Embodiment and Umwelt: A Phenomenological Approach(forthcoming in Social Imaginaries)

Abstract

This article reconstructs several aspects from Husserl’s phenomenology regarding the intentionality involved in embodied experience of a pre-given Umwelt. I argue that Husserl’s account of environed embodiment underlies and conditions his clarification of Natur (spatio-temporal materiality) and Geist (human cultural and historical achievements). This argument is situated in Husserl’s engagement of the 19th century debate between Wilhelm Dilthey and the Neo-Kantian Baden school concerning the methodological relationship between the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften). Husserl radicalized the debate between Dilthey and the Baden School by pluralizing Heinrich Rickert’s attitudinal characterization of concept formation and clarifying and developing Dilthey’s notion of a life-nexus. Husserl’s approach allows for an identification of the belief modalities of the natural attitude that are operative in feeling sensations oriented toward embodied resolutions involved in bodily regulation. The pre-reflective bodily self-awareness involved in feeling sensations correlated with an Umwelt as a horizon of relevancy and familiarity is the constitutive ground of both Natur (spatio-temporal materiality) and Geist (human cultural and historical achievements) investigated in the respective domains of modern scientific rationality. This reconstruction of Husserl’s approach to shows that, despite criticisms to the contrary, Husserl overcame a dichotomy between Natur and Geist through an identification of their common ground in environed embodiment.

Introduction

Edmund Husserl’s conception of world has proven to be

one of his most rich and subtle phenomenological

discoveries, one that still has contemporary philosophical

implications. Husserl’s theory of world constitution,

however, is complex and his clarification of the meaning of

the term world underwent several revisions and

1

clarifications over the course of his career. During the

1910s and 1920s, the difference between a surrounding or

environing world (Umwelt) and world (Welt) gradually became a

technical distinction for Husserl, one that remained as an

important trace in his later work, e.g., in his distinction

in the Crisis works between the pre-given lived-environing-

world (Lebensumwelt) and life-world (Lebenswelt) that is

inclusive of cultural achievements and historical self-

understandings. Husserl’s theory of world constitution

culminated in his later articulation of the life-world.

The development of Husserl’s theory of world

constitution occurred throughout his career and played a

central role in Husserl’s engagement in a 19th century

debate concerning the methodological relationship between

the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and human sciences

(Geisteswissenschaften).1 The questions concerning the

scientific relationship between Natur (nature understood as

spatio-temporal materiality) and Geist (human world comprised

1 Husserl gave lectures courses on the Natur/Geist distinction in 1912, 1919, and 1927. He also substantively engages the distinction in the seminars Phenomenology and Psychology (1917) and Phenomenological Psychology (1925).

2

of various cultural and historical achievements) led Husserl

to identify and clarify what he called the “forgotten

meaning fundament” that underlies both Natur and Geist.2 In

order for the relationship (similarities and differences)

between Natur and Geist to be properly clarified, it was

necessary to demonstrate how they respectively arise from

the pre-theoretical experience of a pre-given Umwelt. While

Husserl’s later articulation of the life-world was inclusive

of the scientific accomplishments that flow in (einströmen)

everyday life, these enriched and higher order features of

world constitution nevertheless presuppose and form a unity

with the disclosure of a world in its pre-givenness as an

Umwelt.

Husserl’s attempt to clarify the Natur/Geist distinction

has been criticized by subsequent phenomenologists such as

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2003) and Barry Smith (2001). In

Merleau-Ponty’s lecture course on nature, for example, he

claims “Husserl did not manage to overcome this duality

[between Natur/Geist].”3 This appraisal can also be 2 Husserl 1970b: 295.3 Merleau-Ponty 2003: 72.

3

illustrated by Barry Smith’s claim that Husserl remained

confined to a Natur/Geist dichotomy in a way that resulted in

a conception of the “subject of mental experience in

isolation from any surrounding physic-biological

environment.”4 These criticisms largely take their point of

departure from Husserl’s treatment of the Natur/Geist

distinction in the Ideas II, a text that does not provide a

sustained account of the pre-theoretical pre-givenness of an

Umwelt. In subsequently published lecture courses and

research manuscripts, however, it is evident that Husserl

investigated the intentional correlate between a lived body

and Umwelt more thoroughly.

This article reconstructs several aspects from

Husserl’s phenomenology regarding the intentionality

involved in embodied experience of a pre-given Umwelt. I

argue that Husserl’s account of environed embodiment

underlies and conditions his clarification of Natur (spatio-

temporal materiality) and Geist (human cultural and

4 Smith 2001: 15. Smith thus finds it necessary to supplement a Husserlian account of environed embodiment with the ecological psychology of J. J. Gibson in order to gain a “ new realist interpretation” of environing phenomenon. See also Smith 1999.

4

historical achievements). This argument is situated in

Husserl’s engagement of the 19th century debate between

Wilhelm Dilthey and the Neo-Kantian Baden school concerning

the methodological relationship between the natural sciences

(Naturwissenschaften) and human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften).

Husserl radicalized the debate between Dilthey and the Baden

School by pluralizing Heinrich Rickert’s attitudinal

characterization of concept formation and clarifying and

developing Dilthey’s notion of a life-nexus. Husserl’s

approach allows for an identification of the belief

modalities of the natural attitude that are operative in

feeling sensations oriented toward embodied resolutions

involved in bodily regulation. The pre-reflective bodily

self-awareness involved in feeling sensations correlated

with an Umwelt as a horizon of relevancy and familiarity is

the constitutive ground of both Natur (spatio-temporal

materiality) and Geist (human cultural and historical

achievements) investigated in the respective domains of

modern scientific rationality. This reconstruction of

Husserl’s approach to shows that, despite criticisms to the

5

contrary, Husserl overcame a dichotomy between Natur and Geist

through an identification of their common ground in

environed embodiment.

Husserlian Phenomenology and the Natur/Geist Distinction

The 19th century debate between Dilthey and the Neo-

Kantians from the Baden or Southwest school (especially

Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert) concerned the

methodological differences between the natural and human

sciences. The distinction between the Naturwissenschaften and

Geisteswissenschaften (Dilthey) or Kulturwissenschaften (Rickert)

became an issue of debate in light of the general success of

methodological naturalism in the natural sciences which, in

turn, raised questions regarding whether and how this

naturalism could legitimately be appropriated in disciplines

such as psychology, anthropology, and sociology. The Neo-

Kantians and Dilthey agreed that the human sciences have

methodological autonomy in relation to their naturalistic

counterpart and their common aim was to legitimate a

6

taxonomy of scientific disciplines wherein this autonomy

could be exercised.5

Dilthey and the Baden School sharply disagreed,

however, about the criterion through which the human

sciences are legitimately demarcated from the natural

sciences. For example, they disagreed about whether

psychological methodology could be fundamentally

naturalistic. Influenced by the then prevalent naturalistic

psychology originating in the research of Wilhelm Wundt,

Windelband and Rickert maintained that the discipline of

psychology is a naturalistic endeavor that investigates the

causal relationships involved in psycho-physical processes.

They thus classified psychology as a naturalistic science

and in his Kulturwissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften, Rickert

(1899) replaced “Geist” with “Kultur” to reflect the domain of

non-naturalistic methodology that was reflective of this

classification of psychology. On the other hand, Dilthey

maintained that a non-naturalistic psychology was the

5 The Natur/Geist distinction can be historically traced back to John Stuart Mill’s distinction. See Mill 1974. On early uses ofthe scientific use of the term “Geist,” see Rothacker 1948; Makkreel 1969; Plantinga 1980.

7

foundational discipline of the human sciences and could be

properly descriptive and analytic, rather than explanatory

and experimental.6 In Dilthey’s view, a naturalistic

psychology that is governed by continuums of causal

hypotheses represents an atomistic approach to intuitive

lived experience (Erlebnis) in a psychic nexus (seelischer

Zuzammenhang) that does not adequately account for various

kinds of unity evident in a first person perspective.

While Husserl recognized that it is possible to employ

both causal and descriptive methodologies in the

psychological disciplines, he agreed with Dilthey that

psychology could be legitimately non-naturalistic and thus

properly classified as a human science. Husserl provided

many arguments throughout his career to support this

position, including his critique of psychologism in the

“Prolegomena to Pure Logic.”7 Generally speaking, the

psychologism of Husserl’s day attempted to reduce the

6 Dilthey’s position develops and culminates in his Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften (1910). For an account of this development, see Jalbert 1988; Owensby 1994.

7 Husserl 1900.

8

cognition involved in mathematical and logical reasoning to

the explanatory laws that govern psycho-physical processes.

This logical psychologism thereby ignored a category

distinction between the act of knowing and the apodicticity

(indubitable certainty) and a prioricity (non-empirical

validity) that characterize laws of logic. Husserl’s

general critique of psychologism attempted to justify the

claims that logical laws are exact and a priori, and do not

imply predications concerning psychological matters of fact.

Consider, for example, the difference between the

psychological act of knowing, on the one hand, and the known

ideal objects pertaining to mathematics and logic, on the

other. The difference can be identified through a thought

experiment in which the repetition of the same logical

meaning in numerically different acts does not render a

different meaning that is reducible to the iteration of each

psychological act. The logical meaning, rather, has an

identity that is not reducible to the manifold of

psychological performances. With arguments such as this,

Husserl thus defended a non-naturalistic approach in

9

psychology and sided with Dilthey against the Baden School

concerning the classification of psychology as a human

science.

The debate between Dilthey and the Baden School also

included an epistemological disagreement regarding the

intelligibility of the real. For the Baden school,

empirical reality is a contingent and anomic infinite

manifold that becomes intelligible through concept

formation. For both the (non)naturalistic sciences, the

stream of unconceptualized sense experience of an infinite

reality is utterly chaotic in comparison to the articulated

structures of predication. The experience of an infinite

manifold of single events and processes that has no temporal

and spatial limits becomes intelligible by taking recourse

to the process of concept formation of the knower. As

Rickert (1986: 217) states, “If we assume that empirical

reality is the only material of science, and if empirical

reality forms an infinite manifold whose purely factual

rendition can never be provided by science, it is self-

evident that science is possible only by means of the

10

reshaping undertaken by the subject.” The “reshaping”

involved in the knower is different in the (non)naturalistic

sciences and Rickert attempted to account for this formal

difference through an attitudinal distinction involved in

the judgments concerning Natur and Kultur. The nomological

attitude (Einstellung) that animates the interests of a

natural scientist is governed by an evaluative priority of

general laws that pertain to associated objects and states

of affairs. The idiographic attitude that animates the

interest of the cultural scientist, on the other hand, is

governed by an evaluative priority of discreet features of

individual events and states of affairs involved in

judgments, for example, concerning cultural history.

Rickert’s critique of naïve epistemological realism, in

short, plays an important role in the methodological

differences between the natural and cultural sciences, a

difference that he formulated in terms of the attitudinal

interests of theoretical inquiry.

Not only did Dilthey maintain that this attitudinal

differentiation of the natural sciences from their non-

11

naturalistic counterpart was too formal, but he also

rejected the strong dichotomy between concepts and intuition

involved in the Baden School’s critique of naïve

epistemological realism. As Dilthey (1977: 32) states,

The classification theory of the faculties during the

time of Kant resulted in the drastic separations, the

divisive compartmentalization of his critique of

reason. This can be seen clearly as regards to the

separation between intuition and logical thought, as

well as between the matter and form of knowledge. Both

distinctions, as sharp and they are with Kant, destroy

the coherence of a living nexus...

The intuitive experience of empirical reality, according to

Dilthey, is not of an infinite manifold of chaotic sense

data that lacks an inherent intelligibility, but rather an

intelligible structure pre-given in a life-nexus

(Lebenszusammenhang). The fundamental data of the

intelligibility of the empirical does not originally operate

with a dichotomy between the concepts of thought and the

intuitions of the empirical. Rather, this dichotomy

12

presupposes a more fundamental unity of a lived experience

in a life-nexus with pre-given horizons of meaning that are

historically produced and accumulated. This life-nexus is

the proper object of the non-naturalistic sciences and

remains presupposed in any theoretical investigation, “… the

theoretician of knowledge is in possession of this nexus in

his own living consciousness, from which he transports it

into his theory. He presupposes it [the life-nexus]. He

makes use of it, but he is not in control of it.”8 In

short, Dilthey charged the Baden school’s attitudinal

distinction with formalism in contrast to an original datum

of lived experience with a pre-given intelligibility.

Husserl’s engagement with this debate not only

creatively appropriated terminology from both sides, but

radicalized the philosophical issues involved through

phenomenological methodology. More specifically, Husserl

appropriates the Baden School’s development of attitudinal

distinctions and pluralizes an account of attitudes that not

only apply to alternate forms of scientific inquiry, but

8 Dilthey, 1977: 32.

13

forms of pre-theoretical and phenomenological inquiry as

well. Husserl also creatively appropriated Dilthey’s

correlate of lived experience and life-nexus to develop an

account of a pre-given Umwelt that was the pre-theoretical

ground of both naturalistic and humanistic scientific

inquiry.

The Natur/Geist distinction was problematic for Husserl

and he spent significant effort in the 1910s and 1920s

attempting to situate phenomenology in relation to Dilthey

and the Baden School. While texts like Ideas II attempt to

address the problematic in terms that arise merely within

the distinction, in more recently published lecture courses

and research manuscripts it is apparent that Husserl

attempted to unbuild (Abbau) the Natur/Geist distinction

through the intentional structures involved in the pre-

theoretical lived experience of a pre-given Umwelt.9 This

attempt culminated in Husserl’s later articulation of the

life-world in the “Crisis writings” of the 1930s. It is the

pre-theoretical experience of a Lebensumwelt that is

9 This unbuilding is developed further in Konopka, 2009.

14

presupposed by and forms a unity with the theoretical

interests of both the natural and human sciences. In

developing this account, however, Husserl is in a difficult

position in that he must penetrate through the Natur/Geist

distinction in an attempt to unbuild the dichotomy, while

preserving the methodological autonomy of the non-

naturalistic sciences. In order to build up a legitimate

formation (Aufbau) of a Natur/Geist distinction, it was first

necessary to unbuild (Abbau) the distinction and identify

and clarify the conditions of its possibility.

Lived Belief in the Natural Attitude

One of the ways in which Husserl radicalized the debate

between Dilthey and the Baden School was by appropriating

Rickert’s attitudinal characterization of the cognitive mode

of concept formation in the clarification of Dilthey’s life-

nexus. While Rickert only employed attitudes to account for

theoretical investigations, Husserl radicalized this

attitudinal characterization when he thematized pre-

theoretical experience as a natural attitude. Husserl

occasionally referred to the natural attitude as a “life

15

attitude” because it is the natural attitude is the habitual

stance we assume in everyday life.10 The natural attitude

is intentionally correlated with the experience of the world

as an Umwelt and “life” was the term Husserl eventually used

to describe the involvement in this nexus of significance.

Husserl formulated in the distinction between a

theoretical and pre-theoretical experience of an Umwelt in

the opening sections of each of the Ideas triptych, but it

is in the lecture courses and research manuscripts that he

elaborates the significance for the methodological

differentiation of the natural and human sciences (and

ultimately the justification for the autonomy of the human

sciences). The opening sections of Ideas II, for example,

deal with the theoretical modifications of lived experience,

but it does not provide a sustained analysis of the pre-

theoretical.11 How does an analysis of the pre-theoretical

experience of an Umwelt clarify the relationship between the

theoretical interests involved in the naturalistic and 10 Husserl 1970: 270.11 Husserl 1952: 11. Eugen Fink (1976: 190) argues that pre-theoretical natural attitude remained an “operative concept” in Ideas II. C.f. Luft, 1998.

16

personalistic attitudes? What are the methodological

implications to the way Natur and Geist can be compared and

contrasted?

An attitude for Husserl is a habitual posture or stance

whose intentions shape the interests through which the sense

of objects and states of affairs are given in experience.12

The attitude in pre-theoretical experience is a natural

attitude in that it is properly characterized in terms of

habitual normalcy and thetic naïveté. First, the natural

attitude of ordinary everyday experience has habituated

interests that are reinforced and sedimented in routine

situations. In both straightforward (pre-reflective)

participation in practical life and deliberative (practical)

reflection, the natural attitude is governed by systems of

habituated interests that reinforce each other and produce

normal patterns of stylized (associative) relations in a

given situation. Second, the natural attitude can be

properly characterized in terms of its naïveté in that it

implicitly posits a belief in the actual existence of

12 Husserl, 1977: 51; Husserl, 1970b: 280.

17

objects and states of affairs in the world. Indeed, the

natural attitude does not operate with awareness that it is

an attitude at all in that the intentions that animate

interests are absorbed in the overall perceptual style of

habituated situations that are presented in simple

certainty. This implicit positing of the actuality of

perceptual and practical objects and states of affairs is

accompanied by an implicit positing of the world as an

encompassing totality and the horizon within which objects

and states of affairs are disclosed. The basic and overall

belief of the natural attitude is real actuality.

The very thematization of the natural attitude implies

a suspension of participation in it. While beliefs

concerning objects and states of affairs can undergo

modification in, for example, doubt and negation, the

emergence of a phenomenological or philosophical attitude

arises in the suspension of the participation in basic and

overall belief in the world as an encompassing totality.

The phenomenological reduction thus involves an attitude

shift that neutralizes the thetic characteristics involved

18

in how objects and states of affairs are disclosed for and

by an experiencing agent. This “leading back” to an

experiencing agent involved in the reduction allows for

experience to be considered through the intentional

correlates of the experience of an object and the object of

an experience to be taken as internally unified, not

externally related.

The structures of intentionality involved in a lived

experience can be clarified through a description of their

cognitive, practical (volitional), and evaluative

attributes. First, objects and states of affairs are given

in ordinary experience with cognitive contents that

contribute to the justification of judgments about those

experienced objects and states of affairs. Second, pre-

theoretical interests are characterized by an instrumental

or categorical structure wherein objects and states of

affairs are practically apprehended as an “in-order-to”

(Um-zu). Third, these practical as-structures are motivated

by an evaluative sphere of experience wherein the evaluative

sense of objects and states of affairs are given as

19

likeable/unlikeable, attractive/unattractive, etc. in

various wide and varied continuums.

While Husserl’s published works largely dealt with the

cognitive attributes involved in intentionality, his

lectures and research manuscripts develop more probing and

sophisticated descriptions of the embodied and evaluative

attributes involved in pre-theoretical life. For example,

he developed accounts of how embodied forms of valuing are

evident in instinctual intentions that are fulfilled through

satisfactions that regulate the bodily equilibrium involved

in pre-reflective self-awareness. Husserl’s rather

extensive analyses of the intentionality of instinctual

experience illustrate the sense in which the belief

modalities of experience, e.g., the basic and overall doxic

modality of the perceptual objects as really existing, are

lived. Let’s briefly consider Husserl’s account in more

detail.

Generally speaking, Husserl conceived of drive

intentions as embodied impulses or strivings of practical

material performances that proceed more or less

20

automatically toward the evaluative resolution of a tension

that is instrumental for the preservation and welfare that

is achieved in and through embodied equilibrium.13 Consider

a simple performance of quenching thirst. Thirst can be

described as an instinctual experience wherein bodily

intentions are fulfilled through a resolution of a tension

manifested in feeling sensations such as a dry throat and

bodily warmth. The bodily intention animates these feeling

sensations with an orientation toward their resolution,

which is to say, the sensations are negatively valued and

can even become uncomfortable. The bodily tension arises

through a conflict between the feeling sensation and its

negative evaluation that arises in and through an

equilibrium achieved in pre-reflective bodily self-

regulation. The tension manifested in the feeling

sensations of thirst is resolved through the temperature and

taste of the water through which the feeling sensations,

e.g., dry throat and bodily fatigue, are relieved and the

13 Husserl, 2014: 82 ff. C.f., Husserl, 2008: 316, 510; 1973a: 661; Nam-In Lee, 1993; Melle, 1997; Mensch, 1997.

21

horizons of interoceptive sensation in pre-reflective bodily

self-awareness are resolved.

Instinctual experience operates with doxic modalities

that are related to the positing the real actuality of

perceptual objects and states of affairs. Parallel to the

process from an empty to fulfilled perceptual intention,

instinctually embodied intentions operate with unthematic

beliefs in the 1) possibility and 2) positive evaluation of

the resolution. These belief characteristics can be

indicated through an analogy between a voluntary wish and

hope. If quenching one’s thirst operated with a positive

evaluation of the performance but not its possibility, the

voluntary action would be properly characterized as a wish.

While the temporal structure of a wish restricts the

unbelief in the possibility of the evaluative resolution to

the present, the wish can become a hope through an

association with a belief in the possibility of the

evaluative fulfillment in the future. While a voluntary

wish does not assent to or agree with a present possibility,

a hope assents to or agrees with the possibility in the

22

future. This distinction between a voluntary wish and hope

is analogous (similar and different) to the doxic modalities

in instinctual experience.14 One of the initial differences

between the two is the degree to which they are thematic.

Voluntary intentions are higher order volitional acts that

include an explicit “living through” of focal attention

whereas drive intentions are lower order volitional acts

that can have pre-egoic intentional origins in the bodily

regulation involved in pre-reflective self-awareness. For

example, the feeling sensations involved in thirst operate

with unthematic positings of the 1) possibility and 2)

positive evaluation of their resolution. These feeling

sensations operate with gradated saliences that range from

basic allures and repulsions analogous to psychological

valences and emotional episodes and are oriented by the

overall fulfillment of bodily regulation. In short, these

doxic modalities proper to the feeling sensations of

instinctual embodiment are determinative of the senses in

which objects and states of affairs are significant. 14 This analogical methodology is developed in Walton, 2010; Melle, 1997.

23

Husserl’s investigations of feeling sensations involved

in the embodied resolutions of instinctual experience

illustrate how he radicalized Dilthey’s account of a life-

nexus. While Husserl’s published work focused on the

cognitive attributes of experience, his lecture courses and

research manuscripts provide more extensive analyses of

practical and evaluative attributes. These more extensive

analyses, e.g., feeling sensations involved bodily

regulation, radicalized Dilthey’s account of a life-nexus

through a phenomenological account of the intentional

structures of a lived body. As we will see further below,

Husserl also radicalized the concept of life-nexus by

clarifying the associative features involved in the nexus

and developed a phenomenological concept of world to

describe the overall associative horizon of the life-nexus.

Theoretical Modifications of the Natural Attitude

The distinction between the natural and

phenomenological attitude is the fundamental attitudinal

distinction in phenomenological methodology and it allows

for the identification and clarification of various

24

scientific attitudes.15 When we take up scientific

interests we enact implicit modifications of the natural

attitude. The most basic modification that is common to all

scientific interests is brought about through assuming a

theoretical concern that can be characterized through an

interest in non-instrumentality, universality, and

explanation. In the course of one’s personal life,

experience is dominated by an instrumental or “means-end”

interest in the accomplishment of practical activities.

These goal-oriented activities do not operate with a first

person interest in the theoretical dimensions available for

reflection. For example, as we drive our automobiles or

build our homes our lived experiences are instrumental for

reaching a destination and completing a shelter and so on.

These goal oriented activities do not operative with a first

person interest in the theoretical dimensions available for

reflection, e.g., the principles of physics relevant to

internal combustion engines and the chemical properties of

building materials. When we turn our attention from our

15 Husserl, 1952: 11.

25

practical concerns to consider objects and states of affair

as non-instrumental or ends in themselves, we become

theoretically interest in them, which is to say, their

immediate instrumental value is suspended in favor of an

epistemic valuation. These objects and states of affairs

become significant to us not merely through their practical

purpose but with a manner of givenness shaped by a curiosity

to know them. When this theoretical interest becomes

habituated to the point where it forms certain normative

styles of attention, we have assumed a scientific attitude.

A scientific or theoretical attitude thus shifts the

ordinary or everyday characteristics of the natural attitude

with an extra-ordinary curiosity for knowing objects and

states of affairs. As Husserl put it, the turn to theoria is

a “voluntary epoché of all natural praxis.”16 Even though

there is a shift in this exchange between the dogmatism of

our everyday opinions with an implicit critique of this

dogmatism through theoretical interest, the scientific

attitudes still maintain the basic doxic and being modality

16 Husserl, 1970b: 283.

26

of the natural attitude – the belief in the existence of the

world. In the theoretical inspection of the internal

combustion engine or the building materials for a house, the

belief in the existence of the engine or materials is not

called into question or suspended. In shifting our

practical interests from whether or not the engine or

materials continue to function in their handiness to a

theoretical interest in how they function as such, we do not

suspend participation in the belief that they function in a

variety of different ways. Given that the belief in the

existence of objects and states of affairs in the world is

“the general thesis of the natural attitude,” the scientific

attitudes still remain natural attitudes in that they

operate with an ontological naïveté.17

Husserl thus draws a distinction between the natural

attitude of life and the theoretically modified natural

attitudes of the scientist. The scientific attitudes could

thus be considered theoretical species of the natural

attitude. While there are, in principle, scientific

17 Husserl, 1977: 52.

27

attitudes specific to each scientific discipline, e.g.,

biology, chemistry, and physics, Husserl in Ideas II and

accompanying Natur/Geist lecture courses pioneers two basic

attitudes corresponding to the broad domain of the natural

and human sciences. The attitude of the natural scientist

is the naturalistic attitude wherein the researcher confines

her theoretical interest to the physical or material

features of the objects of experience. This isolation of

the spatio-temporal materiality of objects is accomplished

through the neutralization of subjective accomplishments in

experience, e.g., the meaning predicates that indicate and

express non-epistemic value and so on, which allows the

natural scientist to secure a stratum of appearances that

are, in principle, reducible to res extensa.18 If a chemist,

for example, were to investigate a painting in New York’s

Metropolitan Museum of Art in the naturalistic attitude, she

would merely be concerned and interested in the various

chemical properties of the physical features of the paint.19

Her attention toward the author of the work, the composition18 Husserl, 1952: 33. 19 Husserl, 1952: 8.

28

of the painting, and its historical significance would be

put out of play in the naturalistic attitude. The isolation

of the physical features of phenomenon results in a

neutralization of a variety of cognitive, practical, and

evaluative attributes involved in a full range of aesthetic

experience. The naturalistic attitude is thus a limiting

attitude in that its theoretical interest in confined to

merely physical characteristics of experience and this

restriction of attention is a modification of the broader

scope of meaning predicates in the pre-theoretical natural

attitude.

The personalistic attitude of the human scientist is

also a modification of the pre-theoretical natural attitude,

but the scope of available possibilities for theoretical

interest remains much broader than its naturalistic

counterpart. In the personalistic attitude, our interest is

not only directed toward the physical features of objects

and states of affairs, but other forms of givenness such as

we find in legal codes, intersubjective communities, and

historical events. The non-physical properties of objects

29

and states of affairs, e.g., the motivational features of a

person in social interactions, do not present themselves

apart from their physical properties but neither is a full

account of them reducible to their material features. While

the forms of givenness in the personalistic attitude are not

separate from or juxtaposed to their physicality, these

phenomenon have an “excess” or “surplus” beyond their merely

physical givenness.20 While personalistic interests cover a

broad range of phenomenon, the particular human sciences

confine theoretical attention to specific types of

phenomenon – the historican relegates her interest to

historical events, the sociologist to social phenomenon, and

the psychologist to psycho-physical properties of the

person. These are all interests that, in principle, are

also available to the pre-theoretical natural attitude, but

when we assume the personalistic attitude, we theoretically

modify these interests by neutralizing their practical

significances. The personalistic attitude is also thus a

20 Husserl, 1952: 176.

30

modification of the personal concerns and interests of the

natural attitude of life.

While Rickert confined his formulation of attitudes to

the theoretical inquiry involved in scientific methodology,

Husserl radicalized Rickert’s formulation through a

pluralized account of attitudes. The plurality of various

attitudes can be distinguished according to the doxic

modalities and being characteristics that condition

interests in objects and states of affairs. Husserl’s

attitudinal characterization of the lived experience

involved in pre-theoretical natural attitude provided the

methodological resources for a phenomenological

clarification of Dilthey’s life-nexus. As we have seen,

Husserl radicalized Dilthey’s conception of life, e.g.,

through investigations of the embodied resolutions of the

lived body involved in instinctual experience. Husserl also

investigated the correlative features involved in the nexus

of significance of lived experience. As we will see below,

his clarification of the organization involved in the

objective correlates of lived experience employed a theory

31

of association that identified the systemic patterns of pre-

given unity.

General Introduction of Lebensumwelt: The Pre-Given

Lebenswelt

The theoretical modification of natural attitude of

life in the two broad scientific attitudes that correlate

with (non)naturalistic theoretical inquiry are correlated

with a certain horizon of objects and states of affairs that

are unified in overall harmonious associations. The

concerns and interests of each of the above attitudes are

shaped by the associative styles of the pre-given world with

which they are correlated. In the natural, naturalistic,

and personalistic attitudes, the world is the sum totality

of all objects. In a phenomenological attitude, the term

“world” is the intentional correlate of consciousness that

provides the overall context in and through which objects

and states of affairs have sense.

Husserl’s discovery of the phenomenological concept of

world occurred in the context of unbuilding the Natur/Geist

distinction. In attempting to generally clarify Natur as

32

the overall correlate of the naturalistic attitude of the

natural sciences and Geist as the overall correlate of the

personalistic attitude of the human sciences, Husserl’s

investigations led him to consider the clarification of the

world as the overall correlate of the pre-theoretical

natural attitude of life. As highlighted above, this

primordial attitude operates with doxic modalities and

thetic characteristics that are proper to the feeling

sensations of the lived body’s orientation toward regulative

equilibrium in and through a sense making process. Even the

modalities of feeling sensations of a lived body are

characteristic of a sense making process operate with

horizons of possibility with an unthematic overall

associative unity. The disclosure of a world is not merely

a high order cognitive achievement, but implicitly and

unthematically operates in a sense making process proper to

feeling sensations and embodied resolutions.21

Husserl’s identification of the pre-given world as an

embodied and lived world radicalized Dilthey’s notion of a

21 Husserl, 1966: 298; c.f. 1952: 158.

33

life-nexus and was also influenced by Richard Avenarius’

notion of the “natural concept of world.” Like Dilthey,

Avenarius was critical of the naturalistic psychology of his

day that uncritically accepted first person experience and

he attempted to develop a synthetic and analytic account of

the mental contents of “pure experience” that he understood

to be analogous to physiological processes in the brain.

Avenarius’ attempt to bring the psychic and physical into a

close parallel operated with a minimal commitment to

presuppositions concerning a living thing. A living thing,

according to Avenarius, required the nourishment and

exercise involved in the striving to maintain a “vital

maximum” through the maintenance of bodily equilibrium in

response to a changing environment (Umgebung).22 He

categorizes this orientation toward the stability of bodily

equilibrium in response to environmental changes as “System

C” and describes the motivational attributes of this

orientation, for example, in periphery perception in terms

of relevancy and familiarity. Husserl’s account of the

22 Avenarius, 1888, 64-72.

34

feeling sensations proper to a lived body condition a

process of world disclosure engages this account of

periphery perception. Let’s briefly consider Husserl’s

engagement of Avenarius in more detail.

Husserl’s approach to the formation of the concept of

world can be introduced through his account of

“habitualities.”23 He employed this account of the habitual

features of experience to describe a wide range of higher

order cognitive, practical, and evaluative phenomenon. He

also characterized lower order perceptual and embodied

habitualities that contribute to a process of association

involved in horizontal anticipation of novel objects and

states of affairs. Husserl’s basic claim was that each

perception of an object with a new sense, especially when

that experience is evidential through a process of

intentional fulfillment, produces an abiding conviction for

the perceiver. Consider again the example of quenching

thirst. The perception of the temperature and wetness of

the water is accompanied by resolved feeling sensations of

23 Husserl, 1970a: 66-67; c.f., 1959: 75.

35

increased bodily temperature and fatigue. As these

perceptions and feeling sensations retentionally recede into

the past, the perceptual fulfillments and resolved bodily

sensations likewise recede into the past but can also inform

subsequent experiences in the future. While this process of

habitual association is not necessarily propositional, it

can be reflected in judgments like “Cool water quenches

thirst” and the practical property of “thirst quenching” can

accompany the anticipation of future experiences of drinking

water. The retentional phase of quenched thirst and the

accompanying resolutions of feeling sensations thereby

contribute to an abiding conviction in the embodied

perceiver regarding drinking water’s embodied significance

for quenching thirst. The accumulation of sedimented

convictions produces in the embodied perceiver an overall

“empirical style.”24 In the course of accumulated

confirmations of resolved feeling sensations, the perception

24 Husserl’s account bears similarities with Alva Noë and Evan Thompson’s sensory motor knowledge. See Noë and Thompson, 2004a and 2004b. C.f., Herbert and Pollatos, 2012; Craig, 2002.

36

of anticipated objects and states of affairs become

associated with affordances for further bodily regulation.

Husserl’s claim that habitualities make an essential

contribution to perception can be further clarified through

an analogy between kinaesthetic and feeling sensations

involved in pre-reflective bodily self-awareness.

Kinaesthetic sensations are sensations through which a

subject is aware of movements of sense organs and the lived

body.25 These sensations of bodily movement are an inherent

moment in the perception of objects, which is to say, the

flow of kinaesthetic sensations are correlated with the flow

of presenting contents. In ambulatory movement, for

example, I not only perceive the walking path, but the

correlative bodily sensations involved in my leg and arm

movements. While the process of learning how to walk may

involve concerted attention to the correlation between

kinaesthetic sensations and ambulatory movement, these

correlations become unthematic in pre-reflective bodily

self-awareness through a process of sedimented

25 Husserl, 1973b: 161, 136; c.f. 1966: 299.

37

habitualities. In this process, this sensation of

individual bodily movements – leg, arm, neck, and eye

movements – become passively synthesized in a kinaesthetic

horizon correlated with the perceptual horizons of objects

and states of affairs.26 This horizonal correlation between

the pre-reflective bodily self-awareness in kinaesthetic

sensations and the horizons of perceptual sense is an

example of an overall habitual style of experiencing a

world.

The habitualities involved in feeling sensations

oriented toward embodied resolutions are analogous (similar

and different) to kinaesthetic sensations.27 First, feeling

sensations such a dry throat or empty stomach are given as

unresolved tensions that are affectively oriented toward

resolution through felt discomfort. The saliences of

embodied resolutions in this regard are analogous to higher

order psychological valences. Kinaesthetic sensations are

not given with the same motivational structure. Second, like

kinaesthetic sensations, however, feeling sensations 26 Husserl, 1971: 118; c.f. 1952: 155. 27 Husserl, 1984: 109-112.

38

oriented toward resolution are correlative to the perceptual

sense of objects and states of affairs. As I increasingly

become thirsty during a long walk on a summer day, for

example, the salience of the discomfort of a dry throat and

bodily fatigue can motivate explicit thematic attention, but

these feeling sensations below certain salience thresholds

can also remain implicit in pre-reflective bodily self-

awareness. Thus, feeling sensations oriented toward

resolution are affectively charged with salience in a way

that kinaesthetic sensations are not. Third, the particular

feeling sensations involved in bodily fatigue and

temperature, for example, become passively synthesized in an

affective horizon of the lived body that is correlated with

kinaesthetic horizons involved in perceptual senses of

objects and states of affairs. While the kinaesthetic

horizon involved in pre-reflective bodily self-awareness is

an integrated manifold of sensory contents that is indicated

by the bodily gestalt, if you like, involved in

proprioception, the embodied horizon of feeling sensations

oriented toward resolution is not integrated in the same

39

way. That is, these feeling sensations remain localized to

particular bodily organs or parts, e.g., throat, stomach,

etc., rather than becoming unified in a way that is proper

to the sensory integration involved in movement. Fourth,

feeling sensations involved in embodied resolutions are

largely subject to supervening voluntary intentions whereas

kinaesthetic sensations are not. I can freely volitionally

intend an endorsement or resistance to orientation toward

bodily resolutions, e.g., choose to satisfy or refrain from

satisfying thirst or hunger. It does not seem possible,

however, to voluntarily supervene on the pre-reflective

bodily self-awareness involved in walking. Despite these

important similarities and differences between kinaesthetic

and feeling sensations, both sets of sensation operate with

habitualities that become sedimented with belief modalities

and being characteristics. In sum, like the habitualities

involved in kinaesthetic sensations, then, feeling

sensations oriented toward bodily regulation also condition

the overall habitual style of experiencing a world.28

28 Husserl, 1959: 169.

40

Husserl characterized the associative process involved

in the pre-reflective bodily self-awareness correlated with

the overall empirical style of the perceptual horizons

through what he called “tendencies.” Tendencies generally

refer to the affective and motivational attributes involved

in passive synthesis. “By affective force I mean a tendency

directed toward the ego, a tendency whose reaction is a

responsivity on the part of the ego. That is, in yielding

to the affection – in other words, by being “motivated” –

the ego takes up an endorsing position; it decides actively

for what is enticing, and it does so in the mode of

subjective certainty.”29 Tendencies operate with various

thresholds of affective allure or repulsion wherein a sense

making process passively elicits the attention of the

perceiver. This passivity is not pure, however, but

accompanied by a horizon of unthematic feeling sensations

that are inclined toward bodily regulation. The passive

association involved in the anticipation of new objects in a

perceptual horizon does not merely administer

29 Husserl, 1966: 50; c.f. 1959: 196.

41

allure/repulsion on thematic attention in higher order

performances, but is inclusive of allures/repulsions

correlated with unthematic feeling sensations.30 When a

perceptual object comes to prominence, it is disclosed with

a style that is conditioned by these habituated feeling

sensations involved in bodily regulation.

Husserl more generally characterized the allure and

repulsion involved in tendentious associations as horizons

of familiarity and relevancy. Tendentious associations do

not merely arise in the prominence of individual objects,

but the associations among various objects and states of

affairs. When an individual object comes to prominence with

an affecting salience, its appearance retains an association

with habitual style of feeling sensations. These

associations point to other associations through outer

horizons and comprise systems of referential indication in

an overall horizon of familiarity. This overall horizon of

familiarity through which objects are disclosed with

specific senses is also pre-given as a horizon of relevancy

30 Husserl, 2014: 132 ff.

42

for feeling sensations involved in bodily regulation.31 This

is the process in which pre-reflective self-awareness of

feeling sensations become correlated with an Umwelt.

The associative attributes involved in the overall

horizons of familiarity and relevancy have an overall

unthematic unity through the disclosure of a world.

Husserl’s phenomenological clarification of Dilthey’s

conception of a life-nexus as an Lebensumwelt thus emphasized

a particular kind of overall unity that is not descriptively

captured by the term “nexus” (Zuzammenhang). The

sedimented empirical style proper to the totality of

possible perceptual experience is pre-given with a unity of

similarity (harmony) through which individual objects and

states of affairs are disclosed with sense. This

“harmonious style” is not reducible to subjective

accomplishments nor does it become fully determinate.

Rather, it is accomplished by the enworlding (Verweltlichung)

or worldhood of an Umwelt.32

31 Husserl, 2008: 311, 510. C.f., Merleau-Ponty, 1967: 151. 32 Husserl (2002: 228) characterizes Umwelt as the constitutive ground of the concept of world, “That which has already resulted for us in this regard is the fundamental basis of the original

43

Conclusion

Husserl’s lecture courses and research manuscripts on

the Natur/Geist distinction develop a sense of “life-in-the-

world” that correlates an embodied horizon of feeling

sensations with the habituated sensuous style of objects and

states of affairs in an Umwelt. The general sketch above is

perhaps sufficient to respond to Merleau-Ponty’s criticism

that Husserl was not able to overcome the duality between

Natur and Geist or Barry Smith’s criticism that Husserl

conceived of mental experience in isolation from a

“surrounding physico-biological environment.” As we have

seen, a lived body’s correlate with an Umwelt is pregnant

with sense associations that are prior to the theoretical

modifications involved in the formation of the Natur as the

correlate of the naturalistic attitude and Geist as the

correlate of the personalistic attitude.

The belief modalities and thetic characteristics

involved in the natural attitude are inclusive of the goal

source of the determination of the concept ‘world,’ namely, the necessary form of the correlation ‘I and my Umwelt,’ and the correlation ‘I and my pre-theoretical Umwelt.” C.f., Konopka, 2010; Gurwitsch, 1964: 11, 406.

44

orientation involved in the feeling sensations involved in

bodily regulation. As we have seen, the lived belief in the

evaluative possibility of embodied resolutions in pre-

reflective bodily self-awareness contributes to a sense

making process in an Umwelt as a horizon of relevancy and

familiarity through a process of sedimented habitualities.

This “overall empirical style” is inclusive of a sensuous

style proper to associations among objects and states of

affairs in horizons of tendencies that condition and are

conditioned by the feeling sensations involved in bodily

regulation.

45

Reference List

Avenarius R (1888) Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, Erster Band. Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag.

Craig AD (2002) How Do You Feel? Interoception: the Sense ofthe Physiological Condition of the Body. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 3: 655-666.

Dilthey W (1977) Descriptive Psychology and Historical Understanding. Zaner RM and Heiges KL (trans) The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Fink E (1976) Nähe und Distanz. Phänomenologische Vorträge und Aufsätze. Franz-Anton Schwartz (ed) Freiburg/Munich: Alber.

Friedman M (2000) The Parting of Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Chicago: Open Court.

Gurwitsch A (1964) The Field of Consciousness. Pittsburgh: DuquesneUniversity Press.

46

Herbert BM and Pollatos O (2012) The Body in the Mind: On the Relationship Between Interoception and Embodiment. Topicsin Cognitive Science, 4(4): 692-704.

Husserl E (2014) Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie. Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte. Metaphysik. Späte Ethik (Texte aus dem Nachlass 1908–1937). Sowa R and Vongehr T (eds) Husserliana XXXXII. New York: Springer.

Husserl E (2008) Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916-1937). Sowa R (ed) Husserliana XXXIX. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Husserl E (2002) Natur und Geist. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1919. Weiler M (ed) Husserliana Materialienband IV. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Husserl E (2001) Natur und Geist: Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1927. Weiler M (ed) Husserliana XXXII. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Husserl E (1977) Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführungin die reine Phänomenologie. Schuhmann K (ed) Husserliana III. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Husserl E (1973a) Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil. 1929-35. Kern I (ed) Husserliana XV. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Husserl E (1973b) Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907. Claesges U (ed)Husserliana XVI The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Husserl E (1970a) Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Cairns D (trans) The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Husserl E (1970b) The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Carr D (trans) Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

47

Husserl E (1966) Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918-1926. Fleischer M (ed) Husserliana XI.The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Husserl E (1959) Erste Philosophie (1923/4). Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion. Boehm R (ed) Husserliana VIII. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Husserl E (1952) Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. ed. Marly Biemel M (ed) Husserliana IV. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Husserl E (1900) Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Teil: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Halle: Max Niemeyer.

Jalbert J (1988) Husserl’s Position Between Dilthey and the Windelband-Rickert School of Neo-Kantianism. Journal of the History of Philosophy 26(2): 279–296.

Konopka A (2010) The Worldhood of the Perceptual Environing World. In Vandevelde P and Luft S (eds) Phenomenology, Archaeology, Ethics: Current Investigations of Husserl’s Corpus. New York: Continuum, pp. 120-131.

Konopka A (2009) The Role of Umwelt in Husserl’s Aufbau and Abbau of the Natur/Geist Distinction. Human Studies 32: 313-333.

Lee NI (1993) Edmund Husserls Phänomenolgie der Instinkte. Dordrecht:Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Luft S (1998) Husserl’s Phenomenological Discovery of the Natural Attitude. Continental Philosophy Review 31: 153-170.

Makkreel R (1969) Wilhelm Dilthey and the Neo-Kantians: The Distinction of the Geisteswissenschaften and the Kulturwissenschaften. Journal of the History of Philosophy 7(4): 423-440.

48

Melle U (1997) Husserl’s Phenomenology of Willing. In: Hart J and Embree L (eds) Phenomenology of Values and Valuing. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp.169-192.

Mensch JR (1997) Instincts: A Husserlian Account. Husserl Studies 14(3): 219-237.

Merleau-Ponty M (2003) Nature: Course notes from the College de France. Vallier R (trans) Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty M (1967) The Structure of Behavior. Fisher AL (trans) Boston: Beacon Press.

Mill JS (1974) A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and Methods of Scientific Investigation. In RobsonJM (ed) Collected Works VIII. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Noë A and Thompson E (2004) Are There Neural Correlates of Consciousness? Journal of Consciousness Studies 11(1): 3-28.

Noë A and Thompson E (2004) Sorting Out the Neural Basis of Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 11(1): 87–98.

Owensby J (1994) Dilthey and the Narrative of History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Plantinga T (1980) Historical Understanding in the Thought of Wilhelm Dilthey. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Rothacker E (1948) Logik und Systematik der Geisteswissenschaften. Bonn: H. Bouvier.

Rickert H (1986) The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science: A Logical Introduction to the Historical Sciences. Oakes G (ed) (trans) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

49

Smith B (2001) Husserlian Ecology. Human Ontology (Kyoto) 7: 1-17.

Smith B (1999) Truth and the Visual Field. In Petitot J, Varela F, Pachoud B, and Roy JM (eds) Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science.Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 317-329.

Walton R (2010) The Constitutive and Reconstructive BuildingUp of Horizons. In Vandevelde P and Luft S (eds) Phenomenology, Archaeology, Ethics: Current Investigations of Husserl’s Corpus.New York: Continuum Press: pp. 132-150.

Walton R (2003) On the Manifold Senses of Horizonedness: Theories of E. Husserl and A. Gurwitsch. Husserl Studies 19:1-24.

50