10.13135/2036-542X/7982
The paper deals with questions related to the method of Husserl’s phenomenology. It is argued that Husserl’s analysis of different kinds of intuitional consciousness (anschauendes Bewusstsein) should be regarded as functional towardsthe elaboration of the method of phenomenology as a science of essences. The paper especially focuses on Husserl’s analyses of phantasy – and picture –&nbsp;consciousness and highlights the specific relevance of such analyses for the phenomenological method.
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2036-542X
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Alessio Rotundo
Trópos
Phantasy, Picture–Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Method
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos
8
Saggi
2015-12-01
2023-07-31
2015-12-01
2023-07-31
135-154
1
Alessio Rotundo
2015/12/01
10.13135/2036-542X/7982
135
Duquesne University
2036-542X
2
154
Phantasy, Picture–Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Method
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos/article/download/7982/6708
8
                                                      trópos • anno VIII • numero 2 • 2015 – ISBN 978-88-548-9061-9
                                                      DOI 10.4399/97888548906199 – pag. 135-154 (dicembre 2015)




                               Phantasy, Picture–Consciousness,
                             and the Phenomenological Method
                                                                             A R*



                                             So kann man denn wirklich, wenn man paradoxe
                                             Reden liebt, sagen und, wenn man den vieldeuti-
                                             gen Sinn wohl versteht, in strikter Wahrheit sagen,
                                             daß die „Fiktion“ das Lebenselement der Phänome-
                                             nologie, wie aller eidetischen Wissenschaft, ausmacht,
                                             daß Fiktion die Quelle ist, aus der die Erkenntnis
                                             der „ewigen Wahrheiten“ ihre Nahrung zieht.

                                             E. H, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und
                                             phänomenologischen Philosophie, erstes Buch, § 




   : The paper deals with questions related to the method of Husserl’s phe-
      nomenology. It is argued that Husserl’s analysis of different kinds of intuitional
      consciousness (anschauendes Bewusstsein) should be regarded as functional to-
      wards the elaboration of the method of phenomenology as a science of essences.
      The paper especially focuses on Husserl’s analyses of phantasy — and picture
      — consciousness and highlights the specific relevance of such analyses for the
      phenomenological method.

   : Phenomenological method, phantasy, Bildbewusstsein, neutrality modifi-
      cation, eidetic science.




Introduction

In this essay, I undertake an examination of Husserl’s concept of neutrality
modification, with an emphasis on the implications of this modification for
the method of phenomenology. In Ideas I, the only place in which the con-
cept of neutralization finds its systematic treatment, Husserl characterizes
the neutrality modification by a via negativa against possible equivocations
of this modification. In doing so, Husserl is following a specific dialecti-
cal procedure. According to this procedure, the peculiar characteristic of
   ∗
       Alessio Rotundo, Duquesne University (rotundoa@duq.edu).


                                                                                                              
      Alessio Rotundo


each kind of intuitional consciousness, such as perception, memory, etc.,
is unveiled only in contrast with parallel kinds. Therefore, in Husserl’s
dialectical strategy, the contrastive or negative way of approaching a new kind
of consciousness aims at its positive characterization. As Husserl writes in
his lectures of –’ on Phantasy and Picture–Consciousness,

      every motivation, every psychic total situation that stimulates neutrality, also gives
      to the neutrality a characteristic. The suppression of a positionality, understood
      as abstention, is a characteristic, just as the playfulness of ‘free’ phantasy is. On
      the other hand, it is precisely the neutrality that must be marked out that which is
      fundamentally and essentially common to all the forms and connects them.

   As regards neutrality modification, the possible equivocations taken into
account by Husserl in Ideas I are, respectively, the epoché (§ ), suppos-
ing/assuming and thinking (§ ), phantasy (§ ). It is significant to note
that all these modifications play a role in the elaboration of Husserl’s phe-
nomenological method. In this essay, I therefore claim that the analysis of
neutrality modification in Husserl’s system can be read and understood in
the framework of Husserl’s self–critical elaboration of the method of phe-
nomenology as eidetic science of pure experiences. In my essay, I especially
focus on Husserl’s contrastive analysis of neutrality modification in connec-
tion with phantasy. It is in this context that Husserl also discusses another
form of neutrality consciousness, namely that of picture–consciousness.
Through a concrete examination of Husserl’s analysis of these two forms of
neutrality consciousness, phantasy and picture–consciousness, my aim is
to show how their characteristic moments, taken together, delineate the
concrete articulation of the phenomenological method.
   The essay is articulated in different sections. In the first section I in-
troduce the doctrine of the neutrality modification that Husserl lays out
in Ideas I. Then I will briefly characterize the two determinate forms of
neutrality modification of phantasy and picture–consciousness. Finally, I
will work out their methodological import for Husserl’s phenomenological
project.




     . Cf. B, K and M : . The authors quote a passage from Husserl’s Ms. A
VI  I, b [–’] as evidence of Husserl’s own proceeding in the analysis of different kinds of
consciousness.
     . Husserliana XXIII,  (). Forthwith, all textual references to the volumes of the Husserliana
(abbreviated as Hua) will indicate the number of the volume, the number of the page of the German
edition, followed by the number of the page of the English translation in brackets.
                     Phantasy, Picture–Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Method                


. The doctrine of neutrality modification

In Ideas I, the “neutrality modification” is introduced by Husserl in terms
of a most important (höchst wichtige) modification, “which occupies a com-
pletely isolated place” with regard to the modifications occurring within
the sphere of belief. Husserl introduces the term “belief ” (Glaube), or its
synonym “doxa,” in Section . With this terminology, Husserl aims at
providing a more complete characterization of the noetic–noematic par-
allelism, which his descriptions established as the basic structure of any
lived experience whatsoever. Husserl describes consciousness as “living;”
consciousness is for him essentially “activity.” The complex structures of
consciousness’ life are summarized by the expression “intentionality.” Con-
sciousness always intends something, it is always engaged with something,
it is essentially interested, that is, committed to, involved in something with
something (e.g., in a present perception with the perceived object). It is with
regard to this fundamental state of affairs of consciousness that Husserl falls
back upon the expression “belief.” With this expression, Husserl attempts
to describe consciousness’ engagement with its object. In its living relation
to its object, consciousness believes in it, the object “exists” for it, the object
is experienced by it as “certain” or “actually” existing, “possibly” existing,
“probably,” “doubtfully” or “questionably” existing, even as “non–”existing.
These so–called doxic modalities (Glaubensmodalitäten), correlated to what
Husserl designates with the expression “being–modalities” (Seinssmodal-
itäten), are interpreted as modifications of a primary state of belief that
posits its object as being actually there in certainty.
     Husserl’s term “positing” (Setzung), understood in the broader sense
of any modality of belief whatsoever, describes the original character of
consciousness which is discoverable in reflection. With the introduction
of the neutrality modification of consciousness, Husserl is able to further
articulate the intentional character of lived experience as it can be exhibited

     . Hua III/,  ().
     . Cf., for instance, the following statement from § : “Thus the eidetic law, confirmed in every
case, states that there can be no noetic moment without a noematic moment specifically belonging to it.”
     . For a more precise determination of the “life” of consciousness, see in particular Section
 and its description of the characteristic of subjectiveness of experience. In this section, Husserl
is specifically addressing the attentional aspect belonging to every experience. Cf. Hua III/, 
(–).
     . Cf. Ideas I, § .
     . For this characterization of the modalities of belief and their correlated being–modalities, see
§ .
     . For Husserl’s definition of “positing,” cf. Ideas I, § . For the discovery, by means of
reflection, of the primordial character of consciousness as positing, cf. Ideas I, § : “At the basis of
reflection there is an unreflected and unmodified lived experience.”
       Alessio Rotundo


in the analysis of consciousness. In Section , Husserl fixes the distinction
between actual and potential positing under the general title of positing
consciousness. As Husserl remarks, this distinction is certainly related to
the distinction between the modes of attention and inattention discussed
in previous sections. Yet the introduction of the concept of neutrality
adds some complications that do not allow for a perfect matching between
actual and potential positing with the attentional modes. The reason is
that with neutrality the very concept of potentiality is reframed. In positing
consciousness, it is possible to observe a continuous movement from the
attention of actual positings, or acts, into the inattention of potential acts
constituting the halo of any explicit cogito. For example, looking at the
table in front of me, I do not actually perceive the chair and the rest of the
furniture behind my back, and yet the chair and the furniture are always
ready to be perceived if I were to turn my regard towards them. They make
up the background that I do not actually perceive, but that it is also given
(or posited) with the perception of the table that I am looking at right now.
    Neutralized consciousness, as we shall shortly see, is characterized by
the fact that from the outset it does not posit anything in actuality, i.e., that it
is completely indifferent towards the existence or non–existence of its object.
Thus, in the mode of neutrality, there is in consciousness not a movement
from effected and explicit acts to unaffected and potential ones, and vice
versa, but rather a movement from quasi–positing to quasi–positing, that is, a
movement from what is already a potentiality to another potentiality. In this
respect, however, it is evident that the concept of potentiality (Potentialität)
receives a new connotation. As a result, the task of clarifying the concept
of neutrality modification will have to clarify the notion of potentiality
essential to it.
    The doctrine of neutrality modification finds its first formulation in the
Logical Investigations. There Husserl describes a modification affecting
the class of objectifying acts, like that of perception, and consisting in a
transition from the positing act to its mere presentation (Vorstellung). This
modification is called “qualitative modification” because it affects the quality
of the act within the class to which the act belongs (e.g., a perceiving act
into a mere presentation of the same act) and not the change from one class
of acts into another (e.g., from a perceptual act to an act of sadness, which
belongs to the class of non–objectifying acts in the terminology of the Logical
Investigations).
    If we turn to Ideas I and to the modification represented by the expres-
sion “neutralization,” then Husserl informs us that this modification is one

       . Cf. Ideas I, §§ , , .
      . Hua XIX/, §§ ff. Cf. B, K and M : –.
                      Phantasy, Picture–Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Method   


“related to the sphere of belief,” and that it had to come into view only with
regard to the aspect of consciousness characterized as “doxic.” On the
other hand, however, the neutrality modification presents itself as a “univer-
sal modification of consciousness,” which does not belong to the series of
modifications belonging to the sphere of belief. In fact, Husserl defines this
modification as “a modification which, in a certain way, completely annuls,
completely renders powerless every doxic modality to which it is related.”
Yet in Ideas I Husserl relates all possible acts, such as likings, feelings, will-
ings, to doxic positionalities and ultimately to the primordial doxa. Since
neutrality modification can affect any doxic modality whatsoever, then, at
least in Ideas I, its scope becomes universal and extends to all conscious acts,
even to the non–doxic acts (inclinations, appetites, affections, acts of willing,
that is, those acts that in the Logical Investigations belonged to the class of
non–objectifying acts). As a result, the doctrine of neutrality modification of
Ideas I represents a radical universalization of the doctrine of “qualitative
modification” of the Logical Investigations.
    The “annulment” and “rendering powerless,” which is the effect of the
neutrality modification, however, is not to be understood as a negation.
According to Husserl, negation still falls under a doxic modality of con-
sciousness, the modality that specifically posits something as non–being,
which, however, “is itself again a being.” On the contrary, the characteristic
of neutralization is that it “does not ‘effect’ anything: it is the conscious
counterpart of all producing [Leisten].”
    The first peculiarity of the neutrality modification, therefore, over against
the doxic modifications, is that the something of which the neutralized
consciousness is aware (the object of which consciousness as such is con-
sciousness of ), is not a new object that consciousness takes up as being
actual, or as being possible, or even as non–being. The modification effected
by neutralization “puts out of action” any performance, any “belief ” per-
taining to living consciousness: from now on consciousness is deprived of
all interested commitment to or engagement with its object, or, to put it in
Husserl’s words, it loses all its “seriousness.” Neutralized consciousness en-
gages only in mere (bloß) thinking, it has as its object only mere thoughts.
In figurative language, one might say that neutralization freezes the life

   .   Hua III/,  ().
   .   Ibid.
   .   Ibid.
   .   Cf. Ideas I, § .
   .   Hua III/,  ().
   .   Ibid.
   .   Ibid.
   .   Ibid.
     Alessio Rotundo


of consciousness, its belief and therefore also its doxic “as,” which posits
the being–characteristic of its object. Neutralized consciousness merely
thinks itself into living consciousness, it adverts to the “flesh and blood”
consciousness and its objects, but without taking part to its life: “mere
thinking–of ‘posits’ nothing, it is not a positing consciousness.”
    A second peculiarity of the neutrality modification that Husserl singles
out, and that needs to be highlighted, is that neutralization is not neces-
sarily bound to any “voluntary doing.” This remark will become more
explicit when Husserl will establish the distinction between positionality
and neutrality in terms of a universal distinction running throughout con-
sciousness (Section ), and especially when he will introduce the notion
of “act–arousals” (Section ).
    The peculiarity, and strangeness, of the descriptions related to the neu-
trality modification are motivated, as Husserl himself also admits, by the fact
that he is the first to attempt its thematization. This explains also Husserl’s
circumspection in the determination of the features of neutralization. For
this reason, Husserl sets out to further characterize the latter “by a process
of elimination.” This process consists in the successive exclusion of the
possible equivocations affecting the expression merely thinking of (sich–
bloß–denken), equivocations that could prevent a genuine understanding of
this new and apparently so crucial moment of consciousness. The possible
equivocations taken into account by Husserl are, in order, the epoché (§ ),
supposing/assuming and thinking (§ ), and phantasy (§ ). The equivo-
cal aspect of these further modifications of belief consists in the fact that
neutrality modification plays a role in each of them and yet it is presented
at the same time as an “incomparable peculiarity of consciousness.”


. Phantasy consciousness

In order more concretely to clarify the diverse implications of the neutrality
modification for the method of phenomenology, with special emphasis on
its contrastive analysis in connection to phantasy, let us first survey in broad
outline the modification operated by phantasy, which, following Husserl, is
also a neutrality modification.
    Phantasy is counted by Husserl among those forms of intuitional con-
sciousness that he designates with the term “presentiations” (Vergegenwärti-

  .   Hua III/,  ().
  .   Ibid.
  .   Ibid.
  .   Hua III/,  ().
                     Phantasy, Picture–Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Method             


gungen). As is well known, Husserl contrasts this class of intuitive acts with
“presentations” (Gegenwärtigungen), such as perception. In a presentation,
the object is present to consciousness “in person” (leibhaft), while in a pre-
sentiation (a memory or a phantasy), the object is present to consciousness
as if it were present itself. The peculiarity of all presentiations is that they
are reproductive, that is, they not only give an object as if it were there in
person, but they also implicate (or are consciousness of ) the corresponding
impression and of the different kinds of intentionalities involved in the
originary constitution of the object. Phantasy, for instance, is the reproduc-
tive consciousness of memory which is the reproductive consciousness of
perception. I can phantasy a world in which I fly because I can think myself
into a memory in the first place through which alone I know anything like
a perception of the earth upon which I walk, that I touch with my feet, of
the sky, and of its flying creatures.
    In Section  of Ideas I, Husserl defines more specifically phantasy as “the
neutrality modification of ‘positing’ presentiation, therefore of memory [Erin-
nerung] in the widest conceivable sense.” The term “memory,” as Husserl
himself remarks, is to be understood in the broadest sense of any positing pre-
sentiation whatsoever, i.e., memories proper, expectations, co–presentiations
(apperception of the inner life of other subjects or the co–perception of the
hidden sides of an object given in perception). The positing character of such
presentiations consists in the fact that they always relate somehow to an actual
experience and are thereby lived in some modality of belief or another. Posit-
ing presentiations create a continuity of original lived experience, in which
even deception, doubts, uncertainties bear a connection to and are so mo-
tivated with respect to my actual present. In contrast, phantasy, as it were,
breaks this continuity by putting out of action all belief in the reality of what is
experienced and instead lives through it in the mode of the “as if,” and, as a
result, of that of unreality. Unlike memory, phantasy has the feature of not
positing its object (e.g., myself flying) as “actually” existing, nor as “probably”
existing or “non–”existing. Phantasy, as the neutrality modification of memory,
precisely “wrests” its object from the memorial context in which the latter is
posited as existing in a way or another.

    . Cf. B, K and M : .
   . Hua III/,  ().
    . Cf. B, K and M , p. .
   . Ibid., p. . Cf. Hua XXIII,  (): “Mere or pure phantasy means that no actual positing
or performing act is accomplished, phantasy is ‘pure presentation’ [blosse Vorstellung].” And further,
“Phantasy is the realm of purposelessness, of play.” (Hua XXIII,  []) This aspect of playfulness
pertaining to phantasy shows its commonality with the modification of neutrality and its character of
non–seriousness. Cf. Hua III/,  ().
   . Cf. B : , fn. .
     Alessio Rotundo


. Picture–consciousness

That phantasy is a neutrality modification, and not the neutrality modifica-
tion is shown by the fact that the experience peculiar to picture–consciousness
exhibits a form of neutrality that is not reducible to phantasy consciousness.
The experience of images and pictures as well as aesthetic experience in
general are in fact no longer reproductive, but are rather founded on a
direct perception of something. In Ideas I, Husserl illustrates this case with
reference to the contemplation of Dürer’s etching, Knight, Death, and the
Devil. In the analysis of this instance of aesthetic contemplation, Husserl
distinguishes three relevant levels of experience. The first level consists
in the normal perceiving of the physical object on which the etching is
printed (the sheet or page). The second level of experience is that of the
perception of the figures standing out in the etching (e.g., the outlined
figure of the knight on his horse). Finally, the third level is that of the aes-
thetic regard of the depicted realities themselves (e.g., the knight “in flesh
and blood”). In Husserl’s account, the second level (“the consciousness of
the ‘picture’”) is specifically an example of the neutrality modification of
perception. Picture–object consciousness does not perceive the figures as
mere objects on a page, but as “knight,” “death,” and “devil.” It bypasses
perception towards the depicting picture–object, and thus it neutralizes per-
ception. In this context, aesthetic consciousness proper is a founded modus
of picture–object consciousness. Both the depicturing picture–object (ab-
bildendes Bildobjekt) and the depictured reality (das Abgebildete) are “present
to us neither as existing nor as not existing, nor in any other positional modality
[. . . ] but as quasi–existing in the neutrality modification of being.”
      With respect to the relationship between the first and second level of
experience of a picture, that between the physical thing (the itching) and
the picture–object (the figure of the “knight”), however, there seems to
arise a difficult problem that we shall briefly address.
      In his lectures of –’ on Phantasy and Picture–Consciousness, Husserl
introduced the concept of “overlapping” (Verdeckung). This concept ex-
presses the fact that “in the stream of consciousness nothing is thinkable in

    . “‘Image object,’ which, appearing as present ‘in person,’ can nevertheless also be designated
as ‘fiction,’ though one must no longer speak of re–presentation in this case. Indeed, it is presentation
[Präsentation]. Here, too, the ‘positing,’ the believing in something, is ‘missing.’” (Hua XXIII, 
[]).
    . For the sake of clarity, in the following I quote the relevant passage in its entirety: “The con-
sciousness of the ‘picture’ (the small, grey figures in which, by virtue of founded noeses something
else is ‘depictively presented’ by similarity) which mediates and makes possible the depicturing, is
now an example for the neutrality modification of perception.” (Hua III/,  [])
     . Ibid.
                    Phantasy, Picture–Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Method   


isolation from the rest of the stream.” This is especially significant with
respect to intuitions such as those provided by phantasy, in which a certain
object is grasped in complete isolation from the continuity of positings
in which consciousness lives. Yet, as it has been seen above, even if phan-
tasy breaks the continuity of belief of consciousness, in it I do not actually
lose consciousness of the perceptual world. Phantasy only interrupts the
present intuition of perception, and thereby opens up a merely imagined
perspective reproduced in the presentiation, which, however, is only able
to “cover up” (verdecken, überdecken) our actually present perspective on the
world. The latter, as Husserl says, “does not vanish from my consciousness
when I perform a presentiation.” To say that phantasy covers up the actual-
ity of perception expresses Husserl’s insight according to which the actually
perceptual present and the imagined present in phantasy (or, as Husserl
also calls it, its “nonpresent” [Nichtgegenwart]) cannot be intuited at the same
time. Attention to the one excludes attention to the other. That is, in living
intuition I am either actively involved with or affected by the objects of my
experience or I am engaging in “playful” phantasies with them.
    Let us turn back to the case of picture–consciousness. The sensuous
contents of the physical thing, that Husserl in his lecture course of –’
calls picture–thing (Bildding), are here identical in both the picture–thing
and the appearance of the picture–object. Moreover, as Husserl writes in
Section  of Ideas I, that “two essentially identical perceptions are also iden-
tical with respect to the determination of the surroundings, is of essential
necessity impossible, for they would then be individually one perception.”
Yet, this is clearly the case of picture–consciousness. In the experience of
a picture, we are given the same sensuous contents and have the exact
same perception of an object with respect to its perceptually appearing
surroundings, but two different apprehensions, namely, the apprehension of
a picture–thing and the apprehension of an object in the picture. As in the
case of phantasy, the actual perceptual world, in whose continuous nexus the
physical picture–thing is given, does not disappear in the experience of the
picture–object. However, it cannot be said that picture–consciousness cov-
ers up perceptual consciousness, since they constitute one single experience.
The pictorial apprehension is rather in conflict with the perceptual appre-
hension, in the sense that picture–consciousness wrests from the sensuous

  .   Cf. B, K and M : .
  .   Cf. B, K and M : .
  .   Cited in B, K and M : . Cf. also Hua XXIII,  ().
  .   Cf. B, K and M : .
  .   Cf. B, K and M : .
  .   Hua III/,  ().
     Alessio Rotundo


contents of the picture–thing their character of reality, thereby allowing for
the appearance of the picture–object, to which, therefore, there belongs the
character of unreality.
    As regards the relation between the second and third level involved in
the apprehension of a picture, that between the picture–object (the figure of
the “knight”) and the picture–subject (the knight “in flesh and blood”), the
relationship is that of representation (Darstellung) or depiction (Abbildung).
In the relationship between the representing picture and the represented
or depicted subject the picture–object has the role of appearing foundation
for the picture–subject, which, as such, does not appear, but is presentiated
through a representation of similarity (Ähnlichkeitsrepräsentation). The
pictorial apprehension, as perceptually founded, founds on its part the
apprehension of the picture–subject. The latter, as it were, is again wrested
from the appearing picture–object.


. Phantasy, picture–consciousness and the phenomenological method

As some of the most prominent Husserl scholars have already noted,
Husserl’s interest in the analysis of the different forms of intuitional con-
sciousness and their complicated intertwining had a fundamental role with
respect to the work of clarification of the cognitive achievements of con-
ceptual knowledge, thus of science, and ultimately of philosophy. In the
following, I will highlight in a concrete examination the contributions of
Husserl’s analysis of phantasy and of picture–consciousness to the method
of phenomenology. Since Husserl presents phenomenology as the eidetic
science of pure experiences, i.e., as the science aiming at working out the
laws of essence (Wesensgesetze) pertaining to the field of subjective experi-
encing, the following reflections will contribute to the clarification of the
meaning of intuiting or seeing essences in phenomenology.
    Husserl’s phenomenological project finds in the Logical Investigations
(–’) its groundbreaking beginning. As Husserl himself writes in his
lecture course on Phenomenological Psychology, the Logical Investigations were
the result of an attempt to clarify “the pure idea of logic by a return to
the bestowing of sense or the performance of cognition which occurs in
the nexus of lived experiences of logical thinking.” In particular, Husserl
continues, their task was to bring into one’s grip “the logical lived experi-

  .   Cf. B, K and M : .
  .   Ibid.
  .   Cf. B, K and M : ; Mohanty : .
  .   Hua IX,  ().
                      Phantasy, Picture–Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Method                 


ences which take place in us whenever we think but which we do not see
just then, which we do not have in our noticing view whenever we carry
out thought activity in a natural original manner.” Starting from the issue
of the relationship between ideal objects (e.g., numbers and mathematical
propositions) and the subjective experience in which they appear in their
objective existence, the Logical Investigations begin to examine the “hidden”
inner life of the subject in order to detect the fundamental structures in
play in the experience of ideal objects. Husserl summarizes the question
at stake in his Logical Investigations and eventually of his whole phenomenol-
ogy as follows: “How do the hidden psychic lived experiences look, which
are correlated to the respective idealities and which must occur as quite
determinately appropriate producings, in order that the subject can have
consciousness and evidently knowing consciousness of these idealities as
objects? This designates the proper theme of the Logical Investigations and,
in corresponding amplification, of all phenomenology.”
    In experience ideal objects are given as not dependent on the psycho-
logical states or operations of the thinking subject, yet they can be made
explicit and thought through psychological operations that unveil how it is
that the psychological subject thinks them as such ideal objects. We take, as
it were, a step back from simply being directed towards ideal objects and
being concerned with them in order to open up the possibility of making
that peculiar being–directed–towards and being–concerned–with itself a
theme of research. In this reflection, the very experience of ideal objects
becomes a “fact” from which we, as scientists, want to work out essential
structures which regulate and make that “fact” possible in the first place.
    Let us look at a concrete example. My working with the Pythagorean
Theorem in order to solve a geometrical problem is certainly a new psychi-
cal fact each time I take up the theorem (right now, and again in ten minutes
or tomorrow). Yet, the validity of the Pythagorean Theorem is identical
at any given moment. The point for Husserl is to inquire into those sub-
jective activities that are required in order that each time the Pythagorean
Theorem is experienced in its universal validity. This inquiry led Husserl
to the insight into a possible study of structures pertaining to subjective
experiencing and bearing the character of unconditional necessity and uni-

    . Ibid.
    . This is a study of essential laws and structures that would account for our experience of
ideal objects. This is not to say that ideal objects are the result of subjective structures of experience.
The inquiry into fundamental structures of subjectivity aims at making intelligible the meaningful
experience of objects, and not only of ideal objects, objects that are experienced by a subject in a
determinate way that can be studied. This is an important distinction in order to avoid any unilateral
critique of psychologism and/or idealism towards Husserl’s phenomenology.
    . Hua IX,  ().
     Alessio Rotundo


versality that would account for a realm of equally necessary and universal
truths, that of pure logic and mathematics. The study of ideal objectivities
of logic and mathematics with respect to the subjective lived experiencing
in which they appear as such objectivities represented the starting point
for a more general and more radical study of those structure that are in
play with respect to all possible objectivities as they are experienced by
consciousness, thus also of real objects, e.g., the real objects of the physical
world. As a result, phenomenology emerges as an eidetic science of pure
experiences. Without taking up the difficult problems raised by the project
of a foundation of such a science, problems that have to do with the ultimate
issues of the meaning of science, reason, and truth, it is relevant for our
purposes to address the question of the method of the eidetic science of
phenomenology, since for its elaboration phantasy plays a crucial role.


. Phantasy and ideation

Ideas I opens with a series of clarificatory reflections about the distinction
between the concepts of “matter of fact” (Tatsache) and “essence” (Wesen).
These reflections aim at laying down the first basis, as Husserl writes, “for
our construction of the idea of a pure phenomenology as a science of
essences.” The exhibition of a field of study and of a possible science
arising from it, however, depends first of all on the possibility to exhibit
and delimit the object of such a science. This is why Husserl’s preliminary
reflections in Ideas I deal with questions regarding the concept of “object”
in general and the ways in which it becomes an object of experience and
cognition.
    Beginning with a general consideration about the kind of cognition per-
taining to the “sciences of the world” as grounded in “natural experience,”
Husserl identifies in perception the founding experience that pertains to
such cognition. The specific character of perception lies in the fact that it
presents its objects as really existing and thus as part of that real or actual
world which is to be made into an object of scientific study. Perception is
the presentive intuition (gebende Anschauung) of the “natural” sciences (this
title to be understood in the broader sense of all the sciences of the world,
thus not only of the physical, but also of the psychic and spiritual world).

  .   Hua IX,  ().
  .   Cf. Hua IX, Section  (b).
  .   Cf. M : .
  .   Hua III/,  ().
  .   Hua III/,  ().
                     Phantasy, Picture–Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Method                


    Sciences of the world are thus experiential sciences (Erfahrungswis-
senschaften). Their experience, as Husserl remarks, does not only gives
something in its actual presence, but it presents something real “individu-
ally.” This is also why Husserl calls experiential sciences “sciences of ‘matters
of fact.’” The introduction of the concept of “matter of fact” serves Husserl
as a springboard to the concept of “essence.” In fact, the description of what
is experienced as a matter of fact, e.g., a certain spatiotemporal individual
object (the red chair in the corner of the room), exhibits features that cannot
be apprehended under the title “matter of fact,” but that take up the charac-
ter of essential features. In Husserl words, “when we said that any matter
of fact, ‘in respect of its own essence,’ could be otherwise, we are already
saying that it belongs to the sense of anything contingent to have an essence and
therefore an Eidos which can be apprehended purely.”
    On the basis of this insight, Husserl begins to show the interweaving
between knowledge of matters of fact and knowledge of essences. In this
respect, the first thing to be noted, as it emerges from the passage just
quoted, is that a transition from the intuition of something individual to eidetic
seeing is always possible.
    Secondly, Husserl draws an analogy, or better establishes a radical com-
munity, between the two kinds of seeing and their respective objects. Seeing
of essences, according to Husserl, is a form of intuition, to be sure of a
peculiar and novel sort, but in all respects similar to the perceptual intuition
of an object that I see in front of me; as regards the object of eidetic seeing,
the essence, the latter is an object in all respects, even if a new sort of object if
compared with the object given in perceptual intuition.
    Finally, the interweaving between intuition of something individual, as
in perception, and seeing of essences is shown by the fact that none of them
is possible without the other. Seeing of essence is based on the appear-
ance of something individual. On the other hand, according to Husserl, the
intuition of something individual is not possible “without the free possi-
bility of bringing about an ideation and, in it, directing one’s regard to the
corresponding essence exemplified in what is individually sighted.”
    The communality between the intuition of something individual and
eidetic intuition, however, should not blur their essential differences. The
first of these differences is that intuition of matters of fact is limited to
what is given in factual experience and has to maintain itself within the
   . Hua III/,  ().
   . Hua III/,  ().
    . Hua III/,  (). Husserl readily remarks that this very possibility “is itself to be understood
not as empirical, but as eidetic.”
   . Hua III/, – ().
    . Hua III/,  ().
    Alessio Rotundo


boundaries of such experience, from which alone its statements receive their
legitimacy. In contrast, intuition of essences is not limited to what is given
in factual experience (in perception or memory), but it can also take as its
point of departure what is not experienced at all (data of pure phantasy).
An essence can be grasped starting from an object given in perception (as
in the case, dear to Husserl, of hearing a tone). Essences, however, can be
also grasped starting directly from a phantasy (a tone that I have in mind by
phantasy).
    A second peculiarity of the intuition of essences, whether our point of
departure is an actually experienced object or one merely phantasied, is that
its statements do not imply any claim regarding matters of fact. The latter
function only as examples: “Pure eidetic truths contain not the slightest assertion
about matters of fact. And thus not even the most insignificant matter–of–fact
truth can be deduced from pure eidetic truths alone.” Husserl’s example for
this case is the following statement: “The essence (the ‘genus’) color is other
than the essence (the genus) sound.” Yet, as Husserl adds, seeing of essences,
even though excluding every implication as regards factual existence, can
articulate propositions that invest a totality of single particulars. In this case,
the above eidetic statement is reformulated as follows: “Any color whatever
is different from any sound whatever.”
    Leaving aside the further complications of the theory of science and
in particular of the doctrine of eidetic intuition that Husserl articulates
in the chapter on “Matter of Fact and Essence,” this brief survey on the
opening sections of Ideas I suffices in order to bring to light the crucial role
of phantasy for Husserl’s phenomenological project. The characterization
of the kind of intuition and of the object intuited in the case of seeing of
essences highlights two main elements: () the possibility to be carried out
in phantasy () without positing of factual existence.
    In Section  of Ideas I, Husserl establishes the primacy of phantasy for
the method of phenomenology. On the one hand, perception in general
and external perception in particular has a primacy “as a foundation for
phenomenological eidetic findings,” due to the clarity in which objects of
perception obtain their originary givenness. On the other hand, however,
the seeing of essences obtains its genuine dimension only in phantasy. The
reason, according to Husserl, lies in the fact that what is immediately per-
ceived in its present and is recalled to memory with regard to its past offers
only a limited access to most general eidetic cognitions regarding percep-
tion, phantasy, memory, but also judging, feeling, or willing. To confine

  . Hua III/,  ().
  . Hua III/,  ().
  . Hua III/,  ().
                     Phantasy, Picture–Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Method   


oneself to these most general findings would be an arbitrary restriction.
On the contrary, in phantasy, due to its unbounded character, it is possible
to extend indefinitely the reproduction of examples from experience by
projecting the indeterminate future in all possible directions predelineated
by the universal style of the past.
    In this way, as Husserl significantly remarks, the phenomenologist,
whose object of study are the lived experiences and their correlates, pro-
ceeds like the geometer, who in phantasy feigns an indefinite number of
figures and shapes, thereby working out the essential properties of any spa-
tial shape whatever. Therefore, “in phenomenology, as in all other eidetic
sciences, presentiations and, more precisely, free phantasies acquire a position
of primacy over perceptions and do so even in the phenomenology of perception
itself.” Husserl concludes this Section by claiming that “‘feigning’ makes up
the vital element of phenomenology as of every other eidetic science [. . . ] feigning
is the source from which the cognition of ‘eternal truths’ is fed.”


. Picture–consciousness and ideation

In the last part of my essay, I will offer an interpretation of the method-
ological significance of the analysis of picture–consciousness for Husserl’s
phenomenological project. Since in Ideas I Husserl discusses picture– and
aesthetic consciousness in the context of his doctrine of neutrality modifica-
tion, my analysis will at the same time clarify the import of the neutrality
modification of consciousness for the method of phenomenology.
   As it has been see above, the experience of images or pictures and their
aesthetic contemplation are introduced by Husserl in Section  of Ideas I as
cases of the neutrality modification of perception. The analysis of picture–
and aesthetic consciousness is therefore put forth in order to exhibit an
instance of neutrality modification that is not that of phantasy, and thus
to distinguish the concept of the universal neutrality modification from
that operated by phantasy. Picture–consciousness (as well as the aesthetic
consciousness founded on it) is directed towards its objects in the mode of
unreality, that is, without any interest in the existence or non–existence of
the picture–object. The picture–thing is certainly given to me in external
perception, but in a pictorial apprehension I do not direct my regard to

  .   Cf. Hua IX,  ().
  .   Hua III/,  ().
  .   Hua III/, – (–).
  .   Hua III/, – (–).
  .   Hua XXIII,  ().
     Alessio Rotundo


the page or canvas. In my pictorial apprehension of the “knight” I do not
see the page at all, but the “knight.” The main point, however, is that the
“knight” itself is not apprehended as a real object, but precisely as a picture.
No interest is there for the actual existence or non–existence of the “knight,”
there is no “striving after certainty” (Streben nach Gewissheit). Picture–
consciousness does not arise out of the perception of the page, but out
of the “perception” of the figure, which differs from actual perception
because it brackets or put out of action the modality of belief essentially
pertaining to perception. Thus, living in picture–consciousness I do not live
in a consciousness that posits a reality, but what counts for me are rather
the modes of appearance (Erscheinungsweisen) of the object (as “figure”), its
“subjective” appearance, or the object–in–its–How (Gegenstand–im–Wie),
with no consideration of its existence.
     Husserl tries to express the complex state of affairs in which a presentia-
tion is mediated by a picture or an image with the expression “perceptive
phantasy,” in order to distinguish the latter from the concept of ordinary
phantasy or reproductive phantasy. The meaning of this distinction can be
illustrated with reference to the phenomenon of “double neutrality,” phe-
nomenon that Husserl discusses in his lectures of –’. The examination
of this phenomenon shall also help us in exhibiting the methodological
import of the analysis of picture–consciousness.
     Husserl introduced the notion of “double neutrality” in order to artic-
ulate more in detail the implications among different kinds of intuitional
presentiations. In the phenomenon of “double neutrality,” the first neu-
trality pertains to phantasy as neutrality modification, actively or passively
performed, e.g., I presentiate a theory and play with its propositions, claims,
etc., all of this performed under the sign of the “as–if ” that belongs to phan-
tasy. The second neutrality invests phantasy itself and its (quasi–) perfor-
mances. This neutrality annuls the purely playful reproduction happening
in phantasy in order to actually grasp what has been phantasied. The theory
that I was playing with is now the object of my attention, to be sure not as
this theory that I might or I might not believe in, but as “thought” of this
theory. Not the theory, but the thought of it has actual existence for me now,
it is a new kind of object (not a new object, we should carefully add) that, as
Husserl writes, I can “pick out and describe in evident truth as the ‘content’
of my phantasy.” The peculiarity of this second neutralization lies in the
  . Hua XXIII,  ().
  . Hua XXIII,  (),  (–). Regarding the “subjective” character, Cf. Husserl’s com-
ment in Hua XXIII, , fn.  (, fn. ).
  . Hua XXIII, . Cf. also Hua III/,  ().
  . Hua XXIII,  ().
  . Hua XXIII,  ().
                     Phantasy, Picture–Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Method                 


fact that it operates towards the neutralization of phantasy, not by modifying
consciousness into an original positing consciousness, as when we “come
back to reality” after having been lost in a phantasy for a moment. But rather
by establishing a positional Ego over the neutral Ego of phantasy. Drawing
an analogy, Husserl compares phantasying with a state of dreaming and the
objects phantasied with dreamt objects. Formulated in these terms, Husserl
claims that with the second neutralization,
    it is not a question of an abstention from actual positions with respect to the
    dreamt objects; they are by all means dreamt objects. At present I am precisely
    not supposed to be dreaming, lost to myself, not supposed to be quasi–performing
    such and such perceptions, judgments, and so on, making it seem to me as if
    these objects were there, as if they were changing in this way and that. On the
    contrary, as nonparticipating onlooker [als unbeteiligter Zuschauer] I am supposed to
    contemplate and fix what offers itself in this living–as–if just as it offers itself.

    Significantly, Husserl mentions the grasping of semblances (Scheinen) as
objects — picture–objects and those semblances proper that are not seen as
deceptions (Husserl’s examples are rainbows or the blue sky) — as cases in
which a double neutrality modification is operating. In contemplating a picture,
in fact, I also grasp the lines that make up the “knight,” but not as lines on the
paper, but as features of the “knight.” These features are not grasped as existing
or nonexisting, but they are certainly grasped, and posited, as the features of
this object, the “knight,” that I can fix and describe in the way it gives itself to
me. In pictorial apprehension, I posit the “knight” as what I actually see in my
pictorial seeing, that is, I contemplate the “knight” as what actually appears
there in person, but without appropriating it to myself as something I accept.
The pictorial and aesthetic interest is rather turned to the “object in the How
of its presentedness,” (Gegenstand im Wie der Dargestelltheit) so that, Husserl
concludes, “only what ‘appears as it appears,’ which comes to harmonious
unity in this presentation, interests me.”
    As a result, the characterization of the kind of intuition operating in
picture–consciousness and of the object intuited in it singles out two mo-
ments that play a crucial role for the method of phenomenology: () The
indifference to the existence or nonexistence of the object and () its reduc-
tion to modes of appearance.
     . Hua XXIII,  ().
     . Ibid.
     . Cf. Hua XXIII,  (). Cf. Husserl’s comment in Hua XXIII, , fn.  (, fn. ): “To turn
toward the image object and to contemplate it is to take it as if it existed. A ‘perception’ — just as in
phantasying intuitively and inhibiting the thematizing (positional) quasi–performing of the phantasy acts,
I find the ‘phantasy image’ and have it given itself as the phantasy of a perceptual image.”
     . Hua XXIII, f. (f.).
     . Cf. in particular M : .
         Alessio Rotundo


Final remarks

In the present context, the phenomenon of double neutrality is especially
significant because it allows giving a unitary interpretation of the two
forms of neutrality consciousness of phantasy and picture–consciousness in
regards to their meaning for the method of phenomenology. The method-
ological significance of the phenomenon of double neutrality lies in the
fact that phantasy alone is not enough in order to accomplish the descrip-
tions that are essential to phenomenology. As a result, to change phan-
tasy consciousness into a “positional” consciousness in the sense of the
double neutrality modification is crucial in order to produce assertions
and descriptions about the figments of phantasy. Thus, starting from the
phenomenon of double neutrality, I suggest a possible definition of the
phenomenological seeing of essences as a thetic apprehension (on the model of
picture–consciousness) of a neutralized object (in phantasy). Such definition
contributes to the clarification of the transition to the a priori peculiar to
phenomenology. Phenomenology is the science that inquire into the hid-
den subjective lived experiences that must occur in order for the subject to
actually have experience of various kinds of objects. The transition from
the single appearances of objects to the determination of necessary and
universal laws and principles grounding (“constituting,” Husserl might say)
their appearance to a consciousness, however, is nothing like a mystical
process. This transition or ascension is describable and analyzable on the
basis of the very operations of consciousness. These operations, such as
phantasying and perceiving the object in a picture are the phenomenal
attestations for the possibility of carrying out the activities of eidetic varia-
tion (eidetische Variation), its seeing of essence (Wesensschau) and their result
consisting in the apprehension of the a priori (Erfassung des Apriori). The
characteristic mark of phantasy — and picture — consciousness is that they
perform by their very nature a liberation from the fact. The liberation
from the fact is not a negation of the facts of experience nor of the factual
world as a whole. In phantasy, the facts of experience are no longer taken
in their mere factual occurrence, but they receive instead the status of exem-
plary experiences whose specific style of development can become subject
of a systematic study thanks to the arbitrariness and openness allowed
by phantasy. By means of the endless variations on a single experience

      .   Hua XXIII,  ().
      .   Hua IX,  (). See also Hua IX, – (–).
      .   See Hua IX, § .
      .   See Hua IX  ().
      .   Hua IX,  ().
                     Phantasy, Picture–Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Method               


allowed by phantasy, Husserl conceives the possibility to detect that which
in the variation remains invariable. According to Husserl, this is the eidos
or essence. In this study, I claim that the phenomenon of double neutrality
is especially fruitful in order to secure phenomenally the two moments
that characterize the method of phenomenology: the variation in phantasy
and the apprehension of the essence, the latter described on the model of
picture–consciousness.
    I would like to conclude this essay by pointing to an important impli-
cation that the present interpretation of the method of phenomenology
has for the notion of essence as the object of phenomenological investiga-
tions. In fact, the conception that grounds the seeing of essences on the
operation of phantasy reframes the very concept of essence. The reality
of the essence which is apprehended is based on the aspect of possibility
that constitutes all phantasying as such. Phantasy drops the actuality of the
world of experience in order to determine the underlying structures that
make the experience of the world and its objects possible. This identifies
the transcendental character of phenomenology. But the structures or laws
of essence (Wesensgesetze) that are singled out in the course of the analysis
cannot be posited as categorical and a–temporal structures of experience.
Rather the aspect of possibility attaches to them on the ground of the aspect
of possibility that belongs to phantasied experience, which, ultimately, is
grounded upon the unbounded character inherent in factual experience as
such (Crisis, § ). That the essences of phenomenology define not what
is factual, however, but rather what is possible in regards to the being of
what is factual, also illustrates the sense of phenomenological philosophy
understood, by Husserl, as an “infinite task,” thereby marking the histor-
ical divide between a dogmatic and a phenomenological transcendental
philosophy.


References

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    . Describing the peculiar performance of the epochē, Husserl writes in Section  of the Crisis:
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it are experiences as ‘phenomenon.’” (Hua VI,  [])
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