Zaner - At Play in the Field of Possibles

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/156916210X503092

Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884 brill.nl/jpp

phenomenologicalpsychology

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At Play in the Field of Possibles

Richard M. ZanerVanderbilt University

Abstract Th is essay focuses on questions central to Husserls essential methodology, speci cally his notion of free-fantasy variation, which he regarded as his fundamental methodological insight. At the heart of this vital element of phenomenology is what he often terms as-if experience thanks to which anything whatever (actual or possible) can be considered either for its own sake or as an example of something else. Further analysis explores the act of exempli cation, the act of feigning (termed possibilizing) and the shifts of attention and orientation that ground free-fantasy variation. Exempli cation and possibilizing are then examined in daily life to discern what makes the complex act of feigning at all possible. An examination of the phenomenon of upsets (of what is typically expected) brings the core sense of possibilizing to light. A focus on the dramatic force intrinsic to these experiences, and the essential place of re ective awareness inherent to them, makes apparent how the rudimentary sense of self begins to emerge, and there follows an analysis of this self-referentiality of possibilizing. Th e analysis then concludes with a brief examination of Husserls so-called zig-zag method of constitutive phenomenology.

Keywordsphenomenology, free-fantasy variation, phenomenological method, essence, exempli cation, re ection

Th is essay is presented as the journey I in fact rst embarked upon, and I hope that this neither detracts from nor unduly confuses matters. In this, I am cognizant of the extent my method evokes the method of concrete approaches Gabriel Marcel worked out with amazing depthan approach that bears more than incidental resemblance to that of Soren Kierkegaards

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884 29

indirect communication. If my own approach nonetheless tends more to confuse than to illuminate, this is surely due to my own shortcomings and nothing in what either Marcel, Kierkegaard, or, the one truly at the heart of my work, Husserl, have accomplished.

A long time ago, I sat down in a rickety chair I had found and placed in a tiny room o a garage at an old desk on which I had carefully placed a large stack of blank paper, just so, on it. It was the dead of winter in a place where this made a great deal of di erencePort Je erson, Long Island in the winter of 1972. I had the idea of trying to write about some things that had been niggling me for some time. Not too long, to be sure, for I was still quite young, only a whisker past a decade from receiving my doctorate at the Graduate Faculty of Th e New School.

I must have been charmed, for I had been able to study with some truly fabulous mentors: Maurice Natanson rst, while still an undergraduate (although, it is true, a bit older than most, having already served in the Air Force as a B-26 gunner in Korea, with 50 combat missions behind me); then, as a graduate student, with Alfred Schutz, Dorion Cairns, Hans Jonas, Werner Marx and, after Schutzs death in 1958, Aron Gurwitsch. All of which was not only instructive in the nest sense, but persistently raised a bristle of questions that, I sensed, I needed to pursue. I let them settle into my mind, my soul, my self, leaving them to remain unaddressed for as long as I could before I felt the urge to begin, ever so slowly and cautiously, in that cold, cold side room in the dead of winter, hoping somehow to be able to dig into their grounds, eventually even nurture them to life.

So, I began a long process of airing out these questions, thinking about them as thoroughly as I could at that time, so that I might begin to learn whether they really were worth pursuit, worth spending a long, long time pondering rst this way then that until, perhaps, things could be a little settled between us, these questions and myself. Doing all this, I was long in discovering, was nding myself in a kind of native air.

Th ese questions pestered me, and I wanted to settle things on my own, as it wereor, as much as I could, engaging in this re ective e ort for its own sake and as far as I could on my own; not doing something about phenomenology, nor laying out what others had done on these topics. I resolved to do this on my own and for myself, I must add, each time over the next thirty years whenever I found myself returning to these matters.

30 R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

Not that what others might say is uninteresting; not at all. It is rather that these were issues that I soon came to realize de ned my life, and I knew I would have to settle things on my own.

What eventually emerged was a somewhat lengthy manuscript. Ive managed to wrest out several articlesthe rst nicely buried in the honor-able if neglected cemetery of a Festschriften in memory of Dorion Cairns (Zaner, 1973a); the second an article (Zaner, 1973b), Examples and Pos-sibles: A Criticism of Husserls Th eory of Free-Phantasy Variation, some of the ideas seemed to me more clearly pursued (note that the spelling of phantasy stems from Husserls usage: Phantasie. English usage seems to me to require fantasy which I have used throughout). Th e labor of that project also served importantly in much of my subsequent writing. Even so, I felt I was not yet up to the thing, so I put it to rest, back on the shelf where nobody but I would be likely to look. And forgot it, returned, forgot again, over the next thirty years or so.

It was especially Cairns, I must say, whose meticulous study of Hus-serlwith whom he had spent some years on two di erent occasionspersuaded me that the phenomenon of free-fantasy, which is the central theme driving much of my writing, deserved as close attention as I could muster. In what follows, it will soon become apparent that even more basic issues have become signi cant, and that the pursuit of free-fantasy sheds unexpected light on them.

Examples and Possibles

Th e Signi cance of the As-If

In section 70 of the rst volume of his Ideas, Edmund Husserl (1982) pondered the speci c method he termed free-fantasy variation. It is not, he emphasized many times, an empirical variation such as that found in much empirical psychological or social science, which involves inferences from an inductive empeiria and yields only inductive generalizations pertaining to a speci c class of de facto states of a airs (Husserl, 1969). Free-fantasy variation, to the contrary must be understood . . . as a varia-tion carried on with the freedom of pure fantasy and with the conscious-ness of its purely optional characterthe consciousness of the pure


Anything Whatever (Husserl, 1969, p. 206). Such a method, he went on to emphasize, invokes a di erent kind of experience from our usual straightforward kind found, say, in sensory experience. Here, rather, expe-rience in free-fantasy is

neutralized experience, as-if experience, we can also say experience in fan-tasy, which, with a suitable and freely possible alteration of ones attitudes, becomes positional experience of a possible individual. Naturally, as-if experi-ence has parallel as-if modalities of its primitive mode, as-if certainty of being. (Husserl, 1969, p. 206)

Th is as-if experience forms the basis for the method of free-fantasy, and is distinguished from any form of empirical variation since it is released from all restrictions to facts accepted beforehand (Husserl, 1969, p. 248).

Th e signi cance for Husserl of the kinds of inquiry thereby opened up cannot be over-emphasized. As will be appreciated shortly, as-if experience is an always-possible modi cation of any actual experience of anything what-ever. Accordingly, Husserl clearly recognized that the free-fantasy variational method correlated with such neutralized experience is the ground for

an apriori science, which con nes itself to the realm of pure possibility (pure imaginableness) and, instead of judging about actualities of transcendental being, judges about [its] apriori possibilities and thus at the same time pre-scribes rules apriori for actualities. (Husserl, 1960, p. 69)

Husserl was quite clear about the signi cance of this point: He terms it the fundamental methodological insight. Indeed, it constitutes the basic sense of transcendental phenomenology, which for him is the fundamental philosophical discipline. Once it is grasped, he emphasized, such free-fantasy, methodical variation can be seen to pervade the whole phenom-enological method (and likewise, in the natural realm, the method of a genuine and pure internal psychology) (Husserl, 1960, p. 69). Under-stood as the method of eidetic description, the practice of free-fantasy vari-ation signi es a transfer of all empirical descriptions into a new and fundamental dimension (Husserl, 1960, p. 69). While it can be argued that the method can be found, in some form, even in Husserls earliest writings, his most mature insights came much later, especially in Formal and Transcendental Logic and Cartesian Meditations. By the time of his Paris


Lectures on which he based the latter work, indeed, Husserl was already maintaining that free-fantasy variation is the fundamental form of all par-ticular transcendental methods . . . [and gives] the legitimate sense of a tran-scendental phenomenology (Husserl, 1960, p. 72).

So fundamental is this method that at one point in his early thinking about the matter Husserl insisted that, as he expressed the point in that famous section 70 of his Ideas, I, philosophers need to fertilize their abil-ity to fantasy in order to achieve observations in originary intuition which are as abundant and excellent as possible. He mentions in particular using examples from history, art and poetry. It is clear that he understood its implications, as is evident in the immediately following passage: feigning [Fiktion] makes up the vital element of phenomenology as of every other eidetic science . . . feigning is the source from which the cognition of eternal truths is fed (Husserl, 1982, p. 160). Keenly aware of how this must have appeared, in particular to critics of phenomenology, Husserl observed with marked sarcasm in a footnote to this passage that such an idea should be especially suitable for a naturalistic ridiculing of the eidetic mode of cogni-tion (Husserl, 1982, p. 160).

Given the signi cance Husserl attached to the free-fantasy variational method and its connection to the insight regarding as-if experience, it is all the more surprising that this expression of his fundamental method did not attract much critical attention in the years after he wrote those words, even though he continued to insist on its central import for phe-nomenological work. Moreover, while in his classic study, Field of Con-sciousness, Aron Gurwitsch (1964) did at least recognize the extraordinary signi cance given to the method by Husserl, his own analysis does not probe the foundations, presuppositions, or fundamental place of the method. Even so, Gurwitsch had long recognized the method and its importance, although his studies focus on free-fantasy as regards eide.

While the method has received some notice, this has for the most part been up to the re ecting philosophers e ort to grasp eidetic a airs. Th is is accomplished, it is typically understood, by selecting some object, what-ever it may be, and then methodically varying that object (while maintain-ing it as an example of the kind or sort in question), all the while attending carefully to what stands out as invariant through the variations. Th is com-mon, then, is said to be at least the initial phases of the re ective delinea-tion and explication of the essence.


In contrast to this usual way of treating free-fantasy variation, I have long been convinced that there is an issue of far greater signi cance: Th e very possibility of that free-fantasy focus itself. How is it even possible, no longer to attend to the individual example and instead focus on the kind exempli ed by that individual? Precisely here is a phenomenological theme whose explication sheds important light on the foundations of re ection itself, hence is a central topic for understanding the structures of con-sciousness, the embodying body, the self and still other matters central to the tasks of phenomenological psychology as well as philosophy. First, however, it is essential that the method itself be clearly understood.

First Glance at Free-Fantasy

An outstanding exception to the usual manner of treating free-fantasy variation was Susan Bachelards early and excellent commentary on Hus-serls Formal and Transcendental Logic, an interpretation that should not be ignored. In the rst place, her study clearly showed why free fantasy varia-tion cannot be interpreted as a form of empirical generalization (Bachelard, 1968, pp. 17397). In a close reading of section 70 of Husserls Ideas I, and of relevant passages from others of his works, Bachelard correctly laid out the close parallel between the attitude of the geometer (working within one of the other eidetic sciences Husserl has in mind) and that of the phenomenologist. Clearly impressed with this connection, she then emphasized

. . . that the method of mathematical idealization has been the very source of the elaboration of the phenomenological method of investigating essences1 and that the example which served as the starting point for the phenomeno-logical variation has the same role as the particular gure about which the geometer reasons. (Bachelard, 1968, p. 175)

In thinking geometrically, for example, the geometer operates upon the gure or the model incomparably more in fantasy than in perception

1) As is well known, Husserls use of bracketing (Einklammern) to describe (partially) his method of epoch and reduction has its mathematical analogue, signifying that the brack-eted operations are put out of play, not performed but kept in abeyance (see Husserl, 1982, 3132).


(Husserl, 1982, p. 159), but is not restricted to its particularity even though the geometer must from time to time return to it and other geometrical gures. Here, in fact, is the key to the parallel: Actually, the real datum from which the geometer and the phenomenologist can set out is taken as an example. An example as such is never considered for its own sake, in its individuality (Bachelard, 1968, p. 176).

From her analysis, but even more looking into the passages where Hus-serl himself discusses this method, it is evident that there are four key fea-tures he regarded as vital to understanding it.

Exampling and Possibilizing

(1) Any particular a air, thing or object (in the broadest sense) can always be viewed in one or the other of several ways. First, the individual a air can be attended to simply for its own sake, in whatever context and with what-ever modality it may be. Like the geometer, second, one is also free at any moment to shift attention and regard the a air strictly as an example.

(2) Bachelard understood the second point to signify that the con-sciousness which deals with the example is a consciousness that one is able to substitute another example for this example (Bachelard, 1968, p. 176). Clearly aware of this, Husserl emphasized that, to take an individual a air as an example includes the consciousness of its having been chosen arbi-trarily or freely [beliebig]. As I understand him, this act is free in at least three senses.

(a) Any actual or possible example can serve to initiate free fantasy varia-tion. Hence, the method, unlike an inductive empeiria, is not restricted to anything factual but can begin with any freely chosen actual or possible example.

(b) Th e method is in this sense strictly free from what actually exists at the starting point and throughout the inquiry employing it. About this, Bach-elard emphasized that even in the case where actuality is necessarily taken as [the] starting point, it must be recognized that the necessity of this start-ing point should not a ect the development of the process it initiates. Th e necessity of the starting point is not perforce a necessity in principle (Bachelard, 1968, p. 176).

(c) A third aspect of the freedom-from can now be mentioned. It was pointed out that free fantasy variational method always has the sense of free optionalness (Beliebigkeit). Although one is always free to start with


any actual or possible example, and even to continue through many, indeed to as many possible pertinent variations as one wishes, there is no need to do so. Just as one is free to start anywhere, Husserl emphasized, one is also free to break o an inquiry at any moment. Th is optionalness of free fantasy signi es a remarkable and extremely important consciousness of and so forth according to option.

Th us, one is not only free to begin anywhere, and to move freely from one to other variants, but, as Bachelard also noted, the methodical process implies the consciousness of a fundamental potentiality, a consciousness that one can continue without actually being obliged to do so (Bachelard, p. 178)as distinct from the method of empirical generalization. It is just because of this fundamental character of the act of viewing ideas (Husserl, 1954, p. 422) that one is able to ascertain what is under inquiry by means of the method. As Husserl insisted:

. . . all the variants belonging to the openly in nite spherewhich includes the [initial] example, as optional and freed of all its factualnessstand in a relationship of synthetic interrelatedness and integral connectedness; more particularly, they stand in a continuous and all-inclusive synthesis of coinci-dence in con ict. But, precisely with this coinciding, what necessarily per-sists throughout this free and always-repeatable variation comes to the fore: the invariant, the indissolubly identical in all the di erent and ever-again dif-ferent, the essence common to all, the universal essence by which all imagin-able variants of the example, and all variants of any such variants, are restricted. Th is invariant is the ontic essential form (apriori form), the eidos, corresponding to the example, in the place of which any variant of the exam-ple could have served equally well (Husserl, 1954, p. 248).

(3) Th is passage makes prominent the methods third vital feature. What-ever may be the point of departure, and with respect to no matter which problem, this shift of attention to view an individual a air as an example is a sui generis change of orientation (Einstellung), thanks to which the eidos [is brought] to the fore. In di erent terms, what is exempli ed by the individual a air (in principle by an inde nite number of actual and pos-sible examples) is that by virtue of which any freely chosen actual or pos-sible example is what it is, or it is that without which it would not be what it is. Th e attentional shift to the what is exempli edrealized thanks to the free optionalness (the idealization, and so forth according to option


[und so weiter]) belonging essentially to every variation manifold (Hus-serl, 1954, p. 413)is a speci c and fundamental modi cation of the natural attitude. It is an attentional focusing on the region of the eidetic, an orientation that discloses a universe of conceivability (a pure all-ness), in such a manner that the negation of any result is equivalent to an intuit-able eidetic impossibility, an inconceivability . . . (Husserl, 1968, p. 249).

(4) Finally, it is necessary to point out that it is essential to any eidetic sciencemathematics, geometry, eidetic phenomenology, for instancethat the method is itself an example of the method in question here. Re ec-tion on the method, Husserl contended, shows that it has universal validity, is unconditionally necessary; and that the method can be fol-lowed no matter what conceivable object is taken as an initial example; and that is the sense in which it is understood. Only in eidetic intuition can the essence of eidetic intuition become clari ed (Husserl, 1968, p. 249).

Accordingly, any elucidation of the method is a key part of a theory of method, that is, of methodology, and is therefore also a matter for phenom-enological explication (which includes, as just emphasized, this phenom-enological method itself ). Phenomenology is, therefore, that philosophical discipline or orientation which persistently seeks to explicate and under-stand whatever underlies, is taken-for-granted, or is presupposed, so far as possible. Its basic method, nally, is free-fantasy variation.

Universality of Eidetic Intuition

While the method was for Husserl fundamental to any eidetic science whatever, free-fantasy variation is also found at play in many other types of inquiry. At this point I only wish to note that although several times Hus-serl seemed to identify free-fantasy variational method with eidetic intu-ition (including the practice of eidetic phenomenology), elsewhere he clearly noted that it pervades the whole phenomenological method (and likewise, in the natural realm, the method of a genuine and pure internal psychology) (Husserl, 1960, p. 69).

Still, discussions of the method are rarely clear about this point. It was already noted that, in Bachelards commentary, free-fantasy variational method is as she alleges parallel to mathematical idealization, and she even claims that phenomenology has its very source in mathematics. Although she denies that she has claimed to reduce phenomenological thinking to these mathematical antecedents (Bachelard, p. 180), and


notes Husserls claim that phenomenological philosophy is a genus of investigation that in a certain sense gives to them all a new dimension, she nevertheless lays considerable stress on the alleged parallel.

Th at Husserl was himself an accomplished mathematician may doubt-less give some credibility to such a view. Th e same may be said about his painstaking manner of philosophizing or his life-long concern for probing the foundations of logical and mathematical cognitiona direction that may be as much a source of derision for present-day postmodernists as Husserl suspected his emphasis on Fiktion would provoke among the natu-ralists of his time.

However attractive it may seem, the methods of logic and mathematics must be understood strictly as examples freely chosen (beliebig) from among many other actual and possible examples, and designed to clarify the method of free-fantasy variation. To start from the example of the geome-ter it which, Bachelard asserts, occurs ex abrupto in 70 of Ideas I (Bach-elard, p. 174)in no sense justi es her interpretation. In any event, she herself retreats from this very point only a few pages later.

Fertilizing Fantasy

In that crucial section 70 of Ideas I are found a number of highly signi -cant points for understanding the distinctive features and character of free-fantasy variation. It is to them I want now to turn in order to elicit the crucial dimensions of the method, and at the same time hopefully to cor-rect any misunderstandings of Husserls seminal discovery.

For Husserl, eidetic research also necessarily demands operating in fan-tasy (Husserl, 1982, p. 159). Its function is not to validate (to establish truth or falsity), but strictly to clarify eidetic a airs. It serves in other words strictly to elucidate the essentially possible, impossible, and what is in prin-ciple actualizable or inactualizable; it is in this sense the method of formal ontology, which is the fundamental sense of what Husserl means when he characterizes phenomenology as critical and self-critical.

Bachelard noted that, to be precise, if we treat [any individual datum] as an example and not as an actual datum considered for its own sake, the individual loses its noxiousness [i.e. factuality] and enables the exercising of the fantasy through which perfect clari cation is attained (Bachelard, p. 177). For this task of clari cation, it is necessary not only to exercise ones fantasy abundantly in the required activity of perfect clari cation,


but, before doing that, in Husserls words, one must fertilize ones fan-tasy by observations in originary intuitions that are as abundant and excel-lent as possible (Husserl, 1982, pp. 15960).

It is intriguing to cite more fully the highly suggestive passage alluded to above, where Husserl suggests in what this fertilization consists:

Extraordinary pro t can be drawn from the o erings of history, in even more abundant measure from those of art, and especially from poetry, which are, to be sure, imaginary but which, in the originality of their invention of forms [Neugestaltungen], the abundance of their single features and the unbroken-ness of their motivation, tower high above the products of our own fantasy and, in addition, when they are apprehended understandingly, become con-verted into perfectly clear fantasies with particular ease owing to the sugges-tive power exerted by artistic means of presentation. Th us, if one is fond of paradoxical phrasesone can say in strict truth, that feigning makes up the vital element of phenomenology as of every other eidetic science, that feigning is the source from which the cognition of eternal truths is fed (Husserl, 1982, p. 160).

Despite the only apparent parallels between free fantasy and mathemati-cal idealization, this remarkable passage makes it quite evident that it would be seriously misleading to draw that parallel so closely as to make Husserls method little more than an analog of mathematical technique. Precisely this point was emphasized by Husserl when he re ected on the pure eidetic description sketched in Ideas I:

Here we have one di erence (though not the only one) between the whole manner of this new apriori science and that of the mathematical disciplines. [Th e latter] are deductive sciences, and that means that in their scienti cally theoretical mode of development mediate deductive knowledge plays an incomparably greater part than the immediate axiomatic knowledge upon which all the deductions are based. An in nitude of deductions rests on a very few axioms. But in the transcendental sphere we have an in nitude of knowl-edge previous to all deduction, knowledge whose mediated connnexions (those of intentional implication) have nothing to do with deduction, and being entirely intuitive prove refractory to every methodically devised scheme of constructive symbolism. (Husserl, 1962, p. 6)


Th is new apriori science inquires into the invariant, essentially character-istic structures of a soul, of a psychic life in general. Its way or method is the systematic, re ective consideration and elucidation of every actual and possible a air taken as an example of some kind or sort, whose pro-gressive clari cation eventually enables eidetic judgments. In this sense, free-fantasy variation is a matter of ction in one of its speci c forms.

Th e Fundamental Methodological Insight

Husserl was unequivocal about in what sense the method of eidetic descrip-tion constitutes the fundamental methodological insight (Husserl, 1960, p. 69), for in his words, it signi es a transfer of all empirical descrip-tions into a new and fundamental dimension (Husserl, 1960, p. 69). Starting from no matter which example, the phenomenologist proceeds to vary it with a completely free optionalness (Husserl, 1960, p. 70), mak-ing sure that the example continues to be an example of the kind or sort under investigation (perception or memory, physical thing or dream object, or whatever it may be). Husserls example is from perception:

Abstaining from acceptance of its being, we change the fact of this perception into a pure possibility, one among quite optional pure possibilitiesbut possibilities that are possible perceptions. We, so to speak, shift the actual perception into the realm of non-actualities, the realm of the as-if, which sup-plies us with pure possibilities, pure of everything that restricts to this fact or to any fact whatever. As regards the latter point, we keep the aforesaid pos-sibilities, not as restricted even to the co-posited de facto ego, but just as a completely free imaginableness of fantasy. Accordingly from the very start we might have taken as our initial example a fantasizing [sic] ourselves into a perceiving, with no relation to the rest of our de facto life. Perception, the universal type thus acquired, oats in the air, so to speakin the atmosphere of pure fantasiableness [sic]. Th us removed from all factualness, it has become the pure eidos perception, whose ideal extension is made up of all ideally possible perceptions as purely fantasiable [sic] processes. (Husserl, 1960, p. 70)

Because every fact can be thought of merely as exemplifying a pure possibility, everything formable in free-fantasy variation holds with absolute essential universality, and with essential necessity for every particular case selected . . . (Husserl, 1960, p. 71).


Th e Fundamental Form of Transcendental Method

Finally, together with phenomenological reduction and epoch, this method is the fundamental form of all particular transcendental methods (Husserl, 1960, p. 72) and determines thereby the basic sense and direction of all transcendental phenomenological inquiries. To understand Husserls point here, I suggest, it is necessary to begin moving into phenomena which did not directly fall within his range of concerns.

To fantasize or work within the realm of as-if experience is precisely not to be restricted to the region of facts, the realm of the empeiria. Rather, one is free to focus on any individualactual or possible, and whether it is something actualizable but not actualized, or merely possible and inactu-alizable. More particularly, thanks to that suitable and freely possible alteration of ones attitude, any individual a air may be taken strictly as an example of some kindin order to clarify that kind itself. Taking some a air as an example is accordingly to consider it, not for its own sake but rather as exemplifying some kind or sort which, while other than the individual itself, is made salient strictly through the act of apprehend-ing the individual-now-considered-as-an-example. In this sense, which-ever kind may be exempli ed, the example serves not only as an exempli cation but at the same time as the way, the method or the mode of access to whatever is exempli ed. Th e kind that is exempli ed is experi-enced by means of the individual which exempli es; the latter thus consti-tutes, in Husserls own language, the mode of givenness (Gegebenheitsweis) for the former.

Unfortunately Husserl did not carefully distinguish between several types of awareness: rst, between imagining and possibilizing, and sec-ond, between possibilizing and exampling. Only the latter pair is of immediate interest in the inquiry into free-fantasy variation. First, though, a brief excursus into Dorion Cairns (1972) discussion of the main types of awareness will be helpful.

Cairns Distinctions Among Types of Awareness

I have just suggested that the consciousness or awareness of what is exem-pli ed requires the presentation of some exemplifying individuals in order to be experienced and subsequently known and judged about. Th e eidos or kind, in these terms, is presented only through or by way of the presentation


of individual examples. Th us, the consciousness of the kind is not itself strictly presentive. Nevertheless, it is not to be confused with either a non-presentive consciousness of something (e.g., symbolizing something), or a representive consciousness of something (e.g., depicting something).

Cairns (1972) has given a general delineation of four modes of aware-ness: perceiving, remembering, image-awareness, and feigning-awareness. First, note that perceiving and remembering are presentive, in the speci c sense; they are similar in that each is a more or less clear awareness of some-thing as presented, as given, so to speak, in person, that is, as simultane-ous with the awareness. And in this they di er from any completely obscure awareness of somethingas, for example, merely appresented or merely represented. But a perceiving di ers from a primary memorial awareness or a rememberingwhich is an awareness of something as presented in an earlier perceiving.

Distinct from both presented and the appresented or merely represented is what Cairns terms image-awareness. A more complex kind of awareness, at the very least image-awareness includes both a presentive awareness (whether perceptual or memorial) and, founded on that, a non-presentive awareness of something else as depicted by and, in this speci c manner, represented by the presented a air. An example would be the (non-presen-tive) awareness of a friend as depicted by a photograph, of whose physical properties (e.g., whether printed on matte or glossy paper, in black-and-white or color, etc.) one has a presentive, speci cally a sense-perceptual, and even more speci cally a visual, awareness.

Each kind of awareness (whether presentive or non-presentive) exhibits its own speci c complexities and strata, but each of them is essentially a serious or straightforward awareness of some state-of-a airs. Both the presentive and the non-presentive are non-feigning, but each has as its counterpart a genus or species of feigning awareness (Cairns, 1972a, p. 260). Th us, I may actually (seriously, straightforwardly) see my cat, Wally; actually remember seeing Wally, or actually perceive (or remember perceiving) some physical item (say, a photograph) that represents (= depicts) him. In contrast to such straightforward awareness, I may feign (play like or as if I were) perceiving Wally (an as-if perception, in Husserls phrase), as I may also feign remembering perceiving him, or feign see-ing (or feign remembering seeing) a photograph I took of him. Com-menting on this usage of feigning, Cairns explains:


In everyday discourse I should say that I was imagining a cat. But for purposes of accurate description and discrimination among kinds of awareness, this manner of speaking will hardly do. (For precisely this reason, it will be neces-sary to nd di erent terms to characterize the awareness of something taken as an example as well as what may turn out to be the root condition of possibility for feigning awareness itself.) What went on in my mental life was a feigning awareness of a cat as itself presented, a quasi-perceiving of a real individual cat in person. I was not seeing something else and taking it to be an image of a cat; nor was I quasi-seeing something else and taking it to be an image of a cat. In short, this was not a case of image-awareness of any sort. My cat-awareness was no more and no less complex that a non-feigning cat per-ceiving. Structurally it was, in fact, the precise counterpart of unfeigningly perceiving a cat; it was a modi cation, not a complication, of seriously perceiv-ing a cat. (Cairns, 1972a, p. 257)

Feigning

Feigning-awareness (Cairns)or, fantasy-modi cation, as-if experi-ence, or experience in fantasy (Husserl)is a modi cation of some seri-ous awareness. Just as I can seriously (straightforwardly, actually) perceive (or remember perceiving) Wally, my cat, so I can have an as-if (feigned) perceptual experience of him. Moreover, I am not restricted to visual per-ception in such cases, for I can also enact an as-if perceptual experience of Wally in one or another manner (tactual, auditory, and the like). (Nor are we restricted to sensory perception, for the same holds as well for experi-ences such as liking, wishing-for, etc., as for detesting, believing as worth-less and the likealthough, to repeat, there are multiple distinctions that cannot be pursued in this place.)

Th us, feigning or as-if awareness is not a kind of imagining in a strict sense, since it is not a representive (or depictive) awareness of the cat. On the other hand, neither is it a remembering or a perceiving of the cat. Not an awareness of an actual individual (as perceived or recollected)that is, it is neither representive nor presentivefeigning is instead an awareness of a possible individual (Husserl, 1969, p. 206).

To say, then, that as-if experience is a modi cation of some straightfor-ward awareness of my cat, is to say that this awareness is complex, with at least two crucial components. (1) In feigning, the object of the awareness is not experienced (or posited) as actually existent in the world; the object is not individuated and causally interrelated with other worldly things


(whether posited as present, past, future, symbolized or represented by something present, past, or future). Moreover, it is to say that, as strictly correlative to its object, (2) the awareness is also modi ed (from, say, actual seeing to as-if seeing).

If a straightforward awareness may be said, with Husserl, to involve a more or less explicit or implicit positing of (Positionalitt) or believing-in its particular object as actually existing in one or another modality of beliefactually existent, probably existent, or even not existentthen feigning is a similarly lived process of awareness [Bewusstseinserlebnis] whose sense is that it modi es that modality (basically, from actual to as-if ). What Husserl terms the doxo-thetic positionality of the Erlebnis is modi ed.

Th is is not to say that feigning does not posit (believe in) its object. It is rather to say that feigning is a positing of its feigned object as possible; it is believed-in not as actually existent (really, probably, etc.) but as possibly existent. In di erent terms, the positing is a quasi-positing, or it is an as-if positing. Th e modi cation brought about by feigning, then, is a neu-tralization (Husserl) of some actual positional modality.

Feigning involves a speci c shift of attention, one that is essentially pos-sible as regards any mode of straightforward awareness. Th e method of free-fantasy variation is not, therefore, restricted to the region of actualities (facts), but is rather free to make use of any possible individual. Feigning is thus a kind of positional experience of a possible individual (Husserl, 1969, p. 206), for Husserl. Consistent with this, as I see it, feigning is the ground, the basis, for free-fantasy variation. To understand this method of eidetic inquiry, it is accordingly necessary to elucidate the sense of that shift of attention.

Complexity of Feigning: Exampling and Possibilizing

It is important to recognize that there is more than one shift of attention at play here. By taking any individual as an example, whatever and whichever it may be, the method allows attending to individuals as possible. Th ere-fore, there is a shift of attention that is speci cally di erent from feigning in a strict or narrow sense.

I may feign perceiving a cat. As Cairns noted, this is structurally no more complex than seriously or unfeigningly perceiving a cat. Feigning is not an image-awareness. But attending to an as-if cat as such (the correlate of


the feigning awareness), the feigned cat is no more thereby considered or attended to as an example than is the seriously perceived cat. Th is is even more apparent if we consider that I may very well focus on either an actual or a possible cat simply for its own sake (and do this in very di erent ways: for example, likingly, believingly, expectantly, etc.). On the other hand, as Bachelard pointed out, the individual taken as an example as such is never considered for its own sake, in its individuality (Bachelard, 1968, p. 176), whether it be an actual or a possible one. In short, an awareness of something as an example must be carefully distinguished from either a straightforward or a feigning awareness of it for its own sake.

Th ere are thus at least two methodical shifts of attention and orientation which must be elucidated in order to determine the characteristics and grounds of free-fantasy variation. It will also be important to determine precisely how these two attentional shifts are related to one anotherwhether, for instance, they are but two aspects of the same shift or two di erent shifts, and whether they are grounded in some other kind of experience or shift. (Note, too, at this very point how using examples comes into play without in the least invoking feigninga feature of method that must itself come under investigation as I proceed.)

To determine precisely where these phenomena stand, it will be neces-sary to proceed methodically. First, since the shift of attention that takes something as an example is evidently more pervasive and basic (it can be engaged whether one feigns or not), this step will require more detailed focus. Doing this will, second, facilitate the descriptive explication of feigning more properly and strictlyas well as in which speci c ways the shifts are connected and what implications there may be for other phenomena.

Exempli cation

Delineating Feigning From Exampling

Th e method of free-fantasy variation serves strictly to clarify eidetic states of a airs; hence, evidence pertaining to them provides clari cation and, as was already noted, neither veri cation nor validation. Clari cation pertains to the region of the possible: the essentially possible, impossible, actualiz-able, and inactualizable. Husserls stress on the necessity to fertilize our


fantasies by abundant and excellent observations in originary intuitions is, accordingly, neither opaque nor odd.

Quite in general, it may be observed that developing and cultivating such abilities as are required for rigorous feigning in phenomenological re ection is crucial and necessary for cultivating the work of intelligence in other domains. Equivalently, cognizing such states of a airs as required here requires quite as much practice as does, say, learning to play a musical instrument or understanding a new language. Moreover, Husserls other-wise dense statements about the matter need to be clari ed: feigning is the vital element of every eidetic science, including phenomenology, and is the source of the cognition of eternal truths.

For reasons that have already been indicated, however, a kind of opacity to some extent still remains. Fantasizing or feigning does indeed open up the region of the possible. Its exercise, however, takes for granted that other central shift of attention already notedtaking any individual as an example, exemplifying. Th us, to focus on feigning does not focus on nor does it elucidate exempli cation.

Furthermore, even an initial distinguishing between feigning and exem-plifying makes it evident that in various passages Husserl confused image-awareness with feigning awareness, or at least did not su ciently analyze these to permit their distinction (as Cairns has, on the other hand). In fact, since anything whateveractual or possiblemay be (indeed, often is) considered as exemplifying, it appears that what I will formally term the exemplicative shift (and subsequent methodical orientation correlated with it) is more fundamental than, and is taken for granted by, the feign-ing shift (and its subsequent methodical orientation).

It seems already clear at this point that exemplifying is precisely what makes feigning possible. Nevertheless, at the present point it is only a hunch that this pervasive and not well explicated phenomenontaking something as an exampleconstitutes the basic clue to delineating and understanding the phenomena examined thus far.

Bachelard provided something of a clue. If we are precise, and

. . . if we treat [any particular individual] as an example and not as an actual datum considered for its own sake, the individual loses its noxiousness [factu-ality] and enables the exercising of the phantasy [sic] through which perfect clari cation is attained (Bachelard, 1968, p. 177; emphasis added).


Th e crucial question, accordingly, is this: what is it, to take something as example? While Bachelard strikes me as having moved in the right direc-tion, she does not take up the key question: how does treating any particu-lar individual as an example enable the exercise of the fantasy, hence of free-fantasy variation? Th ese speci c issues must now be taken up.

Pervasiveness of Exampling

If we focus on actual or possible individual a airs as examples, it becomes obvious how pervasive it is in every aspect of human life. Literally anything can be considered as an example, from trivial to weighty matters. But this must include, obviously and importantly, my own current considering itself, since for me to focus on the exemplicative shift requires making use of that very kind of considering, that is, taking something as an example. If I therefore wish to explicate and understand taking something as an examplemore simply, examplingthere is nothing for it but to choose freely or arbitrarily some examples of taking something as an example. (Th is peculiarity will be taken up at a later point.)

Merely to indicate its signi cance: beyond its pervasiveness, the exem-plicative shift lies at the root of such central phenomena as concept (as Husserl, 1960, p. 71 also noted) and conceptualizing, category and categorization, universal and universalization, general and gener-alization, form and formalization, idea and idealization, and even such rudimentary phenomena as particular and particularization, as well as individual and individualization. Exempli cation is essential to each of these, as it is also to the modes of awareness or experience through or by means of which they are at all presented. Without exempli cation, attending to these objectivities (noemata) or paying attention to their cor-relative processes of awareness (noeses) would not be possible.

It is also evident that exempli cation is one of the basic clues to under-standing the objectivity of objects, hence the worldliness of the world (mundaneity). Doubtless, too, it will be found to be at the heart of many fundamental issues in the history of philosophyfrom the One and the Many of the early Greeks, Platos Form/Particular distinction, to such mat-ters as the meanings of a posteriori and a priori, logical induction, scien-ti c generalization, medical diagnosis and a host of other methodological and epistemological matters. Obviously, a phenomenon having such per-vasive and profound range and depths cannot be treated fully in a few


pages. Th e attempt to focus on the phenomenon itself, however, may be fruitful in opening up some lines of inquiry into such other matters as appear essential on even such a cursory review.

Th e Exemplicative Shift

Several features of the exemplicative shift have already been elicited.(1) As noted, anything whatever can be considered (taken up, viewed,

apprehended, attended to) in either of at least two ways. Th us, I am able to view something just for its own sake, and may do so in whatever way and in whichever context of concern it may be, simply by preoccupying myself with it itself in its own individuality or uniqueness. For example, I may focus on a physical thing (hammer) or on any of its qualities (weight, function, etc.), a geometrical expression ([a2 + b2] = c2), a musical composi-tion or any of its particular parts or notes (the opening refrain of a song), an imaginary creature (a ogre or a character in a novel), a past event (the day I taught my rst class), a universal (that every visual seeing is adumbra-tional or one-sided), a patient hospitalized from an injury or illness, or any other a air just for its own sake.

I may consider any of these, or other individual a airs, moreover, in di erent ways: for example, liking the color of a wine, cognitively working out a geometrical expression, recalling and feeling moved by the memory of some student in my rst class, and so on. Furthermore, each of these ways of experiencing (in a maximally broad sense of the term2) such a airs may also be considered each for its own sake: the liking, the cognizing, the recalling, and the like. Whatever may be needed to enable such exampling, as well as considering what is thereby experienced as also exemplifying, it is clear that I can do so and that we all in fact do so throughout our lives.

I may also, secondly, at any time shift my attention away from the indi-vidual a air for its own sake and consider it now as an example. Th is shift is an act in Husserls strict sense (Ich-Akt; Husserl, 1982, 80). It is some-thing which I do, just as the awareness of the thing-as-example is my aware-ness; each is an awareness by means of which I actively engage something or other, and do so in the speci c manner under examination here.

2) For which Husserl uses Erfahrung and its cognates, reserving Erlebnis and its cognates for intentive experiences in the narrower sense (and often translated as life-process or lived experience).


I shift my attention, for whatever reason, even though my attentional shift may be, and most frequently is in daily life, something I do without particularly noticing it. Indeed, among the interesting features of this phenomenon, as with everyday life more generally, is that no particular notice is required. Furthermore, taking the individual a air as an example, this individual a air is thereby considered as exemplifying. As such, I am now oriented toward, or my attention or focus is now directed to, what is exempli ed in, by or through the example (or examples). Th e individual a air is still held in view, it is clear, though no longer for its own sake but rather as the vehicle, so to speak, of the now di erent awareness of the kind exempli ed.

To be sure, in the usual course of my life, I can hardly be said to be fully or explicitly aware of what is exempli ed as such (and even less explicitly aware of the exemplifying of it as such). Indeed, even if I do become more attentive to these matters, I am often unable to say very much about the exempli ed-exemplifying complex itselfexcept perhaps that what is exempli ed is this or that sort or type of thing whose speci c features may be more or less obscure to me, or that I was doing math or remem-bering what my wifes father said to me on our wedding day.

Still, I may become thus attentive, and if I do I have before me (as noema) a complex objectivity: no longer merely the individual thing or things (the math formula, my father-in-laws words), but the complex objectivity: thing-as-exemplifying/what-is-exempli ed (the slash-mark is intended to convey the sense of the complexity at issue here). Moreover, I may now go on to note that whatever the latter component of the com-plex may bewhat is exempli ed as suchit is never presented to me all by itself but rather always along with (because it is presented essentially by means of ) its exempli cation(s). Further, although that complex objectiv-ity is inherent to each awareness of it, one of its central characteristics is that the complexity may be simply taken for granted in the course of my paying attention to one or the other of its components.

To use Husserls terms, the mode of givenness (Gegebenheitsweise) speci c to what is exempli ed (that is, the way or manner by which it is pre-sented, and thanks to which I am at all aware of it) is precisely the exem-plifying a air or a airs: the sort or kind is presented through or by means of the example. Similarly, the consciousness of some sort or kind is grounded on and presented by the consciousness of some exemplifying


individual as such. Although I may also focus on and consider what is exempli ed as itself also an example (of whatever sort it may be, and even if the process itself can be iterated endlessly), it maintains its complexity throughout: one a air is apprehended as exemplifying and by means of it another is apprehended as exempli ed. Indeed, even my taking this or that example of exampling shows the same complexity, and thanks to this that I am then able to say anything about its mode of givenness.

Every such shift of attention is rst of all an ego-activity (Ich-akt) that focuses (or objectivates) a complex object (or, in Husserls term, noe-matic-objective sense). Th e shift is deliberate and attentive, thus the consequent attentional focusing is a thematizing of the complex: individ-ual-as-exemplifying/kind-as-exempli ed, whether the latter is grasped with clarity or only relatively obscurely. (Here I diverge slightly from Cairns, in that, as I shall point out in a moment, the kind must be relatively obscure when only a single example is being considered: it progressively becomes clari ed only through the process of free-fantasy variation.)

(2) I can now notice a second feature of this attentional shift. I may shift my attention in the manner indicated: that is, I am free at any time to do so. As Husserl emphasizes (Husserl, 1969, p. 247 .), in other words, this act of taking something as an example carries with it the awareness of the a airs having been freely chosen [beliebig]: each awareness of a complex example/kind exempli ed includes an awareness that I could have taken something else as an example. Th is being-able or being-free to take this or that as an example will be seen to have certain limitsbasically, limits de ned by what is of interest at the time, what occasioned the shift of attention within the speci c circumstances, along with the restrictions imposed by which speci c kind I am interested inthat is, by what set o the inquiry in the rst place. But for the moment, it is important to look more closely at this free optionalness [Beliebigkeit].

(3) Whatever may be my particular interest at the moment, and what-ever it may be that occasioned my interest, the attentional shift (and result-ing orientation) to the complex, exemplifying/exempli ed, reveals two crucial senses of being-free.

In the rst place, the attentional shift is a shifting-away-from and in that speci c sense is a freeing-from attending to the individual a air for its own sake. Th is shift of attentional focus, thus, has the sense of a being-released-from, it is a sort of deliverance from the region of particularity or


individuality (whether actual or possible). Th is characteristic will occupy me at greater length later, for it gives every sign of being a critical moment, perhaps one that makes everything else possible. For now, I want to con-tinue this survey of the terrain, attending to its geography, so to speak, leaving its archeology for later.

A second sense of being-free is also evident. As Husserl expresses it, the optionalness (Beliebigkeit) in question signi es a remarkable and extremely important consciousness of and so forth according to option (Husserl, 1954, p. 413). Not only may anything whatever be taken as an example, but also the performance of this attentional shift signi es that I am thereby simultaneously enabled to go on considering other individuals as examples and to do so as long as I want. I can but need not go on and on. I can freely focus on and consider all sorts of examples.

Th is can signi es, in Bachelards words, the consciousness of a funda-mental potentiality, a consciousness that one can continue without actu-ally being obliged to do so (Bachelard, 1968, p. 178). So to speak, the rst act of considering anything as an example initiates the possibility of doing it again and again; the rst shift opens up the possibility of subse-quent attentional shifts.

What is then inaugurated and opened upthe openly in nite sphere of possible variations whose inspection forms a principal task of phenom-enologyis not of immediate concern here. It is necessary to keep focus on the attentional shift itself.

Exemplicative Awareness

Because this speci c mode of awareness seems su ciently di erent from those analyzed by Cairns (perceiving, remembering, image-awareness, feigningalthough its relationships to the latter (feigning) have yet to be elicited and determined), I propose, following his analysis, to term it exem-plicative awareness (consistent with presentive and non-presentive). To be sure, it is similar to perceiving, in that it is in a sense presentive. Th e what-is-exempli ed is indeed itself presented but the presentedness is far more complex, for the what-is-exempli ed is presented strictly in, by or through a range of examples, which are themselves also presented, albeit di erently from what is exempli ed.


Th is attending to the what-is-exempli ed is an attending to some (and potentially an inde nite number of ) individuals as exempli cations of what-is-exempli ed. But the examples do not stand to the exempli ed in the way that, say, the perspectival adumbrations (Abschattungen) of a per-ceived thing stand to the thing as perceived. I see a chair, for example, now from this side, now from that side, and so on; perceptions of this type are adumbrational: the chair is perceptually apprehended through or by means of each and every such adumbration. Clearly, examples are not per-spectival adumbrations of the exempli ed kind; correlatively, the perspec-tival adumbrations of a chair are not examples of the chair. Accordingly, even though in order to take an actual physical thing as an example I must perceive or in some sense be aware of it in ways proper to it, my shift of attention in the case of exempli cation is precisely a shifting away from perceptual to exemplicative attentiveness.

Th ere are, Husserl and Cairns both point out, other types of presentive awareness. Conceived as a clear awareness of something as presented simultaneously with this clear awareness (in other words, a now-awareness of something itself, in person [leiblich]) (Cairns, 1972a, p. 257), re ec-tion, for example, is in this sense a presentive consciousness of some par-ticular a air as such. Exemplicative awareness, however (supposing it for the moment to be clear and not obscure, with the quali cation mentioned above), while in a sense presentive, nevertheless involves several complica-tions. Th e what-is-exempli ed is present, not for its own sake or alone, but rather solely by way of something else, namely its exempli cationsand not merely through one but every possible one. Indeed, the what-is-exem-pli ed may not be fully revealed in or by any one exempli cationnor can it be, as will become more evident shortly. What-is-exempli ed is in a sense presented simultaneously with this clear awareness; however, due to the fact that every individual (potentially) exempli es many kinds, it is only certain aspects (or, facets) of an individual that exempli es a speci c kind. Moreover, depending on which individual facets are thematized, that may well mean that it is not one such awareness but an inde nite number of them that is required in order to bring the what-is-exempli ed to full conscious-ness, presentedness, or awareness. As Husserl noted many times, appre-hending an essence or eidos requires what he termed a coincidence in con ict among many variants. Th e One, the common, stands out from


but also by means of the Many. In any case, this characteristic suggests why it is, as Husserl repeatedly emphasized, that judgments about kinds must essentially be open to error and, therefore, to continual criticism.

Similarly, while exemplicative awareness is in a way similar to symbolic awareness (a mode of appresentive awareness)in that it always involves a complex of noetic and noematic stratait is signi cantly di erent. What-ever serves as the symbol stands for something else that is not itself present but is rather, speci cally, symbolizedi.e., is appresented (Husserl, 1960, 4954). Th e a air-as-example, however, does not stand for something else not itself presented; the exempli ed as such is rather presented in, by or through its examples, and thus is neither a matter of symbolic awareness of any sort, nor of appresentive awareness in general.

While in a sense presentive, then, exemplicative awareness displays a sui generis structure. It is speci cally complex, involving an awareness of at least one individual a air as that through which some kind or other is exempli ed. Th e exemplifying individual presents only partially, as it wereor, it may be, is a faceted or, perhaps better, it is an aspectual presentationin that only certain aspects of the individual a air serve to exemplify the exempli ed, but at the same time the kind itself is itself pre-sented (well or poorly) thereby. Not every aspect of an individual exempli- es the same kind. For just that reason, each individual a air as a whole is capable of exemplifying any number of di erent kindshence the neces-sity, in Husserls phrase, to run through some number of examples in order to make the exempli ed stand out clearly and thus be focally appre-hended and eventually enable judgments to be made about it.

By freely varying the examples, the exempli ed comes to the fore for exemplicative awareness precisely as the common, the invariant. It is helpful to recall Husserls words, in the important passage cited before:

all the variants belonging to the openly in nite spherewhich includes the [initial] example, as optional and freed of all its factualnessstand in a relationship of synthetic interrelatedness and integral connectedness; more particularly, they stand in a continuous and all-inclusive synthesis of coinci-dence in con ict. But, precisely with his coinciding, what necessarily persists throughout this free and always-repeatable variation comes to the fore: the invariant, the indissolubly identical in all the di erent and ever-again di er-ent, the essence common to all, the universal essence by which all imagin-


able variants of the example, and all variants of any such variants, are restricted. (Husserl, 1969, p. 248)

Noetically, the exemplicative awareness is thus a synthetic process, that is, the awareness ranges over many (in principle, an inde nite number of ) examples, each of them individual a airs considered as exemplifying and throughout the process retained as such. Every such awareness is an aware-ness of certain facets or aspects of an individual a air that are apprehended as exemplifying the exempli ed (the invariant standing out in a synthesis of coincidence in con ict).

With not simply one but an openly in nite sphere of variants, each of which is complex (exemplifying-exempli ed), exemplicative awareness is thereby an awareness of a speci c sort of coincidence in con ictthat is, of aspects of something invariantly appearing and persisting throughout the variational process. It is precisely this aspectual invariance persisting throughout the synthetic process which, as a coinciding of aspects appre-hended through one, then another, and another, example, and so on indef-initely, comes to stand out saliently as the common or the invariant. Th is aspected common, if I may so term it, then, is the initial presenta-tion of essence, the eidos that is apprehended by means of free-fantasy vari-ation. Th e eidos thus apprehended is, as it were, that without which the exempli cations would not be what they are (in other words: that by virtue of which examples, through certain aspects, at all present or func-tion as the presentation of some kind). Equivalently, the presented com-mon (or invariant) is that by virtue of which the exempli cations are what they are. Hence, exemplicative awareness is the foundation of that synthetic process. Understood as the apprehension of that aspectual invari-ance itself, of the common through all variations, eidetic intuition is distinct from, but is founded on and necessarily involves exemplicative awareness.3

3) It should be noted, however, that a more complete descriptive explication of such indi-viduals would need to account as well for the fact that while some facets exemplify a par-ticular kind, other facets do not; they are ignored so far as the point is to attend to the exempli ed kindbut do not for that reason simply drop out of existence. Indeed, they continue to be presented, but now as not pertinent to the task at hand.


Re ective Apprehension

An individual a air is experienced not merely in its particularity, as having individual parts and standing in individual relations to other individual things. It itself is also experienced and, in Cairns words, may be explicitly seized upon as an individual (an instance of that category), as an instance of a speci c sort of individuals, as having parts speci c sorts, etc. (Cairns, 1972b, p. 232).

Such categories and speci c sorts may themselves be directly attended to by means of or through the speci c aspects of the exemplifying a air, and grasped as such. On the basis, then, of a clear presentedness of such a kind, one is then able to form clear and cogent judgments about individu-als as exemplifying this or that sort, or as falling within or under this or that category. Furthermore, on the basis of clearly apprehending the cate-gory, concept, or speci c sort, such kinds themselves then can be cogni-tively and judgmentally distinguished, identi ed, or otherwise considered and examined.

Cairns points out, however, that such straightforward seizing upon, observing, and judging about generic and speci c things that are them-selves given are not, however, Husserlian phenomenological activities (Cairns, 1972b, p. 232). For example:

Th e Husserlian phenomenologist as such observes and describes color in gen-eral as intended to, as seized upon, in its manner of being given, etc., not color in general simpliciter. And, correlatively, he describes the mental pro-cesses in which color in general is variously intended to, seized upon, judged about, etc. He observes that the generic and speci c pure essences instanced [apparently, instance and example are used synonymously; perhaps fur-ther inquiry may result in the necessity to distinguish between them] by indi-viduals straightforwardly intended to are, in a strict sense, themselves given; he describes the manner of their straightforward givenness, and the straight-forward method of seizing upon them and judging with evidence about them. But he himself, qua Husserlian phenomenologist, practices the observation of only such generic and speci c pure essences as are instanced by re ectively given individuals, i.e., by his own mental processes and their intentional objects. (Cairns, 1972b, p. 232)

Th ese considerations help to clarify the systematic place of my present study, at least as thus far carried out. In particular, although I have been doing or


practicing phenomenological observing, describing, judging and, of course, writingand have thus been re exively concerned with taking something as an exampleI have not been concerned to delineate anything about this phenomenological-re ective practice and its disengagements. I have not been straightforwardly grasping and judging about generic and speci c kinds simpliciter, but have been attempting to describe the ways in which they (that is, the examples of taking something as an example) are given straightforwardly, and the equally straightforward ways in which they are seized upon, judged about, and eventually put into written form.

I have also gone on to try and describe some of the salient features of these awarenesses themselves (for example, attentional shifting and its complex disengagements) and their di erences from other awarenesses and their objective correlates (for example, presentive, representive, appre-sentive and, now, exemplicative awarenesses). I have been concerned, more generally, with describing that crucial shift of attention inherent to taking-as-an-example, but have not yet been focused on or concerned with the speci cally re exive shift of attention characteristic of phenomenological attending to something.

Obviously, I could proceed to so concern myself; but that is not my speci c program at this point. I am, rather, still interested in the phenom-enon mentioned, for it has still not been su ciently displayed to enable me to be fully clear about what was strongly indicated at the end of the last section, namely that exemplicative awareness appears to be the foundation for free-fantasy variation. Th at suggestion will have to be probed (and, hopefully, grounded), but to do so will require additional probing.

In any event, it already seems apparent that most of us (it is unclear whether or not mentally retarded persons exemplify, though it may be that many of them cannot possibilize) actively grasp individuals as well as generic and speci c pure essencesif only naively, that is, without paying express attention to what it is one is doing, and more particularly without noticing that these individual a airs and their exempli ed kinds, categories, or essences are intended-to as such. Th at noticing involves a further shift of attention that has not yet been focused upon. Still, as Cairns points out,

as a naive method it [i.e. the grasping of essences] has been practiced by everyone. To paraphrase Lockes aphorism: God has not been so sparing to men to make them barely able to seize upon individuals and left it to Husserl to make them able to seize upon pure essences. It should be emphasized that,


according to the Husserlian phenomenologist, re ection and the observing of pure essences are not his prerogatives but the de facto practices of even the narrowest empiricist. (Cairns, 1972b, p. 233)

Before explicating that phenomenological shift, before seeking to focus on and ground the method of free-fantasy variation, it will be necessary rst to look into some further features of exemplicative awareness. Second, the shift of attention evidently at work in feigning awareness needs to be more fully explicated. Finally, it will then be possible to make certain observa-tions about the interrelationships between exempli cation and feigning, and, later, to turn to feigning and free-fantasy variation themselves.

Th e Drama of Possibilizing

Daily Life

It is time now to consider what makes it possible to take something as an example. What is necessary for that shift of attention to occur, from con-sidering something for its own sake, to considering it as exemplifying something else? If, as was indicated earlier, this shift is a freeing-from the one and thus is a release or disengagement from the region of particular-itythe awareness of an actual or possible individual this as suchthe question can be rephrased. How is it possible to become released- or freed-from the awareness of a particular and thus free-for apprehending it no longer for its own sake but now precisely as exemplifying some kind (whether this be understood as concept, category, or essence)?

Th is way of putting the question, however, immediately brings out something quite di erent: exemplicative awareness, in the speci c (and still somewhat unclear) sense disclosed thus far, presupposes an awareness of some particular a air as such, that is, for its own sake. Yet, as was hinted at earlier, the course of our usual lives is for the most part a preoccupation with various particular things in the world, with various people and objects (in the broadest sense) with respect to which I, you, we, them, etc., have one or another sort of interest (practical, aesthetic, volitional, emotional, merely perceptual, etc.). Th e interest is not so much for its own sake (although at times it is, of course) but rather as typi ed, experienced as this or that type of person or thing.


Our daily dealings with the many a airs constituting our life-world, in whatever context of concern it may be, are usually in terms of typi cations of one or another kind and at one or another level of typicality (ranging from the more or less anonymous to the more or less familiar). Th us, as Alfred Schutz (Schutz, 1967; Schutz & Luckmann, 1973, 1983) has shown, at any moment in the life of the wide-awake, normally functioning adult, any particular item is at the outset experienced, interpreted, acted upon, and otherwise dealt with, in the framework of the persons speci c biographical situation, by means of his/her coordinate stock of knowledge-at-hand, and within the habitualities (cognitive, emotive, valuative, volitional) included therein. Th is stock of knowledge is, in Schutzs phrase, a relatively coherent system of typicality-constructs built up in the course of any persons life, experiences and encounters, whose texture is formed by the conjoining of tradition and the persons own way or style of life. Th e fundamental charac-teristic of the usual or everyday is its taken-for-grantedness. So far as, or to the extent that, the course of life goes on with no, or with relatively few, disturbances or upsets, things (objects, people, relations among these, etc.) are quite without question interpreted and experienced in terms of the pre-vailing stock of typi cations thus far built up as habitual possessions: thats a (type of ) dog, or thats (some sort of ) reed, etc.

Without entering here into the highly complex structures of everyday lifewhich Schutz (1967), Aron Gurwitsch (1979), Jos Ortega y Gasset (1957), Max Scheler (1961, 1973), Maurice Natanson (1962, 1970), and others have already probed in depthI only note that, in our daily lives we typically just take it for granted that things (in the broadest sense indi-cated) will for the most part and until further notice continue to be and be organized, interpreted and experienced more or less as they have been up to now. Until further notice, that is, we simply accept without question that the typical course, content and style of our own and others lives and the world around us will continue to be more or less what they have been up to now (Husserls classic phrase is apropos: the past casts its shadow over the future). We take it for granted: that is, each of us in our daily a airs typically proceeds with our lives and preoccupations on the assumption that, for all practical purposes and until further notice, people and the world and things generally are pretty much as we typically experience them to be, and they will for the most part (typically) continue to be this way (and so, too, for other persons and ourselves).


Upsets and Disturbances

Of course, upsets of various sorts and degrees of seriousness do occur from time to time. Something may turn out to be (more or less) otherwise than typically expected or taken for granted. For the most part, however, such disturbances within the usual course of a airs get handled with relative ease, within the self-same framework of taken for granted typi cations. If something unexpected occurs, it is, as Husserl remarks, experienced as a not so but otherwise; it is experienced as not this (sort of a air) but that (sort of a air). Th e typi cational scheme does not itself break down in such cases, but rather undergoes modi cation, correction, and/or fur-ther sub-division, to one degree or anotherbut almost never totally.4

Th e obscure shape in the distance that is typically taken to be, say, a sleeping dog (itself also typi ed) turns out on closer approach to be merely a pile of leaves and twigs on the ground (again, a typical a air), and you walk on, relieved or disappointed, as the case may be. Th e object on the table turns out not to be an ashtray but an art object (and you forthwith apologize to the host for emptying ashes from your pipe). What I at rst heard a person say turns out to be di erent, or perhaps intended di er-ently, than I rst thought, and I correct my interpretation and understand-ing accordingly (apologizing to her). Th e noise I took to be a childs cry turns out to be a kettle of boiling water with an odd whistle in its spout, and I sit back down in my chair, relievedand so on throughout every range of experience of things, people, relations, sounds, and the like encountered in the usual course of daily life.

In general, of course, any upset is itself interpreted by means of still other typi cations. Something unexpected is usually experienced as not so but otherwise, which is itself experienced as also expected, in its own usually speci able way (an illness is said at times to manifest just these sorts of typical side-e ects or deviations from its normal course). In each case,

4) A total breakdown would be equivalent to the total shattering of absolutely every con-struct, typi cation, expectation, whateversomething, i.e., which might be interpreted as death. But even a cursory look at the experience of illness or injury, or the potential debili-tating e ects of genetic compromise (whether heritable or congenital) demonstrates that there are numerous phenomena short of death which challenge that typi cational scheme (Zaner, 1988).


what was seen in one way is now typi ed di erently, as falling under a di erent typicality-construct, or perhaps obliging me typically to revise, modify, sub-divide one or another set of typicality-constructs.

Other sorts of disturbance in the usual, typical course of experience also occur, but everyday life also has typi ed ways of handling them as well. I may, for example (keeping in mind that precisely this methodical procedure (taking as an example) is the target of my probing through these matters), walk into a building looking for my friend, and wander into a room I thought was his o ceonly to nd myself in the midst of a group of strangers conducting what appears to be a meeting of some sort (another typi cation). Th e event is then typi ed as one of those sorts of things that can happen, as we say, interpreting this sort of mismatch of prov-inces or contexts of concern. Indeed, the embarrassment felt on such occa-sions is precisely the realization that quite di erent contexts or provinces of concern have intruded upon each other.

Similarly, being busied with trying to nd relevant material in connec-tion with an investigation, I may overhear someones remarks and take them as relevant to the ongoing inquiryonly later to learn that they were not at all relevant, and I nd myself having to make apologies (o cial or otherwise) for mixing di erent provinces or contexts of concern. Again, I may chance into my friends empty o ce, spot what seems an empty container and proceed to rinse it out and get a drink of wateronly later to learn, to my chagrin and his anger, that he had merely laid aside momen-tarily what was not at all an empty water glass but a container he planned to use in an experiment, now aborted because my use contaminated it. I may see a man attacking a woman in the park and rush to her side, only to learn not only that the act was not serious, not an actual attack on her, but that I have just spoiled a scene being lmed for a movie.

In other words, our everyday life-world is structured into di erent nite provinces of meaningwhich I have here also called contexts of concerneach having its own style of action, time, thought, involvement, and framework, any of which we may sometimes get confused. Oh, now I see, I may say after ruining the movie scene, meaning that what I thought was going on was not, and now I understand the sort of thing the man and woman were doing. Such an upset is, typically, readily straightened out for all practical purposes, by being interpreted by means of other typicality-constructs having to do with some other province or context.


Even moving deliberately from one province or context to another, moreover, may bring about or be accompanied by a kind of felt distur-bance in the typical ow of life. One may, for example, have di culty re-orienting oneself to the workaday world after viewing an automobile accident or even a particularly moving lm. On the other hand, it may also be that one context or province intrudes into another without my wanting it: while studying, for example, the telephone rings and jolts me out of my ongoing concerns and I am forced to re-orient myself to a di erent context.5

Clearly, then, many di erent sorts of upsets occur frequently in daily life. It would be an interesting and important task to delineate and study each sort, following Schutzs many works, as part of a general theory of sociality.6 Th at is not my concern here. What is important is the issue even this brief over-view makes plain: how can it happen that I come to focus my attention, no longer on something as typi ed, but rather on something just for its own sake? And, beyond that, what does this suggest as regards the possibility of a further shift of attention, not merely to something for its own sake, but speci cally to the thing as an example (and, beyond these, to something as exemplifying some kind or sort, then to the something merely as possible)?

Structure of Upsets: An Example

Although delineating the various upsets, shocks, and disturbances in daily life is not my immediate concern here, there is something about these routine occurrences which may serve as a signi cant clue for what does concern me.

Whatever may be the speci c sort of upset, and regardless of particular sources and circumstances, undergoing disturbances in the social fabric (such as the illness experience) (although I have not expressly attempted to show this, there seems to me a signi cant convergence with Schutzs analy-sis of enclaves) turns out to have a structure that is decisive for account-ing for exemplicative awarenesseven, as will be seen, for feigning

5) Schutzs (1970) notion of imposed relevances speaks to this. See Alfred Schutz, Re ec-tions on the Problem of Relevance, ed., annotated, and intro. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970).6) I think especially of Schutzs intriguing analysis of enclaves in his last work, with Th omas Luckmann (Schutz & Luckmann, 1989).


awareness, and thus for free-fantasy variation. It does not matter here whether the upset be considered as relatively minor or as quite serious. Once again, any such upset may serve as an example, one that can be freely variedthat is, I can free myself from its speci c particularity and for whatever may be exempli ed by it, and I must do so if I wish to delineate the process of shifting attention from the one to the other.

Quite in general, such upsets reveal the same basic structure: what was earlier termed the aspectual invariance stands out and so to speak shines through each example. Consider no matter which example as the starting point (as I am free to do). Suppose, then, you live in a lovely, mountainous area in which you enjoy daily walks. You are, say, on your way home taking a di erent route than usual, and are walking along a very narrow path you havent been on before; on the left is a spectacular, scenic ravine youve never seen before; on the right is the sheer cli on the mountain just above your homea path that is becoming increasingly narrow as you walk along, but which you have to follow to reach your home, although you could, of course, turn around and retrace your steps. And, besides, being curious and captivated by the dazzling scene of the valley below, however, you would prefer not to turn back; so you push on. You are walking along carefully, but then become preoccupied with thoughts of family, dinner, the book youre currently reading, or whatever, as you place one foot after the other and do not pay much attention to this set of by now automatic bodily movements. You are also taking it for granted that these relatively simple activations of bodily movements will get you where you want to goas they have each time youve taken such walks.

Fine; now, however, as you come around a bend, you nd yourself up against a large boulder that, apparently because of the heavy rain several nights before, has nudged down onto the path. Lodged there, it now e ec-tively blocks your way. Your typical course of taken for granted actions is unsettled, your way home is blocked. You can no longer simply proceed as you have been doing up to now, placing one foot after another and think-ing the thoughts youve been thinking. What has happened?

Th e path is obstructed; the boulder prevents you from going on, and, as you realize that your family expects you shortly, anxiety creeps in. As noted, you might, of course, decide to turn around and go back, perhaps to phone your wife from the gas station you passed earlier and tell her about what happenedthat youll be very late, because the only other way to your


house is back up the trail, to the station then down a short but precipitous drop, over the stream, and so on. What to do?

Whatever you decide, even in this somewhat simple example, some-thing quite signi cant should be noted. Your way is blocked; you now are confronted with an obstacle that prevents you from proceeding. In the rst place, what you now experience is, in Husserls well-known phrase, a not so but otherwisean obstacle, something which as such obliges, indeed forces, you to do something, to reckon with it as you may never have done before; now, you must do something di erent from what you had be doing up till thenmore or less automatically placing one foot ahead of the other, not paying much attention to these actions even while you were carefully noting the particulars of the new path and the dramatic, new perspective on the scenery. What you have up to now been taking for granted can no longer be taken for granted, for just these typical move-ments landed you where you now are and what you were doing (walking along, placing one foot after the other, etc.) is no help for getting you on your way back home to dinner and the coziness of family life.

If nothing else, you must now try, perhaps, to raise your legs so that you can get a foot up on, then over, the boulder, or use your arms and hands (perhaps to try and shove it out of the way), or whateveractions which you have not been doing up to now and which running up against the boulder obliges you to doif, that is, you want to continue along this path toward home. You turn side-ways, and see if you can wiggle your body around so as to try to slide arou

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Zaner - At Play in the Field of Possibles