Continental Philosophy Review 37: 520, 2004.C 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Where is the phenomenology of attention that Husserl intendedto perform? A transcendental pragmatic-oriented descriptionof attention1

NATALIE DEPRAZPhilosophy, College International de Philosophie, University of Sorbonne (Paris IV), Paris,France (e-mail: frj@jussieu.fr)

Abstract. For the most part, attention occurs as a theme adjacent to much more topical andinnovatingly operating acts: first, the intentional act, which represents a destitution of theabstract opposition between subject and object and which paves the way for a detailed analysisof our perceptive horizontal subjective life; second, the reductive act, specified in a psycho-phenomenological sense as a reflective conversion of the way I am looking at things; third,the genetic method understood as a genealogy of logic based on our experiential affective pre-discursive world-life. In this respect, here are some of the leading questions of my investigation:What are the differences and the proximities between these methods and attentional activity?Why is the latter not put to the fore as a method? To what extent is this secondary part playedby attention linked to the constitution of phenomenology as opposed to psychology (for whichattention is a central theme), and what does it mean for the impossibility of phenomenology tofreeing itself completely from psychology?

1. Introduction

At the very end of Section 92 of Ideas I, the title of which is The Noeticand Noematic Aspects of Attentional Changes, Husserl claims the necessityof performing a systematic phenomenology of attention.2 I quote thelast sentence of the paragraph, which is written at the very end of a firstanalysis of these attentional modifications: So much by way of a generalcharacterization of the noetic-neomatic themes which must be treated withsystematic thoroughness in the phenomenology of attention (Ideas I, p. 226).Now, such an explicit claim appears to be quite unique in Husserls work,even though the attentional experience quietly accompanies and softlypermeates most analysis of perception, analyses that form the basis ofeach phenomenological description. Our leading question therefore is thefollowing: Where is the phenomenology of attention that Husserl intended toperform and, more precisely, as it seems to be both central and hidden, howis it possible to lay it out?

When one examines Husserls analyses more closely, we note that thetheme of attention is spread widely throughout his writings, namely in the

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Lectures on the Theory of Meaning (1908),3 in the first volume of Ideas(1913), in the second volume of First Philosophy (1923), in the AnalysesConcerning Passive and Active Synthesis (19181926) and also in Experienceand judgment (1939), or again in a whole set of early manuscripts from 19041905 planned by Th. Vongehr & R. Guiliani (from the Husserl-Archive inFreiburg) as a volume edition in the series of the Husserliana under the titleWahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit [Perception and Attetion]. However, theattentional experience is never considered by Husserl himself in a detailed way,neither as a central phenomenological theme, nor a fortiori as an independentand appropriate method that would be able to provide an accurate investigationof our internal psychic life as subjects. Attention remains in the backgroundor at least is only secondarily linked to other main phenomenological analyses(static analyses of perception and genetic analyses of affection), and in anycase never reaches the dignity of the reduction as a method.

Most of the time, attention occurs as an adjacent theme to the much moretopical and innovatively operating acts: in the first place the intentional act,which represents a destitution of the abstract opposition between subject andobject and which paves the way for a detailed analysis of our perceptual hor-izontal subjective life; in the second place the reductive act, specified in apsycho-phenomenological sense as a reflective conversion of the way I amlooking at things; third, the gentic method understood as a genealogy of logicbased on our experiential affective pre-discursive world-life. In that respect,some of the leading questions of my investigation will be: What are the differ-ences and the proximities between these methods and the attentional activity?Why is the latter not put to the fore as a method? To what extent is this sec-ondary role played by attention linked to the constitution of phenomenology asopposed to psychology, for which attention is a central theme, and what doesthis say about the impossibility for phenomenology freeing itself completelyfrom psychology? At the end of that same Section 92 mentioned above, we finda footnote in which Husserl acknowledges that attention is a central theme ofthe psychology of my time but where he also considers that the psychologicalapproach remains sensualistic, that is, in other, more modern terms, natu-ralistic. Therefore, it does not take into account how important intentionality,reduction and constitution are, that is, it does not acknowledge the central partplayed by the conscious acts of the subject in its specific way of turning tothings. According to Husserl, the psychological point of view therefore isunable to produce anything other than an empirical analysis, that is, it cannotreach the eidetic stage and a fortiori the transcendental one. Lipps and Pfanderare the only ones to whom Husserl does justice, insofar as they succeeded ac-cording to him in elaborating the relationship between attention and object-consciousness.

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Insofar as attention remains a lateral theme of the phenomenological anal-ysis, another method seems to be required in order to investigate more closelythe a-thematic operation and functional performance of such an experience inHusserls texts. In short, our question is this: What are the gestures, the con-crete cognitive operations, the precise rules and the practical performancesthrough which attention may come to the fore as a theme endowed with aphenomenological dignity? In order to be able to let such proceedings at workshow up, we need not to pay too much attention (precisely!); we need notfocus exclusively on the central methodic acts that are placed at the core ofthe whole phenomenological methodology: intentionality in the first instance,but also, of course, the reduction, and third, constitution both as static and ge-netic. In fact, attention may be a real opportunity to achieve such a differentmethodic reading of Husserls approach. Furthermore, what we aim to show isthe following: The attentional activity of the subject is the concrete embodiedway through which these well-known methodic acts appear to me as a subject.In other words, attention is another name, far more concrete, of the real praxisof intentionality, the reduction and genetic constitution.

Methodologically, this hypothesis involves at least a change of hermeneuticparadigm, and at the very most the questioning of the hermeneutic methodas an internal conceptual analysis. Such a conversion of the method relieson the idea that a psycho-phenomenological description, which takes ourfirst-person intuitive experience as a unique first criterion, and then the workof categorization as a sheer second support that always finds its point ofreference in the validity of the subjective experience, is a more appropriateway to do phenomenology and not only to think of it about. Now, such a viewof phenomenology was promoted very early (1950) by Paul Ricur in hisattempt at a phenomenological psychology of the involuntary act.4 By tryingto find a medium way between the empirical psychological analysis and theHusserlian eidetic level, Ricurs La philosophie de la volonte is a remarkableattempt at a pure (non-hermeneutical) description of a phenomenon. So wewould like to present our work modestly as another attempt in the same vein,an attempt that tries such a phenomenological description, again focused thistime on attentional experience, even though Ricur did it only once and thenabandoned the project while turning to a hermeneutic phenomenology.

Just two critical remarks before embarking on the descriptive analysis.First, unlike Ricur who dismisses the transcendental level of our experi-ence as subjects while engaging in his psycho-phenomenological analysis ofinvoluntary actions (which includes dealing with effort, emotions, habits, un-conscious states, life), we would like to show that the descriptive doing ingeneral, and descriptions involving the lived body and affection in particu-lar, does not exclude at all a transcendental approach. In this respect, Ricur

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remains caught in a too narrow view of transcendentality, one that owes toomuch to the Kantian heritage. We claim on the contrary what we call a tran-scendental empiricism as a theoretical background.5 Second, while stressingthe operative and performative side of the descriptive method, we want tostudy the attentional experience from the point of view of its praxis and not ofits theory, therefore suggesting the relevance of pragmatism as a philosophicalbackground, more in the sense of J. Dewey in his Human Nature and Conduct6than in Peirces or in Rortys perspectives. We hope to show concretely as weprogress how much these two comments are relevant and legitimate.7

In the framework of this confrontation between attentional activity with in-tentionality, I will proceed in three main steps: (1) I will show the ambivalenceof Husserls way of relegating attention to a sheer intentional modificationamong others; (2) I will unfold in more detail two main concrete gesturesthrough which attention appears in a lateral way both as an intuitive act and asa signitive act; (3) I will lay out the hypothesis that attention may be in fact ageneric modulator of every intentional act; this may contribute to explainingthe initial ambivalence I pointed out initially.

2. Considering attention as a sheer intentional modification amongothers: The primacy of intentionality against attentionality

In order to provide a first understanding of Husserls ambivalence with regardto the attentional theme, the genealogy of the theme of attention in Husserlswork is quite revealing. As early as September 1898, manuscripts dealing withthe study of attention are to be found (A VI 8I/27a and K I 64/Ia), but theyare presented as Exkursus ins Psychologische.8 In his Hauptstucke einerPhanomenologie der Erkenntnistheorie (19041905), the theme of attentioncorresponds to the second part, after a first part that deals with perception, andtwo other parts concerning time and imagination. In 1906, Husserl recordsin his personal diary: On the first rung we encounter the problem of a phe-nomenology of perception, of phantasy, of time, of things. In relation to this,I have also attempted a phenomenology of attention. . . .This would demand,further, a systematic exposition of a phenomenology of meaning. Further, atheory of judgment. . . .9

In the same vein, Husserls main thematic contention about attention is thefollowing: attention is nothing else than a fundamental kind of intentionalmodification. Such a claim is developed in a footnote at the end of the Section92 of Ideas I10 within the larger framework of the third Section of the work,where the intentional (noetic-noematic) structure of the pure consciousnessis actually promoted as its main methodic structure. More precisely, within

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the third chapter dealing specifically with noema, the attentional changescorrespond to a second extension of the notion, after a first perceptual one(Sections 8991) and a third more complex prectical one (Sections 9396).So just a look at the organization of the argument shows how much attentionis only one possible extended application of the intentional structure squeezedin among others (e.g., perceptual, practical).

Let us focus on the Section 92 and notice in the first place the paradoxicalturn of the sentence, which is straightforwardly revealing for Husserls am-bivalence with regard to attention: (1) attention is nothing else than (nichtsanderes ist als) a kind of intentional modification; (2) attention is a funda-mental kind (Grundart) of intentional modification. Husserls contention istherefore double-sided: First, attention must of course be analyzed within theintentional structure. Outside of this it has no relevance. Second, it is promisedto play a prominent role within such a framework, as it is a fundamental kindof intentional modification. Another indication of such an ambivalence can beread in the following sentence found at the beginning of the paragraph aftera few introductory sentences: In this context it is a question of . . . changeswhich . . . do not alter the correlative noematic productions but, nevertheless,exhibit alterations of the whole mental process with respect to both its noeticand noematic sides.11 We can observe here quite a subtle way of showinghow attention partially affects and alters [wandelt ab] the lived experientialintentionality of consciousness without radically transforming [verandern] it.

In short, the whole development is indicative of a dependence of attentionon the general intentional methodology. Again, at the end of the paragraph,Husserl explains: . . . [We] stand here at the first and radical beginning ofthe theory of attention . . . the rest of the study must be achieved within theframework of intentionality and be dealt with not as an empirical study, butfirst of all as an eidetic one.12 So Husserl excludes here any other possibilityto broach the theme of attention: It is necessarily an intentional act and, assuch, it has an eidetic dimension. At once Husserl makes here two decisions,which amount for him to the same one but could well have been separated inother contexts: (1) Attention is subjected to intentionlity; (2) Intentionality isnecessarily an eidetic intentionality. Such a twofold contention is intended tocreate a clear separation between phenomenology and psychology. (1) Atten-tion is not a mental activity by which some sensations and psychic states getintensified due to more or less strong imprints on my consciousness of sen-sory inputs of stimuli. J. Locke and then the Abbot Condillac first describedit as a plus de conscience or a conscience differentielle, namely, in hisEssai sur lorigine des connaissances humaines (1746).13 On the contrary, itis a lived act of my consciousness that is directed towards specific objects.(2) Attention is not a contingent and factual conscious act that is all the same

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caused by my being existentially impressed and materially affected by variousevents; it is an act of my consciousness, the structure of which is essential,that is, independent of any empirical datum. According to Husserl, both con-tentions are intrinsically linked, even though they address two different kindsof psychology: The first one is a sensualistic and atomistic one, mostly inthe vein of the British empiricism; the second one is an intentional naturalor naturalistic psychology, which could be represented by people like Lipps,Pfander or even J. Daubert.14 In this respect Husserl shares Descartes andMalebranches rationalist conception of attention as being the fundamentalcondition of our freedom as knowing subjects.

Even if we keep as a first step the idea of the primacy of eidetic intentionalityas a general background in order to analyze attentional activities, we need totry to understand the specificity of the so-called attentional changes or modesHusserl is insisting on within such a larger phenomenological background.Indeed, even though the free act of attention has no relevance outside of aneidetic intentionality, it corresponds to (I quote the beginning of the paragraph)a species of remarkable changes in consciousness . . . which cut across allother species of intentional events and thus make up a quite general structureof consciousness having its own peculiar dimension.15 As we noticed it isalready thanks to at least two ambivalent formulations, according to Husserlhimself, that intentionality seems to be a necessary but not sufficient criterionto describe our attentional activity, such that it indeed needs to be broachedfirst through more concrete gestures (i.e., through its praxis), second by layingbare its transcendental functionality.

3. Attention as the embodied praxis of intentionality

Looking closer at Husserls descriptions helps us to come to the conclusion thatthe theme of attention is more present under other terms than the expected one,Aufmerksamkeit, or that the latter needs to be re-anchored in its native concretelato sensu signitive meaning. Both investigations concur in attempting to showthe peculiar concrete flesh of attentionality beyond its general intentionalstructural scaffolding.

A. The attentional act as the intuitive double-sided gesture of turning one-self [sich zuwenden] and becoming salient [sich abheben]

Right at the beginning of the Section 92, after having said that the atten-tional modification refers to a sui generis structure of consciousness, Husserlmentions two gestures as being our specific correlated way of speaking of the

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attentional activity: We spoke metaphorically of the pure Egos mental re-gard or the ray of its regard, of its advertings toward and turning away from.The relevant phenomena stood out unitarliy for us with perfect clarity anddistinctness.16 What is striking here is the imagery in which Husserl uses forhis description, namely, as if he were reporting the language of others and notreally accounting himself for an experience he would actually see in that way.

Truly, such visual and potentially tactile metaphors of looking and lightingand of relief or salience as well as the kinetic metaphor of the gaze turningtowards and turning away are at work in the research of some famous psy-chologists who already began to show their interest for the study of attentionduring the second half of the 19th century; I mean W. James and W. Wundt.Both authors describe the process of becoming attentive as a light or clarityincreasing and as a transfer of perceptions and thoughts from the peripheryto the center of consciousness, the latter being analogized with the centra-tion of the eye looking and turning itself.17 In addition, although this kindof presentation of attention will be ostracized by behaviorism as a regres-sive mentalist introspectionism, the psychologist Binet and the philosopherBergson (Matie`re et memoire) in France, but also the phenomenologists A.Gurwitsch in his investigation into the field of consciousness and A. Schutz inDer sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (1932),18 will all concur in using suchconcrete ways of describing our attentional activity. Again, in contemporarycognitive psychology, many studies rely on the two-sided field of conscious-ness called center/periphery to promote (this time more clearly) third-personexperiments of attentional activity.19

Again, Husserls approach is ambivalent: on the one hand, he cognizesthe frequency of such a way of apprehending attention. A bit later in theparagraph, he will come back again to the visual image of lighting and ofzones of obscurity to characterize attention and its decreasing as inattention:Attention is usually compared to a spot of light. The object of attention,in the specific sense, lies in the cone of more or less bright light; but itcan also move into the penumbra and into the completely dark region.On the other hand, he indicates how much such a presentation remainsinsufficient but is necessary as a basis of description: Though the metaphoris far from adequate to differentiate all the modes which can be fixedphenomenologically, it is still illustrative insofar as it indicates alterations inwhat appears, as what appears. These changes in its illumination do not alterwhat appears which respect to its own sense-composition; but brightness andobscurity modify its mode of appearance: they are to be found and describedwhen we direct our regard to the noematic object.20

All the same, the whole phenomenological topical analysis of my percep-tual and remembering activity, which is developed for example in chapter II

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of the third section of Ideas I, entitled The general structures of pureconsciousness, but also in First Philosophy II, in the third and fourth Sections,is guided by such a double concrete gesture of turning oneself towards/awayand letting objects become salient. However, attention is never mentioned asbeing the act of the consciousness that underlies the whole. Why? It seemsto be that Husserl invented or promoted other concepts that are more in thespirit of the phenomenology he intended to defend, namely, horizontal in-tentionality, reflexive reduction and genetic constitution. Attention thereforeoccurs only indirectly under other less unexpected terms but more concretegestures: Zuwendung and Abwendung, which refer to the bodily kinetic ges-ture of turning towards/away; Umkehrung des Blickes, which corresponds tothe visual action of directing ones gaze from one spatial place to another;Abhebung, which has to do with the way an object becomes salient and there-fore affects me among other objects only perceived with it or simply notperceived at all. Such embodied and precise gestures suggest that the atten-tional activity permeates and nourishes as an everyday praxis every one of myintentional perceptual, remembering or imaginative acts of consciousness. Letus notice besides that these embodied kinetic, visual and affecting gesturesalso provide concrete exemplary leading-clues in order to re-anchor the reduc-tive and the genetic constitutive activity of the subject that shows how muchthe concretization of intentionality is narrowly linked to that of reduction andthat of constitution.

But, not only is attention present at the core of my main intentional intuitiveacts. It is also underlying the concrete signitive activity of the subject of takingnote of [merken], noticing [bemerken] and remarking [aufmerken].

B. The attentional act as the gradual gesture of noticing [bemerken,aufmerken, mitmerken, unbemerken]: The signitive scope of attention

In paragraph 92 of Ideas I again, the process of noticing is directly linked tothe previous double correlative gesture of the subjects turning ones gaze (to-ward/away) and of the objects becoming salient. These words have a commonroot merk- and are used as a way to graduate such processes of becoming at-tentive. However, such a gradual description had not been provided yet by theprevious analysis, neither in terms of lighting, nor with the gestures of turn-ing or becoming salient as they underscored above all the sudden salientpresence of the object lighted by the eye and the kinetic move of the subject.Now, the whole perceptual field is structured along different modes of becom-ing noticeable, of noticeability, or of slowly becoming unnoticeable and it istherefore also approached thanks to the temporal processes of actualizationand dis-actualization: . . . [I]n one of the compared cases, one moment of

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the object is favored and, in another case, another; or of the fact that oneand the same moment is paid attention to primarily at one time and onlysecondarily at another time, or just barely noticed still, if not indeed com-pletely unnoticed though still appearing. Those are indeed different modesbelonging specifically to attention as such. Among them the group of action-ality modes are separated from the non-actionality mode, from what we callcomplete inattention, the mode which is, so to speak, dead consciousness ofsomething.21

Now, such a gradual temporal perceiving process of modes of noticing hadalready been extended and, more precisely, applied by Husserl to its signitiveand verbal dimension. As early as 1908, in the Lectures on the Theory of Mean-ing, within the framework of the central distinction between the consciousnessof meaning [Bedeutungsbewutsein] and the verbal consciousness [Wortlaut-bewutsein], Husserl comes back to the different usual (so he says) functionsof attention, primary noticing [primares Bemerken] and thematic intend-ing [thematisches Meinen] (Hua, 1822). The general framework is the sameas the one of 1913 already, that is, intentionality. Husserls idea is to show theintricacy of my being attentive to the words and to the meaning of the words:Consciousness of meaning is intertwined with verbal consciousness.22 Inorder to do so, he unfolds in quite an illuminating way the different strata ofnoticing the meaning instead of the word in its materiality or vice versa, andthe different experiences we have of a double attention with a stronger em-phasis on the one side or the other: primary noticing, secondary noticing,remarking, adjuct intending [nebenbei Meinen], thematic intending.

Husserl presents his analysis of the interweaving of word-consciousnessand meaning-consciousness as an applied extension of the perceptual inten-tional model. My question however is this: To what extent is the whole analysisnot also permeated by a fundamental lato sensu signitive experience, insofaras, along with a bodily anchored one, as we already shown, the vocabularyused to describe the multifarious folds of the attentional modes of conscious-ness is a signitive vocabulary of marks and indications?

As a provisory conclusion: Attention as an intentional act of consciousnessneeds to be reanchored in its bodily postures (kinetic, visual and affective) andin its noticing qua signitive scope (indicative, both verbal and meaningful)in order to delineate more precisely the experiential praxis which provides itwith its phenomenal impulse. By laying out these two bodily and signitivegestures of attention, we do not want to say that Husserl claimed explicitlysuch practical anchorages, but that his descriptions are full of such concreteindications, which need to be unfolded and uncovered as such. Hence we aimat de-centering the reading from the claim of a de jure thematic intentionalmodel reigning over each act of consciousness to the hypothesis of an operative

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attentionality modulating de facto the different activities of our consciousness.So we have to keep in mind the concrete bodily and signitive gestures atwork in attention that give it its flesh, if we want to argue in more detailour hypothesis about attentionality. The latter does not amount to denyingthe relevance of intentionality, but only to relativize its primacy as a globalmodel of consciousness because of its presentation as a too formal and generalscaffolded structure of consciousness.

4. Considering attention as a concretely embodied modulator23inherent in every intentional act: The empiricist-transcendentalgenetic primacy of attentionality as opposed to intentionality

To modulate means to vary, to be inflected, to adapt to particular casesor contexts of meaning. In addition, the word modulation has a context of ref-erence in music, meaning the changes of stress, emphasis, intensity, pitch of asound as it is emitted. Along this understanding of the process of modulating,our hypothesis is that attentionality is a dimension of the acts of conscious-ness whose originality is to show the character of changing present in all theintentional acts of consciousness, that is, provides them with a constitutivevariability of their own way of appearing and discloses such dynamics ofinner variable alteration as being inherent in each act. Whereas intentionalityis a formal model of the structure of consciousness, whose openness lies in alinear directedness towards the object, attentionality as modulation furnishesevery act of our consciousness with a material fluctuating density due to itsinner variations and its concrete changeability.

At the beginning of the paragraph 92, which appears to be quite a mineof information with respect to attention, Husserl puts to the fore the changes[Wandlungen] of attention. As a matter of fact, he broaches the theme ofattention through its changes. Thus attention winds up being defined as anintentional act by means of its changes. Its originality lies in the fact that itis combined [es kreuzt sich] with all other kinds of intentional phenomenawithout disappearing at all in them, or that it is mingled [vermengt] withthem without ever being given (or able to be given) in isolation or separatedfrom them. It belongs intrinsically to the intentional phenomenal structure ofthe acts of my consciousness and provides them with its constitutive touchof variability. In a similar sense, attention (through the image of the eye-beam) is presented as going through, as penetrating the different strata ofconsciousness, be they perceptual, remembering, imaginative etc. It is a sortof transversal qua vertical activity of my consciousness, perpendicular to thehorizontal linearity of intentional directedness, since it gives us an access to

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the mobile depth of our consciousness as being a weave of vibrating variations.Attention therefore seems not to be linked to any specific intentional acts inparticular, be they perceptual, remembering or imagining, but it is associatedto all as an unessential but unavoidable modulator of each of them.

How is it then possible to determine more concretely the transcendentaloperative functionality of attention inherent in each intentional act? Let ussay first that such a functionality of attention is a direct expression of thegeneral background we contend: transcendental empiricism. Indeed, thereis a transcendentality of the function of attention because it corresponds to aconstitutive dimension of each of the intentional acts: as such it is unavoidable.But there is also a constitutive material empirical character to the givenness ofattention because it appears to be the very concrete variability and experientialalteration of my consciousness.

In other words, as we already said, it is the flesh of the intentional scaf-folding, or, to use J. Derridas perspective, it is the parergon as opposed tothe ergon, the margin with regard to the text, the signifier in relation tothe signified,24 or again, to refer to the musical paradigm, the harmonicsrelated to the fundamental note. We could also say that attentionality fulfillsexactly the function of the example in Husserlian phenomenology, being atthe same time a contingent (unessential in that sense, beliebig as Husserlsays in his Phenomenological Psychology25 leading-clue of intentionality and,once disclosed, an intrinsic structuring of each act.26 As we know how muchexemplarity in Husserl is linked to his conception of eidetics, attentionalitycontributes by giving a more material and dynamic account of the processof eidetic variation: The inner variability which constitutes attentionality asa dynamic multilayered component of consciousness has to be kept with itsempirical richness to reach the eidos of an act, so that we have to do with amaterialized eidetics, which retains in it as constitutive elements the empiricalattentional variations of the act.

In that respect, it is interesting to look closer at C. Stumpfs Tonpsy-chologie.27 We know that Brentano, who was Husserls teacher inVienna, recommended him to Stumpf, who was teaching in Halle. Duringthe fall 1886, three years after Stumpf published his work on the psychologyof sound, Husserl went to prepare his Habilitation under his direction. Healso intended to increase his knowledge in psychology and was impressedby Stumpfs way of dealing with the relationship between perception andimagination in his lectures from the semester 18861887 (Ms. F I 8/8a). Wealso know that Stumpf 1894 encouraged Husserl to read James Principlesof Psychology (1890). As early as 1893 however, Husserl lays out a firstcriticism of Stumpfs analysis of attention, which can easily be extended toJames own analysis.28 In the Manuscript K I 63, we read that both analysis

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are pre-phenomenological. Now, in his Tonpsychologie (1883),29 Stumpfdescribes attention as being awakened by an interest and narrowly linked topleasure [Lust] and feelings [Gefuhle]. The activity of noticing procedes froma pleasure and unnoticed objects are effects of displeasure [Unlust]. It is whatStumpf (but we could also hear James here) calls a pleasure one has to no-tice or a Lust am Bemerken. In addition, the whole analysis of attention isled by the paradigm of listening to musical sounds. As attention is motivatedby pleasure/displeasure, it follows the rhythm of a focused tension [Span-nung] and an open relaxing [Losung] and corresponds to a specific intensityof feeling, involving as a counterpart a resistance [Widerstand] and obstacles[Hemmungen] coming from the subject, which refer to processes of distractionor inattention.

Husserls criticism starts exactly here: attention is not a pleasure one has tonotice [eine Lust am Bemerken]. Pleasure/displeasure or feelings in generalare not at the core of attention/inattention, and Husserl will replace the Stump-fian energetic and bodily tension/relax model by the intention/fulfillmentmodel, that is, formal intentionality, and refuses thereby what he interprets asa content-oriented description of attention in order to promote an act-orienteddescription.30

Instead of strengthening the opposition between Husserl and Stumpf, thatis, between intentionality and attentionality, as if they were exclusive alterna-tives, our own contention is that it is far more interesting to keep the intentionalbasis of analysis of attention and to include therein the fruitful developmentsStumpf has been able to provide in his analysis. As we already said, inten-tionality would remain the scaffolding of each act of consciousness, whereasattentionality brings in its flesh.

Stumpfs analysis brings to the core the idea of interest as feeling: At-tention is interest, and interest is a feeling [Aufmerksamkeit ist Interesseund Interesse ist ein Gefuhl].31 The whole development stresses the grada-tion of modes of attention in the light of concrete examples drawn from thephenomenon of sleeping and its correlates, that is, awaking, half-sleep, day-dreaming, or from the phenomenon of tiredness and its degrees in laziness,concentration, training, etc. What Stumpf wants to underline here is the pro-cess of intensifying (what he calls Steigerung, Verstarkung) which is properto the becoming attentive and, conversely, the counter-process of becominginattentive through the decreasing or lowering of intensity. Moreover, he an-alyzes the different forms of attention (involuntary, reflexive, compelled) andits multifarious effects. Like James, who develops quite a similar analysis ofthe felt degrees of attention, of its forms and effects, he contends that the phe-nomenon of attention can be measured and in a parallel manner analyzed ata neuro-psychological level, relying on Fechners psycho-physical analysis,

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while James is more akin to Wundts experiments. Now, Husserl in later ge-netic works, and above all in his Analyses Concerning Passive and ActiveSynthesis (from 19181926)32 will give a central importance to the gradualemergence of attention, to the becoming attentive and to the different modes,forms and effects of attentionality. He will obviously take into account in a farmore accurate way what has been gained from empiricism and psychology inorder to analyze attention in relation to its affective genesis.33 Never will hehowever include the necessity of doing justice as such to psycho- and neuro-logical experiments as James and Stumpf did, in order not to explain attentionone-sidedly, but even to give more meaning to the complexity of the pheno-menon.34

Now, the recent studies in neuroscience show clearly how much attentionis a complex act that integrates a great amount of competences of the subject,that is, perception, memory, imagination. On the basis of an early psycho-logical analysis of attention understood as a mental effort and an ability toselect,35 attention has been more and more considered as a basic mechanism ofconsciousness36 and, today, the neuro-scientific studies have been able to iden-tify three different attentional networks thanks to electric registering or morespecifically thanks to IRM (Functional Cerebral Imaging): either the attentionof a subject is oriented toward a sensory stimulation, or attention is activatedby the work of the memory, or attention corresponds to a maintained state ofvigilance. Such results show that the sub-personal mechanisms of attentionrefer to a specific complex of unconscious cognitive processes that can neitherbe localized in a few neurons nor put into action the whole of the brain. In thesame vein, P. Buser in his recent book Cerveau de soi, cerveau delautre,37shows very well how the attentional activity is situated at the crossroads ofmany other cognitive activities: perception, memory, action, etc. In addition,he underlines that attention is not a monolithic activity but involves what hecalls attentional states and does not belong only to our clear consciousness,but has to do with unconscious processes related to pre-attentional activities.In short, he insists on the genesis and the transitions inherent in the attentionaldynamics.

From a phenomenological point of view, these neuro-scientific and cogni-tive psychologist thrusts are quite valuable, since (1) they confirm the ideathat the description of attention needs to be anchored in the study of its ge-netic emergence, that is, of its graduality, its different modes and states, itsmultifarious effects; (2) they indicate that the hypothesis of attention as a tran-scendental (both functional and material) modulator of the intentional acts ofmy consciousness is a strong hypothesis, insofar as attentional sub-personalprocesses also seem to be transversal to many other cognitive activities of thebrain.

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5. Conclusion

As early as 1936, Minkowski in his book Vers une cosmologie38 made twoquite relevant observations: (1) attention contains quite essentially in itselfinattention: it is an illusion to try to focus ones attention. It is the deathof attention. Referring to James, he then spoke of tres fins mouvementsoscillatoires de distraction, so as to suggest that distraction is the betterway to broach the theme of attention rather than attention itself. This remarkis quite in agreement with Husserls initial description of the changes ofattention, and its constitutive variability, but also goes one step further, sinceit brings to the fore distraction and modes of inattention as a more relevantaccess to a phenomenology of attention; (2) attention is a phenomenon thatexists in addition, i.e., that has to be added [qui se surajoute] to the otherperceptual and thought-phenomena and specifies them. It has to be studied,not in relation with its object, but with regard to other connected phenomena.Such a comment echoes quite finely our hypothesis of modulation andconcurs with the global functionality of attention neuroscientists pointed outrecently. He also had another comment about attention: Attention as functionhas been much studied by psychologists, how to remain attentive, what is theorgan of attention; attention as phenomenon is embedded in the intentionalcorrelation: noetically, how to turn toward/away; noematically, how an objectbecomes salient for me. This last observation should be a good indicationfor us to keep in mind the necessity to braid together (without exclusion)the Husserlian phenomenological approach (here intentional, eidetic andtranscendental, both reductive and constitutive), the cognitive psychologicalapproach (practical, empirical genetic) and the neuro-scientific one, whichprovides us with parallel thrusts in terms of sub-personal processes.

Notes

1. The following inquiry presupposes a first step (and chapter) which focuses on the reductionas a concrete practical method: it was published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies,Special Issue entitled The View from Within: First-Person Approaches to the Study ofConsciousness, eds. F. Varela & J. Shear 6/2-3 (1999). We present here a further step(and second chapter): Intentionality and Attentionality, was presented at SPEP, 2000,in the framework of a workshop co-organized with Anthony Steinbock; a second one,Husserls Phenomenology of the Micro-genesis of Attention in the Light of C. Stumpfsand W. James Accounts on Attention, was presented at Southern Illinois University atCarbondale in April, 2001, at a Conference on attention organized by N. Depraz and A.Steinbock and corresponds to a third chapter of a forthcoming book.

2. See Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomeno-logical Philosophy, First Book, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983);hereafter, Ideas I.

PHENOMENOLOGY OF ATTENTION 19

3. Edmund Husserl, Vorlesungen uber Bedeutungslehre Sommersemester 1908, ed. UrsulaPanzer (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1986); hereafter, Vorlesungen.

4. P. Ricur, La philosophie de la volonte, t. 1: Le volontaire et 1involontaire (Paris: Aubier,1950; reed. 1988).

5. See N. Depraz, Lucidite du corps: De lempirisme transcendantal en phoenomoenologie(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001).

6. J. Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology (London:Allen and Unwin, 1922).

7. See on this matter, N. Depraz, F. J. Varela, and P. Vermersch, On Becoming Aware. AnExperiential Pragmatics (Amsterdam: Benjamins Press, 2003).

8. See K. Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik: Denk- und lebensweg Edmund Husserls (Den Haag:M. Nijhoff, 1977), 55; herafter, Husserl-Chronik.

9. See K. Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik, 99: Da stehen in erster Stelle die Probleme einerPhanomenologie der Wahrnehmung, der Phantasie, der Zeit, des Dinges. In Zusammen-hang damit habe ich auch Versuche gemacht uber eine Phanomenologie der Aufmerk-samkeit . . . Weiter bedurfte es einer systematischen Ausfuhrung einer Phanomenologieder Bedeutungen. Weiter eine Urteilstheorie . . .

10. Ideas I, Section 92, 221226, here, 225.11. Ideas I, Section 92, 223.12. Ideas I, Section 92, 223.13. Entre plusieurs perceptions dont nous avons en meme temps conscience, il nous arrive

souvent davoir plus conscience des unsque des autres, ou detre plus vivement avertide leur existence. Plus meme la conscience de quelques unes augmente, plus celle desautres diminue . . . .cette operation par laquelle notre conscience, par rapport a` certainesperceptions, augmente si vivement quelles paraissent les seules dont nous ayons prisconnaissance, je lappelle attention. Ainsi etre attentif,cest avoir plus conscience desperceptions quelle fait natre, que de celles que dautres produisent, en agissant commeelle sur nos sens; et lattention a ete dautant plus grande, quon se souvient moins decesdernie`res, Essai sur lorigine des connaissances humaines, (Euvres philosophiquesde Condillac (Paris: P. U. F., Corpus general des philosophes francais, Auteurs modernes,Tome XXXIII, 1947), Vol. I, First Part, Section 5, 1011.

14. See, e.g., K. Schuhmann and B. Smith, Against Idealism: Johannes Daubert vs. HusserlsIdeas I, Review of Metaphysics 39 (1985): 763793, and T. Lipps, Grundtatsachen desSeelenlebens (Bonn: M. Cohen, 1883).

15. Section 92, 222; translation modified.16. Section 92, 189.17. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press

1890/1981); W. Wundt, Grundri der Psychologie (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1896).18. A. Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964);

A. Schutz, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Vienna: Springer, 1932), p. 13.19. B. Mangan, Taking Phenomenology Seriously: The Fringe and Its Implication for

Cognitive Research, Consc. Cognition 2 (1993): 89108.20. Ideas I, Section 92, 224; translation modified.21. Husserl, Ideas I, Section 92, 224.22. Husserl, Hua 26, 22: Mit dem Wortlautbewutsein ist verflochten das Bedeutungsbe-

wutein.23. The expression of modulation is used quite often in cognitive psychology but also in neuro-

biology to characterize the attentional activity. On this matter, see J. Lecas, Lattention

20 NATALIE DEPRAZ

visuelle: de la conscience aux neurosciences (Bruxelles: Mardaga, 1992), 10: lattentionnest jamais seulement en cause et na probablement gue`re de sens en dehors de la modu-lation quelle exerce sur dautres activites; and J.D. Cohen, K. Dunbar, J.F. McClelland,Quesaisje? (1999): 4: A linverse des autres grandes fonctions psychologiques telles quela perception, la memoire, limagination, lattention na pas de produit specifique. En faitelle participe a` toutes les activites mentales, dont elle module le fonctionnement.

24. See J. Derrida, La verite en peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978); Marges de la philosophie(Paris: Minuit, 1972); La voix et le phenome`ne (Paris: PUF, 1967/1998).

25. Edmund Husserl, Phanomenologische Psychologie: Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925,ed. W. Biemel (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1968).

26. Regarding the function of examples, see C. Lobo, Le phenomenologue et ses exemples.Etude sur le role de lexemple dans la constitution de la methode et louverture du champde la phenomenologie husserlienne (Paris: Kime, 2000).

27. C. Stumpf, Tonpsychologie (R. Hirzel: Leipzig, 1883), Bd. 1., Section 4: Aufmerksamkeit;Ubung; Ermudung, 6787. See also Erscheinungen und psychische Funktionen (Berlin:Konigli Akademie der Wissenschaften).

28. W. James, Principles of Psychology, volume 1, chapter 11, 402458.29. A similar analysis is to befound as early as 1873 in Uber den Ursprung der Zeit und

Raumvorstellung.30. Hua XXVII, Section 4.31. Stumpf, p. 68. See also as a parallel step concerning evidence as feeling the article by

G. Heffernan, A Study in the Sedimented Origins of Evidence: Husserl and His Con-temporaries in a Collective Essay in the Phenomenology and Psychology of EpistemicJustification, Husserl Studies 16/2 (1999): 83181.

32. Edmund Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Tran-scendental Logic, trans. Anthony J. Steinbock (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,2001).

33. See also Analyses, esp. Part 3 of the Main Texts Section 49 and 50, which deal with therelationship between activity and passivity and with the attentional modality at work inour affect-consciousness [Gemutsbewutsein].

34. See as we said the chapter 3 of a forthcoming book about the phenomenology of attention,dealing with attention and affection in the genetic Husserlian perspective.

35. U. Neisser, Cognitive Psychology (New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1967).36. M. I. Posner, Attention: The Mechanisms of Consciousness, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA)

91 (1994): 73987403.37. P. Buser, Cerveau de soi, cerveau de lautre (Paris: O. Jacob, 1998), ch. VIII, attention

et pre-attention, 147168.38. E. Minkowski, Vers une cosmologie (Paris: Aubier, 1936), chapter 7, Lattention,

p. 8896.