Abstract
The chapter proposes a most systematic assessment of the notions of region and regional ontology in Husserl’s phenomenology. Contrary to what is usually assumed, the concept of region is deemed completely irreducible to a combination of non-independent parts or moments in the sense of the Third Logical Investigation. As a consequence, the chapter makes the case for a sharp distinction between the mereology of the early Husserl (and the conception of the a priori that follows from it) and the notion of regional ontology outlined in Ideas I.
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Notes
- 1.
In light of these distinctions, one can appreciate (euphemistically) the naiveté of the claim: L’eidétique husserlienne repose en effet sur un équivalence entre essences et eide (Romano, 2019, 162).
- 2.
On this distinction, see Lowit, 1954, 326–327.
- 3.
See also Shoichet, 2013, 173 and ff.
- 4.
- 5.
For the so far only systematic assessment of this passage, see the fundamental Majolino, 2015.
- 6.
See Tinaburri, 2011, 118–130, on Husserl’s theory of material things in relation to Aristotle’s substance.
- 7.
See also Hua XXXII, 29 and ff., where Husserl systematically mobilizes the concept of region to make sense of the relation and difference between nature and spirit. For example, Husserl talks of a “region of all regions” to refer to the macro-region “world” and its many internal regional articulations.
- 8.
- 9.
See Brisart, 2003, for an analysis of the development of Husserl’s view on the “abstract.”
- 10.
On this, see also Plourde, 2003.
- 11.
See the way in which Husserl formulates the corresponding definition in §13 of the Third Logical Investigation: “A content A is relatively non-independent in regard to a content B (or in regard to the total range of contents determined by B and all its parts), if a pure law, rooted in the peculiar character of the genus-essence of content in question, ensures that a content of the pure genus A has an a priori incapacity to obtain except in, or as associated with, other contents from the total ranges of the pure genera of contents determined by B” (Hua XIX/1, 264; Husserl, 2001, II, 22).
- 12.
See Husserl’s words: “Wherever therefore the word ‘can’ occurs in conjunction with the pregnant use of ‘think,’ there is a reference, not to a subjective necessity, i.e. to the subjective incapacity-to-represent-things-otherwise, but to the objectively ideal necessity of an inability-to-be-otherwise” (Hua XIX/1, 242–243; Husserl, 2001, II, 11–12).
- 13.
This is the reason why Majolino, 2015, 47, correctly speaks of “unity of being” to characterize the region.
- 14.
We call it mereological according to Husserl’s attempt at accounting for the concept of moment in terms of “non-independence.” Of course, one could object to our argument that, insofar as an individuum is a whole made up of parts, the regional impossibility is in the end to be understood as a variation upon the mereological impossibility. We could of course agree, but only on condition that we admit that a new sense is being ascribed to the notion of whole. For in the case of the regional whole, the concretum is no longer composed of parts standing to one another in a non-independence-sort of relation in the same sense in which a moment of color stands in relation to a moment of extension.
- 15.
See Simons, 1994, for a different perspective on the matter.
- 16.
For a systematic analysis of the a priori in Husserl, which however overlooks the distinction that here we are trying to bring to the fore, see Romano, 2010, 209–249. In the field of Husserl scholarship, see Costa et al., 2002, 72 ff., who speak of “material ontology” without acknowledging the specificity of the notion of region. De Monticelli & Conni, 2008 do not include the “region” among the technical terms of phenomenology, although their approach is ontology-oriented. See by contrast Drummond, 2007, 180, who includes an entry on the notion of region.
- 17.
Since here we are interested only in the concept of region in general, the reader can turn to Majolino, 2010, for a detailed analysis of Husserl’s eidetics of consciousness in Ideas. A recently published interesting text on the matter is the Beilage XLVIII in Hua XLIII/1, 498–500 (Allgemeine Wesenseigenheit eines intentionalen Erlebens).
- 18.
This specific and technical aspect concerning Heidegger’s interpretation of the region has been so far overlooked by the Husserl-Heidegger scholarship; see for example Stapleton, 1983, 24–29; and the otherwise very important pages by Øverenget, 1998, 84 and ff.; Overgaard, 2004, 74 and ff. Von Herrmann, 2000, just like Greisch, 1994, does not even seem to consider the notion of “region” as an important phenomenological concept. Hopkins, 1993, 32 and ff. (more generally, the entire Chap. 2) pays a great deal of attention to the concept of region in Ideas I, and to the manner in which Heidegger critically tackles it (see 104 and ff.); yet he never seems to raise the question how Heidegger understands or misunderstands it.
- 19.
See the entire text Nr. 17 in Hua XXXIV, 264–278 on the question about the sense of being in relation to Heidegger, in which Husserl re-asserts with even greater emphasis the points we are making in these pages as regards the meaning of the empty “something” and the material-ontological plurality.
- 20.
- 21.
For an analysis of how to understand the problem of “analogy” in Husserl in connection to its material and regional ontology, see the beautiful study by Mariani, 2012. As the reader can imagine, the discussion of the problem of analogy in Husserl goes far beyond the scope of this book and its author’s expertise. On the concept of “multiplicity” in Husserl and its importance for the theory of constitution, see Majolino, 2012.
- 22.
- 23.
We are of course fully aware that for Husserl “formal ontology” is a science of its own and that formal-ontological categories represent “that without which entities as such are not thinkable.” We are in this case following Spiegelberg’s interpretation of the relation between formal and material ontology, the importance of which has yet to be recognized in Husserl scholarship. In his essay of 1930, Spiegelberg understands in a quite peculiar way Husserl’s own statements from Ideas I according to which, “As what is most universal, the formal (das Formale) includes everything else not only under itself, but in a certain sense also in itself. Hence, it cannot be considered without the material (das Materiale), even though it will always remain distinct from it (von diesem immer verschieden bleibt)” (Spiegelberg, 1930, 7). For example, the formal part-whole relationship cannot be fully understood ontologically without taking into account the different meanings it can take on depending on the specific “material” essence of the entity which it characterizes. Since our ambition here is not to defend Spiegelberg’s reading of Husserl, but rather simply to suggest a possible direction, we can refer the reader to De Santis, 2014, 102–129 and ff. Up to a certain extent, Spiegelberg would argue, the very talk of formal conditions of thinkability is pointless unless one actually refers to a specific, and materially determined ontological domain. For example, as we saw above, the impossibility of thinking separately “color” and “extension” and two non-independent objects is not the same as the impossibility of thinking of an individual thing (= individuum) without also including all its material-regional determinations. This is the reason why in his text Spiegelberg invests a great deal of energy and time in distinguishing the many different species of (material) unities and wholes, hence the many different and materially determined part-whole relations. Of course, the point would be to better understand what he intends to say when he affirms that das Formale and das Materiale are verschieden, “distinct” and yet however “inseparable.” For a different Husserlian perspective, see Hopkins, 1993, 33 and ff.
- 24.
In his lectures of 1928 on Leibniz, Heidegger makes a remark that seems to go precisely in the direction of Husserl and his understanding of the relation between “being” and the regional multiplicity. Here is the text: “The term ‘being’ is meant to include the span of all possible regions. But the problem of the regional multiplicity of being, if posed universally, includes an investigation into the unity of this general term ‘being’: into the way in which the general term ‘being’ varies with different regional meanings. This is the problem of the unity of the idea of being and its regional variants” (Heidegger, 1978, 192; Heidegger, 1984, 151). Now, the reference to Aristotle, hence to the problem of the unity of being vis-à-vis its regional variants, immediately tells us to what extent Heidegger’s position should not be identified with Husserl’s own view. Aristotle (and Heidegger) does not recognize any ontological instance higher than the supreme genus: hence, the “variants” Heidegger has in mind when he speaks of “regional multiplicity of being” is the generic variant and the generic multiplicity.
- 25.
“All ontology, no matter how rich and tightly knit a system of categories it has at its disposal, remains fundamentally blind and perverts its innermost intent if it has not previously clarified the sense of being sufficiently and grasped this clarification as its fundamental task” (Heidegger, 1967, 11; Heidegger, 2010, 12).
- 26.
The term appears only in the French translation of the Sommaire des leçons du professeur E. Husserl (Hua I, 196 and 197). The two expressions are: une région de l’être et de connaissance; la région de l’Ego pur. But they do not have any correspondence in the original German text of the Inhaltsüberblick: the first appearance of the French région corresponds to the German Seinssphäre (Hua I, 189), while the second has no correspondence at all.
- 27.
“the fourfold distinction of being of accident (ὂν κατὰ συμβεβεκός), being of the true (ὂν ὡς αληθές), being (ὂν) of the categories, and being as potentiality and as act (ὂν δυνάμει καὶ ἐνεργεία)” (Brentano, 1960, 7; Brentano, 1975, 3–4). For a critical reading of Heidegger’s early position vis-à-vis Brentano, see Shoichet, 2013.
- 28.
For a confirmation of this reading, see the recent Antonelli & Boccaccini, 2021, 85–86 “L’impegno che Brentano profonde nel campo della psicologia empirica non si configura dunque come una deviazione dai precedenti interessi ontologici, ma si traduce nel compito di individuare in campo psicologico […] la natura dell’essere in senso proprio.”
- 29.
For a historical reconstruction, see for example Raspa, 2020, 169–187 on Brentano, and 221–251 on Apelt.
- 30.
- 31.
See Klev, 2017 on Husserl’s conception of region’s influence on Carnap and the Aufbau.
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De Santis, D. (2023). Husserl and the Regions of Beings. In: Transcendental Idealism and Metaphysics. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 126. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39590-1_3
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