Husserl’s Concepts of Apperzeption and Weltapperzeption Saulius Geniusas Here I wish to address the philosophical significance of Husserl’s concepts of apperception in general, and world-apperception in particular, by paying special attention to the manuscripts collected in Part VII of Hua XXXIX.1 In these manuscripts—the earliest of which were written in 1916, the latest in 1936 (most were composed between 1930 and 1934)—we come across Husserl’s most detailed reflections on the apperceptive structures of experience. Three goals will guide my analysis. First, by juxtaposing Husserl’s concept of apperception with how this concept was employed by his predecessors, I will clarify the concept’s specific meaning in Husserl’s phenomenology. Second, it will be crucial to see that in Husserl’s phenomenology, apperception functions as an umbrella term that covers a large variety of non-intuitive modes of consciousness that are synthetically unified with intuitive consciousness and are apprehended as if they were modes of intuitive consciousness. Apperception is a matter of intending something that is not originally present as if it were originally present: this is the core meaning of the concept that we come across in many highly diverse contexts of analysis in Husserl’s phenomenology. Furthermore, it will be important to recognize that Husserl’s concept of apperception admits of different levels of generality, which in turn will enable us to see what is unique about his concept of world-apperception. And third, I will conclude my analysis with some 1 These manuscripts are significantly titled “The World as Acquisition: Structure and Genesis of World-Apperception and the Apperception of Worldly Entities” (see Husserl 2008, 409–556). 187 Saulius Geniusas reflections on the genetic origins of world-constitution in general and world-apperception in particular. 1. Apperception as a Phenomenological Concept It is well known that Husserl often employs established philosophical concepts in unusual ways by infusing them with unprecedented meanings.2 He does so not out of caprice or ignorance, but out of the uncompromising conviction that phenomenology marks the rebirth of philosophical radicalism, which would be compromised if one employed philosophical concepts uncritically. As long as we read into phenomenological concepts the sense they have acquired in other philosophical traditions, we run the risk of misunderstanding their function, meaning, and significance. This is of importance when it comes to Husserl’s use of the concept of apperception. In the history of modern philosophy, and especially when it comes to such thinkers as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (who invented the concept of apperception) and Immanuel Kant (who brought to light its fundamental significance for transcendental philosophy in general), the concept of apperception was juxtaposed with that of perception. According to Leibniz, while perception provides us with access to external things, apperception is the source of our awareness of internal states. Much like Leibniz, Kant too conceives of apperception as an activity that is parallel to perceiving (see Kant 1998, A120). According to Kant, apperception is the mode of self-consciousness that enables the subject to attribute all its representations to itself. Kant famously distinguishes between three forms of syntheses—namely, those of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition— 2 See Husserl’s own “terminological discussion,” which concludes his Introduction to Ideas I (Husserl 1976, 8–9/2002, 5–6). Here Husserl writes: “Since it is not advisable to choose technical expressions which fall wholly outside the framework of traditional philosophical speech, and, above all, since the fundamental concepts of philosophy cannot be defined through stable concepts that can be identified at any time by reference to a directly accessible intuitional basis; since rather it is only, as a rule, after protracted inquiries that they can be finally cleared up and determined: it is often indispensable to make use of a set of speech-forms which group together in an orderly way a number of current expressions bearing closely equivalent meanings, the individual members of the group being terminologically distinguished one from the other” (ibid. 9/6). 188 Husserl’s Concepts of Apperzeption and Weltapperzeption and he employs the concept of apperception with reference to the judgment that performs the syntheses of recognition.3 Husserl significantly broadens the meaning of apperception. While for Leibniz and Kant apperception is fundamentally self-apperception, conceived as a peculiar mode of self3 We are in need of a further clarification, although here we must limit ourselves to some rather brief remarks. For Leibniz, the concept of apperception serves the purpose of distinguishing those perceptions that are conscious from those that are not. It also serves the purpose of distinguishing creatures that are capable of reflection and self-awareness (human beings) from those creatures that lack such a capacity (non-human animals as well as bare monads). Leibniz distinguishes between three different types of monads depending on the different kinds of perception they are capable of. There are monads such as non-human animals that are capable of conscious perceptions; there are monads such as human beings who are capable of self-conscious perceptions; and finally, there are monads such as mere entelechies that have no memories and are only capable of non-conscious perceptions. With this general distinction in mind, in his Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason (1714), Leibniz writes: “It is good to distinguish between a perception, which is the internal state of the monad representing external things, and apperception, which is consciousness, or the reflective knowledge of the internal state, something not given to all souls, nor at all times to a given soul” (Leibniz 1989, 208). As Franklin Perkins observes, “apperception is one of Leibniz’s key terms, referring to perceptions that are consciously recognized” (Perkins 2007, 110). Leibniz employs the concept of apperception as a mode of self-consciousness (hence the identification of apperception with consciousness in the passage quoted above) and contends that there are perceptions that we do not apperceive (“there are a thousand indications that allow us to judge that at every moment there is an infinity of perceptions in us, but without apperception” [Leibniz 1989, 295]). It should therefore be understandable why, in contrast to Descartes, Leibniz refuses to identify the concept of perception with that of thought. According to Leibniz, all monads have perceptions, yet not all monads are conscious of having perceptions. Kant borrows the concept of apperception from Leibniz, modifies it, and develops it further when he clarifies the principle of the necessary unity of apperception in the following way: “It must be the case that each of my representations is such that I can attribute it to my self, a subject which is the same for all of my self-attributions, which is distinct from its representations, and which can be conscious of its representations” (Kant 1998, A116, B131–2, B134–5). This capacity to attribute representations to the self is exactly what Kant, following Leibniz, identifies as the power of apperception, which he further conceives of as the condition of possibility of objective unity. Thus the pure power of apperception turns out to be “the thoroughgoing identity of the self in all possible representations” (ibid. B131–2). 189 Saulius Geniusas consciousness, Husserl considers self-apperception to be one mode of apperception alongside the apperception of the world (Weltapperzeption) and apperception of entities in the world (Apperzeptionen von weltlich Seiendem). How are we to understand such an unprecedented broadening of the concept’s meaning? As soon as one recognizes that perception is fundamentally and irreducibly a mode of intentionality, it no longer suffices, as in Kant, to clarify the unity of apperception as the transcendental unity of self-apperception. If perception is a mode of intentional consciousness, then besides selfapperception, there must also be an apperception of things in the world, and even apperception of the world itself. In Husserl’s phenomenology, these three forms of apperception (self-apperception, world-apperception, and thingapperception) prove to be inseparable moments of one and the same apperceptive structure of experience. Yet it is crucial to stress that the concept does not merely undergo an unprecedented broadening in Husserl’s phenomenology, for here we also witness a transformation of meaning that affects each structural element of apperception. This means, among other things, that the concept of self-apperception also changes its meaning in Husserl’s phenomenology. I can apperceive myself as a European, a Lithuanian, or a resident of Hong Kong, as a member of the academic community, a philosopher, a phenomenologist, etc. These different forms of self-apperception already entail a peculiar mode of world-apperception. Thus the continents, countries, and cities we live in can form their own distinctive worlds; likewise, we can speak of the world of philosophy, or even the world of phenomenology. Moreover, let us not overlook that these specific modes of self-apperception and world-apperception also co-determine the meaning of appearing objectivities. An old book from Husserl’s private library that is filled with his private notes accordingly means something different to someone who inhabits the world of phenomenology and to someone who is part of the world of trade, just as an ancient building carries a different meaning depending on whether one inhabits the world of architecture, archaeology, or engineering. This is something we all know: we can be worlds apart, or we can also inhabit one and the same world (or both, although not in the same sense of the term). Yet is it not true that the different worlds of which we speak here are worlds only by equivocation and that in truth they all belong to one and the same world? Clearly, the answer will depend on how one understands the concept of the world. Following Husserl, let us draw a distinction between 190 Husserl’s Concepts of Apperzeption and Weltapperzeption cultural worlds, conceived as specific surrounding worlds (Umwelten) and as products of intersubjective and intergenerational constitution, and the world taken in its all-encompassing generality, which in phenomenology is sometimes described as the horizon of all horizons. We have already seen that cultural worlds are apperceptively formed unities of sense that are intentionally bound with specific forms of self-apperception. According to Husserl, besides the cultural worlds, the all-encompassing world is also an apperceptively formed world that is intentionally bound with a peculiar mode of selfapperception, viz., mundane self-apperception. For the ego to apperceive itself as a mundane ego means nothing other than to apperceive itself as a member of the all-encompassing world. Moreover, as soon as the ego apperceives itself as a mundane ego, from that moment on, everything that affects this ego is immediately apperceived as a mundane entity that belongs to the allencompassing world. At this point we have all that is needed to distinguish Husserl’s concept of apperception from how this concept was understood by his predecessors. The phenomenological concept of apperception refers to the essential structure of intentional experience, whose three essential moments are those of selfapperception, world-apperception, and thing-apperception. 4 In this regard, there are no essential differences between the specific surrounding worlds and the all-encompassing world. 4 As an example, take any simple act of perception. Here is this cup of coffee that sits on the table in front of you. What you perceive directly in original experience is nothing more than one aspect of the object. What you see, however, is not just an adumbration (Abschattung) of the thing, but the thing itself. This means that strictly speaking, you do not perceive the thing (insofar as the concept of perception is used interchangeably with that of original presentation), but apperceive it. Moreover, this thing in front of you is not isolated from all the other things in the surroundings. The cup of coffee is on the table, which is itself in the room, which is itself in the building, etc. Insofar as you apprehend the object as belonging to its surroundings (and you must apprehend it this way!), you apperceive it as belonging to the actual world. Furthermore, to apprehend the object as a thing in the world, you must also apperceive yourself as a mundane ego. And in addition, you also must be conscious of each and every moment of experience as belonging to the one stream of your own experience. In short, the appresentation of any object goes hand in hand with self-apperception. We thereby see how the three figures of apperception are bound to each other with an intentional knot. 191 Saulius Geniusas 2. Types and Structures of Apperceptive Consciousness Let us proceed to a more precise determination of apperceptive consciousness. In Husserl’s phenomenology, the concept of apperception functions as an umbrella term that covers a large variety of non-intuitive modes of consciousness that do not conflict with, but are synthetically unified with intuitive consciousness. Experience is much broader than purely intuitive consciousness. I see the tree in front of me, or at least I think that I see it. Yet a closer look requires me to admit that what I see is only an adumbration, which I interpret as an aspect of the tree. We always mean more than we see. This irreducible excess of meaning brings to light the synthetic unity that binds intuitive with non-intuitive modes of consciousness. Insofar as consciousness is condensed to the level of original intuition and is incapable of such syntheses, it is also incapable either of perceiving mundane things or of experiencing the world itself. Thus the apperception of things is entirely dependent upon our capacity to synthesize intuitive with non-intuitive modes of consciousness. It is only insofar as consciousness knows how to synthesize the original content given to intuitive consciousness with the sedimented content that derives from non-intuitive consciousness that we can be conscious of things and the world, and not just of the original content of our own experiences (Erlebnisse). Ever since the 1890s, Husserl was strongly committed to the view that—with the British empiricists in mind—William James had formulated especially forcefully: “no one has ever had a simple sensation by itself” (James 1950, 224). Following in James’s footsteps, Husserl repeatedly maintains that experience (Erfahrung) is not reducible to the passive intake of sensory data.5 We always mean more than we see, hear, taste, touch, or smell. This surplus of sense is irreducible, and therefore it is fully legitimate to qualify experience (Erfahrung) as a synthetic unity of perceptions and apperceptions.6 Consider what is going on right now as you are reading this 5 “Das Bewusstsein ist nicht ein white paper, ein dunkler Raum, in den von außen Bilder von weltlichen Objekten und so ein Weltbild hineingewirkt ist, sondern es ist ein lebendiges Werden, und dabei nicht bloß ein passives, sondern zugleich in einem ständigen engeren Umkreis eine ständig leistende Aktivität, die in unterster fundierender Stufe schon erfahrendes Tun ist” (Husserl 2008, 448). 6 Admittedly, in Husserl’s phenomenology in general, and in Hua XXXIX in particular, the concept of perception is ambiguous. Sometimes Husserl conceives of it as a 192 Husserl’s Concepts of Apperzeption and Weltapperzeption text. What you actually see is nothing more than a collection of certain geometrical shapes. Your consciousness, however, is not reducible to the intake of these data. Rather, in these geometrical shapes, you apperceive the letters of the alphabet; not just letters, but words; not just words, but sentences in paragraphs, paragraphs in sections, sections in chapters, with distinct sets of meanings. The same is to be said about phenomena that are intended in other forms of intuitive or non-intuitive consciousness. We can see apperceptions at work in all domains of conscious life: this concept refers to all dimensions of sense that are co-present in direct experience, although they are not reducible to the directly given contents of experience. In his lectures on passive synthesis, Husserl defines the type of apperception he terms “presentification” (Vergegenwärtigung) as “a consciousness of having something that is not present in the original” (Husserl 1966, 234/ 2001, 367, translation modified). Moreover, in Hua XXXIX, he further describes apperception as an as if mode of consciousness (see especially Husserl 2008, Text Nr. 44). He contends that apperception is the constant function due to which what has not arisen from one’s own original experience is apprehended as if it has so originated. Husserl is well aware of the ambiguity this turn of phrase is bound to provoke; with this in mind he writes: “but the as-if is still not that of sheer phantasy” (ibid. 504). While in the case of phantasy-consciousness, one experiences a conflict between actuality and non-actuality (and thus one knows that the imagined unicorn has no place in one’s actual world), in the case of the apperception of mundane objects, no such conflict is to be found. This allows us to claim that a crucial requirement that underlies the different formations of apperceptive consciousness is that these formations stand in harmony with what is given in direct intuitive experience, for only in this way can the contents of apperceptive consciousness be conceived as if they were directly experienced contents. Experience is a synthetic unity of perceptions and apperceptions, a unity that can take highly diverse forms. Thus experience is always already a synthesis that integrates the content given in intuitive and non-intuitive consciousness. Yet where exactly does the non-intuitive content derive synthesis of direct presentations and appresentations (see ibid. Text Nr. 40). Other times it refers to intuitive acts, or direct presentations, though which the intuitive content of experience comes to self-givenness. In the present context, we are referring to the second meaning of the term. 193 Saulius Geniusas from? Husserl’s detailed reflections suggest that the origins of apperceptive consciousness are of two different kinds. The non-intuitive content can stem from our own past experience,7 or it can derive from consciousness that is not our own—the consciousness of others, which we have appropriated as if it were our own.8 In our present experience, we take over the way we have seen the world in the past, or the way other human beings (and even other non-human animals) see it; in virtue of such modes of sense-transference, we continuously broaden our “world-presentations” and constitute our worlds (cf. ibid. 511). What interests us in the present context are those apperceptions through which things in the world, and the world itself, are constituted. Much like mundane consciousness, phantasy-consciousness is also apperceptive through and through (see Husserl 1980/2005). However, phantasyconsciousness is guided by more flexible rules and is therefore more arbitrary than mundane consciousness. With the examples already mentioned in mind, we can ask: why is it so that when it comes to reading, I apperceive the given geometrical shapes precisely as letters of the alphabet? Likewise, why is it so that when it comes to “that thing” in front of my window, I apperceive it as a tree? Of course, I could apperceive these intuitive contents differently. Yet insofar as mundane experience is concerned, we draw quite clear distinctions between appropriate and inappropriate apperceptions. It is especially important to stress the following two points. First, justified mundane apperceptions are those apperceptions that do not conflict with, but form a harmonious unity with other mundane apperceptions within the stream of experience. And second, justified mundane apperceptions are those apperceptions that can obtain intersubjective verification. To be sure, the harmonious nature of mundane experience can break down both within the stream of experience and in the context of intersubjective experience. 7 “Auf das neu Affizierende in seiner Änderung übertrage ich den aus Aktivität stammenden Seinssinn, als Vorgewissheit, ihn als Identitätswiederholung aktivieren zu können” (ibid. 432). Thus when I am affected by particular contents of experience, I apperceive them from the very beginning as objects that entail a specific objective sense. In this way I constantly live in apperceptive transference of sense. 8 “Aber Wissensbeläge können auch durch ‘Tradition’ entspringen, durch Übernahme eines Urteils und durch Übertragung auf das Erfahrene” (ibid. 424f.). Thus once I learn that the dark spots on the moon are mountains, from that moment on I see these spots as mountains. My experience thereby absorbs and reproduces a nonintuitive content that was never intuitive. 194 Husserl’s Concepts of Apperzeption and Weltapperzeption Such conflicts, however, need to be overcome, and the harmonious nature of experience needs to be reestablished if we are to identify apperceptions as formative of world-experience. One of the fundamental goals of Husserl’s analysis of apperceptions is to clarify how specific types of mundane apperceptions are formed and why they are deemed appropriate in specific circumstances. According to Husserl, it is we ourselves who form all the mundane apperceptions that continue to guide us in the course of our subsequent mundane experience. This means that the formation of these apperceptions is irreducibly subjective, although by no means arbitrary. It thereby becomes clear that the concept of apperception denotes the fundamental law of growing and continuously expanding experiential formations. All the experiences we have undergone in the past, as well as all our current and future experiences, do not merely entail a specific experiential content that comes and goes in the stream of consciousness. While all experiences stream in, there is a sense in which they do not stream away. We retain them as our own habitual possessions. All our experiences shape specific types of apperceptive consciousness that continue to guide us in our subsequent experience. Apperceptions admit of highly diverse levels of generality. On the one hand, any object of experience whatsoever, insofar as it is not reducible to the experiential content of intuitive consciousness, is always already apperceptively formed. To refer to one of Husserl’s own examples, once I see a gorilla for the first time, from that moment on every other gorilla is already a gorilla—a being that is from the start apperceived as that specific nonhuman animal. Each time I see a gorilla, the sight of the animal reactivates a pregiven apperceptive type of experience, quite likely enlarging this type, determining it more closely, and bringing to light its new characteristic features (see Husserl 2008, 448). Here we have a very low level of generality, one that concerns only one kind of object of experience. On the other hand, at the other end of the spectrum, the most general types of experience are also formed apperceptively. Thus in Appendix XXXIV to Hua XXXIX, Husserl draws a distinction between the most general types through which things in the world obtain their most general determinacy. Husserl speaks of lifeless things (one can think of natural rock formations, sand on the beach, clouds in the sky, etc.); of animals (both human and non-human); of cultural objects (various things designed to serve our practical purposes, various tools, works of art, linguistic signs, etc.); and of subjects-objects conceived as carriers of cultural meanings (human beings conceived as members of differ- 195 Saulius Geniusas ent associations and communities, as representatives of different professions, as teachers or students, citizens, etc.). Once these general apperceptive types are constituted, they continue to shape the look of things in the course of our subsequent experience. Consider what happens when you find yourself in distant lands and are surrounded by unfamiliar things. Even under such circumstances, you continue to subsume the content of direct presentations under these general apperceptive types of experience. You still encounter either lifeless things, or animals, or cultural objects, or subjectsobjects, no matter how indeterminate the intentional correlates of your experience might be. With regard to the temporal modalities of experience, Husserl draws a distinction between analogizing and indicative apperception. Analogizing apperception enables us to apprehend presently given phenomena through analogy with the past. The intuitive core of presently given experience brings back the memory of what we have experienced in the past, and this memory motivates us to transfer the sense from the past to the present.9 Our capacity to name things, viz., to schematize them in accordance with pregiven types of experience, is an accomplishment of analogizing apperception. And not only that: our capacity to recognize any mundane object whatsoever for what it is, is already an accomplishment of analogizing apperception. Through analogizing apperception, then, we apprehend presently given phenomena. In contrast, indicative apperception can also be retrospective (rückgreifende Apperzeption) and anticipatory (vorgreifende Apperzeption). A certain intuitive content that is given in the present indicates a set of events that have either taken place in the past or will take place in the future. Guided by retrospective apperception, we apprehend the ancient ruins as indicative of the glory of past historical life; guided by anticipatory apperception, we apperceive the clouds in the sky as indicative of the approaching storm. 9 One cannot ignore David Hume’s influence on Husserl in these analyses. According to Husserl, analogizing apperceptions function as a transference of existential validity (Seinsgeltung) from a remembered A to a similar perceived B. This transference is a matter of association. On this basis, Husserl further maintains that worldexperience is a universal synthesis of association: “Durch die strömende Welterfahrung geht hindurch eine ständige Synthesis der Assoziation” (see ibid. 461). For Husserl’s own more elaborate conception of association, see Husserl 1966, 117– 191/2001, 162–242). 196 Husserl’s Concepts of Apperzeption and Weltapperzeption We thereby see that in Husserl’s phenomenology, the concept of apperception covers a large variety of syntheses that bring intuitive and nonintuitive consciousness into unison. To specify this variety more schematically, let us single out four fundamental types of apperception. Type 1 concerns the fundamental structure through which any particular object of experience is given. When the front side of the object is given to direct perception, its back side is not perceived, but apperceived, and it is precisely because it is apperceived that we see things and not just their adumbrations. Husserl refers to this form of apperception as original apperception, further describing it as “perceptively-ad-perceiving perception.” 10 With type 2, things can be given to us in the present as clues that enable us to apprehend other things. When a nature photographer sees the footsteps of a wild animal, he directly perceives the footsteps and indirectly apperceives the animal; he can already “see” the animal in the footsteps, although only indirectly. Here we face an instance of what we have called above indicative apperception. Not only other simultaneously existent things, but also earlier events and causal processes can be apprehended through indicative apperception. To see a cause as a cause is already to apperceive its effect; likewise, to see an effect as an effect is to apperceive its cause. In type 3, cultural phenomena are also experienced apperceptively: what we directly perceive are material things, yet we also immediately apprehend them with a number of cultural properties. Finally, type 4—empathy, conceived as the basis of intersubjective experience—forms yet another type of apperceptive consciousness: while we directly perceive the Other’s body (Körper), we indirectly apperceive the Other as an alter ego. 3. World-Apperception So far, we have spoken exclusively of apperceptions of things, and especially those things that we find in the horizon of mundane experience. Husserl, however, draws a sharp distinction between world-apperception and apperceptions of mundane beings. He claims that despite similarities, these two notions are significantly different. Thus in Appendix XXXVI to Hua XXXIX, he writes: “the world is no real being; the notions of whole and part, property 10 “Ursprünglichste Apperzeption ist perzipierend-ad-perzipierende Wahrnehmung” (Husserl 2008, 431). 197 Saulius Geniusas and relation, etc., fundamentally change their meaning” (ibid. 434). How, then, is the world apperceived? We saw that apperceptions are non-original modes of consciousness through which what has not arisen in one’s original experience is apprehended as if it has so originated; we also saw that apperceptions admit of diverse levels of generality. Yet what is the most general form of apperceptive consciousness? Husserl’s analysis of world-apperception is largely motivated by this very question. Husserl invites us to conceive of the world-horizon as the intentional correlate of the most general apperceptive consciousness, a consciousness that is not focused on any particular thing, but is always already concerned with all mundane things, both actual and possible, taken in their entirety. We can qualify such a consciousness of the world as the apperception of all apperceptions, and correlatively, we can qualify the world given to such apperceptive consciousness as the horizon of all horizons. Husserl conceptualizes such a correlate of the total consciousness as the horizon of ever-expanding familiarity that itself unfolds within the even broader horizon of unfamiliarity (see ibid. 436).11 Despite the important differences between world-apperception and the apperception of things in the world, the structure of world-apperception is analogous to that of any other apperception in some significant ways. According to Husserl, some intuitive content must be given if it is to be apprehended as a moment of apperceptive consciousness, which intends the content in question as part of the actual world. World-apperception is a unique form of apperception in that it not only apprehends a certain content of experience as an adumbration of this or that entity, but further apprehends this content as a moment of world-consciousness. How, then, does the apperception of mundane things around us relate to worldapperception? In light of the foregoing remarks, we can say the following: each moment of mundane experience is always already absorbed within the total consciousness—conceived as the total apperception—in which the world itself “appears,” and appearing in ever-changing moments, it is always one and the same world. 11 As Husserl puts the matter in Appendix XLI to Hua XXXIX, our life of consciousness is in each and every instant a life of experience, and all our particular experiences at any moment are components of a universal experience, viz., world experience. Thus in each instant of our waking life, every experienced content is a component of a total apperception through which the world itself appears. 198 Husserl’s Concepts of Apperzeption and Weltapperzeption The unity of the world-horizon that is intended through worldapperception can be conceptualized at two fundamentally different levels— namely, at the merely formal level, conceived as a rudimentary level of world-experience, and at a genetically more advanced level, which already entails the ego’s habitualities and the concrete style of experience that forms one’s own more elaborate world-presentation. At the first level, mundane experience unfolds within the horizon of a mute world (stumme Welt); at the second level, it is given within the framework of an articulate world (ausgesprochene Welt).12 As soon as I apprehend objects around me as belonging to the actual world, I stamp them with the seal of existence. This means that every mundane perception already entails a sense of being that it projects upon its intentional correlates. Insofar as mundane perception grasps this sense of being only formally, without attending to any of the object’s distinct characteristics, it can be characterized as mute perception (das stumme Wahrnehmen)—it intends being, yet does not explicate it. Such perception is nothing more than a simple original turning toward worldly entities: it already apperceives these entities as worldly, yet before these entities obtain a determinate sense. As soon as perception becomes a matter of an interpretive activity (what Husserl calls “auslegendes Tun”), that is, as soon as it transitions from the level of grasping entities inexplicitly to their explication, it goes beyond the level of mute experience. This genetic transition gives rise to the augmentation of world-experience, which Husserl conceptualizes as a genetic transition from the mute world to the articulate world. The concept of a mute world is a limit concept. Husserl himself admits that we have never experienced a fully mute world (cf. ibid. 447). We live in a world in which everything is always already typically apperceived. The very fact that we always already apprehend mundane objects as belonging to apperceptively formed types of experience allows us to qualify the world as a horizon of familiarity. Yet we should not overlook that we ourselves form the apperceptions through which the horizons of familiarity originate. Nor should we overlook that the process of horizon-formation has never come to an end—can, in fact, never come to an end—which means that the horizon of familiarity itself unfolds within the larger horizon of unfamiliarity. The inseparable unity that binds the horizon of familiarity with the horizon of unfamiliarity is exactly what is uniquely characteristic of the world con12 See in this regard ibid. Appendix XXXVII. 199 Saulius Geniusas ceived as the horizon of all horizons. In light of this, it becomes understandable why Husserl would qualify the style of world-experience as a constant genesis in which familiarity is constituted (cf. ibid. 448). The world is always already there, always already familiar, yet it is also always already in flux, always changing and obtaining new determinations. Husserl qualifies world-experience as a universal synthesis of association (ibid. 461).13 This means that a universal coherence runs throughout the experience of all actual and possible realities. To be sure, conflicts can and do emerge. Even more: conflicts are required, for only through them can the world-horizon obtain new characteristic features. These conflicts bring into question the previously established unities of sense that characterize the totality of mundane experience. Moreover, these conflicts give rise to a further demand to reestablish the lost unity of sense and thereby to reconstitute the universal coherence characteristic of world-experience. At this point, we can ask: what sense are we to make of Husserl’s paradoxical claim that the lifeworld is both pregiven and apperceived? First, it means that the lifeworld, conceived as the world of experience, is a peculiar configuration of sense to be conceived as the correlate of a specific consciousness that Husserl identifies as world-consciousness. This consciousness intends a horizon of sense that both grounds and embraces all mundane objectivities. As a horizon of sense that is intended in a specific type of consciousness, the world is both a structure and a formation of experience. It is not something that is simply there, as though it could somehow precede all possible meaning-formations. Rather, the pregiven world is itself something that is formed apperceptively, and as such, it is always something that is there for new possible activities at a higher level of sense-formation, pregiven for ever-new possible apperceptions. We thereby come to the realization that there is no gap that separates the pregiven world from the apperceived world. Rather, the world, as it is pregiven, is always already apperceived, and as such it is always already pregiven for further apperceptions, which in their own turn constitute new forms of the world’s pregivenness. 13 “Durch die strömende Welterfahrung geht hindurch eine ständige Synthesis der Assoziation” (ibid. 461). 200 Husserl’s Concepts of Apperzeption and Weltapperzeption 4. Concluding Observations Husserl’s account of apperception lands us in a paradox. On the one hand, Husserl argues that all perceptions are always already enwrapped within the structures of apperceptive consciousness. On the other hand, he also argues that apperceptions themselves derive from previous perceptions. We appear to be caught in a vicious circle. With the aim of escaping it, Husserl asks: how is the original acquisition of the world possible? (cf. ibid. 438). Husserl’s resolution of this paradox largely rests on the distinction between two different concepts of affection. In the course of our daily lives, anything that affects us is immediately absorbed within the horizon of apperception. When something salient affects me, I immediately recognize it for what it is and apperceive it as this or that object belonging to the worldhorizon. This is, however, not the only sense in which affections can be given in subjective life. There are also those affections that are experienced in the absence of apperceptive horizons of sense. Husserl calls such affections primary affections (Uraffektionen). When he employs this concept, he is thinking primarily of earliest childhood (“die erste Kindheit”), of the ego of constitutive beginnings, and of the beginning of the “streaming temporalization” (“strömende Zeitigung”), although not only that. He also explicitly addresses the possible role of such “non-practical” affections in mature life (see ibid. 483f.). Primary affections refer to the givenness of saliences at the rudimentary levels of experience, those levels at which something is lived through, although not yet absorbed within any kind of apperceptive structures. Primary affections are those affections that are lived through in the absence of any apperceptions (small wonder that for the most part, they remain nameless).14 At the basic level of experience, which genetically precedes the constitution of apperceptive horizons of sense, these saliences are lived through only hyletically. Yet consciousness is not just a temporal stream, but is also conscious of its own temporalization. Due to its temporal and prereflectively self-conscious nature, consciousness transforms these hyletically given prominences into appearances. Husserl conceptualizes this transformation as the passage (Durchgang) that originates with being affected by 14 “Den Namen bereit haben (selbst wenn er uns entfallen ist, wir ‘nicht auf das Wort kommen’) ist nur die Kehrseite für eine typische Apperzeption, die ja im Menschenleben alsbald ihre Namen bekommt bzw. schon hat” (ibid. 483). 201 Saulius Geniusas hyletic data and leads to their apprehension as appearances (ibid. 468). We can conceive of these original appearances as already perceptually given phenomena that are not, at least at the beginning, absorbed within any kind of apperceptive framework. It is precisely here, then, that we encounter Husserl’s resolution of the paradox mentioned above. Primary affections and their capacity to transform themselves into primary perceptions are the subjective origins of all apperceptions, including world-apperception. The genetic process we are describing here clarifies the emergence of apperceptive consciousness out of the more basic levels of subjective life.15 How convincing is this phenomenological reconstruction of the origins of world-constitution? Ultimately, it relies upon the pregivenness of what Husserl sometimes calls Urmaterialen (i.e., the pregivenness of original affections). Still, some questions continue to linger: is one justified to accept the pregivenness of these “original materials” at face value? Can we not say 15 According to Husserl, primary affections are always already coupled with basic instincts that motivate the subject of experience to single out these and not other saliences in the course of experience. For this reason, Husserl contends that the ego that lies at the constitutive beginnings is not an empty ego-pole, but an ego that is already driven by various instincts. For the same reason, Husserl qualifies primary affections as instinctive affections (see, e.g., ibid. 474) and further claims that the “sensuousness of sensations” (Empfindungssinnlichkeit) is at the same time the sensuousness of instincts (Instinktsinnlichkeit) and thus is interwoven with feeling-intentionality (Gefühlsintentionalität) (ibid. 476). The instincts of which we are speaking here provide the ego with the motivation to turn to specific saliences and to transform them into the appearances of apperceptively intended objectivities. Let us take as an example the case of the nourishment instinct. What is constituted in the process of temporalization is not just an objective thing (ein Dingliches) that satisfies the instinctive need, but a means of nourishment, which can take on various appearances and which can continue to satisfy the nourishment instinct. The same is to be said about all other instincts, such as fear, anger, shyness, curiosity, affection, sexual love, jealousy, envy, rivalry, sociability, sympathy, modesty, secretiveness, acquisitiveness, etc. All these and other instincts motivate us to single out specific saliences and to transform them in the course of experience into apperceptively given phenomena. Husserl’s phenomenological reconstruction of the birth of apperceptions returns us to the primary instincts and the primary affections that they provoke. With this in mind, he can claim that it is not by accident that the world comes to be constituted with all the types of apperceptively given phenomena that we find in it. The tendency toward the world is already sketched out in in the instinctual dimensions of subjective life (cf. ibid. 476). 202 Husserl’s Concepts of Apperzeption and Weltapperzeption about their pregivenness what Husserl himself says about the pregivenness of the world, viz., that it is an index, which in its own turn calls for further phenomenological investigations and clarifications? Here we are reminded of Fragment 45 from Heraclitus, which Husserl himself quotes in the Crisis: “You will never find the boundaries of the soul, even if you follow every road; so deep is its ground.” Quoting (or rather, slightly misquoting) this passage with approval, Husserl further writes: “Indeed, every ‘ground’ that is reached points to further grounds, every horizon opened up awakens new horizons […]” (Husserl 1954, 173/1970, 170). These words are highly appropriate for Husserl’s own account of the constitutive genesis of worldapperception. No matter how philosophically intriguing Husserl’s account of primary affections might be, it cannot be conceived as the final word that closes off all further inquiries into the origins of world-apperception. It remains to be asked: does the ego itself produce the primary affections that it then passively lives through? If it does, then how? And if it doesn’t, then where do they come from? The analysis of this important question will have to wait for another occasion: “[…] all this is far from the beginner” (ibid. 173/ 170).16 References Husserl, E. (1954): Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, ed. W. Biemel [Hua VI]. - (1966): Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926, ed. M. Fleischer [Hua XI]. - (1970): The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. D. Carr, Evanston 1970. 16 One can further note that Husserl’s account of the constitutive genesis of worldapprehension appears to be built upon the “content / apprehension of content” schema, which Husserl had first introduced in the Logical Investigations. It is well known that on multiple occasions, Husserl himself has brought into question the phenomenological legitimacy of this schema. His critique suggests that what we usually take to be the content of experience is already a constitutive accomplishment. What appears to be missing in the present context is a genetic account of the constitution of instinctive affections. 203 Saulius Geniusas - (1976): Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. K. Schuhmann [Hua III,1]. - (1980): Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung. Zur Phänomenologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1898–1925), ed. E. Marbach [Hua XXIII]. - (2001): Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic, trans. A. J. Steinbock (Collected Works, vol. 9), Dordrecht. - (2002): Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson, London. - (2005): Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925), trans. J. B. Brough (Collected Works, vol. 11), Dordrecht. - (2008): Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937), ed. R. Sowa [Hua XXXIX]. Kant, I. (1998): Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. P. Guyer and A. W. Wood, Cambridge. Leibniz, G. W. (1989): Philosophical Essays, trans. and ed. R. Ariew and D. Garber, Indianapolis. James, W. (1950): Principles of Psychology, vol. 1, New York. Perkins, F. (2007): Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed, New York. 204