NATANSON, M. - Literature, Philosophy, and The Social Sciences - Essays in Existentialism and Phenomenology PDF

The ~ssays in this volume have as
their unifying theme the exposition of

existentiali~m and phenomenology as
well as the application of existential
and phenomenological categories to
problems in literature, aesthetics, and
the social sciences. In addition to
introducing the reader to some general
principles and concepts in this domain,
thc author presents existential analy-
ses of such writers as Dostoievski,
Kafka, Camus, and Wolfe, and discusses
problems in the philosophies of Husserl
and Sartre. The volume may serve as
a first guide to those interested in the
relevance of contemporary European
philosophy for the disciplines of theory
ofliterature, aesthetics, sociology, histo-
ry and psychiatry. Despite this great
range of topics, there is a dominant
theme which informs the entire work:
the attempt to explore in depth the sense
f!.f reali~y which art and social reality
presuppose as well as express. Under-
lying the special arguments that arc to
be found in each chapter is a concern
with the sense of reality, and it is in
a phenomenologically conceived ex-
istentialism that Dr. Natanson finds the
surest approach to this root problem.
The phenomenologist, it is main-
tained, is committed to a study of the
magical modes of existence as well
as to their epistemological delineation.
Terror, then, is as much a part of the
problem ofintcrsuhjcctivity as love, and
the student of social life must come to
terms with both if he is to understand
in what sense it is possible for men to
LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY,
AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY,
AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
ESSAYS IN EXISTENTIALISM AND

PHENOMENOLOGY
by
MAURICE NATANSON
Department 01 Philosophy, University 01 North Carolina
MARTINUS NljHOFF
• / THE HAGUE / 1962
ISBN 978-94-011-8530-1 ISBN 978-94-011-9278-1 (eBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-94-011-9278-1
Copy,ight I96a by Ma,tinus Nijhofl. The Hague. Netheflands

AII,ights ,esmJed. including the ,ight to wanslate Of to
,ep,oduce this book Of pa,ts thweo! in any form
THESE ESSAYS ARE DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER,
KATE NAT ANSON
AND MY UNCLE,
ALEXANDER G. SCHEER
Foreword
A collection of one man's essays in book form tends to be viewed

today with some suspicion, if not hostility, by philosophical critics. It
would seem that the author is guilty of an academic sin of pride:
causing or helping to cause separately conceived articles to surpass
their original station and assume a new life, a grander articulation. It
can hardly be denied that the essays which follow must face this sullen
charge, for they were composed at different times for different sorts of
audiences and, for the most part, have already been published. Their
appearance in a new form will not allay commonplace criticisms: there
are repetitions, certain key terms are defined and defined again in
various places, a few quotations reappear, and, beyond this, the essays
are unequal in range, depth, and fundamental intent. But it is what
brings these essays together that constitutes, I trust, their collective
merit. Underlying the special arguments that are to be found in each
of the chapters is a particular sense of reality, not a thesis or a theory
but rather a way of seeing the world and of appreciating its texture and
design. It is that sense of reality that I should like to speak of here.
Philosophy stands in a paradoxical relationship to mundane ex-
istence: it is at once its critique and one of its possibilities. Why there
should be an ordered, coherent (if tortured) reality rather than nothing
at all, to paraphrase Heidegger's version of the metaphysical question,
is as trying a problem as its alternative formulation: why there should
be philosophy instead of the straightforward acceptance of daily life.
The reflexive act which is the initial starting point of philosophical
activity must be accepted as a primordial choice of the living agent.
Whatever its causal conditions, its historical antecedents, its psycho-
logical motives, philosophical wonder is a phenomenon sui generis. Its
VIII FOREWORD
valence for the life of the person can be measured only by its givenness,
its magical irruption in the life of consciousness. To speak of "choice"
here is to suggest something less than sifting among alternatives and
something more than volition. To wonder is to transcend what is
problematic about this or that aspect of experience and to come to a
thematic awareness of experience as such, problematicity as such, and
the uniqueness of one's own being confronted with reality in the ad-
venture of a single and solitary existence. In wonder the strain of being
thrust into a world reveals itself as a possibility, a condition for self-
illumination. Choice is a fundamental predicate attaching to the self, a
subscript in search of its proper integer.
I t is in a phenomenologically conceived existentialism that I find the
surest approach to the sense of reality as the cardinal issue of philoso-
phy. The phenomenologist is concerned with the magical modes of
existence as well as with their epistemological delineation. Terror is as
much a part of the problem of intersubjectivity as love, and the stu-
dent of social life must come to terms with both if he is to understand
in what sense it is possible for men to share a world. Similarly, the
distance between aesthetics and social science is shortened by the same
concern. Art as an uncovering of the Real is a mode of its presentation,
not a surrogate. The epistemological question the artist asks (implicitly,
most often) is analogous to that posed by the phenomenologist of the
social sciences: What are the essential conditions for there being a
world? As Wallace Stevens conceives of the poet as the "orator of the
imagination," so we may think of the philosopher as the spokesman of
wonder. The problems of literature and the social sciences that are
discussed in these pages tum upon the philosophic concern with the
sense of "what there is" as the most splendid datum. Accordingly,
literature and the social sciences are taken as moments in a philosophic
dialectic.
The names that recur so often in this book are perhaps an index of
my indebtedness to other thinkers and writers: Husserl and Sartre,
Dostoievski and Kafka, Max Weber and Alfred Schutz. Of this dis-
tinguished company it was my privilege to know one man in living
directness, the late Alfred Schutz. I hope that what is best in these
essays reflects something of his teaching, encouragement, and phe-
nomenological brilliance. Undoubtedly, Schutz would have disagreed
with a number of my ideas and disapproved of many of my formulations.
I would like to think that there is one generic point upon which agree-
ment would have been reached: it is the task of the philosopher to
FOREWORD IX
capture, in rigorous form, the essential meaning of man's experience in

the Life-world without denying the complex ambiguity of that world
and without robbing it of its warmth and cunning. For whatever else
it is, philosophy is also the discipline of passion.
Chapel Hill, N.C. M.N.

June 13, 1961
AUTHOR'S ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Most of the essays which comprise this volume were originally publish-
ed as articles in journals or as chapters in books: "Phenomenology:
A Viewing," Methodos, Vol. X, 1958; "Phenomenology and Ex-
istentialism," Modern Schoolman, Vol. XXXVII, 1959; "The Em-
pirical and Transcendental Ego" in For Roman Ingarden: Nine Essays
in Phenomenology, Martinus Nijhoff, 1959; "Being-in-Reality,"
PhilosoPhy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. XX, 1959; "Jean-
Paul Sartre's Philosophy of Freedom," Social Research, Vol. XIX,
1952; "Toward a Phenomenology of the Aesthetic Object," (in
Spanish) N otas y Estudios de Filosofia, Vol. III, 1952; "Phenomenology
and the Theory of Literature" and "Existentialism and the Theory of
Literature" in The Critical Matrix (edited by Paul R. Sullivan),
Georgetown University, 1961 ("Existentialism and the Theory of
Literature" also appeared in Forum, Fall 1959, under the title "Sartre
and Literature"); "Existential Categories in Contemporary Litera-
ture," Carolina Quarterly, Vol. X, 1958; "The Privileged Moment:
A Study in the Rhetoric of Thomas Wolfe," Quarterly Journal of
SPeech, Vol. XLIII, 1957; "Albert Camus: Death at the Meridian,"
Carolina Quarterly, Vol. XI, 1960; "A Study in Philosophy and the
Social Sciences," Social Research, Vol. XXV, 1958; "History as a
Finite Province of Meaning," (in Spanish) Convivium, Vol. II, 1957;
"History, Historicity, and the A1chemistry of Time," Chicago Review,
Vol. XV, 1961; "Causation as a Structure of the Lebenswelt," Journal
of Existential Psychiatry, Vol. I, 1960; "Death and Situation," Ame-
rican Imago, Vol. XVI, 1959. I thank the editors and publishers of
these pUblications for permission to reprint my writings. Also, I wish
to thank Mr. G. H. Priem of Martinus Nijhoff for his editorial aid.
My wife, Lois Natanson, has helped to bring all of my efforts to their
best stylistic form. Where inadequacies remain it is because of my
obstinacy. My gratitude to Lois is as profound as my indebtedness.
Table of Contents
Foreword VII
Part I I PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS

I. Phenomenology: A Viewing 3
2. Phenomenology and Existentialism: Husserl and Sartre
on Intentionality 26
3. Phenomenology and the Natural Attitude 34
4. The Empirical and Transcendental Ego 44
5· Being-in-Reality 55
6. Jean-Paul Sartre's Philosophy of Freedom 62
Part I I I AESTHETICS AND LITERATURE
7. Toward a Phenomenology of the Aesthetic Object 79

8. Phenomenology and the Theory of Literature 86
9. Existentialism and the Theory of Literature lOI
IO. Existential Categories in Contemporary Literature II6
II. The Privileged Moment: A Study in the Rhetoric of Thomas
Wolfe I3I
12. Albert Camus: Death at the Meridian 141
Part I I I I HISTORY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
13. A Study in Philosophy and the Social Sciences ISS

14. Knowledge and Alienation: Some Remarks on Mannheim's
Sociology of Knowledge 167
XII TABLE OF CONTENTS
15. History as a Finite Province of Meaning

16. History, Historicity, and the Alchemistry of Time
17. Causation as a Structure of the Lebenswelt
18. Death and Situation
PART ONE
PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS
I. Phenomenology: A Viewing

I wish to begin and end with an irrelevancy. In the autobiographical
statement that appears in the recent volume in the Library of Living
Philosophers devoted to his thought, Karl Jaspers contrasts his
experience living the life of a physician (he began as a psychiatrist)
with that of his life as a philosopher. Regarding his colleagues in both
professions, he writes:
The memory of the intellectual fellowship of our hospital in Heidelberg has
accompanied me throughout my entire life. My later work was quite independent
and was undertaken at my own risk ... without contact with any professional
group. The comparison enabled me to measure how diffused, artificial, and unreal
is the professional association of teachers of philosophy, no matter how often its
representatives may meet each other in congresses or express themselves in
journals and books.l
The point at issue is the existential commitment or lack of commitment

of the professional philosophers to philosophy. It is one thing to master
a jargon and develop a stock-in-trade of questions, answers, arguments,
parries and thrusts; it is quite another thing to have philosophy as
your ultimate concern, to learn to know, in Husserl's language, "the
despair of one who has the misfortune to be in love with philosophy."
To be existentially involved in philosophy is to confront oneself and
others in a dialogue that goes beyond both chatter and conversation.
Such dialogue requires the listening that transcends hearing and the
seeing that is never synonymous with looking. Philosophy is an act of
imaginative extrapolation founded on existential commitment, quite
independent of particular standpoints and regardless of concrete
results. At least part of the silence that has greeted Husserlian pheno-
l The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers (ed. by Paul Arthur Schilpp), New York, 1957, 24.
4 PHENOMENOLOGY: A VIEWING
menology in Anglo-American philosophy for the past half century is, I

would suggest, the function of a root suspicion of commitment in
general and existentialism in particular. At the center of this silence is
a paradox that brings us directly to the issues of this paper.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Anglo-American and conti-
nental philosophy at mid-century is the disparity of sources and aims.
The major impact of analytic and neo-positivistic philosophy in Eng-
land and America, on the one hand, is sharply at odds with the leading
motive and theme of French and German thought, the phenomenology
of Edmund Husserl.2 The paradox of contemporary philosophy, then,
is that of the dominance of phenomenology abroad, the quiescence of
phenomenology at home. What explains the situation of world phi-
losophy in which phenomenology can either be taken for granted as a
starting point in technical discussions or else require the most ele-
mentary set of explanations and distinctions for discussion even to be
possible? As Merleau-Ponty points out,3 fifty years after the first
works of Husserl, it is still necessary to ask, What is phenomenology?
There are a variety of reasons which may be cited to explain the
lack of understanding or, worse, the misunderstanding of phenomen-
ology today in so many quarters. Some of these reasons are clear cut
and limited, others are more subtle. The lack of adequate translations
into English of much of phenomenological literature is an obvious
source of trouble. More generally, however, phenomenology is written
in European style, and its language is strange-sounding to ears ac-
customed to Russell and Moore, Carnap and Quine. Finally, the
"geography" of problems explored by phenomenologists - phenom-
enological reduction, the intentionality of consciousness, the transcen-
dental ego - is unearthly terrain. One is reminded of the New Yorker's
map of the United States: here is, of course, New York City, toward
the eastern bottom of the country is Miami, in the middle is Chicago,
and to the far west is Los Angeles. And in between these notables is
a vast, mysterious swampland into which no intelligent traveller ever
voyages. On a comparable map, phenomenology lies somewhere in
between California and Florida, at best a potentially rich fossil
preserve.
But the misunderstandings of phenomenology are more important
S Wild, J., "Is There a World of Ordinary Language?" Philosophical Review, LXVII, 1958,
460-476.
8 Merleau.Ponty, M., "What is Phenomenology?" (translated by John F. Bannan), C1'OSS
CU1'1'ents, VI, 1956, 59-70. Original: avant-propos of Phenomenologie de la puception, Paris,
1945·
PHENOMENOLOGY: A VIEWING 5
matters for our attention. The list is imposing. 4 Phenomenology is
taken as a kind of introspectional psychology, as a subjectivism, as a
kind of phenomenalism, as a mysticism whose central concern is a
dark realm of essences, as an intuitionism of a Bergsonian order, as an
anti-scientific doctrine, or as a philosophy that denies the reality of
the world by bracketing out existence. Add to this the complex
historical relationship between the work of Husserl and that of
Heidegger and Sartre, and you see infinite possibilities for still further
absurdities. But there are other types of misunderstandings or possi-
bilities for confusion which relate to the very complexity of the histori-
cal development of phenomenology. First of all, in addition to the
phenomenology of Husserl, there are the phenomenologies of Scheler,
Hartmann, and still other investigators whose methods differ in
important ways from that of Husserl. Secondly, even the work of
Husserl is far from completely known. Great parts of his philosophical
writings are now being edited and published. And during Husserl's
own lifetime, his thought underwent important developments. The
reader of Husserl's Logical Investigations who failed to study the
philosopher's volume Ideas would have an abortivE' notion of phe-
nomenology.
For all of these reasons, some valid, others rather sickly, misun-
derstandings of Husserl's method and outlook are the rule rather than
the exception in Anglo-American circles. But there is a totally different
kind of reason for the failure to understand and appreciate phenom-
enological philosophy which I wish to explore in some detail, and that
is the rootedness of both common sense and most non-phenomenologi-
cal philosophy in what Husserl calls the "natural attitude." The cen-
tral effort of phenomenology is to transcend the natural attitude of
daily life in order to render it an object for philosophical scrutiny and
in order to describe and account for its essential structure. Common
sense and those philosophies which share its fundamentally naive,
realistic view of the world are defined, phenomenologically, by their
urgent yet implicit protest against such an examination. The world
4 Ames, V. M., "Mead and Husser! on the Self," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
XV, 1955, 320-331.
Natanson, ~I., "Phenomenology from the Natural Standpoint: A Reply to Van Meter
Ames," ibid., XVII, 1956, 241-245.
Ames, V. M., "Reply to Maurice Natanson's Reply," ibid., XVII, 1956, 246-247.
Williams, F., "Doubt and Phenomenological Reduction: An Appendix to the Natanson-
Ames Controversy," ibid., XVIII, 1958, 379-38I.
Zilsel, E., "Concerning 'Phenomenology and Natural Science,'" ibid., II, 1941, 219-220.
Cerf, \V., "In Reply to Mr. Zilsel." ibid., II, 1941, 220-222.
may be taken apart piecemeal as in the dismemberment of a completed

jigsaw puzzle, but the inquiry into the very sense of reality, into the
meaning of there being a reality of which each piece is a part - such
an investigation is suspended in its very genesis by the natural attitude
itself: the doxic belief in the real existence of a world out there which
holds each one of us forever in its epistemic embrace.
By the natural attitude Husserl understood the fundamental un-
stated thesis underlying the situation of man in the daily public world
which holds that there is a real external existent world which persists
in space and time and which is much the same for all men. Doubts,
fears, anxieties, questions, hypotheses all presuppose the thesis of the
natural attitude because, in varying ways, they all take for granted
the being of the world-totality of which some special part arises to
be questioned, doubted, interrogated. But the doubting, inquiring,
researching is itself within the world investigated and the investigation
is always into something. The natural attitude is not merely a deeply
rooted prejudice or presupposition; it is an implicit metaphysical com-
mitment which lies at the heart of our worldly experience. And just
as important, it constitutes the central metaphysical assumption of the
natural sciences, especially of psychology. The clue to phenomenology
is the appreciation of the natural attitude. Husserl's own description
is valuable.
I find continually present and standing over against me the one spatio-temporal
fact-world to which I myself belong, as do all other men found in it and related in
the same way to it. This 'fact-world' as the word already tells us, I find to be out
there, and also take it just as it gives itself to me as something that exists out there. All
doubting and rejecting of the data of the natural world leaves standing the
general thesis of the natural standpoint. 'The' world is as fact-world always there;
at the most it is at odd points 'other' than I supposed, this or that under such
names as 'illusion', 'hallucination', and the like, must be struck out of it, so to
speak; but the 'it' remains ever, in the sense of the general thesis, a world that
has its being out there. To know it more comprehensively, more trustworthily,
more perfectly than the naive lore of experience is able to do, and to solve all the
problems of scientific knowledge which offer themselves upon its ground, that is
the goal of the sciences of the natural standpoint. 5
The central and ultimate difficulty in seeing what phenomenology

is trying to do relates directly and inevitably to the rootage of all non-
phenomenological attitudes in the natural standpoint. This I take to
be the true basis for so much misunderstanding of phenomenology.
& Husserl, E., Ideas: Genual IntrotlucUon to P"re Phenomenology (translated by w. R.
Boyce Gibson) London, 1931, 106. Original: Idem II" eintw reinen PNinoflU1Jologie"nIl pNino-
menologisc1Jen Philosoph" (ed. by W. Bieme1), Haag, 19So.
It is not so much a matter of this or that phenomenological idea,
concept, or principle that is viewed in a wrong way as it is a failure to
grasp the very style of phenomenological concern. Perhaps one
suggestive way of exploring the phenomenological critique of the
natural attitude is to turn to a brief account of the historical develop-
ment of Hussed's thought, particulady with regard to his reaction to
the naturalistic psychology of the late nineteenth century.
Biographically, Hussed's eady interests were in the natural sciences,

first astronomy, later mathematics. He studied under Weierstrass
and took his doctorate in mathematics with a dissertation on the cal-
culus of variations. In 1891 he published the first volume of a Philo-
sophy of Arithmetic with the subtitle, Psychological and Logical
Investigations. The major theme of this work was the subjective
ground of mathematical operations, and it was developed in concur-
rence with the reduction of logic and mathematics to psychological
processes urged in the work of Sigwart, Lipps, Wundt, and Mill.
Although there are pre-phenomenological or proto-phenomenological
themes and insights contained in this eady work, Hussed at this stage
had yet to reach the threshold of phenomenology and had, in the main,
been positively influenced by psychologism. It was partly as a result of
a review of his book by Frege that Hussed came to be persuaded that
logic cannot be propedy reduced to psychological operations, that,
indeed, the central terms and structure of both logic and mathematics
are ideal objects, meaning-unities, whose status is precisely independent
of the concrete activities of mind and of thinking in its neurological
aspect. Logic is not, as Lipps had proclaimed, the physics of thought;
and with this turn against psychologism (which was to reach its
fulfillment in Hussed's refutation of psychologism in his Logical
Investigations) is to be seen the phenomenological reaction not only
against a particular view of logic but, more generally, against a natu-
ralistically oriented theory of consciousness. Historically, it was his
study with Brentano which occasioned this decisive advance in Hussed's
thought.
In his Psychology trom an Empirical Standpoint (Vol. I, Book II)
Brentano distinguishes between psychic and physical phenomena.
The latter are the terms, objects, or events of sensory awareness which
have as their specific differentia spatial localization. As examples of
physical phenomena Brentano cites: a color, a figure, heat, cold, etc.

Psychic phenomena, on the other hand, involve sensory or imaginative
representation to consciousness. And by representation, Brentano
writes, he means the act of representing and not that which is repre-
sented. Psychic phenomena have as their cardinal differentia intention-
al structure. That which characterizes all psychic phenomena, Brenta-
no argues, is what the scholastics had called intentional presence or
what he prefers to term relatedness to a content or direction toward an
object or immanent objectivity. Directionality means that in represen-
tation something is represented, in judgment something is admitted or
rejected, in love something is loved, in hate something is hated, in
desire something is desired. Intentionality is unique to psychic phe-
nomena. "Thus" Brentano writes (Vol. I, p. 125), "we are able to
define psychic phenomena in saying that they are the phenomena
which intentionally contain an object in them."
Although Hussed ultimately rejected Brentano's theory of inten-
tionality (for reasons that will be presented later), it provided him
with a thematic insight into the nature of consciousness which per-
vades the phenomenological conception of intentionality. Together
with the acceptance of the ideality of logic, the tum to an intentional
theory of consciousness may be seen as a leading motive in the his-
torical evolution of Hussed's philosophy. Fully developed, they pro-
vide a basis for understanding Hussed's reaction against a naturalistic
psychology and a naturalistic theory of mind. In his Logos article, Hus-
sed writes: "Characteristic of all forms of extreme and consistent
naturalism, from popular naturalism to the most recent forms of
sensation-monism and energism, is on one hand the naturalizing of
consciousness, including all intentionally immanent data of conscious-
ness, and on the other the naturalizing of ideas and consequently of all
ideals and norms."6 For Hussed naturalism meant the general philo-
sophical orientation which treated the total range of mental activity as
essentially causally conditioned by and, in the final analysis, a part of
the events of nature. The paradigm for philosophical understanding is
taken, in the naturalistic persuasion, as causal explanation. Finally,
naturalism is defined by its insistence on locating the primary problems
of philosophy within a continuum of inquiry whose ideal form is that
of scientific method. The crucial difficulty with this, for Hussed, is that
natural science and its methodology begin with a set of major philo-
8 Husserl, E., "Philosophy as a Strict Science," (translated by Quentin Lauer), Cross
Currents, VI, 1956, 231. Original: "Philosophie aJs strenge Wissenschaft," Logos, I, 1910.
sophical presuppositions and implicit metaphysical commitments
which vitiate its application to a philosophy of mind. This is most
clearly seen in the case of psychology. Husserl writes:
All natural science is naive in regard to its point of departure. The nature which
it will investigate is for it simply there. Of course there are things, as things at
rest, in motion, changing in unlimited space, and temporal things in unlimited
time. vVe perceive them, we describe them by means of simple empirical
judgments. 7
For psychology as a natural science, the psychical does not constitutt.'

an independent realm; rather "it is given as an ego or as the experience
of an ego ... and this sort of thing reveals itself empirically as bound to
certain physical things called bodies. This, too, is a self-evident prc-
datum." And, Husserl continues, "even where psychology - the
empirical science - is oriented toward the determination of mere events
of consciousness and not toward those which depend on the psycho-
physical in the ordinary narrower sense, still these events are thought
of as those of nature, i.e., as belonging to human or animal conscious-
ness, which for their part have a self-evident connection with human
and animal bodies, along with which they are grasped."8 Naturalistic
psychology and naturalism as a whole remain within the natural
attitude; there is a "commonsensism" which informs their very being.
The only way out, for Husserl, is a procedurE> which seeks in the most
radical way to examine consciousness directly, to appreciate its
contents and structures quite apart from prior scientific commitments
or from philosophical pre-judgments, and which strives, above all, to
regain the immediate experiential world we have forgotten, denied, or
bartered away. Phenomenology purports to offer such a way out, and
it is now possible to examine its claims.
<III>
As a preliminary definition, we may say that phenomenology is the
logos of the phenomenon, the discipline concerned with the descrip-
tive delineation of what presents itself to consciousness as it presents
itself and in so far as it presents itself. Obviously, the central term here
is "consciousness," and it is necessary to explore the Husserlian theory
of the intentionality of consciousness before this definition can mah
7 ibid., 233-234.
B ibid., 234.
sense. But we must first be clear about the "phenomenon." For Hus-
sed, the phenomenon is not the Kantian appearance which points back
necessarily to a noumenal reality. The Husserlian phenomenon has no
ding an sich behind it; rather, the phenomenon is taken as that which
gives itself directly through the acts of consciousness. Again, before
this can be fully clarified, it is necessary to explore Hussed's concep-
tion of the intentional character of consciousness. Postponing such an
account for the time being, we may say that phenomenology is at least
negatively defined by its refusal to turn to an account of presentations
which either assumes their status as real entities within a space and
time world or takes for granted the causal connections such presen-
tations bear to the natural order. Phenomenology is in this sense an
epistemologically neutral instrument for the inspection of the presen-
tations of consciousness. Later I shall reformulate this working de-
finition of phenomenology; for the present, I shall restrict myself to
formulating a list of general theses and goals phenomenology establish-
es and sets for itself.
(1) Phenomenology seeks to found and develop itself as a "presup-

positionless" philosophy.
(2) Phenomenological theory is itself phenomenologically conceived
and, ideally, phenomenologically realized.
(3) Phenomenology demands, in Husserl's phrase, a "return to the
things themselves" of immediate experience.
(4) Phenomenology attempts to clarify the meanings of the funda-
mental terms, basic concepts, and essential categories of all spe-
cial or higher level disciplines, including the natural sciences.
(5) Phenomenology is concerned with the location and clarification
of the a priori structure of all so-called "regional ontologies."
(6) Phenomenology returns to the Cartesian and Leibnizian ideal of
a mathesis universalis but tries to reconstruct its character both
with regard to a point of departure and an ultimate goal for a
fully realized science of man.
(7) Phenomenology continues the essential style of transcendental
philosophy involved in the Critique 01 Pure Reason but at the
same time may be interpreted as both criticism of Kantianism
and as an advance beyond Kant.
(8) Phenomenology seeks to reconstruct the total range of the life
of consciousness in terms of its underlying eidetic structure from
the standpoint of transcendental subjectivity.
PHENOMENOLOGY: A VIEWING II
(9) Phenomenology explores the genesis of meaning in both nature

and history and endeavors to describe the "sedimentations" of
meaning that lie within the evolution of our experience.
(ro) Phenomenology, finally, seeks the reconstruction of the Lebens-
welt, the life-world within which each one of us is born, exists,
and dies.
Out of these mutually related theses and aims arise a number of major
philosophical innovations which lead us to the very ground of Husserl's
thought:
(1) Phenomenology presents a unique method for pursuing its special

ends. More specifically, it develops a theory of epoche and of
reductions.
(2) Phenomenology presents a radical theory of consciousness, that
of intentionality.
(3) Phenomenology expresses a new theory of meaning, one intimately
bound up with Husserl's doctrine of essence.
(4) Phenomenology requires and presents a special theory of evi-
dence,9 one developed in terms of "self-givenness."
(5) Finally, phenomenology articulates a theory of transcendental
consciousness in terms of which the "constitutive" activity of the
transcendental ego emerges as the sovereign theme.
Within our present limits it is clearly impossible to go into a detailed

examination of all of the terms, concepts, and theories just outlined.
Instead, I propose to turn to a study of those elements of phenome-
nological method and theory which are in some sense fundamental and
necessary to grasp the style of Husserl's general problematic, to say it
Germanically. These elements I take to be phenomenological method,
the theory of intentionality, and the transcendental ego. I will devote
myself, then, to a statement of their meaning and purpose in the
matrix of Husserlian thought.
(1) Phenomenological method: Concerned as it is with an immediate

confrontation with what is presented in experience, phenomenology
obviously cannot take over the methods of natural scientific inquiry
or of any philosophy which begins within the natural attitude. Descartes
comes closest to the radical mode of scrutiny with which Husserl
9 Spiegelberg, H., "Phenomenology of Direct Evidence," PhilosoPhy and Phenomenological
Research, II, 1942,427-456.
I2 PHENOMENOLOGY: A VIEWING
wishes to commence his philosophizing. Yet, for reasons that will be

evident presently, a qualitative step beyond Descartes is needed.
Such an advance is possible, according to Husserl, if the phenomen-
ologist starts with the explicit methodological decision to attend only
to what presents itself to him in the full range of his perception as it
presents itself. He can not, then, assume that his presentations are of
real things or that they are occasioned by real events or that they are
psychic events having neurological accompaniments or that they are
part of the real world or that there is an external world outside his
perceptual stream of awareness within which or somehow in contrast
with which his presentations arise. In order to assure the neutrality of
givenness, the phenomenologist begins, therefore, by setting in abey-
ance his common-sense belief in the existence of the real world. It
is exactly at this point that so many typical misunderstandings of
phenomenological method arise. Our problem is to see what Hussed
means by the methodological suspension of what he terms the "general
thesis" of the natural standpoint.
When I suspend or place in abeyance my common-sense belief in
reality, I merely decide to make no use of the thesis which ordinarily
guides our total cognitive and conative life; but this thesis is not to be
understood as a proposition or a formulated article of faith. Rather, it
is the unstated, utterly implicit theme of our common-sense relatedness
to reality. Hussed writes:
The General Thesis according to which the real world about me is at all times
known not merely in a general way as something apprehended, but as a fact-
world that has its being out there, does not consist of course in an act proper, in an
articulated judgment about existence. It is and remains something all the time
the standpoint is adopted, that is, it endures persistently during the whole
course of our life of natural endeavour. 10
Phenomenological suspension or, to use Hussed's term, epoche, consists

in making explicit to consciousness the thesis which unconsciously
underlies every individual judgment made within ordinary life about
reality. Suspension means first of all coming into awareness of the very
meaning of the natural attitude itself. Negatively put, suspension of the
General Thesis of the natural standpoint most certainly does not in-
clude or signify a denial of the reality of the external wodd or of the
validity of our ordinary experience within it. Rather, as phenomen-
ologist I place in phenomenological doubt (which is not psychological
10 Husserl, E., Ideas, I07.

doubt) my traditional common-sense taking for granted of the very
reality of the world within which things and events are noted and ap-
praised. Suspension, then, involves a shift in modes of attention. The
same reality I took for granted in typical fashion in naive attitude I
now re-view in phenomenological attitude. The real world, everyday
existence, etc., do not mysteriously vanish under epochi; they are
merely seen in terms of a perspective hitherto unimagined and even
unimaginable in common-sense terms. Husserl's own description of
phenomenological epochi may now make sense:
We put out oj action the general thesis which belongs to the essence of the natural
standpoint, we place in brackets whatever it includes respecting the nature of
Being: this entire natural world therefore which is continually 'there for us,'
'present to our hand,' and will ever remain there, is a 'fact-world' of which we
continue to be conscious, even though it pleases us to put it in brackets. If I
do this, as I am fully free to do, I do not then deny this 'world,' as though I wen'
a sophist, I do not doubt that it is there as though I were a sceptic; but I use the
'phenomenological' epoche, which completely bars me from using any judgment
that concerns spatio-temporal existence. 11
Epochi is the necessary condition to all other phenomenological

procedures, for it guarantees the freedom of a starting point which
refuses to remain within the metaphysical orientation of common sense.
And further, epochi is the clue to phenomenological method to the
extent that it points to the kind of descriptive neutrality phenomen-
ology encourages. Presentations and not interpretations become the
central object of concern. Dorion Cairns makes a careful statement
of the principle to which all of this leads:
The fundamental methodological principle of phenomenology may ... be initially

formulated as follows : No opinion is to be accepted as Philosophical knowledge
unless it is seen to be adequately established by observation of what is seen to be itself
given 'in person.' A ny belief seen to be incompatible with what is seen to be itself
given is to be rejected. Toward opinions that fall in neither class - whether they
be one's own or another's - one is to adopt an 'official' Philosophical attitude of
neutrality.12
And here as well is the clue to the meaning of a "presuppositionless"

philosophy in Husserl's specific sense. A presuppositionless philosophy
does not mean a philosophy without presuppositions; instead, what is
involved is a philosophy which attends phenomenologically to any com-
ibid., IIO-III.
11
12Cairns, D., "An Approach to Phenomenology," in Philosophical Essays in Memory oj
Edmund Husserl (ed. by Marvin Farber), Cambridge, Mass., 1940,4.
PHENOMENOLOGY: A VIEWING
mitment, however profound and primal, which may be delineated in its

own procedure. Presuppositions are rendered explicit through phenome-
nological inspection and so neutralized to whatever extent neutral-
ization is possible in rational operations. The interesting thing is that
phenomenological method is reflexive in nature and intent: phenome-
nological method is itself phenoinenologically derived.
(2) Intentionality: With epoche methodologically effected, the next

step in phenomenological procedure involves a series of "reductions."
We may distinguish two particular stages in reduction which are of
paramount importance, though it should be borne in mind that these
are by no means the only reductions. First, there is what Hussed calls
the "eidetic reduction." This consists in moving from matters of fact
to essences, from empirical to essential universality. The epoche
fulfills an essentially negative function,13 it prepares us for the ap-
preciation of a purified field of consciousness; the eidetic reduction, on
the other hand, has a more positive role to play. It is concerned with a
residuum presented in the phenomenological orientation; it is the
status of the elements of the residuum which is now of interest. The
eidetic reduction is a method by means of which the phenomenologist
is able to attend to the character of the given, setting aside that which
is contingent and secondary and noting that which shows itself as
universal. Although it is not possible at this point to explain what
Hussed means by "essence," an example of the sort of thing he has in
mind might be helpful.
Euclidean geometry might be considered as an example of an eidetic
science. It is concerned with essences rather than with particulars; the
distinction between token and type is central to its meaning. However
carefully drawn, an illustration of a triangle is never to be confused
with what it is supposed to illustrate. Strictly speaking, a triangle
cannot be drawn at all, it can only be represented. In looking at this
particular examplar of triangle I draw on the blackboard, I may, in
eidetic attitude, reduce away the particularity of this concrete token
and see the triangle it represents no longer as this triangle but simply
as triangle. For Hussed, seeing the essence triangle does not mean
merely knowing the definition of a Euclidean triangle as, say, a plane
figure bounded by three straight lines which intersect. The definition
expresses the essence; the essence is not constructed by stipulation.
18 Lauer, J. Q., The Triumph of Subjectivity: An Int,oduction to T,anscendental Phenome·.
nology (with a preface by Aron Gurwitsch), New York, 1958, 50.
But essences are not, of course, restricted to the domain of mathematics.
The child who learns to recognize the typical figure of the dog is able
to point out this or that kind of dog as being a dog. Whatever jest of
evolution is responsible for borzois and dachshunds both being dogs
does not interfere with the child's immediate grasp of their both being
dogs. And even if a particular child does as a matter of fact judge that
some cats are more dog-like than are some dogs or what purport to
be dogs, still he recognizes cats and dogs to be kinds of animals, and
he sees the difference between members of the class animal and the
generic properties of the class.
But it is with the second stage, that of transcendental reduction,
that the full meaning of both epochi and eidetic reduction becomes
clear and that the Husserlian theory of the intentionality of conscious-
ness finds its statement and rationale. At the same time, it is necessary
to realize that the meaning of transcendental reduction is perhaps the
part of the phenomenological procedure most difficult to comprehend
precisely because it shows most vividly the phenomenologist's methodo-
logical transcension of the mundane sphere. As Husserl writes,
"What makes the appropriation of the essential nature of phenome-
nology, the understanding of the peculiar meaning of its form of
inquiry, and its relation to all other sciences (to psychology in particu-
lar) so extraordinarily difficult, is that in addition to all other adjust-
ments a new way of looking at things is necessary, one that contrasts at
every point with the natural attitude of experience and thought. "14 The
movement from the interpretive attitude of daily life to that of
phenomenological attitude is fundamentally a reorientation in per-
ceptual experience which transforms perceptual immersion in the
object perceived in naive attitude into a reflexive concern with the
very activity of consciousness. Instead of seeing, hearing, tasting,
touching things or objects, I now turn my attention to my seeing, my
hearing, my tasting, and my touching. Instead of "living in my acts,"
in Husserl's phrase, I make my acts the explicit object of phenome-
nological inspection. Such a reflexive procedure leads us directly to the
intentionality of consciousness, but it is still necessary to establish the
status of the transcendental reduction before we can treat intentionality
explicitly.
In eidetic reduction the phenomenologist is still a being in the world
in whose stream of conscious acts essences present themselves. The
14 Husserl, E., Ideas, 43.

subjectivity involved in eidetic description is still a worldly subjectivity,

having an individual temporality and an historical biography. What is
now needed for ultimate phenomenological purification is a reduction
which brackets the very worldliness of the ego and returns the phe-
nomenologist to the pure stream of consciousness as such. Such a
return is the object of transcendental reduction. The transcendental
phenomenologist reduces the residuum gained in eidetic attitude to
the ultimate ground of the transcendental ego in whose constitutive
activity his world arises. Through transcendental reduction, Husserl
writes:
I no longer survey my perception experiences, imagination-experiences, the
psychological data which my psychological experience reveals: I learn to survey
transcendental experience. I am no longer interested in my own existence. I am
interested in the pure intentional life, wherein my psychically real experiences
have occurred. This step raises the transcendental problem ... to its true level.
We have to recognize that relativity to consciousness is not only an actual
quality of our world, but, from eidetic necessity, the quality of every conceivable
world. We may, in free fancy, vary our actual world, and transmute it to any
other which we can imagine, but we are obliged with the world to vary ourselves
also, and ourselves we cannot vary except within the limits prescribed to us by
the nature of subjectivity. Change worlds as we may, each must ever be a world
such as we could experience, prove upon the evidence of our theories and inhabit
with our practice. The transcendental problem is eidetic. My psychological
experiences, perceptions, imaginations and the like remain in form and content
what they were, but I see them as 'structures' now, for I am face to face at last
with the ultimate structure of consciousness. 11>
What arises from all of these complex procedures is the basis for
understanding the very nature of consciousness itself. EpocM and the
reductions make sense only if seen in relationship to the theory of mind
they are intended to disclose. It is now possible to tum directly to
Husserl's theory of the intentionality of consciousness.
All conscious acts, for Husserl, have a fundamental directional
character: they point toward some object, whether objectively real or
not. Thus, all thinking is thinking ot or about something, all remember-
ing is remembering ot something, all imagining is imagining ot some-
thing, all willing is willing ot something. All consciousness, then, is
consciousness ot something. Consciousness is intentional in the sense
that it has as its essential character this projective or directional
activity. The term "intentional," it must be remembered, does not
mean planned or purposeful thought in the sense in which we say that
Mulholland intentionally tripped Auerbach as the latter was walking
down the aisle. Intentionality in Husserl's sense refers primarily to the
15 Husserl, E., article on Phenomenology in Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th edition, 701.
phenomenological structure of the acts of perception, in the broad
Cartesian sense of that term. But if intentionality has such directional
form, what is it that is intended and what does it mean to intend? And
what, to begin with, do we mean by an "act" in this context?
Acts of intentionality are not psychological events; they are not
to be confused with apprehensions of any order. It is the underlying
eidetic character of all apprehension which concerns Husseri. The
structure of intentionality is necessarily purely a priori, and this means
that a phenomenologist is interested in getting at the pure form, in gener-
al, of any concrete example of an intentional act. Moreover, Husserl's
task is to transcend the dualism of subject and object which he thinks
is the historical source of the failure of both traditional realisms and
idealisms to give an adequate account of mind. As psychological events,
as happenings in consciousness, mental acts have subjects - persons
who perform them - and objects - things designated in the world.
However, as phenomenological structures, acts are "experiences of
meaning,"16 they are themselves the initial terms of consciousness.
Consciousness is not so much composed of acts as it is itself the texture
of continuous and interrelated acts bound together in the unity of
inner time. In this sense, "act" no more implies an "actor" than
consciousness implies a "consciousness-er." Acts do have grounding
and generic origin, for Hussed, in the constitutive activity of the tran-
scendental ego. Finally, intentionality is seen phenomenologically as
foundationally given; it is neither deduced from other elements of con-
sciousness or experience nor postulated from observed elements. Con-
sciousness is intentionality, and should this turn out to be a tautology,
the task of the phenomenologist is to make the most of it.
Let us now take a closer look at the structure of intentional acts.
The "object" intended, for Husserl, is "real" only in so far as it is
taken or meant as real, i.e., in so far as, in hyphenated language, it is
real-for-me. The objective status of the thing to which the intention
mayor may not correspond becomes a phenomenological problem
when we consider the intentional structure involved in assertive judg-
ments, not otherwise. Within the structure of the intentional act,
Hussed recognizes two polar though interrelated aspects: a subject
and an object dimension. The former he calls the noetic aspect of in-
tentionality, the latter the noematic aspect. Noesis and noema corre-
spond to subjective and objective sides of intentional experience, and
18 Farber, M., The Foundation of Phenomenology: Edmund Husserl and the Quest tor a
Rigorous Science of PhilosOPhy, Cambridge, Mass., 1943, 333.
by means of this distinction HusserI is able to open up for examination

the phenomenological geography of these dimensions. The most im-
portant location made in this exploration, for our present purposes,
is HusserI's treatment of the noema, the object-aspect of the intentional
act, for it is the noematic aspect of intentionality which turns out to
be the clue to the phenomenological theory of essence and the "intu-
ition" of essence.
The noema is the intentional meaning presented by way of the
act or acts which intend it. The noema as the meant correlate to the
act which intends it is that which presents itself immediately or, in
HusserI's language, "originarily" to consciousness. But the noematic
object is not a particular, though in some sense it may be occasioned
by a particular in actual experience. The particular is always "irreal-
ized" in transcendental reduction so that the phenomenologist is
always concerned with noematic unities as non-realities. The phenom-
enologist's attention is drawn to this object only in so far as it is "ir-
realized" as this and rendered object as such. This object as meant,
this object as intended, are when transposed in phenomenological at-
titude precisely noematic unities, or, we may now say, essences. The
HusserIian essence is the noema understood as an originary meaning-
unity presented in person within transcendentally reduced conscious-
ness by way of the acts of intentionality. Since all of this discussion
of essence and meaning is necessarily condensed, a substantial illus-
trative quotation from HusserI may be permitted at this point:
Let us suppose that we are looking with pleasure in a garden at a blossoming

apple-tree, at the fresh young green of the lawn, and so forth. The perception
and the pleasure that accompanies it is obviously not that which at the same time
is perceived and gives pleasure. From the natural standpoint the apple-tree is
something that exists in the transcendent reality of space, and the perception as
well as the pleasure a psychical state which we enjoy as real human beings.
Between the one and the other real being ... the real man or the real perception
on the one hand, and the real apple-tree on the other, there subsist real relations.
Now in such conditions of experience and in certain cases, it may be that
the perception is a 'mere hallucination' and that the perceived, this apple-
tree that staDfls before us, does not exist in the 'real' objective world. The
objective relation which was previously thought of as really subsisting is now
disturbed. Nothing remains but the perception; there is nothing real out there
to which it relates.
Let us now pass over to the phenomenological standpoint. The transcendent
world enters its 'bracket'; in respect of its real being we use the disconnecting
epocke. We now ask what there is to discover, on essential lines, in the nexus of
noetic experiences of perception and pleasure-valuation. Together with the
whole physical and psychical world the real subsistence of the objective relation
between perception and perceived is suspended; and yet a relation between
perception and perceived (as likewise between the pleasure and that which
pleases) is obviously left over, a relation which in its essential nature comes before
us in 'pure immanence,' purely, that is, on the ground of the phenomenologically
reduced experience of perception and pleasure, as it fits into the transcendental
stream of experience. This is the very situation we are now concerned with,
the pure phenomenological situation. It may be that phenomenology has also
something to say concerning hallucinations, illusions, and deceptive perceptions
generally, and it has perhaps a great deal to say about them; but it is evident
that here, in the part they play in the natural setting, they fall away before the
phenomenological suspension. Here in regard to the perception, and also to any
arbitrarily continued nexus of such perceptions ... we have no such question
to put as whether anything corresponds to it in 'the' real world. This posited
(thetische) reality, if our judgment is to be the measure of it, is simply not
there for us. And yet everything remains, so to speak, as of old. Even the
phenomenologically reduced perceptual experience is a perception of 'this
apple-tree in bloom, in this garden, and so forth,' and likewise the reduced
pleasure, a pleasure in what is thus perceived. The tree has not forfeited the least
shade of content from all the phases, qualities, characters with which it appeared
in this perception, and 'in' this pleasure proved 'beautifUl,' 'charming,' and the like.
From our phenomenological standpoint we can and must put the question of
essence: What is the 'perceived as such'? What essential phases does it harbour in
itself in its capacity as noema? We win the reply to our question as we wait, in
pure surrender, on what is essentially given. We can then describe 'that which
appears as such' faithfully and in the light of perfect self-evidence.l7
It is now possible to see that for Husserl the central terms of phe-
nomenological discourse are all bound to each other, imply each other,
and require each other for a meaningful interpretation of the method
and task of phenomenological philosophy. Intentionality, meaning,
noema, essence - these are all intersecting moments of one schema
whose ultimate foundation is the transcendental ego. And this will be
the last stage in our phenomenological journey.
(3) The Transcendental Ego: The evolution of Husserl's thought was

very far from a smooth and simplistic progression. Each major work
by Husserl was an endeavour to return to root problems, to reconceive
the whole structure of his work, to reconstruct the fundament of his
philosophy. There is one historical transformation from the Husserl
of the Logical Investigations to the Husserl of Ideas which requires
special attention, and that is his theory of the nature of the ego.
At the time of Logical Investigations Husserl held to what is sometimes
termed a "non-egological" conception of consciousness, i.e., he treated
consciousness as completely contained and fulfilled in and through
intentional acts. More specifically, he deemed it unnecessary to posit
some ground or container or source of intentionality. There is no ego
17 Husser!, E., Ideas, 258-260.
at the basis of intentional acts; the ego is nothing more than the con-
catenated intentional acts located in experience. The "I" appears only
after acts of reflection; it is never to be found prior to reflection, for
it is no proper part of the a priori structure of pre-reflective or, in
other terms, non-positional consciousness. A brief excursion into
Sartre's critique of Husserl's theory of the ego may clarify what is at
issue here.
Claiming to follow the Husserl of Logical Investigations and to avoid
the fundamental error he thinks is involved in Husserl's later theory of
the transcendental ego, Sartre states his case:
For most philosophers the ego is an 'inhabitant' of consciousness. Some affirm
its formal presence at the heart of Erlebnisse, as an empty principle of unification.
Others - psychologists for the most part - claim to discover its material presence,
as the center of desires and acts, in each moment of our psychic life. We should
like to show here that the ego is neither formally nor materially in consciousness:
it is outside, in the world. It is a being of the world, like the ego of another.IS
Consciousness in these terms fulfills itself in its very directionality,

and it is only with reflective thought, acts concerned with prior acts,
that an ego arises. My original being in the world is intentional prior
to any thetic or positing act :
When I run after a streetcar, when I look at the time, when I am absorbed in
contemplating a portrait, there is no 1. There is consciousness of the streetcar-
having-to-be-overtaken, etc., and non-positional consciousness of consciousness.
In fact, I am then plunged into the world of objects; it is they which constitute
the unity of my consciousness; it is they which present themselves with values,
with attractive and repellent qualities - but me, I have disappeared; I have
anniliilated myself. There is no place for me on this level. And this is not a matter
of chance, due to a momentary lapse of attention, but happens because of the
very structure of consciousness. 19
Now in the Ideas Husserl changes position radically and insists on the
necessity for a transcendental ego as the ground from which radiate all
intentional acts. Sartre, for reasons we cannot discuss here, considers
the change not only unnecessary but positively injurious to phenome-
nological theory.2o In any event, it is clear that Husserl considered the
full development of his phenomenology to be bound up necessarily
with a transcendental idealism in which pure consciousness as the
18 Sartre, J.-P., The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness
(translated by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick), New York, 1957, 31. Original: "La
Transcendance de I'Ego: Esquisse d'une description phenomenologique," Recherches Philo-
sophiques, VI, 1936-37,85-123.
19 ibid., 48-49.
20 Gurwitsch, A., "A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness," PhilOSOPhy and
Phenomenological Research, I, 1941, 325-338.
phenomenological residuum gained by means of epoche and transcen-

dental reduction is the rock bottom of all phenomenological inquiry.
And this transcendental ego is, for Husserl, consciousness as such, in
its ultimate generality, revealed as the very condition for the possibility
of individual empirical egos and ultimately, their world. Thus, there
are not transcendental egos, but The Transcendental Ego, which is the
phenomenological ground and source for the individuated conscious-
nesses within empirical reality. Phenomenology as an eidetic science
is possible in virtue of the discovery and disclosure of the transcendental
sphere. In Husserl's words: "Consciousness in itself has a being of
its own which in its absolute uniqueness of nature remains unaffected
by the phenomenological disconnexion. It therefore remains over as a
'phenomenological residuum,' as a region of Being which is in principle
unique, and can become in fact the field of a new science - the science
of Phenomenology."21
In contrast with the Kantian transcendental ego, Husserl's con-
ception does not involve a purely formal judgmental unity, the "I
think" which, according to Kant, accompanies all of our judgments
as a necessary condition for the unity of consciousness. Further, the
Husserlian ego is essentially constitutive in nature, since it is the
source of intentional acts. Although there is a fundamental similarity
between Kant and Husserl at this point (especially regarding the very
meaning of transcendental method), the difference arises precisely
in terms of the doctrine of intentionality. However one may be able to
translate and interpret the relationship between Kantian appearances
and what they are "of," the full force of an intentional theory of
consciousness is not to be found in Kant. Furthermore, the formalism
of the Kantian "I think" involves an essentially constructive rather
than descriptive procedure. Kantian deduction is very different from
Husserlian "seeing." The former is an effort to characterize the given
in terms of a cognitive apparatus that can explain it; the latter consists
in attending to the phenomena and appreciating them in their in-
tentional unfolding. For Husserl the court of final appeal is what he
calls "the things themselves," the noematic unities originarily given to
a transcendentally purified consciousness and possessed of an immanent
sovereignty. 22
A final note comparing Husserl's theory of consciousness with
that of Descartes and Brentano is relevant. In his Cartesian Meditations
21 Husser!, E .• Ideas, 113.
22 Husser!, E., Formale und transllendentale Logik, Halle, 1929. section 59.
Husser! indicates both his indebtedness to Descartes as well as the

points of vital disagreement he has with the author of the earlier M edi-
tations. The points of difference are of primary interest here. First,
Husserl argues23 that Descartes failed to recognize and to elucidate the
meaning of epocM. Doubt remains a psychological procedure in Des-
cartes' way of doing things. Second, Descartes stopped short of
entering the entire domain of transcendental consciousness. His
concern with certitude limited itself to argument and demonstration
and failed, accordingly, to see the infinite range of transcendental
experience. 24
Husserl's relationship to Brentano can be clarified at this point.
Indebted as he was to his teacher for the generic concept of intentional""
ity, Husser! felt that there was a radical difference between Brentano-
intentionality and his own. The difference was this: psychic acts for
Brentano are still permeated with the sensationism and naturalism of
the natural standpoint, and intentionality has not worked itself free
from psychologism. Despite its positive value for both philosophy and
psychology, Husserl finds it necessary to rej ect Brentano's psychology of
intentionality since it "remains fettered to this inherited naturalism. "25
Husser! can be satisfied only with a theory of consciousness which is
founded on the methodological transcension of the natural standpoint
and of every naturalism which permeates those disciplines naively
rooted in the mundane sphere.
Let us return to the problem of defining phenomenology and see
if our early working definition of phenomenology as the discipline
concerned with the description of the phenomena cannot now give way
to a more sophisticated formulation, one which will sum up the results
of our exposition. Phenomenology is an essentially descriptive examin-
ation of the noetic and noematic structure of intentional acts as groun-
ded in transcendental subjectivity; and its concern is with a total
reconstruction of consciousness, in terms of which science will achieve
its rationale, art and religion their validation, and philosophy its own
consummation. That a programmatic philosophy of such massive
proportion and difficulty should have been so profoundly misconstrued
and so wildly misinterpreted is perhaps, upon reflection, not as sur-
prising as it appears. Yet Husserl would be justified in saying with
.1 Hqsserl, E., CtlrlesUlfHsche Medilationen "nd Ptlrtser Vorltige (ed. by Stephan Strasser).
Haag, :19S0, Section X3.
14 Fulton, J. S., "The Cartesianism of Phenomenology." The Philosophical Refliew. XLIX,
1940, :z85-308•
15 Husserl, E., Ideas, :Z4.
Kierkegaard: "People understand me so little that they do not even
understand when I complain of being misunderstood. "26
<IV>
Important as the phenomenological movement is on the Continent,
it is far from being a univocal expression of orthodox Husserlian
philosophy. Even excepting the radical developments of Heidegger
and Sartre, those phenomenologists who were the original students
of Husserl are far from standing in agreement with each other on points
of major significance. There is hardly a follower of Husserl today who
would accept all of his pronouncements, and there is hardly a major
follower of Husserl who has not put forward serious criticisms of phen-
omenological philosophy. Although these criticisms are immanent, in-
ternal arguments, it would be false to dismiss them as trifling family
quarrels. I take it to be a sign of the vitality of phenomenology that it
can not only tolerate serious internal criticism but that it can avoid
hagiolatry. Certainly no philosopher was ever harder on himself than
was Husserl, and few academicians today would, I think, have the in-
tellectual courage Husserl showed in withdrawing a completed work
from the printer's table because he felt not fully satisfied with his for-
mulation. When the tense is the present such an act is rare; in the sub-
junctive we can all be heroes.
The central lines of internal criticism raised by present-day phen-
omenologists move toward a cluster of central problems: Husserl's
theory of intersubjectivity, the nature of transcendental constitution,
the entire question of ontology. The feeling is generally that these,
among other issues, form the focus for present phenomenological in-
vestigation. And the quality as well as amount of research and public-
ation now going on in phenomenological circles is great. In addition
to work in philosophy proper, there is also considerable activity in soc-
iological, psychological, and psychiatric fields of inquiry. On the
American scene, the work of Aron Gurwitsch 27 in phenomenology of
perception and of Alfred Schutz28 in phenomenology of the social
sciences is especially noteworthy. The recently published volume
Existence 29 which contains important translations into English of the
26 The Journals of Seren Kierkegaard (ed. by A. Dru), London, 1943, 25.
27 Gurwitsch, A., Theorie du champ de La conscience, Paris, 1957.
28 Schutz, A., Del' sinnhafte Au/bau der sozialen WeU, Vienna, 1932.
29 Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology (ed. by Rollo May, Ernest
Angel, Henri F. Ellenberger), New York, 1958.
work of such phenomenologically influenced psychiatrists as Ludwig

Binswanger, Eugene Minkowski, and Erwin W. Straus brings to a
focus the convergence of phenomenology and existentialism and their
import for psychiatry - all of this presented to a potential American
audience reared in a naturalistic and behavioristic tradition. Such
investigators and such works point to a possible breakthrough of
phenomenology into the Anglo-American intellectual scene. Whether
such a breakthrough does or does not come is not so much connected
with the understanding of phenomenology as a collection of principles,
concepts, and procedures as it is with appreciating what I have called
the style of phenomenological concern. In the beginning as well as in the
end the real question at issue is the phenomenologist's sense of reality.
It has been said that phenomenology is above all a method, that
in principle it may, as a neutral instrument, be utilized by a philosopher
of any persuasion. Theoretically, perhaps this is true. More realistically
and more honestly, I feel, it is quite mistaken. For phenomenology
is above all a way of seeing, a way of grasping the world and of articu-
lating experience. Rather than some esoteric or mystical realm of es-
sences, it is the common everyday reality with which the phenomeno-
logist is ultimately concerned. His mode of concern is radically different
from that of the common-sense man, but the object of his inquiry is the
daily world seen in its uncontaminated givenness. To this daily world of
which we are forever a part Husserl gives the name "Lebenswelt,"
the "Life-world," and it is the Lebenswelt which became the final theme
of his phenomenologicallife. 3o It is here that the "style" of phenome-
nological philosophy is manifest.
To be a phenomenologist is to see the world in its givenness as
perpetually and repeatedly bearing the universal in its slightest, most
ephemeral aspects. But the essential here does not tum out to be a
divinely ordered realm; it is instead the gift of subjectivity and the
genius of consciousness. That each one of us constitutes for himself
language and a coherent world is the miracle of man's existence. Phen-
omenology seeks to disclose by description and analysis the miracle
of daily life, and the phenomenologist is defined, in Fink's phrase, by
his "astonishment before the world."31 It is in this sense that Sartre
is able to write: "The phenomenologists have plunged man back
into the world; they have given full measure to man's agonies and
80 Husserl, E., Die Krisis tier e.ropiiisc1len Wissenschatten .nd die tranSllendentale Phiino-
menologie, Haag, 1954, part three_
81 Fink, E., "Die phanomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in dez gegenwaztigen
Kritik (Mit einem Vorwort von Edmund Hussezl)," Kant-Stfldien, XXXVIII, 1933, 319-383.
sufferings, and also to his rebellions."32 In short, phenomenology has
given back to philosophy its existential commitment. And this returns
us to the point of our beginning in this paper and to the promise of a
final irrelevancy.
It seems to me that quite apart from whether he is persuaded by
phenomenology, naturalism, logical positivism, ordinary language
analysis, Thomism or anything else, the student of philosophy today
is faced with the personal decision of whether to commit himself funda-
mentally to his work or whether to play his role, advance his profes-
sional prospects, and leave the anguish to somebody else. His choice
may decide his attitude, but another way of seeing the problem is to
suggest that what he finds may define his attitude, that philosophy
may define the philosopher. To adapt a remark of Kierkegaard's to
my own purpose, the student of philosophy today is much like the
wanderer in the city who chances by a store which has in its window
display a sign reading "PHILOSOPHY DONE HERE." Our friend rushes in
eager for illumination only to learn from the storekeeper that the sign
itself is for sale.
32 Sartre, l.-P., The Tl'anscendence oj the Ego, 105.

2. Phenomenology and Existentialism
HUSSERL AND SARTRE ON INTENTIONALITY
Heraldry and genealogy are cognate disciplines; the former often leads
to exciting emblems, the latter sometimes to family embarrassments.
An exploration of some central roots of existentialism certainly leads
back to phenomenology, and following the line of Sartrean thought
brings us quickly to Hussed's philosophy. Whether the results are
more embarrassing than exciting may be decided later. Right now the
problem is the nature of the family relationship. I will begin by
suggesting that this relationship has as its ground Hussed's doctrine of
the intentionality of consciousness and that Sartre's existentialism
derives from a problematic critique and transformation of that
doctrine. I will end by suggesting that Sartre's inadequacies illuminate
Hussed's achievements.
The prime character of consciousness, for Hussed, is its implicit
directionality. All consciousness is consciousness 01 something; all acts
of consciousness intend some object. The ontological status of the
intended object is neutralized by phenomenological reduction, so that
the question of whether the object intended is real, illusory, halluci-
natory; imaginary, independent, subsistent, or transitory is set aside
for purposes of description. Whether the intended object is veridical
has nothing to do with its status as intended. The task of the phe-
nomenologist, then, is to investigate phenomena as correlates of the
acts which intend them. Just as phenomenological reduction neutralizes
the ontological placement of the object, so it sets in abeyance the belief
in personal identity, history, and empirical reality of the individual
making phenomenological descriptions. The central terms of the
phenomenological enterprise are within the structure of intentionality;
real object and real person are no proper part of that structure.
PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM 27
Instead, they may appear only as intentional concerns; that is, they
may be considered as meant or intended objects of consciousness.
Some critics of phenomenology have taken this conception of
intentional consciousness as a paradigm case of sUbjectivism or some
kind of solipsism. They have suggested that Husserl has abandoned
the real world, that his procedure of phenomenological reduction
leaves the phenomenologist in epistemic isolation, and that, consequent-
ly' there is no way of ever achieving objective confirmation of pheno-
menological reports. An indirect but interesting answer to these
complaints is found in Sartre's interpretation of intentionality, for the
whole point of his positive reaction to phenomenology is that he found
in Husserl's early writings a deliverance from subjectivism, an escape
from the egocentric predicament. The overwhelming importance of
intentionality for Sartre was what he took to be Husserl's insistence
on a view of consciousness which transcended the subject-object
dualism, which overcame the traditional debates of idealism and
realism, and which opened up for the first time a view of consciousness
which placed the self in the world, in the midst of life, in direct confron-
tation with being. Through phenomenology a return to "the things
themselves" had taken place. What Quentin Lauer has called pheno-
menology's "triumph of subjectivity" was initially, for Sartre, a
triumph over subjectivism. But victor and vanquished must be
examined more closely.
What impresses Sartre in the phenomenological theory of intentiona-
lity is the nonegological conception of consciousness developed in
Husserl's Logical Investigations. Intentionality in this perspective does
not derive from a subject pole which is the condition for its activity. At
this stage there is no transcendental ego to serve as the dynamic
matrix for intentional acts. The emphasis, then, is necessarily on the
noematic side of the intentional stream. Consciousness brings us face
to face with reality as the correlate of intentional acts. Instead of an
ego building its world, constituting its experiential fa<;ade, conscious-
ness is thrust into reality and locates its egological nature after the
encounter. The ego arises with experience; it has no status prior to
experience. It is at this point that Sartre seizes on the nonegological
conception of consciousness and announces its existential possibilities.
For if the ego is not an original resident of consciousness, consciousness
reveals itself as translucent, as a nothingness which fulfills itself purely
in its intentional activity. What for Husserl began as an emphasis on
the noematic aspect of the phenomena is radically transposed by Sartre
PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM
into a theory of consciousness in which the nonbeing of the ego is the

prime phenomenological datum. Husserl's nonegological theory of
consciousness becomes transformed into a philosophy of nihilation.
Although Sartre's essay "The Transcendence of the Ego" is the first
major statement announcing his transformation of Husserl's doctrine,
his fascination with the possibilities of the phenomenological doctrine
of intentionality can be seen more dramatically perhaps in his note
entitled "A Fundamental Idea of the Phenomenology of Husserl:
Intentionality," published in 1939.1 Here Sartre interprets Husserl as
insisting on the co-givenness of object and consciousness. Conscious-
ness and the world are given simultaneously. And consciousness is an
irreducible fact which we can only characterize through metaphors
that suggest its thrusting, volatile nature. Knowing is like exploding;
mind is centrifugal; consciousness is a vortex; awareness is like
combat. Here Sartre is struggling to rid epistemology of the meta-
physical incubus of knowledge as possesssion. For Sartre, one does not
have knowledge; one bursts out in the acts of knowing toward the
object known. Consciousness fires itself toward its mark. These
strange metaphors (some of which are Sartre's and some of which are
mine) support each other in suggesting a conception of consciousness
as a nonsubstantial presence to the world. Sartre writes:
Knowledge cannot, without dishonesty, be compared to possession .... conscious-
ness is purified, it is clear like a great wind, it no longer has anything in it, except
a movement to avoid itself, a gliding beyond itself; if, against all impossibility,
you were to enter "into" a consciousness, you would be seized by a vortex and
thrown out ... because consciousness has no "inside" ; it is nothing but the outside
of itself, and it is that absolute flight, that refusal to be substance which consti-
tutes it as consciousness. 2
Here, then, is the nexus between Sartre and Husserl, between existen-
tialism and phenomenology. For Sartre the phenomenological doctrine
of the intentionality of consciousness not only leads to but is an
existential theory. Instead of the rather staid conception Husserl
presented, Sartre sees in intentionality the full drama of the life of
consciousness.
Imagine [he writes] a linked series of explosions which wrench us from ourselves
... which throw us on ... the dry dust of the world, on the rough earth, among
things; imagine that we are thus rejected, forsaken by our very nature in an
indifferent, hostile and restive world; you would then know the profound
1 Originally published in NouveUe revue /rtJ"fI'ise, January 1939; reprinted in Jean-Paul

Sartre's Situations I, Paris, 1947, 31-35. Our references are to the latter edition .
. 2 ibid., 32-33.
meaning of the discovery that Husserl expresses in that famous phrase: "All
consciousness is consciousness 0/ something." 3
On the basis of this existentialized conception of intentionality Sartre

builds his world. All of the structures of man's being that he explores
- the body, concrete relations with other selves, the emotions, imagina-
tion - are comprehensible only in terms of their intentional foundation.
Perhaps one way of viewing this procedure is to suggest that per-
ception, understood in the broad Cartesian sense, possesses a cognitive
dimension. Feeling, sensory awareness, emotionality are meaning-
laden aspects of human experience, for their nature is grounded in
intentional consciousness. Meaning here is not designative or referen-
tial; it is precisely that which is presented as the correlate of intentional
activity. This approach to meaning becomes clearer if we turn to a
further point of connection between phenomenology and existentialism.
Husserl and Sartre agree in their rejection of a naturalistic or
scientistic Weltanschauung. Physics and mathematics are not accepted
as disciplines whose methodological form is paradigmatic for all other
intellectual enterprises. Rooted and remaining in the natural attitude,
science commits the sin of pride if it insists on projecting its naive
realistic vision of the world on to the concrete and unique problems of
philosophy and the social sciences. The rejection of scientism is not
a rejection of natural science. Rather, phenomenology and existen-
tialism hold to a common front in their insistence on facing phenomena
in their givenness, quite apart from causal and genetic considerations.
The liberation of logic from physics and psychology in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century must be matched by a liberation of
epistemology from neurological and behavioristic grounds. This is the
whole point of Husserl's refutation of psychologism. And implicit in
Sartre's position is the same root dissatisfaction with psychologistic
theories. Phenomenology and existentialism are thus bound to each
other as much by negative as by positive agreements. The common
denominator of intentionality is matched by a mutual disenchantment
with the explanatory categories of naturalism.
Yet despite all sympathetic connecting bonds, there are still differ-
ences between Husserl and Sartre which are more than family quarrels.
There are two points of basic conflict, and they center about Sartre's
rejection of the phenomenological reduction and the transcendental
ego. His radicalization of HusserI's doctrine of intentionality appears
to require the abandonment of the central instrument of phenom-
3 ibid., 33.
30 PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM
enological method as well as the whole grounding of conscious life in a

transcendental subject. Sartre's reasons for moving in this direction
are complex. In addition to an early invocation of Occam's razor
against the transcendental ego in his essay "The Transcendence of the
Ego," Sartre goes on later in Being and Nothingness to protest against
Husserl's idealistic reduction of the phenomenon to the noema as an
irrealized object. Sartres writes:
It is futile to attempt, by a sleight of hand, to found the J'eality of the object on
the subjective plenitude of impressions and its objectivity on non-being; the
objective will never come out of the subjective nor the transcendent from im-
manence, nor being from non-being. But, we are told, Husserl defines consciousness
precisely as a transcendence. In truth he does. This is what he posits. This is his
essential discovery. But from the moment that he makes of the noema an i"eal, a
correlate of the noesis, a noema whose esse is P81'cipi, he is totally unfaithful to his
principle. 4
Phenomenological reduction and the transcendental ego rob intention-
ality of its genius by relinquishing the immediate world seized through
intentional consciousness. What Sartre calls the transphenomenality
of being is lost in the reduction. Now, this criticism relates to, but is not
synonymous with, the argument that Sartre rejects the reduction
because it brackets out precisely what the existentialist is most
concerned with: existence. It is a distortion of Husserl's theory of
reductions to accuse the phenomenologist of disregarding or of being
unable to regard concrete existence as a philosophical problem. But the
misunderstanding appears to me to be compounded by those who sug-
gest it, since neither Husserl nor Sartre, in my opinion, makes this
claim or is necessarily involved in such an interpretation. Sartre's
attack against the reduction rests immediately on his conviction that
the irrealized noema lacks transphenomenal being, that the whole
purpose, therefore, of Husserl's doctrine of intentionality has been
undermined. Instead of consciousness transcending itself toward the
objects of reality, consciousness falls back upon itself. Sartre does not
argue, however, that the phenomenologist's concept of existence is
somehow a,shadow of the real thing, that existence in its givenness as
phenomenon is a surrogate for flesh and blood reality. Indeed, it might
be suggested at this point that Sartre's rejection of the reduction is
based partly on phenomenological considerations, upon a common
refusal with Husserl to take what is called concrete existence at face
value. Those who insist on a distinction between the object as intended
4 L' £tre et Ie tUant, Paris, 1943. 28. The present translation is my revision of Hazel E.
Barnes's translation, Being and Nothingness, New York, 1956, llriii.
or meant and the real honest-to-goodness object itself presuppose a
theory of action in which the term "real" operates as a predicate of
force, displacement, and material efficacy. One major consequence of
the alignment between Sartre and Husserl, I submit, is the inter-
pretation of action as an intentional category. The real honest-to-
goodness thing is the thing interpreted as honest and good, and inter-
pretation becomes the signal moment of action. Sartre's break with
Husserl is not to be found along these lines. It is not a question of
existence but of transcendence. Phenomenological reduction and the
transcendental ego, according to Sartre, draw us away from the reality
which intentionality not only promised but gave. The Husserlian
cogito remains trapped in immanence. Sartre writes:
If Husserl's cogito is first given as instantaneous, there is no way to get outside it

... Husserl for the length of his philosophical career was haunted by the idea of
transcendence ... But the philosophical techniques at his disposal removed from
him any way of accounting for that transcendence; his intentionality is only the
caricature of it. Consciousness, as Husserl conceived it, can not in reality
transcend itself either toward the world or toward the future or toward the
past. 5
Sartre believes that he has liberated the lonely ego and delivered
Husserl's theory of intentionality from the essential misunderstanding
of its creator. It is now time to examine Sartre's good works.
Although the radicalization of intentionality requires the rejection
of the transcendental ego, what is gained carries with it the impact of
what is lost. Sartre is now faced with the problem of accounting for
the unity and continuing identity of the ego. If the ego is, as Sartre
maintains, "a being of the world, like the ego of another," if it arises
only through reflection, then how is it possible to account for the ego
as being mine? How is it that I do not confuse my ego with that of
the other? Sartre answers these questions by appealing to a certain
intimacy which attends my ego, to transverse intentions which
spontaneously bind together the ego as object of reflection. The result,
he says, is that "my I, in effect, is no more certain tor consciousness
than the I at other men. It is only more intimate." 6 But this sponta-
neously personal ego constitutes itself as mysteriously as any tran-
scendental ego. Moreover, a circle in explanation results. A phenome-
nology of intimacy is invoked to account for personal identity when
5 Being and Nothingness, 109.

6 The Transcendence of the Ego, 104.
32 PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM
the very recognition of the ego presupposes a recognizing agent.

Recognizer and recognized are reconciled in the assertion that "my
I ... is no more certain for consciousness than the I of other men."
And this, I am suggesting, is reconciliation at the price of circularity.
Giving up the transcendental ego deprives Sartre of a constitutive
ground for the unity and identity of the self.
Coeval with the rejection of the transcendental ego is the apparent
though problematic repudiation of the phenomenological reduction.
Sartre argues 7 that Husserl cannot account for the transposition from
the mundane to the phenomenological attitude of the individual who
begins, as we all do, in the natural attitude. He interprets the natural
attitude itself as a kind of objectification of the ego, an instance of
"bad faith" in which consciousness seeks to escape from itself. A
miracle becomes necessary for the individual in the natural attitude
to perform the epoche. On Sartrean grounds, however, consciousness
is perpetually confronted with epocM not as an intellectual method
but, in Sartre's words, as "an anxiety which is imposed on us and
which we cannot avoid." 8 Phenomenological reduction, then, is really
transposed by Sartre rather than simply repUdiated. But in his efforts
to avoid the idealistic implications of the reduction, Sartre fails to
acknowledge his profound debt at this point to Husserl's method. It
is, rather, Merleau-Ponty who makes explicit the indebtedness of
existentialist philosophy to phenomenological reduction. He writes:
The philosopher ... is a perpetual beginner. This means that he holds nothing as
established which the popular majority or the scientists believe they know. It
also means that philosophy cannot consider itself as definitively established in
any of the truths which it can utter, that it is a renewed experience of its own
beginning, and that it consists entirely of a description of this beginning. It
means, finally, that this radical reflection is consciousness of its own dependence
upon a non-reflective life which is its initial, constant and final situation. Far
from being, as one might think, the formula for an idealistic philosophy, the
phenomenological reduction is that of an existentialist philosophy.9
Reduction, then, opens up for phenomenological appreciation the full

drama of consciousness and its initial placement in the Lebenswelt.
And rather than Sartre, it is Husserl who should be credited with seeing
the full depth of his methodological creation. Here as elsewhere,
7 ibid., 102 ft.

• tbtd., 103.
8 Merleau-Ponty, M., PUnombiologie de la perception, Paris, 1945, Ix. The present trans-
lation is my revision of John F. Bannan's translation of the "Avant Propos" which appears
in Cross Cu"ents, VI, Winter 1956, 59-70, under the title "What is Phenomenology?"
The quotation cited appears on 64-65.
PRE NOMENOLOG Y AND EXISTENTIALISM 33
Sartre's efforts to correct Husserl's "mistakes" miscarry, and this
miscarriage is our final theme.
Sartre sees in most of the major principles of phenomenology implicit
clues to existential philosophy; he believes that he is carrying out the
vital impulse of Husserl's discoveries. This attitude and its conse-
quences are at once suggestive and misleading. More than anything
else, Sartre's advances beyond Husserl illuminate the full range of
insights achieved in traditional phenomenology. Husserl's original
doctrine of the intentionality of consciousness is not "liberated"
through Sartre's radicalization; it merely includes the existential
dimension as one of its possibilities; phenomenological reduction is
not positively transposed in Sartre's analysis, for the existential
possibilities were there all along; and finally, Sartre's rejection of the
transcendental ego ignores its existential implications. 10 Here Sartre's
determination to rescue Husserl from himself blinds him to the very
subjectivity existentialism seeks. It is in this sense that Sartre's
inadequacies illuminate Husserl's achievements.
If Sartre's existentialism cannot be examined without some concern
for Husserl's phenomenology, it is no less the case today that Husserl
is being looked at suspiciously because of Sartre's exploits. Professor
Herbert Spiegelberg in a recent paperll warns us that phenomenology
should not sell its birthright for a mess of existentialist pottage. I
would suggest instead that this warning should be the occasion for
self-examination rather than embarrassment, and self-examination is
the first principle of Husserl's philosophizing. Most, if not all, of the
results of Sartre's technical contributions will have to be reexamined
phenomenologically to separate the responsible from the purely
spectacular, but there is no doubt in my mind that something responsi-
ble as well as original is there to be sifted. Talk of "existentialist
pottage" may give comfort to those who have little patience with
either existentialism or phenomenology but who are willing to admit
that Husserl, at least, is respectable. If there is any conclusion to
these considerations it is that Sartre stole much of his existential fire
from Husserl. Or to put the same thing differently, the lesson to be
learned from Husserl is that a responsible philosopher may also be a
conceptual terrorist.
10 ibid.
11 "Husserl's Phenomenology and Existentialism," paper read as part of a symposium on
phenomenology and existentialism held by the Western Division of the American Philosophi-
cal Association on April 30, 1959, at Madison, Wisconsin.
3. Phenomenology and the Natural Attitude
At first glance it would appear that Husserlian phenomenology and

ordinary language analysis have little in common. At second glance,
however, it seems that these positions are so violently opposed to each
other that their representatives do not even share a universe of dis-
course. In a recent and provocative article entitled "Is There a World
of Ordinary Language? ,"1 John Wild has taken a third glance at
these rivals and has come forth with the suggestion that there are some
fundamental points of contact between them, that, in fact, they have a
good deal in common. I wish to take some of his remarks as a point of
departure for considering the relationship between phenomenology
and analytic philosophy. The focus for discussion will be Husserl's
conception of the "natural attitude," the fundamental belief in the
existence and validity of our common sense experience. The point is to
clarify what I take to be the differences that set apart the philosophical
enterprises being carried on by analysts and phenomenologists. Such a
clarification is the necessary condition for meaningful contact between
what is happening now in Anglo-American philosophy and what is
happening on the Continent.
For John Wild, the positive bond between analysis and phenome-
nology turns, first of all, on an implicit agreement about what is the
wrong way of philosophizing. Both positions reject transcendent
objects and problems; both reflect what Wild calls "a similar distrust
of transcendent, unobservable objects, and of the artificial problems
engendered by such assumptions." 2 In different terms, one might say
that the bias of both analysis and phenomenology is against meta-
1 Philosophical Review, LXVII, October ;[958, 460-476.
I ibid., 46;[.
PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE NATURAL ATTITUDE 35
physical speculation and in favor of a radical empiricism. "One also
finds," Wild writes, "a similar urge towards empiricism, a respect for
what is called fact, and finally a similar recognition of the depth and
fertility of that ordinary language which is presupposed in all the
artificial constructions and abstract modes of speech which grow out of
it. These similarities," Wild continues, "led me to reflect on the
mistrust and suspicion which is so openly expressed on both sides of
the English Channel, and to wonder if this is not somehow based on
avoidable misunderstandings and misconceptions .... Are not phenome-
nology (in the current broad sense) and linguistic analysis both
approaching the same thing (concrete experience) from different
angles?" 3 Professor Wild says that an affirmative answer is possible,
although some important preliminary distinctions must be made. He
recognizes that there are, of course, differences between the camps,
but his point is to make the analyst realize that these differences, if
probed in the right way, reveal an underlying unity of intention and
outlook. My present purpose is not to reply to Wild's article, but rather
to continue the exploration he has begun. I think he is right in sug-
gesting that there is an underlying connection between analysis and
phenomenology, but my reasons for believing this are not his reasons.
Concomitantly, I agree with him that there are differences involved -
crucial ones, I think - but again the differences I find are not the ones
Wild stresses. In short, we find ourselves docked at the same port but
on different vessels.
In order to explore the similarities and differences between analysis
and phenomenology, it might be helpful to get before us some central
issue which both positions must, in some sense, confront. I recommend
that we consider Husserl's conception of the "natural attitude."
Suppose we begin with Husserl's own statement of the problem. "I
find continually present and standing over against me," Husserl writes,
"the one spatio-temporal fact-world to which I myself belong, as do
all other men found in it and related in the same way to it. This 'fact-
world,' as the word already tells us, I find to be out there, and also take
it fust as it gives itself to me as something that exists out there. All doubting
and rejecting of the data of the natural world leaves standing the
general thesis of the natural standpoint. 'The' world is as fact-world
always there; at the most it is at odd points 'other' than I supposed,
this or that under such names as 'illusion,' 'hallucination,' and the like,
36 PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE NATURAL ATTITUDE
must be struck out 0/ it, so to speak; but the 'it' remains ever, in the
sense of the general thesis, a world that has its being out there." 4 To
live in the natural attitude, then, is to live "believingly" in the world,
to have the massive content of experience unfold not only as part of the
world but as inevitably given within a tacitly accepted frame of reality.
It is not an act or a judgment which founds such belief; rather all
predication presupposes it. And even when we have cause to doubt the
status of an event within the world, that doubt arises within an un-
doubted relationship between the event in question and the ground of
reality over against which it appears as doubtful. Moreover, along with
what Husserl calls this "doxic" belief in the existence of the world,
there is an unsophisticated commitment to its intersubjective charac-
ter. This is, above all, our world, and we must come to terms with it.
The event in question is questionable, in principle, for you as well as
for me, and reasonable doubt means precisely that others, fellow men,
will view the event as doubtful in much the same way and for much the
same reason as I do. The historical, cultural, scientific, and religious
interpretations of the world largely presuppose the epistemic involve-
ment of the individual with a range of experience we call the common-
sense world. Whatever interpretation is given that world, it remains
the universally acknowledged base in terms of which our daily lives
are oriented. The phenomenologist is concerned with the examination
of the world of daily life and the implicit epistemic commitment of men
to it. At this point we might ask how this rough sketch of Husserl's
approach to the natural attitude squares with the analyst's idea of the
common sense world.
Philosophers have so many things to apologize for that it is unneces-
sary to confess at this point that of course the term "analyst" and the
phrase "ordinary language analysis" are mean shorthands for po-
sitions or movements of some complexity not all of whose adherents
agree with each other and whose embrace includes quite different sub-
orientations. To a lesser degree but still with justification, the same
may be said of "phenomenology." Later I hope to examine aspects of
these differences I must now pass by. For the time being, I'm limited
to shorthand, but even so a general account may be given of what I
think would be the analytic response to Husserl's theory of the natural
attitude. First of all, assuming the analyst could get over the initial
giddiness Husserl's language may occasion, he might agree that there
is some justification in saying that men in ordinary life seldom have
4 Ideas, 106.
cause to doubt the veridical character of experience in general and
that, in this sense, they take the existence of the world for granted.
The balk might well arise over the epistemic concept of what Husserl
has termed "the general thesis of the natural attitude." Second of all,
the analyst might well find sense in the suggestion that each of us
experiences the world as intersubjectively valid, but again the snag
might come in understanding the phenomenologist's way of ex-
plaining the genesis of intersubjectivity. Finally, the analyst could
hardly fail to welcome a philosophy that turns its critical attention
toward the structure of the common-sense world, but the real question
would be whether the "common" of common sense and the "ordinary"
of ordinary language are truly equivalent or even fundamentally
related to Husserl's natural attitude or his theme of the Lebenswelt.
Here then are three strata of the problem: the world as believed in, the
intersubjectivity of that world, and the world of lived experience, the
Lebenswelt. The delineation of differences and similarities between
analysis and phenomenology will hinge on the examination of these
issues.
The phenomenologist has as his prime task the examination of
the natural attitude, and by this is meant a reflective inquiry which
takes as the object of its inspection the very believing in the world, a
"believing" identified with the general thesis of the natural attitude.
The complex methodological apparatus phenomenology develops, its
theory of reductions, is generated in order to overcome the difficulty
of securing a neutral description of the root belief in the existence and
validity of the world. It is not so much the world that is evasive as the
subtle and unsaid commitment to it which is the quarry here. Pheno-
menology tries to render the naive believing in the world an object for
philosophical inspection through an act of methodological restraint.
The world is not denied or, in one sense, even doubted. We continue to
be common-sense men living our lives in the intersubjective world of
daily life; but in the phenomenological attitude this taken for granted
thematic commitment to the world is put into relief, rendered evident
through the very act of designating it an object for descriptive exami-
nation. My believing in the world is a proto-logical commitment, a
pre-rational involvement which I discover at any moment as already
implied in the predications I make about the world. It becomes clear
that it is methodologically impossible to approach such a theme
in terms of any philosophy which begins by assuming that we are
already in a world, that communication of course is not only possible,
but exists, and that fellow men witb whom we communicate share the
general features of a "normal" world, that they experience things in
much the same way we do. The philosophical starting point is crucial
here because the whole point of phenomenology is to reconstruct the
world in terms of consciousness, without presupposing precisely those
problems which are philosophically at issue here: world, communi-
cation, and intersubjectivity.
If the phenomenologist cannot presuppose the general thesis of the
natural attitude as a philosophical starting point, no more can he
begin with a world of common, shared experience.
Intersubjectivity remains the root problem of philosophy for those
who follow Husserl. The phenomenologist cannot properly begin by
saying "we"; he must speak for himself. That so many critics of
phenomenology have seized on the problem of error, the question
of how one phenomenologist can verify the findings of another, has
always struck me as odd, assuming that the critic understands that
there is no issue of "subjectivism" here, for is it not the case that every
act of philosophical verification is ultimately a seeing by the self for
itself? If, in this sense, we may say that seeing is believing, the phe-
nomenologist must see for himself, and his enterprise involves getting
clear, rigorously clear, about the logic of seeing. Not "we" but "I,"
then, must be the point of departure for phenomenology. But the
hallmark of the natural attitude is that this common world we live in is
taken as our world, the world we inhabit and engage in our joint
pursuits. The phenomenological task here is complex and may be
fulfilled at different levels. Among other things, the phenomenologist
is interested in the constitution of intersubjectivity, that is, the
phenomenological uncovering of its genesis in the activity of con-
sciousness. Such an interest can be satisfied only by the pursuit of a
transcendental phenomenology which seeks to trace the constitution
of an intersubjective world from the ground of the transcendental ego.
But there is a more humane and less dark aspect of the problem. At
another level phenomenology is interested in a descriptive account
of the essential features of the world taken as intersubjective within the
natural attitude. What Husserl referred to as a phenomenological
psychology would have as part of its task the location, ordering, and
illumination of what Alfred Schutz has called the "typifications" of
common sense. These basic assumptions of daily life are distinctively
different from the constructions and formal typifications or models
utilized by natural scientists and form the basis for a radical distinction
between the intersubjective world of daily life and the artificial worlds
of scientific inquiry. The difference between these worlds leads to the
phenomenological theory of the Lebenswelt.
By the Lebenswelt, or Life-world, the phenomenologist understands
the concrete reality of the individual's lived experience in contrast to
the interpretation of that reality within the context of models or types
constructed for particular purposes by the scientist. My immediate
living, being in the world, my awareness of what is about me now, my
fresh or indistinct memories of my past, my lively or vague antici-
pations of my future, my existential relations to home and family and
friends, my situation in life and its problems for me, my life and my
death, are all elements or themes of the Lebenswelt. The phenome-
nologist believes that not only is the structure of this world as complex
and rich in philosophical implications as the world of natural science
but that the latter is ultimately founded on the experiences rooted in
the former. The Lebenswelt is the underlying matrix of our lives, and
its full exploration would mean the fulfillment of a phenomenology of
the natural attitude. The elements or essential structures of the
Lebenswelt would include the spatio-temporal location of the self
within its Life-world, the incarnation of the self and the ways in which
the body is an instrumentality for the discovery and articulation of
experience, the situation of the self, understood as the complex of
attitudes, projects, and interpretations which form the ground for the
emergence of any problem, and, finally, the action of the self as an
agent in reality whose self-interpretation of the meaning of its acts is
the paradigm for what may be termed meaning in the Lebenswelt. The
self is at once situated, involved, and continuously interpreting its
world within the horizon of criteria, values, norms, and goals which are
both conceived and realized in Lebenswelt terms. Death remains the
only full escape from the natural attitude.
The implicit distinction between what I have said about the pheno-
menological approach to the natural attitude and the position of
analytic philosophy must now be made explicit, and this will be the
condition as well for locating whatever sympathies these movements
truly share. Boldly, and therefore inadequately stated, what dis-
tinguishes one from the other is first that intentionality is missing
from the analyst's scheme of consciousness and that as a consequence
a completely different conception of meaning arises for both camps;
second, that there is a behavioristic thesis or bias to which analysis is
tied; third, that there is a residue of the earlier therapeutic positivism
which remains in analysis; and fourth, that it lacks an existential

dimension. I take the first claim about intentionality to be crucial,
the rest symptomatic. But each point deserves fuller treatment.
By intentionality, I understand, of course, Husserl's definitive
conception of the directional character of all acts of consciousness as
well as the intimately related distinction between the activity of
consciousness and the objects posited by that activity. If we are
considering contemporary phenomenology, as we have been throughout,
a phenomenology which had no commitment to the intentionality of
consciousness would be a contradiction in terms. What is so central
about the doctrine of intentionality is that the entire phenomenological
conception of meaning is generated out of and sustained by its special
treatment of the stream of consciousness. The primary locus of meaning
is not the linguistic instrument which is the vehicle for the expression
of meaning but rather the activity of an intentional consciousness in
whose dynamic operation unities are constituted. Even before the
predications expressed in linguistic form are possible or given, there is a
pre-predicative range of experience within which unities of meaning
are primordially grasped. All of this, I think, is at a far remove from
the concern of analytic philosophy, which begins with the world of
common-sense experience and the ordinary language we use to express
the meanings we locate there and wish to communicate to each other.
The "ordinary" and the "common" are, for phenomenology, consti-
tuted by the activity of consciousness, and are sedimented deposits of
meaning realized progressively though the intentional activity of
consciousness. For the analyst, the world about us is simply and beyond
any real question familiar; but I do not believe that he would recognize
familiarity to present a cardinal or even distinctive philosophical
problem. On the contrary, for phenomenology, the familiar is not only
a central issue, it is one which can be handled properly only by a
methodology which neutralizes and so sets in relief the general thesis
of the natural attitude. Where the analyst might wish to turn to
psychology for help in explaining the nature and origin of familiarity,
the phenomenologist insists that the problem is an intentional one,
that psychology or any other naturalistically oriented discipline cannot
be brought in without hopelessly prejudicing the case. Stated another
way, we might suggest that the ordinary, the familiar is the experiential
surface of a philosophical domain whose depth and constitutive
structure the phenomenologist tries to uncover. This seems to me alien
to the concern of the analyst.
PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE NATURAL ATTITUDE 4I
The other differences must be given summary treatment. The lack of

an intentional theory of consciousness in analysis is not accidental; it
is related directly to an implicit psychological commitment in an
opposite direction, that of behaviorism. The analytic philosopher is
primarily an observer; he shares with the natural scientist a professional
distrust of first-person reports. And to the extent that he is true to
this orientation, he adopts a view of mind which is necessarily antago-
nistic to phenomenology. Behaviorism and phenomenology are
irreconcilable terms. Next, I maintain that there remains in analysis a
residue of the early therapeutic positivism with its insistence on
treating the metaphysician as a disturbed person, philosophy itself
becoming transformed into a therapeutic enterprise. There are still
signs of such practioners going about their rounds, and the language of
phenomenology is surely enough to excite their blood.
Finally, I suggest that analysis lacks an existential dimension, and
by this I mean only to point to what must be evident to everybody-
that phenomenology has moved beyond logical investigations into a
concern with the life and death of the monad, and with the texture of
the Lebenswelt as the locus of ambiguity and cross-purposes, of meta-
physical defeat no less than of office memoranda and business contacts.
To say, in the end, that the analyst and phenomenologist are trying to
describe the same world from different vantage points can only b('
considered, at this level, the inevitable triumph of an eclecticism which
is determined at all costs to award everybody prizes.
It is at this point that my argument must be reformulated, for it is
clear that the license taken at the beginning to use the terms analysis
and analyst in some generic sense cannot possibly be maintained at
this stage. I propose to step out over these usages now and to disregard
the scaffolding that has enabled us to paint a total sketch of the re-
lationship involved between phenomenology and analytic philosophy.
Such a liberation will, at the same time, provide the basis for deter-
mining the positive connection which we have been anticipating. Again,
only a summary statement is possible. I suggest that there are two
related but qualitatively different strands in the fabric of analysis. The
first is represented by such figures as Ryle and Austin; the second by
Strawson and Hampshire. The adjectives that qualify the first grouping
are behavioristic, psychologistic, and lexicographical; those for the
other group are egological, descriptive, and in a sense still to be speci-
fied, phenomenological. In terms of publications the clearest repre-
sentatives of the different modes of analysis are Ryle's Concept 0/ Mind
and Hampshire's Thought and Action. An indication of what I find

in Hampshire's book which I would call phenomenological may be
the best way to point to the positive nexus between analysis and
phenomenology.
What I take to be Hampshire's central view in Thought and Action is
this: the individual human being is seen as a person caught up in a
social world in which his actions define his experience. The center of
this world is the individual to whom experience is given in his particu-
lar temporal and spatial location, but that individual is at the same
time an actor, an agent operating in reality, transforming his experi-
ence. Here Hampshire is reacting against the older empiricism which
thought of mind as a kind of receptacle into which experience dropped
its marks, and a view of the self as standing simply over and against
other things in reality which act as stimuli to which the self responds.
Thought and action, for Hampshire, are integrally related aspects of
the unity of the world of human experience. It is noteworthy that
Hampshire speaks of intention as the fundamental character of both
thought and action. That he does not mean by intention what Husserl
means by it is not as important as the realization, which I think is fully
justified, that Hampshire is approaching a theory of mind which is
basically continuous with phenomenology. I can merely suggest at this
point that Hampshire's analysis of thought and action is an analytic
counterpart, independently developed, to the kind of phenomenology
of the natural attitude so brilliantly carried out in the writings of Alfred
Schutz. It is Hampshire's sensitivity to the essential ambiguity and
darkness of intentional consciousness which I have found so lacking in
much of recent analytic philosophy; and if I interpret Hampshire
correctly, that lack was not endemic to analytic philosophy as such,
but rather to the behavioristic and lexicographical versions of it I find
exemplified in the work of Ryle and Austin.
This positive note, however, must be sustained on just grounds. It
would be as unavailing as it would be deceitful to argue at this point
for some sort of rapprochement between analysis and phenomenology.
N either camp would stand to gain very much from an artificial
synthesis or effort toward reconciliation. But the kind of dialogue
between them which John Wild calls for is a possibility, although a
rather distant one at the moment. To return to our point of departure,
Professor Wild concludes his article by asking analysts to attend
seriously to the contributions of phenomenology for a philosophy of
the Lebenswelt. "Is it not true," he asks, "that ordinary language is
concerned with facts of a different order from those of science? Is

there not a world of ordinary language?" 5 And is it not the case that
the contributions of analysts and phenomenologists to the study of this
world are not opposed but mutually supplementary? This paper has
been an effort to show the slippery terrain on which these very meaning-
ful questions are posed and the still frozen depths in which the answers
are locked.
• op. cit., 476.

4. The Empirical and Transcendental Ego
"We are talking now of summer evenings in Knox-
ville, Tennessee in the time that I lived there so
successfully disguised to myself as a child ... After a
little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling,
draws me unto her: and those receive me, who
quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in
that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not
ever; but will not ever tell me who I am."
James Agee
Psychologists have often distinguished between the ego and the self,
taking ego as subject and self as object of thought. So, for example,
George H. Mead's distinction of the "I" and "me" aspects of the self
points, at one level at least, to the "I" as the subject and the "me" as
the object of any act. More explicitly, William James in the first
volume of his Principles of Psychology distinguishes between the self
and the ego. But James is quick to establish a distinction between what
he calls the "empirical self" and the "pure ego." "The Empirical Self of
each of us," he writes, "is all that he is tempted to call by name of
me," 1 but the pure ego refers to a "pure principle of personal identity"
and leads ultimately to considerations of transcendental philosophy.
Contemporary psychologists have not been as ready to allow for
such demarcations within the province of psychology; but more
interesting, I think, they have missed the clue to James's contribution
to philosophical psychology. He entitles his famous chapter on the self
"The Consciousness of Self," 2 for his theory of the nature of the self is
really a theory of the nature of consciousness and is the logical as well
as the chronological continuation of his previous chapter on "The
Stream of Thought." The self, for James, is incomprehensible apart
from the structure of consciousness. An inquiry into either the psycho-
logical or philosophical aspects of the self is therefore necessarily, at
bottom, an inquiry into the genetic or transcendental structure of con-
sciousness.
I propose here to consider a certain conception of the ego. The
framework for my remarks consists of chapters from the history of
1 James, W., Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, New York, 1893, 291.
2 Italics mine.
THE EMPIRICAL AND TRANSCENDENTAL EGO 45
act psychology, particularly Brentano, Husserl, and Sartre. The focus
will be on Husserl's theory of the intentionality of consciousness. The
distinction we have to begin with, however, is not that between self and
ego, but between two conceptions of the ego, both of which logically
antecede the self and are keys to its interpretation. I refer to the empiri-
cal and the transcendental ego.
By the empirical ego I understand the actually existent stream of
perceptual acts - thinking, remembering, imagining, etc. - realized in
the life of a concrete individual. By an "actually existent" perceptual
stream I mean one in which the elements are unique spatio-temporal
events having a neurological ground in a body. The present events of
my conscious life, the actual stream of my awareness, are particulars,
distinctively mine. Thus, the empirical ego has a neural history
conjoined vvith a personal biography of unique events of consciousness
which renders individual consciousness a natural object within the
spatio-temporal world of nature.
The transcendental ego, on the other hand, is the pure stream of
consciousness, freed from the causal conditions that occasion psychic
events and independent of the concrete character of any elements
within the stream. Rather, the transcendental ego is the pure a priori
structure of consciousness understood as a noetic matrix of intentional
acts. By intentionality here, I mean the doctrine first adequately
expressed by Brentano and renovated and reconstructed by Husserl
which holds that there is a directional character to the entire range of
perceptual life. All thinking is thus thinking of something, all remem-
bering is remembering of something, all imagining is imagining of
something. Intentionality is the prime feature of consciousness, and
the transcendental ego may now be understood as the pure intentional
stream of perceptual acts.
In moving from the empirical to the transcendental ego it would
appear that the unique individualized character of events of conscious-
ness is transcended, so that the content of the stream of transcenden-
tally purified consciousness is no longer "mine" in the sense in which
the events of empirical consciousness are mine. How can the "mine" be
expressed at all in terms of the transcendental ego? Within the
phenomenological tradition two radically different answers have been
suggested. The first is that the transcendental ego is itself the ground
for the unity of experience, for there being "my" world. Experience is
"mine" because it comes to articulation within the constitutive activity
of the transcendental ego. Just as the Kantian "I think" is necessary
46 THE EMPIRICAL AND TRANSCENDENTAL EGO
for the coherence of experience, so the transcendental ego is the

precondition, a priori, for there being world at all and for there then
being "my" world.
The other answer to the question, How can the "mine" be expressed
in terms of the transcendental ego? is found in the earlier writings of
Husserl and has been, more recently, refurbished and advanced with
considerable force by Jean-Paul Sartre in his essay on "The Tran-
scendence of the Ego." The position here involves nothing less than an
abandonment of the concept of a transcendental ego. The radical claim
is, then, that the "mine" need not be expressed at all through a
transcendental ego, that a non-egological conception of consciousness
is adequate to the task of describing and understanding the phenomena
of conscious life. This idea will be clearer if we return for a moment to
Husserl's doctrine of intentionality.
To say that consciousness is always consciousness of something
means that the objects of intentional acts are merely meant and are
not held to be ontologically real in nature. The ontological status of the
object as real or illusory, as veridical or hallucinatory is held in abeyan-
ce. But the "meant" object is always taken as the correlate of the act
which intends it. If this is so, the life of consciousness is the life of
intentionality and all that is given in and through consciousness is the
intentional stream itself. The "I" that does the intending is not given
in the intentional activity, but is rather a reflective addition made
possible only after the intentional act is rendered an object of inspection.
Thus, rather than speaking of "my" consciousness of chair, it is proper,
phenomenologically, to speak of there being "consciousness-of-chair."
Indeed, rather than say "I am conscious of chair," it would be proper
to say "I am consciousness of chair." The "I" enters the scene of
consciousness only after the drama is underway. "The ego," Sartre
writes, "is neither formally nor materially in consciousness: it is
outside, in the world. It is a being of the world, like the ego of
another." 3
The examples Sartre offers by way of illustration of this so-called
"non-positional" consciousness are interesting. "When I run after a
street car," he writes, "when I look at the time, when I am absorbed in
contemplating a portrait, there is no 1. There is consciousness of
the streetcar-having-to-be-overtaken, etc., and non-positional conscious-
ness of consciousness. In fact, I am then plunged into the world of
3 Sartre, J.·P., The Transcendence of the Ego, 31.

objects; it is they which constitute the unity of my consciousnesses; it

is they which present themselves with values, with attractive and
repellent qualities - but me, I have disappeared; I have annihilated
myself. There is no place for me on this level. And this is not a matter of
chance, due to a momentary lapse of attention, but happens because of
the very structure of consciousness." 4 The ego, then, according to
Sartre, is found after or upon the act of self-conscious objectification;
it is not any original ground for intentional acts. The transcendental
ego is not only surplus baggage for a phenomenological theory of
consciousness; it is inimical to the very essence of such a theory. "The
transcendental I," Sartre writes, "is the death of consciousness." 5
We have before us now two phenomenological conceptions of the
nature of consciousness: one position maintains that intentionality
presupposes a transcendental ego as its absolute ground; the other that
it does not and, indeed, cannot. I would now like to sketch an outline
of a phenomenological approach to consciousness which argues for the
necessity of a transcendental ego but which allows for the non-po-
sitional character of intentionality as Sartre describes it. Quite apart
from the adequacy of my proposal in phenomenological terms, I hope
that it will help to illuminate the relationship between the psychologi-
cal and phenomenological approaches to consciousness. 6
My approach is built upon the following theses: first, that the
decisive feature of consciousness is intentionality; second, that
intentionality is a non-natural and purely a priori structure; third,
that we may distinguish between the experiential givenness of in-
tentionality and its transcendental presuppositions; fourth, that the
direct experiential givenness is non-positional or, in other terms,
presents no "I"; but fifth, that the transcendental presuppositions of
intentionality do both require and, in some sense, present a transcen-
dental ego; and sixth, that this transcendental ego is the pure possi-
bility which metaphysically underlies and attends the actualization of
any empirical ego in the world and which may then be understood as
the interpretation of the role I choose to play in the drama of conscious
life in which the dramatis personnae are announced, if at all, only at the
conclusion of the performance. The transcendental ego in this sense is
the condition of my being able to find out, through the performance
of my life, who I am.
4 ibid., 48-49.
5 ibid., 40.
6 See Aron Gurwitsch, "The Phenomenological and the Psychological Approach to Con·
sciousness," PhilosoPhy and Phenomenological Research, XV, March 1955, 303-319'
Now the first two theses are acceptable to both Husserl and Sartre
and indeed constitute the minimum for any phenomenological theory
of consciousness. The third thesis, however, that we may distinguish
between the experiential givenness of intentionality and its transcen-
dental presuppositions, is what I take to be the first differentiating
point in my own approach. Some further explanation is required. The
experiential givenness of intentionality refers to what is directly
presented in the pure reflexive act of phenomenological inspection.
When in phenomenological attitude I render my own intentional
activity the object of investigation, I locate the qualitative stream of
my intentional life. And to be sure, here I can locate no transcendental
"I" in the immediacy of what is directly given. But there is a difference
between what is phenomenologically given and the transcendental
structures which are the ultimate presuppositions for what is given.
The transcendental I is "presented" only as a horizonal theme, unifying
and directing my conscious acts and rendering them, all along, con-
catenated fragments of my life.
The phenomenological problem at this point is to elucidate the
relationship between the I as an empirical ego concretely and historical-
ly in the world and the transcendental ego as the pure possibility which
metaphysically underlies and attends the actualization of the empirical
ego. I suggest that at each moment in the becoming of empirical
consciousness there is the actualization of the transcendental possi-
bilities of the ego. Whether I conceive of this actualization through an
image of self-realization is a psychological question, but that this
image transcends the facets that point toward it and operates as a
thematic unification of my conscious life is the essential feature for
emphasis. My empirical existence is a projection out of the pure
possibilities of consciousness as such toward the horizon of my life's
completion. In this sense, my historical life is one realization of the
infinite pure possibilities of the transcendental ego.
The relationship between empirical and transcendental consciousness
may be reposed in Sartrean terms. The pre-reflective cogito (non-
positional or non-thetic consciousness) is a sheer spontaneity which
stands phenomenologically prior to the actualization of the empirical
ego: belore I am, there is. The instantaneous spontaneity of the pre-
reflective consciousness as pour-soi is, in Sartre's formulation, that
which it is not and is not that which it is. 7 Each moment of its actuali-
zation is at once a collapse of its past, a presentiment of its future, and
7 Cf. Sartre's L' £tre et le ""nt, Paris, 1943, deuxieme partie.
a restructuration in its present of these elements of the past and future.
The Sartrean instantaneity is the moment at which the pre-reflective
cogito causes there to be consciousness. Thus, "each instant of our
conscious life reveals to us a creation ex nihilo. Not a new arrangement
but a new existence." 8
What may then be termed original presence to the world is made
possible by the activity of the pour-soi, but reflection upon this activity
is the burden of the ego as an empirical being actualized in the world.
What is the relationship, then, between the pour-soi and the ego? What
is the connection between the nihilating structure of pre-reflective
consciousness and the self-reflective person who has a name, a unique bio-
graphy, and a life? It is of decisive importance that Sartre never presents
a satisfactory answer to these questions. And this is because there occurs
in L' Etre et le neant a magical transition, never philosophically ex-
plicated or justified, from the pour-soi as pre-reflective cogito to the
pour-soi as self. How do I as a concrete being in this world ever come
into connection with the pour-soi? In eliminating the transcendental
ego, Sartre has given up the possibility of answering these questions or
resolving the problems they announce.
The applications of Sartre's non-egological conception of con-
sciousness are no less fraught with difficulties. Consider his example
of the friend whose need is given as a quality of his being:
I pity Peter, and I go to his assistance. For my consciousness only one thing
exists at that moment: Peter having-to-be-helped. This quality of 'having-to-be-
helped' lies in Peter. It acts on me like a force ... I am in the presence of Peter's
suffering just as I am in the presence of the color of this inkstand; there is an
objective world of things and of actions, done or to be done, and the actions come
to adhere as qualities to the things which call for them. 9
Now is it the case that "I am in the presence of Peter's suffering just as
I am in the presence of the color of this inkstand?" The question is not,
of course, whether Sartre is reducing felt experiences to the status of
simple perceptions; rather, the sole question here is whether the quali-
tative presentations are, in truth, of the same order. I think they are
not. Peter's suffering is never merely given; it is given to me. I en-
counter Peter-in-need-of-help in my encounter with him. His need is
given only if it is recognized, and recognition is not an aspect of Peter's-
having-to-be-helped but of my active awareness of his condition. It is
8 Transcendence of the Ego, 98-99.

9 ibid., 56.
above all I who encounterPeter-in-need, and this I is not a reflective

perceiver but an actor in the world.
If I say of this inkstand, "It is green," I note a quality of the object
as it is for an observer. Its being green is something held to be true of the
object in the sense that any observer, any typical observer, with normal
color sensitivity will also perceive the object as green. The predication
is on the side of the object. But in the case of Peter, I must admit that
my pity may not be shared by others. Peter-in-need as I find him is not
necessarily Peter as you encounter him. Need is not a quality on the
object side exclusively; it is a function of the act of encounter in which
a human being locates, sympathetically, a fellow man. The suffering,
anguish, and desperation of fellow men may be encountered as ob-
jective qualities of their being only if I choose to divorce myself from
the meaning of recognition as a human act. The condition and ground
of such recognition is the ego as phenomenologically prior to the objects
it encounters.
It is still possible, however, to interpret the Sartrean ego as an ideal
noematic unity. Aron Gurwitsch writes:
The general result of Sartre's investigation may be formulated as follows. The
ego exists neither in the acts of consciousness nor behind these acts. It stands to
consciousness and be/ore consciousness. It exists in the world as a worldly
transcendent existent. This is true of my ego as well as that of other persons.
Now a transcendent existent may be conceived only as an ideal noematic unity.
Such is in fact the case of the ego; it turns out to be the noematic correlate of
reflective acts. lO
Taken in this way, the Sartrean ego presents itself as a totality only
through particular dispositional aspects:
As the totality of the dispositions and actions the ego may not appear except as
seen from this or that disposition or action, its self-presentation is necessarily
one-sided. Every apprehension of the ego involves empty meanings and in-
tentions bearing on dispositions and actions which, for the time being, are not
given, i.e., do not appear through a correspondent conscious fact grasped by
reflection; these empty meanings and significations may of course be filled out in
further apprehensions. l l
The problem here, I feel, is how we can interpret the ego as an ideal
noematic unity without at the same time implying that this unity is a
correlate of a noetic unity which is the polar ground and transcendental
condition of reflections as noetic acts. Although the noematic unity
10 Gurwitsch, A., "A Non·Egological Conception of Consciousness," Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, I, March 1941, 337.
11 ibid.
THE EMPIRICAL AND TRANSCENDENTAL EGO SI
may appear only through particular dispositions or actions, its very
appearing in this modality must mean an appearing to consciousness.
How can 1 recognize the transcendent ego as mine unless the individual
acts of self-reflection are caught up in a thematic continuum of self-
recognition? 12 Without an ego as the noetic condition for there being a
continual recognition of acts of consciousness as mine, it is conceivable
that 1 might come to associate the events of my life as being those of
the other, of a fellow man. The curious upshot of this possibility is the
reinvocation of the transcendental ego on the noematic side of ex-
perience. If 1 locate my ego in the same way that 1 have presented to
me the ego of the other, 1 may take the ego of the other as mine. But
what distinguishes my ego from that of my fellow man is precisely its
being mine; i.e., its being grounded existentially as well as epistemically
in the truth of my life.
A further possibility we may consider here finally is the interpreta-
tion of the "mine" as being merely the formal condition for the ego as a
noematic unity. Sartre interprets the Kantian "I think" to be a trans-
cendental condition for the unity of experience as a purely formal
requirement. "The Critical problem being one of validity, Kant says
nothing concerning the actual existence of the I think." 13 Here Sartre
equivocates between two senses of modality in his interpretation of
Kant's claim that "the 1 think must be able to accompany all our
representations." 14 Sartre holds that because Kant says the 1 think
must be able to accompany all our representations, he "seems to
have seen perfectly well that there are moments of consciousness
without the I." 15 This does not follow. "Must be able" means that the
possibility of this accompaniment is a necessary possibility, not that it
mayor may not be fulfilled in fact. The choice in interpretation is not,
as Sartre thinks, between a transcendental ego as purely formal and as
substantivized or reified. "There is in contemporary philosophy," he
writes, "a dangerous tendency ... which consists of making into a
reality the conditions, determined by Criticism, for the possibility of
12 Cf. the following criticism offered by Schutz: If Gurwitsch "says that there is no
egological moment involved if I see my friend in adversity and help him and that what is
given to me is just 'my·friend-in-need·of·aid' it must be stated that any single element of the
hyphenated term 'my', 'friend,' 'need,' 'aid,' already refers to the ego for which alone each of
them may exist." In: Alfred Schutz, "Scheler's Theory of Intersubjectivity and the General
Thesis of the Alter Ego," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. II, March 1942, foot·
note on 339.
13 Tl'anscendence of the Ego, 32.
14 ibid.
15 ibid.
experience." 16 An alternative interpretation is to treat the transcen-

dental condition as formally required but at the same time as pheno-
menologically presented in the on-going activity of consciousness. Not
only do I locate the "I think" as formally necessary, but as indeed
realized in conscious life. It is not necessary to reify the constitutive
activity of consciousness in order to locate the givenness of its structure
and achievement. The transcendental ego is not directly presented in
the immediacy of consciousness, but its formal character is not
restricted to its "validity" or pure possibility; instead - and this is
the whole point - the transcendental ego is continuously evident
and given in the thematic recognition that shocks the entire range of
experience into existence as mine.
Let me restate what I have in mind here in more humane terms. I
am suggesting that when I look for a transcendental "I" in immediate
and pure reflection, I find one only as a formal presupposition thematic
to my life. But this "I" is the cardinal ground of there being my life as
an on-going fulfillment of my possibilities. We may imagine the quality
of a concrete human existence as the fulfillment in some modality of the
possibilities a priori available to each of us. In these terms, an individual
life is the concrete actualization of the transcendental ego, not "my"
transcendental ego. It follows that far from the transcendental ego
being, as Sartre claims, the "death of consciousness," it is, indeed,
the metaphysical life of consciousness. The support for this view,
however, requires that we look for the transcendental ''I'' not in the
reflexive act but in the thematic ground of intentional life. The general
understanding of this thesis, moreover, requires that we distinguish
sharply between consciousness as a transcendental stream of pure
intentional activity and consciousness as a neurological product. We
must differentiate radically between a phenomenological and a psycho-
logical conception of consciousness. This is what I have been trying to
do in this paper. The reinforcement of this distinction may serve as
conclusion.
In comparing phenomenology and psychology, some psychologists
have seen what they thought was a basic similarity between subjective
or introspectional psychology and HusserIian phenomenology. This
was true in HusserI's day and it is true in ours. The supposed similarity
was based on the idea that phenomenology begins with the immediate
data of the field of individual consciousness and then proceeds to a
descriptive account of the content presented in that field. The report
11 ibid., 32-33.
is then a report of the private, first-person experience of the reporter.
From such an introspectionism, it is held to follow, for phenomenology,
that Husserl's method is a sUbjectivistic report of private experience
which is then useless for scientific purposes and suspicious at best
for philosophical psychology. In his own day, Husserl tried, perhaps in
vain, to correct these total misunderstandings of phenomenological
method. Unfortunately, the misunderstandings are still with us; they
stem centrally from what Husserl called the "naturalization of con-
sciousness" and are part of a "natural science about consciousness."
"It is to be expected beforehand," Husserl writes, "that phenome-
nology and psychology must stand in close relationship to each other,
in so far as both are concerned with consciousness, even though in a
different way, according to a different 'orientation.' What we should
like to express thereby is that psychology is concerned with 'empirical
consciousness,' with consciousness from the empirical point of view, as
an empirical being in the ensemble of nature; whereas phenomenology
is concerned with 'pure' consciousness, i.e., consciousness from the
phenomenological point of view." 17 It follows for Husserl "that any
psychologistic theory of knowledge must owe its existence to the fact
that, missing the proper sense of the epistemological problematic,
it is a victim of a presumably facile confusion between pure and
empirical consciousness. To put the same thing in another way: it
'naturalizes' pure consciousness." 18
The classical Husserlian refutation of psychologism has as its chief
implication, I think, not merely the liberation of logic from the
"physics of thought," but more important, the liberation of intentional
consciousness from the assumptions of a naturalistic psychology. The
following points emerge: first, pure or transcendental consciousness is
not "in" the world; second, the content of the intentional stream of
consciousness is not psychic in the sense of being composed of events
which have space-time referents in the real world; third, the objects of
intentional acts are purely meant unities and not "things"; fourth,
traditional subject-object dualisms must all be called into radical
question and set in methodological abeyance as far as intentional
experience is concerned; fifth, what is opened up through phenome-
nological reduction is a domain of pure meanings which present
themselves directly as essences which are the noematic correlates of
intentional acts.
17 Husser!, E., "Philosophy as a Strict Science," Cross Currents, VI, Summer 1956, 236.
11 ibid., 236-237.
Understood in this way, phenomenology is the logical ground and

philosophical foundation for empirical psychology. It follows that a
phenomenology of the ego is not only qualitatively distinct from a
psychology of the ego but that any philosophically clarified theory of
the empirical ego presupposes phenomenological investigation. The
larger conclusion implicitly suggested here is that a theory of mind
which gives full value to the range and SUbtlety of cognition is im-
possible in psychologistic terms. The naturalization of consciousness is
the philosophical death of consciousness.
5. Being-in-Reality
In Joyce's A Portrait at the Artist as a Young Man, the boy here, We

are told, "turned to the flyleaf of the geography and read what he had
written there: himself, his name and where he was.
Stephen Dedalus
Class of Elements
Clongowes \Vood College
SaBins
County Kildare
Ireland
Europe
The World
The Universe"l
Self-placement through listings of this sort is common, and we may

attach to them no more significance than the desire of the child to find
a primitive order in his world, or, perhaps, to approach what transcends
him by pointing to it. But the very ordering arrangement may be a clue
to a still different problem: the location and realization of the primal
situation of the self in reality. Tentatively, it might be suggested that
the ordering procedure is a way of securing the self against the initial
lack of placement, a way of avoiding the ranges of experience that defy
full comprehension, and a way of establishing the self as knowable,
comprehensible, and controllable in a world in which knowing, compre-
hending, and controlling are ultimately ambiguous and fragmentary
structures.
Transposed to the adult and philosophical level, it might be sug-
gested that each of Stephen Dedalus' regions or realms could be fully
1 Joyce, J., A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, 1956, 15-16.
BEING-IN-REALITY
explored in tenns of a naturalistic position; that, for example, under-

standing of Stephen himself is possible through an empirical psy-
chology developed to its mature fonn, that a thorough knowledge of
place and county and country may be achieved through a coalescence
of infonnation gained from a dozen disciplines ranging from geography
to political science; that, finally, knowledge of "world" and "universe"
can be gained through the method of inquiry characteristic of the
sciences. If the kind of naturalism involved here be of a sort similar to
that of John Dewey, the underlying attitude might be summarized in
the familiar recommendation that there is a qualitative continuity
between the problems of the natural sciences and those of the cultural
sciences, that scientific method is adequate, in principle, to resolve the
problems of man and nature, and that progress is made through a
reasoned effort to advance the possibilities inherent in a rational,
scientific view of the world. Man, in this view, is fundamentally at
home in the natural world, able to control crucial aspects of his en-
vironment and advance his cause over the opposition of superstition,
ignorance, and prejudice.
Were this a full accoUIit of the matter, there would be little more to
what we are calling the problem of placement in the world than awaiting
definitive scientific answers to questions of a limited sort. But if there
is any truth in suggesting that the problem of placement in reality goes
beyond scientific questions and answers, then it is necessary to put the
naturalistic position in question in order to see our problem. Just as
Stephen Dedalus' primitive cosmology can be understood as a way of
finding himself in the labyrinth of the world, so the categories and
methods of naturalism may be treated as markers set up to map an
otherwise wild terrain. So long as mapping the world is an ongoing
affair, the original status of the mapper does not arise; so long as we
are doing, making, acting in the world, our being in the world is
unproblematic. Dewey's idea that a problem arises always within a
context which is unproblematic is completely gennane here, for being
in the world, original placement in reality, is taken by the naturalist as
the unproblematic context of his actions in the world. As long as we
remain in the naturalist's standpoint, the very techniques of inquiry
predicate a world and man in that world, the fundamental character of
both being taken for granted, or, if placed in question, reduced to
piecemeal problems. We suggest that the very articulation of the
problem of being-in-reality requires a departure from the naturalistic
position, or more generally, a disconnection from what Husserl calls
BEING-IN-REALITY 57
the "natural attitude." The statement of our problem, therefore,
requires a phenomenological transposition.
<II>
Within the natural attitude I act in a world which is real, a world that
existed before I was born and which I think will continue to exist after
I die. This world is inhabited not only by me, but also by my fellow
men, who are human beings with whom I can and do communicate
meaningfully. This world has familiar features which have been
systematically described through the genetic-causal categories of
science. The world of daily life is lived within this natural attitude, and
as long as things go along smoothly and reasonably well, there arises no
need to call this attitude into question. But even if I do occasionally
ask whether something is "really real," whether the world is "really"
as it appears to be, these questions are still posed in such a way that
they are my questions about the natural world in which I live. I do not
really scrutinize my natural attitude in any rigorous manner: I merely
mark off a bit of it for more careful study. And so I continue to be a real
being in the real world of real things sharing real experiences with other
real companions and living a real life.
If I am questioned about my "identity" in my natural attitude, my
answers are ready: I can give my name, validated by birth certificate,
my age, place of birth, parents' names, address, occupation, and, if
necessary, a list of my hobbies. These "vital statistics" summate my
position within the natural attitude, though a full examination of that
attitude would require an exhaustive analysis of common-sense reality.
The problem of being-in-reality does not and cannot arise within the
natural attitude for the essential reason that the natural attitude is at
its root founded on the assumption that the individual is, 01 course,
already in the world when we interrogate him about his history and
interests. Being in reality here can mean no more than psychophysical
presence. The person is in the world in much the same way that a
marble is in the bag, that a cat is in the house, that a teacher is in the
classroom. But it is at this point that a kind of rebellion takes place:
the full reality of the individual is surely not exhausted in statistics,
and the identity of the person demands an appreciation of his situation
in the world as distinct from one's situation in the world. I am forced to
the question of the true character of my placement in the world, of the
signification of name, place, and realm, of the credentials of the natural
58 BEING-IN-REALITY
attitude itself. It is Kierkegaard who leads the revolt. He writes in

Repetition:
One sticks one's finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is: I
stick my finger into existence - it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I?
How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this word
mean? Who is it that has lured me into the thing, and now leaves me there? Who
am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made
acquainted with its manners and customs ... ? How did I obtain an interest in
this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not
a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the
director? I should like to make a remark to him. 2
But to place the natural attitude in question is not only to declare in
favour of an existential awareness of reality; it is also, in phenome-
nological terms, to try to get the meaning or sense of that awareness.
Therefore, the disconnection from the natural attitude that leads in the
direction of existential philosophy may itself be examined and made
the object of scrutiny. A phenomenological description of being-in-
reality turns first of all to the initial disconnection from the natural
attitude that is at the root of existential awareness of what it means to
be in the world. What is the character of this disconnection? Unfortu-
nately, the celebrated theory of reduction in Husserl's phenomenology
is a much misunderstood topic, and so it is not possible to answer our
question by merely invoking the procedure of "bracketing." It is first
necessary to clarify what is meant by phenomenological reduction.
"'The' world is as fact-world always there," Husserl writes, "at the
most it is at odd points 'other' than I supposed, this or that under such
names as 'illusion,' 'hallucination,' and the like, must be struck out 01 it,
so to speak; but the 'it' remains ever, in the sense of the general thesis, a
world that has its being out there."3 The radical "alteration" of the
natural thesis requires a continuing procedure of disconnection or
bracketing which transposes the naively experienced world into the
intentional field of world-for-me. To bracket the world is neither to
deny its reality nor to change its reality in any way; rather, it is to
effect a change in my way of regarding the world, a change that turns
my glance from the "real" object to the object as I take it, treat it,
interpret it as real. Within the natural attitude I attend to the object;
in the phenomenological attitude I attend to the object as known, as
meant, as intended. The reality of the object is bracketed only in the
sense that I attend to what presents itself to me immediately, whether
really real or not, and seize the reality of the object as the object of my
• Kierkegaard, S., Repetition, Princeton, 1941, II4.
3 Husseri, E., Ideas, 106.
BEING-IN-REALITY 59
intentional acts. The object continues to be in the real world, as I do,
but what now interests me, phenomenologically, is my awareness, my
sense of its being in the real world. The object I reflect upon in the
reduced sphere is the real thing as I've taken it to be real. Thus, "the"
world is replaced by "my" world, not in any solipsistic sense, but only
in the sense that "mine" indicates an intentional realm constituted by
my own acts of seeing, hearing, remembering, imagining, and so on.
If I wish, phenomenologically, to refer to "the" world, I must attend
to the world I take to be "the" world, i.e., world taken as "the" world.
Placement in "the" world in the natural attitude presupposes the
nature of that "in" structure, and the presupposition is not self-
consciously considered. Husserl writes, "The General Thesis according
to which the real world about me is at all times known not merely in a
general way as something apprehended, but as a fact-world that has its
being out there, does not consist of course in an act proper, in an articu-
lated judgment about existence. It is and remains something all the
time the standpoint is adopted, that is, it endures persistently during
the whole course of our life ofnaturalendeavour."4 The disconnection
or bracketing in phenomenological reduction is an alteration of this
General Thesis which, for methodological reasons, I suspend. My being
in the natural attitude, of course, continues. I remain in the natural atti-
tude at the very time I disconnect myself from it in terms of judgment
and description. This means only that my being in the natural attitude
becomes the theme of my phenomenological consideration, but that
my physical bodily existence continues in commonsense fashion.
With the transposition to the intentional realm, my being in the world,
or more generally, my being in reality, may now be expressed through
the hyphenation given in the title of my paper: being-in-reality; and
we understand by this hyphenation that disconnection from the natural
attitude permits the originally taken for granted placement in the world
to become the intentional object of phenomenological examination.
Whereas unhyphenated being in reality is the unconscious basis of all our
predications and actions, hyphenated being-in-reality involves the self-
conscious reflection on the signification and structure of the General
Thesis of the natural attitude. The relationship between the natural atti-
tude and intentional consciousness may be restated in still a different
way by referring back to our discussion of the Deweyan position.
To say, with Dewey, that every problem presupposes an unproblem-
atic context within which, against which it arises, is to leave unexami-
4 ibid., 107.
60 BEING-IN-REALITY
ned and unclarified the very meaning of "context." Whatever inter-

pretation of "situation" Dewey presents is already founded on the
assumption that we have, are in, or find or locate such a context. This
assumption is proper to empirical science; in fact, it is its point of
departure. But if part of the task of philosophy is to consider the
foundational concepts and presuppositions of the sciences, it is neces-
sary to start at the beginning and place in question what it means to
take something as unproblematic. To do this is to shift from the natural
standpoint to a reflective one; and to attempt to take the reflective
standpoint itself as the object of scrutiny is to search for phenome-
nological roots. The effecting of the transposition from the natural to
the phenomenological standpoint in no way alters or disregards any
structure located or experienced in the natural attitude; in placing the
natural attitude in suspension, the phenomenologist only tries to
comprehend the meaningful structure of the Life-world as it reveals
itself in intentional consciousness. Properly understood, then, there is
no disagreement between the natural attitude and the phenomeno-
logical standpoint or between natural science and phenomenological
philosophy; the latter is nothing more than a systematic, sustained,
but completely radical endeavour to illuminate our being-in-reality in
its full intentional structure.
(III>
We are now prepared for a closer examination of our theme. My being-
in-reality always presents itself to me within a horizon of relatedness to
more or less determinate surroundings. My "being-in" is in a more or
less circumscribed situation. Each concrete event in experience is,
Husserl says, "partly pervaded, partly girt about with a dimly appre-
hended depth 01' fringe of indeterminate reality."5 Every "this" is a "this"
within a context, clearly or dimly grasped, of a "more-than-this." And
if I follow the horizonal character of the presentation involved, I am
led to the vague "form" of a total inclusiveness. Husserl, describing the
movement from limitation to form, writes:
Determining representations, dim at first, then livelier, fetch me something out,
a chain of such recollections takes shape, the circle of determinacy extends ever
farther, and eventually so far that the connexion with the actual field of per-
ception as the immediate environment is established. But in general the issue is a
different one: an empty mist of dim indeterminacy gets studded over with
intuitive possibilities or presumptions, and only the "form" of the world as
"world" is foretokened. Moreover, the zone of indeterminacy is infinite. The
misty horizon that can never be completely outlined remains necessarily there. 6
I fIIitl., I02.
• fIIitl.
BEING-IN-REALITY 61
When I move, then, from a "this" to the vague form of "world" sur-
rounding and including that "this," I explore the phenomenological
horizon of my immediate placement in reality. The "in" of hyphenated
"being-in-reality" is then, I would suggest, the horizonal directedness
which attends and defines every act of placement. The "in" is therefore
not the "in" of class inclusion or of physical habitation, but the radi-
cally different and unique structure of horizonal projection; i.e., the
fluid movement from being "in" a concrete situation to being "in"
world as such. Reality, in this sense, is the form of the widest generali-
ty, the horizon of all horizons, the indeterminate penumbra that
surrounds our farthest reach of intention and presents itself as trans-
cendence. To complete the clarification of terms, "being" may now be
understood as the life of consciousness involved and engaged in inten-
tional activity. Fully translated now, the title of our paper comes
out from behind its hyphens: As a thinking, willing, perceiving, feeling,
imagining consciousness, my intentions are directed to the concrete
situations in which I live. The elements of these situations are not the
objective things of the natural attitude, but the phenomenological
objects of my intentional acts: I live within a world of my own attitudes
and interpretations. But each act of consciousness intends some object
within a concrete situation which itself finds placement in the world I
think is "out there." When I carry out my intention to its farthest
limit, I end with the strangeness, the uncanniness of reality taken as
transcendent. Being-in-reality is consciousness moving toward a horizon
ot transcendence.
The suspension of the natural attitude alone makes possible the
exploration of our theme. As long as we start with man naively existent
in the world, the meaning of "man-in-the-world" cannot be explored.
Phenomenology is an effort to overcome this naturalistic impasse by
opening up for inspection the region of intentional consciousness. The
point of this paper has not been to attempt a phenomenological study
of "being-in-reality," but to try to show in what sense that structure is a
valid philosophical problem, and to indicate the kind of approach a
phenomenologist makes to such a root-problem. Since the very state-
ment of the problem requires phenomenological disconnection from the
General Thesis of the natural attitude, it has been necessary to move
within the problem rather than commence with a direct statement of it.
Instead of beginning with definitions, I have tried to end with them.
But I think that this reflexive mode of thought, if circular, is not
vicious. As Husserl says, "Philosophy can take root only in radical
reflexion upon the meaning and possibility of its own scheme."
6. Jean-Paul Sartre's Philosophy of Freedom
.• I desire to speak somewhere without bounds ... for I
am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even
to lay the foundation of a true expression."
Thoreau
It is now a commonplace in discussions of existentialism to distinguish

between existentialism the fad, the darling of the Left Bank and of the
sensation seekers, and existentialism the serious philosophical endeavor
to explicate the categories and structure of man's existence in its
unique and immediate being. Nevertheless,. any discussion of the
writings of Jean-Paul Sartre seems, like a tropistic reaction of a plant,
to bend toward a confused admixture of ontology, ethics, psychology,
literature, and pUblicity. It is beyond the scope of my present intentions
to determine the reasons for the unclarified status of Sartre's thought,
but that lack of clarification may be taken as a starting point for
an examination into the meaning of Sartre's conception of existential
freedom.
SARTRE AND HIS PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION
Who is this enfant terrible who is at once philosopher, psychologist,

novelist, dramatist, commentator, editor, lecturer, and disturber of the
peace? His personal historyl is not of crucial importance to us here.
After learning that one of his parents was Catholic and the other a
Protestant, that his father died when Sartre was four years old, that
Sartre's childhood was that of a constantly sick and ailing boy, that he
ultimately went on to the study of philosophy, received a doctorate in
philosophy, and subsequently published a torrent of books, we are still
left with something of a mystery: with the fundamental question,
1 See M. Beigbeder, L'ltomme Saf'tre, Paris, 1947.

SARTRE'S PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM
.. What is this man seeking philosophically?" and the related question,

"What has led him to undertake this search?" Let us take these two
questions in order.
First, what is Sartre seeking? In the simplest terms, he is seeking to
describe the being of man in reality, but to comprehend that being in a
radical and irreducible manner. The object of existential inquiry is
man's being in the world as such; and therefore it is concerned not
with special aspects of the business, professional, or artistic world in
which men live, but with the necessary and essential conditions for
being in all realms, for all men. Before we are citizens or fathers or
employees or Protestants or Kantians, we are: we find ourselves in the
midst of things, we are beings in the world. To understand the full
nature and significance of this being in the world is a central task for
existential philosophy. Its importance is apparent only when we
realize that all subsequent analyses in Sartre stem from the analysis
of the ground phenomenon of being in the world. For Sartre, then,
existential philosophy is the analysis of being, and proceeds through
the study of man's being in the world. Such an analysis leads ultimately
to the structures of the self, and the multiple aspects of the relation-
ships between the self and other selves. The dialectic between self and
other selves is the key to Sartre's concept of human freedom.
If Sartre's search is then the search for being, a search that will lead
in its final consequences to man's freedom, we may now ask our second
question: what has led Sartre to undertake this search? It is possible,
of course, to answer this kind of question in a number of ways. We may
try to develop a psychoanalytic interpretation of Sartre's behavior -
which, by the way, has been done; 2 or, at the other extreme, we may
attempt to analyze his problem purely on a philosophical plane. But
more is involved: we are really faced with a basic problem, which is
how to account for the multiple and divergent roots of existential
philosophizing as they appear in the total cultural and historical
heritage of man - for it should now be clear, even if it has not been
explicitly stated, that existentialism as the search for man's being as
such is an inseparable part of the organic nucleus of the human intel-
lectual heritage.
As a distinctive attitude and cultural phenomenon, as a central
nerve trunk in the corpus of world literature, and, finally, as an
historical development, the content of existential thought may be
summarily indicated by listing four of its predominant charac-
2 See S. ~aesgaard, "Le complexe de Sartre," Psyche, June 1948.
teristics. Existential thought is characterized, first, by a profound

concern for the everlasting categories of man's being, his fear, dread,
suffering, aloneness, anguish, and death; second, by the fact that it
takes man as the object of its inquiry, but man as an "unhappy
consciousness," as a fragmentary and fragmented creature who locates
his existence in a cosmos that is at once overpowering, threatening,
and demanding; third, by its internal un-neutrality toward God - the
existentialist's dialogue takes place in an empty cathedral, and the
protagonists debate the terminology of the mass and, more important,
for whom the mass is to be said; and fourth, by a decisive concern with
man's authenticity in existence, his gift of freedom which is his anguish,
his total responsibility which is his dread.
If existential thought, both as an attitude and as a philosophy, is
properly indicated by this characterization, it is now possible to
understand the several roots for the development of existentialism in
literature, history, and philosophy proper.
First, the literary background. When Ecclesiastes sought to tran-
scend vanity in a sad and aching wisdom, when Job sought God's will
from the embroiled margin of his distress, when Abraham wrestled
with the paradox of faith and filial love, of God's will and man's
obligation - in all of these instances the thread of existential distress
and wonder began to be woven and defined.
It is impossible to read Dostoievski, Tolstoy, Kafka, without being
faced with the existential problems of the human condition. "What if
my whole life has really been wrong?" asks Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich, who,
in the illuminated immediacy of the realization that he is dying, is
faced with the irrevocable mediocrity and banality of his lived life.
One fine morning Kafka's Joseph K. is accused of an unknowable,
transcendent guilt, is compelled to prepare a defense of his innocence
before unreachable courts, and is ultimately destroyed in a moment of
terrifying solitude by the bureaucratic agents of an incomprehensible
power. Dostoievsky's Underground Man is hurled shivering and jangled
into an alien and thwarting reality that blockades his soul and suffo-
cates his sensibility; Raskolnikoff is spliced between Nietzsche and
Kant, and the finality of every character Dostoievsky ever created is
sounded by Ivan Karamazov, who cries, "I must have justice or I will
destroy myself!"
In literature, then, the existential content is defined by the dualisms
of man's existence: guilt and salvation, authenticity and self-deceit,
necessity and freedom.
Now the historical background. Ages of crisis and upheaval have

always produced characteristic literatures. An extended study might
consider such literatures from Montaigne to the present day. We must
restrict ourselves, however, to the historical background of Sartre's
thought, and even more specifically to the notion of the "extreme
situation." It should not be forgotten that the Paris school of existen-
tialism is the product, historically, of two world wars. Sartre served
in the French army, was captured by the Nazis, was incarcerated in a
concentration camp, escaped, made his way back to France, and served
with distinction in the French underground. The extreme situation is
the sign of the underground movement: the lives of a large number of
persons, known and unknown, depend upon the actions of a single
person; capture and torture are an everyday affair; death is always a
fellow traveler, likely to upset one's plans at any moment; the entire
concept of time is transvalued and transformed.
Thus any analysis of Sartre's thought must take into serious account
the general pattern of the historical situation: the phenomenon of the
lost generation between the wars; the physical and cultural devastation
of France during the occupation; the present conflict of parties
wrangling desperately in the face of another and perhaps final wave of
death.
And finally the philosophical background. Any serious consideration
of Sartre's thought would have to go into extended analyses of the
influence of Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Hussed, and Heideg-
ger. Obviously this is not possible in a paragraph or two. I shall try,
however, to do the impossible: to summarize in a sentence the basic
influence that each of these philosophers had upon Sartre.
Kant: In the spirit of Kant's Copernican revolution, Sartre seeks to
comprehend the nature of being via an analysis of man's being.
Hegel: Hegel's ideas of the "unhappy consciousness" and the
dialectic between Master and Slave, in the Phenomenology of Mind,
reappear in Sartre's main work and have central importance.
Kierkegaard: Kierkegaard's categories of man's fear, dread, trembling
and anguish are transformed by Sartre so as to operate within an
atheistic position.
Nietzsche: Sartre accepts Nietzsche's proclamation, "God is dead,"
and seeks to find the final expression of this dictum.
Husserl: Sartre, with Hussed, seeks to return to the "things them-
selves" of experience, and to describe those things phenomenologically,
so that all analyses are essentially in terms of consciousness.
66 SARTRE'S PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM
Heidegger: With Heidegger, and so too with Sartre, the starting

point is man's being-in-the-world, the method is phenomenological,
the result is a radical interpretation of self and authenticity.
These fragmentary statements of influences on Sartre have prepared
the way for a statement of his general philosophical position, through
which alone a real understanding of his philosophy of freedom is
possible.
I shall first try to state the essence of Sartre's philosophic position
in a few clear sentences. For Sartre, human being, as man's conscious-
ness, is in a dialectical relationship with non-human being, the "stuff"
of nature. The outstanding characteristic of this dialectic is the
dynamic, changing, and flux-like status of human consciousness, which
nowhere can find permanence, surety, or absolutes, but must continu-
ally define its condition and nature through the choices it makes in life.
Thus for Sartre there are no eternal or a priori certitudes, there is no
absolute basis for permanent relationships between persons. Man must
make himself, that is, he must choose his ideals, his meanings, and his
destiny. Freedom consists in such acts of choice and self-definition; but
man is forced to define himself, since he has no permanent self upon
which to rely. Man's state of perpetual redefinition and flux is what
Sartre means by "nothingness," and to this nothingness man is con-
demned. We are, for Sartre, condemned to be free. The individual,
reacting to this condition, can choose himself as authentic or inauthen-
tic.
Some of these ideas may now be clarified in greater detail. Let
us consider first the problem of being and its polarities. Being, for
Sartre, is that which appears to us - phenomena, in the Aristotelian
rather than the Kantian sense of the term. But there are two aspects
of all being: the being of man, consciousness; and the being of objects,
which is non-consciousness. The consciousness of man is in perpetual
relationship with the things of reality. While consciousness is moving,
shifting, altering constantly, non-consciousness is inert, non-reflective,
a plenum.
Second, the self. If the human being is a conscjousness in constant
transition, then the essence of that transition, the very reason for that
transition, is the nothingness of the self. Sartre conceives of the self as a
kind of projectile, which implicitly lacks the ability to give itself a
permanent foundation. All dimensions of the self share this imper-
manence: the past of the self, its past deeds, its memories, its recol-
lections, are all subject to change in their meaning, as future events
cause those happenings to be revaluated. The present of the self we

have already characterized as the nothingness of a cardinal instability
and projection. The future of the self is ambiguous, and to be chosen.
Third, other selves. Relations between selves are, for Sartre, es-
sentially paradoxical and antagonistic. I first locate the Other episte-
mologically when he looks at me. The "look" of the Other causes a
kind of hemorrhaging of my sUbjectivity: I feel like an object for the
Other's subjectivity. Since I can never grasp the Other as subject for
my subjectivity, the concrete human relationships of love, hate, sadism,
masochism, and the like are all developed in the light of this subject-
object dualism.
Fourth, the situation. Self and the Other, however, are not under-
stood by Sartre in epistemological isolation. They are involved always
in a situation. Sartre writes:
For us, man is defined first of all as a being "in a situation." That means that he
forms a synthetic whole with his situation - biological, economic, political,
cultural, etc. He cannot be distinguished from his situation, for it forms him and
decides his possibilities; but, inversely, it is he who gives it meaning by making
his choices within it and by it. To be in a situation, as we see it, is to choose
oneself in a situation, and men differ from one another in their situations and
also in the choices they themselves make of themselves. What men have in
common is not a "nature" but a condition, that is, an ensemble of limits and
restrictions. The inevitability of death, the necessity of working for a living, of
living in a world already inhabited by other men. Fundamentally this condition
is nothing more than the basic human situation, or, if you prefer, the ensemble
of abstract characteristics common to all situations. 3
Fifth, choice and authenticity. Through choice the self constitutes
itself, gives itself its unique content, and at the same time gives to its
reality, to the world and other persons in the world, the special
qualities and characteristics that make up the objective situation of the
self. There are two fundamental modes of choice, which lead to
authenticity or to inauthenticity. Either the self chooses self-conscious-
ly, wills its actions positively; or it seeks to flee from the grave responsi-
bilitY,of having to make choices. In the latter case the self is inauthentic.
In his Anti-Semite and Jew, Sartre writes, "Authenticity ... consists in
having a true and lucid consciousness of the situation, in assuming the
responsibilities and risks that it involves, in accepting it in pride or
humiliation, sometimes in horror and hate"4. The ground of
existential freedom is thus, for Sartre, the self in a situation which it
defines through choice. We are now in a position to examine this
radical conception of freedom.
3 Sartre, J.-P-, Anti-Semite and Jew, New York, 1948, 59-60.
4 ibid., 90 •
68 SARTRE'S :PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM
THE THEORY OF EXISTENTIAL FREEDOM
Sartre has given a brief definition of existentialism as the philosophy

which holds that existence precedes essence. By this he means that
there is no a priori, unavoidable, or instinctual "human nature" which
makes men heroes or cowards, successes or failures. Rather, men define
their peculiar natures through the actions, the deeds, that they perfonn.
A coward is a man who has committed and who commits acts of
cowardice. He may, however, alter his status as a "coward" by refusing
to commit such acts again, by acting in a dignified manner. Moreover,
the nature of a person is exhausted in the actions he has perfonned
and does perfonn. Thus, for Sartre, it makes no sense to talk about the
novels Thomas Wolfe might have written had he lived twenty years
longer. Wolfe's genius was expressed in his written work; it was the
expression of his work. Beyond that expression lies a void, as far as
prediction or characterization is concerned, and it makes no sense
to talk about possibilities that are in principle cut off from human action.
The notion that existence precedes essence means, then, that the self
is the resultant of its choices, subject to change and alteration in
principle. But there is a deeper philosophical issue involved. If the
essence of the self is constituted by acts of existential choice, then the
self is only in so far as it acts. We come here to an ego-less conception
of the self that is characteristic of Sartre's ontology. The self is able to
grasp its ego, its content, only in its acts. Thus the notion of choice is
far-reaching, for only by choice, through acts, can I grasp myself: I
live in my acts.
It is now time to examine, in greater detail, the specific relationships
between the self and other selves. Let us analyze the relationships of
sadism, masochism, hatred, and love.
Sadism. This is essentially the attempt to make the Other a complete
object for my SUbjectivity. The sadist seeks to reduce his victim to the
status of a "thing", to deprive him in this way of his freedom. We may
here return to the earlier distinction between the polarities of being.
Sartre's theory of sadism asserts that the sadist, as a consciousness, a
self, attempts to reduce the Other to a non-conscious thing, to inner
matter. It is to be noted that this kind of analysis of sadism is not
concerned with the fact that there are different ways or modes of
sadism. Sartre is attempting to describe the invariant, essential
characteristics of sadism, and to show that these characteristics are
the ground for all variant cases.
SARTRE'S PHILOSO PHY OF FREEDOM 69
Masochism. In the case of masochism, the relationship between
persons is one in which the masochist makes himself, desires himself to
be made, an object for the Other's sUbjectivity. At the point that the
masochist is reviled, stricken, and injured, he comes closest to achieving
the status he yearns for: that of the complete object, freedomless and
selfless.
Hatred. My hatred of the Other is really an attempt, at least a desire,
to cause the Other's complete destruction, his death. The fulfilment of
my hate would mean the total abolition of his consciousness, his free-
dom.
Love. In love I seek to possess the subjectivity of my peloved as a
subjectivity, to possess the freedom of my beloved as a freedom. If it is
recalled that for Sartre it is possible for the self to know the Other only
as an object, it becomes clear that a paradoxical situation is involved
in the relationship of love: the paradox is how we can ever possess the
subjectivity of another and remain subjectivities ourselves. But this
difficulty is really at the heart of all the relationships previously
described.
For Sartre, the relationships of sadism, masochism, hatred, and love
are all paradoxical and unstable relationships which end in frustration
and defeat. In sadism, the sadist may be triumphant in the relationship
almost to the point of completion and victory, but at the last moment
an implicit and unavoidable defeat occurs: the sadist's victim looks at
him and makes of him an object. The sadist is compelled to realize
that it is not an object but a sUbjectivity that he has possessed and
attempted to wound. A brilliant example of the failure of sadism
through the look of the victim at his torturer is to be found at the end
of William Faulkner's novel, Light in August. The scene is the muti-
lation of Joe Christmas, a Negro, by Grimm, a southern white man,
whose sadism is the expression of an imponderable evil and guilt.
Faulkner writes:
When the others reached the kitchen they saw the table flung aside now and
Grimm stooping over the body. When they approached to see what he was about,
they saw that the man was not dead yet, and when they saw what Grimm was
doing one of the men gave a choked cry and stumbled back into the wall and
began to vomit. Then Grimm too sprang back, flinging behind him the bloody
butcher knife. "Now you'll let white women alone, even in hell," he said. But the
man on the floor had not moved. He just lay there, with his eyes open and empty
of everything save consciousness, and with something, a shadow, about his mouth.
For a long moment he looked up at them with peaceful and unfathomable and un-
bearable eyes. Then his face, body, all, seemed to collapse, to fall in upon itself,
and from out the slashed garments about his hips and loins the pent black blood
seemed to rush like a released breath. It seemed to rush out of his pale body like
the rush of sparks from a rising rocket; upon that black blast the man seemed to
rise soaring into their memories forever and ever. They are not to lose it, in
whatever peaceful valleys, beside whatever placid and reassuring streams of old
age, in the mirroring faces of whatever children they will contemplate old disas-
ters and newer hopes. It will be there, musing, quiet, steadfast, not fading and
not particularly threatful, but of itself alone serene, of itself alone triumphant. 5
The failure-in-principle of sadism is the failure also of masochism, hate,

and even love. An epistemological and ontological gulf separates self
from self, freedom from freedom, and each of us must choose himself
within the closed circuit of his own solipsism.
If man's actions determine the content of the self that he is, and if
his relations with others can be only further elements in that self, for
what is the individual responsible in his freedom? In other words, how
can his actions and status reflect outward to meet the objective
conditions of the world and the needs and demands of other persons in
the world?
The answer to this question involves a return to the notion of
"situation." It will be recalled that for Sartre the self is always in a
situation, but a situation that exists in virtue of the self's constitutive
activities. As a self, it is I who give meaning, direction, and purpose to
my associates, to physical location, to cultural heritage. In this sense I
choose my situation and am responsible for it. To the extent that my
choice involves other people, I choose for them also, in my decisions
and actions. Whether I desire it or not, my choice of a situation
involves others about me, and mankind in general.
It is here that we begin to realize the profound anguish that choice
involves. There are two aspects of the problem. When I choose, I am
constructing through my choices the person that I am and will be. I
am responsible, then, for the image of myself that I construct. If man
has no a priori nature, he chooses in total responsibility for himself. On
the other hand, if in choosing myself I am choosing my situation and
others in my situation, then I am responsible for them as well. The act
of choice, f9r Sartre, is one of total responsibility and total anguish. More-
over, having chosen, I cannot, like a mason, rest with having constructed
a permanent structure. My choices, my deeds, my existence are in
flight, in flux, and I must reconstruct that existence as long as I live.
If the individual, in choosing, is responsible not only for himself but
for mankind, it would seem that Sartre is really suggesting something
akin to the Kantian categorical imperative. As a matter of fact, Sartrc
6 Faulkner, W., Light in August, New York, 1932, 439-40.
SARTRE'S PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM 7I
is suggesting such an imperative, but he has withdrawn the content of
the imperative. In other words, the individual must act in such a way as
to consider what is good for all men, but what it is, specifically, that is
good he cannot determine in any form that would permit codification.
Sartre suggests, "choose yourself in such a way as to be authentic,
responsible, and thus existentially free in your self-awareness." But if
we ask, "what is it that we must choose to achieve this?" the answer is,
"define yourself, act, improvise." Beyond this, there is no answer.
In principle, Sartre cannot tell us what to do, or what we should
take to be the good. We are in a world of ambiguity in which it is the
essential nature of the self to be forced to decide for itself what is good
and just and true and beautiful. The whole point, however, is that this
determination is not arbitrary. Man must determine the content, but
the form of the imperative is there: he chooses within the framework of
responsibility, in self-acknowledgment of anguish, in the decisive clutch
of requiredness. To be free, then, is not to choose one's freedom, but to
be aware that one is free in any case - that one is condemned to be
free - and from there to achieve authenticity, that is, self-conscious
choice in the face of anguish, through acting in the world of contingent
and modal realities.
As some of the existentialists have pointed out, this conception
of total freedom and total responsibility is really a derivative of Dos-
toievsky's famous statement, "If God did not exist, everything would
be permissible." Sartre has taken this seriously, and has attempted to
find the final consequences of the assertion. His novel Nausea contains
perhaps the most interesting description of this conception of freedom
as the paradox of total responsibility and total contingency.
We have already seen that the fundamental ontological dualism
of consciousness and non-conscious matter, of self and nature, is the
ground for Sartre's theory of existential freedom. The self in situation
is always, among other things, the self in its basic relationship to the
external world of inert matter. Thus if the self is free, its freedom is, in
part, a function of its relationship to nature.The real theme of Sartre's
novel Nausea is the articulation of the self's experience of nature as
absolute contingency, pure absurdity, an experience which is charac-
terized by a root form of nausea of which physiological nausea is only
one type.
The hero of the novel, Antoine Roquentin, is an individual involved
passionately and reflectively in the problem of his own existence. Our
brief considerations of the novel must center about the scene in which
Roquentin meets his own existence in an immediate experience of his

own total contingency, his being there. The scene is a park. Roquentin
has become absorbed in the existence, the very being, of his immediate
surroundings. For a moment all reality external and secondary to the
things about him has been put aside; he is faced with a brute givenness
that clots his consciousness. Later, in his diary, Roquentin writes:
So I was in the park just now. The roots of the chestnut tree were sunk in the
ground just under my bench. I couldn't remember it was a root any more. The
words had vanished and with them the significance of things, their methods of
use, and the feeble points of reference which men have traced on their surface.
I was sitting, stooping forward, head bowed, alone in front of this black, knotty
mass, entirely beastly, which frightened me. Then I had this vision.
It left me breathless. Never, until these last few days, had I understood the
meaning of "existence." I was like the others, like the ones walking along the
seashore, all dressed in their spring finery. I said, like them, "The ocean is green;
that white speck up there is a seagull," but I didn't feel that it existed or that the
seagull was an "existing seagull"; usually existence hides itself. It is there,
around us, in us, it is us, you can't say two words without mentioning it, but you
can never touch it. When I believed I was thinking about it, I must believe that I
was thinking nothing, my head was empty, or there was just one word in my
head, the word "to be. "8
The crucial and qualitative transition, then, from existence as a

concept, as a predicate, as a linguistic phenomenon, to existence as the
experience of a radical contingency is the transition from the common-
sense attitude to existential pathos. The original feeling that charac-
terizes this transition is nausea. Sartre, in the same novel, attempts
to describe the experience when Roquentin asks:
Had I dreamed of this enormous presence? It was there, in the garden, toppled
down into the trees, all soft, sticky, soiling everything, all thick, a jelly. And I
was inside, I with the garden. I was frightened, furious, I thought it was so
stupid, so out of place, I hated this ignoble mess. Mounting up, mounting up as
high as the sky, spilling over, filling everything with its gelatinous slither, and I
could see depths upon depths of it reaching far beyond the limits of the garden,
the houses, and Bouville, as far as the eye could reach. I was no longer in Bouville,
I was nowhere, I was floating. I was not surprised, I knew it was the World, the
naked World suddenly revealing itself, and I choked with rage at this gross,
absurd being. You couldn't even wonder where all that sprang from, or how it
was that a world came into existence, rather than nothingness. It didn't make
sense, the World was everywhere, in front, behind. There had been nothing before
it. Nothing. There had never been a moment in which it could not have existed.
That was what worried me: of course there was no reason for this flowing larva
to exist. But it was impossible for it not to exist. It was unthinkable: to imagine
nothingness you had to be there already, in the midst of the World, eyes wide
open and alive; nothingness was only an idea in my head, an existing idea
floating in this immensity: this nothingness had not come before existence, it was
an existence like any other and appeared after many others. I shouted "filth!
• Sartre, J.-P., Nausea, London, 1949, 170-71.
SARTRE'S PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM 73
what rotten filth!" and shook myself to get rid of this sticky filth, but it held fast
and there was so much, tons and tons of existence, endless: I stifled at the depths
of this immense weariness. And then suddenly the park emptied as through a
great hole, the World disappeared as it had come, or else I woke up - in any case,
I saw no more of it; nothing was left but the yellow earth around me out of
which dead branches rose upward. 7
Roquentin's experience of nausea is, for Sartre, the experience of what

it means to be. The self as consciousness in a reality of total contingency
is, in its nothingness, in flight from an instability it can never terminate
to a synthesis it can never achieve. Were the self able to conquer its
condition it could unite with the being of nature, but this, for Sartre, is
precisely what the self cannot do. The union of self (consciousness) with
non-reflective being (nature) would be the Absolute, God. Man is a
being who seeks to be God, and is perpetually thrown back upon his
finitude in decisive failure.
It is at this point that the core of Sartre's notion of existential
freedom is to be grasped. Man, a failed God, is thrown back upon his
own resources in a world in which the only directives and truths for him
are those he himself creates. In one sense everything is lost - a per-
manent human nature, divine laws, certitude, salvation - and in virtue
of this horrific loss, man is completely free: since he has lost everything,
everything is possible to him. On a shattered and deserted stage,
without script, director, prompter, or audience, the actor is free to
improvise his own part.
THE THEORY'S CRITICAL RECEPTION
The reactions to this philosophy of freedom have been as lively and

forceful and belligerent as the philosophy itself. The Marxists have
called existentialism the "philosophy of the graveyard"; the work of
Sartre is banned in the Soviet Union; it is on the Catholic Index; and,
to stick our finger in a more logical pie, Sartre's existential philosophy
has been called, by A. J. Ayer, the well known positivist, "a misuse of
the verb 'to be.'" Thus the criticisms range from "danger" to "non-
sense." The most that can be done here is to summarize the major
criticisms of Sartre's conception of freedom. I shall do this by cate-
gorically listing seven major contentions made in these attacks on his
position.
One, the self, far from being a "nothingness," is a stable, enduring
structure which can achieve permanence and happiness in the world.
7 ibid., r80-8r.
Two, the phenomenon of "choice" can be accounted for on purely

psychological grounds, rather than making it an obscure metaphysical
concept.
Three, even if Sartre has described an aspect of freedom, he has
elevated this one aspect beyond all importance; there are many orders
of human freedom - social, political, religious, and other - and each of
these realms of freedom requires its own proper analysis.
Four, the dualism of self and nature in which freedom is grounded is
an artificial one, which can be philosophically overcome or avoided by
commencing analysis with society, and man within society, as the
primal human situation.
Five, Sartre's descriptions have at best psychological and literary
insight, and at worst they are simply meaningless in relation to any
empirically meaningful criterion; this is not philosophy, but a poor
mixture of sensationalistic literature and pseudo-psychology.
Six, freedom is not restricted to "extreme situations"; any analysis
that forces such an artificial restriction ignores the multiple instances
in the everyday world in which human beings are faced with problems
of choice and self-determination - instances that are not in any way
"extreme."
Seven, Sartre has given us not a philosophy of freedom but a
pathology of freedom.
It is not possible here to expand upon these criticisms or to analyze
their philosophical justification or lack of justification. Let us instead,
for the sake of the argument, give Sartre the last word. In trying to
formulate the answer he might give to these charges - or rather, to a
thread common to most of them - let us try to look at reality through
his eyes, try to grasp the whole thing as he has seen it.
The being of man is located primarily in his being there. You and I -
apart from our special statuses, roles, or purposes at any moment,
apart from the differences in our age, sex, personal history, religion,
ideals, attitudes - apart from all this we are beings in reality. In an
original and underivable manner we are, and the reality in which we
are is philosophically prior to the content and methods of the special
disciplines and the common-sense attitude - all of which take for
granted, presuppose, our being.
This primal reality is an everlasting conflict, a dialectic in which
man is in search of a synthesis, a peace and harmony, which he cannot,
in principle, obtain. Within the bitter confines of this dialectic, man is
condemned to act, to choose, to create what he is; but in the moment
SARTRE'S PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM 75
that he chooses, he feels the profound anguish of responsibility, for
his choice involves all men. When the choice has been made, the dia-
lectic continues, for choices are moments in the dialectic, never
finalities. To be free is self-consciously to take upon oneself the burden
of admitting and facing this condition, and acting within its confines.
Condemned to the dialectic, we cannot choose it. But we can choose to
acknowledge it, and to face its implications.
If the more than seven hundred closely printed pages of Sartre's
L'Etre et le neant could be reduced to a single sentence, that sentence
would perhaps be this: the tragedy and the dignity of man lie in the
dictum, to be is to be free.
PART TWO
AESTHETICS AND LITERATURE

7. Toward a Phenomenology of the Aesthetic Object
"Art converts the natural attitude toward the experi-

enced world into the transcendental attitude toward
one's experience of the world."
Fritz Kaufmann
What distinguishes phenomenological philosophizing from other

avenues of approach is the central challenge it extends to the knower
to hold himself back from, aside from, the "accepted" world of common
sense: to hold in abeyance the judgments and decisions and attitudes
that are characteristic of thought which begins with the "obvious"
facts and existents of reality. If philosophy has a radical and unique
core, it is that philosophizing at its finest is unwilling to go along with
traditional presuppositions; it seeks the heart of the knowing of things.
Philosophy is thus Kantian and Husserlian in so far as it examines the
grounds of knowledge and distinguishes between the experienced world
and our experience of the world. In the greatest sense philosophy
brackets the natural attitude in order to penetrate to that order of
knowledge in which distinctions between ground and object are
possible. That consciousness, the ego, the cogito should then prove to
be central to the entire inquiry is understandable and to be expected,
for it is only through bringing our own awareness into the field of
analysis that the pre-conditions of knowing can be explored.
The general tone of this order of procedure is set by Frederic Arnie!
when he writes:
For myself, Philosophy is a manner of seizing things, a mode of perceiving reality.
It does not create Nature, or Man, or God, but finds them and tries to understand
them ... Philosophy is the ideal reconstruction of consciousness, it is conscious-
ness understanding itself with all that it contains.!
Such a conception of phenomenology would seem to generalize its

1 This translation is taken from "Phenomenology in France" by Jean Hering, contained in
Philosophic Thought in France and The United States (edited by Marvin Farber), Buffalo, N. Y.,
1950. The quotation is to be found also in The Private Joumal of Henri Frederic Amiel
(translated by Van Wyck Brooks and Charles Van Wyck Brooks), New York, 1935, 58.
80 PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE AESTHETIC OBJECT
purpose and structure beyond what Hussed intended as strict phe-

nomenology; but it is along lines indicated by this generalization that I
wish to discuss a phenomenological approach to certain aesthetic
problems, in particular the notion of the "aesthetic object."

Aesthetic inquiry has a root level which transcends the history of
aesthetics, theories of aesthetics, even semantical investigations of
the meaning of crucial terms in the language of aesthetic theory. This
root level considers such questions as What does it mean to speak of or
refer to an "aesthetic object"? What determines the object-ness of
the aesthetic work? What determines the stability and enduring unity
of the aesthetic object? The aesthetician as philosopher is distinguished
from the art critic, the literary analyst, the art appreciator, etc.,
because he is the only one to question the meaning and attempt to
analyze the nature of the fundamental and ultimate art unity: the
object in art. That the object is, that we may begin analysis of the art
work since it is - such attitudes are commonly shared by the literary
critic and art appreciator. The art critic proceeds to question the value
and meaning of the art work, he may suggest criteria for such judgment,
he may conclude that a specific art work fails, i.e., that it is not ade-
quate in terms of some set of standards, but nowhere does he raise the
question What does it mean to say that this is an "aesthetic object"?
Nowhere does the critic ask How is the work of art constituted as an
aesthetic object, i.e., as a unitary and stable structure presented to
consciousness as a type of thing? What we may then call the natural
attitude in art consists in the failure to recognize that there is an
epistemological level of analysis in aesthetics and that this level is
naively pre-supposed by the art critic.
A distinctive role for philosophical analysis in aesthetics is the
exploration of the epistemological grounding of the aesthetic object
both in the consciousness of the artist and the consciousness of the art
appreciator. Such an exploration, however, is no more possible if we
assume the nature of the art object than an epistemological analysis is
possible if we remain naive realists. In short, both investigations
become possible in principle with the bracketing of the natural attitude.
The question is: What type of reduction is required here? In essence, a
bracketing that will serve to isolate or restrict a part of the Given in
experience, but not (and here we depart from Hussed) to claim
PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE AESTHETIC OBJECT 81
"purity" for that which is isolated. Our thesis is that such "bracketing"
does, as a matter of fact, take place in art creation and that an analogue
of this reduction occurs in the appreciation of an art work, and further
that such dual reduction is a phenomenological pre-condition for the
possibility of an "aesthetic object." 2
<II>
Art-creation may be understood as a revolt against the ordinary modes
of cognizing reality. The artist is extraordinary in so far as he takes a
magical 3 view of the content of experience. The very production of a
work of art is possible only through concentrating upon a section of the
screen of ordinary perception. The act of framing, of literally surround-
ing a canvas with sides of wood or metal, is the astonishing sorcery of
the art apprentice. To frame a picture is to separate a part of experience
from its context. This is the first meaning of reduction. To create, then,
is to separate, to exclude, to deny a whole by intending a fraction of
that whole. The daring and inventiveness of the artist lie in the risk he
takes in rejecting both the traditional picture of experience and the
2 To avoid confusing the notion of the "reduction" we are expounding here with Husserl's
epoche, we will term what we are describing "reflexive" analysis; hence, reflexive reduction.
The choice of the word "reflexive" is not arbitrary; it is suggested by the sort of philosophizing
Sartre does in L'j:;tre et Ie neant. As Hering points out (op. cit., 73), much of Sartre's analysis
poses the "problem of perception, representation, memory, and of numerous analogous
problems, in terms of consciousness." (ibid.). This is primarily what we mean in speaking of
"reflexive" analysis. (I believe that Gilbert Varet was the first to suggest this terminology in
regard to Sartre's work (L'Ontologie de Sartre, Paris, 1948)). However, Hering says that much
of Sartn"'s analyses "belong to genuine phenomenology" (op. cit., 73). It is at this point that
serious difficulties arise in attempting to differentiate between reflexive phenomenology and
Husserlian phenomenology. I think it is true that Sartre is making use of a kind of phenome-
nology, but the important thing is to understand what order of phenomenology is involved
and what one means by a "genuine phenomenology." The failure to differentiate between
Husserl's epoche and Sartre's "reflexive" reduction leads Helmut Kuhn to classify Sartre as a
Husserlian phenomenologist. Kuhn writes: "Sartre, less original than Heidegger, is to a still
higher degree a typical phenomenologist of the Husserl tradition. His descriptive analyses of
the nature of sense perception, of the body which the individual not only 'has' but 'is,' and of
the individual's relationship to 'the other' belong among the finest specimens of phenomeno-
logical research." (Encounter With Nothingness, Hinsdale, Ill., 1959, 132). I have presented
my reasons for opposing this interpretation in A Critique of Jean-Paul Sartre's Ontology,
University of Nebraska Studies, New Series No.6, March 1951.
3 Sartre writes: "the categories of 'suspicious,' of 'alarming,' designate the magical
insofar as it is lived by consciousness, insofar as it urges consciousness to live it. The abrupt
passage from a rational apprehension of the world to a perception of the same world as
magical, if it is motivated by the object itself and if it is accompanied by a disagreeable
element, is horror; if it is accompanied by an agreeable element it will be wonder." (The
Emotions: Outline of A Theory, New York, 1948, 85). "In emotion, consciousness is degraded
and abruptly transforms the determined world in which we live into a magical world." (ibid.,
83). The traditional "emotionalism" of the artist is the foundation, then, of his "magical"
existence.
traditional way of comprehending that experience. In this view the

art object becomes the resultant ultimately of an act or acts of segre-
gation and placement. But an example may be of aid here.
Taking the drama as an art-object, we have a group of scenes ordered
into acts which are in turn integrated into a whole that can be observed
as a unity by the audience. If the drama be Hamlet, we have a set of
incidents associated together in such a way as to form a story that
describes those events and, in describing them, sets forth the meanings
and significances they contain. But the telling of Hamlet's story, the
enactment of the drama, forces us to focus our attention upon a set of
happenings and meanings that prevail apart from the rest of our
experience. When Hamlet was written, the playwright constructed his
play by selecting from the mass of possibilities just those aspects which
he wished to set apart. The very act of setting apart, here, is the
artistic venture. The non-artist is he who fails not only to effect a
reduction from the whole of experience but also to recognize the
meaning of such a reduction. The setting apart is not haphazard: it is
self-conscious, figured, and permanent in the sense that what is set
apart or reduced is given form and endurance.
Not only does the artist have to bracket the natural world to secure
his "yield" of the art-object, but the very fact that the art-object was
originally made possible only by the reduction carries with it the
associated quality which perpetuates its "reduced" nature; not only
the artist but the art appreciator as well must bracket the rest of
experience. Thus, the audience at a showing of Hamlet (to continue our
example) must recognize that a play is being produced. In traditional
theatre, the stage is the frame and the audience is expected to recognize
the stage not merely as separating the players and play from the
audience but as being a tacit agreement between speakers and listeners
that one group may communicate with the other group only through
form, i.e., only through the play itself. The failure to recognize this
agreement - the failure to reduce - is observed frequently in children
attending the theatre: they cry out and must be hushed, they see the
action as an adult might see a street scene. The child must be forewarn-
ed about his conduct not because he will annoy others but because the
curtain must be respected; the play is in the form and the form de-
mands reduction. But the adult may also fracture the bond of reduc-
tion, and when he does, we say that he was "carried away," that he
"forgot himself." The viewer of Hamlet may thus be so involved in the
drama that he forgets that it is "only a play" and cries out toward the
PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE AESTHETIC OBJECT
end: "Don't drink it! It's poisoned!" But his breech of accepted
behavior lies not in trying to alter the actions of Hamlet when it
is understood that those actions are pre-determined by the course of
the play itself, but rather in the failure to realize that what we seek in
art can be given to us only if we permit and enact the reduction which
makes art possible. 4
<III >
If reflexive reduction is the pre-condition of an art work, reflexive
reconstruction is no less necessary for the being of the aesthetic object.
Reflexive reconstruction will be taken to mean in its widest sense the
intentional act of synthesis by which the aesthetic object achieves
unity and life. What is synthesized is a complexus of meanings: the
artist intends the meaning of his work. Such intention may be highly
self-conscious and critical, or it may have a minimum of cognitive
direction. The act of synthesis, however, unifies both the meanings
intended and the content of the work in the artist's primary decision
to constitute his work as a synthetic unity. But the reduced elements
of the art work must be re-constituted as a part of reality, albeit a special
part, an independent unity. To understand the need for reconstruction
we must realize that in itself the art-object is only a mass of possi-
bilities: a potential for the viewer. It is only when we observe the work
as a formed whole that we are experiencing an art work. Apart from
the intention, then, the art work is nothing. The nothingness of the art
work is recognized in many ways: in the multiple and variant inter-
pretations of it by various critics and ages, in the problem of what the
art work is apart from its audience and what it can be if in principle
there should be no audience possible. Is the art work a unity in its utter
solitude, in the confines of the museum without guests, the room that
permits no entrance? Do we mean by the art work this complexus of
4 Perhaps the physical location of the art work inspires part of the reduction. It is inter·
esting to note that many of Sartre's scenes, both in his literary and philosophical works, are
associated with parks and are replete with benches and chestnut trees. The park is the point
of separation from the rest of the world; in it we are reduced from the business world, the
academic world, the realm of other worries. We go to the park for greenery and release, for
a soothing contemplation, and for love; yet for Sartre the bracketing out of other worlds in
the park produces a perverse effect: it is in the park that the Other looks at us, that we are
made an object for the Other's subjectivity. It is in the park, seated on the bench, that
existence, being itself, overwhelms us. But even in nausea the brackets of the park make
possible what is akin to artistic awareness: a reflexive consciousness that momentarily isolates
the park from the huge given ness of reality and permits the artist to achieve a fresh mode of
cognition.
canvas, wood, smears of color, and areas of shade and light? Without
initial intention by the artist these elements are only scattered and
empty qualities; with the intending of the work arises the being of the
aesthetic object as unified: the canvas and smears of oil become
qualities of an object. However, the meanings which the artist intends
in the art work achieve only temporary unity, for continual recon-
struction is necessary. The art work is the idea of the artist, and the
meanings comprising that idea must be given new life: the art work
must be perpetuated in intention if it is not to lapse into nothingness.
Just as reduction had a dual aspect: the reduction of artist and art
appreciator, so reconstruction has two sides. The intended unity which
the artist constitutes originally in his art work is taken up by the
audience: they, too, must reconstruct for themselves the meaning-
complex at hand, the art-object. Thus, art commences with the act of
intention on the part of the artist and depends for its existence upon
the audience which experiences it. 5
It is at this point that the entire problem of understanding the art
work arises, for if the reader must himself reconstruct the meanings of
the novelist, how can he be certain that his reconstruction is correct:
that he has, in fact, reconstructed what the author intended? But this
uncertainty is the necessary separation of the artist from society,
from his audience. The artist has no guarantee that he will be under-
stood; more frequently he knows or suspects before creation that he
will probably be misunderstood. Yet the tie between the artist and his
audience is absolute and binding, for it is only in virtue of the recon-
struction by the audience that the art work has a chance of survivaL
The artist has created something that cannot stand by itself, for in
5 Sartre writes: "The creative act is only an incomplete and abstract moment in the pro-
duction of a work. If the author existed alone he would be able to write as much as he liked;
the work as object would never see the light of day and he would either have to put down his
pen or despair. But the operation of writing implies that of reading as its dialectical correla-
tive and these two connected acts necessitate two distinct agents. It is the conjoint effort of
author and reader which brings upon the scene that concrete and imaginary object which is
the work of the mind. There is no art except for and by others.
"Reading seems, in fact, to be the synthesis of perception and creation (Sartre adds in a
footnote here: "The same is true in different degrees regarding the spectator's attitude before
other works of art (paintings, symphonies, statues, etc.)"). It supposes the essentiality of both
the subject and the object. The object is essential because it is strictly transcendent, because
it imposes its own structures, and because one must wait for it and observe it; but the snbject
is also essential because it is required not only to disclose the object (that is, to make there be
an object) but also so that this object might be (that is, to produce it). In a word, the reader is
conscious of disclosing in creating, of creating by disclosing." (What is Literature?, New York,
1949, 42-43). The constructive role of the art appreciator is thus clear: "the imagination of
the spectator has not only a regulating function, but a constitutive one .... it is called upon
to recompose the beautiful object beyond the traces left by the artist." (ibid., 47).
PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE AESTHETIC OBJECT 85
addition to the original ordering of his intention, the art work requires
the sympathetic re-ordering of the audience. Each art work is, then, a
set of meanings for which an infinite number of reconstructions are
possible. In itself, i.e., apart from the reconstructor, the art work is
dead. The unread novel, the forgotten novel, the ignored novel - all
are diseased with a kind of catatonic suspension. The novel stands
waiting for the mind of the reader. The books on the stall are there
dead-for-a-time, and the power of the reader is the power of revival,
almost of resurrection.
<IV>
There is a special aspect of reflexive reconstruction which requires

separate attention, an aspect which might be termed "intentional
perception." In ordinary perception - simply looking at - I passively
see what is in the field of my vision: that chair, that person, this book.
But it is possible so to direct my active attention that, via a reduction
of this book on this table, from the ordinary seeing of the book on the
table I am able to frame a "scene," a freshly observed relationship
which can best be understood by imagining the content of the field of
vision to be a still life : Book on Table. Such intentional perception -
the framing of otherwise passive aspects of what we experience - takes
place quite naturally on many occasions: "Look at that sunset!" we
are told, and we look not simply at what is before us, but at what is
before us as it has been ordered into a scene, an object for scrutiny, an
area of beauty to be examined as area. We have fancifully framed the
sunset we were told to witness, and we have elevated it from part of the
Given to a special fragment of the Given: however momentarily,
obscurely, and inadequately, we have created what approximates an
art-object.
Intentional perception is possible as a mode of general perception.
We are surrounded by potential scenes if only we can snare them
between our brackets and give them intentional unity. The reduction
and reconstruction which are the grounds for such unity may be under-
stood as aspects of a generalized phenomenology of consciousness in
which are located the roots of art-creation, art-appreciation, and the
fundamental relationship of the artist to his product.
8. Phenomenology and the Theory of Literature
I should like to begin with a declaration not of principles but of

contents, a declaration that is not a manifesto but a manifest of
conceptual cargo. The theme of this paper is the relationship between
philosophy and literature; its thesis is that the microcosm given to us
in a literary work is founded on and in turn illuminates the transcen-
dental structure of common-sense experience. I wish to explore this
foundation of daily life by way of phenomenological philosophy. The
outcome is a recommendation for a philosophically grounded theory of
literature. I shall do my best, however, to get through customs an
undeclared commitment to reality, an insistence on the primordial,
"originary" givenness of our world. In this sense, the task of both
literature and philosophy is the reconstruction of mundane existence.
Apart from the warfare between philosophy and literature and the
skirmishes between philosophy and criticism, there is a tension between
these disciplines which is the result of a confusion concerning their
relevance for each other. The field of philosophy of literature is ill-
defined; the study of philosophy in literature is at best rather dimly
focused. In the last, for example, it is sometimes held that the study of
so-called "philosophical literature" offers a non-technical kind of
introduction to philosophy to the student whose primary concern is
literature or fine arts. In such a course, presumably, the student is able
to locate the great issues of philosophy without having to be overly
bothered with matters of formal logic, epistemology, ontology, or
axiology. The professional philosopher sometimes treats such a course
as a diluted substitute for the "real thing"; accordingly, he may tend
to patronize such efforts. Since the relationship between literature and
philosophy is vague to begin with, suspicions proliferate. And whatever
PHENOMENOLOGY AND THEORY OF LITERATURE 87
good will may be realized within the band of teachers of philosophy

is sometimes threatened by the resentments of those outside. Academic
banking restrictions are brought into play: credit toward a major may
be given or withheld for a course taken in another department. In the
midst of these scandals we must search for order. What relevance does
philosophy have for literature, and what gift does literature hold for
philosophy?
Let me begin with a distinction between philosophy of literature and
philosophy in literature. Very simply, "of" leads to problems in formal
aesthetics, "in" marks a dimension of literature which informs us
philosophically. "Of" raises questions about the categories of literature
and their relationship to the mode of being of an art work. "In"
presents the realized work and summons us to an appreciation of its
implicit philosophical achievement. Although these titles are often
interchanged as synonymous, I propose to hold to this difference of
purpose and level between philosophy of and philosophy in literature.
An immediate advantage of the distinction is that it permits a
reassessment of the relationship between literature and philosophy.
Although there are many novels that qualify by most criteria as
philosophical literature, they are philosophical to the extent that they
present a fundamental critique of reality, a concern with the totality
of what there is. Philosophy arises in literature when the question
raised is that of Being. Another way of saying this is that philosophy in
literature has an ontological placement; the author is not asking about
aspects of reality but about the ground of reality. The study of phi-
losophy in literature is an effort to make explicit what is implicitly
sedimented in the art work. Philosophy of literature may concern itself
with the concept of reality as dealt with in literary works, but the
discipline of philosophy in literature turns to the very experience given
in art and attempts its reconstruction. Far from being a dilution of
"real" philosophy, it is its living extension.
Ultimately, the "of" and "in" distinction ends, as all such relation-
ships must, in a root junction. The problems of an aesthetic proper to
literature merge with those encountered in a study of philosophy in
literature. But keeping these domains separate for at least part of our
way may enhance the journey. It may help us to understand what it is
that certain literary works have which leads us to call them philo-
sophical. For surely, literature is not philosophical merely because it
discusses ethical choice, cosmic destiny, or the meaning of tempo-
rality and death; it is philosophical when it returns us to the pheno-
88 PHENOMENOLOGY AND THEORY OF LITERATURE
mena of our being. It is not a matter of grandiose themes but of concern

for what is given in our experience of reality as such in its fundamental
modalities. The philosophy of literature may tend to obscure this
concern; it leads away, at the beginning at least, from the phenomena,
and this means necessarily that it is tempted to abandon the literary work
in favor of theory. An a fortiori argument of a sort could be made out
for the relationship between philosophy and criticism. What is at issue
is precisely the old antagonism between philosophy and literature. Just
as philosophy of literature may be accused of sacrificing the novel or
the poem for ulterior passions, so a philosophically grounded or
oriented theory of literature or approach to criticism may be rejected
as barren, for all its presumption. Thus Allen Tate speaks of the
"fenced-in apriorism of the merely philosophical approach" and says,
"Its conclusions are impressive and are usually stated at length, but I
have never seen one of them that increased my understanding of the
XXVI lIth Canto of the Paradiso, or even of "Locksley Hall." 1 If
this reaction is justified for the style of philosophical analysis involved
in philosophy of literature, it does not follow that it holds for what may
be done in studying philosophy in literature. Mr. Tate's own philoso-
phical sophistication is reason enough to distrust his distrust; but
nothing can be gained by pushing this point. Instead, I propose to
illustrate the relevance of philosophy for literature - even philosophy
at its a prioristic worst - by investigating a concrete problem of phi-
losophy in literature. The problem is that of the literary microcosm. I
shall restrict myself to the novel form.
<1>
It is a commonplace to speak of a novel presenting a microcosm; but
the meaning of this commonplace is far from clear, precisely because
the meaning of "microcosm" is far from clear. A novel presents us with
a little world which is said to be a reflection in some sense of the big
world of real life. "Reflect," "mirror," "represent," are all variants for
a central term of nexus between two domains held to be isomorphic in
certain respects. Indeed, this relationship of microcosm to life is
sometimes taken as a necessary part of the definition of all art. Erich
Kahler; for example, defines art as a "human activity which explores,
and hereby creates, new reality in a suprarational, visional manner
1 Tate, A., "The Hovering Fly," in The Man 01 Letters in the Modern World: Selected
Essays, X9!1B-I955, New York, 19S5, lSI.
and presents it symbolically ... as a microcosmic whole signifying a
macrocosmic whole." 2 Despite the general reliance on "microcosm" as
a central term of discourse in aesthetics and in criticism as well, I
insist on a further, more careful delineation of its scope and signifi-
cation. In what sense, then, does a literary work give us a world?
A typology of elements comprising even the minimal features of a
world would exceed the limits of my powers and your patience. I pro-
pose to restrict myself for the moment to one nuclear feature of any
possible world, its horizonal character. Things, events, states of affairs
are said to be "in" the world. The epistemologist's dearest possessions,
his desk and his chair, are said to be in his room, and we know that his
room is in his house, his house in the town, and that all of this leads
eventually to the world, which contains them all. The movement from
chair to all the rest is horizonal. Taking the world as an outer limit,
its horizon is the condition for bounding what can be experienced. For
something to be "in" the world means that we can grasp it through the
primal horizon of its being. Everything experienced in this world is
more or less familiar, more or less strange to us; but the familiar and
the strange are not more or less "in" the world. Instead we should say
that familiarity and strangeness are themselves comprehensible only
through the horizon of their being. My world includes zones or regions
of intimacy, familiarity, and strangeness. I move conceptually and
conatively from those persons I call my father and my mother, my
wife and my children, my friends and my acquaintances, to others
known about but not known. And there are those I shall never come
to know as well as those I shall never even know about. Yet all of them
are comprehensible in terms of the world which includes them as
actualities or possibilities. This world I grasp only as that matrix
within whose horizon persons and events appear and transpire. It is
not the world that gives itself to me, but its horizon.
A thing or event, then, is horizonal at the outset. For something to
be or to transpire is for it to have regional or zonal character. Meeting
my friend is an event which has whatever temporal and spatial features
it possesses because time and space are of the world. Saddened or
pleased by his conversation, I confront my friend within a context of
what may please or sadden, and that context is placed within the
horizon, ultimately, of our friendship in a life which is a fragment of all
that there is. His news, his ideas, his projects are aspects of my friend's
2 Kahler, E., "What is Art?" in Problems in Aesthetics (ed. by Morris Weitz), New York,
1959, 171.
existence because that existence is in movement toward whatever

fulfillment his life is to have. Fulfillment is in its very texture horizonal.
It does not follow, however, that experiencing something within the
horizon of the world involves a self-conscious awareness of horizon. In
everyday life the horizon of the world is taken for granted, and this
very taken-for-grantedness is itself a crucial part of our experience of
the world. I hope to develop this theme later; the immediate issue is
horizon as a root clue to the kind of world given to us in the literary
work of art.
It is certainly common to speak of the world of Thomas Mann or
William Faulkner, and it is sensible to refer to the world of The Magic
Mountain or Light in August. Perhaps it is not as obvious that these
usages are different. The world of Thomas Mann as a literary figure can
be comprehended only through his writings, and then we mean
ordinarily that his novels and stories presuppose a certain outlook. And
we mean that while Mann was alive, we expected certain things of him,
we expected him to enrich his concerns, fulfill his promises, and develop
his manifold talents through that outlook. To know the world of
Thomas Mann, in this sense, means to understand his concern with
problems of representation, mediation, and historicity. Any discerning
reader of Mann knows that his works deal with the artist's relationship
to spirit and nature, that temporality and death are leading themes,
just as he knows that leitmotifs and patterns of stylistic recurrence
enrich his creations. The world of Mann here is synonymous with the
mind of Mann. But the world of The Magic Mountain is something else.
And here we encounter directly the problem of the literary microcosm.
In what sense does such a work as The Magic Mountain present us with
a world?
Earlier we dodged the problem of establishing a typology of elements
essential to the concept of world. A little more responsibility is neces-
sary now. But I intend to be as evasive as possible, which means as
superficial as possible. The world of The Magic Mountain contains a
host of constants: the characters and action are temporally and
spatially bounded, their affairs constitute a history supported by the
narrative, the characters grow older and, in some instances, die; in the
time that we follow their lives they suffer and exult, they explore a
great range of emotional and conceptual reality, and finally, they are
enmeshed in the symbolic forms of existence and transcendence. So far
these elements are also true of our own world. The differentia, super-
ficially at least, are not hard to find. The world of The Magic Mountain
PHENOMENOLOGY AND THEORY OF LITERATURE 9I
is a fictional, not a real world, and this means that the constants we
have located have at best "As-If" status. The history told is not an
account of events that ever "really" happened, the characters that
inhabit this imaginary world are not people who ever actually lived,
and so the whole thing is a remarkable fabrication, a studied deceit,
in short, a fiction. The trouble with this account of the literary micro-
cosm is simply that it will not do.
An acceptable account of the concept of world must include some
distinction between "real" and "imaginary," between "fictive" and
"actual." To say that the difference between the world of a novel and
the world of daily life is that the one is synthetic, the other historical,
is to presuppose the very problem at issue. But above all, what is taken
for granted in this account is "world" itself. To do better here means to
confront these presuppositions and disentangle their roots. As a start, I
submit the following characteristics of a literary microcosm which I
think are essential features: first, a temporal-spatial matrix of some
order is necessary for the characters and action. Second, the story
presenting the action presupposes that this matrix has functional
limits which set off what occurred prior to the story told as well as what
might occur after the story ends. Third, the action involved is action
for the characters. Their world is interpreted by them. Its meanings
are disclosed originally through their action. Fourth, that there is and
that there continues to be a coherent reality for the characters through-
out the narrative, a reality that is intersubjective, that embraces their
lives, is a necessary condition for the possibility of their world. And
fifth, underlying every possible element of the literary work is the
horizon which defines and limits the world created.
These a prioris of the literary microcosm present the image of a world
interpreted from the outset by the characters within it. Our analysis of
their actions is therefore necessarily a second order translation. We
interpret their interpretations; we encounter their encounters; we
subscribe to or deny their faith. The world of the literary microcosm,
then, is a pre-interpreted one, to follow the terminology of Alfred
Schutz. And to see how this is the case, we must consider the structure
of human action. Unfortunately (to my mind at least), the para-
digmatic image of action for our time is external, physical movement.
An act is taken usually as an event which gears into the external world,
something seen or felt or heard, something that moves something else,
or something that causes a change. The blow struck, the ball thrown,
the shout voiced, the order announced - these are dearly acts, and
their positive ring is unmistakable. The soldier, the athlete, the states-
man, the entrepreneur, the adventurer are all typically men of action.
The poet, the philosopher, the artist, the dreamer remain spectators.
They are contemplatives. An act, in these terms, is primarily something
done whose effect can be marked in the world around us, a public
affair. The trick now is not to say that poets are also men of action,
but to reconsider the very meaning of action presupposed in the crite-
rion taken for granted in common-sense life. I accept Max Weber's
definition. "In 'action,'" he writes, "is included all human behaviour
when and in so far as the acting individual attaches a subjective
meaning to it. Action in this sense may be either overt or purely
inward or subjective; it may consist of positive intervention or passive-
ly acquiescing in the situation. Action is social in so far as, by virtue of
the subjective meaning attached to it by the acting individual (or
individuals), it takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby
oriented in its course." 3 For Weber, "subjective meaning" refers to the
interpretive understanding by the actor of the meaning of his own act;
it has absolutely nothing to do with personal or psychological atti-
tudes. 4 In this sense, the action which characterizes the literary micro-
cosm is subjectively defined by the characters. And as we take up their
story we enter a world pre-interpreted by its fictive inhabitants.
If action is disclosed through interpretation, interpretation in tum
points back to its horizonal ground. The meaning an actor bestows
upon his act is defined by his intent. And his intent is guided and
circumscribed by the horizon of value and purpose toward which he
moves. But values are located as worldly, as part of the framework of
our lives. Whether they are held to be transcendent or immanent is
irrelevant here. Valuing takes place within a pre-established horizon
of the world. Intent, then, is intent toward some aspect of the real. And
this holds for every dimension of awareness: thinking, remembering,
imagining, dreaming, and feeling. The holiness of Father Zossima, the
lust and buffoonery of Feodor Karamazov, and the divergent styles of
being of his sons are comprehensible only as they unfold within the
horizon of the world they project. That world has its antecedent
history of which we know relatively little, and it has a future which is
equally obscure. But past and future are related to each other by the
common reality they bound. Zossima's past and Alyosha's future are
perspectives of a single horizon interior to the novel. That we as readers
3 Weber, M., The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, New York, 1947,88.
4 See chapter X3.
comprehend these temporal dimensions is a crucial yet secondary fact,

for we are witnesses to a world born of its own generative power and
sustained by its own scaffolding.
Yet the remarkable thing is that we do grasp the literary microcosm
as a world, understand immediately that the story it tells is worldly,
and through a decisive act of intuitive extrapolation come to share its
axial horizon. When we say that a literary work illuminates our own
lives, we trustingly presuppose that our intuitive sense of world is
warranted. And even if we cannot account fully for the nature of the
literary microcosm, the assumption is that we certainly know what we
mean by our own world. This assumption must now be placed in serious
question. Our description of some of the essential features of the micro-
cosm must be matched by an examination of the fundamental structure
of the world of daily life. Out of this confrontation between literature
and life our conclusions and recommendations will arise.
<II>
Each of us in one dimension of his being is a common-sense man living
in the daily world. As Kierkegaard puts it, each of us has "an interest
in this big enterprise they call reality." 5 Yet we need no teacher to
inform us that there is a world, that there is daily life, and that we
are part of this affair. We receive instruction regarding its elements, its
component parts, its cunning machinery; never are we taught that
there is reality. This strange omission in our education is more than
instructive, for it provides a clue to the horizon of our being. Whatever
questions are raised about the world are raised within it. We may doubt
some part of our experience, however great, but our doubt leaves
standing the undoubted framework in terms of which a solution can be
recognized and accepted. Behind, beyond, over and against even the
potentially doubtful is the unquestionable ground in contrast to which
the dubious is dubious. The central thrust of our lives is believingly
towald reality; and that our belief in this reality is warranted is never,
fundamentally, an object for inspection. The horizon through which
the world is given to us is our natural, unselfconscious believing in
daily life. This believing-in is the taken-for-grantedness I mentioned
earlier. A quick inventory may prove helpfuL6
5 Kierkegaard, S., Repetition, Princeton, 1941, II4.
8 In what follows we are indebted to the work of Alfred Schutz. See his "On Multiple
Realities," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, V, June 1945, 533-576; "Choosing
Among Projects of Action," ibid., XII, December I95I, I61-I84; "Common, Sense and Scien-
tific Interpretation of Human Action," ibid., XIV, September I953, 1-38.
94 PHENOMENOLOGY AND THEORY. OF LITERATURE
As a common-sense man in daily life, I take it for granted that the

world of which I am part is real, essentially trustworthy, reasonably
disclosed by the normal senses, and continuously coherent. Further-
more, I take it for granted that this world is perceived in much the
same way by all other normal men. I take it for granted that this world
has a past as well as a future; that my fellow men, like myself, are born
and will die; that just as there are those who occupied this world before
I did and just as there are those with whom I share this world now, so
there will be those who will follow after me. The startling aspect of
this incomplete list is not the set of statements included; it is rather
that the taken-for-grantedness of these truths is itself taken for granted.
Here we come to a kind of bed-rock of belief.
Whether we call it "animal faith" or simple horse sense, there is not
the slightest doubt that belief in reality is overpoweringly universal
and indelibly a part of daily life. Often, the student in an introductory
course in philosophy smirks at Cartesian doubt and privately unseats
Bishop Berkeley. The high point of the course comes for him when he
learns that several philosophers died insane. The teasing possibility
that perhaps after all, despite everything, reality might be problematic
at its very root - that possibility cannot withstand the triumph of
common sense. In the end, the idea that a phUosopher might be telling
the truth about reality is as incongruous as the image of Wanda
Landowska playing rock and roll.
It is at least certain that the common-sense world has constants of
its own, including this utter faith in itself. Again following Alfred
Schutz, we may designate these universal features of daily life "meta-
physical constants" for human existence. Being born into the world,
beiug born of mothers unique to us, being born into a world already
inhabited as well as interpreted by others, having to grow older in this
world and having to die in it are all inescapable realities; and it is just
as true to say that as metaphysical constants they have absolutely
nothing to do with obstetricians, gereatricians, census takers, or
undertakers. Instead, they illuminate and are in turn illuminated by
the cardinal horizon of our being in the world. They refer not to public
affairs of state but to an ontological state of affairs. They have to do
with our being as such, and they form the anatomy of our world.
The metaphysical constants underlying common-sense life are
relevant to our theme in two ways. First, it is characteristic of daily
life that in it these constants are taken for granted; their philosophical
significance lies sedimented in our experience. Second, the interpre-
tation of these constants requires a distinction between two aspects of
human existence: the directly given world each of us possesses is
radically different from the derivative world we gain from natural
science, history, and sociology. Following the second point will lead us
back to the first. A study of Helmholtz's Physiological Optics tells me
nothing about the visual experience I have in its qualitative immediacy.
Nor will a more recent treatise help. There is a decisive gap between
my color experience and a scientific account of its causal structure.
My color world is first of all mine; it isnotmediated by expert knowledge
of its conditions, nor is the theory of vision in any way relevant to
its presentational validity. It is only in a derivative sense that the case
of my color experience falls under the general scientific category of
visual perception. In one sense, then, my color world is a privileged one:
the total scope and content given in it possess an experiential depth
that is independent of subsequent theoretical explanation. What holds
for vision holds for my entire world. The particulars of my existence
are not decided on by some conceptual apparatus of the discipline of
history or sociology or psychology; they are primordially given states
of affairs uniquely and irrevocably mine. To say that they are mine
means first of all that they are given to me through a certain vantage
point, a certain location. My body, in fact, is the point of reference in
terms of which perceptual phenomena achieve location and placement.
And once again, my body is an immediately intuited reality, not the
product of a sophisticated knowledge of physiology. To say that I
possess a qualitatively given, privileged domain of immediate experi-
ence is to suggest that this primordial given has precedence of a certain
order over the derivative world of science. That precedence must be
clarified.
Just as action has been taken in our time as external, physical
efficacy, so the quality of immediately given experience has been
subsumed under the causal categories of natural scientific explanation.
What is often referred to as the "real" explanation of a state of affairs
involves a reduction of something given to an appraisal of its antece-
dent conditions and relations. My sorrow is explained when an account
is given for what is said to have produced it; my anguish is understood
when earlier events in my life are located and classified; my emotional
reality is illuminated through a schematism of stimulus-response
mechanisms. However subtle these accounts may be, they have in
common a refusal to consider phenomena as given, as integral presen-
tations of consciousness which have sovereign status. A vast genetic
fallacy informs much of contemporary psychology, and it is in reaction

against that total style of analysis that we speak of the primacy of
immediate experience. The frantic search for origins, conditions, causal
grounds, and neurological antecedents goes on at the expense of ignoring
the richness and complexity of concrete awareness. Just as action in
Weber's language includes the full intentional life of the subject, so
awareness itself has an architectonic built of meaning. It is within the
horizon of my world that all scientific and historical determinations
are ultimately grasped, translated, and acted upon. Causal-genetic
analyses themselves come to be understood in my world. Of course,
this understanding may be severely limited, but then it is this stricture
which colors my projection of the world. The attainment of all disci-
plines is destined to be brought back to the sphere of immediate
existence. In this sense daily life maintains precedence over all the rest.
Within its limits are the conditions for the validity of our lives.
The metaphysical constants, then, apply to the immediately given
reality of daily life, not to the derivative world of natural science. And
at the same time their application is to a forceful, "thick" experience,
the world of our errors and our confusions as well as of our victories and
insights. If science gives us a "clean" reality, the world we begin with is
fringed with torment. And part of the complexity of daily life is that
the constants of birth and death and the rest are elements of a taken-
for-granted existence. The horizonal features of these constants are
sedimented in immediate experience. This means that being born into
the world and dying in it are thematic to our lives in a completely a
priori sense. We cannot be taught what birth or death mean because
any teaching presupposes that we already know. At best our experience
occasions this learning. We teach ourselves to be able to say what we
know but cannot utter. In Platonic terms, the metaphysical constants
are themes for recollection.
We have before us now at least some of the essential features of two
worlds, that of daily life and the literary microcosm. Their convergence
is the clue to their disjunction. Together they present the world of
immediately given experience; separately they bring into relief the
conditions a priori which make common-sense life possible. Both worlds
are horizonal, both presuppose a taken-for-granted set of elements,
both are defined axially by metaphysical constants. What, then,
distinguishes the fictive from the real world? I shall answer this
indirectly by exploring a certain relationship between the reader of a
novel and the world he encounters in his reading. To enter the world
of The Brothers Karamazov requires a peculiar decision to suspend our

ordinary believing in our own world. "Suspend" is an unhappy term
here, but a further account of what is involved may overcome the
difficulties. My decision to enter the world of Dostoievski's novel is
essentially a resolve to set aside the ordinary flow of daily life, by
attending only to the horizon given to me in the literary work. The
real world, of course, continues to exist. Suspending my belief in it
does not in any way involve denying it. Rather, in shifting the focus
of my attending to another world, I bring into view the continuing
awareness of my thinking, my anticipating, my remembering, my
wondering. It is now the very structure of these activities of conscious-
ness which becomes the object of my concern. I am not suggesting that
reading a novel means becoming introspective about that reading.
Just the opposite. There is an extrospective character to our attending
to The Brothers. But in that complex awareness we call reading, there
is presented directly the continuing consciousness of the world we
encounter. Our own world has not been negated or cancelled; it
persists. But it continues as methodically out of play in order to make
possible at each moment the literary microcosm.
My decision to suspend my believing in common-sense reality is the
key to the creation of the fictive world. The world of the novel is not
imaginary but real in its way, a way that is made possible by the
activity of fictive consciousness. Consciousness does not discover a
fictive being in The Brothers; rather, it fictively thinks that being. 7 In
this sense, to enter the world Dostoievski created is to participate in a
suspension of one attitude and the bringing into focus of another. This
transposition marks the difference between fiction and life. There are
no criteria which enable us to differentiate the literary microcosm from
the human world; there is an experience of transposition in our modes of
attending to what there is. And in this fundamental change in awareness
the illumination of common-sense existence is rendered possible in a
radical manner. The achievement of fictive consciousness is the
revealing of the transcendental structure of daily life. And this was the
thesis I set out to present. That transcendental structure consists of
the horizon of daily life and the a prioris which attend it: the meta-
physical constants of our being. What we ordinarily take for granted in
daily life is. rendered explicit by the constructive activity of fictive
consciousness. Far from the literary microcosm reflecting the world,
it reveals to us the experiential foundation of our world. In a moment
7 In speaking of "fictive consciousness" I am adapting the terminology of Dorion Cairns.
I shall turn to a final illustration of this thesis, but now a methodologi-

cal interlude is necessary.
Sooner or later all titles must be justified. Curiously enough, the
title for this paper is "Phenomenology and the Theory of Literature."
Those of you who are acquainted with the writings of Edmund Husserl,
the founder of the phenomenological movement, must be wondering
when I will come to a discussion of his views in the exotic language that
is his hallmark. And those who are unacquainted with phenomenology
must have wondered all along when I was going to explain what it
means. The apology lowe both plaintiffs is lost in a private euphoria,
for I consider it a triumph to have fulfilled a promise I made to myself,
to present phenomenology without phenomenological jargon. Apart
from this sentence, my paper contains no mention of intentionality,
phenomenological reduction, epoche, noesis, noema, and the rest of the
phenomenologist's stock in trade. Instead of talking about phenome-
nology, I have tried, within very modest limits, to give some example
of its style and direction.
But with regard to the last part of my title, I find myself thinking
of a course in mathematical logic taught by a famous philosopher.
Toward the end of a semester devoted completely to technical con-
siderations, a student suddenly asked, "But Professor Whitehead, what
has all of this to do with death?" To pick up that magic thread which
will lead us to the theory of literature, we must return to an earlier
distinction. This procedure is in perfect keeping with the established
dictum that whenever a philosopher cannot answer a question, he
draws a distinction. In this case, the distinction is between philosophy
in literature and philosophy of literature. Our discussion of the literary
microcosm and the world of daily life concerned problems of philosophy
in literature. The a prioris underlying the very concept of world were
given in and through the literary work. Now, if we were to explore the
aesthetic issues relevant to the world of the novel, we would then
confront the questions of a philosophy of literature. The ontological
status of the microcosm, the sense in which literature gives us know-
ledge, the truth of the art work - these are typical problems for a
philosophy of literature. The central contribution of phenomenology
to this domain would be a clarification of the essential terms, concepts,
and meanings involved in aesthetic experience through a tracing back
of their epistemic genesis in the activity of consciousness. The dominant
concern would be a description and understanding of the constitution
of the aesthetic object. The a prioris located in the novel would find
their rationale in a phenomenological philosophy of literature.
At the same time, such a discipline would be able to provide a
grounding for a conceptual framework valid for the whole range of
literary art. Such a framework would be what I understand by a theory
of literature. And here, if I interpret these authors correctly, I find
myself in agreement with Wellek and Warren. A theory of literature
for them is a "rationale for the study of literature." 8 Although they
do not utilize a phenomenological approach to their problems, and
despite their distinct, though appreciative criticism of the work of the
Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden, who has written on The
Literary Artwork, I still think that Wellek and Warren have made an
important advance toward the ideal of a philosophically grounded
theory of literature. Rather than attempt the overwhelming task of
expounding a full typology of the problems involved in such a theory,
or outlining the procedures of a phenomenological philosophy of
literature, I have followed a more modest course. In turning to a
concrete problem of philosophy in literature, I have sought to illustrate
the relevance of philosophy for literature. And it is with a final ex-
tension of that illustration that I wish to conclude.
The last scene in The Brothers Karamazov is a triumph over bathos.
Every element of that ending conspires against the author; yet his
genius transcends them all. The death of an innocent, the gathering of
the band of boys who first taunted him and later befriended him, the
memory of that child's humiliation in the humiliation of his father, the
farewell of Alyosha and his speech to the children - all these closing
moments of the novel are fused in a strength and a truth that are
undeniable. The power of that scene is not pedagogic. Alyosha's
message is merely a fragment of gospel transformed in the passion of
Dostoievski's art. Yet the message of love that Aloysha brings to the
children is fresh and mysterious because the horizon in which it is
given is recognized as valid for our world. The point in the story when
the children meet at the stone for Ilusha's grave is not merely the end
of the tale, it is the focus for a movement outward toward life. Their
being there is identified by the death of a child, by the memory of his tor-
ment, and by the horizonalimage of a destruction that implicitly awaits
them all. When Alyosha speaks to the boys, he is prophesying their en-
counter with evil and imploring their goodness. He is predicting the
becoming of their lives and pleading for the preservation of innocence. Of
course, the instructions he gives the children are hopelessly inadequate,
8 \Vellek, R. and Warren, A., Theory of Literature, New York, 1956, 26.
incredibly naive; and that is their overriding strength. The world of

The Brothers meets our own in a moment of epiphany. Taken by
surprise, our shrewdness down, our arguments asleep, our orthodoxies
suspended, we with Alyosha are asked by Dostoievski's child, "Kara-
mazov ... can it be true what's taught us in religion, that we shall all
rise again from the dead and shall live and see each other again, all,
Ilusha too?" 9
• Dostoievski, F., The Bf'otms Kaf'amallov, New York, 940.

9. Existentialism and the Theory oj Literature
Philosophical change, if not progress, may be measured by the nature

and frequency of its embarrassments. An earlier age in Anglo-American
thought was dominated by a passion for the Absolute. Questions con-
cerning the nature of Man, the Cosmos, Life, and Death were familiar
and valid. Even those, like William James, who thumbed their noses
with pluralistic fingers were at home with big issues. Today the scene
has changed. Anyone who went about the smoker of the American
Philosophical Association asking members what their philosophy was
would be considered a crank, a fool, or at best, someone who wasn't in-
terested in a job. If some extraordinarily considerate philosopher were
to venture an answer, it would probably be something of this sort: "If
you mean by 'my philosophy' some grand metaphysical system, I'm
afraid I don't have one. But I can tell you something about the way in
which I approach what I take to be the issues of philosophy." And what
would follow would be an inquiry into the rather strange question
posed in asking about "your philosophy." It would not be surprising if
the questioner were told that his question was a misformulated one, or
even a meaningless one.
I'm not sure that our questioner would fare any better on the
Continent, but I believe he would feel more at home in his disgrace. In
any event, the kinds of questions raised by some contemporary
European thinkers might well appear to him closer to the spirit of his
question. He might be confused by the language of phenomenology and
existentialism, but he would sense in that language a concern for major
themes. Whatever the achievements of contemporary French and
German philosophy, they have at least led to new embarrassments.
Explanations for the new mode of philosophizing are abundant.
102 EXISTENTIALISM AND THEORY OF LITERATURE
Existentialism, for example, is often treated as a side-effect of the

second World War, as a philosophical equivalent of Dada or Futurism,
as, in the words of Louella Parsons, the product of the failure of the
French to read their Bible, or simply as a disease. Fortunately,
existential philosophy in its technical achievement is sufficiently
known today to make further comment on these animadversions
unnecessary. It is to the more serious reactions to existential philosophy
that we must turn. And here the difference between Anglo-American
thought and the philosophy of the Continent is striking in its disparity.
A distinguished British pilosopher told me not long ago of a confer-
ence he had joined in France devoted to phenomenological problems
and attended chiefly by European phenomenologists. "They are very
sweet people," he said, "but quite hopeless philosophically." Soon
after I had a report from the other side. "He's a very nice man," it
was said of the Englishman, "but philosophically naive." The score
sheet for such a misencounter could only read "scratched."
Whatever other reasons may account for the astronomic distance
between the parties involved here, there is, I think, one very basic
difference between them which is worth attending to: the qualitative
wfference in their very sense of reality. In reading Heidegger, Sartre,
and Marcel, I am presented with a world that is essentially dramatic, a
world in which people suffer and dream, in which they triumph and
die. Whatever is given is fringed with the ambiguities of a life involved
in radical choice, tormented commitment, despairing allegiance.
Vanity, pride, deceit, despair, creation and faith are endemic features.
Reality is forceful in its impositions and disguises. Above all, the
quality of existence is alchemic; its substance is magic. A much tidier
reality seems to be given to Anglo-American philosophers. Reading
Ayer, Austin, and Ryle and then their Continental opponents is like
going from a matinee of The I mporlance of Being Earnest to an evening
performance of The Lower Depths. The point is made neatly by Iris
Murdoch when she says of a book by Gilbert Ryle, "The 'world' of The
Concept of Mind is the world in which people play cricket, cook cakes,
make simple decisions, remember their childhood and go to the circus;
not the world in which they commit sins, fall in love, say prayers or
join the Communist Party." 1
My problem now is to probe the sense of reality which existential
philosophy articulates. But before I begin, I must pause for a breath of
explanation. This paper will have as its central concern the implications
1 Murdoch, I., Sarlre: Romantit: Rattonalist, New Haven, 1953,35.
EXISTENTIALISM AND THEORY OF LITERATURE 103
of Jean-Paul Sartre's contributions to aesthetic theory. In particular, I

wish to explore his ideas on the nature of literature. The more general-
ized theme involved here is the relevance of a phenomenologically
grounded existential philosophy for the theory of literature, understood
as a fundamental rationale for literary art. Although I am deeply
indebted to a remarkably conceived and brilliantly executed essay
on "Phenomenology and the Theory of Literature" by an earlier
investigator, the present paper is intended as an independent contri-
bution.
If we turn to literature for an expression of the sense of reality, the

distance between alternative philosophical attitudes is apparent,
indeed unavoidable. But even within an existentially oriented litera-
ture the differences are striking. The work of Camus possesses a Medi-
terranean horizon, a presence of the sea, an indication of lands split off
by air which gives his art an openness into which corruption can
empty without limit. His is essentially a Milesian world. Celine, whose
existential relevance is dubious but nevertheless interesting to consider,
hammers out an Eleatic plenum replete with the evilly condensed
bitterness of a world of malintention, small-time greed, pent or ex-
hausted virulence: the full measure of our insolence, gossip, antagonism,
and being toward craft and guile. Whatever interstices might be caught
in this world are plugged instantaneously with a gummy venom that
saturates the whole. The sense of reality here is unredeemed by even
the hope of love or the memory of friendship. If the absurd can be
transcended for Camus, it can only be endured for Celine as the
inwoven fabric of our being. As his titles tell us, existence is a journey
to the end of night and life is death on the installment plan.
These considerations provide a focus, perhaps, for our theme of the
sense of reality, but they hardly constitute an inroad into the philo-
sophical issues. It is the sense of reality itself which must be existen-
tially interpreted. Perhaps the best place to begin is where I am. I shall
speak for myself. The world I inhabit is from the outset an intersub-
jective one. The language I possess was taught to me by others; the
manners I have I did not invent; whatever abilities, techniques, or
talents I can claim were nourished by a social inheritance; even my
dreams are rooted in a world I never created and can never completely
possess. The texture of this social reality is familiar to me; it seems to
have always been close to me, a necessary companion. I cannot
recapture in its original quality the familiarity of the world which I
experienced as a child; but that I experienced it is so. The forbidding

problem that arises here is when and how the familiarity of the world
became thematized for me as an explicit object of reflection and
concern. Here autobiography can give way to a phenomenology of
discovery. However philosophy began, a philosopher begins in that
privileged moment when the experienced world achieves explicit
thematization in his consciousness, when he for the first time self-
consciously experiences his own being in the world.
Becoming aware of the texture of existence as possessing the under-
lying, implicit quality of being given in a certain way to consciousness
is at least part of the meaning of wonder. And to say that philosophy
begins with wonder may be transposed into the claim that the phi-.
losopher begins as philosopher when his own being becomes a distinct
theme for self-examination. Why there is philosophy at all is a curiously
disturbing question. The attitude of daily life is almost antiphiloso-
phical in its general tenor. The man who says at a moment of crisis or
despair, "We must take things philosophically" is really saying that the
ordinary run of daily life need not be taken philosophically, that it is
only the atypical which requires profound explanation. The underlying
style of daily life, then, involves an unconscious suspension of doubt. 2
But more than this, common sense projects a world that is reassuring
in its typicality. The very objects of that world are seen in the horizon
of the familiar. An illustration from the realm of painting may help.
As I write this, I am looking at a set of reproductions entitled "A

Norman Rockwell Album." The Editor of The Saturday Evening Post
introduces the sketches with these words: "It is no exaggeration to say
that Norman Rockwell is the most popular, the most loved, of all
contemporary artists." I am sure he is, and looking over these examples
of his art tells me why. The legends under each painting are cross
sections of mundane existence typically apprehended. "Thanksgiving,
1951" depicts a woman and child seated in a cheap restaurant, sur-
Z We are indebted here to Alfred Schutz. In his article "On Multiple Realities" in Philoso·
phy and Phenomenological Resea1'ch, V, June l:945, on pp. 55O-55l: he writes: "Phenomenology
has taught us the concept of phenomenological epoclN, the suspension of our belief in the
reality of the world as a device to overcome the natural attitude by radicalizing the Cartesian
method of philosophical doubt. The suggestion may be ventured that man with the natural
attitude also uses a specific epoclN, of course quite another one than the phenomenologist. He
does not suspend belief in the outer world and its object but on the contrary: he suspends
doubt in its existence. What he puts in brackets is the doubt that the world and its objects
might be otherwise than it appears to him. We propose to call this epoclN the epoclN of the
natfl1'al attitude. ,.
rounded by truck drivers and working people who stare at them as they
pause, their hands locked together, saying a silent prayer of thanks-
giving. "The Inexperienced Traveler" presents us with a little boy
seated alone in the diner of a railroad train, ordering for the first time
probably, while the colored waiter stands by with a loving smile.
"The Satisfied Swimmer" tells us the story of the salesman who has
stopped his car by a stream one hot August day and has taken a dip,
just as he must have done at the old swimming hole of childhood. The
other titles tell their own stories: "Off to College," "The Facts of Life,"
"The Sick Dolly," and a weary so on. Each item depicted is as clear as
Mr. Rockwell's signature on the painting. His technical skill returns us
to the fat blackness of the physician's medical bag, the creases in the
leather of his old-fashioned high shoes. Nor is there any chance for
misunderstanding. We know that he is a physician because the signs of
his profession are directly given: his stethoscope, his diploma, his
medical books. Similarly, we are able to identify the "satisfied swim-
mer." His car shows the emblem of the company he represents, his bow
tie and eyeglasses and cigar are clearly in view. And if everything else
failed to place him, that grin of his would recall the sunny face of
every salesman we ever met. Mr. Rockwell's talent gives us the world
we look at but never see. The simplest element of that world, the
slightest detail is seen for us, not by us. These faces are the nonchalant
equivalent of figures from a wax museum nobody would ever knowingly
enter, for there are no stinkers in Mr. Rockwell's world.
If the realm of anonymity will not do, how then is the reality of our
lives given? Philosophy and art, in some of their forms at least, have
suggested an answer. The challenge is to be shrewdly naive, to learn to
stop looking and to begin seeing. We must, in the language of phe-
nomenology, return to "the things themselves" of our experience.
Whatever else Husserl means by this advice, he is suggesting that the
given in experience cannot be gotten at second hand, through the lens
of the family camera or through borrowed binoculars. It is necessary to
rediscover the given for yourself in its immediate quality, as given, as
presented directly in the focus of awareness. Consciousness as a
movement toward, as a directionality, is the root concept of phenome-
nology, and it provides as well the key to Sartre's form of existential
philosophy. The sense of reality, the rediscovery of what is given in
experience, is made explicit in Sartre's description of consciousness.
That description will lead us ultimately to the formulation of his
aesthetic.
In his essay on "The Transcendence of the Ego," Sartre presents

what has been termed a "non-egological" conception of consciousness.
Stripped of phenomenological jargon, his argument amounts to this:
there is no self behind the activity of consciousness. The ego is located
as out there, in the world, and my ego is encountered in the same way
that I encounter the ego of another. Consciousness is directional in its
very nature because it hurls from its vortex the meanings, attitudes,
interpretations, and qualities we then claim to be "ours." I discover
myself in my acts, and if I try to knock on my own door with the
expectation of being greeted by an interior resident, I am destined
to disappointment. "When I run after a streetcar," Sartre writes,
"when I look at the time, when I am absorbed in contemplating a
portrait, there is no I. There is consciousness of the streetcar-having-to-
be-overtaken . ... In fact, I am then plunged into the world of objects; it
is they which constitute the unity of my consciousness; it is they which
present themselves with values, with attractive and repellant qualities
- but me, I have disappeared; I have annihilated myself. There is no
place for me on this leveL And this is not a matter of chance, due to a
momentary lapse of attention, but happens because of the very
structure of consciousness." 3 The I or ego arises only through a
reflexive act, as the result of reflecting on the original directional
activity of consciousness. It is as though I unexpectedly encountered
my face in a wall mirror and said, "Oh, there you are!" Prior to the
ego, then, is an original activity of consciousness which is the condition
for the possibility of reflection and the peculiar quality of our being in
the world.
The lucidity of consciousness, however, is fundamentally betrayed
not only by the typifications of common sense but by an epistemic
disjunction: the break-up of awareness into a subject-object dualism.
As soon as a here-there sort of attitude filters into a philosophic
perspective, everything is organized into a self as subject and the thing
known as object. And when this happens, a fatal gap divides awareness
into a double camp. For Sartre, the directionality of consciousness
means above all that this dualism is not only dispensable but false. The
object is not at distance from me, it does not subsist over there. These
threats I hear announced are not apart from me, the thousand living
movements of the world, its scandals and treasures are not messengers
from the outside; they are all known, observed, comprehended, enter-
tained as an integral part of my awareness. They are mine precisely
3 Sartre, J.·P" The Tt·anscendence of the Ego, 48-49.
EXISTENTIALISM AND THEORY OF LITERATURE I07
because they manifest themselves as moments of consciousness, as

meant unities in the flow of my temporal being. In a word, Sartre has
erased the distance between consciousness and the world. Henceforth,
solipsism and realism are cop arts of a single untruth; existentialism
transcends them both.
Reality, then, is given by way of consciousness. There is no need to

attend to the relative contributions of mind and matter because the
fused world Sartre presents antedates both categories. It makes
possible, for the first time perhaps, a full realization of the existential
sense of reality. Returning to "the things themselves" means attending
to the given in experience precisely as it is given, neither altering for the
sake of appearances nor forgetting for the sake of propriety. The task is
to see even the barest fragment of our lives in utter nakedness, to see it
"in person." Such seeing is the beginning of art. The astonishments
of van Gogh and Cezanne, of Dostoievski and Kafka are phenome-
nologies of the world unbetrayed by sensibility or understanding. They
move tropistically toward the given. This movement toward reality, this
insistence on attending to the sheer quality of the achievement of
consciousness is the victory of a phenomenologically grounded ex-
istential philosophy, but it has been sensed by a variety of writers. I
hope that both Husserl and Sartre would recognize their deepest
motives in the rhetoric of James Agee. "For in the immediate world,"
he writes, "everything is to be discerned, for him who can discern it,
and centrally and simply, without either dissection into science, or
digestion into art, but with the whole of consciousness, seeking to
perceive it as it stands: so that the aspect of a street in sunlight can
roar in the heart of itself as a symphony, perhaps as no symphony can:
and all of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to
the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiance of what is." 4
The phenomenological sense of reality arises in existential
literature in several ways. First, we are presented with reality as the
magical product of consciousness situated in the world; second, there is
a kind of metalinguistic reflection or commentary on the affairs of
consciousness. The given is both presented and reflexively considered.
The contrapuntal effect attained in this way leads to an internal
questioning of the literary work. This self-interrogation finds its stylistic
form in the confession, the diary, the embattled monologue. Notes
Irom Underground is the clearest expression of this mode of self-exami-
• Agee, J. and Evans. V'i., Let Us Now Praise Famous M'en, BOstOll, 1941, II.
nation. What is at issue here is not the paradoxalist, but the trembling
status of every particular he encounters. Once the horizon of typicality
has been abandoned or transcended, each fragment of experience takes
on multiple possibilities for interpretation. Signs of the world proliferate
and darken; their very being wavers and the given turns problematic.
But rather than an endless manufacture of particulars, it is their
underlying essences which become manifest. To put the matter
phenomenologically, the "irrealization" of the particular is the con-
dition for the possibility of seeing the universal.
The logician's distinction between token and type may serve as an
illustration of what is meant by irrealization. Your copy and my copy
of the same edition of Euclid's Elements have, we say, the same geo-
metrical figures on the same pages. The triangle that appears on the
upper right hand portion of page 89 is the same triangle that appears
on the corresponding part of the page in your copy. Obviously, there
are two triangles being compared, yet we commonly say that they are
the same triangle. They are tokens of the same type. Just as we must
not confuse the token with its type, sowe must not confound the print-
ed illustration of the type with the ideal object it represents. We cannot,
strictly speaking, draw triangles at all. The visual aids we use are
merely graphic conveniences. Yet we do not, or at least should not see
the tokens as tokens when we do geometry. As an eidetic scientist, the
geometrician sees through the token to the type. He manipulates
tokens in order to comprehend the relations of types. We may say that
he irrealizes the token in apprehending the type.
Is there an analogue of this procedure in existential literature ? I am
suggesting that self-interrogation, the reflexive concern of the exis-
tential hero is a comparable activity. The paradoxalist strikes the
particular from its pedestal of typicality and confronts the ruins of his
act. Seeing through the multiple facets of the given he creates, the
interior questioner exposes their essential features. But even more than
this, he irrealizes the world and constitutes the realm of the imaginary.
Again, existential literature both presents this remarkable action and
provides a commentary on it. The commentary will lead us back to the
act. But first of all, what do we mean by the "imaginary" ?
Sartre, in the tradition of phenomenology, distinguishes three related

but quite different structures: memory, anticipation, and imagination.
Something remembered, something anticipated, and something
imagined are not three variations on the same perceptual theme; they
are radically different modes of awareness. When I remember, I
recapture a state of affairs that is real in the mode of the past: what I
remember happened, and it is that happening, now past, which I search
for in memory. The past event is not an unreality but a reality whose
mode of being is its being past. "The handshake of Peter of last
evening in leaving me," Sartre writes, "did not turn into an unreality as
it became a thing of the past: it simply went into retirement; it is always
real but past. It exists past, which is one mode of real existence among
others."5 But if I anticipate shaking hands with Peter tomorrow, the
anticipated handshake is not there waiting for me to join up with it;
rather, it is not there. To anticipate that handshake means to posit
it as though it were here, to treat it as here in a fugitive sense. This
subjunctive presentation is close, in some of its forms, to the consti-
tution of nothingness. Anticipation involves the detachment of the
future from the present to which it is bound and presenting it to
myself.6 In imagination, however, I posit nothingness, I posit Peter as
an unreality. It is only by a fundamental negation of the real that I
imagine shaking hands with him. Imagination is an act of wrenching
oneself from the reality of the world; it is a disengagement from my
being-in-the-world made possible through a simultaneous affirmation
of that world. "In order to imagine," Sartre writes, "consciousness
must be free from all specific reality and this freedom must be able to
define itself by a 'being-in-the-world' which is at once the constitution
and the negation of the world; the concrete situation of the conscious-
ness in the world must at each moment serve as the singular motivation
for the constitution of the unreal." 7
It is this simultaneous affirmation and negation of being-in-the-
world which so much existential literature illustrates and explores. The
particulars given in a situation are exploded by consciousness into a
kind of shrapnel. Each character not only interprets the fragments of
his experience but causes them to be. By irrealizing their ordinary
mundane signification, the existential hero brings into being their
essential qualities. These qualities arise against the background of
the world, but that world is negated in the moment in which it is
affirmed and is affirmed in the moment of its negation. The characters
of the novel cause their world to be. In positing the unreality of their
acts, they secrete the imaginary. It would seem from these remarks
5 Sartre, ].-P., The Psychology ot Imagination, New York, 1948, 263.

8 ibid., 264-265.
7 ibid., 269-270.
no EXISTENTIALISM AND THEORY OF LITERATURE
that a kind of literary solipsism is being advanced, that novels write

themselves and read themselves and then put themselves away. To be
misled here would mean that the imaginary has been treated apart
from the imagining consciousness of the author and reader. This is not
the case. What has been said so far about the imaginary is a shorthand
for a full account of the relationship of the reader to the literary work.
Without that relationship, in fact, the microcosm of literature would
collapse. The being of the characters in the novel has all along been our
being; their world is our responsibility. "The literary object," Sartre
writes, "has no other substance than the reader's subjectivity; Ras-
kolnikov's waiting is my waiting which I lend him. Without this
impatience of the reader he would remain only a collection of signs.
His hatred of the police magistrate who questions him is my hatred
which has been solicited and wheedled out of me by signs, and the
police magistrate himself would not exist without the hatred I have for
him via Raskolnikov. That is what animates him, it is his very flesh." 8
The reader, too, is limited in his creativity. If the microcosm of The
Trial depends on his participating consciousness, it is no less the case
that participation must be along restricted lines. Everything will not do.
Sartre tells us that the degree of realism and truth of Kafka's mytho-
logy is never given. "The reader must invent them ... in a continual
exceeding of the written thing." 9 But "to be sure," he adds, "the
author guides him." 10 Thus Kafka demands that we become responsi-
ble for his world, but that world remains his. The text of The Trial may
be understood as a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the
constitution of the art work. In order to see how we are at once free yet
restricted by the novel, we must attend to its status as an aesthetic
object. All of our considerations so far have led to this problem. In
approaching Sartre's aesthetic we are at the same time exploring a
possible line of connection between philosophy and literature. Or to
put the matter in a different way, we shall be interested in the relevance
of aesthetics for the theory of literature.
Suppose we get a rough summary statement of Sartre's aesthetic
before us. It is something like this. The novel is an aesthetic object in
so far as the reader moves from the descriptions given in the book to
the imaginary microcosm toward which they point. The story by itself
is not enough to reach the fictive world it promises. The characters,
8 Sartre, J.-P., What is Literature?, New York, 1949,45.

9 ibid.
10 $bid.
EXISTENTIALISM AND THEORY OF LITERATURE III
events, general action are all analogues, in Sartre's language, which

may lead us to the aesthetic object. It is always possible to read fiction
as a report of real events, or to read an historical account as fiction.
The pronouncements, questions, and won de rings of Joseph K. are
merely clues or guides to the microcosm of The Trial. If I take the
descriptions of the life of Joseph K. as a report of true happenings or if
I simply note what is said in the way in which adults at breakfast may
read the messages to children on the backs of cereal boxes, then
an imaginative consciousness is not functioning. The movement toward
the aesthetic object is short-circuited. I find myself merely with a book
in my hands.
The necessary condition for the constitution of the aesthetic object is

that an imaginative consciousness posit it as unreal.1 1 "It is self-
evident," Sartre writes, "that the novelist, the poet and the dramatist
construct an unreal object by means of verbal analogues; it is also self-
evident that the actor who plays Hamlet makes use of himself, of his
whole body, as an analogue of the imaginary person. '" The actor does
not actually consider himself to be Hamlet. But this does not mean that
he does not 'mobilize' all his powers to make Hamlet real. He uses all
his feelings, all his strength, all his gestures as analogues of the feelings
and conduct of Hamlet. But by this very fact he takes the reality away
from them. He lives completely in an unreal way. And it matters little
that he is actually weeping in enacting the role. These tears ... he him-
self experiences - and so does the audience - as the tears of Hamlet,
that is as the analogue of unreal tears ... The actor is completely
caught up, inspired, by the unreal. It is not the character who becomes
real in the actor, it is the actor who becomes unreal in his character." 12
Such, in outline, is Sartre's account of the constitution of the aesthetic
object. It is, of course, unfair to refer simply to his "aesthetic"; he
offers no aesthetic, merely some nuclear hints which, if developed,
would lead to a systematic theory. But these hints are enough, if taken
in the context of his total position, to warrant serious consideration.
How much of lasting value does Sartre offer here?
The central achievement, it seems to me, is the phenomenological
uncovering of the imaginary as the informing structure of the literary
microcosm. The imaginary is not found but constituted by conscious-
ness. And the essential character of imagination consists in its negation
11 The Psycholof,~' 0.1 Imagination. 277.
12 ib,:d .. 277-278.
I:I2 EXISTENTIALISM AND THEORY OF LITERATURE
of mundane existence. My being-in-the-world carries with it all along

the possibility of its nihilation. In different terms, the imaginary is
the implicit margin surrounding the horizon of the real. Just as the
child is destined to discover his gift for dreaming, so the adult lives in
a world whose limits will be announced by his imagination. But the
condition for the imaginary is the paramount reality of worldly
existence. It is because the imaginary is unreal that it can be deciphered.
The decoding presupposes the natural language from which it was
translated and transposed. Without the real the unreal is unthinkable,
indeed unimaginable. Art, the province of the imaginary, returns us to
reality and to the theme with which we began, the sense of reality. It is
time to close the accordion.
The sense of reality, being-in-reality, the irrealization of the par-
ticular, the return to "the things themselves" are all problematic
aspects of an aesthetic whose dominant concern is the constitution of
the aesthetic object. If, as reader, I cause there to be the imaginary by
disengaging mundane existence, then I assume an epistemic responsi-
bility for the art work. "You are perfectly free to leave that book on
the table," Sartre writes, "but if you open it, you assume responsibility
for it." 13 The true meaning of responsibility here, however, is founded
on the directional activity of consciousness. Causing there to be the
imaginary means that I move from the world to the horizon of its
unreality; I discover the limits of the mundane, and in transcending
those limits I affirm the very reality I have outdistanced. It is con-
sciousness which holds the clue to reality; consciousness is the secret of
ontology. Again Sartre's debt to phenomenology is great. His con-
ception of consciousness can be understood only if we return once
again to Husserl.
The non-egological theory of consciousness which Sartre advances
denies Husserl's doctrine of a transcendental ego supporting or
directing the acts of awareness. All knowledge is still knowledge 01
something, all memory is memory 01 something, all anticipation is anti-
cipation 01 something, and all imagining is imagining 01 something. But
the full weight is given over to the act within whose structure the meant
object is located. The object of the act of consciousness is regarded neutral-
ly; I neither affirm nor deny its real being, its objective status, its causal
relations. In concerning myself phenomenologically with the act of
awareness, I make a decision to attend only to what is presented, as it
is presented. My ordinary believing in the world, my knowledge of its
18 What is Literalvre?, 48.
EXISTENTIALISM AND THEORY OF LITERATURE II3
historical past, its scientific explanation, are all set aside for present
purposes. In virtue of this reflexive attention I decide to pay to the
stream of my own awareness, I uncover a pure field of essential
relations. The objects given in that field comprise my phenomenological
data. What Sartre has done with this Husserlian doctrine is to reject
its transcendental condition in affirming its sovereign status. The data
of consciousness are intrinsic aspects of the directionality of conscious-
ness. My responsibility for the given is absolute. It arises and is
sustained through my epistemic fiat. And since, according to Sartre,
the "I" or ego is found in and through the acts of consciousness as a
product of reflection, in the same way in which a fellow man is located,
I am thrown out of the vortex of consciousness into the being of the
world. Sartre quotes Rimbaud with approval: "I is an other." 14
The total result, then, of Sartre's version of a phenomenology of
consciousness is to rid mind of a transcendental agent and make the
acts of awareness the sole domain of our being-in-the-world. Conscious-
ness is worldly to begin with, and its activity is thrown outward in the
midst of the human condition. It is the doctrine of the directionality
of consciousness which alone can account for the existentialist's sense
of reality. Sartre has removed us from our place in the endless waiting
line of the Hegelian Absolute, stamped our ticket, and put us on the
train. With him we are en route. Far from phenomenology leading to a
philosophical idealism, an avoidance of the brute features of existence,
Sartre maintains that the victory of phenomenology is in a completely
different direction. "The phenomenologists," he writes, "have plunged
man back into the world; they have given full measure to man's
agonies and sufferings, and also to his rebellions." 15
I t might seem that phenomenology and existentialism offer a very
long way around to their final point. Is it really necessary to provide a
theory of consciousness in order to read novels and plays and poems
with full sensitivity? Even in the literature of the existential writers, is
it necessary to study Being and Nothingness as an endless footnote to
Nausea? Must there always be categories? This complaint has a
cousin who asks similar questions: Is a theory of literature really
necessary? Why can't we read a poem as a poem, and let it go at that?
A just answer to these criticisms would require first that we have a solid
formulation of the problems of the theory of literature. We don't. The
only defense possible here must proceed along other lines. It seems to
14 The Transcendence oj the Ego, 97.
15 ibid., lOS.
II4 EXISTENTIALISM AND THEORY OF LITERATURE
me that what must be defended is the relevance of philosophy for

literature. And the only way of doing this is to explain the nature and
necessity of theory.
When a blunt, robust, and fair-minded critic waves away abstractions

and urges us to attend to the concrete work of art, how are we to follow
his advice? Is the poem the printed token that appears on my copy or
his? Should I recite the lines or listen to somebody else read them? Will
diligent study locate a normative structure of some sort which we will
agree is the poem as the author meant it, or as it might be understood,
or as it must be interpreted? Can we wave these cautions aside as
abstractions, too? With all the good will and fairness of mind I can
muster, I must confess that the critic's directions confuse me. But
worse, I cannot discuss these confusions in his presence; he will not
hear of them. The critic who does attend to my worries attends to my
theorizing, and the discipline which tries to formulate, clarify, and
resolve these torments is the theory of literature. Abandoned by the
man who will not hear of categories, I find some intellectual solace in
reading Wellek and Warren. Perhaps, as Marcel remarks of Jaspers, "I
can only proceed in this kind of country by calling out to other travel-
lers." 16
Unfortunately, the situation in contemporary philosophy is equally
unsettling. The philosophical problem of communication, the problem
of intersubjectivity, has given way to the conversational silence held
between analytically oriented philosophers and those sympathetic to
phenomenology and existentialism. We are back to that conference of
phenomenologists which the English philosopher attended. It is
curious that most attempts to explain the gap between the opposed
camps rely on psychology. Differences in temperament are noted;
some even turn to psychoanalysis for guidance. But the psychology of
philosophers, however interesting and fruitful it might prove to be,
cannot satisfy us. Splits in philosophy are themselves philosophical
problems. If I cannot account for the division today between so much
of Anglo-American and Continental philosophy, I can at least describe
a few of its features.
Much analytic philosophy attends very seriously to the formulation
of philosophical assertions. Language has become a leading concern,
and the ordinary language of everyday discourse has been analyzed in
remarkable detail. Whatever the results of this analysis, it can at
18 Marcel, G., The Philosophy oj Existence, London, 1949, 29.
EXISTENTIALISM AND THEORY OF LITERATURE II5
least be said that it is guided by certain suspicions. The great treatises
of Bradley and Bosanquet have given way to more modest, less
Germanic ventures; the style is crisp, the sentences clearly structured,
the movement of the argument distinctly articulated. Although
literary styles vary among analytic philosophers, some of them seem to
strive for an almost schoolboy effect: titles are quite short, illustrations
are often bits of casual dialogue, the manner is tart. We cannot ask,
What manner of men write these works?, but we must pose another
question: What sense of reality informs these writings? Instead of
generalizing, I prefer to restrict myself to one analytic philosopher of
great distinction who has said something about his way of regarding
the world. I can think of no better way of pointing to everything
phenomenology and existentialism are not than to quote G. E. Moore
when he writes: "I do not think that the world ... would ever have
suggested to me any philosophical problems. What has suggested
philosophical problems to me is things which other philosophers
have said about the world ... " 17 This is not intended as an admission
but as an affirmation. It must surely be considered one of the remar-
kable embarrassments of our age.
17 The PhilosoPhy of G. E. Moore (ed. by Paul Arthur Schilpp), The Library of Living
Philosophers, IV, Evanston and Chicago, 1942, 14. I note that this quotation, cited more
fully, and the one from Iris Murdoch referred to above appear also in Walter Kaufmann's
Critique of Religion and Philosophy, New York, 1958.
IO. Existential Categories In Contemporary Literature
Presenting a paper on existentialism is somewhat like escorting a lady

of rather dubious reputation to a party: the half-smiles and half-
concealed glances are matched by an absorbing interest in the new-
comer, and there is a nervousness in the discussion. Among philosophers
the tenn "existentialism" is unique in this respect: no other term can
make philosophers smile. What they are smiling about remains a
mystery; that they smile, however, is no less mysterious. Again, there is
a nervousness which teases about the subject, and which, in the end, is
often all that ever emerges from the discussion. But even where
existential philosophy is given a more serious hearing, the sense of
mystery never quite vanishes; it transposes itself instead into an almost
eschatological expectancy, the awaiting of a resolute answer to the
jocular yet desperate question, "Well, what exactly is existentialism?"
Unfortunately, most goodwilled and competent efforts to answer this
question are blocked at the outset by misunderstandings, mistaken pre-
conceptions on the part of the questioner. Moreover, the questioner too
often falls into one of several patterns. Perhaps the best way of intro-
ducing my conception of existential philosophy is by indicating, briefly,
some of the typical objections raised against it and then proceeding
to a positive statement of what I take to be the "real thing."
From among the many typical challenges extended to existentialism,
I'd like to select four examples: First, the objection is made that
existentialism is the product of post-war despair, the nihilism of a
shattered Europe, or, to cite a variation of this theme, the distorted,
violent world of the resistance movement, the underground. The point
intended here is that this is not philosophy but at best an unhappy
feature of a passing despair generated out of the cruelty of war. A
EXISTENTIAL CATEGORIES IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE II7
second objection is argued in a very different way. It is agreed that
there are some serious philosophical themes explored by existentialists
but that all the shouting, the publicity, the stir is undeserved, since
whatever is valuable here is not new but old. It was all said before by
Socrates, by Augustine, by Montaigne, hy Pascal or at the very least
by Hegel, who said everything. Existentialism is then merely a new
version of very old ideas. Still another pattern of objection stresses the
ambivalence of existential ideas, their unhealthy mixture of philosophi-
cal and literary categories, their academic duplicity. The existentialist
woos the student of literature with philosophy and the philosopher
with literature. This is scandalous. Finally, it is objected that ex-
istentialism is neither philosophy nor literature but what can only be
termed a mystique. Here the emphasis is on existentialism as a move-
ment which attracts a variety of marginal figures: intellectual drifters,
bohemians, politicos, faith seekers, and assorted magicians and wizards
from the arts. This too is scandalous.
The fundamental inadequacy of most of these charges is clear in at
least an historical sense, for it is surely the case that there is no philo-
sophical position which is "existentialism"; instead there are a number
of existentialist philosophers who represent existentialism in very
different ways. It is obvious, first of all, that existential philosophy,
whatever its ancient or classical roots, is at least as old as its modern
father, S0ren Kierkegaard, who lived during the first half of the Igth
century. Kierkegaard can hardly be accused of being generated out of
post-second world war nihilism. Furtiler, it is no secret that there are
both theistic and atheistic varieties of existential philosophy, the
former having Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish subvarieties. Finally, a
Kierkegaardian-inspired existentialism is quite different from Sartrean
and Heideggerian philosophy, at least in some of its major motives and
themes. An understanding of Socrates and Hegel would help greatly in
appreciating Kierkegaard, whereas a thorough knowledge of the
phenomenology of Edmund Husserl is necessary to read Sartre and
Heidegger with understanding. If we turn from the historical to the
systematic dimension of problems, it is still the case that there is nothing
that can be called "existentialism" without serious qualifications. Such
existential themes as man's aloneness are matched by an emphasis on
community, as in the thought of Martin Buber. Concern with anguish
in Heidegger and Sartre is matched by the examination of hope in the
writings of Gabriel Marcel. The search for essential themes and atti-
tudes becomes more complex the more carefully one reads the history of
IIS EXISTENTIAL CATEGORIES IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
existential philosophy. One point, I think, is evident: the charges

against existentialism just discussed are, in a very real sense, issued
against a phantom. No one has ever seen "existentialism," only
existentialists, and they derive from a rather complex history which
must be delineated carefully before very much can be said about
existentialism that is meaningful. These remarks, however, have not
faced one of the four patterns, the charge of old wine in new bottles.
The best way of meeting this point, I think, is to tum to a positive
statement of what existential philosophy is, and to see then whether
anything distinctively new is suggested. Once we get a coherent notion
ofthe meaning of existential philosophy we then have won our right to
proceed to an exploration of certain problems in contemporary litera-
ture.
What I take to be central and decisive for all existentialist philosophy
is a concern for what I wish to call man's being in reality. I am trying,
first of all, to describe a phenomenon given to consciousness, an
experiential structure for all human beings, not some mystical aware-
ness granted to a chosen few. The phenomenon I am dealing with is
open, public, available, and evident, but the description of it depends
first upon ridding ourselves of a certain deeply rooted attitude,
suffusing consciousness, which renders being in reality obscure to the
point of hopelessness for the philosopher committed to its articulation.
Suppose I proceed by a general statement of what I understand by the
idea of being in reality and follow then with an illustrative explanation.
Being in reality is the location of the self as there in any moment of
the flow of temporal consciousness. Being ~'there" is an underived and
irreducible datum given directly to consciousness. The placement
"there" refers to an awareness of the self in reality as such, in reality as
the total reference, the complete remainder when I subtract myself
from all that there is. The clarification of being in reality requires a
preliminary inquiry into the component words "being," "in," and
"reality." By "being" I mean here the activity of consciousness; I
understand consciousness as directive, in movement, intentional in the
broadest sense of that term. Furthermore, "being" is always my being,
my consciousness, my openness and presence to the world. I am in
reality in the sense of involvement rather than spatial placement. The
"in" is not "inside," not "within"; rather I am in the world of my
activity and awareness as the agency of choice and action,as the
support, finally, for the object of my consciousness. The last term,
"reality," is the broadest frame I can express for what there is, the
EXISTENTIAL CATEGORIES IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE IIg
total, the inclusive all for my consciousness. It is no part of "world" or

"universe" but all that my horizon of awareness leads me toward. Now
let me try to say this again in a different way.
Being in a concrete situation of any type, being involved in specific,
limited action of any order, presupposes my being involved. To be
involved, then, is itself a structure of experience which demands its
own explanation. But to be involved, quite apart from what I am
involved in, to be involved as such, presupposes my presence in the
world and my being in reality. Before I become interested in this or
that, concerned with such and such a problem, involved in one thing or
another, I am in a reality in which all these specifics manifest themselves.
My point is that there is a ground, a fundamental structure which is the
necessary condition for there being specificities in experience; that
ground is what I have termed being in reality. And being in reality is
not merely a logical requirement or conceptual device in explaining the
meaning of my experience, it is, above all, a datum given to me in
immediate awareness, given as sui generis.
Let me try it a third time. We know, in common-sense fashion, what
being here or there means, and we know what it means to be in typical
situations: the classroom, the market, the shop, the library, the
town square. Physical presence and psychological presence in these
sorts of places are indicated through the "yes" or "no" answer to the
question, Were you there? or Are you here? Thus I am in a room, in an
argument, in a quandary, and in a situation in essentially the same sense,
whatever the obvious differences are. In each case the description of
the structure of being in is dominated by certain kinds of questions which
reveal the level involved. Did you answer "present" when the roll was
called? Did you get the better of him? Did you decide what to do? Did
you succeed? In each case these questions are defined by their limits,
by their being understood as having limits, as encompassing only a
sector of our world and a segment of our experience. When I speak of
being in reality, however, everything is at once different. My being in
reality cannot be circumscribed by specific questions; my being in
reality does not take a particular stratum or sector of experience, and
my being in reality cannot be articulated through lines of analysis
which presuppose the very object at issue, reality in the sense of all
that there is. Being in reality is a fundamental givenness in my
experience which occupies the unique position of being basic to all
concrete events and to all particular situations. It is the cardinal
presupposition of there being experience at all.
J20 EXISTENTIAL CATEGORIES IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Now some explanation may help. Let each one of us try to locate,
through active experiment, what I claim is a possible datum for
experience. In what way may I locate my being in reality? First of all,
it is necessary to be clear about the way in which we are going to
pursue being in reality. I am not suggesting that we are to enter upon a
metaphysical treasure hunt. What is at issue is a concrete datum; the
problem is to overcome certain root-attitudes which obscure this datum
and render it unavailable. Thus it is not a question of sharpening some
special sense, of looking in some extraordinary comer of the mind, or of
locating the philosopher's stone. What is called for, above all, is that
each one of us examine his style of being in the world at the level of
ordinary, common-sense life, so that the philosophical character of that
level of experience be clarified. If that can be done, I maintain that at
least a necessary condition for possession of the datum is fulfilled and
that we are close to the goal. What, then, is it that the character of
common-sense life is going to reveal which will make being in reality
understandable? The direct answer is curious: the mark of common-
sense life, the very essence of its style of being, is its failure to make it-
self an object for its oWn inspection. Common-sense life does not reflect
upon common-sense life; at best it makes some particular event within
the stream of daily life a topic for analysis and reflective scrutiny. That
common-sense life has a style, has an essential structure, is an insight
that necessarily transcends the understanding of common-sense men.
We may at various times see ourselves as we are engaged in an activity
- the barber for a moment aware of himself as barber, the waiter self-
consciously grasping his act of moving to the left of the person he is
about to serve, the concert goer fleetingly aware of himself as a concert
goer - but we never place the whole of our common-sense attitude itself
in question. Yet it is exactly that absolute awareness of the style of our
being in common-sense life which must be made an obj ect for inspection
if the datum of being in reality is to be gotten. And this is the most
difficult of all tasks, largely because grasping what it is that is required
of us is exactly the problem. There is a built-in mechanism of protection
in the stream of daily life which guards against this awareness; philoso-
phy is an effort to crack this barrier. Existential philosophy is a force
directed against this most subtle of all barricades.
The initial step then in coming to an understanding of our being in
reality is the absolute, the overpowering obstacle; it is to place in
radical question the very meaning of our way of living in day to day
existence. And here difficulties proliferate. Not only is the sense of
EXISTENTIAL CATEGORIES IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 121
daily life, what I have called its style, cunningly elusive, but the typical
ways in which we in daily life try to explain ourselves and our lives are
charged with prejudices of a distinctive sort - philosophical commit-
ments we are unaware of, emblems of our time. The typical analysis to
which I refer might be given the block title of the psychologistic or
scientistic attitude, i.e., a basic way of explaining phenomena by
tracing out their genetic origins. Something is "explained" in this sense
when how it came to be, how it arose, has been made evident. The
qualitative character, the what of the phenomenon is said to be appreci-
ated when the how and the why of its coming into being are accounted
for systematically. If we proceed in this way, the problem of being in
reality is transposed into something utterly different, the psychological
question of what accounts for our having such an experience. The
methodological character of such a transposition is evidenced in its
causal mode of analysis. To account for the phenomenon psychologisti-
cally is first of all to look to its genetic history in causal terms. When
the causal series is thoroughly clarified, the phenomenon is said to be
explained. In all of this, the qualitative what being described is gone,
for it vanished at the outset, or better, was eliminated.
In order to gain access to the phenomenon of being in reality then, I
insist that we must, for purposes of our analysis, set aside the whole of
the causal-genetic mode of analysis characteristic of natural science
and its methods. We must return to the phenomenon in its givenness;
we must make a radical effort to, quite literally, see what gives itself
directly to consciousness. The prime step in getting at the datum we
seek is a purposeful bracketing of what we know about ourselves and
our world from the sources of science, history, psychology, and all other
systems of explanation. We must seek the purely given features of
consciousness, what directly presents itself. That this is difficult to do,
I grant; that it is strange, I admit; that it is impossible or purposeless,
I deny. If we can, right now, at least get a notion of what is at issue, I
think the effort of our experimenting will be rewarded.
I begin, then, and so must you in experimental spirit, by trying to
focus upon the general character of my - your - style of being in daily
life, not on this or that event or problem, but on the total range of
existence. At the outset I purposely set aside my commitments to
particular ways of interpreting the world and I decide not to permit
myself the wicked lUXUry of invoking causal-genetic categories of
explanation. I am trying to look at my world as it directly gives itself to
consciousness. What I have left behind, what I have bracketed, what I
122 EXISTENTIAL CATEGORIES IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
am doing without now interests me, for I find myself confronting

reality in a completely fresh, original way. The world in this sense can
no longer be explained by giving its history, the scientific laws which
describe its behaviour, or by tracing out the why and how of its
development; and I have no discipline or system or person to count on
for my understanding. I am now directly confronted with reality and I
find myself in this world with its complex horizons; I find myself as a
being in reality.
This is as far as I can go within the limits of this paper. But if what I
have struggled to explain is suggestive to you at all of the problem
involved and if you get some sense of the philosophical roots of the
issue, then what follows will be meaningful in a particular way:
something of the relationship between philosophy and literature will
have been illuminated. If we have at least pointed to the datum of
being in reality, if we are at worst in the suburbs of its locale, we have a
feeling for what we have abandoned or set by the wayside. At this
moment we must grasp ourselves as being in reality. This means that
apart from our historical and cultural heritage, apart from our personal
histories, apart from all scientific categories of explanation, we simply
are, we locate ourselves in reality. The original theme of our common-
sense lives has been rendered an object for inspection. And we are now
in a position to ask what existential philosophy does with the datum it
has located and to decide whether all this effort will bring forth
something splendid.
My thesis has been that existential philosophy is properly defined as
having as its crucial concern man's being in reality. Those who want to
get the meaning of this without going through the exasperation of its
philosophical signification are asking for trouble. I prefer to think that
there are among us no men of resentment. Having made an effort to
explain something of the philosophical problems at issue, I want now
to turn to some of the implications of my thesis, and in particular to the
categories which are intimately related to man's being in reality.
The broadest pUblicity given to existentialism emphasizes its
dramatic categories: fear, dread, anguish, suffering, aloneness, choice,
authenticity, and death. I suggest that what is distinctively existential
about these categories is their grounding in the matrix of man's being
in reality and that these categories are generated out of the awareness
of that foundational reality. By a category, first of all, I understand a
concept of the widest generality. One thinks of Kant's categories:
quantity, quality, relation, and modality. When I utilize the term
"category" I do so in a traditional sense, despite the fact that the

existential categories are not those of traditional philosophy. The
meaning of category remains constant in my discussion; which terms
are selected as categories is the innovation of existentialism. It is not
the case, however, that traditional philosophy has nothing to say about
such problems as choice, authenticity, and death; it is rather that
these are treated as themes for classical philosophy and not as distinc-
tive categories. A theme is, most simply, a problem for inquiry; a
category is an instrument for inquiring into a problem. As I interpret
them, then, the existential categories operate specifically as philosophi-
cal instruments for exploring human experience. To suggest, as I have,
that these categories are generated out of the awareness of man's being
in reality is to claim that what is new and commanding in existentialism
is its very procedure in exploring man's being through categories which
are independent of common-sense experience and scientific method and
which take as their object not particular features of human existence
but existence itself.
At this point it becomes necessary to justify the title of my paper.
Rather than analyze the existential categories as philosophical
instrumentalities and see in a technical way how they relate to the
ground of being in reality, I wish to examine the categories as they are
decisively present in literature, especially contemporary literature.
Proceeding with my thesis means that I wish to show how being in
reality may be encountered as a literary theme and how, then, the
existential categories spring into meaning when their literary mani-
festation is given in this encounter. All this presupposes that these
structures are involved in literature, that they are there to be en-
countered. This assumption in turn involves a certain way of looking at
the relationship between philosophy and literature which is my
subordinate theme. A quick statement will have to do. I maintain that
philosophy is sometimes encountered in literary works. I believe that
authentic instances of such philosophy in literature are neither popu-
larizations of philosophy nor substitutes for philosophy. Obviously, the
differences between technical philosophizing and philosophy in litera-
ture are enormous; it is their underlying continuity which interests
me. And it is this continuity which I shall consider, however indi-
rectly, in what follows. The appropriate subtitle for this paper is:
"A study in the relationship between philosophy and literature."
Of the existential categories I shall select two for close consideration:
aloneness and anguish. What I shall say about them holds, I believe, a
fortiori for the others. Each category will be taken up with regard to a
particular author: aloneness in Kafka, anguish in Dostoievski. In each
case the problem will be to see the relationship between the category
and the general ground of being in reality as revealed in literature.
Whether apocryphal or not, the story is told that a friend lent Albert
Einstein a copy of The Trial and was surprised when Einstein returned
the volume before very long only half read, with the apology, "The
human mind is not complicated enough." The paradox in reading
Kafka is the density of the apparently simple. Complexity here is not a
matter of deciphering a symbolism but of holding on to a microcosm in
which the self slips from all control, past all stability, into the imbalance
of a universal quest: the demanding, unswervable search for reso-
lution. The story of The Trial is desperately simple: Joseph K. is
"arrested one fine morning," under a charge which is never revealed to
him, which he seeks to defend himself against in endlessly complicated
court procedures, and for which he is finally executed. His innocence is
protested, and that is the measure of his guilt. In the cathedral scene
the priest says to Joseph K.:
"You are held to be guilty. Your case will perhaps never get beyond a lower
court. Your guilt is supposed, for the present, at least, to have been proved."
"But I am not guilty," said K.; "it's a misunderstanding. And, if it comes to that
how can any man be called guilty? We are all simply men here, one as much as
the other." "That is true," said the priest, "but that's how all guilty men talk.".
The efforts of K. to vindicate himself prove pointless. But the point-
lessness of his action, pointlessness, one might say, in action, is ex-
pressed through the web of connections K. establishes with the human
elements of his world. The hopelessness, the uselessness of his defense
is exactly his aloneness in a world he can never join. The litigant K.
proceeds to establish the lines of his defense. He secures the services of
an advocate, but his advocate, he learns, has many other cases pending.
K. is not his only client. K.'s troubles are not his sole concern. Still he
represents K. to those others somehow knowledgeable about the courts,
those with access to the higher ups. The lines of the web become more
tenuous still. K., finally, is in the absurd position of trying to take
independent action in his case. Not only is independent action im-
possible, but all action must be sifted through the mesh of represen-
tation. And deliberation is endless. Intermediaries, messengers, repre-
sentatives bear the weight of social action. K.'s aloneness is absolute.
He is surrounded by a world he can never reach, a world whose texture
can never be touched but only guessed at. It is a world in which
1 Kafka, F., The Trial, New York, 1945, 265-266.
verification is necessary and unattainable, an impossible possibility.

In what sense are we faced here with an existential category of
aloneness? In what way does it relate to the ground of being in reality?
To speak of aloneness as a category means first of all in Kafka's
context that the concept of category is dictated by a thematic experi-
ence, by a substantive experience and not a theoretical need. The
category is made possible by the experience and then the category
makes possible the interpretation of the experience. This order is
essential, for aloneness is not an idea but an encountered experience
which makes the idea possible. The structure of the experience has
already been outlined. "One fine morning" K.'s world, the common-
sense everyday business world of a bank employee faithful in his
duties, is placed beyond him, in the instantaneous moment of the
charge. Access to his world is transposed, for although he continues
more or less at liberty in his activities he finds that the routine of his
life slips from his grasp and he becomes increasingly involved in the
problems of his case. Accusation is the moment in which aloneness is
realized, in which the theme of daily life suddenly comes into question.
And here it is possible to see the way in which the category of aloneness
arises out of an awareness of being in reality. K.'s trial is a movement
into the horizons of the world, from the fragmentary to the absolute.
At the time of the original charge, that fine morning, K. tries to
convince his warders that a mistake has been made:
"Here are my identification papers." "What are your papers to us?" cried the
tall warder. "You're behaving worse than a child."2
The common-sense world has hitherto, for K., been assuring in its
recognition of his existence: witness his identification papers. Now
the fragment, the surface fragment of recognition gives way and the
warders are the first indication that a horizon of meaning is opening
up for K. in which everything that he has been, the identification papers
for every level of his being will prove worthless, irrelevant, subject to the
mockery of hirelings, subordinates, and wretches. The first awareness
of his being lost in the world that has hitherto been his home is directed
already to the final scene of his execution. There we find the clearest
expression of the horizon which I have called being in reality. The place
of execution is a deserted stone quarry at the edge of the town, close
enough to have in the near distance what Kafka calls "a still complete-
ly urban house." Here K.'s executors come to a standstill, Kafka
writes, "whether because this place had been their goal from the very
2 ibid., 9.
beginning or because they were too exhausted to go farther." And here

the execution occurs. K. turns his head while waiting for the knife to be
driven into him and, at the last moment, Kafka writes,
His glance fell on the top storey of the house adjoining the quarry. With a flicker
as of a light going up, the casements of a window there suddenly flew open; a
human figure, faint and insubstantial at that distance and that height, leaned
abruptly far forward and stretched both arms still farther. Who was it? A friend?
A good man? Someone who sympathized? Someone who wanted to help? Was it
one person only? Or were they all there? Were there some arguments in his
favour that had been overlooked? Of course there must be. Logic is doubtless
unshakable, but it cannot withstand a man who wants to go on living. Where was
the Judge whom he had never seen? Where was the High Court, to which he had
never penetrated ?3
This final awareness of K. is the datum of his being in reality. The total
horizon of his world opens up at that last moment and the possibilities
of the world reach toward him in darkness and confusion. His aloneness
is his complete severance from a world wh;ch contains hope and love
and goodness as impossible possibilities. The existential corollary of
such aloneness is anguish, and this takes us from Kafka to Dostoievski.
It might appear that in moving from the world of Kafka to that of
Dostoievski we are abandoning the referential standpoint of common
sense. Is it not true that the world of daily life is the thematic back-
ground against which Kafka's hero emerges, whereas Dostoievski's
world is marked precisely by an almost complete absence of the normal
stream of day to day existence? It is out of the uninspected, taken for
granted realm of the wide awake man, typified by the business
world, that Kafka's hero is catapulted instantaneously. In Kafka's
!vIetamorphosis Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find himself
"changed in his bed to some monstrous kind of vermin."4 And his
transformation is over and against the literal samples of his occupation.
His bedroom contains a collection of cloth swatches; Gregor is a
commercial traveller. His first thoughts are reflections on his business
life: "God!," he thought, "What a job I've chosen. Traveling day in,
day out. "5 And with this Gregor goes on to prepare himself for meeting
his obligations. Metamorphosed into the horrific, aware of the utter
impossibility of carrying on his job, Gregor nevertheless says to himself,
"I must get up, for my train goes at five."6
Seemingly in contrast, the world of Dostoievski's heroes is seldom, if
3 ibid., 287-288.
4 Kafka, F., Metamorphosis, New York, 1946, 12.
5 ibid., X3.
6 ibid., X4.
ever, the workaday world. In fact, these heroes are notoriously

unemployed and unemployable: they are the marginal figures of the
social world: criminals, neurotics, gamblers, drunkards, epileptics, and
saints. The normal world seems to have disappeared or never to have
been at all. If there is a thematic quality to this style of life it is
complete, pure, yet bearable desperation. It would appear that rather
than locating being in reality with regard to the character of common-
sense life, we have moved to a literary scene which is defined by the
very lack of such a structure. The explanation of the paradox provides
an approach to Dostoievski.
By desperation I understand a fundamental removal of the self
from concrete possibilities of resolving a problem. I am desperate
about this or that, I need something or somebody desperately, and
these situations are solvable and so resolvable. But desperation as
such, not my being desperate about this or that, but my desperation
as a mode of being, a permanent possibility of human existence, is
unaffected by events or persons. Events and persons, to the contrary,
are seen and treated as fearful, awesome, lovable, or hateful, in virtue of
the self's desperation. The desperate man is not one who is desperate
about this or that. Each one of us lives through moments or times of
desperation, but we are 110t because of that desperate men, nor are we
desperate men at the time of being desperate about a concrete, over-
powering problem. The desperate man has a style of being; his world is
structured in terms of his way of being in the world. And that way of
being, I now want to suggest, is crucially related to both the problem
of common-sense life and being in reality. Essentially, the desperate man
builds his existence on an inversion of common-sense life; he operates on
the terrain of nothingness which is the immediate character of being in
reality. The desperate man is above all the prime example of one
whose being in reality is the starting point for his life's odyssey and
the continual image in which he encounters the world.
Dostoievskian desperation is one mode of existential anguish. To be
anguished is to define one's life as perpetually lived in confrontation
with the datum of being there. Anguish as a category is discovered
through the immanence of existence. The substantive experience of
anguish, perpetual confrontation with one's being in reality, locates the
conceptual meaning of the experience, and the conceptual structure
then realized is itself utilized as a way of grasping the meaning of
experience. In this way, the existential category of anguish fulfills a
double service: it derives from an experience it helps to define. In the
I28 EXISTENTIAL CATEGORIES IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
case of anguish this double character of the existential category is an

aspect of the self-reflective Dostoievskian hero. The anguished man is
not only aware of his anguish, he is critically concerned with its nature,
with the full signification it bears. In Notes From Underground the
paradoxalist analyzes his own motives in presenting his confession.
"Hadn't I better end my 'Notes' here,?" he asks, after revealing
himself to us.
I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt
ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's hardly literature so
much as corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have
spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting
environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my under-
ground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all
the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters
most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life,
we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. 7
The self-reflection of the anguished man renders him an anti-hero. He

is forever at issue with himself, an issue for himself: his world is sus-
pended on the moment in which his being in reality gives itself to him
and holds him possessed.
Essentially the same analysis is true for the positive hero, rather
than the anti-hero, in Dostoievski's world. The arguments of Ivan
Karamazov are dialogues with himself in which his passion for con-
viction meets his absolute demand for truth. The theme that tortures
him is the problem of theodicy: man's anguish is located in that single,
overpowering issue. And the placement of the issue, I would hold, is at
the level of man's being in the world, seen as a moral search for reso-
lution. Anguish here is the awareness of a root mode of being: the
inescapable and radical reality of evil. The difficulty in defining evil is
an indication of its foundational character. Evil cannot be defined
operationally; for it is not defined but encountered in reality. Again, it
is not a matter of concrete acts which are evil but the quality in life
which marks an act as evil. Evil is disclosed as a feature of the horizon
which is man's being in reality. The sense of moral requiredness is built
upon the confrontation with the evil we must face and live against. The
teons of discourse here are universals transcendent to anthropology or
history, relative only to the human condition they define. "With my
pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding," Ivan says, "all I know is that
there is suffering and that there are none guilty." To give a rationale for
this condition, to resolve its demands on moral intellection is the force
7 Dostoievski, F., Notes From Undergrovnd, New York, 1943.
of Ivan's life. "I must have justice," he cries, "or I will destroy my-
self."8 And this cry is the voice of existential anguish calling into
judgment its own desperation.
In both aloneness and anguish existential literature has discovered
and invoked substantive experiences as fundamental categories for the
interpretation of experience. The genius of Kafka and Dostoievski is in
their literary creations, but their philosophic insight is no less extra-
ordinary. One expression of that insight is given in the way in which
aloneness and anguish are shown, implicitly, as deriving their unique
force from the very style of man's being, the condition of his existence,
his being in reality. One moves into the worlds of these creators
through a metaphysical trap door. Fallen suddenly into the atmosphere
of existential concern, the participating reader encounters himself
without pretence, his social roles cast aside, his public masks undone,
his naive original wonder about the meaning of human existence
regained. These authors return us to ourselves.
Perhaps the peculiar quality of existential literature is the demand
it makes on the reader that he possess a metaphysical dimension.
This is at once the admission price and the barrier. For many it is
their devotion to the naively given world, their rootedness in the
common-sense attitude, that rebels against categories which are felt to
be morbid and at best partial truths. The existential underground
seems distant from the warmth and brightness of reason and the com-
forts of a trust in the advance of science. Dostoievski's underground
man is entitled to his reply. He asks:
Does not man revel in destruction and confusion because he instinctively dreads
that he may attain his end and crown the work he has begun? And perhaps -
who knows - the end of mankind on earth may consist in this uninterrupted
striving after something ahead, that is, in life itself, rather than in some real end
which obviously must be a static formula of the same kind as '2 and 2 make 4.'
For 2 and 2 make 4 is not a part of life but the beginning of death ... And why are
you so firmly and solemnly convinced that only that which is normal and posi-
tive, in a word, his well-being, is good for man? It is possible that, as well as loving
his own welfare, man is fond of suffering, even passionately fond of it ... I am
sure that man will never renounce the genuine suffering that comes of ruin and
chaos. Why, suffering is the one and only source of knowledge. 9
Aloneness and anguish, together with fear, dread, suffering and death
are the central concern of those who bear a metaphysical dimension;
and irrationalism here is not so much an attack against the traditional
B Dostoievski, F., The Brothers Karamazov, New York, 1945, 289.
9 Dostoievski, F., Notes From Underground.
I30 EXISTENTIAL CATEGORIES IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
categories of reason as an abandonment of the natural attitude of daily

life in favour of the magical and the mysterious.
I fear that these last words will probably wreck everything I have
been trying to construct in this paper, but I would be avoiding my
goal if I failed to include them here. To see the world as magical is to
have a feeling for the extremity of man's fundamental condition, his
being confronted with the task of answering the most tortured of all
questions, What does it mean to be an existent in reality? Magic is an
effort to transform ourselves, not the world. The magician is a fraud;
he knows he cannot change objective nature, and so his art consists
instead in changing us, in deceiving us into believing what is false. To
view the world as magical is to transform our experience of the world
through the alchemy of the existential categories. Above all, to treat
the world as magical is to discover it as ultimately mysterious. Magic
leads to mystery.
By mystery and the mysterious I do not mean the occult or that
which is beyond explanation. Rather I use the term in Gabriel Marcel's
sense, i.e., as a problem which for certain reasons has no univocal
solution possible. Marcel distinguishes between a problem and a
mystery. A problem may be overpoweringly complex, but in principle
there is a way of approaching it which will lead to a solution. The data
of problems are always exterior to us, they are never inwoven in the
human fabric of the investigator himself. A mystery, on the contrary,
has interiority as the mark of its data; it is the inquirer himself who is
at issue in his inquiry. "A mystery," Marcel writes, "is a problem
which encroaches upon its own data, invading them, as it were, and
thereby transcending itself as a simple problem. "10 The metaphysical
dimension can be defined in these terms. To treat the world as my-
sterious, to take the existential categories as mysteries, to concern
ourselves with ourselves as more than problematic, is to stand in a
radical relationship to reality. And paradoxically, it is the most ordinary,
common-sense structures of human experience which magic transposes
into mysteries. Being born into this world, existing in it, and dying in it
become themes which no psychology can even approach. It is rather in
philosophy and in literature that we find such mysteries expressed and
explored. Magic and mystery return us to our metaphysical origin. to
the moment when we are shot like rockets into midnight, and we are
born.
10 Marcel, G., The Philosophy of Existence, London, 1948, 8.

The Privileged Moment:
I I.
a Study in the Rhetoric of Thomas Wolfe

"Every language is the whole of a world, a space in
which our souls live and move. Each word breathes
the airofthewhole. Each is open toward an unbound-
ed horizon. A language is not an aggregate of words
and rules. It is a potential world, an infinity of past
and future worlds, merely a frame within which we
speak and can create our world, actualizing ourselves
and our language."
Kurt Riezler

The rhetoric of Thomas Wolfe is part of his legend.! Building a fury of
signs, he elevated words and sounds to an intensity which is qualita-
tively their own and unique to his style; protean and boundless, he
urged language into a wildness and power that signalized his tran-
scendent view of the world as a labyrinth of the lonely and the alone.
Wolfe's style, then, is as striking as his great figure must have been;
and there is no critic of his work who has failed to remark its reach and
also its problematics. 2 But as with so many other features of the Wolfe
legend, there has been more mention of his rhetoric than there has been
serious analysis of it. 3 Somehow it has been taken for granted for the
very reason of its immediacy. That much has been lost in this way 1
hope to show; but the present essay cannot claim to be a study of
Wolfe's style or an anatomy of his language. Rather, 1 am here con-
cerned with his rhetoric as a single, though crucial, facet of a
phenomenology of language, a facet which will, however, lead to
nuclear issues in rhetorical theory.
1 See Herbert J. Muller, Thomas Wolle, Norfolk, Conn., 1947, Chapter 1.
a For a sympathetic treatment of Wolfe's style, see Pamela Hansford Johnson, Thomas
Wolle: A C1'itical Study, London and Toronto, 1947, 17-33; the case against Wolfe is pre-
sented by Alfred Kazin, On Native G1'ounds, New York, 1942, Chapter 15. Kazin writes (p.
480): "Wolfe was the Tarzan of rhetoric, the noble lover, the antagonist of cities, the spear
of fate, the Wolfe whose rhetoric, swollen with archaisms out of the English classics, can be as
painful to read as a child's scrawlings. His rhetoric, pilfered recklessly from the J acobeans
and Sir Thomas Browne, James Joyce and Swinburne, Gilbert Murray and the worst tradi-
tions of Southern oratory, was a gluttonous English instructor's accumulation. He became
enraptured with the altitudinous, ceremonial prose of the seventeenth century, with the
vague splendors of a dozen assorted romanticisms, and united them at the pitch of his father's
mountain oratory."
3 There is no title on Wolfe's rhetoric contained in the bibliography of the secondary lit-
erature which appears in Thomas Clark Pollock and Oscar Cargill, Thomas Wolle at Washing-
ton Squa1'e, New York, 1954, nor is there any article specifically concerned with Wolfe's style
included in The Enigma of Thomas Wolfe (ed. by Richard Walser), Cambridge, Mass., 1953.
132 THE PRIVILEGED MOMENT
Although it is not within the scope of this essay to consider the

problems of a phenomenology of language or the more general philo-
sophical issues involved in clarifying the relationship of language to
reality, I do wish to indicate the immediate sense in which I am using
the term "rhetoric" in the present discussion. Negatively stated, I am
not interested here in anything that can be called traditional rhetoric,
i.e., the history of rhetoric in Greek and Roman thought, nor am I
concerned with recent discussions of the status of theory of rhetoric. 4
Furthermore, I am not talking about anything which has been dis-
cussed under the rubric of rhetorical criticism or poetic. Although the
style of my problem may be closest to the spirit of the "New Rhetoric,"
I have developed my ideas from distinctively philosophical con-
siderations and from a particular philosophical tradition that are not
proper parts of the "New Rhetoric." Positively stated, I have used
"rhetoric" as an inroad to the philosophical problem of how language
both fixes and realizes the complex "moments" of meaning which
announce reality. Rhetoric here is developed, however, within and
through the context of Wolfe's writings rather than in philosophical
terms. I have started with the naive sense of rhetoric which has been
used to characterize a distinctive aspect of Wolfe's style, but my point
is that this sense of rhetoric as high-flown, charged, and rhapsodic
usage is a clue to a profound dimension of language which has been
obscured or ignored - the power of language to epiphanize transcendent
meanings through its own instrumentality. The rationale of such a
concept of rhetoric, the analysis of its structure, is the task of a phenom-
enology of language which would account for and describe the logical
genesis and foundation of meaning in SUbjectivity. The philosophical
achievement of Edmund Hussed has given us the groundwork for such
an investigation. Alfred Schutz' "Symbol, Reality, and Society" 5 is a
decisive contribution to recent discussion of these problems. But such
phenomenological investigations of language and reality are beyond
the limits of my remarks on Wolfe. Here I wish to restrict the
problem to exactly what I have attempted: interpreting the rhetoric
of Thomas Wolfe as the articulation of reality through privileged
moments.
4 E.g.: My article, "The Limits of Rhetoric," Quarterly Journal of SPeech, XLI, April I955,
is completely unrelated to the present essay, apart from the identity of philosophical stand-
point underlying both papers.
5 In Symbols and Society: Fourteenth Symposium of the Conference on Science, PhilOSOPhy
and Religion (ed. by Lyman Bryson, Louis Finkelstein, Hudson Hoagland, R. M. MacIver),
New York, I955.
THE PRIVILEGED MOMENT 133
Our first problem is one of definition. Traditionally, by the rhetoric of
Thomas Wolfe has been meant his charged language, those extensive
passages throughout his works which are stylistically reminiscent of
Whitman and Melville and which bear the fiery and solemn cadences
ofthe Old Testament. 6
Who has seen fury riding in the mountains? [Wolfe writes]. Who has known fury
striding in the storm? Who has been mad with fury in his youth, given no rest
or peace or certitude by fury, driven on across the earth by fury, until the great
vine of the heart was broke, the sinews wrenched, the little tenement of bone,
marrow, brain, and feeling in which great fury raged, was twisted, wrung, worn
out, and exhausted by the fury which it could not lose or put away? Who has
known fury, how it came? 7
Such passages appear in at least two ways in the novels: they are
interspersed, usually following scenes or vignettes, and serve as a kind
of chorus for the works; also they are binding and bridging structures
which function as motifs at the beginning of each novel, as connective
tissue between sections, and as poetic finales.
As a chorus, Wolfe's chanting voice takes up again and again the
central themes of his work: the self in its solitude and lost ness in reality,
the self in the image of Telemachus, the self's rootedness in earth,
history, and the prime memories of family and home, and, finally, the
voyage of the self in search of itself through the mysteries of time and
the haunting domain of death. Suffusing these passages is a sense of
root loss, an a priori of something sought for and somewhere missed, as
though what structures human experience into the relatedness of men
were itself flawed - not failure here but the impossibility of fulfillment:
Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's
heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not
forever a stranger and alone? 8
As binding and bridging forces, such expressive passages are distilla-

tions of things done, places seen, persons encountered, and experiences
suffered and reveled in. The connections are both immediate and
indirect: they lead from one set of affairs to another in the novelist's
story and they also thrust back and forth in the substance of events.
6 Two collections of rhetorical-poetic passages from the writings of Wolfe have appeared:
John Hall Wheelock, The Face of a Natiotl, New York, 1939 and John S. Barnes, A Stone,
A Leaf, A Door, New York, 1945.
7 Of Time and the River, New York, 1944, 27-28.
8 Look Homeward, Angel, New York, 1929, motif, facing p. 3.
I34 THE PRIVILEGED MOMENT
Throughout Of Time and the River, for example, the image and theme
of death is taken up in manifold ways - the deaths of the hero's father
and brother are the points of central reference-and returned to through
the instrument of rhetorical passages. Immediately after a comic
interlude in the novel, Wolfe turns to the theme of his brother's death
and resurrects his image:
And then he would hear again the voice of his dead brother, and remember with
a sense of black horror, dream-like disbelief, that Ben was dead, and yet could
not believe that Ben had ever died, or that he had had a brother, lost a friend.
Ben would come back to him in these moments with a blazing and intolerable
reality, until he heard his quiet living voice again, saw his fierce scowling eyes of
bitter gray, his scornful, proud and lively face, and always when Ben came back
to him it was like this: he saw his brother in a single image, in some brief for-
gotten moment of the past, remembered him by a word, a gesture, a forgotten
act: and certainly all that could ever be known of Ben's life was collected in that
blazing image of lost time and the forgotten moment. And suddenly he would
be there in a strange land, staring upward from his bed in darkness, hearing his
brother's voice again, and living in the far and bitter miracle of time. 9
After this section devoted to Ben, there is an immediate return to the

earlier scene. This kind of placement can only be understood as con-
nective ordering which illuminates the themes of a novel by rhetorical
emphasis. The connection is direct to the extent that it instantly binds
together parts of a single sequence; it is indirect, however, in its very
persuasion, for it calls the reader back to fragmented moments of the
theme's expression at the same time that it promises a re-sounding and
rearticulation in pages to come.
But defining rhetoric in this context as charged language, dominated
by poetic image, and having the several stylistic functions just dis-
cussed, is far from arriving at an acceptable analysis of the problem.
I tis my thesis that there is much more involved in the rhetoric of Thomas
Wolfe; that we must go beyond the character of rich, compressed, and
pulsating language to the interior and essential meaning born and
expressed by the order of prose-poetry commonly associated with
Wolfe. I wish to suggest that that meaning lies in a certain attitude
toward language itself, a certain appraisal of the limits of language, and
a certain refusal to accept those limits - at least not without raging.
To put the entire matter in a different way: Wolfe's rhetoric involves
a conception of language, its inherent powers and possibilities, and, I
would add, its relationship to the reality it describes and engages, and
to its votaries, like Wolfe, whom it demonizes.
• Of Time and the Rivet', 20o-20r.
For many and divergent reasons, ours may be called the century of
language: whether we consider the contributions of philosophers,
psychologists, or novelists, the central impression that a new "key" (to
use Susanne Langer's term) has been struck in the whole range of
knowledge and art is unavoidable and undeniable. In philosophy
the work of such variant thinkers as Peirce, Husserl, Cassirer, Heideg-
ger, and Wittgenstein has created a rich literature concerned with the
problems of symbol, concept, and form: in psychology (broadly taken)
the work of Freud, George H. Mead, the Gestalt school, and Kurt
Goldstein has opened up a new terrain of relevances for language in its
relationship to mind and action; and in literature, the revolutionary
contributions of Proust and Joyce have liberated and made explicit a
generative force in art.l0 Even if we restrict ourselves to literary
influences, the impact of the century's discovery on the consciousness
of Wolfe was enormous. Joyce's influence on Wolfe may serve as an
approach to the problem of rhetoric. 11
Only obliquely in Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man, but explicitly ill Stephen Hero, Joyce formulates his theory of
epiphany.
By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the

vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phrase of the mind itself. He
believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme
care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of mo-
ments. 12
An epiphany is a momentous and instantaneous manifestation of

reality; it is a sudden breaking into experience with arterial force,
revealing "that which is" with utter truth and candor. The greatness
of an artist may be measured by the epiphanies he gives us, those
revelations that turn on vast lights in our consciousness, which in
10 T. S. Eliot writes of Ulysses: "I hold this book to be the most important expression which
the present age has found; it is a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of
us can escape." ("Ulysses, Order, and Myth," in James Joyce: Two Decades of Criticism (ed.
hy Seon Givens), New York, 1948, 198).
11 See Thomas Wolfe, The Story of a Novel in The Portable Thomas Wolfe (ed. by Maxwell
Geismar), New York, 1946,566 and also cf. Nathan L. Rothman, "Thomas Wolfe and James
Joyce: A Study in Literary Influence," in The Enigma of Thomas Wolfe.
12 Joyce, J., Stephen Hero (A Part of the First Draft of A Portrait of the A rtist as a
Young Man), (ed. by Theodore Spencer, N"ew York), 1944, 2II; see Spencer's Introduction,
·ibid., 16-17 and cf. Irene Hendry, "Joyce's Epiphanies," in James Joyce: Two Decades at
Criticism and Harry Levin, James Joyce: A Critical Introduction, Xorfolk, Conn., 1941, 28-31
and passim.
THE PRIVILEGED MOMENT
searching out their hidden objects, their shadowed fonns, search out
in us the gift of understanding. Joyce presents his theory in quasi-
satiric scholastic tenns:
First we recognize that the object is one integral thing, then we recognize that it
is an organized composite structure, a thing in fact: finally, when the relation
of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we
recognize that it is that thing which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from
the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure
of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany.13
An epiphany may be generated out of compounded objects and experi-

ences, however, and the moment of insight and expression goes beyond
the Thomistic trinity of "wholeness, hannony, and radiance" which
Joyce discusses. 14 An epiphany in the compounded sense, generalized
into the total world of experience, is the discovery of a thematic
meaning which has been lost in its "sedimentations" (to borrow a tenn
from the language of phenomenology), which has encysted in its
complexity within experience, but below the threshold of explicit
awareness. It is this distillation of meanings which is tapped by
creative genius and brought to expression in epiphany. And, I would
suggest, it is precisely the stylistic methodology of Joyce that recom-
mends itself to Wolfe, for he too is haunted by epiphanies potential to
creation, awaiting the season of their unfolding.
If the epiphanies of Joyce are revelations of Man, they are for Wolfe
outpourings of the person, the self alone; yet the starting point,
stylistically, is historical for both. Just as Ulysses is the exploration of
consciousness through the single day of Leopold Bloom, a moment in
time, so, it may be remarked, the novels of Wolfe begin with a dating
of the action or a statement of the historicity of the theme. IS The
beginning of Look Homeward, A ngel is the clearest announcement of
Wolfe's intentions: the prologue of the first chapter presents a colon
to which the totality of the rest of the novel is a restricted, implicit
remainder:
Each of us [Wolfe writes] is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into
nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years
ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.
18 Stephen Hero, 213.
14 ibid., 212-213 and A Porlrait 0/ the Arlist as a Young Man in The Porlable James Joyce
(ed. by Harry Levin), New York, 1947, 478 ft.
15 The opening sentences of 0/ Time and the Rivet" and You Can't Go Home Again date the
action ofthe novel in terms ofthe hero; the opening sentence of The Web and the Rock and the
third paragraph of the opening page of Look Homeward, Angel date the action in terms of the
hero's ancestors.
The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure
grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern,
because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty
thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and
every moment is a window on all time.
This is a moment: 16
Each person, each event, each history of affairs is a compressed cipher

for which Wolfe's art is hermeneutic. The world of each man is a
microcosm in which is pressured the totality of all that ever was,
implied in an almost Hegelian trail of connections that return the mo-
ment to Time, the event to Process, the individual to the Absolute.
Wolfe's world is a world of moments, highly structured and indi-
viduated, yet caught up in the themes of a mutual destiny, a single
attraction that gives them valence and defines their signification.
The placement of meaning and insight in the moment is inescapable
to any reader of the novels: the stranger seen in the street, on the train,
from afar, glimpsed for that instant of recognition and then forever
vanished back into the web of anonymity, the face at the window, the
brief look of the bank teller, the sight of the salesman, the suddenly-
caught movement of the laborer, the craftsman, the stitch of the tailor,
the trucker shifting heavy gears, the frosty face of the trainsman
signalling in an early hour of winter, the soft cry of a child - all these
are familiar moments in the pages of the novels, and Wolfe is unimagi-
nable without them. But these moments are usually described as "far
and lost," as instantly gone, as "forever lost." They are instantaneous
irruptions in consciousness which fill the hero with sadness and longing
and despair and wonder; they are always sudden, always intense, and
always remembered. It is in these moments that Wolfe's epiphanies
manifest themselves.
But it is necessary to examine these moments most rigorously if we
are to go beyond the simple marking of them: what content do they
inform us of, what indeed do they epiphanize? In answer to this
question one commentator has suggested that the passion of the
moment is in its givenness and that the meaning of the moment
invariably escapes both novelist and reader.
Everything for Wolfe is in the moment [writes John Peale Bishop], he can so
try to impress us with the immensity of the moment that it will take on some
sort of transcendental meaning. But what that meaning is, escapes him, as it
does us. And once it has passed from his mind, he can do nothing but recall
16 Look Homeward, Angel, 3.

THE PRIVILEGED MOMENT
another moment, which as it descends into his memory seems always about
to deliver itself, by a miracle, of some tremendous import. 17
But Bishop views these moments in an almost moral context: they

represent efforts on the part of the novelist to embrace his characters
and their truth as well; and since Wolfe, according to this critic, was
ultimately incapable of love, those moments fail to achieve resolution:
they are mounting crescendos in a symphony that moves, quickens,
and elevates without ever coming to climax.
The most striking passages in Wolfe's novels [Bishop says] always represent
these moments of comprehension. For a moment, but a moment only, there is a
sudden release of compassion, when some aspect of suffering and bewildered
humanity is seized, when the other's emotion is in a timeless completion known.
Then the moment passes, and compassion fails.I8
But I think Wolfe's moments may be viewed apart from Bishop's

moral framework, that they do reveal an interior signification, and that
though they lapse in the temporal movement of the novel, they remain
constant in the articulation of Wolfe's vision. It is as instrumentalities
of rhetoric that their import may be grasped and their positive quality
seized.
<III>
Someone has remarked that all Wolfe's novels are about a novelist
writing a novel. Whatever truth there may be in this, in addition to
surface observation, it may tend to obscure a deeper truth about
Wolfe's work: that much of it is self-critical in the sense of being meta-
linguistic. There are sections of the novels, in addition to The Story of a
Novel, which are directly concerned with the problems of language and
language users, though those sections often take the form of meditations
on language and art rather than academic or philosophical critiques. In
an epiphanous moment Wolfe presents the bond and power that bind
the writer to his art :
At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction,
the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being - the reward he
seeks - the only reward he really cares about, without which there is nothing. It
is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail
through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance
11 Bishop, J. P., "The Sorrows of Thomas Wolfe," Kenyon RelJiew, I, 1939, 10-11.
18 ibid., 14-15.
of his own experience. into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that
are themselves the core of life. the essential pattern whence all other things
proceed. the kernel of eternity.1 9
The epiphany Wolfe gives us is the revelation of language itself: the

artist in words is more than storyteller or technician; he is in possession
of the quintessence of existence if only it can be tamed into expression.
worked into "the congruence of blazing and enchanted images."
Language. for Wolfe. is both battering ram and castle, it is weapon
and wound. for the moment's meaning is that language is reality.
bound to it in the way of its being and in the form of its substance.
Wolfe's quest for linguistic dominion is the effort to wrench from
language its capacity to penetrate reality, to gain an inroad into being,
to achieve the miracle of epiphany in which language reveals itself as
reality and reality reveals itself through image, form. and the magical
terms of language. "Could I," Wolfe cries, "weave into immortal
denseness some small brede of words, pluck out of sunken depths the
roots of living, some hundred thousand magic words that were as great
as all my hunger, and hurl the sum of all my living out upon three
hundred pages!"20 And this cry, itself a moment. is the confession that
language is superior to any of its concretizations, that it remains, like
earth and the seasons, a quest for the wanderer and a home for the lost.
The moment, then, is revealed in language because its very character
is constituted of language: the image of the real is the real or as much
of it as man can grasp, and language draws us into the vortex of full
expression. The points in language when such perfection of meaning
and image, of word and reality, is achieved are epiphanies; they are, we
may say, privileged moments of consciousness. And now the full relation-
ship of rhetoric and language may be seen, for rhetoric, as we choose to
interpret it in our present framework, is the complete expression which
embodies an epiphany, and makes of it a privileged moment. It is not a
question of poetic expression or high-flown language; rather it is the
victory of language over its object when form fixes content with
purity and high purpose. The fixation intended here is the expression
of consciousness divorcing from its interest, momentarily, the irrelevan-
cies which bind us to the meanings sedimented in reality. In this sense,
rhetoric liberates consciousness from a burden of connections and opens
it up and out into a world of unlimited truth. It re-teaches us how to
see what is given us in experience; by its very power and elevation
19 OJ Time and the River. 550.
20 The IYen and the Rock. New York. '937. motif on page prec~ding p. 3.
140 THE PRIVILEGED MOMENT
it draws us up to face what hitherto in seeing we have always ignored:

rhetoric gives to the privileged moment a privileged status. Though his
essay is concerned with different problems from those we have been
dealing with here, a passage from Camus' The Myth 0/ SisyPhus gives a
penetrating statement of what we may call the rhetoric of privilege:
Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one's consciousness,
making of every image a privileged place ... From the evening breeze to this
hand on my shoulder, everything has its truth. Consciousness illuminates it by
paying attention to it. Consciousness does not form the object of its understanding,
it merely focuses, it is the act of attention, and, to borrow a Bergsonian image, it
resembles the projector that suddenly focuses on an image. The difference is that
there is no scenario, but a successive and incoherent illustration. In that magic
lantern all the pictures are privileged. Consciousness suspends in experience the
objects of its attention. Through its miracle it isolates them. 21
Consciousness attains to the privileged moment through its capacity to

fix it in symbols, to announce its coherence through the coherence of
language itself. In this sense, rhetoric as "fixative" is a special moment,
a privileged moment, in linguistic expression, and in the purest form it
can attain, it transcends itself into poetry.
If we have presented rhetoric in a rather unusual light, it is no less
the case that we have turned to perhaps curious features of language
and consciousness itself. The world examined in these terms is hardly
the world as it is ordinarily regarded. Our excuse, if one is necessary, is
that the world as it truly presents itself to human experience is elusive
and that the privilege of epiphany commends itself in making substan-
tive to consciousness what otherwise remains tormentingly adjectival.
Rhetoric seems, from a theoretical standpoint, to be all things to all
men, and we offer here only a little suggestion regarding one possibility
of interpretation which we think has been overlooked. However, if
what we say about Wolfe's rhetoric is true, we can no longer talk about
"mere" rhetoric again. Even at its shallowest, most hollow worst,
rhetoric is an instrument capable of a magnificence: as we use it, it
may be, but rhetoric itself is never "mere." At its finest, as in the
writings of Thomas Wolfe, rhetoric reveals the privileged moment in
which human consciousness discovers its passion and power, its
capacity to bind up the wound reality inflicts upon those who discover
it, and in discovering it, transcend it.
21 Camus, A., The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, New York, 1955, 43. Note that
we are taking this statement out of its context in the essay, considering its meaning for our
present discnssion quite apart from Camus' interpretation of Edmund Husserl's phenomenol-
ogy - an interpretation we cannot follow.
12. Albert Camus: Death At The Meridian

"The great question as to a poet or novelist is," Henry James once said,
"How does he feel about life? What, in the last analysis, is his philo-
sophy? When vigorous writers have reached maturity, we are at
liberty to gather from their works some expression of a total view of the
world they have been so actively observing. This is the most interesting
thing their works offer us. Details are interesting in proportion as they
contribute to make it dear."! In the case of philosophical writers, of
poets and novelists whose work is centrally directed toward meta-
physical questions, the relevance of James' remark is intensified in
several ways, and also rendered strikingly complex. The philosophical
novelist is not only concerned with issues generated out of the essential
terms of our existence, he is self-consciously committed to creating a
work of art whose very character expresses the urgency of his quest. A
philosophical novel, let us say, is about itself; it is a meta-literary
performance which reveals the triple bond that compels author,
characters, and reader to come to terms with themselves and each
other. That bond is an existential commitment to self-justification,
to engaging impossible questions and to the despair of an enterprise
that is destined to perpetual renewal. Philosophy becomes the con-
science of art.
Too often the interior dialogue between the author and his story is
translated into the problem of "autobiography." In these terms, the
commitment of the philosophical novelist to his work is interpreted as
revelatory of the dialectic of his own life, as manifesting the history of
his personal struggles and aspirations. One then looks in the novel for a
chapter in the life of the author, and one interprets the hero of the
1 quoted by Eliseo Vivas in Creation and Discovery, New York, I955.
ALBERT CAMUS
story as the instrument of his confession. Such a translation both

obscures the meaning of autobiography in literature and limits its
possible range. What is important is not whether an event in a story
had a counterpart in the actual life of the author but, instead, whether
the life of the novel is informed by the mind of the novelist. The
question is, Can you locate in the literary work the hypothetical
alternatives the artist ponders in his creative task? Are you drawn into
dialogue with his possibilities? Or are you left searching for the strands
of his life? If the commitment of the philosophical novelist is to the
urgency of fictive possibilities, the search of the creative reader must be
for an author's questions, not his conclusions. And not merely those
questions which are announced in the novel, but especially those which
antedate the written page and which return us to the torment of
making a start.
The philosophical novelist, then, is a writer in dialogue with himself,
his work, his readers, and, in a sense that is ordinarily missed in the
use of a phrase which should tell us much, with his time. It is here that
a more profound notion of "autobiography" comes in. A writer's time
is his age perceived in the metaphysical perspective of his insertion in a
temporal world. And to say that a writer expresses the problems or
paradoxes of his time or that a writer symbolizes the essential anxiety
of his time is to imply that his act of creative representation provokes
and is provoked by the infoldment of experience in the magic circle of
his own awareness. To represent an age is, in this sense, to re-present its
cardinal content, to bring once again into unity, into the unity of a
single consciousness, the elements that comprise its anger, its pride, and
its secret shame. All of the metaphysical novelists have been privileged
witnesses to the infoldment of consciousness. In different ways such
writers as Dostoievski, Kafka, and Melville contribute a literature of
dialogic commitment; it is they who are at issue in their work, and it is
they we meet in reading their books. In our own day, Albert Camus has
come to stand for the same kind of involvement. His books and his life
appear to fuse in the image of philosophic concern, artistic strength,
and human integrity. He has become for many almost the imago of a
contemporary hero, the metaphysical man within whose life our own
autobiographies achieve illumination. The recent death of Camus,
death in a senseless automobile accident, death in his forties, death in
the midst of his creative involvement, is the lonely occasion for an
inquiry into the philosophic dimension of his art.
ALBERT CAMUS 143
<II>
Camus seems destined for a period of misunderstanding before his
themes and positions achieve some security in the minds of his readers,
especially his readers in this country. And this is not just a matter of the
immediacy of his work, his proximity to the disorder of these times. No
waiting period will help to set straight the peculiar misreadings his
books seem to attract and his life seems to encourage. Paradoxes have
in their turn generated cross-purposes. Camus is thought of as a French
writer, as a Frenchman; not only was he born in Algeria, he remained
throughout his life emphatically sensitive to the world of Algeria, to its
climate, its horizon. Camus is known in the United States primarily as a
novelist and essayist; in France he was as much thought of as a man of
the theater, not only a playwright but a director, once an actor. But
there are more important impasses and confusions: it is commonplace
to speak of Camus as a poet of the absurd; that he transformed this
position in many ways in the later part of his life is not so much
forgotten as unrecognized. Finally, Camus is thought of most often as
an existentialist. His own repudiation of much of existential philo-
sophy or his declaration of his ignorance of some of it have not caught
up with the fancies of his public. Many of his readers prefer him to be
an existentialist. That they cannot explain very much of what they
mean by such a classification only adds to its charm. The worst of it is
that Camus' split with Sartre has been interpreted by some people as
the repudiation by an honorable man of a dishonorable Left. Unfor-
tunately, Camus' rebellion in this incident does not even make sense in
what we call political terms; we, Camus' American audience, are
unexperienced in the apparatus of metaphysical defection. Immersed
in what schoolboys call "current events," we find it difficult to attend
to history. Dialogue with Camus is possible only if we bracket what we
have heard about him and listen to what we may hear from him.
At the center of Camus' thought is a struggle to locate the limits of a
radical humanism which at once frees man of his bondage to God and
permits him to realize a moral life. The struggle has a dozen roots and
manifold reasons; it arises out of a concrete historical experience that
commenced with the collapse of the Crystal Palace, the dream of a lost
humanism, and it may be traced through two World Wars and the
spectacle of disaster familiar to everyone who has lived through the
years of war. But the concrete events are merely touchstones for a
more generalized collapse of values which has been felt, as a tremor of
144 ALBERT CAMUS
the earth is felt, by men everywhere who ask themselves how it is

possible to be decent in a fallen world. In other terms, the struggle for a
new humanism is one consequence of an epistemic disjunction between
self and world which has always haunted the philosophic mind. How is
it possible to claim objective validity for moral concepts that appear
to be subjectively rooted? How is it possible to ground moral truths in
a certitude that goes beyond mere attitude or opinion unless such a
ground lies outside and beyond man? And if the truth does transcend
man, is it possible to live with what one has, with an untruth achieved
under the duress of absolute commitment? Camus' search is born of a
rejection of tradition and an abhorrence of anarchy. The truth, for
him, is neither in the middle nor at the extremes of theism or atheism;
the truth has no position, no placement in terms of spatial metaphors. It
is instead that tension, that intellectual passion, and that conative thrust
which men can realize in their lives in the very act of moral commitment
in a world defined by men. And beyond this there lies a peace and joy
which are purely human possibilities, a release from exasperation into
love. The way into that jubilation of consciousness is by passage into
the absurd. The first category of a radical humanism is the problematic
concept of the absurd. It is the threshold to the art of Camus.
As with every term fundamental to a fairly rich schema, the absurd
operates at different levels and with varying meanings in Camus'
thought. Its common denominator may not be the best way of ex-
pressing what is of major importance here. Instead, a definition that
proliferates, that moves in several directions at once, that hesitates
as much as it affirms - this perhaps is the proper procedure. The absurd,
for Camus, is the location of the world in the perspective of human
reality. World and self, being and consciousness, can never find a
principle of reconciliation. For man the world arises to be known, to be
judged, to be embraced; but knowledge, judgment, and love remain
fugitive structures. Man is the being who yearns for justification. "I
said that the world is absurd," Camus writes, "but I was too hasty.
This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But
what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild
longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd
depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that
links them together. It binds them one to the other as only hatred can
weld two creatures together. This is all I can discern clearly in this
measureless universe where my adventure takes place."2 The absurd,
2 Camus, A., The Myth of SisYPhus and Other Essays, New York, 1955, 21.
ALBERT CAMUS
then, is measure and measured; it is both a condition and the agency of

revolt. But there are other ways of presenting the absurd.
Imagine several situations. First, you have quarreled with someone.
Harsh words were exchanged. Voices were distorted in anger. A verbal
mesh of fury enveloped the scene. Now imagine that the argument was
secretly recorded and that you are made to listen, months after the
affair, to all that was said. You hear yourself, you listen to your angry
noises, you avoid looking at anybody for fear of smiling. Is it not
absurd? Second, in the act of performing your daily job you suddenly
become aware of yourself as performing that job. So, for instance, you
become aware of yourself as being the person who is asking a customer
to please wait a moment. When you turn to the customer a little later,
you recognize yourself as a person part of whose task it is to ask people
to wait. Isn't that absurd? Third, you are asked to join an organization
for the achievement of world peace. You don't think that world peace
can be attained by such organizations, but you are not sure how else
you can help. You decide to think the matter over, but other problems
come up and you forget about it. Months later you remember that you
were to decide, and feeling a bit guilty over your long silence, you mail
in your dues. Meanwhile the organization has collapsed. You send
several letters in trying to get your money back. Now, a final encounter
with the absurd reported in Eugen Kogon's book on Nazi concentration
camps, The Theory and Practice of Hell:
All prisoners in the concentration camps had to wear prescribed markings sewn
to their clothing - a serial number and colored triangles, affixed to the left
breast and the right trouser leg. At Auschwitz the serial number was tattooed on
the left forearm of the prisoners. Red was the color denoting political prisoners.
Second offenders, so-called recidivists, wore a stripe of the same color above the
upper edge of the triangle. Criminals wore a green triangle, with a surprinted S
for the SV category. Jehovah's Witnesses wore purple; 'shiftless elements,'
black; homosexuals, pink. During certain periods, the Gypsies and the shiftless
picked up in certain special campaigns wore a brown triangle.
Jews, in addition to the markings listed above, wore a yellow triangle under the
classification triangle. The yellow triangle pointed up, the other down, forming
the six-pointed Star of David. Jews and non-Jews who had violated the Nurem-
berg racial laws - so-called 'race defilers' - wore a black border around or
athwart the green or yellow triangle. Foreigners had a letter surprinted on their
triangles - F for France, N for Netherlands, etc. Special political prisoners
picked up at the outbreak of the war, for supposed unreliability, wore their
serial number across the triangle, the others about an inch below the bottom
point. Starting with the war, certain prisoners were admitted who had a K
printed on their triangles. These were 'war criminals' (Kriegsc'erbrecher) and they
were always permanently assigned to penal companies. Their offenses were often
trifling. Occasionally a prisoner long in camp was likewise assigned to this K
company. Only a very few of them survived. 'Labor Disciplinary Prisoners'
146 ALBERT CAMUS
wore a white A on their black triangles, from the German word for labor, A"beit.
Most of them were in camp for only a few weeks. Members of the penal companies
showed a black dot, the size of a silver dollar, between the point of the triangle
and the serial number.
Prisoners suspected of plans for escaping had a red-and-white target sewn or
painted on chest and back. The SS even devised a special marking for the feeble-
minded - an armband with the German word Blod. Sometimes these unfortunates
also had to wear a sign around their necks: 'I am a Moron!' This procedure
was particularly provocative when the prisoner in question also wore the red
triangle reserved for avowed opponents of the Nazi regime. The feeble-minded
enjoyed the freedom of the camp and were the butt of the cruelest jokes. Eventu-
ally they all perished or were killed by injection.
The camps were a veritable circus, as far as colors, markings, and special
designations are concerued. Occasionally prisoners were decked out in nearly all
colors of the rainbow. 3
As Sartre, as well as many other commentators, has pointed out, the

absurd, for Camus, "is both a state of fact and the lucid awareness
which certain people acquire of this state of fact. The 'absurd' man is
the man who does not hesitate to draw the inevitable conclusions from
a fundamental absurdity." The distance between self and world,
consciousness and nature, not only exists, it is recognized. The absurd
is not only a quality of man's reality, it is encountered. Beyond the
limitations of the petty and the overpowering, the distant garble
coming out of the recording machine and the inventory of concentration
camp symbols, there is the texture of the absurd felt, handled, imme-
diately given in an overarching design: it is precisely the world which
is encountered as absurd. And to speak of the world here, not of its
fragments, is to make a claim about "our time" - that its foundation
is built of an evil that can never be rectified, that its spirit has no
ulterior support, and that the possibilities of transcendence are only
toward that lucidity of consciousness which Camus discovers, ultimately,
in the simple joys of this earth. The recognition of evil, the rejection of
divine transcendence, and the oblique yet purposeful movement
toward joy are moments (in the Hegelian sense) in a triple progression.
They constitute the matrix of the absurd.
Discussions of the problem of evil in professional philosophy and
theology seem to be at a standstill today. Theodicy is, if anything, a
contemporary embarrassment. Yet in literature the issue is very much
alive, and in the writings of Camus theodicy is again put at the center
of our worldly concern. The question, far from exhausted, is given
renewed urgency: How is it possible to justify the existence of radical
evil? How is it possible to understand the suffering of the innocent?
3 Kogan, E., The Theory and Practice 0/ HeU, New York (Berkley Book ed.), 4I-42.
ALBERT CAMUS 147
And how is it possible for men in daily life who strive for a moral order
of existence to build their lives on the unhappiness of others? Camus is
beginning not where Dostoievski left off but where Dostoievski began.
Camus' question is Ivan's appeal to Alyosha in The Brothers Karama-
zov:
Tell me yourself, I challenge you - answer. Imagine that you are creating a
fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving
them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to
death only one tiny creature - that baby beating its breast with its fist, for
instance - and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to
be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth. 4
Camus is compelled to say "no" with Alyosha, but unlike Alyosha

his is a "no" without recourse to Christ, a "no" that in its finality can
only hope for man's achievement of lucidity within an irrevocably
faulted world. And just as Ivan builds his case on the irrefutable data
of the suffering of the children whose cases he cites, so Camus stocks
his ammunition dump with the unavoidable terror given in the death of
a child. He writes in The Plague:
They had already seen children die - for many months now death had shown no
favoritism - but they had never yet watched a child's agony minute by minute,
as they had now been doing since daybreak. Needless to say, the pain inflicted
on these innocent victims had always seemed to them to be what in fact it was:
an abominable thing. But hitherto they had felt its abomination in, so to speak,
an abstract way; they had never had to witness over so long a period the death-
throes of an innocent child.
And just then the boy had a sudden spasm, as if something had bitten him in
the stomach, and uttered a long, shrill wail. For moments that seemed endless he
stayed in a queer, contorted position, his body racked by convulsive tremors; it
was as if his frail frame were bending before the fierce breath of the plague,
breaking under the reiterated gusts of fever. Then the storm-wind passed, there
came a lull, and he relaxed a little; the fever seemed to recede, leaving him
gasping for breath on a dank, pestilential shore, lost in a languor that already
looked like death. When for the third time the fiery wave broke on him, lifting
him a little, the child curled himself up and shrank away to the edge of the bed,
as if in terror of the flames advancing on him, licking his limbs. A moment later,
after tossing his head wildly to and fro, he flung off the blanket. From between
the inflamed eyelids big tears welled up and trickled down the sunken, leaden-
hued cheeks. When the spasm had passed, utterly exhausted, tensing his thin
legs and arms, on which, within forty-eight hours, the flesh had wasted to the
bone, the child lay flat, racked on the tumbled bed, in a grotesque parody of
crucifixion. 5
Our world is founded on the death of that child, and our hopes are
nourished with the bounty of his suffering. There is, for Camus, no
4 Dostoievski, F., The Brothers Karamazov, 29I.
5 Camus, A., The Plague, New York, 1948, 192-93.
148 ALBERT CAMUS
escape from this moral datum. At the heart of man's being in the social
world is the infection which shadows his plans, a residue of pus that
can never be squeezed dry. That it is absurd that this is the case can
only mean that God can never justify his creation and that man is left
with the responsibility of accounting for himself in a life made possible
by death. There is, however, a strange alternative.
In some of its forms Gnosticism suggests a distinction between the
Demiurge as creator of this world and the Divine Being who is truly
God. The evil of the world is the work not of the ultimate God but of an
intermediary. There then exists not only evil but a structure of evil.
In Camus' terms the absurd might be understood as the creation of the
Demiurge, but a creation set adrift from the Divine Being. Man's
yearning to return to his source, his divine source, is a thematic element
of all of Camus' books. His early and serious interest in the philosophy
of Plotinus makes itself manifest here. But against Plotinus and
Christian doctrine as well, man is fallen in a world abandoned by its
creator. If God cannot be reached, the question is whether the world is
contrived in the mold of an inescapable evil. One of Faulkner's charac-
ters says, "Perhaps it is upon the instant that we realize, admit, that
there is a logical pattern to evil, that we die." Camus' answer to this is
given in the context of his religious rejection of God.
In a way, Camus' conception of God and man is the reverse of that of
Ivan Karamazov. Ivan accepts God but rejects His world; Camus, we
might say, rejects God but accepts His world. And in fact it is notorious
that Camus has been received most enthusiastically by the church,
especially those within it who sense in his work the existence of an
authentic religious dialogue. Parodoxically for our time, the rejection
of religious transcendence has become a way of formulating, for those
who would be believers, the very problem of transcendence. The
question for Camus as well as for his audience is, Can humanism be
revitalized? Is a radical humanism possible which can adequately
pose the issues that confront men today? Can we live religiously
without God? Camus gives us the question, not an answer. How is this
to be understood?
Philosophical questioning, whether in philosophy proper or in
literature, comes alive only when the questioner is at issue in his
question, when he commits himself, opens himself to the possibility
of change and upset. This is why questioning is a hazardous affair.
On the dust jacket of the American edition of The Myth 01 Sisyphus is
the phrase: "a lucid invitation to live and to create." This appears on
ALBERT CAMUS 149
the cover, not in the blurb. It happens to be the truth. Camus is well
aware of the ironies possible between author and audience. In the face
of these dangers - the dangers of patronization and phony devices - he
extends to us, to each of us, an invitation to consider the dialectic of
his theme. On opening his book we are struck with the personal quality
of his thought. He is not speaking for us but to us. His thoughts
require that we involve ourselves in the struggle to articulate, in true
form, the questions that are implicit within us. Camus, then, is a
dialectician following an ancient tradition. But the tradition is French
as well as Greek; it is French and Danish too. The being of the questioner
is the theme of Socrates as well as Pascal and Kierkegaard.
We are given a question, then, not an answer. But this does not mean
that in being called to self-examination we are left without suggestions.
Rather, we are left with an image of the absurd that is rendered
possible by a dialectical consideration of a Godless world. The image
is that of daily routine: "Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or
the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according
to the same rhythm."6 But in the very activity of routine the absurd is
encountered: "one day the 'why' arises and everything begins in that
weariness tinged with amazement."7 The "why" is not a transforming
agency; it merely slips into the work of the day and sticks there as a
disturbance. The logic of inquiry here leads, Camus says, either to
suicide or recovery. In fact, the whole of Camus' encounter with the
absurd comes into focus at this point. The committed questioner who
asks with Camus whether he can live with what he knows is really ask-
ing whether it is possible to transcend the appeal of suicide as a
completely valid refusal to bear the human condition. Camus does
not make that refusal. He accepts instead a world in which men define
themselves authentically in persisting in an unbright search for honor
and decency. The Hegelian moments of theodicy and the rejection of
divine transcendence lead, finally, to the prize of the venture, the
recovery of joy as the victory of and over the absurd.
Earlier we said that Camus is as much Algerian in spirit as French.
This should now be qualified. If anything, he is more Algerian than
French. But it is not a matter of political or cultural loyalties. Camus'
France faces Africa; his Africa opens out into a Mediterranean horizon.
The beach and the sea beyond are more than facts of nature; they are
6 Camus, A., The Myth ot Sisyphus and Othe, Essays, 12-13.
7 ibid., 13.
ISO ALBERT CAMUS
guide lines to a serenity, a way of being, a style of life that Camus knew
and to which he remained true. "In Algiers," he writes, "no one says 'go
for a swim,' but rather 'indulge in a swim.' " Bathing in the sea is an
almost ritual reliving of a natural drama. Like fishermen of the flesh,
Camus' young men go out by boat to swim in the sea that brings them
its treasures of vitality and quickness. Their return is almost mythic:
"At the hour when the sun overflows from every comer of the sky at
once, the orange canoe loaded with brown bodies brings us home in a
mad race. And when, having suddenly interrupted the cadenced beat
of the double paddle's bright-colored wings, we glide slowly in the
calm water of the inner harbor, how can I fail to feel that I am piloting
through the smooth waters a savage cargo of gods in whom I recognize
my brothers?" 8
The simple joys that Camus returns to or, better, that he rediscovers
in himself, are misleadingly formulated, for the vocabulary of simpli-
city is disarming. Swimming together, talking together, joking together,
playing together, making love together - these are wonders that we
recapture after the agonies of the absurd: they are the fruits deliciously
hidden in the absurd. But before a return to them is possible, we still
confront the daily world of insolence, deceit, yearning, and reprisal.
Toward what we must now call the end of his life, Camus felt that he
had broken through the walls that make of our world a labyrinth, that
he had rediscovered a vein of joy that lay concealed in his flesh. In an
essay recording his return to the North African city of his youth, he
remembers himself:
I discovered once more at Tipasa that one must keep intact in oneself a freshness, a
cool wellspring of joy, love the day that escapes injustice, and return to combat
having won that light. Here I recaptured the former beauty, a young sky, and I
measured my luck, realizing at last that in the worst years of our madness the
memory of that sky had never left me. This was what in the end had kept me
from despairing ... In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in
me an invincible summer. 9
Evil cannot be justified, God cannot be, but the absurdity of existence
can be suffered with a heart that guards its interior freedom, a freedom
that can transform terror into a triumph of consciousness. It is here that
Camus' style becomes the banner of his cause. His central terms are
charged simplicities: joy, lucidity, summer, and the sea. The language
of the absurd returns us to that infoldment of consciousness which
8 ibid., 143.
• Wid., 201-202.
ALBERT CAMUS 151
marks the mind of its author. Joy is the dialectical transformation of

man's being into that lucidity in which the absurd is at last shackled.
It is as close to transcendence as man can come.
<III>
Final sections seem destined to raise questions such as, What is the
place of Camus in the total literary scene? How much is there in his
work which will last ? Is Camus a truly great artist? In a way, what
difference is there if one answers such questions with thumbs up or
thumbs down? And who are we to be executioners or saviors? I prefer
to turn to other problems. We have considered Camus as a philosophical
novelist. Is he then to be taken as a philosopher? It would be a mistake
to answer yes or no to this question without first asking whether the
function of philosophical literature is clearly delineated. I think it is not;
in fact, the entire region is obscure. We are able to point to philosophical
novelists and poets, but we find it extremely difficult to explain what
it is we are pointing to. It is necessary to go beyond the statement by
Henry James with which we began. A philosophical novelist not only
raises metaphysical questions, he explores their nature in the frame-
work of human action. He develops philosophical concepts as well as
utilizes them. But there is always a hazard: the writer is most often
not a professional philosopher; is it quite fair for him to employ
categories and themes which are deeply rooted in the soil of philosophy
and then to claim literary immunity if he is critized at a technical
level? Is Camus, then, destined to be called a good philosopher by
the writers and a good writer by the philosophers? Such dodges can
never be fair to anyone. Still, they form the first rank in a series of
criticisms and charges the philosophical novelist must face. Everything
depends here on the placement of the problem. We are interested in the
writer as a philosophical artist.
To be sure, Camus' themes are not new. His art is heavily in-
debted to an existential tradition in both philosophy and literature.
Yet it is not enough to say that he has given new life to old ideas.
Camus' originality lies in a confrontation with the absurd which ends,
as we have seen, neither in capitulation to transcendence nor the chaos
of death. The tension that flows through his work is the power of revolt,
a living witness to man's capacity to upend himself without destroying
himself. And even this thematic tension is at least as old as Hegel. The
Phenomenology of Mind, especially the sections on Master and Slave
ALBERT CAMUS
and the Unhappy Consciousness, is the best introduction to the philo-

sophy of the absurd. Through the dark and thick tangle of German
metaphysics one sees burning the gem of Camus' thought. What
distinguishes his work and mission from that of Hegel and the philoso-
phers is, paradoxically, best understood in terms of Hegel and the
philosophers. It is precisely that infoldment of consciousness in man
which makes him a witness to his time. Without a grounding in nine-
teenth century philosophy, most readers of Camus have felt this secret
attraction of his work. It is Camus himself that attracts us. At the end
of the absurd world he describes, we find him waiting for us.
The death of an artist can reverberate in the mind of his public.
He is missed in a special way. In the case of Camus, death is both part
of his thematic world, one of the central terms of his discourse, and
now closes out that world. Here is the prime example of the involution
of art and life: an artist whose theme is death dies. We must add this
to our list of illustrations of the absurd. But if we do, we must at the
same time attend to the moments of the absurd and be true to its
dialectical possibilities. An audience always survives an author, but it
is then the responsibility of that audience to recover the artist's
questions and enrich his dream. Camus leaves us at a time when we
can ill afford his death. Long after the tributes to him have completed
their course and the literary pickpockets have run their fingers through
his Nobel Prize address, it may be time to try to assess his gifts. We
shall, however, have to catch up with him, for he died en route.
PART THREE
HISTORY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

13. A Study zn Philosophy and the Social Sciences
My intention in this essay is not to survey either the historical or the

structural relationships between philosophy and the social scien-
ces, but rather to focus on a basic systematic problem in methodo-
logy: the philosophical character and implications of the methods of
social-scientific inquiry. By "methodology" I understand the under-
lying conceptual framework in terms of which concrete studies in
history, sociology, economics, and the like are carried out, and in
terms of which they receive a general rationale. Therefore I am not
concerned here with the nature of specific techniques that social
scientists utilize, or with their evaluation. Instead, I am interested in
what I take to be a distinctly philosophical task, the analysis of the
underlying presuppositions of the conceptual systems employed by
social scientists in virtue of which their scientific enterprise is carried
out. Methodology in the sense in which I am using it thus implies a
certain order of philosophical commitment.
The framework for my remarks is historically oriented, however,
since I wish to begin with two major methodological approaches to the
task of social-scientific inquiry. The approaches in question will provide
us with a point of departure for a discussion of social-scientific methodo-
logy, its relationships with natural-scientific inquiry, and its general
philosophical implications. Such a discussion looks toward the concrete
problem of this paper, which is an analytic, critical comparison of
naturalistic and phenomenological approaches to the methodology of
the social sciences. It shall be my purpose to point out certain crucial
inadequacies in the naturalistic interpretation of social science -
inadequacies that can be overcome, it seems to me, by a phenome-
nological approach.
PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

Let me begin, then, with a statement of two positions. I use the desig-
nation "naturalism" in this context to refer to that approach to social
science which holds that the methods of the natural sciences, scientific
method generally, are not only adequate for the understanding of
social phenomena but indeed constitute the paradigm for all inquiry
in this field. A conjoint thesis of naturalism is that of the qualitative
continuum between problems of the natural and of the social sciences.
William R. Dennes expresses this point quite clearly: "There is for
naturalism no knowledge except that of the type ordinarily called
'scientific.' But such knowledge cannot be said to be restricted by its
method to any limited field of subject matter - to the exclusion, let
us say, of the processes called 'history' and the 'fine arts.'" 1
Thelma Z. Lavine presents the thesis of naturalism in this way:
"The naturalistic principle may be stated as the resolution to pursue
inquiry into any set of phenomena by means of methods which admi-
nister checks of intelligent experiential verification in accordance with
the contemporary criteria of objectivity. The significance of this
principle does not lie in the advocacy of empirical method, but in the
conception of the regions where that method is to be employed. That
scientific analysis must not be restricted in any quarter, that its
extension to any field, to any special set of phenomena, must not be
curtailed - this is the nerve of the naturalistic principle. 'Continuity'
of analysis can thus mean only that all analysis must be scientific
analysis." 2
It follows clearly that naturalistic methodology is held to be appli-
cable to the problems of the social sciences - in fact, that a proper
theory of the social sciences would have to be founded in these terms.
In the words of Ernest Nagel, it would have to be a theory that, "in its
method of articulating its concepts and evaluating its evidence," would
be "continuous with the theories of the natural sciences." 3
The second approach is radically different. It directly argues that
the phenomena of the social sciences are not qualitatively conti-
nuous with those of the natural sciences, and that very different
1 Dennes, W. R., "The Categories of Naturalism," in Naturalism and the Human Spirit
(ed. by Yervant H. Krikorian), New York, 1944,289.
2 Lavine, T. Z., "Naturalism and the Sociological Analysis of Knowledge," i.bid., 184-85.
3 Nagel, E., "Problems of Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences," in
Sci.ence, Language, and Human Rights, American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division,
Philadelphia, 1952, 63.
PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCES IS7
methods must be employed to study social reality. Here it is maintained
that what is needed above all is a way of looking at social phenomena
which takes into primary account the intentional structure of human
consciousness, and which accordingly places major emphasis on the
meaning social acts have for the actors who perform them and who
live in a reality built out of their subjective interpretation.
Obviously the label "phenomenological" is less than satisfactory for
this total approach, since it neither derives directly from the philosophy
of Edmund Husserl nor is always philosophically compatible with
principles of Husserlian phenomenology. Nevertheless, I prefer the
term "phenomenological" to the possible alternative "subjective," for
although the former may be misunderstood, the latter is necessarily
misinterpreted in the context of its present meaning if it is equated, as
unfortunately it generally is, with personal or private or merely
introspective, intuitive attitudes. I shall therefore use "phenomeno-
logical" as a generic term to include all positions that stress the primacy
of consciousness and subjective meaning in the interpretation of social
action.
The clearest expression of this standpoint is offered by Max Weber:
"Sociology ... is a science which attempts the interpretive understand-
ing of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of
its course and effects. In 'action' is included all human behaviour when
and in so far as the acting individual attaches a SUbjective meaning to
it. Action in this sense may be either overt or purely inward or sub-
jective; it may consist of positive intervention in a situation, or of
deliberately refraining from such intelvention or passively acquiescing
in the situation. Action is social in so far as, by virtue of the subjective
meaning attached to it by the acting individual (or individuals), it
takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its
course." 4
Contemporary discussion of the problems of the social sciences has
been dominated by the dialogue between representatives of the two
camps. Most of the characteristic problems of social-scientific methodo-
logy have been at issue: criteria of verification, the status of so-called
introspective reports, the use of models in explanation, the applica-
bility of mathematical or formalistic modes of description to social
phenomena. But underlying all of these topics there is what I consider
to be the root issue for the entire range of problems involved: the
question of the nature and status of knowledge as such in science as
4 Weber, M., The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, New York, 1947, 88.
158 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
such. At the basis of all methodological analysis there lies an essentially

epistemological problem, that of the critique of knowledge. It is this
problem I am interested in exploring at present. To carry out such an
exploration requires that we tum to the epistemological grounding of
the naturalistic and phenomenological approaches.
As we have seen, it is the central contention of the naturalistic
school that the methods of natural science constitute the proper means
for inquiring into social phenomena. Now if we distinguish between
methods in the sense of concrete techniques and methods in the philo-
sophical sense of conceptual instruments, it is clear that the naturalist's
thesis is directed to a level concerned with the kind of knowledge in-
volved in social science. In other words, the naturalist is suggesting that
the concepts of the social sciences, as well as the theoretical matrix for
those concepts, are identical or ought to be made identical with those of
the natural sciences.
But at what level is this suggestion offered? Is the suggestion itself
a proper part of scientific discourse? Is the analysis of the conceptual
structure of a system within the province of science? Is the working
out of a system of scientific explanation to take place within the
framework of natural science? Are philosophical questions about
natural science to be treated as problems within the methodology of
natural science? All of these questions lead back to a foundational
one: is an epistemological analysis of the kind of knowledge involved
in natural-scientific discourse to be taken at the same level with
natural-scientific problems, and therefore to be answered in terms of
the criteria of explanation provided by natural science? The immediate
question is then whether natural science can talk about itself philoso-
phically in natural-scientific terms. But before turning to the paradox I
think is involved here, let us glance at the epistemological problem
relevant to the phenomenological approach.
To decide that the problems of the social sciences are first of all
phenomenological means that social action is understood as founded
on the intentional experience of the actors on the social scene. The kind
of theoretical framework erected in accordance with this insight is
distinctively philosophical, that is, questions about the nature and
status of intentional experience may themselves be raised and resolved
within the same framework. A phenomenological approach has then this
unique characteristic: questions about its own methods and procedures
are part of its structural content. Since a phenomenological system is
not bound to criteria taken over from a non-philosophical or a supra-
PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 159
philosophical domain, it may consider immanent problems. For the
same reason a philosophical system may, indeed must, consider its
own procedures and articulation as part of its field for inquiry. The
point is that a phenomenological approach lends itself completely
to philosophical self-scrutiny.
At the conceptual level, then, the method of natural science and the
method of social science are radically different; the former is rooted
in a theoretical system that may never take itself as the object of its
inquiry without transcending its own categories; the latter, in its
phenomenological cha.racter, necessarily becomes self-inspecting yet
remains within the conceptual system involved, that of philosophical
analysis. Furthermore, whereas a phenomenological approach begins
by raising the question of its own philosophical status, the naturalistic
standpoint cancels out the possibility of self-inspection by its own claim
that natural science provides the essential method for stating and
evaluating philosophical claims.
It might appear that this analysis of naturalism does not do justice
to its precisely philosophical character, that it fails to acknowledge the
status of naturalism as a philosophy that reflects on nature and ex-
perience. Rather than replying to this caution directly, I prefer to
consider it first in the context of a fairly recent statement by a
philosopher in the naturalist tradition who approaches this criticism of
naturalism in an especially forceful manner.
<II>
In a 1953 article Thelma Z. Lavi le, herself a contributor to the earlier
volume entitled Naturalism and the Human Spirit, reflects on certain
problems raised in that volume concerning philosophical naturalism, and
addresses herself to a criticism of the fundamental method of naturalistic
inquiry.5 Although her purpose is a reconstruction of naturalism in the
light of her criticisms, rather than an abandonment of the position, her
critical remarks are directly relevant to the present discussion.
Miss Lavine presents four basic charges that she thillks natural-
ism must face: "(I) naturalism's surrendering of the status of
constructive philosophy for that of methodological principle; (2) its
failure to raise the question of its own method as distinguished from
that of science; (3) its neglect of elements other than the experimental
5 Lavine, T. Z., "Note to :\aturalists on the Human Spirit," Journal of Philosophy,
L, February 26, 1953, 145-54.
160 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
in scientific method; (4) its omission of the problems of social science

method." 6 Her statement of the flrst two charges will suffice for an
account of her general argument:
The dominating concern with the unrestricted applicability of scientific method
tends unfortunately to reduce naturalism itseH to a mere uncompromising
testimonial to the universal adequacy of that method. Naturalism is left with
only a negative function: watchdog of scientific method, sniffing out interloping
methods. A naturalism that is content to be defined by a principle of continuity
of analysis conceived in terms of experiment and empirical verifiability must
also be agreeable to forfeiting its status as a positive, i.e., constructive philosophy
... A related difficulty stems from the failure to distinguish at all times between
the method stipulated by naturalism for inquiry into all types of subject matter
and the method of naturalism itseH. If naturalism views 'itseH: however, as
nothing but a methodological principle, it is easy to see why more care was not
devoted to distinguishing itseH from the scientific method it recommends.
Naturalism as mere 'controlling methodological principle' or as 'criticism' is in
the limbo of methodology, concerning which methodological questions are rarely
raised. The failure to raise clearly the question: 'What is the method 01 naturalism?'
even more than the failure to provide a clear answer, has two unhappy results. It
has, firstly, suggested to some that the method of naturalism is the method
of the sciences. Yet who should know better than a naturalist that only science
uses scientific method? Secondly, an even less desirable result of not inquiring
into the method of naturalism is that naturalists have thereby cut themselves
off from that insight into their own philosophy which can lead them out of the
cuI-dc-sac of a position which is nothing but a methodological principle. 7
I have quoted here at length because I believe that this statement on

its own account deserves more serious attention than it was given in
Ernest Nagel's reply to it,S and because, wming from a naturalist, it is
doubly interesting.
For Miss Lavine the way out of this naturalistic impasse is
provided by a reconstructed "method of understanding" or Verstehen,
which has, among other things, the "merit of designating the ... non-
experimental elements in scientific and in philosophic theory." 9
"What is here being suggested," she writes, "is that those present
difficulties of naturalism stemming from its incapacity to admit and to
treat effectively the various non-experimental elements in inquiry may
be resolved by a naturalistically reconstructed method of Verstehen. In
this reconstruction the most important single task is working out a
set of controls for the verstehendes element in philosophic and scientific
theory which will serve, as do the controls in experimentation, as empi-
• ibid., I53.
? ibid., I46-47.
8 Nagel, E., "On the Method of Vel'stehen as the Sole Method of Philosophy," Joumal of
Philosophy, L, February 26, I953, I54-57.
9 "Note to Naturalists on the Human Spirit," 150.
PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 161
rical checks." 10 Of course, it is Miss Lavine's view that such a

reconstruction is possible within the naturalistic framework. I would
like to challenge this contention.
First, it is necessary to be clear about the meaning of Verstehen. The
translation "understanding" is not a happy one, because Verstehen
signifies a certain kind of understanding relevant primarily to human
behavior. Verstehen is interpretive understanding. If we go back to
Max Weber's conception of the subjective interpretation of meaning in
social action, we will have a clearer notion of what is at issue here.
Weber maintains that the primary task of the sociologist is to under-
stand the meaning an act has for the actor himself, not for the observer.
The kind of understanding involved is precisely that of Verstehen.
What is sought in such explanatory understanding is the total
character of the intentional framework of the actor, which alone
provides the key to the meaning of a specific act he performs. A
particular act is referred back interpretively to the intentional
matrix that is the ground of its meaning. "Thus," Weber writes,
"for a science which is concerned with the subjective meaning of
action, explanation requires a grasp of the complex of meaning in
which an actual course of understandable action thus interpreted
belongs. In all such cases, even where the processes are largely affectual,
the subjective meaning of the action, including that also of the relevant
meaning complexes, will be called the 'intended' meaning. This involves
a departure from ordinary usage, which speaks of intention in this sense
only in the case of rationally purposive action." 11 Verstehen, then, for
Weber, is the operation concerned with explicating the structure of
subjective interpretation of meaning. But this is not all that Verstehen
signifies.
Alfred Schutz has pointed out that Verstehen has at least three
different levels of application. It may be understood "as the experi-
ential form of common-sense knowledge of human affairs ... as an
epistemological problem, and ... as a method peculiar to the social
sciences." 12 It is the failure to distinguish these different levels which
explains, in part, much of the confusion involved in the criticisms
directed against Weber's postulate of the SUbjective interpretation of
meaning. These criticisms are usually generated by the following
assumptions: first, that Weber is saying that a different kind of
10 ibid., 151-52.
11 op. cit., 95-96.
12 Schutz, A., "Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences," Journal of Phi-
losophy, LI, April 29, 1954, 265.
knowledge is involved in understanding social phenomena from that

involved in understanding natural phenomena; second, that the
method of Verstehen consists in an empathic response to or imaginative
reconstruction of another person's motivation in social action; third,
that Weber's postulate of subjective interpretation involves a "sub-
jectivism" that renders the method of Verstehen not only unscientific
but even anti-scientific; and fourth, that the method of Verstehen
offers no criteria for scientific explanation. As Ernest Nagel puts it,
"the method of Verstehen does not, by itself, supply any criteria for
the validity of conjectures and hypotheses concerning the springs of
human action." 13
All of these assumptions are false and completely misleading.
A review of the three levels of Verstehen presented by Schutz will enable
us to see what Weber is advocating. To say, in line with the first of
those levels, that Verstehen is "the experiential form of common-sense
knowledge of human affairs" means that as a matter of fact men in
daily life do interpret one another's actions by seeking to grasp the
meaning intended by fellow men. Consider some of the language
involved at this level. "What did he really mean by that?" "Why don't
you say what you mean?" "Who does he think he's fooling?" If overt
statements and actions were always taken at face value, taken as true
indicators of the speaker's opinions and attitudes, sincerity would be a
meaningless term, politics would be without a subject matter, and
history would be the chronicle of human vegetation. Common-sense
interpretation turns out to be a highly complicated instrument.
Motive, attitude, intent, and purpose are the primary structures
looked to as the real basis for understanding overt behavior. Verstehen
at the level of common sense is the actual mode of understanding
utilized by actors in daily life to interpret one another's actions.
"As a method peculiar to the social sciences," another level of
application formulated by Schutz, Verstehen is concerned with the
typifications of interpretation found in common-sense life, and endea-
vors to provide a theoretical system suitable for their clarification.
This theoretical system has as its guiding principle the subjective
interpretation of meaning, but how this principle is utilized depends on
the particular way in which the theoretical system is understood.
There are two aspects to the system. First, it is the theoretical foun-
dation for a method of interpreting social phenomena, that is, it
provides the general concepts in terms of which the method of Verstehen
13 op. cit., IS6.
is comprehensible. But second, it is a philosophical foundation for

comprehending the intentional structure of social action.
For this reason it makes good sense to say, with Schutz, that
Verstehen may be understood in a third application "as an episte-
mological problem." Here there are again two aspects to be grasped.
Verstehen is concerned epistemologically with the cardinal philosophical
problem of the social sciences, that of intersubjectivity; at this point it
endeavors to pose the problem rather than to resolve it. But a second
meaning of Verstehen involved here is that of philosophical method
itself; in this sense it is synonymous with what might be termed
metaphilosophical inquiry, that is, a necessarily a priori, dialectical,
categorial analysis of philosophical procedures. Since philosophy is
necessarily reflexive in character, since a philosopher must necessarily
concern himself with the critique of his own enterprise (in its systematic
rather than psychological context), it follows that metaphilosophy is an
indispensable part of philosophical analysis. Verstehen is as essential to
philosophical life as it is to common-sense life.
The misunderstandings involved in the criticisms of Weber pre-
sented before are now manifest. It is not that a different kind of
knowledge is involved in the social sciences as compared with the
natural sciences, but that the object of knowledge is different. The
social sciences are concerned with the intentional dimension of social
reality. Again, the "method" of Verstehen is not that of empathic or
imaginative response, but rather a conceptual clarification of the
interpretive understanding descriptively involved in the affairs of
common-sense men in daily life. Furthermore, the "subjectivism" of
Weber's postulate of interpretation does not mean that private,
intuitive, unverifiable elements are involved in the understanding of
social action, but that the very structure of social action is built out of
the intentional character of human life. 14 Finally, to argue, as Nagel
does, that "the method of Verstehen does not, by itself, supply any
criteria for the validity of conjectures and hypotheses concerning the
springs of human action" 15 is to confound severa] senses of "method"
and to ignore what is distinctive about Weber's leading principle.
Verstehen is not concerned at any level with providing empirical criteria
for determining the validity of hypotheses; as a philosophically directed
method it is concerned rather with the conceptual framework within
which social reality may be comprehended.
Interestingly enough, this interpretation of the method of Verstehen
14 Cf. Schutz, 26g-70.
16 op. cit., 156.
as metaphilosophically oriented is in complete agreement with Miss

Lavine's presentation of Verstehen as "designating the ... nOn-
experimental elements in scientific and in philosophic theory." 16
Indeed, it is her claim that "Verstehen is the sole method of philoso-
phy. Alternative philosophies cannot differ in the method they
employ, but only in the types of terms they select as the objects of
reflection." 17 But now it is Miss Lavine's contention that Verstehen,
understood in this sense, may be appropriated by a reconstructed
naturalism and thus provide what amounts to a philosophical ground-
ing for the naturalistic position. I am in complete agreement with
Miss Lavine's criticisms of naturalism, and with her conclusion that
the method of Verstehen is needed to correct the central inadequacies
she has indicated. I do not agree, however, that a reconstruction of
Verstehen is possible in naturalistic terms. My reasons follow.
It seems to me, first of all, that Miss Lavine, having distin-
guished between methods of science and philosophical analysis,
between "the method stipulated by naturalism for inquiry into all
types of subject matter and the method of naturalism itself," 18
lapses into the very evil she is attacking when she recommends a
Verstehen reconstructed in such a way that empirical controls are built
into it. It may be well, however, to quote her own conception of what
such an empirically controlled Verstehen would involve:
A naturalistically reconstructed method of Verstehen would make possible the
revising of the naturalistic methodological principle to incorporate Verstehen and
would thus make this principle a more accurate statement of naturalistic aims.
For naturalists do not so much seek to deny the fact of the various non-experi-
mental elements in inquiry as they fear the uncontrolled philosophic vagaries
which are apt to result from acknowledging them. Once naturalistic safeguards
were provided for Verstehen, this new content might modify the form of the
principle of continuity of analysis as follows: The naturalistic principle is the
resolution that inquiry into any area be subject to the single intellectual criterion of
pertinent empirical checks upon the methods employed. This is to say that the nerve of
the naturalistic position is not insistence upon a "single intellectual method" but upon
a single intellectual criterion for whatever method may be feasible. What is crucial,
of course, is the concept of the pertinence of empirical checks to given methods.19
If Verstehen is offered by Miss Lavine as "the sole method of
philosophy," which is then to be the method of naturalism, I do not
see how it can be consistently suggested that "naturalistic safeguards"
can be "provided for Verstehen." It was the philosophical status of
naturalistic safeguards which was placed in question by Miss Lavine
16 "Note to Naturalists on the Human Spirit," ISO.
17 ibid., 153.
18 ibid., 146.
19 ibid., 152.
in her criticisms of naturalism. To reinvoke naturalistic criteria as

correctives for a reconstructed naturalistic method is to take a step
forward and follow with a step back. Moreover, Miss Lavine sacrifices
the central point of her argument when, after making it clear that
Verstehen is the essence of philosophical method, she reverts to a notion
of Verstehen in the narrow sense of method as a conceptual device.
Verstehen in the broad sense cannot be "incorporated" into natural-
istic methodology, because it is itself foundational; the meaning of
methodological incorporation is part of the subject matter of Verstehen.
What Miss Lavine wishes to do is quite clear. She wants to found
naturalism philosophically without departing from naturalistic method.
But her own placement of naturalism "in the limbo of methodology"
should have warned her away from such an undertaking, and
her insight into the character of Verstehen as the fundamental method
of philosophical inquiry might have suggested a way out: the tran-
scension of naturalism in favor of a phenomenological standpoint.
<III>
Thus far I have used the term "phenomenological" to designate a
general style of social science which takes human consciousness and its
intended meanings as the proper locus for the understanding of social
action. In this sense such American social scientists as W. 1. Thomas,
Cooley, and G. H. Mead, in addition to the European school influenced
directly by Max Weber, are all representatives of the phenomenological
standpoint. Now, however, I wish to narrow my usage of the term to
the technical meaning in contemporary philosophy given to it by
Edmund Hussed, and suggest that Hussedian phenomenology not only
is capable of providing a philosophical grounding for the social sciences
but is distinctively suited to the philosophical task of Verstehen. Hus-
sed's doctrine of the intentionality of consciousness provides an
immediate entrance into the questions at issue.
All perceptual acts, in the broad Cartesian sense, have a directional
character, an active movement that intends some object. Unlike the
naive, real object of common sense or natural science, the intentional
object is merely the correlate of the act of intending. The intentional
object, or noema in Hussed's language, is the object as meant, as
intended in the acts of thinking, remembering, willing, imagining, and
the like. Phenomenology is a discipline concerned with the description
of the phenomenon in so far as it is given to consciousness by way of
the acts of intentionality. Since the entire range of intentional activity

is taken as the subject matter for phenomenological investigation, the
intentional life of actors in social reality is clearly included in the pheno-
menological domain. And here philosophical and sociological concerns
merge into a single concordant venture: the attempt to comprehend
social action in terms of the intentional meanings consciousness
ascribes to its objects. Phenomenology is precisely, therefore, philo-
sophical Verstehen.
In addition to its methodological rapport with the structure of
social life, phenomenology is also a philosophy that claims to be self-
founding. Determining whether it is truly a presuppositionless philo-
sophy depends first on understanding in what sense that phrase is used
by Husserl, a problem outside the province of this paper. But it is
proper to suggest here that by a self-founding philosophy Husserl
meant a position that attempts an absolute scrutiny of its own con-
cepts, postulates, principles, and general procedures, by referring them
back in each case to their experiential roots in the intentional life of
consciousness. Therefore what distinguishes Husserlian phenomeno-
logy from all other positions is its insistence on a method that is
reflexive, that places in radical question its own enterprise, and that
seeks to found its results on a transcendental ground rendered apodictic
by the instrument of phenomenological reduction. In contradistinction
to naturalism, then, phenomenology not only is able to ground its own
method but is defined byitsinsistence on doing so. Phenomenological phi-
losophy is phenomenologically derived and phenomenologically realized.
Finally, the phenomenological approach to social reality fulfills the
method of Verstehen since it offers a philosophy of the social world,
rather than techniques or devices in the narrower methodological
sense. And the social world at issue for the phenomenologist is the
original, forceful, meaning-laden reality in which we exist. It is this
world, the world of the natural attitude, which requires the inter-
pretive understanding of Verstehen. When the naturalist approches
social reality in terms of the methods of natural science, he forfeits his
philosophical concern with a crucial dimension of reality and indeed
reduces himself to limbo. Phenomenology claims to reconstruct social
action by providing a fundamental clarification of its intentional
structure within the framework of a comprehensive philosophy. It
claims to return us to the social world in its full richness and urgent
complexity. These are its claims. The demonstration of what is claimed
involves another story, one much more difficult to tell.
14. Knowledge and Alienation:
Some Remarks on Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge
There is a line of thought starting with the ancient sceptics, revitalized

by Montaigne, and appropriated by certain modern thinkers, including
Max Weber, which points to the root-incapacity of human reason and
all theory to articulate an absolute conception of reality. Whether the
argument starts with the divergence and variegation of sensory
awareness, whether it points to the contingency of all human expe-
rience and its interpretation, or whether, in modern form, it advocates
positions with respect to the Real instead of univocal solutions, the
central direction of this theme is clear: it posits an alienation of the
intellect from the grounds of assurance and certitude. The latest tum
given this development is its historicization through the categories of
sociology, and the clearest and most forceful expression of this style of
analysis is Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge. I propose to take
it as the framework for my remarks and to restrict myself to the
epistemological aspect of Mannheim's work. What I have to say does
not refer to his so-called substantive sociology.
My problem is the paradox of the relativization of thought as
encountered in Mannheim's distinctive formulation of the sociology
of knowledge.
The thinker [Mannheim writes] who sets out to relativize thought, that is, to
subordinate it to supratheoretical factors, himself implicitly posits the auto-
nomous validity of the sphere of thought while he thinks and works out his
philosophical system; he thus risks disavowing himself, since a relativization
of all thought would equally invalidate his own assertions as weILl
The way out of this paradox, Mannheim tells us, is the relativization of
thought and the devaluation of the sphere of theoretical communica-
1 Mannheim, K., Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, New York, 1952, 137.
168 KNOWLEDGE AND ALIENATION
tion. This means concretely that the existential thinker, in Mannheim's

phrase, by self-discipline and methodological decision discounts the
world outlook into which he was born, which he shares with his fellow
men, and discounts, even further, the very categories of knowledge
which underly that outlook.· That he discounts them permits him
to utilize them with a purpose, but his purpose is not the uncovering
of some specific inadequacy but rather the unmasking of a total
ideology. The existential thinker emerges as the arch unmasker,
and the immediate question arises, Is unmasking as a procedure
itself a mask? Perhaps a more decisive formulation of the question
might be, Is there anything behind the mask? If this question is
pursued at the philosophical level and is not transposed into the realm
of substantive sociology where it becomes an historico-empirical
problem of a descriptive character, it leads, as Mannheim himself saw
and admitted,2 to metaphysics.
Let me try to formulate the relevant aspects of Mannheim's meta-
physics. First, he denies the in-itself, purely immanent character of
reality; second, the non-relative in respect to which relativized thought
is relative is itself a function of a particular Weltanschauung: we are left
with relational structures leading to non-relational centers which are
themselves moulded by the fundamental perspectives and presupposi-
tions of an epoch or tradition. It is not foolish or facetious to speak
here of a relative certitude. But if this description is fair to Mann-
heim's position, we have here a metaphysical conception of whole and
part which is both historical and methodological in its implications. It
is historical to the extent that revolutions and major transitions in
thought witness to some order of change from a totality to a radical
segment which stands in a dialectical relation to the totality. It is
methodological, however, in quite a different way. Here we are told
that the true comprehension of our Weltanschauung requires that we
step outside it by rejecting, for purposes at hand, the quality and status
of theoretical thought. And this, Mannheim urges, has been done and is
repeatable.
The movement from whole to part was intended to avoid the
reflexivity of the thesis of the existential determination of knowledge.
Has it succeeded? I think not. First of all, the movement from whole
to part is predicated on the abandonment of the immanence of thought.
The devaluation of the sphere of theoretical communication requires
precisely an abandonment, as Mannheim puts it, of thinking only
2 ibid.. 175.
KNOWLEDGE AND ALIENATION
"within thought." 3 With this abandonment goes the possibility of a

rationale for a theoretical explication of the procedures of devaluation
as well as for a coherent explanation of its metaphysical justification.
What is left is a series of positions, intellectual camping sites, which
are the variant loci of the existential thinker. The point is not that the
existential determination of knowledge requires at least one proposition
which is true - the thesis itself, but rather that the way of transcending
the immanence of thought leaves the existential thinker with no basis
for evaluating his own movement of transcendence or its internal
implications for the metaphysical status of his intellectual activity.
The existential thinker is left with temporary determinations not
because of a generalized fallibilism or historicism or some evolutionary
point of view, but because systematically each position is in its very
nature, for Mannheim, merely a fulcrum for the displacement of ideo-
logies. It must be emphasized that when Mannheim stresses the exis-
tential nexus of epistemology, his emphasis is not historicistic but
metaphysical: "epistemology," he writes, "is as intimately enmeshed
in the social process as is the totality of our thinking." 4 And this is the
case, for Mannheim, because the existential thinker alone can view the
pre-formed structuration of his own thought in the very act in which
he transcends it by devaluating it and partializing it. The metaphysical
corollary of such partialization is what I would call, appropriating
Mannheim's language, the unmasking of the object of knowledge and
the event in which that object is given to consciousness. The existential
thinker moves from the object and the event to the conditions of
thought which structure them. In a special sense, the existential
thinker concerns himself with the conditions of knowledge:
Just that which one perceives in 'phenomenological immediacy: [Mannheim

writes] is, in fact, already shaped by the historical process; it is already permea-
ted by the form-giving categories of a new 'reason,' or a new 'psyche.' In every
event, then, there is something other than the event itself. The event is moulded
by a totality, either in the sense of a law patterning or in the sense of a principle
of systematization. 5
What is unusual about this interest in the conditions of knowledge and

what distinguishes it from, let us say, the transcendental method of
Kant is the very conditionality of the entire enterprise. Instead of a
transcendental concern with the necessary conditions for the possibi-
3 ibid., 138.
4 Mannheim, K., Ideology and Utopia, New York, 70.
, F.ssays on the Sociology of Knowledge, 89.
170 KNOWLEDGE AND ALIENATION
lity of knowledge, the sociology of knowledge interprets conditions as

masks to be penetrated. Metaphysically, the movement is from the
object and event to their source in knowledge, and since sources of
knowledge demand transcension, the existential thinker is left without
foundation or the hope of self-resolution. It is in this sense exactly that
I speak of his alienation from certitude as thematic of a tradition of
scepticism which leads in modem form to the minimal assertion of
positions with respect to knowledge rather than solutions. A position
is a decisional modality, it is purely heuristic in function and requires
no ultimate philosophical commitment; it is a neutral mechanism
designed to facilitate insights and interpretations which might other-
wise be obscured. Its utility is measured purely in pragmatic terms.
The dependence upon positions, then, amounts to a declaration of the
bankruptcy of pure reason.
In return for his alienation from certitude, the existential thinker
has the advantages of a nomadic existence in the historical realm.
Bound by no formal commitments, he can move lightly through
traditional formulations of social causation, control, and prediction.
But the price Mannheim pays for the originality of his concrete
investigations in the sphere of substantive sociology is epistemological
and metaphysical fragmentation. The release from the wheel of analy-
sis offered by Hegel and Marx is closed to Mannheim. His existential
thinker must remain an unhappy consciousness.
Our thesis may now be formulated explicitly: the paradox of the
relativization of thought turns out to be, in our interpretation of
Mannheim, the alienation of the existential thinker. The sociology
of knowledge has, then, as at least one of its major implications the
problematic role of the sociologist of knowledge. As unmasker, pene-
trator of lies and ideologies, as relativizer and devaluator of immanent
thought, as disintegrator of Weltanschauungen, he is the agent of a
theory that seeks metaphysical justification and epistemological
adequation but which, in principle, is committed to the impossibility of
both. The transcendence of theoretical thought to partial existential
determinations is a transcension of philosophy itself; what remains is
the illumination of mistakes and blunders. In this sense it may be
suggested that there can be no sociology of knowledge; there can be
only a sociology of error.
I would like to extend my thesis by analyzing the concept of
alienation more closely. To say that the existential thinker is
alienated from certitude means several things: first, that he has
KNOWLEDGE AND ALIENATION 171
given up the dream of absolute truth; second, that he is an

oppositional thinker, an intellectual mercenary in the service of
dialectic; third, that he allies himself with the sceptic tradition and
finds his placement in philosophy as a definer of limits and positions.
Beyond this, alienation means that the existential thinker is an ant a-
gonizer of orthodoxies and has a marginal role to play within society.
His alienation is a function of his self-awareness of the historical
process in which his marginal role is constituted. But the more profound
character of alienation arises, I think, at a different level and derives
from another source. To say that the existential thinker is alienated
means that he is divorced in virtue of his own position from the sphere
of theoretical thought. The relativization of thought creates a paradox
which is resolved only, it must be recalled, by transcending the im-
manence of thought. Existential determination is not an influence,
however powerful, but a mode of reality. It is within supratheoretical
thought that the existential thinker lives. His alienation here is
defined by his commitment to the principles of relativization: that all
determinations are historicized, that all determinations are ideologized,
that all determinations are, if not ultimately disintegrated, at least
partialized and devalued. These principles, themselves relational,
define the existence of the sociologist of knowledge and are the reasons
for and the very meaning of his alienation. They lead to a final remark.
If commitment is decisional and therefore neutral, there would
appear to be at least as much to argue against as there is to argue for
Mannheim's epistemology. What accounts for his reasons for moving
in one direction rather than the other may itself be a problem of the
sociology of knowledge, but it is unfair to dismiss the issue by sugges-
ting, as has been done,6 that Mannheim's position is itself merely an
expression of the times in which he lived. The decision to become, to be,
and to remain an existential thinker is at issue, and it is that decision
which the sociology of knowledge does not explain by appealing to
procedural or methodological decision. Much more is involved in
making such a decision than articulating a formal device. Nor is the
problem a topic for motivational psychology, psychoanalysis, or
statistics. I would assign it to a philosophical anthropology, in the
Continental sense, which considers styles of being. The meaning of
alienation might find its statement in such a critique.
8 "Could Ideolof!.y and Utopia have been written anywhere save in Germany between I9I9
and I933?" asks Frank E. Hartung, "Problems of the Sociology of Knowledge," Philosophy
of Science, XIX, I952, 23·
I5. History as a Finite Province of Meaning
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar ... "
Wallace Stevens
The history of civilizations and cultures, and of the monumental deeds

of heroes, the history of Hegel, Spengler, and Toynbee, we shall call
"Big history" ; the history of ordinary people in the everyday, working
world, living their lives, involved in the daily web of obscure
projects and minor skirmishes, the history of the unknown, the
unsung, and the easily forgotten, we shall call "little history."
Our theme is the relationship between the two, and our thesis is
that investigating this problem is decisively relevant for the philo-
sophy of history. Indeed, a study of "little history" may lead
to the clarification of an entire dimension of the philosophy of history
which has generally been overlooked or obscured. A preliminary
indication ot this dimension will bring whatever we have to say into
immediate focus.
Men living in the everyday common-sense world are not only aware of
"Big history" but, in their actual existence, take up attitudes and
positions with regard to it. The realm of experience involved here is
composed not of the overt actions and statements of actors in the
historical world but of the subjective interpretations men in the world
of daily life give to their own actions and attitudes as they deem them
relevant to the domain of history. Our question is: What is presupposed
and involved in the common-sense individual's interpretation of his
own situation with respect to history? Following the general line of
argument suggested in the writings of Max Weber, we may distinguish,
on the one hand, between those completely valid but only partial
aspects of philosophy of history which deal with the nature of the
historical process and of the methodological problems involved in the
historian's knowledge of that process and, on the other hand, those
HISTORY AS A FINITE PROVINCE OF MEANING I73
questions related to the actor in the common-sense world who is not

only a performer within history but also a self-conscious agent who, as
a matter of fact, interprets his own actions and beliefs and lives within
the cosmion created out of those very interpretations. l Our central
problem in what follows is to explore this dimension of philosophy of
history and to endeavour to illuminate its significance.
To say that the individual lives in the common-sense world in which

he interprets the meaning of his own acts suggests the possibility of
other worlds of meaning in which he also has status and evidences
interest. There are, indeed, as William James indicated,2 "multiple
realities" in which human beings live: the world of everyday life is
called by James the "sub-universe" of "sense, or of physical 'things'
as we instinctively apprehend them," and in addition he lists "the
world of science," of "ideal relations, or abstract truths," "the world
of 'idols of the tribe,' illusions or prejudices common to the race," "the
various supernatural worlds, the Christian heaven and hell, the world
of Hindoo mythology," "the various worlds of individual opinion,"
and "the worlds of sheer madness and vagary. "3 James has brilliantly
analyzed these realities at the psychological level; more recently,
however, the problem of "sub-universes," or "finite provinces of
meaning" as we may now call them, has been given a more distinctively
philosophical examination by Alfred Schutz in his article "On
Multiple Realities," which provides a phenomenological framework
for the consideration of our subject. 4 The present paper is an appli-
cation of that framework to the problem of history.
In order to comprehend history as a finite province of meaning,
however, we must first state the essential features of the common-sense
world which, as the paramount reality, is the model for all other
worlds. s The paramount reality of daily life is the intersubjective
world into which we are all born, in which we work, and in which we
die. It is a world that involves those who lived before ourselves, as well
as our contemporaries, and our anonymous successors. This world is
characterized by our "attention to life," to use Bergson's phrase, and
1 Cf. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, Chicago, 1952, 27.
a Principles of Psychology, New York, 1893, Vol. II, Ch. XXI.
a ibid.
4 PhilOSOPhy and Phenomenological Research, V, June 1945, 533-576.
5 ibid.
174 HISTORY AS A FINITE PROVINCE OF MEANING
by our particular concern for what we deem to be relevant to some

purpose at hand. In addition, it is a world whose existence we do not
fundamentally doubt and whose reality we experience under a specific
time perspective. But most important, to say that the world of daily
life is the paramount reality means that all other finite provinces of
meaning are oriented about it, and that a shift to another finite
province is comprehensible as a transposition in the placement of the
"accent of reality."
The shift to the historical world is established by a bestowal of
the accent of reality upon this particular province of meaning. And
this new placement is in tum occasioned by a specific form of suspension
of belief (epocM, in Husserl's language) 6 in the central importance of
the individual's personal life. Under this suspension, the world ceases
to be centered about me and I instead become defined within what I
take to be its center. This kind of suspension has its prototype in daily
life where I continually move from central to marginal positions (and
the reverse), depending on the situation. A student asks me for an
appointment; I ask my Dean for an appointment. My child asks me for
a nickel; I ask my bank for somewhat more. And so on. The point is,
however, that there is a specific style of suspension which dislocates
my importance in the historical realm. I now take up new positions,
attitudes, and interpretations with regard to my own "situation" in
history; i.e., my own interpretation of how I figure in a world in which
my individuality is a minor, subordinate, or even insignificant moment
in a process evolving about other persons and their activities. Such a
radical shift in the accent of reality from the everyday world to the
historical one is an indication of the corresponding change in the struc-
ture of relevance in the new province of meaning. What is relevant to
the historical world depends on a number of other aspects of that
province of meaning which can only be summarily indicated here:
First, the time perspective changes from both the duree and standard
time to the dimensions of past, present, and future of historical reality;
second, there is what might be termed a "distance" element introduced
which distinguishes the events of history as no longer "at hand" as are
the occurrences of the ordinary world; third, there is a fundamental
factor of ambiguity respecting all actions and interpretations of events
in the historical realm; finally, the historical world is grasped in a
fragmentary fashion by the common-sense interpreter who is aware of
but a fraction of the past and a narrow segment of the present. Time,
e ibid.
HISTORY AS A FINITE PROVINCE OF MEANING 175
distance, ambiguity, and fragmentation are aspects of the individual's

finite province of history as they are of his daily life, though they take
concrete forms in both worlds as a result of the mode of suspension of
belief characteristic of each. A more detailed examination of the idea
of fragmentation may provide us with a clue to the difference and
similarity between both provinces as well as to the essential structure
of the historical microcosm.
<II>
For the professional historian, "little history" is lived within "Big
history" ; but for the man in daily life the reverse is true: "Big history"
is known and interpreted within a subjective schema. The deeds,
events, movements, and implications of "Big history" are refracted
through the prism of relevance, and the emergent qualities are the
fragments which constitute the individual's historical awareness. On
closer examination, however, we may distinguish between three
aspects of the idea of fragmentation: the historical fragment of which
the individual is aware, the fragmentary character of his awareness
itself, and fragmentation as the style of the microcosm.
"The" event in history of which the individual is aware is usually
an interpreted phenomenon built up from the evidence of traces or
reports of traces. The event is presented through the proxies that report
it. What the individual is aware of, then, is an interpretation or a
report; the event "itself" is a limiting concept which remains trans-
cendent to the halo of accounts which announce it. In this sense, the
historical event is known as a fragment which points to its source but
reveals only a partial image.
The awareness of this fragment is itself fragmentary because aware-
ness is always relevance-directed. My awareness of the conflict engaging
the efforts of the forces of the North and South in the United States
from 1861-65 is pre-interpreted at the outset, for example, depending
on whether I refer to that struggle as the "Civil War" or the "War
between the States." A fragmentary awareness is situated and com-
mitted in its very nature because the question involved in such
awareness is not what is significant for history, but what is historically
significant for me. I organize my world in the very interpretation of it,
and my awareness is both an affecting and affected agen~y in this
process.
Finally, the historical microcosm is a fragmented one in the very
style of its being. Fragmentation is understood here as the overwhelm-
176 HISTORY AS A FINITE PROVINCE OF MEANING
ing disjunction between the multitude of discrete elements given

for historical interpretation and the integral and selective character of
the judgment about them expected of the observer. Involved in the
complexity of data, the individual seeks to interpret himself with
clarity; caught between insight and impotence, he lives self-enchanted
and self-distressed in the world of his own limits and possibilities.
The fragment, the fragmentary, and the fragmented in the historical
microcosm provide a clue to the nature of this province of meaning, for
taken together they point to one of its dominant features: the referent
of the historical process, that of which there are fragments, is beyond
the control and manipulation of the individual. The historical past is
inaccessible to the craft of the interpreter in daily life. It is this fact
that explains the suspension of belief in his own dominant importance
which is the basis for the reality of the historical microcosm. At the
same time, the transcendence of the historical past differentiates it
from the accessible world of daily life which is in its very nature
manageable and alterable. In "little history" the individual is the self-
acknowledged master of his plans and projects; in "Big history" he is
the instrument of others. Yet the decisive point here is that "little
history" is completely aware of this very situation: the common-sense
individual acts within a world he knows is dominated by others; but he
lives within a world defined by his attitudes toward domination. The
meaning his action has for him is the crucial realm of signification in
which the individual lives. History as a finite province of meaning is
the microcosm created by the SUbjective interpretation of actors in
daily life who place the accent of reality upon their own interpretations
of the "Big history" which remains transcendent to the world of
"little history" in which they live.
But the contrast between the realities of history and daily life also
reveals their fundamental similarity. To say that daily life is the
paramount reality, the model for all other finite provinces, is to
appreciate the analogous structures of fragmentation in the common-
sense world. Though I gear into daily life, alter its circumstances and
help shape its design, I am also aware that my centrality and inde-
pendence in this world are limited and ultimately ill-defined. My
success and power depend on typical mechanisms of authority and
control which may be dislocated or lost as a result of conditions or
forces unknown to me. The accessible, understandable world of daily
life has its "fringes" of strangeness and futility, and it is only within
segments of the common-sense world that my "formulas" for results of
HISTORY AS A FINITE PROVINCE OF MEANING 177
various kinds work. The events of daily life also have their fragmentary
character, and human existence is qualified at its root by the incerti-
tude of social action. In both the province of history and daily life I find
myself as a being in a situation whose ultimate conditions transcend
my existence; and whether I react to this fact with resignation or
anger, I live within a microcosm defined by the choice I make. Whether
it be "Big" or "little," it is not history but ourselves who are ambi-
guous and fragmented.
<III>
The suggestion that history, understood as a finite province of meaning,
is a proper object of analysis for the philosophy of history has been
presented in terms of a phenomenological approach which takes the
"natural attitude" (in Husserl's sense) as itself open to reflective
treatment. The individual's sUbjective interpretation of his acts is
understood, therefore, not through the causal-genetic categories of
psychological inquiry but rather by way of a direct inspection of the
essential features of experience as they are known to the experiencer
himself, not to the detached observer who describes them from "with-
out." The possibility of viewing this dimension of history, then, turns
upon the achievement of a reflective standpoint internal to human
experience. The justification of such a standpoint and general method
is obviously beyond the limits of a paper which intends merely to
recommend the relevance of such an approach for the philosophy of
history; still, a final word may be offered toward clarifying the nature
of our position.
Man is not only a being who lives in the world; he is a being who has
a world, and even further, we may say, he is a being who is a world.
Whatever is given to him in experience, therefore, is transposed and
translated into the fabric of his cognitive and conative life and becomes
restructured and reformed into an aspect of his self-awareness. Born
into a world "already there," we nevertheless define it, illuminate it,
and live within the confines of the meaningful structure thus es-
tablished. "The" world is only a shorthand for the paramount reality
of everyday life which is the model for the other worlds; but as James
says, "each world whilst it is attended to is real after its own fashion." 7
It is in this sense that the finite province of history is to be compre-
hended. Its reality is the reality of the subjectivity that creates and
defines it, that bears its meaning, and that is witness to its truth.
7 op. cit., 293.
I6. History, Historicity, and the Alchemistry oj Time

Suicide notes have a rather dubious status in the list of materials of the
historian's craft, but their intrinsic fascination can hardly be denied. In
recent times the death of President Vargas of Brazil has presented the
contemporary historian with a paradigm case of the suicide note whose
content and purpose are historically defined, defined not by the annal-
ist but by the actor on the historical scene, by Vargas himself. This is
what he wrote to his people:
I offer my life in the holocaust. I choose this means to be with you always. When
they humiliate you, you will feel my soul suffering at your side. When hunger
beats at your door, you will feel inside you the energy to fight for yourselves and
your children .... To hatred I respond with pardon. And to those who think they
have defeated me I reply with victory. I was the slave of the people. and today I
free myseH for eternal life. But this people to which I was a slave will not longer
be a slave to anyone. My sacrifice will remain forever in your soul. and my blood
will be the price of your ransom. I fought against the looting of Brazil. I fought
against the looting of the people. I have fought bare-breasted. The hatred.
infamy and calumny did not beat down my spirit. I gave you my life. Now I
offer my death. Nothing remains. Serenely I take the first step on the road to
eternity. and I leave life to enter history.1
The peculiar texture of this note, its flamboyant style, its passionate
cry can, of course, be waved aside as merely a product of Latin Ameri-
can histrionics, as the rhetoric of an unbalanced mind. The state of
Brazilian politics which occasioned this note is of no interest to me at
this point. It is not the suicide of Vargas which is relevant here but his
interpretation of suicide as an historical act. What does it mean to
"enter history"? Or more specifically, what does it mean for Vargas to
"enter history"? These questions have indeed a strange ring. Pre-
1 Time, September 6, 1954, 29.
HISTORY, HISTORICITY, AND THE ALCHEMISTRY OF TIME 179
sumably, they are problems for some psychological inquiry into the
subjective attitudes of historical figures, or else they are puzzles for
metaphysical speculation. But are they the sort of issues proper for
strict historical investigation? Are they materials for the historian's
craft? These questions constitute the starting point for an inquiry into
the relationship of philosophy and history.
Definitions of history suffer from a curious ailment: the subject
matter they seek to locate depends on the character of the apparatus
for location. Judgments about what is relevant or irrelevant to the
discipline of history presuppose not only criteria of relevance but some
conception of the very meaning of relevance, a subject of the most
difficult philosophical character. But there is an additional problem.
The subject matter of history is events or states of affairs whose
epistemic nature is either presupposed by a particular historical school
or else interpreted in a committed fashion. The difference between
Ranke and Collingwood is a clear illustration of more than a disagree-
ment about methods or techniques; it is a distinctively philosophical
opposition which distinguishes them. How does one get back to things
as they happened? What is at issue in the effort to reconstruct the
past? Often we are told that whatever methods historians use, they
are eager to get at the facts, that although they may disagree about
philosophical approaches, they are at one with regard to the search for
the truth. And the truth seems to point back to what there was. The
historian, then, endeavours to be true to what there was. Examine this
more closely.
"What there was" is composed of states of affairs whose elements are
ordinarily called facts, and facts are the prime data, it would appear,
for the historian's reconstructive task. Here is one, rather standard,
report of what the historian understands by "fact":
A historical 'fact' [Gottschalk writes] may be defined as a particular derived
directly or indirectly from historical documents and regarded as credible after
careful testing in accordance with the canons of historical method. An infinity
and a multiple variety of facts of this kind are accepted by all historians: e.g.,
that Socrates really existed; that Alexander invaded India; that the Romans
built the Pantheon ... Simple and fully attested 'facts' of this kind are rarely
disputed. They are easily observed, easily recorded (if not self-evident like the
Pantheon ... ), involve no judgments of value ... contradict no other knowledge
available to us, seem otherwise logically acceptable, and, avoiding generalization,
deal with single instances. 2
What is "fact" here? That Alexander invaded India? That Socrates

2 Gottschalk, L., Understanding History, New York, 1950, 140.
180 HISTORY, HISTORICITY, AND THE ALCHEMISTRY OF TIME
really existed? Is Alexander's invasion of India the fact or is it the fact

that Alexander invaded India? The difference is not insignificant, for
we are interested in determining whether fact is the event itself or a
predicate of some order regarding the event. When we say it is a fact
that Socrates really existed we are, it would seem, reporting about a
state of affairs, the actual life of Socrates, but we are not saying that
the actual life of Socrates is the historical datum. If facts are reports
about states of affairs, then they are not equivalent to what they
report, and they must not be confused with events. Does the historian
deal with events or with reports about events? Again, answers by
methodologists of history are not hard to find.
The historian, we are told, is destined to locate the past indirectly,
through traces of what has occurred or what has been. Even when we
have monuments, tombs, diaries, letters, documents, first-hand
accounts, etc., we are still left with the problem of relating them to
their original time, place, and to the intentions of those who made
them or wrote them or transcribed them. In fact, there is no return to
"what there was" as it was. The primary characteristic, then, of
historical procedure, as Marc Bloch puts is, "is the fact that know-
ledge of all human activities in the past, as well as of the greater part of
those in the present, is, as Francois Simiand aptly phrased it, a know-
ledge of their tracks. Whether it is the bones immured in the Syrian
fortifications, a word whose form or use reveals a custom, a narrative
written by the witness of some scene, ancient or modem, what do we
really mean by document, if it is not a 'track,' as it were - the mark,
perceptible to the senses, which some phenomenon, in itself inaccessible,
has left behind?" 3 In these terms, the historian's "facts" are not even
the traces or tracks of what has occurred but a judgment in the form of
a proposition about what occurred. The "fact," then, is twice removed
from the event. There is the event, there is the trace of that event, and
there is the judgment of the historian about the trace. It is only the
last that is termed "fact," and this means that not only are historians
concerned with the past in a most indirect manner but that their
judgments are rooted in the interpretive apparatus of the observer, the
practicing historian. The certitude of fact, the objectivity of fact, the
apodictic status of fact are all pieces of a single deeply rooted illusion,
the illusion that in getting the facts the historian's own subjectivity,
his own philosophic attitudes or lack of them, and his own value-world
are methodologically set aside in the practice of his craft. This illusion
3 Bloch, M., The Historian's Craft, New York, 1953,54-55.
is itself part of a larger attitude which many historians share with the
naive realism of the common-sense world. The world and our experience
of it is, for common sense, simply there, and though we may doubt
aspects of it for certain restricted purposes at particular times, we
cannot conceivably doubt the fundamental truth of its being there in
much the way in which it appears to normal perceivers. Thus, " 'fact
is the material of experience; it is the solid datum which experience
must accept and may come to understand. In experience facts are
accepted, analyzed and coordinated, but they may not be tampered
with. Facts are observed, remembered and combined; they are material,
not the result of judgment. Fact is coercive because it cannot be
questioned, infallible because from it there is no appeal, and both
because it is given. The furthest reach of experience is the collection
and reflective consideration of unalterable facts.' "
This caricature of the historian as naive realist is, unfortunately, not
too far from the truth. The author of the caricature, Michael Oakeshott,
presents its refutation:
This melancholy doctrine [he writes] as common as it is crude, suffers from
obvious disabilities. Fact, whatever else it maybe, is experience; without thought
there can be no fact. Even a view which separates ideas from things must
recognize that facts are ideas. Fact is what has been made or achieved; it is the
product of judgment. And if there be an unalterable datum in experience, it
certainly cannot consist of fact. Fact, then, is not what is given, it is what is
achieved in experience. Facts are never merely observed, remembered or
combined; they are always made. We cannot 'take' facts, because there are none
to take until we have constructed them. And until a fact is established, that is,
until it has achieved a place in a coherent world, it is not more than an hypothesis
or a fiction. 4
The "coherent world" in which facts find placement is the historian's

projection of reality, his interpretive schema for organizing the
elements of his experience. But to talk in these terms is to stress
the importance of interpretation, awareness, judgment, attitude,
and analysis. In short, the historian's craft is rooted in the soil
of his subjectivity. Far from having to avoid what are ordinarily
called "psychological" or "metaphysical" questions, the historian can
hardly exist professionally without them. When he thinks he is
avoiding them, his discipline suffers concretely. When he faces them,
he moves toward the fulfillment of his calling.
There are at least two kinds of reasons for the disjunction between
history and philosophy - for that is exactly what is meant by the
4 Oakeshott, 1'.1., Experience and Its }Jades, Cambridge, England, 1933, 41-42.
historian's turning away from problems of sUbjectivity. First, the field

of philosophy of history is shared in certain ways by both philosophers
and historians. When historians do philosophy of history, they fre-
quently are working in the domain of historiography. Philosophers
have different interests. I would suggest that historiography is properly
concerned with the underlying problems of the writing of history.
Canons of historical method, questions of research and procedure are
all part of the subject matter of historiography. To the historian as
historiographer the study of philosophies of history is the study of the
problems involved, methodologically, in the activities of the historian.
To be sure, philosophers of history can be studied as part of history.
What they said becomes the subject matter for inquiry. But there is a
qualitative difference between studying what was said and studying
the essential concepts which taken together articulate a philosophical
position. For a philosopher, philosophy of history is concerned with the
problems of philosophy of history. And this means that the student as
philosopher is called upon to examine not merely what Hegel said but
the problems with which Hegel worked. These problems become, in
tum, the data for the student of philosophy. The question is not how
Hegel wrote philosophy of history but the issues with which his
philosophy of history are concerned. There are, in these terms, his-
torians who are doing philosophy of history, not historiography, and
philosophers who are doing historiography, not philosophy of history.
I have presented logical, not descriptive categories.
The second reason for the disjunction between history and philoso-
phy involves the question of the scientific status of the historian's
craft. Very simply, for some historians involvement with philosophy in
any professional sense lends suspicion to the historian's product.
Philosophy in this view represents everything that is not scientific.
everything that is subjective in the pejorative sense of that term. To
become a science history must attend to its own business, to the loca-
tion, organization, compilation of facts into larger patterns of order.
Philosophy represents a threat to that enterprise. For such an outlook
philosophy of history can only validly mean historiography, and his-
toriography is translated into the training of the student of history.
introducing him to research techniques, library procedures, and the
general apparatus of fact gathering. Both reasons for avoiding the
union or encounter of history and philosophy are, I believe, unfortu-
nate. Among lesser losses, this disjunction has obscured the problem of
SUbjectivity for the historian. Whatever else may not convince him of
the importance of a truly philosophical approach to history, there is

one thing which the historian must face or risk a profound lacuna in
his professional life, and that is the radical status of his own existence,
his own being in the historical world. History, let us say, is character-
ized by the remarkable fact that the historian's study ofitis part of it.
Ranke's study of the past is no less a part of the content of history than
the original object of his investigation. The subjectivity of the historian
is a prime historical datum. To avoid subjectivity in history is to
negate its very meaning.
<II>
Unfortunately, the term "subjectivity" is charged with a variety of
almost hopelessly confused connotations which involve everything
from psychological to mystical references. Unambiguous usage requires
more than stipulated definitions. By "subjectivity" I understand the
intrinsic relatedness of experience to consciousness, of the elements of
action and understanding to the essential structure of awareness.
Consciousness in these terms is not a neurological affair nor a psycho-
logical structure; it is instead a purely formal and immanent stream of
intentional directedness, having its own a priori nature and its own
constitutive dynamics. I am concerned with a phenomenological
rather than a naturalistic or behavioral view of the mental. And this
means that the study of consciousness is primarily an epistemological,
not a psychological task. To speak of the subjectivity of the historian
in this context is to turn to the relatedness of events or whatever the
historical phenomena are taken to be to the conditions for the possibi-
lity of knowledge. It is not the actual empirical mind or thinking of the
historian which is in question but the essentially logical structure of
his awareness, of his historical consciousness. Perhaps a change in
terms might be of help to mark the movement from talking about
psychological to phenomenological affairs. Instead of the psychological
variations or peculiarities of the mind of the individual historian
concerned with what is ordinarily called history, we are interested in
the formal structure of the historian's awareness of history as he grasps
or intends it, with what we shall call historicity. History is distinguished
from historicity in the same way as natural events are demarcated
from acts of intellection. If history is the study of what there was,
historicity is the historian's conceptual experience of what there was.
In short, the historian who is professionally concerned with the mean-
ing of his own historical existence is implicitly concerned with his-

toricity.
The task before us then is a study of historicity, and this appears as a
distinctive problem for a philosophy of history. I doubt that the issue
can even be formulated in terms of traditional historiography. And in
turning to philosophy of history, it is necessary to consider the episte-
mic dimension rather than what is overtly called philosophy of history.
The concept of historicity, for example, would be missed if we looked
for it only in Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of history. For Hegel's
insights into the realm of the historicistic we must turn to his Pheno-
menology 01 Mind. And since we have taken Hegel as our illustration of
a philosopher concerned with historicity we may well begin with his
kind of philosophy.
Hegelian phenomenology is committed to a dialectical account of the
evolution of experience f:r:om its immediate and primordial givenness in
the lowest range of sensory awareness to its highest manifestation in
conceptual life. A "phenomenology" in this sense is a survey of the
modalities of consciousness in their logical unfolding. For Hegel, the
history of concepts is to be located in their logical genesis, not in their
chronological development. Chronology presupposes temporality, and
the study of temporality is necessarily the survey of the dialectics of
consciousness. The relationship between consciousness and its objects
is an integral one, but the relationship can be explicated only by the
reflexive activity of consciousness concerned with itself. The possi-
bilities and perplexities of awareness are rooted in the original paradox
of consciousness operative in a reality which it both discovers and
constitutes. The dialectic of consciousness is expressed by Hegel in his
typical stylistic extravagance:
This dialectic process which consciousness executes on itself [he writesJ, on its
knowledge as well as on its object - in the sense that out of it the new and true
object arises, is precisely what is termed Experience. In this connection, there is a
moment in the process just mentioned which should be brought into more
decided prominence, and by which a new light is cast on the scientific aspect of
the following exposition. Consciousness knows something; this something is the
essence or what is per se. This object, however, is also the per se, the inherent
reality, lor consciousness. Hence comes ambiguity of this truth. Consciousness,
as we see, has now two objects; one is the first per se, the second is the existence
lor consciousness of this per se. The last object appears at first sight to be merely
the reflection of consciousness into itself, i.e., an idea not of an object, but solely
of its knowledge of that first object. But, as was already indicated, by that very
process the first object is altered; it ceases to be what is per se, and becomes
consciously something which is per se only lor consciousness. Consequently, then,
what this real per se is for consciousness is truth: which, however, means that
this is the essential reality, or the object which consciousness has. This new object
contains the nothingness of the first; the new object is the experience concerning
that first object. 5
One advantage in quoting Hegel is that it is never necessary to say

"unquote." By the same token, we seem to have a splendid example
of everything scientific historians seek to avoid. Is it conceivable that
anything very crucial for the study of history could emerge from the
forest of such language? The answer will have to be "yes." And this
"yes" is itself an eminent historical datum, for out of Hegelian meta-
physics there has come not only a philosophy of history of decisive im-
portance for our time but a concept of historicity which may be
considered beyond the matrix of Marxist thought. However difficult
Hegel's language may be, it is necessary to come to terms with his
heritage. We are not done with that quotation.
The paradox of duality Hegel is describing is not unfamiliar in a
different guise to common sense. In daily life we worry about the
relationship between what we know of a man and what he is apart from
our understanding or interpretation of him. We distinguish implicitly
between objects and our experience of an object and subsequent inter-
pretations of that experience. There is my knowledge of a person and
my later interpretation of my knowledge. Examples could be multi-
plied without profit, for what is at issue is an epistemic relationship
which underlies all illustrations and which must be grasped if the
illustrations are truly to illustrate. The object, for Hegel, is absorbed
in the act of knowing, and what is gained in knowledge is, in a way, lost
in return. We gain knowledge of the object, we lose the object as it
stood prior to the cognitive act which places it in the range of experi-
ence. We may feel little loss with respect to common objects - tables
and chairs - but there is something more important involved when
the object is a fellow man or ourselves. Here the dialectic becomes
overpowering.
Just as there is a qualitative difference between my understanding
of an object and my understanding of a fellow man, so there is an
analogous difference between my understanding of a fellow man
and my understanding of myself. Fellow men are observed, but I
hardly can be said to "observe" myself in the ordinary current of life.
It is only on special occasions that I step out of my routine of awareness
and formally "observe" some aspect of my behavior. For the most pact,
I simply live in the stream of my continuous action, aware in a naive
5 Hegel, G. W. F., The Phenomenology 0/ Mind, London, 193I, 142-143.
way of that stream and its contents. Philosophy might be understood

as a deliberate, self-conscious movement out of that taken for granted
current of life, a movement which succeeds in rendering the assumed
and presupposed an explicit object for inquiry. In a related but still
radical way, art is an effort to explore the familiar by exhibiting its
structure in forms which make of the taken for granted unique moments
in aesthetic contemplation. Philosophy and art are divergent modes
of handling our world by pointing to its transcendental conditions.
Such activity involves the inquirer in his inquiry. To be philosophically
or aesthetically committed is to locate oneself as philosopher or artist
as a cardinal aspect of the subject matter for study. And this means
necessarily that self-awareness, subjectivity in its broadest reference, is
inescapably part of the experiential structure of our lives. Philosophy
is the discipline of SUbjectivity.
Hegel's statement has led to its most urgent application, the dual
aspect of consciousness in the experience of the individual concerned
with comprehending himself. Here object and subject receive a strange
dialectical status precisely because the individual subject aware of
himself renders himself object for himself in his act of reflection and yet
remains at the same time subject for all activities of consciousness. The
epistemological implications of these problems are overwhelming in
their complexity, but there is one feature of Hegelian subjectivity
which lends itself to a more limited treatment, and that is historical
subjectivity or, in the term we have chosen, historicity. The self-
conscious, deeply reflective actor on the historical scene makes of the
events of the historical world the historicistic component of conscious-
ness. He interprets not only the events of history but his own evaluation
and ordering of those events. And he finds that concern with history
hides within itself a double face: on one side, the subject's awareness
of historical events is reflected in his historicistic consciousness; on
the other side, historicity has its own history in the development of the
individual factor on the historical scene. The play between these double
facets of the historical leads to a dialectical embarrassment which
Hegel calls the "Unhappy Consciousness."
The paradoxical dualism of subject and object with respect to ordi-
nary phenomena returns in intensified form in the dualism of con-
sciousness seeking to grasp itself, liberate itself from its cognitively
transposing activities, and achieve the unity it senses within itself.
There is a direct historical counterpart to this beleaguered subjectivity.
Hegel's views on the Master and Bondsman in The Phenomenology of
Mind, his hidden conception of revolt as rooted in philosophical

alienation, is the clue to the analogue of this conceptual movement
at the historical and historicistic level. Struggling at all of these strata,
individual and historical, is the effort of consciousness to ground itself,
to free itself from the bondage of epistemic dualisms. "Thus we have
here," Hegel writes, "that dualizing of self-consciousness within itself,
which lies essentially in the notion of mind; but the unity of the two
elements is not yet present. Hence the Unhappy Consciousness (un-
glUckliches Bewusstsein) , the Alienated Soul which is the consciousness
of self as a divided nature, a doubled and merely contradictory
being." 6
Again, it would appear that little of scientific worth could follow
from such speCUlation. Certainly, if history is to concern itself with this
kind of talk, the results are not especially promising for anyone whose
philosophic grounding isempiricistic or positivistic. Wouldn't it be better
to leave to philosophers the gift of Hegel's madness? The answer is
interrupted by the fact that these problems have not been left entirely
to philosophers, or at least those who have engaged them as purposeful
issues have refused to consider their philosophic concern to be isolated
from the total historical and cultural scene. I propose to consider an
example of such refusal, one in historical politics. Through it I hope to
explore the living testimony that lies secreted in Hegel's view of human
SUbjectivity.
<III>
The Moscow Trials of 1938 received great notoriety in all quarters of
the world and were discussed by intellectuals of all political faiths. The
fascination of the Trials went beyond the drama of political courtrooms;
what was at issue in the proceedings was a logical development of
Marxism working itself out in the field of historical action. The central
theme of the Trials was the necessity of counter-revolutionary activity
for the party in power as well as for those who lost power. And nowhere
was this theme more evident than in the case of the defendant, Nicholai
Bukharin, theoretician and revolutionary. The game of the trial was
obvious: that Bukharin was innocent of the crimes of which he was
accused was clear to the Court, to the Prosecutor Vyshinsky, to Buk-
harin's co-defendants, to the people, and to himself. The comedyofthe
Trial was constituted out of these mutual recognitions, and all roles
6 ibid., 251.
had to be played within the limits of those recognitions. But unlike his
less insightful co-defendants, Bukharin accepted the role of tactical
guilt but insisted on historical justification. He pleaded guilty to the
charge that inevitably would bring about his execution, but insisted on
defending his ideological position. For three months Bukharin re-
mained silent in prison, refusing to "confess." Suddenly he changed. It
is impossible to understand his transformation in terms of torture;
everything in his story points back to an interior theoretical abandon-
ment of a position of refusal in favor of fulfilling what was for him a
necessary historical role, that of conceptual revolt as a moment in the
unfolding of the dialectic. In the skein of charges and refutations, denial
and feverish assertions, one thing emerges which is unavoidable: the
Hegelian theme of subjectivity working itself out in trans-political
terms. And with an irony beyond irony, Hegel's theme becomes
explicit in Bukharin's testimony.
Throughout his trial Bukharin taunted Vyshinsky, the prosecutor,
with philosophic jibes. All of them rest on a more serious contention,
the claim that the issue of the Trial is ideological, that the question
of guilt must be tied to ideological grounds, that practical acts of
subversion are beside the point. "I want first," Bukharin testified, "to
deal with ideological positions." 7 And he persisted throughout the
Trial in an effort to establish not his innocence but the character of his
historical guilt. His theoretical jests were merely the fringes to his
purpose. At one point in the Trial Vyshinsky says to Bukharin, "You
have already reached the year 1933. Bukharin: The reason I wanted to
refer to his question is that it is connected with the practical prepara-
tions ... Vyshinsky: So speak of the practical preparations, instead of
telling us why this or that did not take place. The Court is interested
in knoWing what took place, and why. Bukharin: Yes, but every
negation contains an affirmation, Citizen Procurator. Spinoza once
said that in the sphere of determination ... Vyshinsky: Speak concrete-
ly: how were you preparing the seizure of power, with whose aid, by
what means, with what aims and objects in view?" 8 A little later in
the Trial, the folloWing encounter takes place between the examiner
and the defendant: "Vyshinsky: Accused Bukharin, is it a fact or not
that a group of your confederates in the North Caucasus was connected
with Whiteguard emigre Cossack circles abroad? Is that a fact or not?
7 Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti·Soviet "Block of Rights and Trots-
kyites," Verbatim Report, Moscow I938, 379.
8 ibid., 394.
Rykov says it is, Slepkov says it is. Bukharin: If Rykov says it is, I
have no grounds for not believing him. Vyshinsky: Can you answer
me without philosophy? Bukharin: This is not philosophy. Vyshinsky:
Without philosophical twists and turns. Bukharin: I have testified that
I had explanations on this question. Vyshinsky: Answer me 'No.'
Bukharin: I cannot say 'No,' and I cannot deny that it did take place.
Vyshinsky: So the answer is neither 'yes' nor 'N 0' ? Bukharin : Nothing of
the kind, because facts exist regardless of whether they are in anybody's
mind. This is a problem of the reality of the outer world. I am no
solipsist." 9 Still another example. "Vyshinsky: Accused Bukharin,
were you with Khodjayev at his country place? Bukharin: I was.
Vyshinsky: Did you carryon a conversation? Bukharin: I carried on a
conversation and kept my head on my shoulders all the time, but it
does not follow from this that I dealt with the things of which Khod-
jayev just spoke; this was the first conversation ... Vyshinsky: It is of
no consequence whether it was the first or not the first. Do you
confirm that there was such a conversation? Bukharin: Not such a
conversation, but a different one, and also secret. Vyshinsky: I am not
asking you about conversations in general, but about this conversation.
Bukharin: In Hegel's 'Logic' the word 'this' is considered to be the
most difficult word ... Vyshinsky: I ask the Court to explain to the
accused Bukharin that he is here not in the capacity of a philosopher,
but a criminal, and he would do better to refrain from talking here
about Hegel's philosophy ... Bukharin: A philosopher may be a criminal.
Vyshinsky: Yes, that is to say, those who imagine themselves to be
philosophers turn out to be spies. Philosophy is out of place here. I am
asking you about that conversation of which Khodjayev just spoke;
do you confirm it or do you deny it? Bukharin: I do not understand
the word 'that.' " 10 Vyshinsky's ultimate reply to these thrusts comes
in his summation before the Court of the State's case when he says, "I
know of no other instances - this is the first instance in history of a spy
and murderer using philosophy, like powdered glass, to hurl into his
victim's eyes before dashing his brains out with a footpad's bludgeon." 11
So far, however, we have explored the comedy of the Trial at its most
superficial level. The philosophical weight lies below.
Bukharin, we have said, chooses to argue his case on ideological
grounds. Legal guilt is no issue in the Trial. It is obvious to everyone
9 ibid., 400-401.
10 ibid., 420-421.
11 ibid., 628.
that death is the only possible conclusion. Within these limits the
philosophical drama of the Trial unfolds. The climax is reached in
Bukharin's last plea to the Court. Direct quotation here is worth more
than any explanation or commentary. Even Koestler's literary portrait
of Bukharin in Darkness at Noon does not excel the almost fictive
quality of his speech. I must quote at length. Bukharin is speaking:
I want briefly to explain the facts regarding my criminal activities and my
repentance of my misdeeds. I already said when giving my main testimony
during the trial, that it was not the naked logic of the struggle that drove us,
the counter-revolutionary conspirators, into this stinking underground life,
which has been exposed at this trial in all its starkness. This naked logic of the
struggle was accompanied by a degeneration of ideas, a degeneration of psycho-
logy, a degeneration of ourselves, a degeneration of people ... it seems tome
probable that every one of us sitting here in the dock suffered from a peculiar
duality of mind, an incomplete faith in his counter-revolutionary cause. I will
not say that the consciousness of this was absent, but it was incomplete. Hence
a certain semi-paralysis of the will, a retardation of reflexes. And this was due not
to the absence of consistent thought, but to the objective grandeur of socialist
construction. A dual psychology arose. Each of us can discern this in his own
soul, although I will not engage in a far-reaching psychological analysis. Even
I was sometimes carried away by the eulogies I wrote of socialist construction,
although on the morrow I repudiated this by practical actions of a criminal
character. There arose what in Hegel's philosophy is called a most unhappy
mind. This unhappy mind differed from the ordinary unhappy mind only by the
fact that it was also a criminal mind .... It seems to me that when some of the
West European and American intellectuals begin to entertain doubts and vacil-
lations in connection with the trials taking place in the U.S.S.R., this is primarily
due to the fact that these people do not understand the radical distinction,
namely, that in our country the antagonist, the enemy, has at the same time a
divided, a dual mind. And I think that this is the first thing to be understood. 12
Bukharin is contemptuous of the easy explanation in the West for his

confession and admission of guilt. He sharply criticizes the idea that he
was drugged or hypnotized. To another possible explanation he devotes
an interesting rebuttal:
This repentance is often attributed to the Dostoyevsky mind, to the specific

properties of the soul (Tame slave' as it is called), and this can be said of types
like Aloysha Karamazov, the hero of the 'Idiot' and other Dostoyevsky
characters, who are prepared to stand up in the public square and cry: 'Beat me,
Orthodox Christians, I am a villain!' But that is not the case here at all. 'L'ame
slave' and the psychology of Dostoyevsky characters are a thing of the remote
past in our country, the pluperfect tense. Such types do not exist in our country,
or exist perhaps only on the outskirts of small provincial towns, if they do even
there. On the contrary, such a psychology is to be found in Western Europe.13
11 ibid., 775-777.
11 ibid., 777.
And finally Bukharin comes to his personal confession, to the elements

which defined his role in the Trial:
I shall now speak of myself, of the reasons for my repentance. Of course, it must
be admitted that incriminating evidence plays a very important part. For three
months I refused to say anything. Then I began to testify. Why? Because while
in prison I made a revaluation of my entire past. For when you ask yourself: 'If
you must die, what are you dying for?' - an absolutely black vacuity suddenly
rises before you with startling vividness. There was nothing to die for, if one
wanted to die unrepented. And, on the contrary, everything positive that
glistens in the Soviet Union acquires new dimensions in a man's mind. This in
the end disarmed me completely and led me to bend my knees before the Party
and the country. And when you ask yourself: 'Very well, suppose you do not die:
suppose by some miracle you remain alive, again what for? Isolated from every-
body, an enemy of the people, in an inhuman position, completely isolated from
everything that constitutes the essence of life .... ' And at once the same reply
arises. And at such moments, Citizen Judges, everything personal, all the personal
incrustation, all the rancour, pride, and a number of other things, fall away,
disappear ... I am about to finish. I am perhaps speaking for the last time in my
life .... The point, of course, is not this repentance, or my personal repentance
in particular. The Court can pass its verdict without it. The confession of the
accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of
jurisprudence. But here we also have the internal demolition of the forces of
counter-revolution. And one must be a Trotsky not to lay down one's arms.14
<IV>
The movement from history to historicity is a discovery of the dynamic
of time as the underlying agency of man's social evolution. In addition
to what might be termed public or external time, in Bergson's classifi-
cation, there is personal or inner time consciousness. The same duality
holds at the historical level. Hegel's bequest to Marx was more than the
dialectical method Marxists insist on as the valid content of Hegelian
philosophy; what is truly radical in Hegel is a messianic conception of
history wedded to an historical phenomenology of human sUbjectivity.
The doctrine of the Unhappy Consciousness gives way in Marx to the
concept of alienation, the reification of subjectivity in the object of
production. And the inner meaning of dialectic is posed in terms of class
struggle and the privileged potential of the proletariat precisely because
an historical eschatology requires a sUbjectivity capable of transforma-
tion within historical time. History gives way to historicity because the
chronology of historical events in turn gives way to the temporality of
the historical process. Time becomes the engine of history.
Although it is obvious that historians are concerned with phenomena
14 ibid., 777-778.
whose time dimension is of central importance, the study of time itself

does not appear to be considered universally as part of the historian's
craft. Events which occur in time are the objects of study, or perhaps,
more exactly, traces of occurrences which are time-bound are studied,
but time itself is more often than not presupposed in historical method
and left unexamined. To argue, as I have, that subjectivity is the axial
datum for a historicistic conception of methodology is to be committed
to a concern with time and temporality as the "object-matter" of
history. But the mode of study must be attuned to its object. Histori-
cistic time cannot be studied by the techniques of natural scientific
method, nor can the problem of historical time even be posed in terms
of naturalistic categories. A chemistry of time will not do; we must
search for a more magical instrument of divination, and that is why I
choose to speak of an "alchemistry" of time. My clue is taken from Tho-
mas Mann's Magic Mountain. At one point Hans Castorp says,
"There is such a thing as alchemistic-hermetic pedagogy, transubstan-
tiation, from lower to higher, ascending degrees ... " 15 The education of
the individual, assuming he has a little something to start with,
advances toward the fulfillment of an entelechy which is partly defined
by what he makes of his epoch, how he attends to his mentors, what
risks he manages within the promises of an age. Magic makes of the
Mountain an hermetic microcosm, but it is a monad whose structure
and content mirror the forces and possibilities of the historical order.
Transubstantiation is an historical event, and its product is an histori-
cized consciousness. The happy illusions of Settembrini and the bitter
prophecies of N aphta are aufgehoben in the destiny of Castorp. The
seven years he spends at Davos are the distillation of time's alchemy.
The application of such a conception of time and SUbjectivity to the
concrete activity of historians is at best problematic. But there is one
field of contact which seems to me inescapable, the life of the historian
has a reflexive dimension; he necessarily becomes the object of his own
inquiry. It is in this necessity that the study of history locates its
alchemic properties. Self-study is, in principle, beyond the possi-
bility of behavioristic explanation. The historian's decision to study
some phase of history is an act whose significance depends largely
on his own interpretation of his own choice. Here action becomes
not an external event but an intentional phenomenon. The discipline
which concerns itself with such phenomena, among others, is a
philosophically conceived history, one whose dominant effort is the
16 Mann, T., The Magic Mountajn, New York, 1955, 596.
location, ordering, and interpretive understanding of the historistic.

Such a discipline does not replace history as ordinarily comprehended.
Instead, to the extent that historians recognize the alchemic dimension
of their enterprise, they restore to its proper level the status of
philosophy as the foundation of historical methodology.
A different way of seeing the relevance of philosophy for the study of
history is to consider again the question of what constitutes the realm
of historical fact. When we distinguish between the event, its trace, and
the historian's attempt to reconstruct events through the study of
traces, we suggest, really, that there is a major problem with respect to
the reality of which events are a part. To question the logical status of
the event is to question, ultimately, the logical status of reality itself.
To the extent to which the historian operates as a naive realist, episte-
mologically, he presupposes that of course reality is a subsistent affair,
composed of elements whose independent status is much the same as the
status of facts ordinarily located in the external world. And it is
precisely here that the real trouble begins, for it is not enough for the
historian to assume that his object of concern is philosophically neutral
or obvious or to be taken for granted. It is instead necessary to acquaint
himself with the philosophic issues and to commit himself to consistency,
clarity, and as much sophistication as he can manage. If pushed far
enough such claims lead to a pedagogic impasse.
What is it the student of history must do? Must he settle the problems
of metaphysics and epistemology before he can write his dissertation
or monograph on the Lost State of Franklin? The answer is "yes," but
I don't believe in the answer. Rather, I maintain that a reconstruction
of the history of the Lost State of Franklin involves, in principle, every
major issue one can locate in the methodology and philosophy of
history. The point is that judging accomplishments in the writing of
history necessarily involves the pathos of relative failure. The same
thing holds in philosophy, except possibly in more intensified form.
And the problem is not only what one is able to accomplish, but what
questions one dares to formulate. Philosophic concern in this sense can
be understood as a commitment to honesty, that kind of honesty which
admits freely but responsibly that the initial limits one places on a
project reflect not only the kinds of results that can be looked for but
the kinds of embarrassments that are implicitly avoided. We should
be judged not only on what we have done but on what we have
attempted.
It is time to conclude the argument. The awareness of events, I have
maintained, is no less an historical datum than the study of historical

phenomena, traditionally understood. Historicity is the plenum of all
intentional action in the historical scene. The actor in history is a
subjectivity concerned with the meaning of his own action. It is the
task of the historian to comprehend not only the action of fellow men
but his own existence. To the extent that he strives for interpretive
understanding of the historicistic world, he encroaches on the domain
of magic, and the logic of his inquiry leads him to the prime datum of
temporality as the essential stuff of our lives. To profess a concern with
history as historicity is necessarily to utilize the instrumentality of
magic, to participate in conceptual alchemy. Such is the argument.
Those who are bent upon interpreting such terms as "subjectivity,"
"temporality," "magic," and "alchemy" as the vocabulary of Satan
are free to proceed as they wish. One can hardly keep them from the
appointment they have made from the outset of this paper. As they
depart for their rendezvous, however, I offer a final caution. In addition
to the historian's career there is the historian's life. Reflectively or not,
he projects a certain style of existence. Profession and person are not
isolated terms. Taken integrally they lead to at least the possibility of
responsible commitment; splintered apart, the study of history
becomes what Spengler called "ant work."
17. Causation as a Structure of the Lebenswelt
"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard
masks. But in each event - in the living act, the
undoubted deed - there, some unknown but still
reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its
features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man
will strike, strike through the mask!"
Herman Melville

Whatever radical insights existentialism and phenomenology have
occasioned in philosophy as well as in science, an implicit consequence
of their intellectual vitality is the question they raise regarding the
nexus between philosophy and science. Nowhere is this question more
clearly found than in contemporary psychiatry. The recent stir in many
quarters over existential psychoanalysis is only the surface disturbance
of a much deeper problem, for underlying the publicity that has
attended this movement is the more important, more insistent issue of
the relationship between philosophical viewpoints and systems and the
role of psychiatric theory in the matrix of knowledge. What is at issue,
ultimately, is the very meaning of theory itself. I am interested in
exploring theory in terms of a particular perspective, that of a funda-
mental problem for all science, the problem of causation. In a way, the
choice of causation is less than necessary, for I could as well turn to
the status of "fact" or "law" or "hypothesis" as a way into the difficul-
ties I wish to engage. But if "causation" is a half-arbitrary choice, it
is no less the case that it will do very well for the purposes at hand.
Causation, I trust, will prove to be the threshold to the domain of
theory as well as a clue to the meaning of the contribution of existential
and phenomenological philosophy to science in general and to psychia-
try in particular.
The notion of "theory" is especially exasperating. Not only are
there divergent connotations for the term, but there is little agreement
within a single discipline as to proper usage. For some, theory means
the formulation of general principles, the location of guiding lines for
inquiry. For others, the very term has a rather pejorative inflection.
Theory is opposed to practice, and that very opposition tends to make
196 CAUSATION AS A STRUCTURE OF THE LEBENSWELT
of theory an abstract survey of concepts which may be relevant for

philosophers but may prove hazardous for more concretely oriented
practitioners. Theory, as I propose to treat it, has a very different
placement. I am interested in examining the basic presuppositions of
natural science, of the common-sense world, and of all attitudes which
are derivative from them. To the extent that philosophy is a critique
of presuppositions, it has a theoretical orientation. The clarification
and ordering of all basic concepts taken for granted in scientific and
common-sense life is the specific task of theory. In this sense, theory
means the rationale of science as well as existence; it is the logos of all
phenomena.
But treating theory as logos does not liberate it from philosophic
difficulties. To begin with, there are at least two qualitatively different
approaches to the meaning of theory in the history of thought. One
division goes back to Francis Bacon and to the idea that the legitima-
tion of theory lies essentially in practice, in the uses to which theory is
put. Contemporary pragmatism is a child of this ancient parent. The
emphasis here is on what theory does, what it produces, what its
applications are, how it functions in the practice of science and of
daily life. A kind of fundamental value judgment is brought to bear on
theory, for according to its fruits the theory is judged valid, weak, or
impotent. The acid test, then, is performance, and performance is
itself judged in accordance with the canons of standard scientific
method. A good theory must be able to predict accurately, generate
theorems which not only hold for the empirical world but which
are interconsistent with each other, and merge with cognate
disciplines and their findings. In Baconian terms, knowledge is
validated in its capacity to transform the world. Knowledge is indeed
power.
The other way of looking at theory has a very different lineage.
From Plato through St. Thomas Aquinas to more recent thinkers we
will discuss a little later comes the fundamental idea that knowledge
is understanding and that understanding is self-validating. The task of
theory is comprehension; and not comprehension for the sake of some-
thing else, but comprehension for the sake of comprehension. The
criteria for a good theory are its internal coherence, its capacity to
illuminate the structure of reality, its power to transform not the world
but the theorist, to make of him a wise man. Theory is concerned with
that order of question which is reflexive, which is able to tum back
upon itself. Thus, if one asks the empiricist why he wishes to change the
CAUSATION AS A STRUCTURE OF THE LEBEN SWELT 197
world, to dominate and control it, his answer must be in terms of some
predicate of value which he must, at some point, take as intrinsically
good. But one cannot judge the status of intrinsic good in terms of
empirical criteria. A pragmatist may judge something good in terms
of its product, but his judgment of that product as good cannot itself
become a further object of inquiry without the danger of an infinite
regress. For those, however, who look to understanding as self-valida-
ting and to theory as essentially philosophic comprehension, the dia-
lectical examination of intrinsic goods is quite possible. A reflexive
concern with the very notion of good is a proper part of the meaning of
this order of theory. The kinds of questions we raise, what we presup-
pose as a meaningful question, will in fact stem from what tacitly or
explicitly we grasp as theory.
There is one kind of question which is endemic to symposia in which
philosophers meet with scientists. The latter very often want to know
how a particular philosophy or approach to philosophical problems will
help them concretely in their own work. This is a very fair question, but
it is often posed in such a way that it presupposes a Baconian conception
of theory. Presumably, if an idea will not be of any concrete aid to a
scientist, his time may not be wasted but the symposium will then not
have professional significance for him. I should like to ask for a special
favor, a psychiatric boon. For once, let us set aside the question, How
will all this help me in the practice of psychiatry? Without underesti-
mating the importance of therapy, let this be one time when that
question does not arise. In a way, the question is pointless, for all its
good will and decency. If it would require a philosopher to make out a
detailed case for the practical implications of what he says, then there
is hardly any real hope of turning to him for help. What he has to offer
lies in a completely different dimension, one which I propose to explore.
But for the time being, then, we will have a moratorium on such
questions. And while we are making preliminary arrangements, we
may as well turn to the initial problem of relative areas of compe-
tence.
For the most part, psychiatrists are not philosophers and philoso-
phers are not psychiatrists. There are notable exceptions, but this
hardly helps the general situation. Individual psychiatrists may have
a sophisticated background in philosophy without posing as profession-
al philosophers; in return, some philosophers have more than an
amateur's appreciation of some of the concrete problems of psychiatry.
Most of us, unfortunately, fall between these camps. It seems reason-
198 CAUSATION AS A STRUCTURE OF THE LEBEN SWELT
able to me to be frank in announcing our mutual illiteracies and to be

appreciative of our efforts to understand what the other may take for
granted. The whole point of our holding a symposium in common, it
seems to me, is that we are not professing to appropriate the other's
specialized domain, but rather to explore certain areas which present
challenges to all of us. Those areas are precisely theoretical in nature,
and our task, our common task, is to approach theory with all the
candor philosophy and science demand if they are to hold truth dear.
<II)
Causation is without doubt a central term of all scientific discourse.
Its methodological status reveals a double aspect. First, causation
refers to the orderly interrelatedness of all events; second, causation
denotes a procedural dimension of scientific method. It is a cardinal
presupposition of all scientific inquiry that the world can, in principle,
be known. This means that it bears an inherent order of connectedness,
a causal order, of such a nature that scientific observers can come to
terms with what they study. Although the causal order may in fact
escape us temporarily, we must suppose that such escape is only
temporary, that ideally all of nature exhibits causal structure through-
out. Science in this sense is a persistent and controlled effort to exhibit
the order of events in nature. "Why" questions in science are answered
typically in terms of organized accounts of antecedent states of affairs.
We know "why" a muscle contracts when we know something about a
complex set of antecedent states of affairs in body chemistry and
physics. If we persist, like children, in further "why" questions
regarding these antecedent events, we must turn to still other, still
broader states of affairs which in turn, we expect, will show the causal
relationship between the event in question and what produced it. So
far the stress is on the object of inquiry, the structure of events in
nature and their causal order. But if we turn to the mode of causal
explanation, to the character of scientific method itself, we transpose
our inquiry to another dimension of the problem. We, in effect, turn to
the causal way of explaining, to what may be termed genetic method in
scientific analysis. Here we meet the concept of causation on very
different though related terrain. And it is here that my own proper
inquiry begins.
The causal or genetic mode of investigation projects a particular
conception of explanation as well as a particular view of the datum to be
explained. Explanation consists in tracing back causal relationships to

the springs of action. What is given in experience cannot be understood
in its givenness; it must be referred back to antecedent states, to prior
conditions, to origins from which it derived. A full account of such a
causal chain seen in its gigantic complexity constitutes an explanation.
Of course, there are criteria for plausible accounts. For the moment,
however, I am not concerned with how we know whether an explana-
tion explains, but what explaining consists in. Quite apart from whether,
for example, we can predict successfully on the basis of a particular
explanation, there is the very meaning of what is involved in explana-
tion as such. In these terms, explanation, for the genetic approach, is
generated out of the delineation of causal structure. So deeply ingrained
is this notion that a scientist or researcher or student almost automati-
cally commences the effort to explain by searching out the causal
linkage of events that eventually will lead to a relatively complete
picture of the phenomena under investigation. Were the causal mode
of examination stricken from scientific procedure, we would be left
with a corpse.
Explanation, then, is causal ordering, but what about the datum
observed, the phenomenon to be explained? What is its status? For
the genetic method, the phenomenon given is merely a starting point
for further searching. What is given is not a qualitative unity as much
as a point of departure backward toward roots and antecedent condi-
tions. Givenness in these terms cannot provide a datum which may be
analyzed out of itself, so to speak; it is always the case that givenness
is a clue to a sphere of order that is its ground. What is explained, the
object of explanation, comes into focus only after the causal order has
been established. Until then what is given is, we might say, merely
"loaned." Stated differently, the datum for genetic explanation is a
disguised entity. The task of the observer is to penetrate its disguise, to
unmask its appearance and locate its reality. The datum cannot stand
alone. Givenness qua givenness is not a proper object for scientific
scrutiny. In so far as its method is essentially genetic, science is com-
mitted to penetrate the manifestation of the datum by securing its place
in the schema of causation.
Apparently this situation pertains to the discipline of psychiatry.
Symptoms are quite exactly symptomatic of something. What appears,
what presents itself, is caused by, produced by, occasioned by other
states of affairs, and other states of affairs are in turn generated out
of broader explanatory syndromes which include the forces of heredity,
environment, childhood experiences, unconscious and subconscious

styles of influence, and patterns of social and cultural character. To
understand a single event one must, ideally, understand the total
structure of a life or of a style of life. What manifests itself appears
over against a latent background which it is the task of the psychiatrist
to reconstruct in its essential outlines. Understanding a patient means
penetrating the disguises of his appearance in order to comprehend the
true nature of those appearances. Psychiatry might be defined as
systematic distrust. It would seem, then, that the given cannot be
taken as it is given, the datum cannot be explicated out of itself, and
the methodological character of psychiatric explanation requires a
transcension of the object in favor of an account of what produced it.
Thus far the model of explanation in science has implicitly been that
of the exact sciences; physics is perhaps the paradigm case. And it
appears that some schools of psychiatry in following the ideal of natural
scientific explanation tend to build their own image of method after
that of the natural sciences. But there is a rather crucial difficulty here,
one that has been clearly recognized by many workers in psychiatry.
The datum for psychiatric study is, generally taken, the human
being. Whatever aspect of his behavior happens to be the explicit
object of study, it is a concrete man always who is studied. Clinical
categories are not reified; they have meaning only in so far as there are
individual people who exemplify them in some fashion. But if this is so,
then the psychiatric datum is a being who is not only an object for the
causal placement of the scientist studying him or the psychiatrist
trying to help him, he is, above all, primarily a creature who has his
own causal reality, a being who interprets his own world in terms of his
own causal categories. This datum is very much alive, and his life is
originally self-projected and self-interpreted. The psychiatristislook-
ing in on a reality that is looking out.
If it is commonplace to suggest that human beings are self-aware
creatures who are different from molecules or window shades, I must
confess to a concern for the obvious. But the obvious is by no means
simple or trivial. To the contrary, as the phenomenologist Alfred
Schutz has shown, the structure of the taken for granted world of daily
life with its apparent obviousness is in reality the most complex and
philosophically subtle of all the phenomena with which we have to deal.
The apparent certitude of daily life is a prime datum for our investiga-
tion. So to say that men are self-reflective beings who interpret their
.own reality and project a causal schema of their own making is to
recommend a fundamental distinction between the datum traditionally

conceived in scientific terms with its causal apparatus of explanation
and the datum presented to us as actors in daily life, enmeshed in the
world as we interpret it. In this way, we come to the problem of causa-
tion in the Life-world or Lebenswelt, as Husserl called it. In my opinion,
it is one of the richest "finds" ever made in contemporary thought. Its
appreciation, then, becomes our special responsibility.
<III>
The Lebenswelt is the world of concrete existence as projected and lived
by men in daily life. My own immediate awareness of my surroundings,
the familiarity of home and neighborhood, relations and friends, all
refer to a taken for granted horizon of reality as experienced through
the events of ordinary life. The Lebenswelt is characterized by the fact
that within it there arise no distinctively philosophical problems. My
own existence, the existence of fellow men, communication with others,
the very being of the external world are all assumed naively; they
present no distinctive issues of any problematic order for men in action
in the public world. Moreover, everything experienced in my world is
taken as roughly similar to what is experienced in the world of all
normal fellow men. In short, we live in the same world, experience its
typical aspects in a similar way, and act in a reality which we can then
dominate in common. This is our world and we live our lives within its
limits. The naive realism of the Lebenswelt consists in the way in which
its taken for granted structures are lived rather than rendered objects of
inspection. As long as I exist within the ongoing stream of my aware-
ness of the world of daily life, I presuppose its philosophical dimension.
Philosophy lies concealed within the Lebenswelt as its interior possibility.
The philosophical discovery of the Lebenswelt theme is a recognition
df the order of daily life as a constitutive product of consciousness.
The quality of the Lebenswelt as taken for granted in our experience
is something achieved by subjectivity, something that arises as a result
of the relatedness of consciousness to its objects. The phenomenological
description of the structures of the Lebenswelt, then, is an attempt to
account for its constitutive history, for its coming into being as a
meaningful unity. Rather than assume that reality simply has such
and such a typical structure, the phenomenologist endeavours to turn
directly to the essential forms of the activity of consciousness building
the meanings of its world. The constructive activity of consciousness is
not taken as a product of experience but as a transcendental condition

for experience. The orientation is Kantian to the extent that it is not
the world that is to be explained but our experience of the world. One
looks to natural science for an explanation of the world; one looks to
philosophy for an account of man's experience of the world. The location
of the Lebenswelt is, above all, the recognition that daily life is neither
produced by nature nor fashioned after the conceptual models of the
natural sciences. The problem of the Lebenswelt is that of attending to
the givenness of existence as it is directly appreciated by men in action
living their lives within the naive schemas of explanation they con-
struct for themselves in daily life.
Just as familiarity is a thematic assumption of ordinary existence,
so causation is taken for granted within the Lebenswelt. Again, there are
two facets of the problem. Causation as a Lebenswelt concept may refer
to the order of experience as men live it or it may denote the way in
which interpretation of daily life is structured. But the objective and
subjective aspects of causation are qualitatively different from their
counterparts which we examined in discussing causality in the domain
of the natural sciences. For within the Lebenswelt the very meaning of
causation remains largely indeterminate, implicit, and generally vague.
Both the object of causal analysis and the mode of analysis remain
relatively obscure to the consciousness of ordinary men involved in
their jobs. To be sure, there are areas within the taken for granted world
of daily life which are rather expertly interpreted. The causal pattern
there is somewhat different. The diesel engineer undoubtedly has a
much more sophisticated notion of locomotive engineering than the
average person whose job is everything but diesel engineering. The
physician has a profound understanding of the operation of the heart
compared to the man who waits on tables or runs a bookstore or teaches
Latin in a secondary school. But it is not difficult to see that areas of
special competence are themselves only fragments of the public world,
and that in ordinary life each of us, no matter what his specialty, is a
novice at dozens of other fields. There is nothing new in all of this,
but there is something to be understood about the familiar. Causation
is, for the most part, naively taken for granted in a completely inexpert
way by men operating within the Lebenswelt. Nor will degrees of civili-
zation be any solution to the situation. In some ways, less advanced
peoples know a great deal more about the causal structure of their
world than we do about ours. Max Weber makes this point quite force-
fully in his essay on "Science as a Vocation." Do we today, he asks,
CAUSATION AS A STRUCTURE OF THE LEBENSWELT 203
have a greater knowledge of the conditions of life under which we exist than has
an American Indian or a Hottentot? Hardly. Unless he is a physicist. one who
rides on the streetcar has no idea how the car happened to get into motion. And
he does not need to know. He is satisfied that he may "count" on the behavior
of the streetcar. and he orients his conduct according to this expectation; but he
knows nothing about what it takes to produce such a car so that it can move. The
savage knows incomparably more about his tools .... How does it happen that
one can buy something for money - sometimes more and sometimes less? The
savage knows what he does in order to get his daily food and which institutions
serve him in this pursuit. The increasing intellectualization and rationalization
do not. therefore. indicate an increased and general knowledge of the conditions
under which one lives. It means something else. namely. the knowledge or belief
that if one but wished one could learn it at any time. l
It is an endemic feature of the Life-world, then, that all of us, more or

less advanced in civilized life, are destined to interpret its causal struc-
ture in a fragmentary manner. And the structure thus interpreted is
not an image or a reflection of causation in natural science or in expert
areas of knowledge, but causation as the indeterminate horizon of
human action.
I have suggested that there is a double aspect to causation as a
structure of the Lebenswelt. On the one hand, the elements observed in
the Life-world are taken to be causally ordered; on the other hand.
the way in which men in daily life experience their immediate reality
involves a causal ordering. In both cases, however, I have insisted that
the kind of causation operative in the Lebenswelt is qualitatively dif-
ferent from that at issue in the natural sciences. This contention must
now be supported in greater detail. The best procedure, I think, is to
turn to an extended example. But before doing this, I wish to introduce
a methodological note which perhaps will set the example in its proper
context. The approach I am both following and trying to explain is the
phenomenological method originated by Edmund Husserl. The very
location of the Lebenswelt is itself a phenomenological act. In these
terms, the object located in phenomenological description as well as
the activity of consciousness involved in investigating that object is a
meaning-structure. We are not interested here in object in the physical
sense but rather in the logical sense. The object is any element meant
by the activity of consciousness. The physical properties or geographical
location of the object in the ordinary sense of that term are not at issue
here. They are bracketed from our procedure. This does not mean that
they are denied or disregarded; instead, we set our traditional attitude
1 Weber. M.• "Science as a Vocation." in Sociological Analysis (ed. by Logan Wilson
and William L. Kolb). New York, I949. 7-8.
or belief toward them in methodological abeyance. Objects,.then, are

directly given to the acts of consciousness, to intentional consciousness,
in Husserl's language, precisely as consciousness thinks them, treats
them, places them, believes them, fears them, or considers them. The
object, furthermore, is not given to us, but to me the inquirer. And as
a phenomenologist, I do not presuppose the historical, natural, cultural,
or common-sense character of the object given for description. I turn
to the object ideally in perfect neutrality. I attend to what presents
itself. I make myself available to the stream of experience in its sheer
givenness. And in doing this, I gain access to the intentional data of
consciousness independent of any causal schema or preconceived
doctrine of causation. Causality, then, is bracketed, and I attend to the
given in a causation-free attitude. The result, indeed, seems strange
to both natural science and common sense. How is it possible to under-
stand the structure of the Lebenswelt by means of a method that frees
itself of traditionally conceived naturalistic categories? And more
particularly, how is it possible to study causation as a structure of the
Lebenswelt by means of a method that begins by bracketing causation?
We shall tum to the resolution of this paradox later. For the present,
it is first necessary to examine causation within the Lebenswelt by
means of some illustration that will enable us to see the issues in ques-
tion in concrete form. I propose to use as my example the encounter
with the Absurd, taking the Absurd as a central category of existential
philosophy.
<IV>
The man who suddenly loses control of the stable image of the world is
a familiar symbol. We encounter him in life as often as we meet him in
literature. We say that in facing the Absurd he has been transformed.
Spatial metaphors often announce such changes. We crack up or we
break down. In the ecstasy of the Absurd we are beside ourselves. But
the metaphor transcends the spatial and introduces what might be
termed the spatiality of inner life, the space of the "I" moving through
the corridors of consciousness. Kafka's Joseph K. undertakes his defense
in a world in which defense is indicative of guilt. The first act of the
guilty man is to affirm his innocence. Another of Kafka's heroes
suddenly locates himself metamorphosed into the insect whose life he
had all along lived in utter unconcern. Camus' stranger murders the
lucidity of a day and advances himself from the backdrop of reality
into the focus of mundane destruction. In Sartre's Nausea the prota-

gonist encounters the sheer quality of facticity, the pure is-ness of
experience; he becomes the Absurd. In all of these remarkable instances,
some facet of an essential structure of inner life is transposed; the world
remains stable perhaps, but our experience of it shifts into the horizon
of a new vision, a new sense of awareness in which subject and object
are no longer traditionally conceived. Within the interior space of
consciousness the Absurd moves and waits; its domain is bounded only
by the reach of awareness. We may define the Absurd as the intrinsic
question ability of all order. The Absurd is causation turned inside out.
Rather than choose an example from literature, the poor man's
equivalent of the psychiatrist's cases, I propose to consider the Absurd
in terms of an Ideal Type in Max Weber's sense. My illustration for
the encounter with the Absurd will be a construction, one which relates
to empirical and literary phenomena but which transcends any of their
possible exemplifications or actualizations. As Ideal Type, the Absurd
is a composite of person, situation, and action. Let us then imaginatively
project an encounter with the Absurd and look to the causal structure
of both the object of awareness, what is given, and the noetic aspect of
the awareness, what we may call the Absurd consciousness. The given
as Absurd presents itself in packets. It were as though the totality of
what there is announced itself in sudden, finite charges. This bed, this
ceiling, this room are not parts of anything; they are themselves units
whose inner and outer horizons form an immanent circle. Perspective
is fractured at its causal root. Instead of seeing things in ordinary
frames, we appropriate them as they give themselves not in isolation
but in a modality of consciousness in which relatedness itself is dis-
placed. Isolation means isolation from something; these givens are
neither isolated nor related. They stand free of all connectedness, all
order, all causal reference beyond themselves. And if perspective is
bracketed, one may move in closer and closer to the unity given,
explore its givenness in overpowering detail. This ceiling, then, may
become mine not as part of anything but simply as there-for-me. My
room's ceiling is not identical with this ceiling I have presented to me
here and now in my room. From outside the circle of awareness the two
may be identified; within the circle they have no necessary connection.
Indeed, "connecLion" is an abortive concept. The Absurd object steps
out of the country of its birth, it calls me to its explicit and stark
presence.
Moving from the object aspect of the Absurd to the subjective or
noetic side, I attend now to the awareness of what I have tenned this
ceiling. There is a glance of consciousness that intends this object. It is
a kind of this-ceiling-attending that becomes thematic here. But no
relatedness manifests itself between this act of consciousness and the
mainstream of what I call my awareness. Nor do I intend this ceiling
as the noematic unity for a series of possible acts of awareness. For
the Absurd consciousness there is no repetition of acts all of which point
toward the same meaning. Each intending has its fixed label, its inimi-
table and unrepeatable texture. Moreover, it is that specific texture
that captivates me. The ceiling is the same ceiling for my ordinary
predications as well as for my ordinary perceptions. But in Absurd
consciousness it is in every instance a new moment of consciousness that
arises in perceptual experience. Causation has been flushed out of
consciousness; the remainder is the overpowering particularity of the
world. Absurdity has afflicted the intentional structure of consciousness,
and the Absurd man is, in a strange way, analagous to some of the
aphasic patients described in the work of Kurt Goldstein. 2
I hope the last point will not be misunderstood. A phenomenology
of the Absurd is not a pathology of the Absurd. There is no issue here
of disfunction. Rather, the Absurd is a metaphysical modality, and it
requires direct inspection. Seeing the world in a certain way, possessing
the world in a certain way, bearing the reality of the world in a certain
way are, I am suggesting, more than interpretations of the Real. They
are the reality with which we have to deal and with which we must
come to tenns. The causal analysis of particular styles of existence, the
examination of the Absurd, for instance, must first respect the full
quality and status of its metaphysical object. It is not even enough to
attempt to gain an appreciative and sympathetic understanding of the
way in which the Absurd man sees his world. It is above all demanded
of us, philosophers and psychiatrists alike, that we view his reality
in full depth, not as the product of distortion but as a conceivable
and conceivably valid pennutation of experience. To be sure, it may
Z Of course, the Absurd has a horizon of universality as well as of specificity, In addition
to the delimitation of reality to "thises," unique packets of awareness, it is possible to point to
a plethora of possible causal relata. In place of the minimal order and relatedness we assume
as normal for daily life, there may be posited an almost infinitely detailed schema of causation.
The Absurd in this manifestation approaches some forms of schizophrenic consciousness.
Everything has its secret connection. The world is dominated by mysterious linkages, endless
chains of implication, a subtle apparatus of forces and hidden controls. Far from appreciating
only the specific intention, the individual is led to the Hegelian disaster of total, absolute
causation pulsing in every living act and implicit in nature itself. The world is rendered
Absurd either way, with the shattering of causation or its pathological magnification to the
point of unbearable Gnostic design.
later be the professional task of the psychiatrist to categorize the

Absurd in his own terms. His scientific delineation looks forward to
therapy. But any change presupposes the original status of that which
is to be changed. If the datum escapes us, we move ahead in conceptual
danger.
Exactly what has my illustration of the Ideal Type of the Absurd
really illustrated? Essentially, the explosion of causal relatedness in
the Lebenswelt. That I have chosen an extreme case does not prevent
the application of the same ideas to the more nearly normal character
of the Life-world. The application must, of course, be modified radically,
for in the normal scheme of things in ordinary life there is a causal
pattern operative. But causation remains largely implicit in its meaning
and function. As Alfred Schutz once suggested, the notion of "likeli-
hood" which Aristotle develops in his Topics is a possible approach to
the meaning of the kind of causation that operates in the Lebenswelt.
Men in daily life deem innumerable events "likely" to follow from the
performance of certain actions. There is no systematic concept involved.
As a common-sense man, I simply take it for granted that certain types
of actions will follow from other types of actions. Causation has been
thoroughly typified. Alfred Schutz writes:
I take it for granted that my action (say putting a stamped and duly addressed
envelope in a mailbox) will induce anonymous fellowmen (postmen) to perform
typical actions (handling the mail) in accordance with typical in-order-to
motives (to live up to their occupational duties) with the result that the state of
affairs projected by me (delivery of the letter to the addressee within reasonable
time) will be achieved. 3
All of us as common-sense men operate within the horizon of such

typifications. Social reality is largely possible in virtue of this order of
Lebenswelt-causation.
In choosing to explore the problem of causation in terms of the
radical example of the Absurd, I have moved away from the typifica-
tion of the normal toward the environs of the abnormal. This move-
ment is purposeful for several reasons. First, the stronger, stranger case
of the Absurd delimits more dramatically the region of the Life-world
from that of the models constructed by the genetic method of the
natural sciences. Second, the Absurd dramatizes the problem of a
social reality built up out of the typifications of common sense. For if
we are destined to live within such constructs, we find necessarily that
3 Schutz, A., "Common·Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action." Phi-
losophy and Phenomenological Research, XIV, September, 1953, 19.
portions of our daily world are reified or rendered paradoxical in

virtue of their typically constructive character. The Absurd man is not
as far off from the center of normalcy as we supposed. Both the object
he intends and the quality of his intending are perhaps the limit points
of typified existence. The genetic method is not free to attend to such
problems, but it is exactly such problems that form the nucleus of our
lives. The phenomenological approach endeavours to remain true to
the texture of human reality. Paradoxically, a method that brackets
causal analysis is utilized to describe causation as a structure of the
Lebenswelt. It is time to attend to that paradox.
<v>
The phenomenological procedure requires that the phenomenologist
place in abeyance his ordinary believing in the world, his causal and
valuational appreciation of reality. Bracketing is not denying; it is a
methodological device (though I believe it has more generalized
philosophical implications) to overcome the naive committedness of
men within the natural attitude. Setting aside causation, then, in this
methodological sense, does not involve denying or ignoring causation.
Indeed, causation instead may be rendered an explicit object for
description. But the phenomenologist does not pursue that description
in causal terms. It is not necessary to write in green ink in order to
describe a green table. One does not "greenly" call the table green. We
recognize that the descriptive process may have independence from
the objects for description. Similarly, but in a much more radical mode,
the phenomenologist disconnects his ordinary naive believing in causal
order in the hope of being able to "catch" that causal order in neutral
terms. The paradox is only apparent. Having taken care of one paradox,
however, we find that another rises in its place.
For the natural standpoint, that not only of mundane existence but
of natural science, the phenomenologist's non-causal treatment of
causation presents a paradox because a certain relationship is pre-
supposed between the sensory order and the physical order. Naturalism
in all of its forms simply assumes that there is a nexus between sensory
events and the physical world of such a nature that causality is
properly to be located in terms of that nexus. Consciousness is viewed
as, at best, an epiphenomenon to neurological events. The causal order
of the nervous system grounds the resultant events in consciousness. As
long as such a view is held either explicitly or, worse, implicitly, the
phenomenologist's conception of consciousness as a sovereign domain

will appear paradoxical, and causality must remain a fugitive concept.
From the phenomenological side, however, the paradox arises only if
we make the presuppositions which the naturalist insists on. "Causa-
lity," Husserl writes, "belongs in principle to the system of the con-
stituted intentional world, and has no meaning except in this world ... " 4
The paradox of causation arises for phenomenology only if we ignore
the conception of intentional consciousness that phenomenology
projects.
If causation does not serve as a naturalistic nexus between the
"objective" world and the "subjective" states of consciousness - and
this is the view explicitly denied by phenomenologists-then description
of reality is an integral project. Phenomenology is a movement beyond
traditional realisms and idealisms; it refuses to accept the common-
sense distinction between subject and object. The prize of that refusal
is a radical vision of man in his Life-world. It is this achievement of
phenomenology together with its existential implications which has
attracted so many creative minds in contemporary psychiatry, especial-
ly in Europe, to its possibilities within the domain of psychiatric
theory. And it is here that the relevance of philosophy for psychiatry
may be observed. Whether we are common-sense men operating in
ordinary life or philosophers bracketing the natural attitude in order to
comprehend it, or psychiatrists attempting to understand the patient's
world in its integral unity, we are committed at multiple levels to seeing
the world. If we presuppose that the cardinal philosophical features of
reality are obvious and to be taken for granted as being largely what
they naively appear to be, we waive our right to locate a more neutral
conception of the Real as well as a more exciting one. The moral is
that we must never assume that we don't pay for what we take for
granted. Philosophical ingenuousness may be another name for scien-
tific arrogance. I have argued that both are out of place in modern
psychiatry, and that existentialism and phenomenology have largely
been responsible for teaching us the profits of openness and humility.
A final problem remains within the limits of this essay. Earlier I
suggested that psychiatry is concerned with an aspect of the relation-
ship between appearance and reality. To the extent that the psychia-
trist seeks to penetrate disguises, to unmask disguises, he is attempting
to transcend appearance and gain reality. The reality is the living unity
of the person, his inwardness, in Kierkegaard's language. But to locate
4 Husser!. E., Ideas, r62.
that essential person it is necessary, in cases of mental pathology, to

evaluate what appears as a clue to what does not manifest itself.
Appearance is not reality, but how is it possible for a psychiatrist to
explore reality without precisely that genetic method of causal analysis
we have been criticizing from the outset? Isn't an appearance-reality
dualism destined to utilize causal procedures? I should like to clarify,
not qualify, my position. Phenomenological method is not in conflict
with genetic procedures. Phenomenology and science can never con-
tradict each other because, as Husserl clearly pointed out in his essay
on "Philosophy as a Rigorous Science," they operate at qUalitatively
different levels and have different spheres of experience for their subject
matter. There is nothing in phenomenology which demands that scienti-
fic method disqualify itself from the study of man and nature. Rather,
the situation is this: genetic method is untrue to itself if it assumes
naively that phenomenological description, uncovering of the data of
experience, is unnecessary or a mere philosophical lUXUry. It is above
all the nature of the given that is the prime problem of any science
that seeks interpretive understanding of human reality. The necessity
of phenomenology must then be understood as a propaedeutic to any
later inquiry. In a more generalized sense, philosophy has an analogous
role to play. Its aim is to achieve that synoptic unity without which all
disciplines would remain fragmentary and isolated efforts to come to
terms with the world. If psychiatry is systematic distrust, philosophy
is creative persistence.
It may appear that the conclusion to my argument is a call to some
sort of truce between science and philosophy, a call to cooperative
harmony. Since they don't contradict each other, genetic and pheno-
menological method can get along tidily. I'm afraid such a claim would
be as hopeless with respect to practical operations as it would be false
on more theoretical grounds. There is no need to underestimate the
distance between naturalistic and positivistic and existential and
phenomenological categories. But it is critically important to recognize
the legitimacy of phenomenological procedures with respect to a
causally inspired natural science. With respect to psychiatry my claim
has been that there are epistemic and metaphysical dimensions to the
reality with which psychiatrists are concerned. To assume that the
philosophical problem here is of only limited practical significance is to
miss not only the meaning of the impact of existentialism and pheno-
menology on contemporary psychiatry but to abandon any hope of
establishing the outlines of theory in the discipline of psychiatry.
Phenomenology does not entail a denial of the appearance-reality

motif; indeed, to the contrary, it offers a remarkable methodological
apparatus for probing that duality. It urges that we attend to the
tension between what there is and what there seems to be, but that we
remain true to the experiential givenness through which both person
and persona achieve expression.
I8. Death and Situation
As an "essay in phenomenological ontology" 1 Sartre's VEtre et Ie

neant is concerned with the structures of Being in so far as Being
presents itself, i.e., in so far as it is given in experience. As a phenome-
nology, Being and Nothingness deals only with presentations, and as a
descriptive enterprise, it cannot handle metaphysical problems. Thus
Sartre gives us extensive descriptive analyses of the self, the body, the
various concrete relations with the alter ego (love, language, desire,
etc.), but he does not attempt to analyze questions of the ultimate
origin, purpose, or meaning of reality. Since the character of his
investigation is descriptive, and since Sartre's method takes the
standpoint of the individual consciousness, the question of what is
within and outside our experience becomes transposed into the problem
of what is within and outside my experience, I as experiencing con-
sciousness. What is within the experience of my fellow man may be in
principle inaccessible to my direct experience and vice versa. A crucial
case in point is the problem of the experience of death. My experience of
death is always my experience of the death of the Other, the death of a
fellow man. The experience of my death as a phenomenon, Sartre
clainls, can only be a phenomenon for the experience of the Other,
whether that Other is friend, relation, associate, stranger, or part of the
anonymous "public." If "my" death is thus outside my possible
experience, in what sense is my death a possible object for my pheno-
menological investigation?
In endeavouring to consider this question, I believe that an analysis
of Sartre's philosophy of death may be of interest and of value in
several ways: first, we may clarify a vital point of difference between
1 the subtitle of Jean-Paul Sartre's L' Etre et Ie neant, Paris, 1943.
DEATH AND SITUATION 21 3
the thought of Sartre and Heidegger, philosophers sometimes taken as

expressing equivalent positions; second, we may come to a more
careful understanding of the fundamental Sartrean concept of "situa-
tion" with which his idea of death is connected; third, we may impli-
citly come to a more penetrating appreciation of the problem of death
as a theme of phenomenological philosophy. I propose, then, to turn to
a brief exposition of Sartre's views on death, to proceed to an examina-
tion of the correlated but more fundamental concept of "situation," to
offer certain critical remarks on Sartre's treatment of the problem in
the light of his total ontology, and finally to turn to the larger theme
of a phenomenological approach to the meaning of death in human
experience.
<II>
Although it is well known that Heidegger has made much of his idea of
Sein zum Tode, of the emergence of the authentic person from the
condition of anonymity (das Man), it is pertinent to note that in this
regard Sartre does not follow Heidegger; to the contrary, he clearly and
thoroughly dissents from the Heideggerian position. Sartre's dissent is
occasioned by a rejection of Heidegger's underlying thesis that my
death may become, in a direct sense, a phenomenon in my experience.
To understand his reasons for rejecting Heidegger's philosophy of
death, it is necessary to summarize Sartre's general conception of
death. 2
For Sartre (r) my death is not an experience of which I can ever be
aware, for awareness is a life-characteristic: death means absolute and
final cessation of my awareness; (2) my death, as phenomenon, is a
possible experience only for a fellow man: it is a structure of "being-for-
the-Other" 3; (3) I cannot meditate on my life from the standpoint of
death, since that standpoint would have to be that of a fellow man,
a standpoint denied me in principle 4; (4) I can meditate on my possible
future death from the standpoint of my life, but such meditation fails
to reveal my death, it only refers me to the existence of the Other, of
some fellow man for whom that possible future death will be a possible
2 L'litre et Ie neant, 615-638.

3 ibid., 631.
• According to Sartre, I can know the Other only as object for my subjectivity or I may
experience myself as object for the Other's subjectivity, but I cannot know the Other as
subjectivity for my subjectivity; hence I cannot takt' the standpoint of the Other as sub-
jectivity. See ibid., 327-328.
214 DEATH AND SITUATION
experience; (5) my finitude and my death must be differentiated: the

former is an ontological structure (which does not derive from death)
and so is an object for my phenomenological investigation; the latter is
not.
Sartre has defined "being for-itself" (l'etre pour-soil or, most simply,
the self, as a principle of negativity. The self, understood from different
aspects as human subjectivity, consciousness, etc., is the "being for
which being is in question in its being," 5 i.e., the being which is con-
stantly, ceaselessly undergoing a nihilating transition and alteration
which places its very nature in question. My past, what I have done
and been, is, so long as I live, continually being reconstructed and
reinterpreted by me as well as by others in terms of a present self which
is itself undergoing change in the light of an anticipated future which
shapes and conditions the intentions underlying my present projects.
The self is pro-jected, it is, temporally, a forward moving structure
whose present being is a "nihilation" (neantisation) defined by the
anticipated future, so that Without that future the present has no
status. Most simply: the self is only to the extent that what it tends
toward establishes the very condition of that "is." Thus, Sartre says, it
is because the self is the being which always claims an after, that there
is no place for death in the being which the self is. 6 As a self my being
exists in the stream of life activities moving toward the future: my
death cannot be any part of this structure of being.
"My project toward a death is comprehensible (suicide, martyrdom,
heroism)," Sartre writes, "but not the project toward my death." 7 My
death would mean the unfulfillment or the collapse of my projects, it
would place my projects in the hands of Others whose standpoint I
cannot take; a death is a meaningful aspect of my projects, for it is
only the concept of death as such that is involved. But is not the differ-
ence between my death and a death Heidegger's problem of the
distinction between authenticity and anonymity? Here we come to
Sartre's specific criticism of Heidegger's philosophy of death. Sartre
writes:
Heidegger ... begins by individualizing the death of each of us, by indicating to us
that it is the death of a p61'son, of an individual, the 'only thing that nobody can
do for me'; then he utilizes this incomparable individuality which he has con-
ferred upon death from the 'Dasein' in order to individualize the 'Dasein' itself:
it is by projecting itself freely toward its ultimate possibility that the 'Dasein'
5 ibid., 624.
• ibid.
1 ibid.
DEATH AND SITUATION 215
will reach authentic existence and will break away from the everyday banality
in order to attain the irreplaceable oneness of the person. But there is a circle
here; how, in effect, prove that death has this individuality and the power to
confer it. 8
The "circle" indicated is really this: the experience of my death is the

ground of my authenticity; the authentic I replaces the I of anonymity,
das Man, yet the individuality of death presupposes my capacity to
recognize it as unique. How is the I of das Man, the inauthentic banal
self, able to appreciate the uniqueness of the experience of its own death?
Sartre concludes that the phenomenon of my death, in so far as it can be
entertained at all as an idea, is meaningful only in the same sense in
which my love, my vows, or my emotions are mine, i.e., as defined by
my subjectivity. "Thus, from this point of view," Sartre writes, "the
most banal love is, like death, irreplaceable and unique, no one can love
for me." 9 My death remains then, for Sartre, the possible experience
of the Other, an experience beyond my consciousness, and to me forever
inaccessible.
<III>
But Sartre's rejection of Heidegger's philosophy of death is not, in

itself, his major concern. Indeed, Sartre's own analysis of death is not
an independent topic of inquiry nor a fundamental theme of Being and
Nothingness. It is introduced as a clarifying agent for a broader problem,
one to which Sartre has devoted a considerable amount of attention,
the problem of "situation." The analysis of death will, in part, he
writes, "permit a clearer conception of what a 'situation' is." 10 To be a
self, according to Sartre, is to be in a "situation": the self is its situation.
As self I am: first, "an existent in the midst of other existents" 11;
second, an existent born into a world which has a history, societal
organization, etc. 12 ; third, an existent who determines the rapport of
utensility or of adversity of the realities which surround me in the
world; fourth, an existent who constitutes my situation through the
selection of the goals toward which my projects are aimed; fifth, an
existent who is only in the face of the not-yet future which conditions as
a limit what is given in my experience.
8 ibid., 617.
9 ibid., 618.
10 ibid., 633.
11 ibid.
12 Cf. Sartre's Anti-Semite and jew, New York, 1948,59-60.
My situation is, therefore, a complex dialectically generated out

of both objective and subjective conditions: "the situation cannot
be subjective, for it is neither the sum nor the unity of the
impressions which things make upon us; it is the things themselves and
myself among the things." 13 But the situation "can no more be
objective, in the sense in which it would be a pure given which the
subject would verify without being in any way engaged in the system
thus constituted." 14 Rather, the situation is a "relation 01 being" 15
between the facticity of the world and the "illumination" 16 of that
facticity by the subject. In this manner, situation is defined by the self
in a double sense: by the actual being of the self and also by that which
the self has not yet become.
<IV>
We have stated that Sartre treats the experience of death as subordi-

nate and contributive to the larger ploblem of "situation." Let us now
reverse his procedure and see the relationship between the two, taking
the problem of death as primary. In what way does his idea of "situa-
tion" clarify his idea of death?
My situation is always concrete. The universal ends I choose for my
life are chosen from my particular standpoint, they reflect my ambition,
my hope, my struggle. The very selection of the "life of a professional
man," for example, is made in the light of my conception of what such a
life implies and involves. But in addition, the degree to which I realize
the "life of a professional man" is expressed in the concrete situations
of my existence. In this manner we come to the relationship of death
and situation within the context of the concrete eVents of my life.
Sartre recalls Kafka's story of the merchant who comes to plead a
case at the castle: "a terrible guard bars his entrance. He dares not pass
beyond, waits and dies in waiting. At the hour of death, he asks the
guardian: 'How does it happen that I was the only one to wait?' and the
guardian answers him: 'This gate was made only for you.' " 17 And
Sartre adds: "each one makes for himself his own gate." 18 As self I do
not choose my own death (though I may choose a death, as we have
13 L' £tl'e et le neant, 633.

14 ibid., 634.
15 ibid.
16 ibid.
17 ibid., 635.
18 ibid.
seen), for my death is an ontologically transcendent phenomenon

available only to the Other; rather, death as such is an a priori condi-
tion of the human reality, the sheer facticity of what is given in the
human condition: "it is absurd that we are born," Sartre writes, "it is
absurd that we die." 19 But every general objective aspect of my
situation, death included, is constituted in so far as the self "makes a
human reality exist as species." 20 Though I do not "create" death as
an a priori facticity of the human situation, there is a human situation
only to the extent that there are selves who constitute such worlds. The
a priori of death, then, is the condition not of my death but of my
finitude. To be finite is to choose one end to the exclusion of others, for
the very conception of "exclusion" involves the choice of this and no
other, a choice that establishes my self as defined by the irreversibility
of temporality.21 Thus death is an a priori condition defining my
situation as finite, but I choose my situation and that choice is within
the situation of my choosing. I cannot choose the objective condition of
finitude, but without my self-constituted world that a priori would
remain abortive.
Taken together, then, death and situation, for Sartre, are mutually
revealing structures which illuminate man's being; but situation
transposes death into the phenomenological givenness of finitude.
My death is a phenomenon for the situation of Others, of a situation that
transcends my existence. And if we now add that finitude cannot be
derived from the conception of death we are left with Sartre's reduction
of the problem: man, as pour-soi, is a being whose finitude defines his
situation and whose situation defines his finitude; death remains only
as an a priori limit of the human condition.
This reduction of death to finitude is open, I would suggest, to a
number of criticisms. First, to speak of the phenomenon of death is
necessarily to locate those meanings which present themselves directly
to my awareness as observer of the Other's death. Even if the Other dies-
for-me, his death is independent, as phenomenon, of the causal cate-
gories that make up the physical or medical definition of death. My
friend's death does not consist for me in the biological fact of cessation
19 ibid., 631.
20 ibid., 636.
21 ibid .. 63I.
of heartbeat or respiration or the decay of his tissues; it is my

friend who has died, not his body. If the phenomenon of my friend's
death is the complexus of meanings signified by his dying, then those
meanings are available to me with respect to my own death. I need not
be the witness of my death, the guardian of my corpse, to locate the
phenomenon of my death. But there is a second point to be made: it is
not possible, I think, to derive the meaning of finitude from the self
alone, apart from the structure of death. For the self to be finite means
that it must move forward temporally to a point of cessation that is
more than the end of a formal series: that point of cessation which is
the terminus of consciousness is my death. To be finite is to be limited
by death; to derive finitude from man's being alone is to conceive of
an "end" without that ground which makes the very conception of
man's "end" possible. There is, finally, a third point of criticism:
Sartre makes of death an a priori limit of man's situation. But this
device merely returns us to the problem of the constitution of the
situational a priori. Since the self ultimately constitutes the way in
which its situation is structured, death as an a priori is returned, full
circle, to the immanence of consciousness. Death and situation, in my
own view, are comprehensible as aspects of an integral experiential
reality which is phenomenologically given. In this respect, I think
Heidegger is closer to the truth than Sartre. But rather than play one
doctrine against the other, I think it more profitable at this time to
tum to the completely valid question implicitly raised by both philo-
sophers: In what sense is a phenomenology of death possible? Perhaps
the best way of approaching this question is to abandon the special,
often tangled, terminology of Sartre and Heidegger and tum directly
to the phenomena themselves.
As soon as we are born, Heidegger recalls in Sein und Zeit, we are
old enough to die. The awareness of death may come for the child
through the death of a pet, the sight of an animal killed on the road, or
through the experience of a death in the family. However it comes,
there comes along with it the uncanny, almost insidious realization that
the child too will die. Thus, death enters the world and gives a shock
to innocence from which innocence can never recover. The child's
questions about death are the adult's questions more honestly stated
and the philosopher's questions naively discovered. "Will I die too?"
asks the child; "Why must I die?" "What does it mean to die?" And
the simple truth is that there are no final answers to these questions,
though there are myths and dreams and desperate hopes evinced in
the answers children get. Our evasions are decisive evidence of our
metaphysical illiteracy.
But death for the adult world is no less the ambivalent problematic
of our daily lives. It is not necessary to turn to Heidegger to locate the
immediacy of the issues. Heidegger himself makes reference to Tolstoi's
remarkable story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich." We could trace the
problem in quite other directions as well. Writing in 1915, twelve years
before the publication of Sein und Zeit, one investigator discusses the
spiritual atmosphere of Europe at the time of the First World War:
a factor to which I attribute our present sense of estrangement in this once
lovely and congenial world [he writes] is the disturbance that has taken place in
our attitude towards death, an attitude to which hitherto we have clung so fast.
This attitude was far from straightforward. We were of course prepared to
maintain that death was the necessary outcome of life, that everyone owes a debt
to Nature and must expect to pay the reckoning - in short, that death was
natural, undeniable and unavoidable. In reality, however, we were accustomed
to behave as if it were otherwise. We displayed an unmistakable tendency to
'shelve' death. to eliminate it from life. We tried to hush it up ... at bottom no
one believes in his own death. 22
The author of this statement is not an existential philosopher but a

psychoanalytic philosopher, Sigmund Freud.
From childhood through our adult lives, then, the problem of
making sense of life by making sense of death is a primary obligation in
a purely descriptive sense; for whether we like it or not, death is the
horizon of our being. And it is perhaps as horizon that we can interpret
it phenomenologically. When I come to terms with reality, I admit the
overpowering truth of my total human situation: that I am a being
born into a world in which I am destined to grow older and to die. My
being in this world is along a horizon of action and belief that includes
my death in a world that transcends me. The first evidence, pheno-
menologically, that is given to me of this horizon of death is, I would
suggest (though I cannot develop it here), a sense of uncanniness which
haunts the experienced elements of my familiar surroundings. 23 The
uncanny is appresented, we might say, with the familiar. Each familiar
object, person, or event carries with it the possibility of the sinister
and the strange. If the familiar is rooted in life, the uncanny is its
Doppelganger. And though it may be perfectly "natural" that plants
22 Freud. S .• "Thoughts on War and Death." in Collected Papers. Vol. IV. London. 1949.
30 4-3 0 5.
23 Again. Freud's essay on "The ·Uncanny· ... ibid., pp. 368-407. is remarkably suggestive,
although he does not consider the implications of the problem with respect to death.
and animals and other human beings die, it remains strange beyond
comparison that this will really happen to me. Here, then, i believe is a
root meaning of the experience of death; the uncanny thrusts us
instantaneously within the horizon of death.
These remarks lead to no special conclusion. As Landsberg says in his
essay on "The Experience of Death," the question of the meaning of
death to the human being as a person admits of no conclusion, "for
we are dealing with the very mystery of man, taken from a certain
aspect." 24 And he adds: "every real problem in philosophy contains
all the others in the unity of mystery." 25 Our effort has been directed
to the articulation of a problem rather than to its solution. In this sense,
the central contribution of Sartre and Heidegger to the clarification of
these issues is their recovery of a philosophical problem that has been
almost lost to contemporary thought in a scientific age. Whatever their
technical inadequacies, they have succeeded not only in relocating an
authentic problem but in directing our attention to its living urgency.
It has been a long time since Montaigne reminded us of Cicero's in-
junction that to philosophize is to learn how to die. In our age the same
truth is expressed by Rilke:
"Lord, give to each man his own death."
14 Landsberg, P.-L., Tlu Ezperience 0/ Death €I- Tlu Moral Problem 0/ Sflictde, New York,
:1953,1.
n UNl.
share a world. Furthermor<>, the
distance between aesthetics and social
science is shortened by the same ap-
proach. Art as an uncovering of the Real
is <l mode of its presentation, not a
surrogate. The epistemological question
the artist asks (implicitly, most often)
is analogous to that posed by the phe-
nomenologist of the social science~:
What are the essential conditions for
there being a world? As 'Wallace
Stevens conceives of the poet as the
"orator of the imagination," so, the
author suggests, we may think of the
philosopher as the spokesman of wonder.
The problems of literature and the
social sciences that are discussed in these
pages, then, turn upon the philosophic
sem:e of reality as a major datum. Ac-
cordingly, literature and the social
sciences arc taken as moments in a
philosophic dialectic.
The Author: .\laurier. 0<alallSOIi rt'ce'.w,d Ill., I'l,.

D. from the University of l'\"h,."sk" an d holds th"
Doctor or Social Seif'llc" <leg""" rrom the l'\cw
School jill' Sorial Research. AutlJ"r "r A Critiqllc
q/ Jean-i'aul Sari"'" Oliiolog), and Ti,e ,";orjal nr-
namics qf George H. J1((Id, be has also contributed
chap("rs to scvPral hooks '" well '" nUlIlerous
articl es (0 scholarly journals. He is a ",,:111 her or
1h" ('di(orial board or the j ournal Philo.roph,' ami
Phenomenologiwl R psrarch. During 195 1-53 he was
~11 American Council of Learned S"ci ctics Schillar.
and hr' holds a Fellowship from lhe sallie Coullcil
j'.r the year 19GI-G2. Dr. Natanson ie ,\s,o"ialc
Professor of Philosophy ' a( the Uni,'nsity of North
Carolina.

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NATANSON, M. - Literature, Philosophy, and The Social Sciences - Essays in Existentialism and Phenomenology PDF

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The ~ssays in this volume have as

their unifying theme the exposition of

ESSAYS IN EXISTENTIALISM AND

Copy,ight I96a by Ma,tinus Nijhofl. The Hague. Netheflands

A collection of one man's essays in book form tends to be viewed

capture, in rigorous form, the essential meaning of man's experience in

Chapel Hill, N.C. M.N.

Part I I PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS

Part I I I AESTHETICS AND LITERATURE

7. Toward a Phenomenology of the Aesthetic Object 79

Part I I I I HISTORY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

13. A Study in Philosophy and the Social Sciences ISS

15. History as a Finite Province of Meaning

The point at issue is the existential commitment or lack of commitment

menology in Anglo-American philosophy for the past half century is, I

may be taken apart piecemeal as in the dismemberment of a completed

The central and ultimate difficulty in seeing what phenomenology

Biographically, Hussed's eady interests were in the natural sciences,

physical phenomena Brentano cites: a color, a figure, heat, cold, etc.

For psychology as a natural science, the psychical does not constitutt.'

(1) Phenomenology seeks to found and develop itself as a "presup-

(9) Phenomenology explores the genesis of meaning in both nature

(1) Phenomenology presents a unique method for pursuing its special

Within our present limits it is clearly impossible to go into a detailed

(1) Phenomenological method: Concerned as it is with an immediate

wishes to commence his philosophizing. Yet, for reasons that will be

Phenomenological suspension or, to use Hussed's term, epoche, consists

10 Husserl, E., Ideas, I07.

Epochi is the necessary condition to all other phenomenological

The fundamental methodological principle of phenomenology may ... be initially

And here as well is the clue to the meaning of a "presuppositionless"

mitment, however profound and primal, which may be delineated in its

(2) Intentionality: With epoche methodologically effected, the next

14 Husserl, E., Ideas, 43.

subjectivity involved in eidetic description is still a worldly subjectivity,

by means of this distinction HusserI is able to open up for examination

Let us suppose that we are looking with pleasure in a garden at a blossoming

(3) The Transcendental Ego: The evolution of Husserl's thought was

Consciousness in these terms fulfills itself in its very directionality,

phenomenological residuum gained by means of epoche and transcen-

Husser! indicates both his indebtedness to Descartes as well as the

work of such phenomenologically influenced psychiatrists as Ludwig

32 Sartre, l.-P., The Tl'anscendence oj the Ego, 105.

into a theory of consciousness in which the nonbeing of the ego is the

1 Originally published in NouveUe revue /rtJ"fI'ise, January 1939; reprinted in Jean-Paul

On the basis of this existentialized conception of intentionality Sartre

enological method as well as the whole grounding of conscious life in a

If Husserl's cogito is first given as instantaneous, there is no way to get outside it

5 Being and Nothingness, 109.

the very recognition of the ego presupposes a recognizing agent.

Reduction, then, opens up for phenomenological appreciation the full

7 ibid., 102 ft.

At first glance it would appear that Husserlian phenomenology and

which remains in analysis; and fourth, that it lacks an existential

The other differences must be given summary treatment. The lack of

and Hampshire's Thought and Action. An indication of what I find

concerned with facts of a different order from those of science? Is

• op. cit., 476.

for the coherence of experience, so the transcendental ego is the

3 Sartre, J.·P., The Transcendence of the Ego, 31.

objects; it is they which constitute the unity of my consciousnesses; it

8 Transcendence of the Ego, 98-99.

above all I who encounterPeter-in-need, and this I is not a reflective