## 1. The Munich and Gottingen Circles of Phenomenology: A Brief History



At the turn of the twentieth century, the relation between philosophy
and psychology was a topic of intense debate in various academic
circles. Among other issues, this debate concerned whether psychology
should be understood as a philosophical discipline or, the other way
around, whether philosophy should be grounded in psychology. Of
particular importance to this debate is whether ethical, metaphysical
and logical concepts are psychological or not. Since these concepts
are usually held to be constitutive of the corresponding laws of
ethics, metaphysics, and logic, claiming that these concepts are
psychological would imply that the nature of such laws is
psychological and, thus, that their investigation is a task that
should be assigned to psychology. To give an example, according to
logical psychologism (Mohanty 1982: SS2; Kusch 2007 [2011]), the
law of the excluded middle is about the psychological impossibility of
a subject judging that *p* and that *non-p* at the same time.
On this interpretation, this law is psychological in nature and its
investigation should be pursued by psychology. Psychologism was not
uncontested, as we will see: although the anti-psychologist camp
encompassed different views as to how logical, ethical, and
metaphysical concepts have to be positively defined, these views all
agreed on the negative insight that logic, ethics, and metaphysics do
not depend on psychology.



It is against this background that Theodor Lipps founded the Academic
Society for Psychology in Munich, most likely in 1895. Lipps, who was
both a philosopher and a trained psychologist, helped to shape the
Department of Philosophy in Munich, where he became professor in 1894.
Although Lipps revised his initial views over the years, by the end of
the nineteenth century he endorsed a psychologistic approach by
promoting a form of psychology that he at times qualified as
"descriptive" (1903: 5). Lipps understood descriptive
psychology as a discipline that, by means of inner perception,
describes, compares, and systematizes mental contents (basically, any
part of our conscious mental life, see 1903: 5). Lipps maintained that
inner perception is able to grasp these contents with evidence.



The meetings of the Society dealt with a broad range of issues at the
intersection of philosophy and psychology. Some of the topics
discussed in the initial years are: "the sensations and the
contents of consciousness as objects of psychology" (1895),
"the theory of feelings and striving" (1895-1896),
"the definition of psychology" (1896), etc. (Schuhmann
2000: 19f). In addition to Lipps, other senior figures of the circle
were Alexander Pfander, Max Ettlinger, and Johannes Daubert. In
the decades after its foundation, a rapidly growing community of young
students partook in the activities of the Society. These students
included (in alphabetical order): Maximilian Beck, Alfred Brunswig,
Theodor Conrad (nephew of Theodor Lipps), Aloys Fischer, August
Gallinger, Moritz Geiger, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Paul Linke, Karl
Loewenstein-Freudenberg, Karl Lowith, Adolf Reinach, Hermann
Ritzel, Herman Schmalenbach, Otto Selz, Alfred Schwenninger, Gerda
Walther, and Czeslaw Znamierowski (Ave-Lallemant 1975a;
Smid 1982). It is worth noting that Max Scheler, who had been teaching
in Munich since 1906, also participated in these meetings.
Scheler's philosophy followed its own peculiar trajectory within
the history of phenomenology and deeply influenced the members of the
Munich and, later on, Gottingen circle.



Tradition credits Daubert with the merit of submitting Edmund
Husserl's work to the attention of the group in Munich. Daubert
began to discuss Husserl's *Logical Investigations*
(1900-01, henceforth: LI) at the meetings of the Society from
1902 (Schuhmann 2002; Smid 1985: 269). This two-volume work follows
Husserl's first book of 1891, *Philosophy of Arithmetic.
Psychological and Logical Investigations* (Hua XII), and is the
result of Husserl's attempt to reconcile the various positions
that inspired his thinking in that period and, in particular, the
logical realism advocated by authors like Bernard Bolzano, Hermann
Lotze, and Gottlob Frege, and the philosophical psychology of Franz
Brentano and Carl Stumpf. Briefly after the publication of the LI,
Husserl was appointed Extraordinary Professor at the University of
Gottingen, where Daubert paid him a visit in 1903. This was the
first personal contact between Husserl and a member of the Munich
circle and has been described as "easily the most important
single event in the history of the Munich Phenomenological
Circle" (Spiegelberg 1982: 169). As a consequence of this
meeting, Husserl was invited to give a lecture at the Society in May
1904, after which the LI became one of the main philosophical
references for the members of the Munich circle.



As the following section illustrates, the LI were not received without
substantial criticism, but one element that was explicitly appreciated
in Husserl's line of argument was its anti-psychologism, which
early phenomenological reading of this work put particular emphasis
on. Husserl devoted extensive efforts especially in the first volume
of the LI (the *Prolegomena to Pure Logic*) to show that the
laws of logic and ontology are not psychological. Mental acts are
intentional, i.e., they are directed towards objects and facts that
transcend the mind: these objects and facts are not mere contents of
consciousness and, thus, have a structure of their own, which is
regulated by laws of their own. Early phenomenologists thought this
idea provided the systematic basis for what could be qualified as an
"objectivist" approach to philosophical problems
(according to which ontology, logic, ethics and aesthetics are about
entities with an ontological status of their own, see Conrad 1954
[1992: 81]; in a similar vein, Geiger speaks of a "turning to
the object" in the LI, see Geiger 1933: 13). At the same time,
the *Prolegomena* also questions what it means for mental
experiences to be intentionally directed towards objects and asks for
a clarification of the relationship between logic and psychology. The
second volume of the book (*Investigations in Phenomenology and
Theory of Knowledge*) attempts to provide a solution to these and
cognate questions by presenting an articulated theory of
intentionality, which attracted a more critical reception in early
phenomenology (partly because this theory was perceived as, to some
extent, reneging on the anti-psychologist principles of the
*Prolegomena*, see Conrad-Martius 1959: 177).



In 1905, Daubert and Reinach began to attend Husserl's lectures
in Gottingen. This initiated a trend that culminated in what has
been described as the "Munich invasion" of Gottingen
(Schapp 1959: 20f): in 1906, several students of Lipps left Munich to
study under Husserl. The first were Moritz Geiger, Alfred
Schwenninger, and Fritz Weinmann, but others followed: most notably,
Conrad in 1907 and von Hildebrand in 1909. Gottingen became thus
home to a large community of young phenomenologists, which included:
Winthrop Bell, Rudolf Clemens, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Fritz
Frankfurter, Siegfried Hamburger, Erich Heinrich, Jean Hering,
Heinrich Hoffman, Roman Ingarden, Alexandre Koyre, Hans Lipps,
Dietrich Mahnke, Helmuth Plessner, Wilhelm Schapp, Kurt Stavenhagen,
Edith Stein, and Alfred von Sybel (Ave-Lallemant 1988; Sepp
1988a).



This group of scholars gave itself an institutional form when Conrad
and von Sybel founded the Philosophical Society of Gottingen in
1907. The pivotal center of this new circle of phenomenology was Adolf
Reinach, who taught at the local university after receiving his
habilitation to teach at university level (the *venia legendi*)
in 1909. Reinach's philosophical and didactic skills were so
admired that several members referred to him, and not Husserl, as
their teacher in phenomenology (Conrad-Martius 1921; Ingarden 1968
[1998: 408f]; Stein 1965: 195; von Hildebrand 1975: 78).



The period that extended from 1906 to the end of the First World War
was particularly fruitful in the history of early phenomenology.
Important dissertations were submitted and defended (e.g., Conrad in
1909, Conrad-Martius in 1912 [1913], von Hildebrand in 1912 [1917],
Stein in 1917). In 1911 Pfander edited the important
*Lipps-Festschrift* with the title *Munich Philosophical
Essays* (1911b), which contains influential articles by Brunswig,
Conrad, Geiger, Reinach, and Pfander himself. Just two years
later, in 1913, the first volume of the *Yearbook for Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research* (*Jahrbuch fur
Phanomenologie und phanomenologische Forschung*)
appeared: Geiger, Pfander, Reinach, and Scheler were co-editors,
together with Husserl. By presenting classics such as the first part
of Pfander's *On the Psychology of Sentiments*,
Geiger's *Contributions to the Phenomenology of Aesthetic
Enjoyment*, the first part of Scheler's *Formalism in
Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values*, and Reinach's
*The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law*, this volume
probably marks the peak in the philosophical production of the two
circles.



The first volume of the *Yearbook* also featured
Husserl's *Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a
Phenomenological Philosophy*, where Husserl places transcendental
philosophy at the heart of his research agenda in terms that are far
clearer than those he has used up to that point. Husserl's
transcendental phenomenology has many facets and one aspect is
particularly significant for early phenomenologists: this is the idea
of a necessary correlation between reality and consciousness (Zahavi
2008: 361). To put this in Husserl's own words:



> 
> 
> [*a*]*n object existing in itself is never one with which
> consciousness or the Ego pertaining to consciousness has nothing to
> do*. (Hua III/1, Eng. trans. 106)
> 
> 
> 



Husserl's so-called transcendental idealism remains a matter of
debate today: questions concerning the relation between
Husserl's *Ideas* and his previous works (especially the
LI) or the exact location of his transcendental phenomenology between
the two poles of idealism and realism have not yet found a definite
answer in the relevant literature.



In the Munich and Gottingen circles, Husserl's
*Ideas* was intensively discussed. Parts of its research
program were pursued further; to make just one example, Hering
(1921) and Ingarden (1925) further developed Husserl's eidetics
(ontology of essences). Generally, however, the *Ideas*
provoked what could be seen as a mirror image reaction, for it
provided young phenomenologists with an opportunity to renew their
commitment to a robust form of metaphysical realism, which was
perceived as incompatible with Husserl's transcendental
idealism. Reality, it was claimed, exists independently of
subjectivity (whether this is intended empirically or
transcendentally). The clash between these two different approaches to
phenomenology has been labeled "the realism-idealism
controversy" (Ingarden 1929; Ave-Lallemant 1975b) and
turned out to be a decisive episode in the history of the
phenomenological movement. To mention but one of its most important
consequences, Husserl referred to Pfander's dismissal of
transcendental idealism (shared, as he writes, by "the
phenomenologists of the Munich and Gottingen tradition") as
the main reason for preferring Martin Heidegger as his successor for
the professorship in Freiburg in 1928 (Husserl 1994: 180f).



The tragedy of the Great War not only led to an abrupt stop in the
scientific output of the two circles, but also contributed to the
dissolution of the Munich and, in particular, the Gottingen
group. Many among early phenomenologists died at the front: Reinach
fell in 1917, and his fate was shared by, among others, Clemens,
Frankfurter, and Ritzel. In 1916, when Husserl moved to Freiburg to
take over Heinrich Rickert's position as chair of philosophy,
the "tradition of phenomenology" fostered by the two
circles remained active mainly in Munich and Bergzabern (a small city
in Rhineland-Palatinate, where the Conrads had an estate and regularly
hosted discussions in which mainly Hering, Koyre, Lipps,
Stein, and von Sybel took part, see Feldes 2015). It was in Munich,
however, that the future of this approach to phenomenology seemed most
secure: there, Pfander became full professor in 1929, and
Gallinger and von Hildebrand taught as *Privatdozenten*. The
rise of Nazism in Germany, however, put an end to this group, too. Due
to his opposition to the regime, von Hildebrand had to flee to the
United States. Gallinger, who was of Jewish origin, left Germany for
Sweden. Geiger (full professor in Gottingen from 1923) was forced
to retire in 1933. And Stein died in Auschwitz in 1942.



Although it could be argued that the Munich and Gottingen eras of
phenomenology ended in those years, some of its members (e.g.,
Conrad-Martius, von Hildebrand, Ingarden, and Stavenhagen) continued
to publish and remained active after the Second World War. Their ideas
have also directly influenced other authors, including Friedrich
Bassenge, Nicolai Hartmann, Aurel Kolnai, Jose Ortega y Gasset,
Herbert Spiegelberg, and Karol Wojtyla.


## 2. Philosophy of Mind



This section is organized as follows. It begins by summarizing some of
the main contributions early phenomenologists delivered on the general
theory of intentionality
 (SS2.1).
 In a subsequent step, it zooms in on intersubjective forms of
intentionality by discussing social, empathic, and collective acts
 (SS2.2).
 Phenomenological insights into the philosophy of mind shape a
multi-faceted and articulated view about mentality and its position in
the natural and social world, which anticipates many contemporary
positions on these and related issues.


### 2.1 Theory of Intentionality



The contributions of the Munich and Gottingen circles to the
theory of intentionality generally converge on the idea that there are
many primitive kinds of of-ness or about-ness, which are radically
different from each other. This idea can be claimed to conflict with
Husserl's theory of intentionality as presented in his
*Logical Investigations*: on a plausible interpretation of
Husserl's theory, "objectifying" acts (acts like
thinking, perceiving, and imagining) come in several kinds, but they
are all intentional in exactly the same sense, since they all
instantiate the very same essence (accordingly, kinds of objectifying
acts are "species" of the genus of
"intention", or "intentional act", Hua XIX
380f, 432f, 625f). In what follows, the assumption of radically
different kinds of intentionality is discussed in connection with two
important distinctions drawn by early phenomenologists. The first,
broached in
 SS2.1.1,
 holds between acts of "meaning" something and acts of
presenting something (e.g., acts of perception or imagination). The
second, which is the topic of
 SS2.1.2,
 contrasts the cognitive acts discussed in SS2.1.1 with the
doxastic, affective, or conative attitudes (position-takings or
stances) that a subject can adopt towards objects and facts.


#### 2.1.1 Meaning Acts and Presentations



Early phenomenology associates (or even simply identifies) the notion
of thinking with that of *Meinen* (literally: "to
mean", hereafter "meaning something" or
"meaning act", Mulligan 2011). *Meinen* is a
specific kind of intentional act, which is claimed to differ
fundamentally from presentation (presentations are intuitive
experiences like perception or imagination). The focus on meaning acts
is found throughout the entire history of the two circles (Mulligan
2011, 2012): despite differences in the details, early
phenomenologists share a basic understanding of this concept.



Alexander Pfander is perhaps the first phenomenologist who, in
his *Phenomenology of the Will* (1900), extensively discusses
the notion of meaning something (Schuhmann 2004a). He originally
describes this act as a presentation (*Vorstellung*), which is
non-intuitive. According to this initial view, to mean something is to
present (*vorstellen*) a (representing) content that
symbolically (i.e., by means of a similarity or depictive relation,
1900: 25ff, see also Fischer 1905) refers to another (represented)
content. For instance, you mean the Eiffel Tower, when you form a
mental image (a representing content) of the Eiffel Tower (the
represented content). Pfander's position would rapidly
evolve in the following years, though. In a talk given at
Munich's Society for Psychology in 1898, he recognizes that
presentations are always intuitive (*anschaulich*), whereas
meaning acts do not have intuitive content. In this context,
Pfander gives the example of someone attending a lecture (1898:
61): if you understand the speaker, then you mean the same objects the
speaker means or talks about. This act of meaning something should be
distinguished from the act of *presenting* the words uttered by
the speaker: the words are intuitively given to you, but their
referents are not (or, at least, they are not required to be
intuitively given in order for you to mean them). Therefore, the way
in which you are directed to (or: you mean) the referents is different
from the way in which you are directed to (or: you present) the words.
Presenting something--but not meaning something--always
requires the intuitive presence of their objects (either in perception
or imagination). Pfander develops this position in later works by
increasingly emphasizing the differences between presenting and
meaning something (see 1911a: 135). Contrary to his initial position
of 1900, he then comes to consider the latter experience as an act
*of its own kind* and no longer as a kind of presentation
(1913, 19): the concept of a non-intuitive presentation is eventually
held to be a contradiction in terms (1921: 140; 1933: 21f), and
meaning acts, being defined by complete lack of intuitive content, are
described as referring to an object only in a linguistic way (1973:
153). This last feature licenses the label of "thinking"
as applied to meaning acts (or, at least, as one kind of thinking
among others like questioning, conjecturing, assuming, inferring,
etc., see 1921: 145f; 1933: 21).



Pfander's early positions provide the basis for a series of
arguments that Reinach develops in his 1911 paper *On the Theory of
Negative Judgment* to illustrate that meaning something is an act
of its own kind that is fundamentally different from presentation.
Reinach, too, seems to understand the notion of meaning something as
interchangeable with that of thinking (1908a [1989: 339f]; 1913a
[1989: 419], but see Mulligan 2011: 266 for a different
interpretation). The broader sense of "thinking", which is
equivalent to that of "meaning something", is contrasted
with a narrower one, which restrictedly points to those acts that are
directed towards ideal or abstract objects only (1911a [1989: 104]).
Reinach also operates with a broader notion of presentation, which
encompasses all acts that secure intuitive access to their objects:
this notion includes sensual and categorial perceptions, imaginations,
"presentifications" (i.e., the act of making
"present" an object in consciousness), etc. (1911a [1989:
101]).



According to Reinach, a number of properties characterize acts of
meaning in contradistinction to presentations (1911a [1989: 102ff]).
In particular, meaning something is an intrinsically linguistic act,
whilst presentations are not linguistic (1911a [1989: 104]). This is
conducive to the idea that, whereas presentations are defined in terms
of experiences that enable an intuitive access to the object, meaning
acts are "blind" (1911a [1989: 119]): if one means an
object, no intuitive aspect of the object becomes present in virtue of
the fact that this object has been meant. Reinach notes that this has
consequences for how these acts relate to time. The objects of
presentations, being intuitively present, stand "in front
of" the mind in corresponding acts of perception, imagination,
presentification, etc. It is therefore possible for these acts to
extend in time for as long as the object stands in front of the mind.
By contrast, meaning acts are "temporally punctual" in the
sense that to mean something is an act that does not last in time:
this is why it would make no sense to ask the subject how long it took
her to mean a certain object (Chrudzimski 2015: 289). Reinach
complements these ideas by developing an additional argument that
turns out to be crucial for the phenomenological understanding of
meaning acts.



Reinach ponders whether the distinction between meaning acts and
presentations could be traced back to the one introduced by Husserl in
his *Logical Investigations* between acts that lack intuitive
content and acts that are intuitively fulfilled. Roughly,
Husserl's idea is that objectifying acts *either* are
intuitions because they bear intuitive content--in the case of
perceptions, this content is saliently made of sensations (these being
mental experiences that are not intentional). *Or* they are
thinking acts ("meaning-intentions" or
"significations") because they lack such content. Husserl
claims that objectifying acts can be more or less intuitively
fulfilled, which entails the idea that the intuitive content typically
comes in degrees: if the act has a maximum of intuitive content, then
one faces a so-called "pure intuition", in which



> 
> 
> no part, no side, no property of its object fails to be intuitively
> presented [...], none is merely indirectly co-meant
> [*mitgemeint*]. (Hua XIX 611, Eng. trans. mod., 236)
> 
> 
> 



By contrast, if the intentional act is empty, then it is a thinking
act. In addition, if an intuition and a thinking act are directed to
the same object in the same sense, they can "fuse", to the
effect that the intuition can be said to intuitively fulfill the empty
act. Note one important implication of this view: since the presence
of intuitive content is not essential for the act to be an
objectifying act, every such act either is a signification or is
always co-constituted by a signification. (It should not go
unmentioned that Husserl modifies his view about this issue by arguing
in later works that intuitions are not co-constituted by thinking
acts, see Hua XVI SS17; Hua XX/I, 85-98; Melle 2002.)



Reinach grants that a presentation can be more or less intuitively
fulfilled, but he also emphasizes that the act's component,
which is fulfilled by the intuitive content, is *not* a meaning
act (1911a [1989: 105]). In addition, Reinach again grants that the
subject can simultaneously present an object and mean this very same
object. However, he also maintains that in this case the two acts do
not relate to each other in any essential way:



> 
> 
> this identity of reference point of the two acts cannot sanction the
> identification of the acts themselves, i.e., by allowing the
> dissolution of the punctual act of meaning within [sic] the
> stretched-out act of presentation. (1911a [1989: 103] [1982: 324])
> 
> 
> 



In other words, Reinach contends that, although the objectual
correlates of both acts can coincide, meaning acts cannot enter a
relation of fulfillment with presentations (or with intuitions in
Husserl's sense), i.e., they cannot fuse (1911a [1989: 106], on
this, also see Salice 2012).



Put differently, meaning acts, insofar as they are essentially
"blind", simply cannot have intuitive content. Although
such contents, sometimes, can "accompany" meaning acts,
they operate as mere accessories for they



> 
> 
> do not "exhibit" or "present"
> anything--for of course in the sphere of meaning there is
> absolutely nothing to hand which is presented. (1911a [1989: 106]
> [1982: 328]; see also Gallinger 1914: 36 who operates with this idea
> in his investigation of memory)
> 
> 
> 



Thus, intuitive contents are not and cannot be present in meaning acts
and, if these acts did have such contents, they would not qualify as
meaning acts, but as presentations (this argument is developed by
Reinach in explicit contrast to Husserl in 1908a [1989: 339]).
Conversely, while meaning acts are always "empty" (or,
more precisely, they do not show anything like the dichotomy of
emptiness/fullness), it is "very questionable whether there
exist absolutely intuition-free presentations" (1911a [1989:
106] [1982: 329]).



Reinach's line of argument suggests that presentations and
meaning acts are directed to objects and states of affairs in two
radically different ways: if these acts were directed towards their
correlate in the same way, they would share the same essence and,
thus, they could fuse. To put this differently, the
"of-ness" of presentations does not coincide with the
*intentionality* of intentions or meaning acts. This
distinction is terminologically fixed by Conrad, who in his 1911
essay, *Perception and Presentation* (*An Essential
Comparison*), further explores Reinach's view and reserves
the expression "*Intentionalitat*" to the
directedness of meaning acts (1911: 64 fn) while qualifying
presentations as the consciousness *of* an object or
*of* a thing.



As we have seen, the intentionality of meaning something, in contrast
to the of-ness of presentations, requires linguistic signs (see also
Conrad 1910, Schmucker 1956, Fabbianelli 2015). This idea is
further investigated by Herman Ritzel in his dissertation of 1914
(published 1916) where the distinction between meaning acts and
presentations is articulated in an original way. Ritzel endorses
Reinach's idea that presentations require the intuitive presence
of the object, whereas meaning something does not (1916: 35), but he
develops this view by claiming that meaning acts and presentations
differ in kind because they correlate to objects of different kinds.
Whereas presenting directly points at objects, meaning linguistically
points at concepts, and it is by means of concepts that meaning acts
can be said to refer to objects (1916: 48f).



Ritzel's proposal aligns with the idea, quite generally embraced
by early phenomenologists, that presentations are non-conceptual,
whereas *Meinen* is essentially conceptual. However, it also
stands out for the following reason: Ritzel claims that, when it comes
to meaning acts pointing at "empirical concepts" (an
expression he adopts from Kant to express concepts based on sensorial
experience, see *Critique of Pure Reason* A50/B74; 1916: 22),
semantic reference works in the same way in which, on John Stuart
Mill's view, proper names denote individuals: just as proper
names directly refer to individuals, so do "[empirical concepts]
denote [*nennen*] their object directly [*in direkter
Weise*]" (1916: 17). More precisely, what both cases have in
common is that meanings of proper names or of terms of empirical
concepts change if the objects they denote change. That is, the
content of an empirical concept is identical with the kind that the
concept refers to. In contrast to the traditional view about concepts,
in these cases, it is not the intension (the content) of a concept
that determines its extension, but rather the extension that
determines the intension. On this point, Ritzel seems to anticipate
the theory of direct reference and rigid designators (see Sowa 2007:
97).



The contributions of Pfander, Reinach, and Ritzel (among others)
support a statement made by Conrad in his last publication according
to which phenomenologists in Gottingen rejected Husserl's
claim that intentionality is the essential characteristic of
perception and presentation (1968: 3). Indeed, despite differences in
the details, the idea that intentionality is not a general, but a
specific property that characterizes only a given kind of experience
(acts of meaning something) seems to have been a widely endorsed view
among early phenomenologists: authors like Daubert (see Schuhmann
& Smith 1985: 784--on Daubert's view in relation to the
nature of intentionality, see also Bower 2019), Geiger (1911a: 125,
139), Stavenhagen (1925: 164f; 1933: 38), or Brunswig (1910: 64f)
mention this idea in their publications often without feeling the need
to offer further justification. However, not all early
phenomenologists concurred on this view: some of them refused certain
implications of it, others refused the view altogether.



Karelitzki, for instance, sides with Reinach and Conrad when it comes
to distinguishing meaning from presentation, but he rebuts their
central point that meaning is always blind, i.e., that it can never
get sight of the object (1914: 33f). Karelitzki argues that, although
meaning is generally blind, it does not have to be so: he presents an
example in which someone asks the question "what do you mean
with...?" and the addressee of the question gives a
characterization of what was meant, hence bringing the meaning act
step by step closer to what Karelitzki calls the "essence"
of the meant object (1914: 36).



Other voices within the groups maintained, in line with Husserl, that
thinking and intuition can fuse together. This idea is advocated by
Schapp (1910), Hofmann (1913) and Leyendecker (1913), who apply it to
the phenomenology of perception, and by Heinrich, who presupposes it
in his work on concepts (1910). For instance, Schapp holds that, in
perception, intuitive contents and ideas (or concepts) can only be
separated conceptually, but not factually: without ideas, we cannot
perceive things (1910: 133f). Although Hofmann was critical towards
the existence of sensations (the first chapter of his 1913 essay is a
critique of this notion), he nonetheless puts Husserl's concept
of apprehension at the core of perception (as does Ingarden, see his
1997: 15ff): in apprehension, a subject "interprets" an
intuitive content by means of a conceptual content (but see Mulligan
1995 for a different interpretation). According to Hofmann, perception
is apprehension, even though the apprehended contents are not mere
sensations, but structured "sight or visual things"
(*Sehdinge*, see Hofmann 1913: 82; on the notion of
*Sehding*, see Casati 1994). Furthermore, Leyendecker
investigated the phenomenon of cognitive penetrability and various
ways in which perception is permeable to thinking by discussing a
large number of perceptual situations including various kinds of
illusions, selective perception, the experience of
"overlooking" something, etc.


#### 2.1.2 Attitudes: Doxastic, Affective, Conative.



One important idea secured by early-phenomenological discussions about
presentations and acts of meaning something is that, in acts of the
first kind, the subject is acquainted with or simply has the object in
a purely receptive or passive sense (*rezeptives Haben*, see
von Hildebrand 1916: 134; Pfander 1911a: 167f; Reinach 1911a
[1989: 102]; Karelitzki 1914: 35, among others). This is why the broad
family of presentations are sometimes called "cognitions"
(*Kenntnisnahmen*, literally: the experience of "taking
note of something", von Hildebrand 1916: 139ff). The receptive
way in which the subject relates to the object in presentations is
contrasted with an active one: once the subject has the object in
cognition, she can *adopt an attitude* (a position or a stance,
*Stellungnahme*) towards that object (Reinach 1911a [1989:
109f]; von Hildebrand 1916, Stavenhagen 1925). Phenomenologists
generally agree on the idea that, based on one's cognitions, a
subject can form attitudes of a doxastic, affective, or conative
nature. Another way of formulating this idea is that cognitions
"found" attitudes, where "founding" expresses
existential (one-sided) dependence: attitudes would not exist without
cognitions, but not vice versa. One way to understand the
receptive/active distinction is that attitudes can be made subject to
a specific sense of the "why?" question (Uemura &
Salice 2019): if you believe that *p*, feel a certain emotion about
*p*, or want that *p*, you put yourself under the rational demand
of providing reasons for your attitudes. The remainder of this
subsection summarizes early phenomenology's main ideas about
these three kinds of attitudes.



*Doxastic attitudes*. Suppose you perceive a child falling on
the street. In this perception, you have cognized a given state of
affairs, but you have not yet adopted any doxastic position towards
that state of affairs. You do that when you form the positive belief
that a child is falling on the street. The distinction between
perception and beliefs can be easily overlooked and is illustrated
most clearly by scenarios involving optical illusions. For instance,
in the Muller-Lyer illusion, your perception that the two
segments are of different length is clearly different from your belief
that they are of equal length.



Beliefs are a member of the family of doxastic attitudes, together
with assumptions, conjectures, convictions, etc. Beliefs are states:
they endure in time and, in their dispositional form, they can endure
for a very long period of time (your belief, say, that Rome is the
capital of Italy lasts for years). Also, they are polar attitudes: a
belief is either positive or negative. For instance, the positive
belief that the segments are of the same length in the
Muller-Lyer illusion has, as its counterpart, the negative belief
(or disbelief) that they are of the same length. And that disbelief
should be distinguished from the positive belief that they are
*not* equal in length. Finally, beliefs come in degree: your
belief that *p* is the case can be more or less firm. These
properties show why beliefs, even when true and justified, ought to be
distinguished from "apprehension" (or the act of
"coming to know something", *Erkennen*, Mulligan
2014: 381). For instance, suppose that you perceive a moving object
from afar and that, at some point, you realize that it is a cyclist:
in this case, you have come to know a certain fact. Coming to know
that *p* does not endure, it is temporally punctual. Also, coming to
know that *p* does not have a polar opposite. And finally, this act
does not come in degree: you either know that *p* or do not. It also
merits attention that, while cognitions can found belief and
apprehension, and while apprehension can found beliefs, beliefs can
found neither apprehension nor cognitions: this makes apprehension
more fundamental than beliefs in our psychological architecture
(Reinach 1911a [1989: 118]; von Hildebrand 1950: 5-11; Scheler
1915: 222f). Partly also because of these considerations, some
commentators have identified the epistemology developed by early
phenomenologists as a precursor of the "knowledge first
view" (Mulligan 2014).



*Affective Attitudes*. Suppose further that you not only
perceive the child falling on the street, but you also become
acquainted with the negative (dis-)value of the child falling on the
street. In this case, you could emote according to that disvalue by
feeling disquiet about or concern for the child. This example
illustrates two further insights about our mental life secured by
early phenomenology. First, it illustrates the possibility of becoming
acquainted with value-properties: these are higher-order properties
like being dangerous, beautiful, elegant, morally blameworthy,
pleasurable, commendable, etc., which supervene on properties of other
kinds, but do not reduce to them. The specific kind of act that gives
access to value-properties is called by phenomenologists
"feeling" (*Fuhlen*) (see Brunswig 1910: 182;
Geiger 1928: 36f; Reinach, 1912/13 [1989: 295-301]; von
Hildebrand 1916: 203ff, Pfander 1933: 24; Scheler 1913/16: 271f;
on this notion, see also Mulligan 2010: 235f). Even if affectively
colored, feeling is not an affective attitude, but belongs to the
family of presentations or cognitions and thus shares the main
features exemplified by acts of this kind. In particular, this act
secures a receptive, non-conceptual, and intuitive access to
value-properties. Interestingly, feeling's sensitivity can be
cultivated through time: this enables subjects to better discriminate
values and, thereby, to achieve epistemic excellence in the
appreciation of the goods that exemplify values (see Schapp 1930:
11f).



Second, the example also indicates that, when confronted with facts or
objects and their values, one can also adopt an affective position
towards those correlates: when one feels emotions towards them, one
affectively *responds* to them (see von Hildebrand 1916: 134f;
Brunswig 1911: 47; Reinach 1912/13 [1989: 295ff]; Scheler 1913/16:
267ff; on the early phenomenological conception of emotions and its
development, see Vendrell Ferran 2008; Muller 2019; Szanto &
Landweer 2020). The distinction between the cognitive act of feeling
values and emotions is illustrated by the possibility of a
subject's grasping the value-property of something by,
nonetheless, remaining affectively inert towards it (von Hildebrand
1916: 200f): e.g., it is possible to observe a moral wrongdoing
without eliciting indignation or to perceive a commendable action
without admiring it. In this case, the act of feeling has not
triggered an emotive response towards it. The value-property, which in
contemporary debates on emotions is also called the emotion's
"formal object" (Kenny 2003), is the condition of fit of
the emotion: an emotion is fit or warranted if it tracks a
value-property.



Affective phenomena are variegated and multifarious. One of the most
sophisticated accounts is developed by Scheler, who distinguishes four
kinds of affective phenomena or feelings (*Gefuhle*, the
German term equally applies to bodily feelings and emotions):


1. sensible feelings like pleasure or displeasure deriving, e.g.,
from eating food;
2. vital feelings (*Vitalgefuhle*), which affect body
(*Leibgefuhle*) or life (*Lebensgefuhle*):
they include feeling sick, feeling old, feeling tired, vigour,
etc.;
3. mental or psychic feelings (*seelische Gefuhle*) like
happiness, sadness, sorrow, or grief; and
4. spiritual feelings like bliss or despair, etc. (Scheler 1913/16:
341ff; Mulligan 2008a; Schlossberger 2020).



This taxonomy is enriched by other phenomenologists in various ways.
To mention but a few lines of investigation: Pfander (1913, 1916)
discusses various kinds of sentiments (Uemura & Yaegashi 2020);
Geiger (1911b) tackles moods and their intentional correlates
(Schlossberger 2019); Else Voigtlander (1910) offers an
articulated description of self-conscious feelings and emotions in her
dissertation (Vendrell Ferran 2020). Interestingly, Scheler claims
that his four-part distinction of affective phenomena correlates with
four different kinds of values (that are hierarchically ordered,
Scheler 1913/16: 125ff):


1. the values of the agreeable and the disagreeable (which occupy the
lowest level in the hierarchy);
2. vital values like weakness, well-being, nobility or
vulgarity;
3. aesthetic, moral, and epistemic values; and, finally,
4. the values of the holy and the unholy, which are in the highest
position of the hierarchy.



*Conative Attitudes*. Conative experiences are the third kind
of attitudes that attracted substantial attention in early
phenomenology (see Pfander 1900, 1911a, 1913, 1916; von
Hildebrand 1916; Scheler 1913/16, esp. 141ff; Reinach 1912/13, and
Reiner 1927). Conative attitudes share the core properties of doxastic
and affective attitudes: once a subject is confronted with certain
facts in cognitions or presentations, it is possible for her to
respond to those facts by adopting a conative position. To go back to
the previous example, the acquaintance with the disvalue of the child
falling on the street can also motivate you to adopt a particular
conative stance, e.g., by forming the will to help the child.



The will always represents the goal under a positive value-property:
the conative attitude is fit if the goal (the state of affairs to be
brought about by the action) indeed exemplifies the represented
value-property and if alternative goals exemplify properties that are
of lower rank (that is why elements like premeditation, preferences
and, more generally, the experiences by which we grasp the
goal's value-property have moral relevance, see Reinach 1912/13;
von Hildebrand 1916). Phenomenologists put the category of the will
(rather than that of desire) at the heart of intentional agency. In
contrast to a widespread tendency of tracing the will back to wishes
or desires (see Frankfurt 1971), phenomenologists argue that willing
is a *sui generis* experience (Scheler 1913/16: 143f,
Lowenstein 1933). One of the main differences between willing and
desiring is that the former, but not the latter, entails the
disposition of forming a decision or intention (*Entschluss* or
*Vorsatz*): just as the belief that *p* (but, say, not the
assumption that *p*) entails the disposition of asserting *p*, so
wanting that *p* (but not desiring that *p*) grounds the
disposition of intending that *p* (von Hildebrand 1916: 36, Salice
forthcoming A).



Intentions (like assertions) are not attitudes, but mental actions
(whereby intentions as actions [*das Fassen eines Vorsatzes*]
should be distinguished from the states of having an intention
[*das Haben eines Vorsatzes*], Reinach 1913b [1989: 158f],
Salice 2018). Intentions aim at realizing *projects* that are
instrumental to reach the goal (which is spelled out by the willing).
For instance, if you intend or decide to help the child on the street,
you will form a plan or project on how to do that (calling an
ambulance, providing first aid, etc.). Intentions are acts of
self-determination (or "causally self-referential
attitudes" to use Searle's terminology, 1983: 86ff): the
intention is satisfied if it is the subject of the intention that
brings about the project (Pfander 1911a: 174; Heller 1932: 254f).
Intentions also self-commit the subject: when the subject forms an
intention, they thereby put themselves under a commitment to satisfy
it (von Hildebrand 1916: 159; see also Reiner 1927: 71). Intentions
have the power of triggering actions (some phenomenologists claim that
this triggering identifies a further act lying in between the
intention and the bodily movements, see von Hildebrand 1916: 161f, but
the existence of this act is contested, see Reiner 1927: 76ff).
Finally, intentions control actions via "acts of
realization" (*Realisierungsakte*) that accompany and
affect bodily movements (Scheler 1913/16: 142; von Hildebrand 1916:
152).


### 2.2 Social, Empathic, and Collective Experiences



Early phenomenologists did not shed light only on infra-personal
intentionality (intentional experiences that, roughly, do not require
the existence of other persons). They also devoted extensive
investigations to cases of intersubjective intentionality (intentional
experiences that require the existence of other persons). These
investigations can be summarized under three main umbrella topics:
social or speech acts, acts of empathy, collective acts.



*Social Acts*. An act is social if it stands under the
requirement of being understood by its addressee in order to be
successfully or happily performed. On this definition, acts like
promises, orders, bets, apologies, and more in general: all so-called
"speech" acts, are social acts. (It is worth noting that
the concept of "social act" as "social operation of
the mind" can be found in Thomas Reid already, see Schuhmann
& Smith 1990. Reid was not unknown within the two circles of
phenomenology, see Peters 1909, but there is no solid evidence that
early phenomenologists adopted this idea from Reid, see Mulligan
1987a: 33f n 5.) One main difference between the phenomenological and
the ordinary language approach to speech acts is that the tradition
inaugurated by John Austin understands speech acts as conventional or
ritual actions (Austin 1962: 14), whereas phenomenology describes them
as mental acts or experiences (Smith 1990).



The first steps towards a theory of social acts are made by
Pfander and Daubert. In his logic of imperatives (1909),
Pfander theorizes that the logical form of imperatives is
different from that of predicative sentences. This provides evidence
for the idea that the act of ordering something is not identical to
the judgment of having a certain conative experience. Daubert
developed extensive considerations about questions around 1911/12
(Schuhmann & Smith 1987; despite his influential role within early
phenomenology, Daubert never published a single line in his life and
the only sources available to scholars are unpublished manuscripts).
In these considerations, he describes various phenomena that are
usually collated under the label of "question", and argues
that, among various erotetic phenomena, one in particular should be
set apart. While many erotetic phenomena are purely inner phenomena,
when one raises a "direct question", then one addresses
the question *to* somebody else.



It is plausible to assume that Reinach--who in 1913 presented the
most advanced and articulated theory of such acts within
phenomenology--developed his position in close dialogue with both
Pfander and Daubert (Reinach 1913b; see also Schuhmann 2004b;
Smith 1990). In fact, Reinach expands on the ideas that social acts
are not descriptions of inner experiences and that these acts have
addressees. More specifically, Reinach defines social acts as all
those acts that are in-need-of-being-heard
(*vernehmungsbedurftig*, see Mulligan 1987a). A social act
performed between two or more human beings is heard (in this specific
sense), according to Reinach, when three conditions are satisfied:
first, the linguistic utterance is acoustically or visually perceived
by the act's addressee; second, the addressee understands the
content of the utterance; third, the addressee understands the type of
the act, that is, she understands whether a given utterance is a
promise, an order, etc. Furthermore, social acts have illocutionary
effects: a promise, e.g., generates a claim on the promisee's
end and an obligation on the promisor's end. Finally, social
acts undergo various modifications: they can be honest or treacherous,
they can be addressed to many and/or performed by many, they (or their
contents) can be conditional, they can be performed in the name of
somebody else.



Reinach's ideas have proven to be seminal for further
investigations. For instance, von Hildebrand extends the idea of
experiences that are in need of being heard to emotions: accordingly,
some forms of love are claimed to exemplify that property as love can
be reciprocated only if the loved one is aware of being loved (von
Hildebrand 1930: 28f). Schapp applies Reinach's idea of promises
as generators of claims and commitments to develop a theory of
economic contracts (1930). Also, Stein advances Reinach's theory
by discussing the possibility for states to be subject of social acts
and, especially, of enactments (1925, see Taieb forthcoming).



*Empathy*. We have seen that part of what it means for a social
act to be happy is that the addressee grasps the act that is addressed
to her. This presupposes the ability of understanding others and their
mental states, which invites the question of how, in general, that is
possible. An initial answer to this question is provided by Lipps, who
adopts the notion of empathy (*Einfuhlung*) from debates
in aesthetics and claims that empathy is the specific experience,
which enables social understanding. Empathy, according to Lipps,
relies on two innate drives: a drive to imitate others and a drive to
express mental states. On Lipps' view, I understand that the
other is sad, when the following happens: First, I should be aware
that, whenever I am sad, an inner drive leads me to express sadness.
Second, when I see the other's face, this triggers the drive of
imitating his expression in me. Because in my mental life, that facial
expression has constantly been linked with sadness, having that
expression induces sadness in me. By feeling sad with the other, I
project sadness onto him (Lipps 1907a).



This understanding of empathy rapidly attracted criticisms in the
Munich and Gottingen circles. One of the most striking criticisms
was that Lipps' account is not able to explain the
*explanandum*: why the fact that the other's expression
induces a certain mental state in me (which I then project onto the
other) is supposed to explain my understanding of the other's
mental state? And can't I understand the other without living
through his mental state? (see Zahavi 2014: 131f). As an alternative
solution, phenomenologists argue that mental states are not
unobservable entities that lie "behind" our bodily
expressions and gestures. Rather, mental states can be genuinely
perceived: they are perceived in these very movements and gestures
(see Scheler 1923).



Perhaps one of the first explicit formulation of this idea is provided
by Schwenninger in 1908. In his critical discussion of Hume's
notion of sympathy (which is also directed against Lipps),
Schwenninger writes:



> 
> 
> the consciousness of the mental state [*Seelenzustand*] is
> immediately included in the perception of the gesture
> [*Gebarde*]. I grasp something [and] this is what is
> expressed in the expression; this means: in the grasp, an intimate
> connection, unity, intertwinement [*Ineinander*] between
> expression and expressed obtains. [...] (1908: 44)
> 
> 
> 



Importantly, Schwenninger argues further:



> 
> 
> speaking of perception here [that is, of perception as applied to
> mental states] is just as correct as speaking of perception in the
> case of three-dimensional objects. [...] The sympathizer [*der
> Sympathisierende*] perceives that the other expresses certain
> mental experiences and, therefore, also perceives these experiences,
> but he does not live through them himself, which just means that he
> does not have an adequate inner perception [of these experiences].
> (1908: 46f)
> 
> 
> 



The ideas that mental states can be perceived in the gestures of
others and that the perceiver does not live through the other's
experience are the building blocks of early phenomenology's
theory of social cognition. In particular, Stein (1917) puts them at
the basis of her articulated view of empathy, according to which the
perception of the other's mental state is only the first step in
the cognitive process that leads to a fuller understanding of the
other. After one is struck, as it were, by the other's mental
state in perception, one has the possibility to put oneself in the
other's shoes and, thereby, to explicate the experience (e.g.,
by appreciating the intentional object of the state). In a third step,
the empathizer can gain a piece of propositional knowledge by forming
the thought that subject *x* lives through a given experience (see
also Dullstein 2013).



*Collective Acts*. Paradigmatic cases of empathy or of social
acts exemplify an I-Thou intentional relation where an *I* is
directed towards the other as a *you*. This relation should be
distinguished from the collective relation in which you and I share an
experience as *ours*. Interestingly, the phenomenological
investigation into experiential sharing is part and parcel of a larger
investigation into various forms of groups. The two topics are related
because phenomenologists argue that different kinds of groups
correlate with different kinds of social attitudes.



The starting point of this investigation is the distinction between
societies, communities, and masses (Scheler 1913/16; Stavenhagen 1934;
Stein 1922; von Hildebrand 1930; Walther 1923). The distinction
between societies and communities has been drawn originally by
Ferdinand Tonnies (in his seminal book of 1887) and the
introduction of the mass as a different kind of group in the taxonomy
should be mainly credited to Scheler, who adopts it from French
sociology (see Stavenhagen 1936: 20; Thonhauser forthcoming).



What animates crowds is mental contagion, which is the psychological
mechanism whereby the mental states of one individual pass (often
unconsciously) to another individual. In crowds, individuals form
mental states on the basis of others' mental states, but the
induced states are entertained without a reason. So, for instance, the
warranted joy of a subject *x* may infect individual *y*
who elicits an emotional episode of the same kind, but without having
a reason for it. This is what makes crowds different from societies:
in societies, too, individuals form mental states on the basis of
others' mental states, but here the individuals take the
other's mental state to be a reason for them to entertain their
own states. For instance, agent *x* might form the intention to
act with agent *y* (and vice versa) because *x*
and *y* come to know that each of them pursues the same
goal.



Crowds and societies should be distinguished from communities. Whereas
crowds are characterized by mental contagion and societies by
interlocked experiences (often based on instrumental considerations),
members of communities share experiences. For instance, when two
parents stand beside the dead body of their child, they mourn together
and, thereby, share their experience of mourning (Scheler 1923: 23f).
One of the elements that sets experiential sharing apart from the
previous two forms of sociality is the sense of us that infuses the
life of the community members and that grounds solidary behavior among
them. Communal or collective experiences are lived through as
*ours* by the group members and that is why these members are
prone to mutual help and support.



The pre-conditions of collective experiences are debated in early
phenomenology. According to Walther, what makes an experience ours is
a complex structure of social cognition: the individuals, under
condition of common knowledge, empathize with each other and mutually
unify, where "unification" is described as a particular
affective state (see Leon & Zahavi 2016; Zahavi &
Salice 2016). Other authors, e.g., Stein, emphasize a rationality
requirement: among other conditions, for an experience to qualify as
collective, it has to be entertained for a group's reason.
Accordingly, a single individual could live through a collective
experience as long as that experience is sustained by a group reason
(Stein 1922: 123; Szanto 2015). Other authors, e.g., Stavenhagen, put
a self-understanding as a group member at the core of collective
experiences: for an experience to qualify as such, the subject must
understand herself as belonging to a group. Interestingly, Stavenhagen
identifies several factors that could lead to that self-understanding
(Salice forthcoming B): sharing preferences with others, having mutual
respect, or being part of an "emotional tradition" are
elements that can elicit that particular self-understanding.


## 3. The Theory of Objects in the Munich and Gottingen Circles



The previous section introduced phenomenological descriptions of
various kinds of experiences. These descriptions are presented by
phenomenologists as "eidetic", which means that they are
supposed to identify the essential properties of the experiences at
issue. Phenomenology, however, is not merely concerned with providing
eidetic descriptions of mental experiences. That is why the
"phenomenology of acts" (*Aktphanomenologie*)
should be distinguished from (although it is not unrelated to) the
"phenomenology of objects"
(*Gegenstandsphanomenologie*, Geiger 1907: 355). Among
other tasks, the latter discipline (also called "theory of
objects" or "ontology") is concerned with the
identification of the essential properties exemplified by objects of
all kinds (and not only by objects of the mental kind).


### 3.1 General Features



There are at least three interrelated features that broadly
characterize the wide range of early phenomenological investigations
on ontology: metaphysical realism, ontological pluralism, and
essentialism.



*Metaphysical realism*. Early phenomenologists consider the
world to be made, in large part, of a variety of objects that are
intentionality-independent. Accordingly, these objects exist
independently of a subject that might know them (regardless of how the
notion of the subject is conceived of). It is important to remark that
this position does not exclude the existence of objects, which are
intentionality-dependent: artefacts and social objects like
institutional facts (promissory commitments, institutions, etc.) exist
precisely because there are individuals or communities that
intentionally create them. Interestingly, it is assumed that,
regardless of its relation to intentionality, the existence of an
object always implies the possibility for this object to be known by a
cognizer, which is why (at least in principle) all objects and their
properties are intelligible.



*Ontological Pluralism*. Objects belong to different
fundamental categories. Because there are fundamentally different
kinds of objects, their investigations are also assigned to different
disciplines. This is why psychologism has to be discarded: logical
psychologism, e.g., collapses different categories (the psychological
and the logical) into one, leading to the conclusion that there is one
single discipline--psychology--in charge of their
investigation. The flip side of ontological pluralism is
anti-reductionism and a descriptive approach to ontological questions:
all objects must be described as they are--without failing to the
temptation of reducing one kind of objects to another (Geiger 1933).
Against this backdrop, eidetic descriptions are occasionally
contrasted to definitions that characterize a concept in terms of
other concepts: the idea is that definitions of this sort should be
avoided because they "betray" the very essence of the
*definiendum* (cf. Reinach 1914 [1989: 535], on the relations
between explanation and description, see also Brunswig 1904 and
Mulligan 2012: SS1). This view has been criticized, even within
phenomenology, for being conducive to a form of phenomenology
characterized as "picture book phenomenology"
(*Bilderbuchphanomenologie*, Scheler 1913/16: 11;
Hering 1939: 370 n 1).



*Essentialism*. Phenomenological ontology is committed to a
form of essentialism according to which objects are constituted by an
essence. It should be noted that the word "essence"
(*Wesen*) is ambiguous (Reinach 1912): on the one hand, it can
refer to the so-being of an individual object, i.e., to that which
makes an individual the individual it is. For instance, how finely a
given quill pen writes is a property that qualifies this individual
pen as the pen it is--for no other pen can write in the same fine
way (Hering 1921: 496f; Hering reserves the term,
"essence" (*Wesen*), for this concept; see also De
Santis 2015, Fabbianelli 2016). On the other, it can also indicate the
what-being of a given object or the kind to which it belongs: e.g.,
being a pen is one such kind (Hering uses the word
"essentiality" (*Wesenheit*) to refer to essence in
this second sense, see 1921: 505ff and Seifert 1996). Essences (in
this second sense) ground necessity (Hering 1921; Ingarden
1925; Reinach 1911b). For instance, the essence of promise, color,
movement, or tone grounds the necessary facts that promises generate
claims and obligations, that colors have extension, that movements
have velocity, that tones have pitch and intensity, etc. (see also
Mulligan 2004; Fine 1994a,b, 1995). Essences are taken to exist
independently of whether they have exemplifications or not. As such,
they are described as ideal (abstract) and atemporal objects. Not all
essences are atemporal, though: for instance, Geiger discusses the
idea of "dynamic essences" (Geiger 1924, e.g., the essence
of the tragic), which evolve through time and are characteristically
instantiated in artworks.


### 3.2 Objects and States of Affairs



Almost all phenomenological investigations into ontology presuppose
that "objectualities" (*Gegenstandlichkeiten*)
come in two kinds: objects and states of affairs.



Objects are the objectual correlates of nominal acts: if you perceive
(think of, remember, imagine, etc.) Napoleon, then Napoleon is the
object of your perception. From a linguistic point of view, objects
are the referents of singular terms, be they concrete or abstract. In
line with Husserl's LI, early phenomenology takes the category
of object to be divided into the two sub-categories of real and ideal
objects, which are distinguished by their relation to time (cf. Hua
XIX 129f). Ideal objects are atemporal; these are usually taken to be
either general or individual objects. Properties and essences are
general because they can be predicated of several objects. By
contrast, ideal objects, which cannot be predicated of anything else,
are individual. So, e.g., Reinach takes natural numbers to be ideal
*and* individual for they are not predicated of other entities
(1911c [1989: 58]; 1914 [1989: 539f]). Real objects are temporal, and
this category is traditionally divided into material and mental
objects. Over the years, this standard classification underwent
substantial revision: in particular, the increasing attention devoted
to social ontology led phenomenology to enrich its table of categories
(Salice 2013). For instance, the case of entities like promissory
claims and obligations called into question the strong connection
hitherto endorsed or presupposed between ideality and temporality: on
the one hand, these entities are neither material nor mental; on the
other, they are temporal (they are brought about by a successful
promise and extinguish when the promise is honored). Also, we have
already seen that investigations into aesthetics led some
phenomenologists to accept the existence of essences that are ideal,
but nonetheless temporal or historical (for a similar conception, see
also Husserl's notion of "bound idealities", 1938:
321).



States of affairs are the objectual correlates of propositional
attitudes like assumptions and judgments. Judging always is judging
*that* something is or is not the case. That which is or is not
the case is the state of affairs the mental attitude is directed
towards. States of affairs are the referents of declarative sentences
as well as of perfect nominals (perfect nominals are linguistic
constructions that contain a gerund and can syntactically act as
names, e.g., "the rose's being red", cf. Vendler
1967). The German expression for state of affairs is
*Sachverhalt*, which apparently was introduced in the Brentano
School around 1888 by Carl Stumpf (Rojszczak & Smith 2003: 165;
Meinong's equivalent reads "objective
[*Objektiv*]", Salice 2009). The term has its roots in
jurisprudence (Smith 1978a) where it is used to express the
"juridical 'status' in the sense of 'status
rerum' (state or constitution of things)" (Smith 1988:
25). This is conducive to how early phenomenologists use the term
*Sachverhalt*: objects or things have an ontological structure,
and this is a structure of states of affairs. (When this structure
involves a value-property, then phenomenologists sometimes talk of a
"state of value" [*Wertverhalt*]).



Early phenomenological debate about these entities extends over many
years and is animated by various positions. These different positions
can be sorted into two more or less well-defined competing views.
According to the first, all states of affairs have an ontological
status of their own, which is intentionality-independent. The second
view claims that only a restricted class of states of affairs are
intentionality-independent entities. On this second view,
non-obtaining states of affairs (e.g., Elvis' being the
president of the US) or negative states of affairs (e.g., the not
being red of the White House) or existential states of affairs (the
existence of Barack Obama) or impersonal states of affairs (the state
of affairs that it is raining) and/or other kinds of state of affairs
have been argued to be intentionality-dependent.



In this debate, Reinach's theory represents one extreme position
(Reinach 1911a): according to him, all meaningful declarative
sentences are directed towards states of affairs. True sentences
(i.e., those sentences which express true propositions) refer to
obtaining states of affairs, false ones to non-obtaining. States of
affairs make propositions true or false: they are truth-makers and the
corresponding propositions truth-bearers. Reinach does not elaborate
on the truth-making relation, but an interesting account of this
relation in terms of the principle of sufficient reason is developed
by Pfander in his *Logic* of 1921 (see also Mulligan
2008b).



In addition, Reinach suggests that states of affairs are either
positive or negative, and he argues that either a positive state of
affairs or its negative contradictory obtains (e.g., either the
being-red of the rose obtains or its not-being red). The principle of
the excluded middle is hence claimed to hold for states of affairs
and, analogously, other principles traditionally believed to be of a
logical nature (and in particular the laws of inference, see 1911a
[1989: 115]) are interpreted by Reinach as being primarily ontological
principles, i.e., principles which hold for states of affairs. That
is, states of affairs are the objects of logic (1911a [1989: 138 n
1]), and logic is primarily about states of affairs and only
secondarily about truth-bearers (on this point, see also Gallinger
1912, Honecker 1921, Gardies 1985).



An ontologically more parsimonious counterpart to this first position
was developed by Daubert. In his theory of judgment, Daubert draws a
distinction between two notions. First, he calls "states of
affairs" complex entities which exist independently of
intentionality, e.g., the being-red of the rose (cf. Schuhmann &
Smith 1987; Schuhmann 2004c). In addition to states of affairs, he
also identifies so-called "states of affairs as cognized"
(*Kenntnisverhalte*), which are described as
intentionality-dependent entities. (Although using different
terminology, Pfander, too, seems to have had a similar
distinction in mind in 1921 when he speaks of "the objects in
their objectual state" (*das Selbstverhalten der
Gegenstande*) and of "states of affairs" as
entities which are "projected or outlined"
(*entworfen*) by judgment and which are "completely
dependent" on judgment, Pfander 1921: 40f, 253.)



Daubert's idea is that, within a judgment, an aspect of the
state of affairs is selected by the mind and conceptually framed. So,
for instance, the expressions


* "the chairman opens the meeting",
* "the chairman is opening the meeting",
* "the meeting is being opened by the chairman",
* "the opening of the meeting is being conducted by the
chairman" and
* "the chairman has opened the meeting", (cf. Schuhmann
& Smith 1987: 368)



point at different "states of affairs as cognized"
(*Kenntnisverhalte*) to which the same state of affairs
pertains. The same can be said for expressions such as "*a* >
*b*" and "*b* < *a*". In the
LI, Husserl employs this very same example to argue that the two
sentences express different propositional meanings pointing at the
same state of affairs (Hua XIX A 48). Daubert reports having discussed
this example with Husserl (Schuhmann 2004c: 206 n 25), which might
have inspired Husserl to replace his previous theory of the LI with
his later distinction, which is analogous to Daubert's own,
between states of affairs and situations (*Sachlagen*, see Hua
XXVI 97f, Husserl 1938: 285ff).



To be sure, Reinach, too, distinguishes between coarse-grained
"factual material" (*Tatbestand*) and fine-grained
states of affairs (Smith 1987: 218ff). Yet, contrary to Reinach,
Daubert contends that states of affairs as cognized do not exist
without corresponding judgments. Moreover, Daubert claims that,
analogously to states of affairs as cognized, states of affairs as
questioned (*Frageverhalte*) or as ordered
(*Befehlsverhalte*) also exist only in relation to acts of
question or of order (Schuhmann 2004b: 91).



Daubert's position raises the question as to what properties
qualify states of affairs proper and what properties qualify states of
affairs as cognized. For instance, Daubert holds that there are no
negative states of affairs, but only negative
*Kenntnisverhalte* (cf. Schuhmann 1987--based on a
somewhat similar approach, Ingarden, too, denies the existence of
intentionality-independent negative states of affairs, see 1964 II/1;
Chrudzimski 2010). Analogously, Pfander (1921: 72f) argues that,
when it comes to giving an account of impersonal judgments, these have
impersonal states of affairs as their correlates, but the
incompleteness that characterizes such states of affairs has no place
at the level of reality, i.e., at the level of "the objects in
their objectual state" (a position which, again, is in agreement
with Daubert, Schuhmann 1998: 184).


## 4. Conclusion



Early phenomenologists make up a philosophical tradition that has been
almost wholly overlooked by historians of twentieth century
philosophy. Partly building upon the ideas of Husserl and other
philosophers, while nevertheless also developing their own ideas
independently, they made contributions to as many fields as the
philosophy of mind, the philosophy of psychology, the philosophy of
speech acts, epistemology, social philosophy, axiology, and
ontology.



Some of their most important contributions are accounts of the
distinction between presentations (perceptions and imaginations) and
the acts of meaning something with an expression; of affective
phenomena, including episodic emotions and long-lasting sentiments; of
knowledge as a direct grasp of objects and states of affairs rather
than any sort of belief or conviction; of the distinction between
attitudes or stances, such as belief and emotions, on the one hand,
and knowledge, on the other; of the distinction between motivation and
reasons, on the one hand, and mental causality, on the other; of the
structure of speech acts such as promises, orders and questions; of
collective intentionality and its relation to social facts; and of
values, our acquaintance with them, and our reactions to them. In
ontology, they developed theories of states of affairs and an account
of modality according to which the most fundamental type of necessity
flows from the essences or natures of objects. The fact that their
ideas have been consistently overlooked is made even more curious by
the fact that they write in clear German and that many of their ideas
were rediscovered, beyond phenomenology, during the twentieth
century.



Uncovering the full extent of these still rather neglected resources
is an ongoing process that promises to impact different strands of
philosophical debate and to substantially enrich the received picture
of the phenomenological movement.