudden great change, a pain or an unexpected noise (or silence)
has affective power. VVhen the ego is awakened, it is awakened

first to the peak, which than drags with it its sides and its background. The ego awakes from a given point of the passively
constituted, to others.
So far we have left out of consideration the "sedimentation"
of past impressions, the phenomena of hyletic retention. Here too
a Weckmzg (awakening) goes on from the present Abgekobenheit
(saliency, contrast) to the sedimented past A bgehobenheit. Thereby the sedimented past Abgeiz-obenhe-item gain an affective power,
become objects of interest. At first they appear in consciousness
(in the narrow sense of ego-consciousness) as Leerbewusstkeitm
(empty awarenesses). By virtue of the accretion of affective power
which they then receive, the sedimented details then come into
consciousness, until a timi-n-e they become intuitive, "presentative' '
memories. Whereas the process of sedimentation, of retention,
goes on continually, so that so to speak, no past Eriebnis (mental
process or occurrence) is ever lost from consciousness (in the wider

sense), yet there is a passive impoverishment of the retained
(a lessening of Abgokobenkeit?), and hence a lessening of its intrinsic potential power, so that even when waked {as it always
must be by a new similar impression) it may not be sufficiently
powerful to affect the ego, to draw its interest or if it does that
its power may still be insufficient to bring it out of the state of
being leer bewusst (conscious in an empty manner).
Dreams present a problem of a higher level, which Husserl did
not treat this time.
In bringing in the notion of affective power, Husserl said that we

find among the Abgehobenhe-item of passive constitution a struggle
for existence, or rather for the interest of the ego. But a struggle
means power; etc.
LX
Co-rwersazfion with Husserl and Fink, I5/6/32
While Husserl was out I spoke to Fink of the Logisck-e Studien,

the manuscript of which, as worked out by Landgrebe, I am
83
couvessarrous
reading. Fink said Landgrebe was inclined to see passive constitution as absolutely passive, whereas the original time~constitution
must be regarded as an ego-activity in a wide sense of activity.
He mentioned this as a view of Kants also. Husserls recent manuscripts on Jebendiger Gegenwart (living present), he said, justify
this attitude.
Nevertheless, when Husserl joined us there was nothing in what
he said to strengthen Finks view; rather the contrary.
He went on with the theme of two days previous. The passively
constituted "object" exercises a "R-le (stimulus) upon the
ego, by virtue of the objects Abgehobmke-it (saliency, contrast),
etc. The ego is then, in the waking state, affected and replies with
an interest in the object. Just as two days ago he spoke of the
power of the stimulus, so today he spoke of the energy of the interest. This energy may vary in amount in various cogitationes.
It may in a given temporal stretch of a given cogito increase, in
another decrease. The interest may be modalized as a dropping
of the object from attention, which is a mode of still attending it.
In sleep the passively constituted "ob}ects still exercise their
stimuli, but the ego is not affected, and has no interest.
VVhen one tries to fall asleep one drops ones thematic interest,
diminishes the energy of interest as much as possible. (Thematic
interest operates as a principle of selection among the passively
associated Abgehobe-nkeiten which stimulate the ego, call its attention, when once the ego has paid attention to one among them.
The ego does not freely associate, but follows a line determined
by his dominant interest, attending only those associates which
are relevant to it. This is a further principle ~ beyond passive association ~ of affection.)
But letting one's "mind" wander, so far as possible thernelessly,
(and shutting out visual, tactual, auditory Abgehobenheiten by
lying still in a quiet place with closed eyes) is not enough to fall
asleep. VVhat more is needed?
Even more difficult is the problem of awakening. How, once
interest has sunk to null, and the ego is no longer affected, does it
ever awaken? (Husserl assumes, perhaps uncritically, that there
is an absoiute sleep.)
One factor in the situation, at least, has been unconsideredi
ego instincts, which possibly arise in the ego spontaneously (an <1,
wrru nussnnr. AND I-INK
89
as it were, send it looking for objects). Hunger, Husserl is inclined
to think, is not merely an abgehobene ( (made) outstanding, sa-
lient) hyletic (passive) complex which, normally, recurs period-
ically and stimulates the ego. It is perhaps a periodic spontaneous

interest in a certain sort of thing (perhaps known more or less
before experience) which goes looking for an object and in it the
ego may wake. Hunger may wake me. But this is tentative, and
even if true, probably inadequate to the problem of waking and
falling asleep.
LXI
Coaoersatfor-z with Husserl and Fink, 23/6/32
Husserl spoke of the reduction of transcendental consciousness to

the living present, the shaken-der Strcin-twig (fixed, or stagnant
flowing) of the Now. It is a sort of second reduction, after the
phenomenological reduction to transcendental consciousness, and
is motivated by the insight that transcendental consciousness in
its full extent, beyond the present, is a Geltmzgsphinomen (acceptance-, validity- phenomenon) for the present. The present,
on the other hand, is not reducible, cannot be regarded as a phenomenon. It is alas Urtiirnl-fake (what-is-primal). Fink called
attention to the different sense in which Heidegger uses the
word phenomenon: that which shows itself. Phenomenology is

the logos of dam Sick-zeigenden (that-which-shows-itself), for
Heidegger. (Fink has rendered more precise the I-Iusserlian sense
of phenomenon (correlatively, of phenomenology) in his Entwmf
(draft) for the new first meditation.) Nevertheless Husserl seemed
inclined to call the transcendental present the "Urj>hcEn-omen
(primal phenomenon), apparently led by the fact that it is in
some sense a Gait-ungsphzinomen for the reflecting transcendental
ego. The reflecting act in which the transcendental present is
given is itself "anonymous", and must first be objectified in a
new transcendental reflection. So proceeding, we create the possibility of insight into the possible endless reiteration of such higher
levels of reflection. But here Husserl saw a difficulty.
Another difficulty with the present transcendental consciousness is that as soon as we try to conceptualize it we transcend it.
90
CONVERSATIONS
It can be determined only in its relation to its own intentional

modalizations, a continuously modalized retentional past. Now,
i.e. in relation to what it produces, a new fixed point in transcendental time - or in relation to the other past and future news which
are likewise intentional quasi-objects of the present now. And
again, the Now is always present, but always diversifying itself
through modalization of its content, so that we get past and future
now-contents, in the temporal structure of immanent time.
just as transcendental consciousness in its immanent temporal
extent is the source of the Zeit-ig-mag (ternpo1'alization> of transcendent objects, the stehend fl-iessende Gegenwort (fixed flowing
present) is the source of the Zeiiig-zmg of immanent objects.
To get at the solution of these problems Husserl said he must
study his ow11 old manuscripts. He docs not remember them offhand. They are too difficult.
The recent publication of a book on Husscrls vor;bh-ci'nome0iOgiSCh8 Pkioso;!>kie" (Husserls pre-phenomenological philosophy)* led Husserl to object to the statement made therein
that his development took a radical turn in the years between
I910 and I912. This statement is based on the evidence of Husserls
publications, but his manuscripts will show clearly that the transcendental idealism was already present several years before
publication, and quite definitely before the Logos article. To be
sure, it was not present at the time of the Logische Untersuchungen.
But instead of being realistic (in any sense opposed to transcendental idealism) the Logische Untersuciiimgeri are pre-philosophical. Even so, Husserl saw clearly that the only world we have is
given us through and as the correlate of perception. With the discovery of the transcendental reduction Husserl was at first tremendously; exalted, but soon the difficulty of "avoiding" transcendental solipsism, i.e. of explaining the constitution of transcendental otl1cr'n1ind,'became apparent, and was notjcasily solved.
While yetlhe did not see his way to a solution he did not consider the'thing publishablc. Furthermore, he thought that it would
be enough for the public to assimilate his pure intentional psychology at first. Thus he did not go beyond that psychology in
" By Dr. Werner Illernann. Leipzig, I932.
5 Philosophie als strange Wissenschaft",Logos, I {rgrr}, pp. 289-341.
QI
his Logos article. Nevertheless he had already been lecturing on

phenomenological reduction before then.
For all this, Husserl spoke well of the book in question.
LXII
Conversation with Husserl, 2-7f6/32
Husserl spoke of mysticism. Every genuine evidence has its

right. The question is always of the Tmgweite (range, scope) of
any given evidence. This applies also to the particular evidences
which the mystic has.
Whole pages of Meister Eckehart, Husserl said, could be taken
over by him unchanged.
He doubts however the practical sufficiency of mysticism. The
awakening from the mystical experience is likely to be a rude
one. On the other hand the insight into the rationality of the
world which one gains through true scientific investigation remains through all future experience. The difference is furthermore, one between passive enjoyment and work. The mystic
neglects work. Both are necessary.
As every evidence has its right, the proper attitude toward religion is tolerance toward all genuine religion.
LXIII
Conversation with Husserl, 29/6132
I told Husserl I was working on the passages in the Logisck-e

St-adieu manuscript where the unity of A ?-SC)l2-dttttg (intuition) is
treated. He was surprised that the subject is treated there at all,
and said that the treatment there must be very primitive.
The ultimate problem of phenornenology is the explication of
the structure of the living present. We find here a passively constituted structure, hyletic on the one hand and egological
but passive on the other, which is prior to all ego-activity. In it
we find the constitution of unity, but not identity. The latter requires active recollection. The passive concrete flow of the living
present involves not only a streaming impressional now, with its
93
CONVERSATIONS
implied retentions and protentions of other now contents -
forming the basis for the constitution oi immanent time but

also a simultaneous stream of Vergegenwcirtigungen <presenta..
ti0ns> of past contents, "men1ories" constituted passively apart
from actual ego-adversion, just as impressions and retentions are.
By virtue of their association in the one time of the living present with original impressional contents these {equally hyletic
but non-original) representations have a l)eckm1gs-relation
(relation of coincidence) with them, and passively constitute
a rivalry which, quite apart from all ego-adversion, represses

either one or the other for a time. They conflict actually in the
sensory fields, by virtue of their identical locus in that two-d.imen-
sional manifold.
This extraordinary account awoke lively objections from both
Fink and me.
LXIV
Coiwersation with Husserl and Fink, I5/7/32
Husserl is inclined to give up calling the innertime constitution
"intentionality. Intentionality is ego-activity, either original or
modalized. The kinaesthetic processes are ego-activities, and every
transcendent objectivity, beginning with such things as patches
constituted oculomotorally are achievements of ego-activity.
Genetically these no longer grasped objectivities have grown out of
a stage in the development of consciousness when they were actually grasped. What Husserl calls secondary passivity is indeed a
modalization of active intentionality. The kinaesthetic process is
an ego-activity even when it is not a direct willing but a habit.
Ego-activity produces all objectification. In the activity of reflecting, the innnanent sphere and pre-world objectivities become objectified, have conferred upon them identity and being.
In the activity of tmascemicntal reflection the immanent has conferred upon it transcendental being; the already objectied
worldly and preworldly receive a modication of their being, as
phenomenal. But the reflection itself receives being only when it
becomes the object of another reflection.
The stream oi immanent time, original "now" and retained
93
past, is the form of all ego-activity and is objectified when the

ego-activities themselves are intended in higher reflective acts.
But as form it is not an activity, and ii we mean activity by intentionality, it is not an intentionality.
Both Fink and I objected to this narrowing of the sense of intentionality.
LXV
Fink outlined the problem of the mundanization of phenomenology. Essentially phenomenology is a product of the transcendental subject, whereas science in the ordinary sense is a product of
the mundane subject. Yet phenomenology necessarily appears
as the product of the mundane subject.
Scientific activity in the ordinary sense is directed upon absolute knowledge as a goal, but achieves and can achieve only
relative knowledge, subject to further correction according to the
further development in time of the irrational element essential to
mundane facticity, and according to the corresponding extension
oi the factual society of scientists. This es.=:e-ntimf relativity is lacking in the case of phenomenological science-.*
Yet it has its place where it "appears" in a culture, and in the
life of the individual phenomenologist. In spite of the fact that
no mumdane motivation is adequate to the transgressing of the
world that takes place in the transcendental reduction, and in
the asking back into transcendental constitutional horizons (as
opposed to mundane horizons).
The problem then receives clarification through the clarification of the essential transcendental necessity of the transcendental ego coming to self-consciousness (i.e. developing phenomenology, which is the achievement of the transcendental subject) in
and through a mundane subject, just as first it necessarily loses
itself in the world which it creates a11d alone in the creating of
which lies its own transcendental being.
Husserl had contributed to the above the exposition of the
In the margin opposite this sentence is a question mark.
94
convnnsnrrons
relativity of mundane science, which is a relativity qualified

ideally by the ideal of validity for every subject. Also he had
pointed out that every object has two horizons, its horizon of
other constituted world objects, and its horizon of transcendental
constitutive intentionalities.
A further problem developed by Fink was that of the different
senses of the intersubjectivity to which transcendental phenomenology is essentially related, according to whether one thinks of the
mundanized subjects who stand together in the transcendental
reduction in a world society, a common culture, or whether one
thinks of the pure transcendental subjects as standing in the
transcendental intersubjective realm.
Husserl spoke of the levels of pre-being, that have become mere
passageways to the awareness of the world, as having once themselves been termini ad quem for the egos interest. The development of the world is teleologically directed upon the substitution
of unities for multiplicities, and the latter become anonymous,
uninteresting to the ego.
He spoke of the possibility - perhaps possibility, perhaps
absurdity, perhaps necessity - that on these pre-world levels there
is also intersubjectivity, as a conditioning of constitution. Fink
suggested that the problem of instincts might lead to this conclusion.
Husserl spoke of induction as a theme appearing relatively late
in the necessary order of transcendental problems, and said that
perception itself, as involving anticipation, is from moment to
moment of its duration, an induction. Induction then is fundamentally a matter of passive association and anticipation. It is
not a process which appears for the first time on the syntactical
level, but is present on the lower levels of Sein-sgelmn-g (acceptance of being, existential validity).
In this connection, and as a problem for the future, he spoke
of the problem of heredity, particularly the problem of an innate
appereeptive mass as sedimentation of the original experience of
past generations. These experiences lie normally at least beyond
the potentiality of being re-produced, recollected by the ego. Connected with this problem, the problem of whether ultimately
transcendental subjectivity is dissevered in absolutely separate
monads, or whether there is not an underlying unity. The prob-
95
lem also of telepathy as a conceivable or inconceivable phenomenon is a problem for the future.
In general, the solid results at any level of phenomenological
science open up horizons of future problems, concerning which we
often cannot decide whether they are genuine or absurd, but to
the rationally motivated rejection of which as absurd or the rational formulation of which, a way is clearly indicated by the
present solidly established results.
LXVI
Connersat-to-2-z tort}: 1--me, 2jjgjl32
The term "net-it-rliche Bin-stall-mag (natural attitude) is dangerous,

as suggesting a sort of (arbitrary?) attitude. Fink prefers to
say "Wetbefaagenhet <entanglement in the world). The transcendental ego lives then as it were in the superficies of its life.
The transcendental reduction makes the third dimension transparent, enables the ego to see the lower levels of world constitution.
The transcendental ego is not to be interpreted too uncritically
on the analogy of the psychological ego. Husserl is too uncritical
in assuming transcendental correlates for the biological determinations of the psyche, for birth, death, instinct. A detailed
analysis of the self-apperception as psyche would perhaps reveal
that these are purely constituted determinations having no
parallels in the constituting consciousness. Similarly Fink doubts
that intersubjectivity is a transcendental fact. Here again the
phenomenal is uncritically read into the transcendental; similarly
with the unconscious. Perhaps the transcendental consciousness
is pure Geist (mind, spirit).
He suggested that the Ur-ego <pIIlITl3.l ego), in which the enduring ego is constituted, that the Ur-now (primal now) is not,
perhaps, the Absolute, but the first emanation of the absolute.
The Husserlian analysis of sense perception analyzes the founded structure of the perceptum on the one hand and the kinaesthetic process on the other, but neglects the peculiar nature of aesthesis
itself. Fink i11 this connection speaks of an openness of consciousness to sensation, that is present even when no sensations are
96
CONVERSATIONS
In the case of ideation, free variation does not first constitute
there. The situation of a person who is awake and can hear but
hears nothing is, e.g., different from that of a person who is
asleep. He does not interpret the difference between waking and
sleeping as a difference in ability on the part of sensations to
reach the conscious consciousness, but rather as a difference between presence and absence of sensation, whether conscious or
unconscious. (The sleeping person is not a person oblivious to
what his ears tell him, but a person whose ears tell him nothing.)
This seems to me to be contrary to empirical evidence.
the eidos, but cuts the already constituted eidos free from the
rest of the concretion. The latter he regards as always individual.
He rejects the idea of a concrete eidos.
But in the case of ideation exercised on transcendental consciousness, he considers the activity as strictly creative of the
eidos. This seems to me part of his more general theory that there
is no I/orgegebenheit (prior givenness) of transcendental consciousness. Which I doubt.
He has been developing in his Entwnrf (draft) for the Sixth
zlfeditat-1'0-n a program of phenomenology of the transcendental
observer. How does the transcendental observer, who "springs
full armed from the transcendental reduction, get its "arms",
its reason, its logic, its ability to explicate the transcendental
phenomenon and the world-constituting ego? It takes them over
from the latter, but they are employed by the latter in constituting and knowing the world. Yet the transcendental observer
uses them not at all to constitute, and employs them to know not
the world but the world phenomenon and the transcendental ego
that posits the world. What about this change? And the problem
of the transcendental observer's habituality?
Husserl himself probably intended in this Sixth 1/Ieditation
rather to criticize the evidence of recollection and other methods
of transcendental reflection. But this belongs in the transcendental Elementariehre (elementary theory) (the theory of the world
phenomenon and the transcendental ego as positing it) rather than
to the theory of the transcendental observer.
Fink has long been working on a Hegel interpretation, particularly of the youthful works, couched in Fichtean-Schellingian
language but with a new content.
WITH HUSSERL AND FINK.
The difficulty with Hegel interpretation is the erroneous appli-
cation of mundane concepts and logic to what Hegel says. For

example, the identity of Sein (being> and Nickts (nothing) is not
a mundane identity, but the identity of constituted and constituting. All interpretations from the point of view of the world
necessarily find nonsense in Hegel, or rather read nonsense into
him.
LXVII
sees that the object itself is, in its being and determinations, corre-
Husserl spoke on problems of totality and infinity.

Earlier, he said, he had taken it for granted that the object was
perceived in original self-givenness, with a horizon that was not
original but could be clarified through free variation. Today he
late of the horizon. The originally given pretends to exist, i.e.

pretends that future acts directed to it will corroborate the present evidence. Being is always and only given as correlate of a
horizon; it is never self-given in originality.
The world, as we perceive it, has the sense of being infinite in
time and space. (Space is essentially a dimension of time, a dimension of coexistence.) If we allow that the part of the world
which lies in my perceptual field is originally given if we
allow this, in spite of the insight (according to the preceding
paragraph) that such original self-givenness is not strict,

absolute self-givenness, then we must say that the infinite of
the world in time and space is but a motivated probability, and
not an originally evident character. Nay, all one can say, perhaps, is that an immediate "Beyond" the perceptual horizon is a
probability. That this beyond has its beyond is a probability of a
lesser degree, and that the probability of an infinite world is onehalf an open possibility, but no more likely than not. Whether
this way of thinking he correct or not, it is clear that the innity
of the world is not positable in the same way, as existing in the
same way, as the originally accessible perceptual field and its
Supplements, obtained through intersubjective communication.
The totality of transcendental awareness is, for its part, given
98
CONVERSATIONS
as extending innitely in the form of transcendental time. Here

also there is an originally given section, with empty horizons,
whose filledness and actual existence is merely a matter of probability, a probability diminishing steadily as one goes further and
further from the originally given, evidently existent present.
Must we not also say that the infinite of the flux is, at all events,
not positable in the same way as the originally (and the reproductively) given awareness-segment?
Similarly, we must ask in what way we can posit as transcendentally existent an infinite plurality of monads. Given in relative
originality are the monads who appear through the original constitution of their bodies in my sphere of sensuous primordiality.
The other monads that never have come into my perceptual field
are motivated horizonal probabilities contemporary persons,
forbears, posterity. But what of the infinity of mon ads? ls it not
just an open possibility?
In all these cases, infinity seems to be a regulative idea, in
l{ants sense.
Fink suggested that the true solution of the Kantian antimomies lies in denying the validity of the alternatives. For example,
the world is neither finite nor infinite.
After we had left Husserl, Fink said that, in general, the Husserlian approach to the problems of infinity and totality is vitiated by too narrow a conception of horizon, as something in no
sense given, but merely an index (in the given) of a probable
more. The horizon is indeed that, but not that alone. It is a
mode of original awareness, not of the object in its further determination, but of the dimension for the probable further determinations. Crndely put, [it is] an original awareness not of content but of container. Husserls way of deriving the infinity
of space or time from the open possibility of going further and
further into the horizon is essentially the same as Kant's, and
both overlook the positive evidence which the givenness of a
container for the probable (or certain) further content affords.
It would follow that the horizon must no longer be thought of as
merely the frame of the originally given, but as something that
permeates the originally given content as well as the beyond.
(The figure of a frame is mine, not Pink's, but he accepted the
simile.)
WITH HUSSEIRL AND FINK
Q9
The horizon, according to Fink, might still be given even if
there were no original content. He has attempted to illustrate
this in the case of the auditory horizon, where the mere "container he calls Stills (stillness, sile11ce> and contrasts it with
Lani (sound) and Laullosigkeit" (soundlessness> as positive
and negative contents.
Ad Coiwersalion with Husserl, 25/Io/32: Speaking of the realists
contention that one can regard all knowledge as hypothetical,
Husserl said that every hypothesis presupposes a non-hypothetical foundation outside itself. If I have an hypothesis that the spatiotemporal world stretches beyond the hie et nunc, the latter,
this bit of ground I stand on now, is no hypothesis but an evident
certainty.
LXVIII
Conversation with Husserl, 2/11]32
Husserl spoke of the constitution of natural time.

Each object has its endurance-quality, before it has a place
in objective time. The problem is to reveal the way objective
time is founded in the endurance-qualities" of objects. The
endurance has a beginning and an end. Beginning and end do not
mean points in time here, but are themselves descriptive qualities. They do not mean points in any mathematical sense. The
endurances of two objects differ qualitatively as longer or
shorter. Simultaneity is also a possible qualitative relation between the endurances of two or more objects. (We are dealing
with the egological natural world, and with simultaneity as originally constituted (perceived) in it.) Simultaneity between a pair
of objects involves one of a restricted group of possible relations
between the beginning points and between the end points of the
two objects. Husserls idea is that, in these gnalilal-the relations
of longer and shorter and of coincidence of beginning and end, the
quantitative objective temporal relations are founded.
There would then come the problem of the founding of higher
levels of temporality, first, in the egological sphere, relations of
longer and shorter between extents that are not coincident, second, intersubjective siinultaneity and succession. These analy-
I00
CONVERSATIONS
ses would have to be made before the theory of relativity could be

analyzed phenomenologically. For this reason, that his own analyses have not yet progressed far enough, Husserl has not taken
up the problems opened up by Einstein.
LXIX
Conversation with Husserl and F-ink, 15/11/32

Husserl spoke of how I would have the problem of expounding
phenomenology so that it would be generally understandable in
America. I questioned our right to hope that transcendental
knowledge will ever be generally understandable. Husserl replied that even without its transcendental components, phenomenology contains much new knowledge that is not generally
understandable. Without carrying out the transcendental reduction one may, if one has grasped the nature of intentionality and
the nature of the method of intentional analysis, analyze the
WeZte0rstellimg <"idea of the world", (mental) objectivation of
the world) as egological and intersubjective Getungsko1~reIat
(validity-correlate), as correlate of human positional acts. Such
investigation would disclose not only the essential nature of the
world-as-meant but also the structure of the acts and habitualities in which the WeZtsorstellung constitutes itself as "valid".
It would also disclose the foundedncss of the terminal Weltvorstelung" in pre-world GeZtungsk0rrelate, which in turn would
be clues to the acts and habitualities in which they are constituted
as "valid".
The analysis of the terminal We1tvorstelung would reveal
that in the latter, as egological and as intersubjective Geltungskorrelaf, there is constituted a self-"VorstelZmg <(mental) obThen a reflection (Selbstbesi-nnung) on the part of the self who
jeetivation> and other-self-VorsieZang".

has been engaged in such psychological intentional analysis of the
" Welteorstelung" would reveal to him that he has no other world
than what he has been analyzing as his Welteo1'sellm*z-g and
that the society of egos who have an intersubjective "Waltherstall-ung" have no other world than what he has been calli
their Welteorstell1mg. But the Welteorstellemg" is essentially
IOI
the intentional "Gsltungsko1'relat and presupposes a synthetic

structure of acts in which it is posited. We are faced with an absurdity if we posit this act-structure as itself essentially part of
its own "Gatungskorreat, and yet my ego-V0rstellrmg and
all other ego-"VorsteZlvmgen and my "VorstelZu-ngenf of my own
act-life and of the act-lives of others are parts of my Welterwstfellrmg. Paced with this paradox, one may find a solution. The
only world for me, for others, is indeed "Geltu-ngskorrela" of
acts, but essentially these acts are not GeZtu-ngst:orrelata", are
not parts of the world, although when they are reflected on they
are apperceived as parts of the world. The ego or egos to whom
acts in their essential world-transcendence (which we shall call
"transcendental" existence) belong, are likewise essentially
transcendent of the world (transcendental) though they too are
apperceived as egos in the world. On the basis of these distinctions one reintroduces the distinction between world and worldVorsteZl1mg. The former is Geltungskorrelat of transcendental awareness, and includes the worldly ego and his life-inthe-world (psychological subjectivity); the latter is Geltimgskorrelaf of "psychological awareness. (It then is evident that
the reflectively gained conviction, "I (or we) have no other world
than the "Geltu-ngskorrelat" of our acts", was an ambiguous conviction: l" (we), world and "Geltungskorreat are both
transcendental and mundane categories. The paradox arose from
the mixing of the two categories of categories i11 a single interpretation of the conviction, a11d the awareness of the paradox
establishes a motivation for becoming expressly aware of the
hidden transcendental sphere. But the reflection, I have no
other world, is already the break of the world-horizon, and the
subsequent explication serves only to ensure against subsequent
misinterpretation. If the break did not come, the result of reflection would be I (or we) have no other world but this subjective Geltungskorrea, but this is not really the world. Have I not
carefully called it a "ll/'eltvorstelE-mi-g? The world is unknowable,
and is not, so far as men may know, a "Gait-migskorrelat at all.)
Husserl agreed that one must not allow the transcendental
reduction to be interpreted as a speculation which has in its
favor the fact that it solves a paradox, but has no direct evidence
in its favor.
I02
CONVERSATIONS
Speaking afterwards with Fink, I observed that I thought that

Husserl does not distinguish egological from primordial reduction
as Fink does in his Entwnrf (draft) for the Sixth Mediiaiion. I
saw then from Fink's reply that there has been on my part a
failure to distinguish terrnlnologically: egological reduction so far
as I sec, is the reduction of the full intersubjective world to its
status as correlate of my acts, including those in which I intend
other selves and their constitutive activity. Primordial reduction
is an abstraetive reduction of the egologically reduced world to

that part of it which is not the correlate of the constitutive activity of other-selves-as-intended-in-my-acts. I have previously
treated these two reductions in a lump and called the whole
"ego-logical or "primordial" indifferently.
APPENDIX
Topics, Husserl Conversation, 24/6/31
Newspapers.
Epoche and Epoch.
Hartmannl immer sogar als Phanomenologe angesehen.
Sehr gescheite Vorlesun g. Alles hineingenommen. Nicht besucht.
Utitzs auch Brentanos SCl'llllEI".
Sympatisch. Andere.
lnnenminister(?).
Fragen.
Frl. Stein 69 hat vieles ausgesehrieben.
Rainer
Spatere Arbeit - ob es publiziert sein wird?
War lang bei Landgrebe.
Heidegger. Hat den II. Band der Ideen (Husserl wusste nicht,
wo es war) nicht genau studiert, sonst hatte er nicht solche Einwan de (gemacht).
Schwierigkeiten der Meditations Cartsiennes: besonders 5.
Meditation. Appartenance" auf Deutsch (Eigenheit). Nicht gerade fur das deutsche Publikum bestimmt. Fink arbeitet an der
deutschen Bearbeitung. Hat das eine Manuskript.
55 Emil Utitz, (1883-1956), Austrian philosopher, a student of Brentano.
'? Nicolai Hartmann (1582-1950), German philosopher, in spite of his rejection of

Husserls transcendental idealism, Husserls thought was greatly influential 011 the
development of his phenomenological and "aporetie" theory of knowledge.
5" Edith Stein (1891-1942), studied and took her doctor's degree under Husserl,
was his assistant from 1916 until 1913, prepared (among other things) the text of
Voriesungsn zur Pllanomenologie ass inneren Z.-a-ilbewusslssins (later published under
the editorial responsibility of M. Heidegger}.
104
APPENDIX
Weitere Untersuehungen.
Husserl hat Sche1ersche und andere Biicher seiner Horer gelesen.
Niemeyerm pessirnistisch. 200 Abbonierte ~ oder 300?
Weitere Zeitvorlesungen zu publizieren.
Ieh bin fr den 25. eingeladen.
Husserl 24 jane.
lie er gezwu ngen war, imlner Lan dkarten zu rnachen, und hat
die einzelnen Untersuclmngen nicht ausarbeiten und ver6ffentlichen konnen. Wollte den ersten Band. der Ideen sogar nicht
publizieren.
II
Kant
deutscher Idealismus
I. Die ganze englische Philosophie ist cin Progress, der sich in

der Phinomenologie vollendet.
Descartes
Leibniz
Locke
Berkeley
Hume
Mill
Kiilpell hat zu Husserl einmal gesagt, wir tun nichts anderes
als die Log-ischen U-ntersnch-angen studjeren. Darnals war Bi'1h1er?2
sein Assistent unrl war dabei. Jetzt gibt er diese Abhngigkeit
nicht zu.
i{raus73 behauptet, class Brentano die Logisehen Untersnehnngen nie gelesen habe. Dagegen hat Brentano I909 (?) mit Husserl
lmllptsiichliell ber die Logischen Un-tersnehiingen gesproehen.
Aueh hat Utitz Husserl gesagt, dass Brentano aueh spiter (I913 ?)
7 Publisher of I-Iusserl's jahrhuck.
71 Oswald Klpe {I862-1915), German psychologist and philosopher, a pioneer 111

experimental psychology, trained at Wu11dt's school.
72 K-""1 T5[1h|B1' (I379I953l- German psychologist, trained at Ki1Ipe's school.
75 Oskar Kraus (1872-1942), Austrian philosopher, Brentands follower, djreetct
oi the Brentaiso-Arehiv in Prague and editor of Brentands works.
APPENDIX
I05
in Florenz und anderswo sehr viel von Husserl gesprochen und
ihn studiert habe.

Husserl meint, dass Brentano seine spitere Veriinderungen der
Phinomenologie gegenber gemacht habe.
Aueh Utitz sei mit der Herausgebung des Brenta.noschen Nach-
So wie Kraus intimiert, habe Husserl von Brentano gestohlen.
lasses unbefriedigt.
Es wiire moglieh, von der Psychologie ans zu einer transzendentalen Phinomenologie zu kommen. U.a. muss ich die Beziehung zwischen Phinomenologie und Psychologie studieren.
Heidegger viel gelehrter als Husserl, aber man muss den ende-
ren aueh verstehen.

Philosophie als radikale Besinnung ber die Welt.
Konnte nur 5-6 Stunclen arbeiten bis dutch die Zeit der Lo-
gischen Untersnchangen.
Lebensentscheidung: Galilei. (Explanation, August 30, I940:
To decide for phenomenology is a Lebensentscheidung. Bat those
who decide for it now will have a place in history analogous to that of
the Renaissance physicists who decided for Galileos physics.)

Hat versueht auch von Scheler und Heidegger auch methodisch
zu lernen.
III
Conversation with Husserl, 27/6/31'
Bad translation. (Explanat-ion. I said the translation of the Ideen

was bad.) Sehr viel Hoffnung darauf gelegt. Eine Mauer gegen
englisches Verstindnis. (Explanation: These were Husserls statements after I had pointed 0-at individual errors in the translation.)
Salmon bedauert, dass er es nicht selbst gemacht hitte. [Sal-
mon hier 2 jahre.)
I. (Explanation: The remarks about English philosophy were made

in the above context.)
Scheler ein so oberflehlicher Loser, dass er transzendentale
und eidetische Reduktion vermengt. Becker und Kaufrnann wohl
nicht, weil Husserl so viel rnit ihnen, trotz Widerstand, gespr0chen habe.
Heideggersehe Philosophie als Anthropologismus. Heidegger
I06
APPENDIX
als Verfhrer. Die grsste Gefahr fr seine Philosophie. Glaubte

er war mit hat ihm seine Studentcn irnnier geschickt. Glaubtc er
konnte seine Sprache nicht verstehen. (Explanation: Heirlegger the
greatest danger /or Husserls philosophy. Husserl had formerly believed that Heidegger agreed with him and that he (Husserl) was
merely unable to understand Heideggers language.)
Becker. Kaufmann niehr iisthetiker, auch Heidegger Folger.
Fink richtig erzogen hat Heidegger innner gehijrt, aber hat
"Afiinitat tr Husserl. Alles rnitgemacht. Der einzige Student,
der treu geblicben ist.
Landgrehe wird den richtigen \-Veg gehen.
Wcnn er frher wie er danials in Gfittingen glaubtc Mitarbciter gefunden hitte, hatte er sclbst nie so gearbeitet. Hat nie so
wie in den letzten jahrcn gearbeitet.
Nie vorher ist cine Vllissenschaft Von einem Mensch von eineni
Standpunkt aus so weit getriebcn. (Explanation: Never before has
one in-an developed a science all alone and to such a high degree,
without changing his standpoint.)
(Ich) muss nicht wciter sprechen ber was er ber seine Studenten gesagt (hat).
I must study Meditatio-ns Carte'siennes, Forrnale -and transzendentale Logih, auch Heidegger und Scheler.
Bin in eincr gcfahrlichen Zcit gekomrncn. Sogar Professoren
lcsen Heidegger. Hiingt mit dem nicht nur zusamlnen. Wiederauftrcten des ll-Iystizismils. Allgeineines Interessc fr die Philosophie. Wie zur Zeit Fichtes. Spiclt sogar in die Zeitungcn hincin.
Zurck zur Metaphysik usw. Einige greifen wioder auf Rassen-
mythos.
Stuart Cl1aniberlain'l4. Ernstere Studenten studieren Heidegger.
jetzt studiert er sein Publikum und bercksichtigt es in seinen
Schriften.
Das hat or abcr in der Formalen und transzendentalen Log-ih noch
nicht getan_
Frher hat er fr er weiss nicht wen geschrieben.
Cassire1"75 nicht (mehr) produktiv. Keine Gcfahr.
H 7 Houston Stuart Chamberlain (r88519za], English author, formulated a racist
th'331"Y , which was iufltlential upon Ila/.i ideology.
*5 hrnst Casslrer (1374-1945), German philosopher, one of the chief representatives
of the neo-1-zantian trend.
APPENDIX.
I07
Dutch Heidegger spricht der Erdgeist". Seine Art (ist), immer ursprnglichere Bedeutungen durchklingen zu lassen: Wortzauberci. Wortentartung: Ent-fernun g.
Hat Heidegger auch neulich (fr seine Vortrage) genau studiert.
Becker hat sehr interessantes (und verstandnisvolles bis zu
einem gewissen Grade) in den Kant-Studien ber Husserl geschrieben . 75
Hat kurz nach dern Kricg in Frankreich und England gespro-
chen.
Will zeigcn, dass er lebcndig ist, nicht nur der ehrenwrdige

alte Papa.
Worhs by Husserl mentioned in the Conversations
bewusstseins. Halle: Niemeyer, I928 {I-Iusserliana

vol. X, The Hague: Nijhoff, r966).
Formale und transzendentale Logik, Hallo: Niemeyer, I929 (Husserliana. vol. XVII, The Hague:
Vorlesuugen zur lh5.nomenologie dos inneren Zeit-
Icleen zu eincr reinen Phanomenologie und pharmmenolngischen Pliilosophie, 2nd vol. (known by
Cairns only in manuscript form), The Hague: Nijhoff, 1952 (Husscrliana vol. IV).
Philosophie als strange Wissenschaft, Logos I
(Io: 1), pp. 289-341 (re-edited Frankfurt am Main:
Klosterinann, 1955).
rr)5o).
Logical Investigations Logische Untersuchungen, Hallo: Nicmeyer, I900)

or (2nd, 3rd and 4th ed: 1913, I922 and I968).
Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologic und phaIdeen
nomenologischen Philosophie, I-Iallc: Niemeyer,
1913 {I-iusserliana vol. III, The Hague: Nijho,
Ideen I I
Logos article
Time lectures
Logih
Meditations Cartsiennes (transl. by G. Pfeitfer and

E. Lvinas), Paris: Colin, 1931 [re-edited Paris:
Nijhoff, 1974).
French Meditations
Cartesianische Meditationen, The Hague: Nijhoff,

1950 (I-Iusserliana vol. I).
Vrin, 1947).
German Mfeditations
7 0. Becker, Die Philosophie Edrnunrl IIu1=ser]5 [anlisslich seines 7o. Geburts-
tags)", in Kantstudien, XXXV, pp. Izg::5o.
1'
~
Hergesheimer, Joseph, 9
Vvertheimer, Max, 9
Whitehead, Alfred North, Io
Fundt, Wilhelm, 48
\Velch, E. Parl, 53
Niemeyer, Max, I04

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 60
Parmenidcs, 75
Pitkin, Walter Broughton, 9
Plato, 75
Protagoras, 71
Reinach, Adolf, 10
Reiner, Hans, 63
Salmon, Christoph Verney, 30, I05
Schapp, Wilhelm, 7o
Scheler, Max, 23, 58, Io4fl'.
Schelling, 96
Schlick, Moritz, 25
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 47, 60
Spencer, Herbert, 48
Stein, Edith, :03
Stout, George Frederick, Io
Stumpf, Carl, 36
Tudor _]ones, \Villiam, 58
Llsui, Jishi, 44
Utitz, Emil, 103i.
Walther, Gerda, 66
Miyake, Goichi, 17, 29
Levinas, Emmanuel, 7o
Locke, 7, I04
Mach, Ernst, 45
McGill, Vivian jerauld, 50
Mill, johrl Stuart, 68, 104
Leibniz, 40, 74, 76, 104
Kiilpe, Oswald, 104

Landgrebe, Ludwig, 57, 87f. 1o3f.
INDEX OF NAMES
Aristotle, 5, 75f.
Augustine, 71
Avenarius, Richard, 6 3
Becker, Oskar, :f., 4, 43, 1o5f.
Berkeley, 47, 104
Brentano, Franz, I0, 61, 1o4f.
Biichner, Ludwig, 47
Biihler, Karl, 104
Cassirer, Ernst, 106
Chamberlain, Stuart, 106
Descartes, 71, 104
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 9
Dostoievsky, 35
Eckehart [Meistcr], 91
Einstein, Albert, 100
Fichte, 22, 37, 96, 106
Galileo, 105
Gelb, Adhmar, 9
Gorgias, 71
Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich, 48
I-Iartmann, Nicolai, 103
Hegel, 22, 25, 5o, 52, 96f.
Heidegger, Martin, 4i., 9, I6, 18, 25,
28., 42f., 63, 89, Io3.
Heraclitus, 75
Hume, 30, 4o, 104
Husserl, Malvine, 8, 10, 46
Huxley, Aldous Leonard 9
Illeman, \Verner, go
_]ames, Wliam, 1o, 36, 63
Kant, 15, 22, 37, 43, 45, 88,98, 104
Kauimann, Fritz, 2, 425., I05
Kierkegaard, 25
Kraus, Oskar, 1041'.
Explication (Auslsgung), 54
Finitude, 47
99
time-c., 92; c. of natural time, 99f.

Construction: phenomenological c., 52
Contrast (Abhebung, Abgehobmheit),
B4-87
Culture: crisis of present-day c. and
technic, 8f.; cultural values, 69
Death: cf. Birth and death
Decision, 61-63
Doxa, 75f.
Ego: atemporality of the transcendental e., 8; doubling oi the e. in the
phenomenological attitude, r2f., 35;
ontologicalstatus of the izanscen dental e., :5; constitution of the e., 3rf.;
temporalization of the e., 34; transcendental and psychological e., 3411,
95f.; transcendental e. and his tradition, 68f. ; transcendental e. and
transcendental alter-e., 82f. ; apodicticity of the transcendental e., 83;
e.-activity, 92f. ; transcendental 12$
cessity of the transcendental e.,
93f.
Empathy (Eimiiklung}, 74
Endurance, 99f.
Episteme, 75f.
Epoch: cf. Reduction
Essence, 42f., 76f.
Evidence, 75-77, 91; originary givenness, 24f., 52; e. for essences, 76f.;
original givenness and horizon, 97-
time, 73f.; passive c., S4-88; inner-
49; c. of self-identity, 55; c. of the

world vs. c. of an idea of the world
(Weltverstel1mgi- 66f. ; analysis of
transcendental c., 67f.; c. of innite
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Act: a.s as voluntary decisions, 6If.;

a. as a doing, 63f.; a. and reflexion
on a,5, roo-102
Activity: a. vs. passivity, 5, 53-55;
ego-a., 92f.
Adumbrations (A bsckntmngen), 3, 54f.,

7o, 78f.
Aesthetic experience, 59
Affection, Aifective power, 84-89
Alter Ego: givenness of the a., 82f.
Analysis: two sorts of genetic a., 24;
constitutional vs. descriptive a.,
27.; intentional a., roof.
Apodicticity, 43f. ; a. of the transcendental ego, 821'.
Appearances, 8, 7If., 78-So
Association, :9, 5 3l., 84-SS
Attention, 3ol., 53i.
Attitude: natural a., 39, 95; natural
and phenomenological a., 35, 38, 44-
461 83
Awakening (Weckimg), 84-89

Birth and death, 19, 33f., 49
Body, 6f.; b.-constitution, 4f., 6; b. as
null-oriented object, 19
Childhood: transcendental problem of
c., 13, 64
Consciousness: time-c., 17, 5 5f.; transcendental c., 39f.; stream of c., 49l.;
horizonal character of transcendental c., 5o; difficulty to conceptualize
the present transcendental c., S9f.;
totality of transcendental c., 97!.
Constitution, 18f.; c. of the body, 4-6;
c. of natural objects, 20-22, 24f.,
7t-73, 77-Bo; levels of c., 20-22, 24,
31i., 49f., 51, 64f.; c. of the prehuman physical world, 32 ; ego-c., 3 I,
33; c. of human being, 45; primal c.,
II2
and ethical life 3 5f.
Present: living p., 31; living p. as

primal phenomenon, 89f.; structure
of the living p., 91f.
Reduction, 42-44; nature of the phenomenological r., r1t., 5of.; transcendental r. and and epoch, I1f.,
44f.; motivation to phenomenological r., 39-41, 56, 93; r. of psyche and
of nature, 39f. ; phenomenological r.
and apodicticity, 43; phenomenological r. and transcendental observer, 59f.; r. of psyche, 65f.; r. of
transcendental consciousness to the
living present, 891.; cgological and
primordial r., Iorf.
Reflection, 89, 92f., moi.
Religion, 46f., 52, 91
9?"'99
Objectivation {mental} (Vors#e:lung},

Ioof.
Observer: transcendental 0., 59f., 96
Ontology. ?6i.
Open range lpielrauml, 80
Organ, 6f.
Pairing: cf. Association, Fusion; p. as
a fundamental passive association,
28f., 73
Passivity; cf. Association, Constitution; p. vs. activity, 53-56
Past: givenness of the p., 32, 84
Perception, I9, 53f., 76; p. oi a physical {natural} object, 6, 78f.; sense-p.,
54"'37- 95fPersonality: nature of p., 47
Phantasy, 19, 43f.
Phantom, 24
Phenomenology: goal of p. and goal of
science, 14; nature of phenomenological investigation, 27f.; phenomenological vs. naive {natural} questioning, 4 5f.; p. as concrete science,
46; limits of the phenomenological
method, 49f. ; phenomenological investigation and speculation, 51; p.
and existential problems, 57, 6o;
motivations for transcendental p.,
75-77, 8o-82; mundanization of p.
93f.
Phenomenon: concept of p., 89
Philosophy, 50f.
Possibility: p. and potentiality, 4;
factual and pure p., 4If.; open p.,
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Fusion {VerscImelzung], 84-86; cf. Association, Passivity

1"uture: givenness of i., 84
Genesis: genetic establishment (Stifmng), 12f.; genetic analysis, 24
Givenness: originary g. (Origa'm'irgegebenbcit}: cf. Evidence
God, 14, 26, 46
Grammar: pure g., 1
Habitus: cf. Genesis, Tradition; h. and
genetic establishment, 13, 17
Harmony (Einstimmigkeit), 1Sf.; h.
History of philosophy, 22f.
Horizon. 42, 5o, 53., 93{., 97-99
finify. 97~Qs
liyle, 3f., 49; h. vs. rnorphe, 65; h. and

hyletic field, 73; hyletic flow, 78f.;
modes of the hyletic flow, 84-S7
Hypothesis, 99
Idealization: i. in science, 7o, 75f.
ldeation, 96
Identity, 55, 79, 91
Irnrnanence: field oi i., 3f.; paradox of
i. and transcendence, 44f.
Induction, 94
Infinitude, 47; problem of positing inInstinct, 88f.
Intentionality: i. as ego-activity, 92f.
Interest, 88f. ; i. and constitution, 4244- 49
Intersubjectivity, 2rl., 94
Kinaesthesis, 3, 5-7, r8l., 62, 92i.;
kinaesthetic systems, zof. ; volitional
character of k., 63.; k. and hyletic
flow, 73, 78f.; kinaesthetic process
and process of willing, 83
Language, 1
Logicizing, 17, 70; cl. ldealization
Mood (St:'mm:mg}, 2
Morphe: cf. Hyle
Mysticism, 91
Neutralization, 5gl.
Noematization, 65L
Now: cf. Present; n.-point, 17; n. vs.
ego as n.-locus", 37; primal-n., 95
Object: cf. Constitution; physical o. as
pretention, 39; transcendent and
transcendental o., 56; two sorts of
physical unities, 73i. ; natural {physical] 0., 77-Bo; self-givenness of
o.s, 971.
84$.
II3
Time, 18, 34f., 49f.; t.-consciousness,

17, 55f.; cf. Constitution
Tradition, 68L, 94
Transcendencei cf. immanence
Variation, 41, 76I.; cf. Ideation
Vs-'i1l.ing {Woman}: volitional phenomena, 61-63
\\"orld: cf. Constitution; relativization
of the w., 21f., 26; being-in-the-w.,
2 5; being of the w. as presupposition
of the being of the self, 4oi.. 59; w.constitution and interest, 41f.; infinity of the w., 47, 97; identity of
the w., 63; w.-in-itself and idea,
(mental) objectivation of the w.
lweltvorslellungj, o6f., 1oof.; w. as
necessarily intersubjective, 82f.;
idea of the w. as validity-correlate
liellungskorrelall , I oof.
36
Teleology, 51f.
Ternporalization (Ze!1'gm1g), 90; t. of
the ego, 34; double t. of the stream
of mental processes (Eebnisstrom),
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Retention, 87
Science: abstract character of s.s, 46;
scientific knowledge, 75{., goals oi
scientic activity, S1, 93; relativity
of mundane s., 93f.
Sedimentation, S7
Selfapperception, 59
Sensation: cf. Hyle; fields oi s.s, 14f.,
84-87; sensory field as the lowest
level of constitution, 2of.; openness
of consciousness to s., 95f.
Similarity: origin of the concept of s..
Simultaneity, 55
Skepticism, 71, 75f.
Sleep, 19, 37, 8Si., 96; dreamlcss s., Sol.
Space, 17f., 4gi.; infinite s., 15; oculomotoric s., 2oi., 24.; s., (mental) objectivation of s., orientation-s., 66f.
s. as open range, So
Stimulus {Ruiz} : cf. Affection
Subject: cf. Ego, Consciousness
Synthesisi cf. Activity. Association,
Passivity
Technic: t. and culture, Sf.

Dorion Cairns - Conversations With Husserl and Fink

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Dorion Cairns - Conversations With Husserl and Fink

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

'

COLLECTION FQNDEE PAR H. 1.. van BREDA ET PUBLIEE. sous

Conversations with Husserl and Fink

EDITED BY THE HUSSERL-ARCIIIVES

Comit de rdaction de la collectio HI

Corwersatzons war/2 Husserl and Fm/r

I976 by .Martnus Nijko_f,=, The Hague, NeHzer'Ia1cds

reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form

ISBN 90 247 1531 8

Conversation with Fink, 24,|'8/'31

Conversation with Fink, 17f8/31

Notes on Husserl conversation, 27l6;'3r

Conversation with Husserl, I6f7j26

Conversation with Husserl, 2818131

Conversation with Husserl and Fink,

Conversation with I-Iusserl and Fink, 9!II/31

Conversation with Husserl and Fink, 511132

Husserl and Fink, 20111131

Conversation with Husserl, 415132

Conversation with Husserl, 615132

Conversation with Husserl and Fink, 3115132

Conversation with Fink, 2319132

Conversation with Husserl, 216132

Works by Hassert mentioned in the Conversations

Lxvrrr. Conversation with Husserl, 2111132

This is an unusual volume. During his periods of study with Ed-

down in writing, as accurately as possible, the details of these

conversations. Largely prompted by the questions and concerns

course); "Tine Phenomenology of Thinking"; ]:lpiste|nology"; as well as several

7 Formal and Transcendental Logic, op. cit, p. 156.

publication. It was, however, by no means the only work which

1" Most immediately, Prof. Kersten is preparing a new translation of l-iusserI's

at preparing for press a text faithful to the original manuscript.

In doing so their interventions were limited to the correction of

was indicated only upon its first appearance.

All the numbered footnotes were supplied by the editors. These

In order to facilitate the scientic utilization of this rather

Louvain, August I975.

Conversation with Husserl, I6/7/26

Today I called for the last time on Husserl.

forms: A is, perhaps, B. This setting forth may be done by the

tone of voice, if not expressly by special words. The word that

become part of the matter.

Ich and Umwelt (Ego and surrounding world) quality, relation,

Conversation with Husserl and Becker, 24/6/31

Yesterday at eleven-thirty I saw Husserl for the first time since

1 Oskar Becker (:88g1964), phenomenological philosopher, co-editor of Husser]s

WITH HUSSERL AND FINK

Instructed to work through, first, the Mditations Cartsiennesa,

Conuersation with Husserl, 11/7]31

latters return from lecturing in Frankfurt, Berlin, and Halle.

Comlersat-to-n with Becker and Kaufmami, 25 (26 or 27) /6}31'

operation no longer seems so simple.

I tried to statc my difficulty in finding the hyle as immanent

Idem orders the problems in a fortuitous manner since Husserl

3 Fritz Kaufrnann [1391-1958} was Husserl's student at Gt-ttingen and Freiburg,

took his doctors degree under Husserl in 192 3.

5 Cairns probably refers to Finks doctoral dissertation Vergegemirrirtigsmg umi Bald.

can be grasped only when space has been constituted. Kinaesthesis

a life he can honestly and fully accept in a world he can accept,

WITH HUSSERL AND FINK

Husserl characterized Heideggers Aristotle interpretation as a

I forgot above to mention an all-important widening of the

Notes on conversation witli Hnsseri, 18/7]31