Summary: Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (page 5)

Husserl describes the flux of perceptions in consciousness. Perception and the thing perceived, though related, do not form a real unity, nor do they share a connection of an eidetic order.

Let us walk around this table. While the table itself remains unchanged, our perception of it is in constant variation—it is a continuous series of changing perceptions.¹

Thus, perception is drawn into the ceaseless flow of consciousness and is itself constantly in flux: the now of perception is continuously converted into a new consciousness, which remains linked to the previous one—the consciousness of the just-passing-now—while at the same time initiating a new now.²

Husserl introduces the notion of sketch to describe experiences of consciousness: the thing perceived is gradually revealed through a series of sketches. For example, the colour of an object appears to me in an uninterrupted variety of colour sketches.

Through this entire analysis, Husserl has demonstrated the transcendence of the thing with respect to the perception we have of it, and consequently, with respect to all consciousness in general.³

Thus, a fundamental distinction emerges: that of being as experienced versus being as thing.

Husserl defines transcendence as the thing taken in itself and absolutely speaking.⁴ Immanence, by contrast, designates consciousness.

A thing is given only by sketch: The perception of a thing implies—this, again, is a necessity of essence—a certain inadequacy. In principle, a thing can only be given under one aspect at a time,⁵ and thus imperfectly. This recalls the famous example of the cube developed in the Cartesian Meditations.

At the same time, there is necessarily a core, and around it, a horizon of co-data, along with a more or less vague zone of indeterminacy.⁶

Immanent perception is indubitable:

When reflection is applied to my lived experience in order to grasp it, I have grasped an absolute in itself, whose existence cannot, in principle, be denied. In other words, the idea that it does not exist is, in principle, impossible; it would be absurd to suppose that an experienced being given in this way does not truly exist.⁷

Here, Husserl returns to the Cartesian cogito. Even if what floats before the mind is a pure fictum, the consciousness that forms the fiction is not itself fictive.⁸

By contrast, all transcendent perception is subject to doubt. Indeed, experience reveals nothing necessary. Later experiences may contradict earlier ones, as Hume demonstrated. This results from the contingency of things.

In fact, it is conceivable that no external world exists: The being of consciousness would certainly be modified if the world of things were to annihilate itself, but it would not be affected in its own existence.⁹ Or, to put it another way: No real being is necessary for the being of consciousness itself.¹⁰

At this point, we can grasp the meaning of the phenomenological epoché:

Let us put all these theses "out of the picture" [...] It is therefore [pure consciousness] that remains as the sought-after phenomenological residue [...] even though we have put "out of the picture" the whole world, with all things, living beings, humans, including ourselves.¹¹

Which sciences can phenomenology draw on? Which are off-limits to it?

The sciences of nature and spirit can contribute nothing to phenomenology, for they remain caught up in the natural attitude.

However, phenomenology appears to be interested in the results of formal logic and formal ontology—that is, the science of the object in general. Indeed, all pure experience is subordinated to the object in the broadest sense.

Yet phenomenology can ultimately do without these two sciences, for it is a purely descriptive analysis that relies on direct intuition alone. Since it involves no deduction, it has no need for a theory of the forms of deduction, such as that provided by logic.

Phenomenology is a purely descriptive discipline that explores the field of transcendentally pure consciousness in the light of pure intuition.¹²

Thus, we have established the absolute independence of phenomenology from all sciences, including the eidetic sciences of the material order.¹³

End of the first two sections

¹ §41, p.131
² ibid.
³ §42, p.135
⁴ ibid., p.136
⁵ §44, p.141
⁶ ibid.
⁷ §46, p.149
⁸ ibid.
⁹ §49, p.161
¹⁰ ibid.
¹¹ §50, p.165
¹² §59, p.195
¹³ §60, p.198