International Phenomenological Society

Review: Review Essay: Husserl and Analytic Philosophy and Husserlian Intentionality and
Non-Foundational Realism
Author(s): Robert Sokolowski
Review by: Robert Sokolowski
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), pp. 725-730
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2108219
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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Vol. LII, No. 3, September 1992

Review Essay:Husserl and Analytic

PhilosophyandHusserlian
Intentionalityand Non-Foundational
Realism
ROBERTSOKOLOWSKI
The Catholic Universityof America

The wish is often expressedfor worksthatwouldbridgethe gap between

"continental" and "analytic"thought.The two books underreview richly
fulfillthatwish, andtheydo so in differentways.Cobb-Stevens'volume'is
wide-ranging, Drummond's2 concentrateson a moreparticulartopic.
The centerof Cobb-Stevens'bookis an expositionof Frege'sthoughtas
seen throughHusserliancategories.Cobb-StevensobservesthatFrege,like
Husserl,rejectedpsychologism,butwas not ableto explainthe beingor the
originsof propositions. Fregealso failedto examinetheempiricistpresuppo-
sitionsof psychologism,whichholdsperceptionto be the mereacceptanceof
impressions.Both of these deficiencies,accordingto Cobb-Stevens,stem
fromthe fact thatFregehadan inadequateunderstanding of perceptionand
couldnotexplainhowperception canleadto predication. Husserl,in contrast,
developeda muchmoreadequateunderstanding of perception
throughhis con-
ceptof categorialintuition.He wasableto showhowpropositions arisefrom
perceptionthroughprepredicative experienceandthroughthe articulation of
partsandwholesin things,an articulation thatyieldspropositionsthatcanbe
expressedin language,repeated,andsubsequently quoted;as Cobb-Stevens
says,it is necessaryto examine"theinterplaybetweenperceptual discrimina-
tions andprimitivepredications" (p. 91). Husserlshows how logic and se-
manticscan be rootedin subjectiveintuitions,withoutbeingdissolvedinto
merelysubjectivephenomena.
Husserl'sconceptof categorialintuition,however,correctsmorethana
deficiencyin Frege'sthoughtalone.Cobb-Stevensclaimsthatit is a correc-

Richard Cobb-Stevens, Husserl and AnalyticPhilosophy,Phaenomenologica 116

(Dordrecht:Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), pp. vii, 222.
2 John J. Drummond,HusserlianIntentionality and Non-Foundational Realism.Noema
and Object(Dordrecht:Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), pp. xii, 295.

REVIEWESSAY 725

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tive to a form of thinking that has characterizedmodem philosophy since its
beginningsin thinkerslike Bacon, Descartes,and Hobbes, who also had inad-
equate notions of perception and intuition. The epistemological problems of
modern thought brought with them a deficient understandingof substance,
which was takenas eithersomethinghiddenand unknownbehind appearances
or a mere congeries of appearances.Husserl's notion of categorial intuition
allows us to recover a premodern,and specifically an Aristotelianunderstand-
ing of perceptionand knowledge, one in which species are presentedthrough
the "looks"of things. Husserl also allows us to achieve a more public under-
standing of mind; mind can now be taken as the partof naturewhich serves
as the place to which the rest of naturecan be displayed, and not as a Lockean
"cabinet"in which ideas occur. Husserl's revision of the modem understand-
ing of cognition also permits a revision of the modem concept of substance;
we come to see thatindividualsare always experiencedas instancesof a kind,
and that kinds or species are always given as embodied in individuals. This
reciprocitybetween individualand kind (between firstand second substancein
Aristotle) is neither an ambiguity nor an embarrassmentbut a necessary
structurein cognition and the display of things.
In developing his thesis, Cobb-Stevensprovides an extensive commentary
on the work of Frege. He examines Frege's notion of sense and reference, his
concept of the True and the False as the referentsof statements,his notion of
assertion and the "grasping"of propositions, his interpretationof senses as
modes of givenness, his treatmentof concepts as functions, and his concept
of number.Cobb-Stevenstreatsat great length the meaning of quantification,
quantifiers,variables, functions, value-ranges, and the problem of substitu-
tion and reference in opaque contexts. He makes abundantuse of commenta-
tors and critics such as Dummett, Baker, Hacker, Rorty, Ryle, Davidson,
Rosen, Searle, Angelelli, Currie, Sluga, Quine, Furth, and others. Russell's
theory of definite descriptions, and Strawson's emendations of it, are also
considered,as are themes from Wittgenstein.Strawson's distinction between
the recognitionof sortaluniversalsand the placing of featuresis interpretedas
an analytical acknowledgment of prepredicative intuition. All this is done
with great competence and clarity, with unity of argumentand with constant
reference to the basic issue of how intuitioncan underliepredication.It is ac-
complished from a point of view different from that of most commentators
on Frege and thus makes a distinctive contribution to the literatureon his
work. Cobb-Stevens appreciates the great advances made by Frege and the
influence he has had in contemporarylogic, ontology, and semantics, but he
is also able to situate Frege's work in a very wide historical context and to
reveal some limitations in it. Frege's work is enhanced, not denigrated, by
this original and insightful study.
Cobb-Stevensalso discusses some other issues in analytic philosophy. He
observes that its emphasis on predicationas independentof intuitionleads to

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a failureto distinguishbetween routine,mechanicalproceduresand insightful
thinking; Husserl's appeal to categorial intuition corrects this weakness. He
says that "facts"ought not be treatedmerely as true thoughts, but should be
taken as confirmeddisplays of things in the world, achieved throughcatego-
rial intuition.He observes thatphilosophy should treatspeech and experience
from a first-person point of view, since it is the first-person who speaks,
predicates, and perceives; philosophy should not adopt the standpointof an
omniscient third-personobserverdetachedfrom the humancondition and en-
joying "unproblematicaccess" to things in the world (pp. 34-36). Husserl's
concept of the transcendental,philosophical attitudethus helps us negotiate
the difficult problem of philosophical discourse. Cobb-Stevens provides in-
teresting historical sketches concerning the origins of psychologism and his-
toricism,and makes some valuablecomparisonsbetween Frege and Brentano.
Only two chaptersof the book are specifically devoted to Husserl, one on his
overcoming of psychologism by means of his description of cognitive intu-
ition, and anotheron his transcendentalturn, which examines the natureof
philosophical discourse and the distinction between propositionaland philo-
sophical reflection. A final chapter is entitled "Reason and History," and
shows how a properunderstandingof contextualizedintuition can overcome
both rationalismand historicism.
It is interesting to note that the two main currents of twentieth-century
philosophy, the continentaland the analytic, stem from two individuals who
were contemporaries,Husserland Frege. They are the originatorsof the prob-
lems treated and the perspectives adopted by the great majority of thinkers
who followed them, and they-Husserl and Frege-in their turnwere not be-
holden to any majorfigures immediatelybefore them. They set the immediate
context, they did not merely inhabit or adjust it. Cobb-Stevens shows what
was at issue in the relationshipbetween the two thinkersand how their rela-
tionship can be placed within the quarrelbetween the ancients and the mod-
ems.
If Cobb-Stevens' book covers great distances, Drummond'sis much more
tightly focused, more like a dogfight than a vast sea battle. It deals with an
interpretationof Husserl that has been inspiredby Frege's thought:the inter-
pretationof the Husserliannoema as a sense, as similar to Frege's Sinn. This
interpretationwas proposed in its basic form by Dagfinn F0llesdal. It was
more extensively expressed in a book and some articles by David W. Smith
and Ronald McIntyre,and it has been upheld by HubertDreyfus. It has be-
come an established interpretationof Husserl, particularly in the United
States. It has been criticized in different ways by writers such as Leonore
Langsdorf, Richard Holmes, J. N. Mohanty, and the present reviewer. This
Fregean readingof Husserl is the majorconcern of Drummond'sbook, but a
secondary concern is the meaning of noema proposed by Aron Gurwitsch,
which is differentfrom the interpretationjust mentioned.A full chapteris de-

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 voted to Gurwitsch,and his interpretationis frequentlydiscussed in the book
as a counterpieceto the Fregeanreading.
Drummondrejects the interpretationsof both Gurwitschand F0llesdal. He
does so after careful exposition of the two positions and their various com-
mentariesand critiques, after a meticulous examinationof the relevant texts
of Husserl, and after bringing out the philosophical issues at work in this
controversy. His task is formidable,because it requiresthat he not only pre-
sent an interpretationof Husserl's writings, but also show how the alterna-
tive readings do or do not fit the texts; he must also show how and why the
alternativereadingshave gone wrong;and he must take into account the vari-
ous commentariesand critiques. Many perspectives have to be balanced and
confronted. Drummond is clear and authoritative in his treatmentof these
tangled issues, and it seems to me thatwhen all is said and done he clears the
skies of hostile aircraft;his book invites careful study and response by those
with whom he differs.
The Fregean interpretationclaims that Husserl's concept of noema is an
expansion of Frege's notion of sense. Frege introducedthe concept of Sinn in
connection with his treatmentof the meaning of verbal expressions, but, ac-
cording to this interpretation,Husserl saw that there was something like
sense or Sinn in all forms of cognitive intentionality, even in perception.
The Fregeaninterpretationis based primarilyon texts fromLogical Investiga-
tions andIdeas I. The interpretationholds furthermorethatHusserlposited the
noema as an abstractentity that explained how our consciousness becomes
intentional,how our awarenesscan become related to objects and not merely
enclosed in itself. It is through the noema, according to this "mediator-the-
ory" (p. 5), that our consciousness targets an object; the contents of the
noema pick out an object and make it the referent of our awareness. The
noema, therefore,is ontologically distinct from the objects it helps us target.
Drummondobserves that while Husserl's early work, Logical Investigations,
gives some credenceto the Fregeanreading,his laterworks do not. Especially
pivotal is Ideas I.
The difficulty with the Fregeanreadingof Husserl is that it misses what is
most distinctive about Husserl's philosophy. It misunderstandsboth the na-
tureof intentionalityand the natureof the transcendentalattitude,the attitude
from which philosophy is done. It reads Husserl from the point of view of
Frege, and hence, as Cobb-Stevensshows, it reads him from within the epis-
temological dilemmas of modernity,which Frege never managed to resolve.
It fails to see the breakthroughthat Husserl's thoughtachieved. Someday the
Fregeanreadingof Husserl will be used as a case history in hermeneutics,an
example of how a fixed paradigmcannot manage to interpretsomething dif-
ferent from itself in anythingexcept its own-the paradigm's-terms, so that
it quite overlooks what is original in the new doctrine.The case is made even
more interestingbecause thereare indeed some passages in Husserl thatmake

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the Fregean readingplausible, provided they are interpretedin a certain way
and providedother texts and other philosophical issues are left out of consid-
eration. The paradigmlets the interpretersee only certain things and blinds
him to others. In this instance, the paradigmin question is the epistemologi-
cal set of issues that has ruledphilosophyfor several centuriesand that is par-
ticularlypowerful in what is called analyticphilosophy.
For Husserl, it is not necessary to find a mediating entity that bestows in-
tentionalityupon awareness, because consciousness is intentionalby its very
nature:consciousness is "alwaysalready"intentional,never in need of some-
thing to make it so. No explanation is called for and it is meaningless to ask
for one. If one does not begin from inside a Lockean cabinet, one does not
need a key to get out of it. What Husserl discovered was the possibility of
understandingphilosophy in such a way that in it we examine both con-
sciousness and the objects of consciousness in theircorrelationto each other.
As Drummondmakes clear, the noema is simply the object looked at from
the philosophical point of view, i.e. from the transcendentalattitude. The
noema is the object phenomenologically examined, it is not a bridge-entity
between us and our objects.
The philosophicalattitudemust be distinguishedfrom what one could call
the propositional attitude, which is another kind of reflection, one in which
we reflect on what someone else has said (or how something might look to
someone) and take what he has said merely as a proposal, as a proposition.
This propositional reflection yields a sense and not, as such, a noema. The
Fregean interpretationdoes not distinguish between propositionaland philo-
sophical reflection, hence it does not distinguish between sense and noema.
The distinctionbetween the two reflective attitudesis made most explicitly in
Husserl's laterworks, such as Format and TranscendentalLogic. It is not dis-
tinctly made in Ideas I, but even in thatwork the noema is relatedto the tran-
scendentalreduction.
One of the best points in Drummond'sbook is his careful analysis of the
text of Ideas I. The experimentumcrucis in the thought experiments of this
work can be found in the following point. Husserl speaks of the noematic
"determinableX" as the center for all the contents we find when we reflect
philosophically on objects. The Fregean interpretationof this X is to take it
as something like a demonstrativepronoun(pp. 133-38). It is said to be part
of the abstractentity that mediates between us and things, the part that points
to the thing we intend throughit. But Drummondis able to show that the de-
terminablenoematic X is indeed partof the object and not like a demonstra-
tive pronoun pointing to the object. It is the identity that underlies all the
predicates, features, and modes of givenness that belong to the object, the
identityin the object's manifoldof appearances.
In this and in other ways, Drummondprovides a more accurateand a more
comprehensive reading of the texts to which the Fregean interpretationap-

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peals. His interpretationof the noema also allows Husserl's thought to es-
cape the legitimate criticisms that writers like Richard Rorty have lodged
against epistemological foundationalismin modern philosophy. Drummond
brings out this wider issue, and it is reflected in the title of his book, which
presentsa Husserl who can be read as a nonfoundationalrealist, not one who
is concerned with establishing foundationallythe validity of consciousness.
Drummond'sHusserlis also a much more interestingand fruitfulphilosopher
than the one presentedby the Fregean interpretation;he provides philosophy
with something to do, to carry out analytical descriptions of various regions
of being and various forms of human intentionality.Husserl threadshis way
between foundationalismand its deconstructiveantithesisand provides a seri-
ous speculativeand culturalrole for philosophy.
Drummondalso criticizes Gurwitsch's reading of the noema. Gurwitsch
takes the noema to be merely the sum of the appearancesof an object, not as
the identitydistinctbut never separatedfrom the manifoldof appearances.Be-
sides providing a critique of Gurwitschand the Fregeans on the noema, and
besides his comprehensive and exact interpretationof texts and positions,
Drummondalso gives many philosophical analyses of his own. He discusses
perception, its relation to space and motion, and its dependence on psy-
chophysical conditions; he analyzes the issue of possible-world semantics
from a Husserlianpoint of view, showing that for Husserl there is ultimately
one world as a setting for all variouspossibilities; he describes three kinds of
foundationalism(empiricist,rationalist,transcendental);he discusses "the re-
alism embedded in our naturalexperience"(p. 258), a realism which, he ob-
serves, the Fregean interpretationcannot explain. He also speaks about the
prelogical dimensions of experience and the way they yield predications,thus
touching on themes found in Cobb-Stevens' work. Drummond's work is
polemical, but positively and constructivelyso.
The two works together mark an importantpoint in the relationship be-
tween continentaland analytic philosophy, the two currentsthat have largely
dominatedWestern philosophy in the twentieth century. It is appropriate,as
the century draws to a close, to review these two traditionsand set the stage
for other configurationsin our philosophical life.

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