Edmund Husserl’s eidetic phenomenology seeks a priori knowledge of essences and eidetic laws pertaining to conscious experience and its objects. Husserl believes that such eidetic knowledge has a higher epistemic status than the inherently fallible empirical knowledge, but a closer reading of his work shows that even eidetic claims are subject to error and open to modification. In this article, I develop a self-correcting account of Husserl’s method of eidetic variation, arguing that eidetic variation plays a critical role in both (...) challenging and improving upon the eidetic results in phenomenology. More specifically, I argue that the self-correcting account of eidetic variation 1) is consistent with Husserl’s own formulations of his eidetic methodology and epistemic principles; 2) captures the dual epistemic function of eidetic variation as means for both testing and intuitively validating eidetic claims; and 3) offers methodological support for contemporary attempts to integrate eidetic variation with non-eidetic methods and resources. To substantiate these claims, I first contrast the self-correcting account with the falsificationist interpretations of eidetic variation. Then, I turn to three applications of eidetic variation in order to examine how eidetic phenomenology could draw from real-life deviations, artificial variations, and critical–historical reflection. The goal is to lay the methodological groundwork for a self-correcting and integrative account of eidetic variation and illustrate its usefulness in research practice. (shrink)

In my paper I introduce the phenomenological concept of “eidetics” and its application to law. I show that, according to this approach grounded in the works of Reinach (1913/1989) and Stein (1925), the problem of the existence and validity of the law can be fruitfully analysed in terms of parts-wholes which constitute law-making acts as wholes, both as performed and fulfilled acts. I argue that the parts of law-making acts can be subject to varying degrees of constraint – necessary, (...) possible or contingent parts – and that it is the possible part of law-making acts that makes the difference between the existence of law-making acts and their validity: between their mere existence as performed acts, and their full existence as fulfilled and valid acts. I show this in focusing on Stein’s suggestion of filling the inter-personal gap between legislator and citizens in legal provisions by introducing “integrative acts”, which facilitate the uptake and, consequently, the enforcement of legal provisions by citizens. I suggest that Stein’s work on the integrative acts of legal provisions is grounded in the eidetic claim that essential parts of a whole also include possible – and not only necessary – parts, and that these are essential relations of tendency: legal provisions tend essentially to be fulfilled and their existence acquires a full sense only when they are enforced. Finally, I deal with eidetics and the issue of degrees and quality of existence in social ontology. (shrink)

In neo-Aristotelian accounts, the task of metaphysics is to explore the space of metaphysical possibilities, and our knowledge of metaphysical possibilities is ultimately grounded on our knowledge concerning the essence of entities. Eidetic variation, as established by Husserlian phenomenology, is a method of identifying a specific pattern of phenomenological givenness that is constitutive of the identity and condition of existence of a kind of entities. Thus, Husserlian phenomenology provides us with a method to acquire knowledge concerning the general essence of (...) entities. (shrink)

This paper discusses the phenomenological method’s reliance on imaginative procedures in view of ethnomethodological research. While ethnomethodology has often been seen in continuity with Alfred Schütz’ phenomenological sociology, it mainly parts ways with phenomenology by stressing that the decisive details structuring mutual understanding (gestures, bodily expressions, or the myriad trifles that regulate casual conversation) are „not imaginable, but can only be found out”. This paper reflects from a phenomenological perspective on what such a claim entails by first delineating this line (...) of criticism from other objections raised against the use of imaginative procedures in phenomenology and by showing how this line of questioning departs from the core philosophical debates concerning imaginabilitiy and unimaginability in the Kantian tradition. Further on, the paper offers an in-depth interpretation of the aforementioned ethnomethodological claim in order not only to outline its methodological implications for phenomenology, but also to show that it involves possible key insights for understanding interaction, which phenomenology needs to take into account despite its eidetic scope. (shrink)

I argue that Reinach’s social acts are a new type of acts with respect to Husserl’s acts of meaning. I focus on the eidetic structure of both acts of meaning and social acts and identify the wholes-parts connections that constitute them. I point out that acts of meaning and social acts have a similar but not identical wholes-parts structure. Social acts are a new kind of wholes, irreducible to the wholes-acts of meaning that are “mental linguistic acts,” which may occur (...) only internally in the mind of their agent without addressing another person, and that also belong, according to Husserl, to the category of “objectifying acts”. Indeed, social acts are constituted by further and new parts, with respect to those of acts of meaning: the making-known of the act to an addressee, the turning toward an addressee and their interpellation, the tendency to be perceived by the addressee, the internal experience that grounds the social act, the normative efficacy of the social act. These parts make the sociality of the social acts and characterize their intentionality as essentially social. At the same time, I show that Reinach’s eidetics of social acts provides a qualitative ontological account that distinguishes different degrees of existence and raises the question of the “good life” of social acts. I argue for these issues by referring to Husserl’s theory of parts and wholes and account of acts of meaning (1901), to Reinach’s account of social acts (1913), and to Scheler’s idea of the reciprocity of social acts (1913–1926). (shrink)

Adorno’s intensive criticism of phenomenology is well known, his entire early period during the 1920s and 1930s being marked by various polemical engagements with Husserl. This engagement finds its peak during his work at his second dissertation project in Oxford, a dissertation that was supposed to systematicaly expose the antinomies of phenomenological thinking while particularly focusing on Husserl’s concept of “eidetic intuition” or “intuition of essences”. The present paper will take this criticism as its starting point in focusing on two (...) highly specific aspects of Adorno’s interpretation: the opposition between eidetic intuition and the traditional theories of abstraction and its relationship to genetic phenomenology. In light of this criticism I subsequently show: 1. that, in his later work, Adorno’s understanding of eidetic intuition undergoes a significant revaluation; 2. that he reappropriates key elements of the eidetic method in his own procedure of physiognomic analysis, and 3. that his account of physiognomics is relevant for addressing the aforementioned incongruities of phenomenological eidetics itself. (shrink)

In this paper I contrast Husserlian transcendental eidetic phenomenology with some other views of what phenomenology is supposed to be and argue that, as eidetic, it does not admit of being ‘naturalized’ in accordance with standard accounts of naturalization. The paper indicates what some of the eidetic results in phenomenology are and it links these to the employment of reason in philosophical investigation, as distinct from introspection, emotion or empirical observation. Eidetic phenomenology, unlike cognitive science, should issue in a ‘logic’ (...) of consciousness. Instead of being derived from empirical investigations its results should consist of high-level background conditions that are necessary for cognitive science to be possible in the first place. To negate these conditions is to be faced with certain types of ‘material’ contradictions. Some analogies with science – mathematical science – are used to develop the argument. (shrink)

In the context of «reassessing the relationship between explanation and phenomenology», the paper discusses the question in what ways Husserlian phenomenology as a descriptive science of consciousness has an explanatory potential in consciousness studies. It takes a very limited approach to the wide-ranging themes that may come to mind on this topic. At the center is an exploration of consciousness as an explanandum in its own right, building on Husserl's reflective-eidetic analyses of conscious experiences. It will concentrate on explicating acts (...) of intuitive representification ( anschauliche Vergegenwärtigungen) as intentional modifications of perception, making up higher, radical novel levels of intentionality. Acts of remembering, imagining, depicting something, as well as iterations and combinations of such acts, will serve as examples. A formal notation will be used with the intention to make the reflection-based theoretical language of phenomenology more precise and easier to survey. (shrink)

Due to his lengthy polemical writings against Heidegger, Adorno is generally perceived as a decisive adversary of phenomenology. Indeed, his entire early period during the 1920s and 1930s was marked by various critical discussions of Husserl. This engagement finds its peak during his work at his second dissertation project in Oxford, a dissertation that was supposed to systematicaly expose the antinomies of phenomenological thinking while particularly focusing on Husserl’s concept of “eidetic intuition” or “intuition of essences” (Wesensschau). The present chapter (...) will take this criticism as its starting point in focusing on two highly specific aspects of Adorno’s interpretation: the contrast between eidetic intuition and the traditional theories of abstraction and its relationship to genetic phenomenology. In light of this criticism I subsequently show that, in his later work, Adorno’s understanding of eidetic intuition undergoes a significant revaluation; that he reappropriates key elements of the eidetic method in his own procedure of physiognomic analysis; and that his account of physiognomics is relevant for addressing some of the incongruities of phenomenological eidetics itself. (shrink)

I focus on empathy from an eidetic perspective, that provided by Edith Stein in her work On the Problem of Empathy and which I call eidetics of empathy. I suggest that the eidetics of empathy allows us to inquire efficaciously into the structure of empathy, and therefore into the relation between empathy on the one hand, and embodied personal identity and intersubjectivity on the other. I argue that the eidetics of empathy sheds light on the complexity, heterogeneity (...) and also fragility of the acts of empathy that we perform in our everyday life with respect to others, and provides us with the conceptual tools to address crucial questions such as: What is the specific and distinctive structure of empathy? What are the conditions of possibility of the performance of acts of empathy? Are there different fulfilment degrees of empathy? What role do living bodies play in the performance of acts of empathy? How is it possible to prevent and correct mistakes of empathy? I deal with these issues in making three points on the eidetics of empathy. My first point is that the eidetics of empathy allows us to understand empathy as one type of acts of perceiving others and their experiences directly and as a whole that is subject to variations of its parts – the limits of possible co-variations of its parts correspond to the essential structure of empathy. Secondly, I focus on the eidetic issue of the possible co-variations of parts of the empathy-type: the content and the degree of fulfilment and accomplishment of empathy acts, the layer of the person they address, the varieties of living beings with whom we can empathize. Thirdly, I argue that the eidetics of empathy exemplifies very well the ontologically qualitative issue of degrees of existence of any entity in relation to its eidetic paradigm, and it is a prime example of how phenomenological eidetics can be a qualitative ontology dealing with qualitative issues that are crucial in our everyday life. (shrink)

This article critically examines Paul Ricœur’s eidetic phenomenology of emotions. With reference to his early phenomenological analysis of the will, developed in his work entitled Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (1950/1960), emotions will be understood as involuntary aspects involved in the essential structures of willing. My analysis will be divided into two parts. First, I will discuss Ricœur’s conception of emotions as tied to his sustained attention to the theme of embodiment as entailing activity (e.g., wanting, moving, (...) doing) and resistance (internal and external). In particular, emotions will be considered in relation to Ricœur's first two moments of willing: decision and voluntary movement. I will show that emotions are linked to needs, motives, and values, conceived as the body’s involuntary dimensions correlated to decision, and I will explain their role as organs for effective action. In this context, I will stress the connection between emotions and imagination based on embodiment, as well as Ricœur’s rejection of the opposition between emotionality and rationality. Then, the second part will focus on Ricœur’s distinction between feelings and emotions and on his careful analysis of the difference between emotions and passions. These reflections will lead to Ricœur’s study of wonder as the most basic emotional attitude. Ricœur’s phenomenology of emotions offers rich insights for any philosophical reflection on the ubiquitous nature of emotions and emotional experiences. (shrink)

Enrique Dussel’s Etica de la Liberacion en le Edad de la Globalizacion y de la Exclusion is undoubtedly one of the most important books of the last ten years in the current of thought known as “liberation philosophy,” and this book is valuable for the way it seeks to incorporate the thought of Emmanuel Levinas into a philosophy addressing global oppression and exclusion. However, Dussel fails to appreciate fully the distinctiveness of ethical experience according to Levinas as well as the (...) significance of the eidetic features of Levinas’s account in particular for the understanding of subjectivity. Furthermore, in his discussion of subjectivity in the Etica, Dussel neglects how ethical responsibility can produce a powerful subject. As a consequence, he overlooks how this possibility, which in its generality is available to oppressors and victims of globalization alike, can be realized by the victims becoming responsible for other victims and coming to fear, as Levinas puts it, the murder of the other more than their own death. (shrink)

Vaidya has recently argued that while Husserl’s method for acquiring knowledge of essence through use of our imagination is subject to a vicious epistemic circle, we can still use the method to successfully attain objectual understanding of essence. In this paper, I argue that the Husserlian objectual understanding-based epistemology envisaged by Vaidya suffers from a similar epistemic circularity as its knowledge-based foil. I argue that there is a straight-forward solution to this problem, but then raise three serious problems for an (...) amended version of Vaidya’s proposal and any similar Husserlian epistemology of essence. The paper closes with some general reflections on applying the Husserlian method to the contemporary notion of essence and on the idea of refocusing the epistemology of essence on understanding instead of knowledge. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl often characterizes essences and eidetic laws in normative terms. Many of his statements to this effect are however highly puzzling as they appear at odds with Husserl’s general understanding of normativity. In this paper I focus on this puzzle and I argue that we can reconcile most of the apparent tensions between these two dimensions of Husserl’s philosophical thought. In the first part of the paper, drawing on the contemporary literature on kinds of norms, I focus on Husserl’s (...) work on the varieties of normativity. I submit that, on his view, essences and eidetic laws are never intrinsically normative, and that not all essences and not all corresponding eidetic laws can function as norms for their instances. Crucially, however, I argue that, according to Husserl, essences and eidetic laws can function as norms for a range of the subject’s acts. In the second part of the paper I further examine this thesis, thus explaining in what sense Husserl thinks that essences and eidetic laws can have this function. I show that formal eidetic laws can engender deontic and evaluative norms for correct or rational judgments, evaluations, desires, and acts of the will. I also contend that material essences and material eidetic laws also have a normative function for judgments. I conclude that this shows how Husserl’s view makes room for norms that are not context-dependent or subjectively grounded. (shrink)

This paper explores the application of the phenomenological method of eidetic variation, developed by Edmund Husserl, to mixed reality (MR). Initially, MR is defined within the Reality-Virtuality (RV) continuum developed by Milgram and others (1994) and revisited by Skarbez and others (2021). MR objects, situated within this spectrum, are analyzed phenomenologically as both perceptual and imaginative, constituted by a network of relations. The paper then focuses on Husserl’s method of eidetic variation from Experience and Judgement, which involves arbitrary modification of (...) object characteristics to grasp their essence. This method, though rooted in essentialism, is used by content designers in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to create objects and environments. Lastly, the paper suggests that MR reflects the externalization of imagination through digital technologies, proposing an Analogue-Digital (AD) continuum that integrates human bodily experience and MR technology, facilitating imaginative visualization and creation without searching for the essence of objects. (shrink)

The article examines Greek philosopher Aristotle's understanding of mathematical numbers as pluralities of discreet units and the relations of unity and multiplicity. Topics discussed include Aristotle's view that a mathematical number has determinate properties, a contrast between Aristotle and French philosopher René Descartes in terms of their understanding of number and Aristotle's description of ways to understand eidetic numbers.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The article shows the affinity of Simmel's formal sociology with Husserl's notion of eidetic science. This thesis is demonstrated by the corroboration of Simmel's revision of neo-Kantian epistemology for sociology with Husserl's phenomenology, and the parallel discussion of Simmel and Husserl concerning cognitive levels and exact and morphological eide. Simmel's analysis of dyads is explored as an exemplar of his eidetic insights. An important consequence of this demonstration is the vindication establishing the scientific legitimacy of Simmel's methodology regarding the sociology (...) of the forms of association. Woven throughout is discussion concerning the doctrine of the complementarity of eidetic and empirical science. Simmel's methodology is shown to have been ahead of its time through conjoining these two modes of scientific investigation. (shrink)

Husserl’s unflagging interest in abstract structures and ideal objects is immediately striking. His Prolegomena to a Pure Logics offer an outline of formal ontology that seems to forestall a universal theory of varieties in the Bourbaki style. Moreover, when he engages in the theory of sets and logic with his great contemporaries, Frege, Cantor, and Hilbert, he always does so as their equal. Less obvious, at first glance, is the presence from the outset of Husserl’s equally lively “hunger for fullness,” (...) his conviction that the ultimate source of our knowledge is intuition, that is, a kind of immediate cognition or direct access to contents of every kind. Failure to see how these two demands correlate and support each other throughout Husserl’s entire intellectual career, starting from Philosophy of Arithmetics, has induced most interpreters to describe this career as a progressive descent from the heavens of logic and mathematics down to this earth that we inhabit, embodied in our mortal bodies, embedded in our geographical, historical, social and cultural environments. This description seems quite misleading if it involves more than a shift of focus concerning (some) objects, as if there had been a change in method and fundamental concepts. Even more so if, as it is often the case, eidetic phenomenology gets accordingly relegated to an early stage of Husserl thought, identified as “static” phenomenology, and supposedly dismissed later on, and typically in the later manuscripts and the Crisis, to the advantage of “genetic” phenomenology –as we shall see. A text from the Crisis (§48, footnote) confirms the continuity of Husserl’s primary concern and introduces us to the subject of this chapter:The paradigm of direct cognition is perception in all its sensorial modalities, but typically in the visual mode. The phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty will inherit this theme in particular: perception in all its kinaesthetic implications. From the beginning, just as for the gestalt masters, perception is inseparable from “behavior,” movement, and action, mainly because the perceived object prescribes the standard to perceiving: if I doubt the sight, I touch; if I see only one aspect, I verify the rest “by going around” the thing, and so on. (shrink)

In the present section we will take to the next level our previous discussion of the concept of eidos. In particular, we will discuss Husserl’s notion of eidetic or a priori sciences, with a special focus on geometry (which Husserl takes to be the most paradigmatic example of a priori, material sciences). In particular, we will argue that for Husserl the importance of geometry is that it perfectly epitomizes the function that he ascribes to every eidetic sciences, i.e., that of (...) rationalizing the empirical world. (shrink)

Many have argued that Plato’s intermediates are not independent entities. Rather, they exemplify the incapacity of discursive thought to cognizing Forms. But just what does this incapacity consist in? Any successful answer will require going beyond the intermediates themselves to another aspect of Plato’s mathematical thought - his attribution of a quasi-numerical structure to Forms. For our purposes, the most penetrating account of eidetic numbers is Jacob Klein’s, who saw clearly that eidetic numbers are part of Plato’s inquiry into the (...) ontological basis for all counting: the existence of a plurality of formal elements, distinct yet combinable into internally articulate unities. However, Klein’s study of the Sophist reveals such articulate unities as imperfectly countable and therefore opaque to διάνοια. And only this opacity, I argue, successfully explains the relationship of intermediates to Forms. (shrink)

This essay articulates obstacles to an interpretation of the whole proper to Plato’s philosophy that are rooted in the general methodical principle of traditional hermeneutics, and then addresses them by a novel hermeneutic application of Husserl’s transcendental and eidetic reductions. This application involves disclosing the transcendental phenomena of the texts of Plato’s dialogues on the basis of the former and articulating their phenomenological essence in accord with the latter. A meta-hermeneutical argument for what Plato himself might have thought is then (...) ventured, which takes as its point of departure both the transcendental phenomena of his texts and Aristotle’s report that eide for him were in some sense arithmoi. (shrink)

Whoever deals with the issue of eidos in Husserl’s phenomenology cannot repress an uncomfortable sensation due to the fact that, if on the one hand the Husserlian Denkweg unfolds itself unitarily, at least at the level of a certain number of basic methodological acquisitions (and eidetic analysis is to number among these), on the other hand the emergence of eidetic variation marks a decisive passage within the Husserlian conceptuality and methodology. Passage that usually, however, seems to r...