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We ask the reader to refrain from reading more into our words than they expressly set forth.Jean Hering

Translations are more or less flagrant modes of betrayal. George Steiner

Translator’s Note

1In a note to the 2nd edition of the Polish version of Controversy over the Existence of the World, Roman Ingarden writes: “It is astonishing that Husserl, in whose phenomenology the concept of ‘essence’ is one of the fundamental concepts, had so relatively little to say about what the essence of an object is.”1 Three works were subsequently endorsed by Ingarden as the most noteworthy contributions in the attempt to remedy this perceived shortcoming. In the opening note of the same chapter [XIII] of the Controversy, he writes:

Of Husserl’s students, it was Jean Hering who first made an effort to further develop this problematic and to gain new insights.2 He was followed by R. Ingarden with his Essentiale Fragen ....3 Herbert Spiegelberg’s work Über das Wesen der Ideen4 also moved in the same direction.5

2Spiegelberg echoes Ingarden’s sentiment when he writes that the “structure of general essences and a number of related phenomena has been the subject of several studies in JPPF, especially by Jean Hering, Roman Ingarden, and the present author.…”6 Ingarden singles out one other work in this endeavor: “After Spiegelberg, we can only point to the work In Geschichten verstrickt by Wilhelm Schapp,7 who once again took up this problem of essence….”8

3 The rather obscure9 “compact essay” by the Alsatian philosopher Jean Hering (1890–1966), student of Husserl and Reinach between 1909 and 1913, has been characterized by Spiegelberg as having “launched some of the most provocative ideas…in the field of essences.”10 The earliest extensive discussions of this work are offered by Göttingen colleagues E. Stein11 and R. Ingarden.12 To signal the complexity of the issues involved, Ingarden cautions that his own discussion pertaining to essences and ideas “will be intelligible only to a reader who is thoroughly acquainted with Hering’s essay, as well as with at least Investigation II of Husserl’s Logical Investigations and Part I of his Ideas I.”13

4 Hering’s essay is challenging to both reader and translator, and it is problematic in several ways. Apart from its dense content, it is a terminological morass. There are numerous terms for which no reliable correlates exist in English, and Hering often employs alternative terms for the same referent; the syntax of his German is, in many instances, quite unorthodox; the use of his own terminology appears too often ambiguous and/or inconsistent (hence, there are more German terms in brackets than one might ordinarily expect). The essay gives signs of having been rather haphazardly assembled, and not very carefully edited. Apart from his own comment on the source of the material in it (see n3 of the translation), we learn from K. Schuhmann14 that Hering appropriated for its composition portions of the Appendix to a “dissertation” (“The Doctrine of the Apriori in Lotze”) required as part of the State Exam for secondary school teachers, for which he returned to Göttingen in the summer of 1914.

5I have provided commentary where I felt it might be helpful to resolve some of the technical issues mentioned above, and I have employed auxiliary sources to shed light on substantive issues. In addition to Stein and Reinach, one such source was a series of “excerpts” that Husserl had extracted from Hering’s dissertation Appen|dix (see trans., n5), although – since I was unable to procure a copy of that Appendix prior to completing the translation – it was sometimes difficult to ascertain to what extent portions of these “excerpts” were paraphrases of Hering’s actual Appendix text; it was, however, clear in numerous cases when Husserl’s own commentary was interspersed amidst the excerpts. Another very useful resource was an excellent translation of Hering’s work into Spanish by Rogelio Rovira.15

6 Discussing his essay in her opus magnum (see n5), Edith Stein calls attention to Hering’s dubious appropriation of Aristotelian terminology, which plays a significant role in it. She cautions in one passage that, despite Hering’s “resorting freely [freie Anlehnung] to the language of the Metaphysics, the entire work should not be read as an attempt at an Aristotle interpretation.”16 Elsewhere, she again reminds the reader of Hering’s “loose [freie] employment of Platonic and Aristotelian expressions.”17 Jeff Mitscherling has kindly offered to shed light on Hering’s use of Aristotle’s language by providing an appendix to the translation, “Hering’s Greek Terminology,” which includes an ample glossary of the Greek terms Hering employs.

7 I am indebted to a number of individuals for contributing in varying degrees to the final product: Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray, Johannes Brandl, George Heffernan, Martin Schwab. I owe special thanks to Jeff Mitscherling for spending countless hours of personal discussions over a thorough examination of the entire text, and for saving me from numerous stylistic infelicities and substantive errors. Finally, I am most grateful to Charlene Elsby, general editor of Phenomenological Investigations, for offering a long overdue and much deserved English voice to Hering’s work, on the 100th anniversary of its original publication.

Arthur Szylewicz 495

Remarks Concerning Essence, Ideal Quality and Idea18

Jean Hering Dedicated to Edmund Husserl on his 60th Birthday

Introduction

8Even if the phenomenological movement never discerns what it is in its commitment to certain doctrines that lends it its unity and vigor, the nature of its research methodology will nonetheless produce consensus among scholars on a growing number of issues. Already now we can name a basic tenet, recognized in like manner (though not adopted as untested presupposition) by all phenomenologically oriented philosophers: the existence of entities that are not given empirically [nichtempirischer Gegebenheiten] and that make so-called a priori research possible. To be sure, opinions concerning these [non-empirical] objects still diverge widely. At times, to the empirical red colors is opposed something like an idea “Red” – which, incidentally, is itself in turn described differently by the different researchers; at other times, there is talk of an ideal quality [Wesenheit]19 “redness” or of an essence of Red – which latter is then again readily equated with one of the two aforementioned entities.

9 The aim of the following expositions is to lay bare a portion of the problems whose solution would perhaps lead to greater clarity in this area.20

496

Chapter One

ON ESSENCE (ΤΟ ΤΙ ΗΝ ΕΙΝΑΙ)

§ 1. Preliminary Determination of “Essence”

1.

10Just as in science, so also in everyday life we often enough ask questions concerning the essence of some specific empirical or general object. Hence, we are all familiar with questions such as those concerning the essence of mathematical objects, concerning the essence of Christianity, or perhaps even concerning the essence of Cardinal Richelieu’s politics. In attempting to give an answer to them, we begin as a rule by enumerating characteristics [Merkmale] that are relevant for constituting the character that is proper [Eigenart] to the object, while omitting those for which this does not appear to be the case. That Richelieu declared war on Spain on precisely the particular day that he did rather than on some other, we may perhaps explain as “coincidental” – or as “occasioned by special circumstances” that might just as well not have transpired; that he did so at all, we consider as a trait well-suited to better acquaint us with the essence of his politics. The more we succeed in discovering features which, as we also put it, are constitutive for the object, the more distinctly does it emerge in the whole fullness of the character proper to it [Fülle seiner Eigenart].

11It is toward working out this proper character21 that makes up [ausmacht] the object, and toward nothing else, that our efforts are directed when we are intent on bringing to light the essence of something. This enigmatic structure [Gebilde] is what we also designate as the being-so [Sosein] of the object taken in the whole fullness of its constitution [in der ganzen Fülle seiner Konstitution]. The single [einzelnen] features of being-so (ποῖον εἶναι) are features of its essence.

12Note: An object’s being-so (ποῖον εἶναι), the complete ensemble of which coincides [zusammenfällt] with its essence,22 is to be sharply distinguished from the existent’s So [So] (ποῖον) – its qualitative endowment [Beschaffenheit] in the broadest sense.23 The brown color of this horse’s hair, which I can say is lighter than the brown color of the rider’s vestment, belongs to the ποῖον of this horse. The being-brown of the horse cannot be lighter than the being-brown of the vestment.24

13497 Of course, the ποῖον εἶναι should be just as little confused with the state of affairs [Sachverhalt] that the object is endowed with such and such qualities. I can affirm or deny the state of affairs that S is p, [but] not the characteristic [moment] “being-p” which I claim belongs to the essence of S. There is a contradictory negative to the state of affairs “S is p”: “S is not p”; there is25 no negative being endowed qualitatively [ein negatives Beschaffensein] of S.26^,27

2.

14It is not immediately obvious why only individual objects28 should have their essence. For not only does every individual object have its essence, so does every so-called “idea.” We need only to juxtapose the following two propositions: (a) “It belongs to the essence of Richelieu’s politics that he formed alliances with Protestant powers just as readily as with Catholic,” and (b) “It belongs to the essence of the octahedron to have 12 edges,” in order to see that we can in both cases speak with equal justfification of essence as the “total ensemble of necessary predicables that would have to accrue to the object as that entity which it is in itself.”29 Also no less certain is the fact that every object possesses only a single such total ensemble of necessary constituents [Ingredienzen].

3.

15We shall therefore be unable to avoid formulating the following proposition, which we could also have advanced as the principal thesis [Hauptsatz] pertaining to essence: Every object (no matter what its kind of being may be) has one and only one essence, which, as its essence, makes up the fullness of the specific character [Eigenart] constituting it.30 It holds, conversely – and this says something new: Every essence, in accordance with its sense, is essence of something, and indeed essence of this something, and of no other. This does still call for additional clarification.

§ 2. The Essence as Individual [Individuum]

1.

16When I say of a pen that the capability to write finely belongs to its essence, but not its location on this table or its retail price, I then have in mind that sense of “essence” which we have made into our problem here. 498 We are not talking here about something like an idea “pen” or about any other idea, but rather solely about the essence that this pen has as this individual, and which embraces the specific constitutive character of its being-so. It is of the utmost importance to emphasize that “essence” in this sense is always characterized as essence of this determinate object.31 Just as there is no surface lest it be the surface of something, so also is there no essence lest it be the essence of something.

17 That is to say, not only is essence a non-selfsufficient object that cannot exist without its bearer [Träger], just as “motion,” say, cannot exist without a medium [Träger] for the motion – or “color” [cannot exist] without a moment of extension – but it is itself, in and for itself and prior to its existence, invested [behaftet] with a certain index that points to its object; it is essence of a. And this index is indeed always just as fully determined as the object it indicates,32 whereas the phenomenon of motion, for example, is what it is, independently of its relation to some bearer – ever so necessary as the latter may be.33

2.

18Two completely alike (individual) objects have two completely alike essences, but not identically the same.34 Of two like flowers, or two congruent triangles, each has indeed its essence. What easily misleads here is the ambiguous use of the pronomen possessivum, or genitive, in the locution “its (the object’s) essence.” That is to say, there are circumstances under which we may say of two flowers with exactly equal right: 1) they have like colors, or 2) the color of the one is the same as that of the other.35 The underlying equivocation becomes apparent as such when the following formulations are chosen: 1') their colors are alike – 2') their color is the same.36 In the first proposition [Satz] we are speaking of the individual color-moment [Farbmoment] of the first flower and of that of the second, each of which occurs precisely only on the one, and not on the other. In the second proposition, by contrast, we are speaking of something that exists non-individually, and is instantiated [sich vereinzelt] 499 in both cases (possibly [both] hic et nunc). In exactly the same way, apart from speaking of the essence of a as its individual essence, it is of course possible to speak of the “kind of essence that a has.” Such an entity could instantiate itself in various separate [einzelnen] essences (essence of a, essence of a', etc.), but would itself be idea of this essence, not itself an essence of a or a'.

19 However, at the moment we are not speaking of the perhaps existing idea of the essence of a, but rather of the essence of a itself. And this can indeed be completely alike to the essence of a', but never coincide with it as an identical one. For just as the fact that the Red-moment of this thing may be transposed onto the level of ideas [in Idee setzen]37 does not deprive this Red of its individuality but in fact presupposes it, so too would talk of an “essence such as a has,” or of an “essence of all a’s,” presuppose what we have called here the essence of a, i.e., the singular [einzelne] essence of this individual a.

§ 3. Constitution and Affection [Affektion]38

1.

20It belongs to the essence of the hexameter (as ideal Species) to consist of six feet of a specific type. It does not belong to its essence that it appears for the first time in German poetry in the work of Konrad Gessner; this is a “[decree of] fate” [Schicksal] that befalls it, and [decrees of] fate do not go into making up the ποῖον εἶναι, but belong rather to the realm of the ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν [doing and being affected].39 Now then, what about the hexameter’s being employed preferentially for epic rather than for lyric poetry40 – should we say that this is fortuitous and has nothing in the least to do with its essence? Surely not. Besides, this happenstance does not belong to its ποῖον εἶναι, to that which makes up the [constitutive] ensemble of its essence [zu dem, was den Bestand seines Wesens aus|macht]. This essence would remain unaltered in the 500 fullness of its constitution even if the hexameter were never employed. We see here that the pairs of opposites – (i) belonging to the essence/not belonging to it, and (ii) essential/contingent – do not in any way coincide.41

21 We therefore have here a proposition that states something about an object, something that does not indeed co-constitute its essence, but which at the same time does not consist of some extra-essential moment in the sense that its “fortuitous” occurrence could be conceived as having been mitigated by external circumstances alone. The preferential application of the hexameter to epic poetry can be made fully intelligible by reference to the essence of this poetic meter. We can say: given that it is employed at all, its preferential application here rather than there is grounded in its essence. For it belongs to its essence to be better suited for the one poetic genre than for the other.42

2.

22Accordingly, in the midst of the ensemble of what does not belong to the object’s essence there are also items [Data] that are related to the latter in such a way that their occurrence can be accounted for on the basis of that essence. We have before us a particularly notable case when the occurrence of some aspect manifests itself as following necessarily from the essence – be it as absolutely necessary, or as necessary on the intervention of certain conditions. It follows with absolute necessity from the essence of a sphere with diameter 1m that it is smaller [in volume] than any cube with edges of 1m; but this relation does not belong to the essence of the sphere; for its essence is what it is irrespective of whether there are other bodies. Essentially necessary relative to certain circumstances is, say, the falling of a stone (it presents itself as essentially necessary once certain conditions are satisfied). – Likewise grounded in essence, but not occurring of essential necessity, is, for example, the falling simpliciter of a stone apart from all specific conditions. We can see that this event can occur on the basis of the stone’s essence. It is surely the essence that signals in advance [zeichnet vor] which happenstances can in general befall its bearer, and in what kinds of relations it can generally engage.

23 Just like talk of essential necessity, talk of law of essence [Wesens|gesetz] also has one of its phenomenological origins here.43 That the stone falls every time certain conditions prevail is a law grounded in the essence of the stone; likewise, that hatred has the tendency to discharge itself in bad actions [is grounded in the essence of hatred], or that 2 is less than 3 [ – in the essences of 2 and 3].

5013.

24We are also occasionally in the habit of applying talk of a priori propositions to such propositions pertaining to essence [Wesens|sätze]; this does in fact accord with linguistic usage to the extent that these propositions are independent of any specific experience [spe|zielle Erfahrung], but are by no means independent of all experience. For it can be ascertained only through experience that S actually has just the kind of essence in which being-p is grounded. Of course, talk of experience makes sense only if S is a real object – in principle accessible to empirical experience. Analogous propositions pertaining to the ideal may without further ado be called a priori in view of the mode of being of these objects themselves.44 But if we wished to label as a priori all judgments that impute a p to a real or ideal S solely on the basis of being acquainted with the essence of S, hence prior to any direct verification [Feststellung] of this being-p, then one would therewith have established a concept of apriority which might perhaps be not unfruitful, and not all that far removed from ordinary speech – but which is at any rate wholly novel relative to the one discussed earlier.

§ 4. Propositions Pertaining to Essence are not Propositions about Essence

25It is not superfluous to recall that propositions which ascribe being-p to an S, as belonging to its essence or being grounded in its essence, are not propositions about essence itself, but rather propositions about S.

26 Statements that show up in the form “S is p by force of, in virtue of, on the basis of, its essence” need to be distinguished, if one desires more precision, from such statements about being-p that label this moment – which on some ground or other has already been established – as an essential trait [Wesenszug] of S, or that set it forth as emerging, possibly or necessarily, on the basis of the [object’s] being-so.

27 But in neither of the two cases are we dealing with propositions about the essence, and, for a deeper look into what the essence is, we should perhaps begin with the observation that we can indeed penetrate into the essence of a thing and investigate it, but that we are accustomed to convey the results of these efforts 502 in statements that do not have the essence itself as their subject. An example of a statement about essence itself would be: “The essence of S embraces being-p, harbors it within itself, or compels or makes possible its existence.”

28 This much, at any rate, we see: so intimate is the coalescence [Verwachsung] of what the essence of S is with what S is, that we would be hard-pressed to find an analogue in any other domain. The essence of S lends itself to being intuitively discerned only in the object that is the bearer of this essence. It subsists only in the object, so to speak – obviously, not as derived from it.45 That intimacy also readily suggests the mistaken identification of the essence with its bearer. On the other hand, S and essence of S are so disparate in kind that hardly a predicate could be found that would be attributable to both – unless it were this: that both have the same mode of existence insofar as, for example, the essence is always a τόδε τι if its bearer is.

§ 5. Essence and Essence-Core [Wesenskern]46

1.

29Let us recall at this point some structural peculiarities of certain essences that are familiar to all scholarly thinking, although a brighter light cannot be shed on their deeper sense until later. When searching for the essence of an object, we are quite often dissatisfied with even the most exhaustive and clear scrutiny [Schauung] of the collective stock of its ποῖον εἶναι – it is rather the essence itself that we make our problem.47 We readily see the traits of which it is composed, but their inner connection has not become intelligible to us, has not “dawned” on us;48 we are missing the key that unlocks for us the fullness of the essence as a cohesive structure. Thus we are always left dissatisfied with a description of an historical personality’s character that consists exclusively of an inventory of the individual traits of the [person’s] essence – be it ever so exhaustive. We need to make a priori intelligible why precisely these traits can occur as so intertwined, and, presupposing the presence of some part of them, why these traits had to occur as combined into a whole in accordance with an internally regulated affinity [Zusammengehörigkeit]. We need, above all, to draw the result [Fazit] from the description in such a way that a more or less simple core of essential traits is disclosed, the presence of which makes intelligible the presence of the other fibers of the essence – in accordance with a priori laws clearly grasped in intuition, or ones that guide us rather more instinctively. 503 Likewise, we believe that out of all the characteristics belonging to the essence of a geometric figure we have to pick out a limited number that constitute its basic essence [Grundwesen], from which the presence of the other features follows self-evidently.49

2.

30The search for such an essence-core is consummated in acts of intuitively revealing what is given, and has nothing to do with arbitrarily simplifying something complicated, or with hypothesizing an unknown for the purpose of explaining a known. But by no means can it be asserted at this juncture that such an essence-core – indeed that any cohesive structure at all that can be grasped in terms of inner necessities – is inherent in every essence.

31 If I am given fully and completely the ποῖον εἶναι of the ink blotter lying before me, then indeed even here I can ascertain certain distinct strata: being-extended and being-heavy belong in strata different from the one to which being-soft belongs, and this in turn [belongs] in a different stratum than being-green; both of the first two moments accrue to it qua body, and then both again in different ways, the being-soft qua blotter and the being-green qua this blotter.50 These are all relations of the utmost philosophical interest, to which we shall have to return later; but they are to be found in every essence, and these structural relationships have patently nothing to do with those which are decisive for the existence [Vorhandensein] of an essence-core. For the complexity of the essence of this blotter, as a merely haphazardly thrown-together contingent entity, defies every attempt to make it intelligible by reference to certain basic characters in a manner analogous to the complex essence of Julius Caesar, or the essence of a conic section.51

32 Having established that by no means every essence has something like a core is initially important to us because from the non-presence of the second of these two enigmatic entities [Gröβen] we cannot infer the absence of essence as such. Perhaps our claim that every individual has an essence will appear less paradoxical following the segregation [Trennung] [of essence-core from essence] we have indicated.

504

§ 6. Concerning Mutability of Essence

1.

33We have already emphasized above that the scope of what does not belong to the essence of an S does not coincide with its ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν, although the latter never appears to belong to the essence. One could perhaps designate all being-p of S, insofar as it does not belong to its essence, as its affection.

34 Real objects – within the compass of which affects occur not only in the form of ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν, or of πρός τι, and the like, but also in the form of properties – present us with especially interesting and difficult examples. If a house that was previously brown were painted white, we would surely say: the being-white does not belong to its essence; and we substantiate this by pointing out that the house could also have been painted some other color without anything having changed in the specific character of the essence [Wesenseigenart] constituting it.52

35 The essence is here in fact the τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι.

2.

36From such alterations within the scope of [an] a thing we distinguish with good reason changes of the thing itself. Originally cramped, dark and gloomy, a house is remodeled in such a way that it becomes spacious, bright and pleasant. Its entire character has changed in the wake of this makeover. And in all fairness to the situation we would have to admit that the essence itself of the house has undergone a transformation [Wandlung] – it has been either altered or converted [übergegangen]53 into a new essence. In this connection, to speak of being altered always presupposes that what is thus altered is something that remains identically itself [es selbst], so that we can tell by the house itself as well as by its essence that it remains the same throughout its changes. After all, 505 the persistence of some portion of the features of an essence is by no means indispensable for preserving its identity. For, something – even an essence – can change from the ground up [von Grund auf], and yet remain identically it itself.54

37 There are of course also partial alterations, whereby, under given circumstances, what we tried to indicate with our reference to the essence-core is what remains unaltered. Perhaps cases of people’s so-called “character changes” afford examples for this, where the changes can be quite drastic without nonetheless touching, as we put it, their innermost being [Wesen].55

3.

38All of these complications fall by the wayside in the case of atemporal objects. The essence of redness is immutable, as is redness itself. The latter may also not display any properties that would be merely fleeting affections. Every material moment adhering [haftende]56 to it belongs eo ipso to its constitution; it accrues to it [redness] in virtue of its essence. Indeed, the essence of real, mutable things is especially instructive because their very existence would enable us to rule out once and for all the possibility of placing essence on an equal footing with an atemporal, immutable “idea” – be it conceived platonically, or in some other way. However, in order to avoid any misunderstandings – since something like the idea of essence obviously must be rigorously distinguished from the essence itself – we once again emphasize that entirely different propositions hold of the one than of the other. The idea of essence would be indestructible, and would also accrue to the object that no longer exists. The essence of the idea of the object would again be something altogether different; this too would be as immutable as the idea.

Chapter Two

CONCERNING IDEAL QUALITY (ΕΙΔΟΣ)57

§ 1. Τί εἶναι and ποῖον εἶναι

1.

39The question that now arises is what to make of that puzzling “So”58 of the object which determines that object’s being-so, and with that – its essence.

40506 As we take the step from being-so [Sosein] to the So [So] itself, the first thing we encounter is the fundamental distinction between the ποῖον (in a narrower sense) and the τί, a distinction which Aristotle had already emphasized and clarified.59^,60

41 In the effort to pin down the So of a particular object, we might perhaps begin by saying: it is λευκός or θερμός. But the question pertaining to the essence of an object will be settled to much greater satisfaction when we learn that it is ἄνθρωπος or ἵππος. Here we are not told how the object is qualitatively endowed, but rather – what it is.

42 As soon as we are asked what the sense of this locution τί εἶναι is, we encounter some rather serious difficulties. We believe we have made the sense of an object’s “being red” sufficiently well understood by pointing to a specific moment “Red” that adheres to the object, and are then fully satisfied with the remark that “being red” is a certain expression for the circumstance that this moment accrues to the object.

43 Now, moments such as “Horse,” “Man” – or even “a Horse,” “a Man” – are nowhere to be found in the object, and so, in our bewilderment, we turn to talking about a thing’s “subsumption” under a general concept, as if by this misdirection of the problem even the least bit had been achieved toward its solution.

44 In response, we must first of all emphasize that the expression “being red” is also in dire need of more detailed clarification. It is after all remarkable that we can assert “being red” not only of the rose R, but also of its coloration [Färbung] c. It appears at first as if the [moment] Red accrues just as well to R as to c. One would therefore have to expect that we could equally well say:61 1) The rose is red; or 2) The color of the rose is red. Our sheer linguistic sensibility bristles at the impertinence of deeming proposition (2) correct. And there is nothing astonishing about that, once 507 we consider that instead of (1) we may equivalently say: “The rose has a red color,” a transformation which in the case of (2) is patently impossible. This shows that we are dealing with different relationships.

2.

45In order to dispel the impression that proposition (2) is incorrect, we may write it as follows: (2a) The color c of the rose is Red; or: The color of the rose is “Red.”62 An attempt at the same modification of proposition (1) will not succeed.

46 If, however, we now follow up on the sense of proposition (2a), we experience a new surprise. We believed ourselves to have stated something about the color-moment c hic et nunc; the truth of the matter is that the subject of proposition (2a) meant the ideal color-species, and “Red” was its name.63 Hence, this proposition answers the question “Which of the ideal color-ideas has been realized here?” by assigning a name to it. We have fallen prey to an equivocation that we brought up earlier. “Its (the object’s) color” means not only the coloration [Färbung] that adheres to the object as moment hic et nunc, but also the ideal color which is realized, and attains appearance, in that coloration.64 It is however highly instructive that such an unnoticed transformation of sense was possible in the case of proposition (2) as could never occur with proposition (1).

3.

47If in concert with linguistic usage we employ the expression “being red” in the sense of proposition (1), and now wish to eliminate the incorrectness of the language in proposition (2) without altering its sense (i.e., while holding to the individual color-moment as subject of the utterance), we would be hard-pressed to find a formulation more fitting than “c is a Red.”

48 But if we ask whether with that “c is a Red” we have hit upon its τί εἶναι or its ποῖον εἶναι, there can be no doubt as to our answer: it is the quiddity [Washaftigkeit] of c, its τί, that we determine in this way of speaking. “Being Red” does not accrue to the color c as it does to the rose R, but rather the way “being-rose” [accrues] to the rose, and “being-human” to other real entities. The rose’s “being-red,” however, designates a ποῖον within the rose.

49 We have accomplished two things by means of this discussion: First, we have made transparent the distinctiveness of propositions (1) and (2). They are, in other words, 508 just as different as are ποῖον εἶναι and τί εἶναι. Secondly, we have acquired an unexpectedly propitious example for the study of what “τί εἶναι” means. It is much simpler than those previously mentioned, and at the same time serviceable for exploring the relations between ποῖον εἶναι and τί εἶναι.

50 Admittedly, this will first emerge in what follows.

§ 2. Quiddity and Ideal Quality|(Morphe and Eidos)

1.

51The color’s “being (a) Red” [“(ein) Rot sein”] conveys, as we have seen, not its ποῖον, but rather its τί.

52 Now even though we are not entitled to say of the color that it is red, as we are of the rose, but only that it is a Red, we can nevertheless speak of the color’s being Red. The situation is no different here than in every kind of [jeglicher] τί εἶναι-relation. We cannot just say without further ado, “this is horse” instead of “this is a horse”; all the same, talk of “ being horse” does have its good sense.

53 Thus, when we speak from now on of the color’s “being Red,” we need to remain alert to the fact that this can be taken as parallel only to the rose-being of the rose, not to its being red.

54Now the sense of “being a horse” or “being a Red,” on the one hand, is by no means the same as that of “being horse” or “being Red,” on the other. On the contrary, inquiry into the phenomenal foundations of these locutions leads in altogether divergent directions.65

55 We wish to make the second of these (being horse) the focus of our study because, as will be shown, it leads us more directly to what will ultimately prove decisive for clarifying the essence of τί εἶναι.

2.

56We now see no other way of answering the question as to what actually makes up the τί of an individual that we call horse, than to say that it is the ἱππότης which it harbors within itself [in sich birgt], and we hope to be able to clarify this situation by means of our subsequent 509 expositions. Correspondingly, we must say: what makes this color into a Red is a certain whatness,66 called ἐρυθρότης – redness [Rothaftigkeit or Röte, or Rotheit if one wishes].67

57 It is these quiddities [Washaftigkeiten] that constitute the object’s What [Was], and possessing them yields the phenomenal foundations for discourse about the τί εἶναι. The relationship of the object to one of its quiddities is altogether different than its relationship to one of its properties. The whatness is no feature of the object, but that which goes into making up [ausmacht] its essence, which makes it into what it is.68 We are incapable of conceiving what the object could be without the quiddity.

58 Unfortunately, all terms such as “redness,” “quiddity,” “ἱππότης” are ambiguous.69 They designate: 1) the quiddity itself70 that the object harbors within itself (the so-quality or what-quality within it [die Soheit oder Washeit an ihm]71); or, 2) the presence [Vorhandensein] of this so-quality72 in the object, or the possession of it by the object’s being horse,73 i.e., of a part of the object’s essence, or of the essence itself.74

59 As a matter of principle, we would like those terms to be understood only in the sense meant under (1), because what is meant under (1) comprises the basic phenomenon on the basis of which what is meant under (2) obtains its determination. In order to point to the peculiar relationship of the quiddity to the object, we shall also label it as the μορφή, which “forms [formt]” the object into what it is.75^,76

3.

60From here we need take only one more step to reach a sphere whose importance for philosophical research – if we are not entirely mistaken – is of the first rank.

61 By “quiddity” we meant the quiddity adhering to [an] a determinate object, with which the quiddity in any other object never coincides – even if the two things were to be completely alike.77 What we said of the essence also applies to the μορφή: it is, in accordance with its sense, μορφή within the compass of [an] something, and that – within a wholly determinate something. 510 It is its μορφή. Now, on the other hand, we can speak meaningfully not only of the redness in a Red-moment, of the ἱππότης in a horse, but also of the “ἱππότης καθ᾽ αὑτὸ,” of the redness “taken in and for itself,” or of the “redness as such.” We then mean something that in itself is wholly free of any relation to objects, something that “is what it is” whether real and ideal worlds of objects exist at all, or not. We can think them without the world. They are not, like the morphes, non-selfsufficient entities in need of a bearer, but are, as can be seen with intuitive self-evidence, selfsufficient and resting within themselves [in sich ruhend].78^,79

62 This redness “in and for itself” belongs in a sphere entirely alien to that of objects. All the same, it enters into relation with them. We say there are objects that partake of it,80 and conversely – though not entirely correctly – that it can realize itself in the objects.81

63 If there were no ideal qualities, there would be no objects.82 Only because there are ideal qualities are morphes possible which prescribe to the object the content of its τί, and – as we shall yet see – its essence generally [überhaupt] in all its plenitude. The ideal qualities are the ultimate conditions for the possibility of objects,83 and of their very selves.

64 Unlike the object, the ideal quality – or εἶδος, which is what we wish to call it from here on – does not sustain [fristet nicht] its existence by 511 partaking (Μέθεξις) in something outside of itself that would confer “essence” on it, just as it itself confers it on the object, but rather prescribes its essence to itself, if we may put it that way. The conditions of its possibility do not lie outside of it, but wholly and completely in its very self. The ideal quality, and it alone, is a ΠΡΩΤΗ ΟΥΣΙΑ.

§ 3. Indirect and Direct Morphe

65The τί of the color-moment c is determined by the eidos “redness.” This does not hold for the rose R itself. The rose is not filled out [erfüllt] by the morphe “redness.”84 Nonetheless, an intuitive immersion into the sense of the relation “being red of the rose” shows us that R too partakes of that ideal quality. To be sure, this latter methexis is not to be compared with the color’s partaking of the redness.

66 The rose has no direct relation to this quiddity,85 but only one that is mediated through c’s belonging to the rose as part to whole. We could perhaps even say that it does partake of the eidos “redness,” but κατὰ συμβεβηκός – not καθ᾽ αὑτό,86 or we may even speak of primary and secondary methexis in the eidos, and correspondingly of the direct and indirect realizers of the eidos “redness,” likewise – of the direct and indirect bearers of the morphe “redness.” Lastly, we wish to designate the redness of which c is the direct bearer as indirect morphe or form of R.

67 Consequently, the following proposition is valid: Every indirect morphe of an object a is direct morphe of a moment b which stands to a in the relation of part to whole.87 It further follows: ποῖον εἶναι consists in nothing other than the indirect participation in ideal qualities. As direct morphe, “redness” constitutes the τί of c, as indirect – the ποῖον of R.

68 The difference in sense between direct and indirect morphe – a distinction which is in no way disturbed because one and the same quiddity can be (and in some instance must be) simultaneously both direct and indirect form – sometimes already comes into clear relief in non-philosophical colloquialism. Thus we speak of “triangleness” [Dreieckhaftigkeit] when we have in mind the direct morphe of a geometric 512 form [Form], but of “triangularity” [Dreieckigkeit] when we mean the indirect morphe of a surface which has that form, naturally applying both expressions, in accordance with an already mentioned equivocation, also to the being-filled-out by the quiddity [auf das Erfülltsein von der Washaftigkeit] – hence, [applying them] to the τί εἶναι on the one hand, and to the ποῖον εἶναι on the other.88

§ 4. The Specific Differentiation as Example of an Amalgamation [Verschmelzung] of Morphes

1.

69Redness is only one eidos among many of which the color-moment c partakes. That we can ascribe being-colored to c shows that c is also at the same time direct realizer of the ideal quality “coloration” [Farbhaftigkeit89]. It could perhaps even be claimed that the eidos “sensible quality in general” is realized in c, an eidos which, over against both of the others, represents something general. The quiddities named here90 have a peculiar sort of relation toward each other, which is commonly known under the heading of “subsumption of the particular under the general” and is thereby well-suited for inspiring considerable philosophical wonder.

70 It seems to us that two things must be distinguished in speaking of “redness”:

1. That redness in which the general [generelle] eidos “chromati|city” makes its appearance, as it were – enriched, to be sure, by a new feature that does not accrue to it as such;91
2. This new feature itself. It is the quiddity “redness” in the second sense that92 confers on the moment c that which, apart from its being-color, it possesses in terms of [an] qualitative peculia|rities.93

2.

71Hence, even if “redness”94 does represent something completely new relative to “color,” a very intimate relation – whose essence is certainly difficult to pin down – subsists between them nonetheless. We would like to assert of it only the following: the affinity between the eidos “color” and the eidos 513 “redness” is of such a kind that the existence of the latter is enclosed [beschlossen liegt], as it were, in that of the former, and, viewed from the opposite perspective, “redness” appears to spring forth, as it were, out of “color.” But therein lies the basis for morphe “redness” never being able to occur without morphe “color,” and for morphe “redness,” whenever it is adjoined to morphe “color,” to always determine more precisely not only the bearer but also the morphe “color” – amalgamating with the latter into a unity (redness in the first sense).

72 That is not what happens when the ἱππότης is found in some τόδε τι together with the morphe “domestic animal” [Haustier].95 For, that which is domestic animal certainly does become more precisely determined when we learn that it is also a horse, or conversely a horse, when we hear that it is also a domestic animal (namely, we then know that a domesticated horse is involved, rather than a wild one). But neither is being-horse (or horseness [Pferdhaftigkeit]) determined more precisely by being-domestic-animal (or animal-domesticity [Haustierhafigkeit]) in the one case, nor conversely is being-domestic-animal (or animal-domesticity) determined more precisely by being-horse (or horseness) in the other case. When I delve more deeply into the sense of “animal-domesticity,” I do not find the existence of horseness [Pferdheit] to be contained in it. But with this in turn appears to be connected the circumstance that whereas being-red represents a specific difference in the strict sense over against being-color (not conversely), such is not at all the case either in the relationship of domestic-animal-being to horse-being, nor in that of horse-being to domestic-animal-being.

73 And this relation of specific differentiation carries over to the relationship of Red to colored [Farbig] as property of things.

74 If this is correct, it entails the following proposition: a characteristic c2 can only be a specific difference of characteristic c1 if a direct quiddity of c2 determines more precisely that of c1, or when the ideal qualities that correspond to these quiddities possess an affinity that makes this possible.96

§ 5. Eidos and Ideal Objects

1.

75Our claim that eidos “redness” includes within itself nothing of the content [Gehalt] of eidos “color,” even though the existence of the one is predelineated in the other, will only appear paradoxical as long as one is inclined to understand by ideal quality something like the ideal Species Red, or an idea of Red. Now 514 at this juncture we know nothing either of an idea or of an ideal Species (vulgo: ideal object), and must for the time being let these entities remain shrouded in a certain vagueness.

76 But it is clear in any event that something like an ideal timeless object would surely be a δευτέρα οὐσία in comparison to the ideal qualities. Even “Red” (as something ideal) is determined in accordance with its τί εἶναι by ideal qualities in which it partakes, e.g., chromaticity and redness. Here too we have before us an object, which, as object, harbors within itself concretized ideal qualities (i.e., quiddities) and not the pure ideal qualities themselves, excluding the possibility that the object itself might belong to the sphere of ideal qualities.

77 In the very nature of the case, we can no longer speak here of the realization of the ideal quality, if by that one understands some sort of intrusion by the latter into the empirical world. But the relation which alone is at issue in the relationship – mediated by the morphes – of ideal quality to object, prevails in exactly the same way here as in the case of something real partaking in the eidos. It is precisely this identical relation that we would like to designate as an ideal quality concretizing itself (in a morphe) in an object as its realizer, or – as we would have to put it more correctly – as its concretizer, which does not of course prevent the specific character of the ideal object from being mirrored in the structure of its essence.97

2.

78Let us mention the following as especially striking differences between ideal qualities and ideal objects:

1. Red is a color; redness, in contrast, is not.
2. One can always meaningfully say: Here resounds the note c; never: here resounds the ideal quality of note c.
3. Finally, the mode and manner in which ideal qualities manifest themselves in what is given empirically [an empirischen Daten] are completely different from the way in which ideal objects do so. It would seem that in both cases one could speak of an instantiation. But whereas the instantiation of the ideal object would be the empirical object, the instantiation of the ideal quality would be not the empirical object itself, but rather a quiddity within the latter. In the second case, the real object is the realizer (more correctly: concretizer) of the ideal quality; in the first, there is no speaking at all of a realizer, 515 and the empirical thing itself is what is realized [das Realisat].98

3.

79 If we now return to the question of specific differentiation, we shall certainly have to concede: Red (as ideal object) contains within itself “being-color” (as morphe) and above and beyond that some other morphe, which distinguishes it from Blue, Yellow, etc. This latter morphe, however, or the ideal quality inherent in it, not only contains something new over against the ideal quality “chromaticity,” but rather is itself, in its totality, something new.99

§ 6. On the Question of Simple and Composite Morphes and Ideal Qualities

Original Morphe and Complex Morphe

Cf. Husserl’s Doctrine of Wholes and Parts (Logical Investigations 2 II, Invest. III)|A. Introductory Remarks|1.

801. Equilaterality, as property of a figure which is a triangle, surely represents a moment within [an] that figure, and not a fragment [Stück]. But what about the morphes “equilaterality” and “triangleness” (µE and µT)? Can one say that µT absorbs µE into itself as moment, or that µT is more precisely determined as an equilateral triangleness? Certainly not.100

81 But the only thing that follows from this with certainty is that the law stating that the morphes of a part are parts of the morphes of the whole does not hold in general.

82516 Perhaps it would also be good to consider:

1. whether this law would not be correct in certain cases;
2. whether the morphes of parts of a whole W do not integrate into a whole W1 whose parts they both101 are;
3. whether the direct morphes of one and the same object do not integrate into one comprehensive whole (e.g., morphe “Red” and morphe “color” within [an] a Red-moment);
4. whether still other modes of amalgamation of direct and indirect morphes are not possible within an object.

2.

83All these questions would have to be dealt with separately, unless deeper insights into the interconnections governing here succeed in replacing these lines of questioning with more adept ones, and more steeped in the nature of the issue [Sache].

84 We may surely state the following generally:

85 Every morphe is morphe of something. When different morphes are related to the same object, this circumstance serves as a basis for a kind of ideal unity – one can perhaps say teleological unity – that here encompasses all of them. However, this unity in and of itself does not yet seem to require the amalgamation that would entitle us to speak of an inner merging together [Zusammenschluß] of parts into a founded unity; but we would have to investigate whether it [teleological unity] does not serve as the precondition for the latter [founded unity], provided one also draws the indirect morphes into the context of deliberation. Further research would have to inquire into: [1] whether the relations between parts P1 and P2 of a whole influence the genesis [Zustandekommen] of their quiddities µ1 and µ2 (and conversely) and the kind of connection between them; [2] whether it is important if P1 and P2 coincide (while µ1 and µ2 do not); [3] whether in other cases it is significant if P2 is a part of P1 (hence is an indirect part of W) in some fashion or other, or in some specific manner; further, [4] whether it makes a difference if direct rather than indirect morphes are at issue.

86 We shall make do with a few notes that are necessary for our immediate goals.

B. Notes on Particular Points|Acquisition of the Concept of Original Morphe [Ur-Morphe]|1.

87Every µ requires completion by its bearer. Now if the need for completion of various µs (µ1, µ2, µ3, ....) 517 is satisfied by the same object A, these µs together with A form a whole. The particular µs are indirectly joined by A; they can be selfsufficient relative to each other. A binding of the µs amongst each other into a founded unity is not procured in this way.

88 Example: morphe “domestic animal” and morphe “horse”. can occur in the same animal, yet are selfsufficient relative to each other.

2.

89Consequently, special relations must prevail between µ1 and µ2 if we are to have any hope of binding them together into a founded unity.

90 Let µ1 be the ideal what-quality [Washeit] “redness,” which accrues to the moment “Red” of some empirical color (e.g., of a table); now µ1 is founded in the moment: quality of the color, which in turn is itself in need of completion by the moment: extension of the color – and this same cannot subsist without harboring within itself “extendedness” [Ausdehnungshaftigkeit], which we wish to designate with µ2.

91 Nothing but µ1 and µ2 bear responsibility for the need of quality and extension to be mutually founded. Nevertheless, on closer inspection of the situation, we shall be hard-pressed to propound a direct need for completion of µ1 by µ2, or conversely; nonetheless, we need to speak here of a need by µ1 for an indirect founding by µ2, or, briefly, [to speak] of a reciprocal need by µ1 and µ2 to be indirectly founded; µ1 cannot be thought otherwise than as belonging to a bearer B 1, which is founded (and indeed directly, in this case) by a bearer B 2 of µ2; but µ1 and µ2 do not together form any kind of partial whole within the whole: W (B1, B2, µ1, µ2).

3.

92We are most apt to expect examples of direct amalgamations of two morphes when both are direct morphes of one and the same bearer. That here too the amalgamations do not always occur was shown by our case of the animal which is simultaneously horse and domestic animal.

93 On the other hand, the example already discussed above of the convergence of µ1 “color” and µ2 “Red” in some real or ideal color does appear to belong here. That µ2 cannot occur in a bearer without µ1 is not accidental, but grounded in the essence of µ1 and µ2. Furthermore, it appears certain that this founding in µ2 is not an indirect one, as if both morphes were linked only via mediation by the bearer – to which it was prescribed by µ2 to simultaneously harbor µ1 within itself. To be sure, that 518 is also the case, but only because µ2 must enter into a direct bond with µ1 as the sole form in which it is capable of occurring within an object.

94 This amalgamation of both morphes is however such a tight [innige] one that we do not have before us something like a mere combining [Verknüpfung] of two quiddities: “coloration” and “redness,” but rather one (new) quiddity “concretized redness [Rothaftigkeit],” or more correctly “concretized Red-coloration [Rotfarb-Haftigkeit],”102 [a quiddity] characterized in itself at any rate not as a simple one, but rather as one in which various components that condition its complexity can be exhibited. This need of completion of µ2 by µ1 we would by all means wish to designate as unmediated [unmittelbare].

4.

95At this juncture let us consider another instructive example of the amalgamation of morphes. A whole series of abstract moments can be distinguished in every empirical sound103 without which it could not exist, e.g., duration, timbre, intensity, quality (in that sense which allows us to consider d and D 1 as sounds of like quality, whereas d and e as sounds of differing quality), and, finally, the pitch of the sound. Although the presence of each of these components is compelled by the others’ need for founding, we are nonetheless immediately struck by the exceptional tightness with which two of these belong together, and by the especially strong resistance they put up against any attempt to ideally tear them asunder – we mean, of course, quality and pitch.

96 By the straightforward note d we do indeed understand a sound of determinate quality and pitch, without regard to the other components. What entitles us to preferentially single out precisely these two features from the complete set [Gesamtfülle] of moments? Why does it not occur to us to capture in separate concepts, say, the pair of characteristics pitch and timbre, or that of intensity and duration, or all four of these characteristics taken together – without the quality? Because otherwise, one will retort, precisely that which makes the note into the note would be entirely or partially lost. Splendid. Except that we would have to further inquire as to why it is precisely these two moments that constitute the essence-core of the note. Here too, the definitive answer can only be provided by that sphere in which there is no Why, but only definitive insights [letzte Einsichten] – the sphere of ideal qualities.

97519 The eidos “sound-pitch” and the eidos “sound-quality” are of precisely such a kind that they can already combine qua ideal qualities, and that the forms intrinsic to the empirical sound determined by them must do so because they cannot subsist without each other. What makes pitch into pitch demands for its completion that which makes quality into quality, but by no means something like intensity or timbre. Therefore, here as well we have a direct need of founding between both forms, and not an indirect one mediated only by the bearer. Hence the more intimate binding of those two features within the particular sound, hence the impossibility of thinking the one without the other – not even at the level of ideas [in Idee].

98 With this we have already anticipated an important distinction within the realm of eidē104 [Washeiten], namely, that between derived [abgeleiteten (derivierten)] or complex ideal qualities and simple or original ideal qualities [Ur-Wesenheiten]. By these latter we wish to understand the ultimate, simple, and indissoluble ideal qualities, in the manner of “redness” or “sound-quality,” by the former, on the other hand, ideal qualities that turn out to be complex relative to the original morphes; certain constituent parts can be exhibited in the complex ones – as, for example, within the eidos “sonority [Tonhaftigkeit].”105 Correspondingly, we distinguish between derived morphe and original morphe.106

5.

99A further deliberation yields the perhaps unexpected result that by no means do all derived morphes (or complex morphes, as we may also call them) owe their existence to an original morphe’s need of founding.107

a)

100“Cunning-yet-stupid [Dummschlauheit]”108 is certainly a singular quiddity of its own, and yet not a simple one.109 As direct morphe, it occurs within the scope of [an] some property of 520 certain mind-endowed individuals [psychischer Individuen], as indirect – in [an] those individuals themselves. Yet no one will venture to claim that stupidity is inconceivable unless it is linked with cunning (or conversely). The two morphes amalgamate in as tight a fashion as only two moments in need of completion can. It seems that this peculiar mode of binding has its place only in the sphere of morphes (and perhaps in that of ideal qualities).

101 It seemed to us that the phenomenon was incorrectly rendered when one wished to affirm that those two properties first exist as δευτέραι οὐσίαι, which [then] enter into a bond within an individual – why indeed should this happen, since they are in no need of founding, and perhaps can even occur within an individual as unamalgamated parts and as reciprocally detachable [abstückbar]? Moreover, they are already themselves quiddities when they bind into a new one, and it is the latter that confers on the subject the property “cunning-yet-stupid.”

102 If we see it correctly, that amalgamation also takes place already in the sphere of ideal qualities, of quiddities in and for themselves, without relation to a bearer whose “form” they are, and we would consequently once more have to distinguish between original what-qualities or original ideal qualities [Ur-Washeiten oder Ur-Wesenheiten (Ur-Eidos)] and derived or complex ideal qualities.

b)

103An even more astounding example for these relationships appears to us to be on offer in the familiar phenomenon of the mixed color [Mischfarbe]. A mixed color, e.g., auburn [Braunrosa] (taken as color, not as quiddity) is in no way a whole in which two parts, brown and pink, interpenetrate110 as abstract moments (like, say, color and extension in the case of some surface); rather, it is in itself homogenous and undecomposable, like a basic color. This is the reason why those who avoid111 the misguided importation of points of view from theoretical physics into the pure theory of colors are often kept from acknowledging the fundamental distinction between basic [or primary] and mixed color.

104 But this distinction is fully justified, nonetheless. It seems to us, however, that it is not the phenomenon of an interpenetration of several simple color-moments into a 521 complex one that lies at the basis of the mixed color (neither in the real, nor in the ideal sphere), but rather that of a binding of two or more quiddities (or ideal qualities) into some other one, which, in itself new and homogenous, allows nonetheless for the clearest recognition of the features of the distinct [einzelne] simpler ideal qualities, and in such a way that in the particular color-moment auburn we can discern not the simpler colors brown and pink, to be sure, but rather a moment (“shade” and the like) that points to them.

105 Perhaps brown and pink also manifest themselves as amalgams of still simpler colors, and these likewise again, until we finally arrive at absolutely simple constituent parts; these we call basic colors, and to them undoubtedly belong, e.g., “Pure Red” or “Pure Blue.”112

106 The peculiarity of certain quiddities to be in this fashion homogenous and yet complex shines forth like a miracle. But it cannot be denied.

§ 7. Inauthentic Morphes

1.

107Confirming the peculiar homogeneity of the complex quiddities we have thus far encountered serves to make us mistrustful of accepting the existence of morphes that are not uniform [gleichförmiger]. Must not the compositions of quiddities always present this sort of homogenized unity, provided they actually constitute a new morphe and do not simply comprise some group of morphes that can be broken up?

108 If we look more closely at ἱππότης as the quiddity that makes the horse into what it is in the zoological sense – with which of course is not to be confused the kind of being and comportment that I could discern as “equineness,” similarly to [the way I could discern], say, “lionness” or “bearness”113 in other creatures – we find that all the many particular features enumerated by the zoologist form a more or less cohesive bundle of elements, but not a novel entity [Novum] with its own distinct 522 quality. Manifestly, we have before us in this case a conglomerate of morphes, or a composite of morphes, if you will, but not a proper complex morphe – or even a simple one. It is for this reason that we speak here of an inauthentic morphe.114 Such conglomerates of morphes are found to be intrinsic to most empirical things, e.g., to the green sheet of blotting paper about which we spoke above.115 We are also no longer surprised now that the ποῖον εἶναι of this thing lacks the character of a self-enclosed [abgeschlossene] unity.

2.

109But the copresence of two morphes in a thing need not yield a new authentic morphe even if they are indeed united by founding relationships, although only mediately, via their bearer – [which is itself] united by means of founding relationships – like the being-extended and the being-red intrinsic to a color-moment.116

110 Inauthentic morphes can be indiscriminately augmented or decomposed, but authentic morphes cannot – unless they forfeit their character as authentic quiddity. Only the authentic quiddities present themselves as “appearances” of πρῶται οὐσίαι, of ideal qualities, which we have also termed Washeiten or εἴδη, and which lead a life diametrically opposed to that of objects and their attributes [Beschaffenheiten]; their existence does not lend itself to being dialectically imposed by plucking out some arbitrary composite of morphes from an object that we may happen to encounter, and simply tacking on καθ᾽αὑτὸ, but their number is fixed [deren Zahl gezählt ist], and every single one of them needs to be diligently sought in the place assigned to it in their world, until one chances upon it as on a rocher de bronce, or until the hope of its existence proves delusional. We do in fact stand here before a new “abyss of the miraculous.”

111 And yet this sphere is the only one that is capable of being made completely intelligible out of its very self; indeed, it demonstrates itself to be that sphere whose knowledge puts us in the position not only to ascertain all there is, but also to understand it.

§ 8. A Look Back at “Essence”

1.

112The quiddities that occur within an object prescribe to it its being-so, its essence.117 In those cases where the stock [Bestand] of morphes occurring in 523 their bearer combines into a new total morphe, which as morphe cannot be indiscriminately augmented or diminished in its composition [Bestand] – and as this morphe, not at all – the essence of the object also acquires the character of a self-enclosed unity, the grasping of which is characterized as a new act of cognition, in contrast to the act that grasps the multiplicity of the essence’s single features as features of a group.

113 All of this is not the case with the frequently discussed examples of the horse or the ink blotter, nor even with that of the extended color; in contrast, it is all very much so in the case where, for example, a mind-endowed individual (as whole) is the realizer of a distinctive [eigenen] ideal quality.

2.

114Even where the just-mentioned unity of essence does not prevail, cases can be singled out in which the essence is more than a mere conglomerate of individual features. We have in mind, of course, all those cases in which the parts of the thing, and therewith also the parts of the essence, are linked together in their totality by means of “a priori” founding relationships. A simple example of such cases is that of the extended color. But founding laws are prescribed by the ideal qualities of which the object partakes by virtue of the quiddities intrinsic to it. Here too I grasp the total essence in an act that is different from the one in which I grasp the juxtaposed multiplicity of its features; but this act is not characterized as one in which something novel (in terms of its composition [Bestand], as opposed to the elements’ being bound together) might be intuitively grasped.

3.

115Based on the findings of this chapter, the talk of essence-core appears to be meaningful in a variety of cases.

116 1. If the So of an object is a complex authentic quiddity, then the single features of the being-so, which were initially identified without regard to their interconnection, are integrated into an organic structure as soon as that morphe – and the total being-so [Gesamt-Sosein] stipulated by it – has been successfully grasped intuitively. The last plays here a role akin to that of a core.

117 2. The image of “core” is more appropriate in those cases of founding interconnections among the parts of the object where – on the basis of having become aware [Innewerden] of the quiddities or ideal qualities animating one or more of the parts, and their indirect need of completion by others – it becomes possible to understand the 524 presence of the other parts as embodiments of those founding μορφαί or εἴδη. Here the part of the essence corresponding to the initially named parts plays at the same time the role of the essence-core.

§ 9. Outlooks on the Problems of the A Priori

1.

118Laws that govern the essence of objects, in the sense of laws that are grounded in the essence of a real or ideal object, always refer back – this should easily follow from the preceding – to relations among ideal qualities, by means of which these laws first become fully intelligible.

119 The relations among ideal qualities are themselves relations pertaining to essences (i.e., not laws governing essence), insofar as they express the essence (being-so) of these ideal qualities, and nothing else.118 They require no further explanation. They never posit existence of objects, much less existence of real objects.

120 Propositions that declare a moment’s belonging to the essence of something are not necessarily grounded by relations pertaining to essence – for instance, not in the case when the said feature of the essence is not bound to other features by any founding relations. Thus, it belongs to the essence of a Schimmel119 that it is white, but there is neither a proper ideal quality: “eidos Schimmel,” nor can the necessary connection of λευκότης with the other characteristics of this animal – characteristics that could at all coincide with those of the horse – be effected on the basis of insights into ideal qualities.

121 Let it also be noted here that the term “being-Schimmel,” attributed to an animal, unlike the “being-Red” of a color, does not express the partaking of the thing named in a homonymous ideal quality that constitutes the totality of its τί. Rather, it expresses only the contingent linkage of the morphes λευκότης and ἱππότης in some τόδε τι. Neither does “horse” itself (we are speaking of the zoological term) express any ideal quality. Even if all ideal qualities were to have names, one could just as well call that animal a Lion or Bear or Alpha or Beta,120 525 whereas a red color, in contrast, could never be named otherwise, because it embodies redness.

2.

122Returning to our example of the Schimmel, we can also show here one phenomenological origin (among many) of talking about the analytic and synthethic necessity of binding some characteristic in an object with others.

123 The being-white accrues to this animal with analytic necessity – even when we do not take its entire essence into account, but only a part of it, provided the latter also encompasses being-white, hence, e.g., that part which accrues to it [the animal] “ qua Schimmel”; in other words, assuming that we apprehend it, say, “as Schimmel.”121

124 It is synthetically necessary that a τόδε τι which is Red also have extension; and we recognize this even if we know nothing else concerning the essence of that something – other than precisely its being-Red; and we do so apart from whether or not we “apprehend” it as bearer of this or the other authentic or inauthentic quiddity that determines its τί (as paper, sheet of blotting paper, utility object, thing, and so on).

125 Synthetic propositions – in this sense (there is also some other meaning of this term) – are grounded in the specific character [Artung] of the ideal quality. One can therefore also call them apriori in a pointed [prägnanten] sense, a sense that does not apply with reference to those “analytic” propositions pertaining to essence.

Chapter Three

ON IDEA, GENERALITY AND GENUS (Ἰδέα, καθ᾽ ὅλου, γένος)

§ 1. Preliminary Remarks

1.

126Our preceding expositions have not gotten us any closer to what an idea is. We have not yet even touched on this problem.

127 Nonetheless, we have constantly spoken of ideas. Our attention was focused, e.g., not on this essence rather than that, but on the (individual) – in the given case 526 hic-et-nunc-attached – essence simpliciter [hic-et-nunc-haften Wesen schlechthin], which is of course why our expositions concerning “essence per se [Das Wesen]”122 should hold for all single essences. We spoke not of this authentic or inauthentic morphe and of that, but rather of the authentic and the inauthentic morphe simpliciter. If we made singular examples our point of departure, we did so only to make clear to ourselves on their basis [an ihnen] the idea “essence” or “quiddity” or “ideal quality.”

128 Should we now retract our preceding expositions on the pretext that we did not really achieve anything with regard to either objects or ideal qualities, or even with regard to essences, but have rather – inadvertently – occupied ourselves with an entirely different, fourth type of objects, namely, with ideas? The absurdity of such a proposal is patently obvious. Ideas are no special class of what exists [Seiendes] alongside objects, ideal qualities, or whatsoever else there may be. Moreover, we affirm the following:

1. Ideas distribute themselves into the various spheres, depending on whether they are ideas of the object, or of the eidos, or of something else.
2. There appears to be no sphere of existents whatsoever that would not have its ideas; no matter how we may wish to partition what exists, there will never be anything that will not be followed by its idea as its shadow.
3. Everything that we say concerning ideas holds eo ipso for the existent of its sphere. “Essence per se is always essence of something”: this proposition – if it was correct – was truly valid for that sphere of entities called “essences,” and not for some other sphere of objects called ideas or universals [Allgemeinheiten]. Despite this, “essence per se” is no particular essence, “horse per se” is no particular horse.

129 Still, we must be much more accurate here.

§ 2. The Idea

1.

130In some house I see a lamp whose striking form, never before observed in the case of any other lamp, makes an indelible impression on me. After a while, in some other place, I chance upon another lamp, which is so completely like the first that I take it for identically the same. Marvelling at how it could have been transported so quickly, I look into the matter and discover that it is a second lamp. It may then well happen that I judge: “ This lamp exists twice.” By “this lamp” I surely do not mean one of the two objects in the two houses, for, needless to say, 527 each of them exists only once – if it makes sense at all to ask here whether it exists once or twice. For precisely the same reason it cannot be some moment of one of the lamps that is meant, or the essence of one of them. Rather, I have in mind something identical that can instantiate itself with varying frequency, and that occurs just as often as there are single [einzelne] lamps of this type [Art].

131 What we stumble upon by following the thread of this argument [Meinung], we wish to name idea of this lamp. (“This lamp.”) The new act that brings the idea into view for us – founded as that act is on the individual presentation, but then characterized by a leap of regard toward a different sphere – can be designated, following Husserl, as ideating act or ideation.

2.

132“This lamp”123 stands in neither the one house nor the other; there are not as many ideas as there are single lamps; rather, the idea “this lamp” exists only once. – But we have just said: “This lamp exists twice.” Are we not faced with a contradiction here? – By no means; “it exists only once” means: it is the only idea that has this set of qualitative attributes; there is no other that is entirely like it; or, there are no more than one of it. But just as little as the circumstance that there are multiple single lamps hinders any one of them from existing only once, so does the fact that the idea is a unique one not prevent it from existing multiple times [oftmals] in the single lamps.

133 The question: “Existing how often?” has nothing in the least to do with the question “Existing in what number?” Also, the second question can never be asked with regard to ideas; the first, in contrast, can be meaningfully asked only in their case.

134 Instead of “existing twice,” one might perhaps coin the locution “realizing itself twice.” However, it is best to avoid this expression, lest we promote unwarranted transfers of notions from other contexts; we shall therefore prefer speaking of “instantiation” or “exemplification” of the idea. But even the locution “existing twice” does not seem to us to be incongruous; it signifies nothing other than the idea’s achieving (empirical) existence twice, or that it “instantiates” itself in two exemplars.

3.

135We can designate the idea in accordance with its instantiations. But every nomen appellativum becomes a nomen proprium (and indeed an individual one) as soon as we transport it onto the level of ideas. 528 There is no idea that would be a lamp, but there is certainly an idea that is called “lamp.” “We would have to have a proper name if we wanted to express the idea that we had when we saw the clay vessel – not a proper name for the thing, but rather for the idea that belongs to the thing.”124

136 “This lamp” as idea or, as we may also put it, this lamp (posited) as idea is not to be thought of as a single lamp. It is ἀγέννητος, ἀνώ|λεθρος, ἀκίνητος, and does not belong to reality. But it has something within itself that makes comprehensible why it has been designated as the prototype [Urbild] of its instantiations.125 It is the “Something like this lamp” [So etwas wie diese Lampe].126

4.

137An idea has no vicissitudes or contingent affections, no ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν. Propositions about its instantiating itself are not propositions about the idea’s vicissitudes; no more than are statements about its appearing in intentional acts.127 Propositions about relations that touch on [tangieren] the idea itself are always essence-pertaining propositions [Wesenssätze] about the idea.

138 To the above-mentioned128 analytic essence-pertaining propositions about exemplars correspond essence-pertaining propositions about ideas (“the Schimmel,” considered at the level of ideas [in Idee], is white-haired); to the synthetic ones correspond synthetic propositions about ideas (the idea: “interminable moral sermon” contains within itself the idea of unbearability). It has been customary to call the latter propositions “a priori” in a strict sense.

139 It is the idea of the object that dictates which ideal qualities the object participates in. For this reason, what belongs to its essence can be gleaned part and parcel from a deliberation of its idea. Indeed, what belongs to the essence of the “something such as,”129 belongs eo ipso to the essence 529 of its instantiation. Already here, in the idea, is truly that place where the eidos concretizes itself into its morphe, which is why this process also has nothing in the least to do with an “empirical realization.” Upon the idea’s instantiating itself, so also the morphe of the “something such as” then instantiates itself in the exemplar.

140 What is grounded in the essence of an exemplar is likewise grounded in the essence of its idea, insofar as this idea stands in relations with others – from which [relations] follows the emergence, as possible or necessary, of affections in the instantiation of the first [idea].

§ 3. Continuation

1.

141The peculiar dual nature of the idea which we already encountered above on ascertaining its two-fold mode of existence, namely: 1. In the things and 2. In and for itself – and which perhaps should be tackled in order to shed more light on its deeper, still very problematic essence – has as its consequence that in the idea, which indeed itself exists atemporally130 and non-spatially, is “contained” the collective qualification of its exemplars. One is immediately tempted to designate the idea as the thing itself dissociated from its existence, of whatsoever kind the latter may be. In any event, we shall not be committing a blunder if we oppose to the existence [Existenz] of the object its manner of being [Essenz]131 in the guise of its idea. But we have to note at this point that, as we believe to have shown, “Essenz” – in terms of both its sense and linguistically – has nothing to do with the concept of “essence” [“ Wesen”] that we delimited above. The idea exists as “idea of the thing” even when the thing is destroyed, or even before it ever existed [war];132 and we can add: even if the thing had never existed at all. The essence of the thing is just as little subject to any sort of material process as the idea, but it dissolves into nothing once the object ceases to exist.

142 Difficulties can actually only arise here as a result of not demarcating sharply enough the hic-et-nunc-adhering essences from the idea to which they are themselves subordinate. To be sure, we can always form the idea “so and so constituted essence of” or “essence of something constituted in such and such a way” and elevate it to the status of the object under consideration; in such cases we surely have before us something ideal [ein Ideelles].

2.

143530 Nothing illuminates more sharply the character proper to the idea (in contrast, say, to [that proper to] the ideal quality) than the occurrence in the idea of an empirical object not only of the total configuration [Konfiguration], but of the hic-et-nunc-moment as well. The thing in idea [in Idee]133 already has a hic-et-nunc-moment, even if not a definite one; in other words: “This lamp” is “something such as a spatio-temporal entity,”134 even though the idea itself qua idea exists neither here nor now.135

144It would seem, accordingly, as if one could consider the idea in two entirely different ways: first, in its ideal mode of being, which accrues to it qua idea; and secondly, with respect to the prototype of all its exemplars that is inherent in the idea. Then again, it is of course something altogether different when I pass a judgment about the exemplars of an idea on the basis of grasping that idea intuitively.

§ 4. General Ideas

1.

145Until now we have only spoken of absolutely specific [speziellen] ideas,136 i.e., ideas whose material composition is determined to the last detail, and is no longer susceptible to being specified more precisely. But in philosophy, a much greater role is played by the general ideas that are contraposed to the former. If we think of two red flowers of differing hue, we can not only transpose each of them for itself onto the level of ideas, thus obtaining two different Red-ideas; by directing our glance toward what is common to the two hues, we can also take this something common itself as idea, and apprehend both concrete colors as instantiations of one identical idea, “Red simpliciter.”

146 This “Red in general [Rot überhaupt]” used to be designated as a general idea, perhaps primarily with reference to its broader range of exemplars, which embraces those of the various specific ideas combined. It is however important at the same time to bear in mind the possibility of recognizing the generality of an idea without any kind of reference to its “range,” and without comparing it to others. A character of indeterminacy adheres to the idea “lamp simpliciter” that comes clearly to the fore in its being impossible for this idea to instantiate itself by its own power. There is not a single lamp in which only the idea “lamp in general” instantiates itself. 531 A specific idea has always entered into existence [Dasein] at the same time. “It is at any rate certain that the singular idea [Einzelidee] first affords the possibility of applying general ideas to objects.”137

147 This fact is so well-known and conspicuous that one might be inclined to dispute on its basis the very existence of general ideas. A gambit that can ostensibly succeed only if one ventures the attempt – suggested by the distinctive character of the specific ideas, but already inadmissible even there – to think the idea itself as “something individual [Einzelnes].”

2.

148Even more important in our context is having established that generality, in that sense which we can make clear to ourselves in connection with the idea, has its place only in the sphere of ideas – and by no means in the sphere of ideal qualities. The eidos “chromaticity simpliciter” does indeed make comprehensible the existence of the various ideal color qualities (redness, blackness, etc.), and the ideal quality “redness” likewise [makes comprehensible] the existence of the ideal quality “crimson-red.” Conversely, in connection with this, the ideal quality “crimson-redness of determinate hue” (in the sense of the full shading, not in the sense of some new moment adjoined to redness simpliciter) harbors redness simpliciter within itself in a manner similar to the way this happens in the case of ideas. But to speak here of a generality in the sense of an indeterminacy or a deficiency, as in the case of the idea “color-moment in general” or “lamp in general,” seems to us utterly nonsensical. The ideal quality, qua ideal quality, is totally and completely determined.

149 Since it is generally well-known, let us mention here only in passing that there are differences of degree in generality (and likewise, of course, in specificity) – by which, of course, is annulled neither the absoluteness of the opposition between the ideal qualities “generality” and “specificity” nor the existence of insuperably specific or general ideas. The highest generality in the region that embraces chromaticity, for example, would be the idea “sensible quality simpliciter”; a lowest Species (singularity) would be the idea “crimson-red of determinate hue.”138

§ 5. Concerning the Subordination of the Particular under an Idea

1.

150It is only now that we are in a position to close an earlier gap. We were inquiring into the phenomenal basis of discourse 532 pertaining to “an animal’s horse-being,” and found that it points to the possession of a determinate morphe (ἱππότης) on the part of the object.

151 We left out of account at the time the differently structured relation: “being a horse.” But if we see it correctly, this relation implies [besagt] nothing other than the inclusion of a definite τόδε τι amidst the multitude of instantiations of an idea called “horse.” With that, nothing is yet decided directly concerning the whatness [Washeit], the τί, of the thing. Now it turns out that the idea receives its material qualification, exactly as does the τόδε τι, by means of the authentic or inauthentic quiddities in which it partakes. The horse at the level of idea already partakes in ἱππότης, not first the particular [horse]. On the other hand, since the nature of an idea is immutably fixed once and for all, the inclusion of an object in the ranks of an idea’s exemplars (briefly: “under an idea”) opens up the possibility of an answer to the question concerning the what-qualities [Washeiten] constituting that object, concerning its essence – an indirect answer, to be sure, but one that is unequivocal and pragmatic.

2.

152In this sense, the proposition “This is a horse” affords us information concerning its essence. For all that, it does so only with respect to its τί or, rather, [with respect to] a part of the latter – insofar, namely, as it is codetermined by the direct (in this case, inauthentic) morphe “ ἱππότης.” We learn just as little concerning the remaining τί εἶναι of the τόδε τι (whether domestic animal or not, whether draught-horse or not) by subordinating it under the idea “ἵππος” as we do about its being-so [wie-sein] in the second sense139 (whether brown, and the like).

153 The more specific the idea is to which we subordinate the particular, the more the known portion of the τί swells at the expense of the unknown ποῖον. White-hairedness does indeed belong to the ποῖον εἶναι of a white horse, apprehended as horse, but as soon as we view it as a Schimmel – i.e., “under the idea Schimmel,” as Schapp would put it – it belongs to the τί εἶναι of that same τόδε τι.

§ 6. Formal and Material Ideas

Ideas of Ideas

1.

154Husserl was fully justified to stress in the sharpest terms the peculiar character of the opposition between formal and material ideas in contrast to that between general and specific ideas. A single logical inference of the form Barbara is by no means a specific mode [eine Spezialität] 533 of the idea “modus Barbara,” regarded as general; rather, it is its form itself that is the ultimate singularity over against the idea “form of inference in general.”140

155 For our context, only the following assertion is now of significance: in the formal sphere, among other highest regional ideas such as “object,” “relation,” “state of affairs,” we also find an idea “idea.”141 This is obviously the highest formal idea for all ideas (with respect to their form of existence). Whereas only ideas of entities which themselves were not ideas showed up in all our previous examples, here we encounter ideas of ideas.

2.

156In order to do justice to the situation, we must guard against putting into the phenomenon of the instantiation of an idea more than is to be seen by means of direct intuition. Above all, we are not allowed to believe that every idea would have to be instantiated in real entities. Even an idea like “ideal quality” instantiates itself; moreover, what we call instantiation has nothing to do with either specification [Spezialisierung] or with material filling-out of a form. For the “being-idea” [Idee-Sein] of a Red-idea is neither something more specific nor something more material over against being-idea simpliciter. Rather, the Red-idea has the form of being ideal [ideelle] that belongs to it, as does the Blue-idea, and it is the idea of this form of being that we are here talking about. Therefore, the metaphysical relationship that lies at the basis of ordering [Einordnung]142 the Red-idea, or the lamp-idea, under the idea “idea” is no different than the one lying at the basis of ordering [Einordnung]143 a lamp under the idea “empirical object in general.”

157 For the same reason we shall also not be permitted to claim that “instantiation” of an idea has in at least some cases the same meaning as 534 “realization” of this idea, namely in the case “where the instantiated entity is something real [ein Reales].”144 For in truth, in such cases the moment of reality [Realität] always inheres already in the idea itself. It is – qua idea – an idea pertaining to something real [Realitätsidee], exactly like the idea of the idea [is] an145 idea pertaining to something ideal [Ideenidee], and it is the process of instantiating as such that is in both cases the same.

3.

158We also see that there is no way that the morphe (the quiddity within the thing) can be treated as the instantiation of an eidos or of an ideal what-quality in itself. However, given that one also designates the eidos as the morphe – taken in and for itself – that occurs within an object, one might be tempted to conceive the eidos as the idea of the concrete morphe corresponding to it. It is easy to show that this view goes completely off the rails.

159 1. There are just as well ideas of inauthentic quiddities as of authentic ones. But no pure eidē [Washeiten] (ideal qualities) correspond to the former. (Example: ἱππότης καθ’ αὑτὸ in contradistinction to this or the other, that is, in contradistinction to the ἱππότης here, adhering to [an] this individual, and the ἱππότης there.) There is no eidos “ἱππότης.”146

160 2. The character of every quiddity to always be intrinsic to [an] something is grounded in its idea’s harboring this non-selfsufficiency within itself. Redness as morphe is eo ipso – taken at the level of ideas – redness intrinsic to an object, which becomes a red object as a result. But when I think the eidos “redness,” there is no thought at all of a relation to a bearer.

§ 7. Abstracted [Abstrahierte] and Genuine [genuine], Simple and Complex Ideas

1.

161An idea can be unequivocally defined in two ways: either by means of an allusion to a determinate τόδε τι with respect to which it is idea, or by adducing the ideal qualities that constitute it. The second method permits us to synthetically construct clearly delimited ideas to our heart’s content, but never (in the realm of sensible reality) to reach that total plenitude by which the full individuality of the sensible τόδε τι – and with that also its idea – is characterized. The idea of this colored surface with all its shadings and its indefinably complicated contours presents itself as acquired solely from the individual concretion, 535 as an idea drawn from this concretion, an idea that we could never construct synthetically with total disregard for the sphere of the τόδε τι and by confining ourselves to the ideal qualities as building material. For this reason, we can perhaps designate these as analytical ideas in contradistinction to the synthetic ones, or, in order to avoid this ambiguous terminology, as abstracted [abstrahierte] ideas in contradistinction to genuine [genuine] ones.147

2.

162Among the synthetic genuine ideas, those that are pure realizations of a single ideal quality take on a privileged status – regardless of whether we are dealing with simple or complex (derived) ideal qualities. They constitute the ground floor for all “ a priori science,” to the extent that the latter is understood as science of ideas. To these belong, e.g., those ideas enumerated by Lotze148 as simple and definite [bestimmte]: “being,” “thing,” “cause,” “force,” “effect” and “material [Stoff].”

163 One can in turn subdivide these simple ideas themselves into primitive and derived, depending on whether they concretize an original ideal quality or a complex one. We have the second case, e.g., in the idea of the note c which has the same quality but a different pitch than note c' – the first case, in the idea of such a quality, or in the idea of redness (as the specific feature that augments color in general). Derived ideas can also be rightfully designated as simple, since the original ideas occurring in them amalgamate into a homogenous unity.149

164 More complicated ideas can be derived from simple ones on the basis of the affinities among ideal qualities, which prescribe the possible linkages [Verbindungen] of ideal what-qualities or ideal so-qualities [Washeiten oder Soheiten] within a bearer. When these linkages satisfy the needs for completion of the morphes – or, to put it more precisely, when every morphe within the idea is joined [verknüpft] with some other by laws of founding – we can also speak of closed or unitary ideas and oppose these to “contingent” ones, which lack such unity. A unitary idea is the idea of the note c with determinate timbre, loudness and duration; a contingent idea is the idea “horse,” or “lamp.”

536

§ 8. Idea and “Ideal Objects”

1.

165However, the most difficult task still awaits us. It has become customary in wide circles to oppose to real or temporal objects those that are aptly named atemporal or ideal objects. Among the latter are reckoned constructs [Gebilde] like a proposition (the sense-content [Sinngehalt] of a proposition), which neither arises nor passes away and which exists even if no one has ever discovered or formulated it; further, above all, the so-called mathematical objects, such as numbers or the objects that geometry investigates (e.g., the circle, the straight line, the regular octahedron); perhaps also the pure qualia150 that correspond to the various sensible spheres – e.g., the notes of the ideal atemporal scale, the ideal vocals [Vokale] of the sound spectrum [Lautgeometrie], the ideal colors of the color spectrum [Farbengeometrie].

166 The question now arises whether these constructs fall within the scope of what we sought to delimit with our concept of idea, or whether, as the Greeks claimed, mathematical objects are something third in addition to the empirical objects and ideas. We already touched on the problem of ideal objects in a different setting, namely, when we tried to separate the ideal quality “redness” from the so-called ideal Species “Red,” which, incidentally, we succeeded in doing. But our new question is now incomparably more intricate. What is indeed common to ideal objects and ideas is not only their atemporal existence, but also their character as δευτέραι οὐσίαι over against the ideal qualities of which they partake. We could initially attempt to approach these entities as a special group of ideas – distinguished by exactness, simplicity, or some other conspicuous property. At this point, where a deeper insight into the relevant sphere of objects is still lacking, a definitive resolution of this question cannot be achieved. We might, however, point out the difficulties confronting any attempt to integrate ideal objects into the realm of ideas.

2.

167To begin with, every idea contains within itself an immanent relation to examplars that are in principle possible. It is “something such as an exemplar.” Such a relation would therefore have to be demonstrated in every ideal object – or, in any event, the possibility of exemplars for each. 537 Perhaps the entities we called pure qualia do not pose any insurmountable difficulties here. It will surely never occur to us to conceive the vocal O of the sound spectrum, or the note c of the ideal sound scale, as the idea of the sound or of the note that resounds hic et nunc; and it would not occur to us because simply nothing of the notion of a temporal duration – which (at the level of ideas) would after all have to accrue to the idea “something such as a note resounding through the air” – is to be found in an ideal object. But perhaps the identical material quale – not itself stretching out over time, but only filling time – which inheres in every note c or in every sound O, could, when posited at the level of ideas, be considered as that ideal object. In fact, the group of the latter might then possibly be characterized as a class of unitary synthetic ideas.

168 But what, for example, are supposed to be the instantiations of a proposition in itself? Surely not the words spoken or printed at any given time? For in the essence of the proposition (as pure sense-content) there is not the least hint of its own possible temporal duration or spatial extension, nor does it instantiate itself in the proposition spoken or written at any given time, in the strict sense of proposition expounded above – which justified the contention that it occurs just as often as it is enunciated. One could sooner interpret the proposition in itself as the idea of the sense of every single spoken or written proposition. But is not the sense (and only the sense-content, not a sense-function, was taken into account here) of the singular occurrence of a proposition [des eizelnen Satzgeschehnisses] already itself that ideal sense? Is there on each occasion also a hic et nunc sense-content, in addition to the ideal sense?

3.

169Another difficulty emerges on attempting to apply the law that every idea can be generalized, provided it is not itself a highest category. To be sure, alongside the ideal objects: the number 2, the number 5 – which are naturally quite specific “ideas,” singularities – we can form general ideas like “even number” or “number simpliciter.” But general ideas are just as little to be found in the ideal number series as a “horse in general” in the pasture, and as a result we shall hardly be inclined to regard them as ideal objects.

170 One could sooner wish to speak of general objects in the realm of geometric objects; after all, 538 basic geometric formations like “the circle” or “the cube” already seem to represent general objects [Allgemeinheiten] in contrast to the particular circles and cubes of well-defined dimensions (which are naturally themselves to be thought of as non-sensuous [unsinnlich]). But at this point, two things must strike us as odd: we can neither [1.] form ideas of arbitrary generality in this sphere – we can indeed speak in the same sense of “ellipse per se,” “hyperbola per se,” “circle per se,” “octahedron per se,” but not of “conic section per se” or of “ regular solid simpliciter per se” (but only of the conic sections, or of the regular solids); nor [2.] are we sure whether we should set the geometrical “circle per se” – if we wish at all to interpret it as idea – on a par with the idea “something such as a circle of arbitrary radius,” and not rather on a par with the idea of the form of every circle, an idea that would surely not be general, since the form in all particular circles is indeed absolutely the same.

171 Similar considerations can be advanced in the sphere of pure qualia. We shall never be able to speak with finality about general propositions (in the sense of the proposition-content, not in the sense of the proposition-form). There is the theorem of Pythagoras, the theorem of Bri|anchon, but no geometric theorem simpliciter per se (as ideal object).

4.

172Perhaps all of these difficulties would prove merely illusory, born of unclear intuitions, were we to delve more deeply into the essence of the matter. But we felt obliged to warn against a precipitate setting of our concept of the idea on a par with the currently circulating concept of the ideal or atemporal object, and to point out the necessity of especially penetrating investigations pertaining to the problem of ideal objects.

173 Another, perhaps more pronounced, confusion concerning the idea we shall be able to eliminate more easily, namely its confusion with general objects [Allgemeinheiten] (universals [Universalien]) in a sense we have not yet engaged. More detailed expositions are no doubt needed here as well.

§ 9. Forging the Path to Further Distinctions

1.

174The single lamp can exist, so we said,151 in varying number, in contrast to the idea, which under certain circumstances 539 exists (instantiates itself) on multiple occasions. This manner of speaking served its purpose at the time [§ 2], but it is incorrect. Strictly speaking, the particular cannot exist in varying number, but can exist only in the same way as another, in the same way as a third…in the same way as an n’th [selbander, selbdritt …... selbsovielt]. The single lamp can together with others constitute a single multitude [Anzahl] [of lamps], can find itself among them, but cannot exist in a certain number [Zahl] of exemplars – after all, it is itself one exemplar among many.152 That the idea too cannot occur “in some specific multitude,” but only so and so often (to wit, in instantiations), is something that we already spoke about above. Some third thing must therefore be involved in that talk of existing in varying number.

175 When we focus on what else we can say about this puzzling object, we arrive at the strangest, but all the same meaningful, propositions (we ask the reader to deliberate whether in each of the following judgments the predicate can also be attributed to a distinct individual thing [individuelle Einzelding] or to an idea).

176 “This lamp was invented in 1910, and was first produced for mass consumption [für die Praxis] in 1911.” – “It proliferated very quickly over the entire continent.” – “There are now many millions of it.” – “No first-rate house is without it.” Instead of speaking of “this lamp of determinate size,” we can also speak of a type which is manufactured in varying size. Just as among ideas, there are therefore also among these constructs [Gebilde] more and less specific ones – “lower” and “higher,” if you will.

177 Surely, what we are talking about here concerns neither single individuals nor ideas; these propositions are also by no means always amenable to being converted into equivalent ones that pertain to individuals. For what would it mean to say that “all single incandescent lamps” were invented by Edison, or that “any arbitrary one” [jede beliebige] was manufactured for the first time in 1911?

2.

178Among the new spheres exposed by our examples, two once again separate out from each other rather distinctly. We juxtapose the following two groups of statements, and once again ask the reader to pay particular attention to their subject:

540

1a) “This lamp is manufactured in various sizes.”	1b) “This lamp comes in sizes S to XL.”
2a) “The lion lives partly in Asia, partly in Africa.” (There are two groups of lions.)	2b) “The lion lives (partly) on animal flesh and (partly) on human flesh.” (There are no two groups.)
3a) “The wolf roams in packs [kommt rudelweise vor].”	3b) “The wolf lives in packs together with its kindred.”
4a) “The lion may die off.”	4b) “The lion dies at age 40, often even earlier.

179 Surely, the beast that dies off is not the same as the beast that dies.153 We wish to provisionally designate the first by “genus” (γένος); to emphasize that it is not an idea that is at issue, but rather an empirical – even if not a “particular” – object in time, we shall also say “ real” or “concrete” genus.

180 In naming the lion that dies at age 40, but sometimes also at age 30, we shall hardly be able to evade the expression: “the general lion,” or “the universal [Allgemeinheit]: lion,” whereby “universality,” certainly in the sense that is decisive here (τὸ καθ᾽ὅλον), has nothing to do with the something general which is opposed to the specific (e.g., color as opposed to Red); one could conjure up “general objects” which would nonetheless be exactly determined to the last detail: e.g., a lion of wholly determinate size, coloring, number of hairs, etc. “in general” – of which we could well say that it frequently dies at age n.

181 Also that which we called concrete genus is not necessarily general in the way color in general is in comparison to Red. We think, e.g., of the genus of the lamps – precisely determined as to size, form, qualification – of which we spoke above.154

3.

182541 Disentangling the following set of dichotomies [Gegen|satzpaare] could therefore prove useful as primitive point of departure for subsequent research:

Exemplar	Idea
Something specific [Spezielles]	Something general [Allgemeines]
Individual	Genus
Singularity [Einzelheit]	Universality [Allgemeinheit]
Real	Ideal

§ 10. Concerning the Problem of Universals [Allgemeinheiten]

1.

183The nature of universals [Allgemeinheiten] is still very problematic. Surely different, however, from anything we are otherwise accustomed to encountering. The genus [Gattung] “lion” also has a different object-structure than the particular object: “lion.” Yet it does appear that the latter [particular] is not as far removed as the former [genus] from what one is accustomed to think of as an “object.”155

184In investigating what “genus” is we do manage in some measure to fix our sights on a stable object-core, which is what matters (“the lion is a beast of prey, lives between 30 and 40 years, etc.”). These efforts founder, however, relative to the universal for at least as long as our search is guided by that direction which is familiar to us from inquiry into self-enclosed objects; we see a Protean kind of entity (it dies now at age 30, now at 40), and in the attempt to grasp it we appear to be left with nothing in hand except for a series of particular objects.

2.

185In the face of these difficulties, it may occur to us that we have fallen victim to a delusion here. Just as alongside the lion hic et nunc there is no new kind of object that would be called “every lion” or “any lion at all,” so too is there no “lion generally [im allgemeinen].” Rather, at the basis of these locutions would lie, as identical noematic core, diverse ways of referring to particular objects and of their being posited in such intentional acts.

186542 Above all, we need to point out in response to this objection that to those propositions in which “every lion” or “any lion at all” occurs as grammatical subject can be juxtaposed equivalent propositions or groups of propositions in which the same predicate is attributed to the particular [lion]. Instead of “Every lion has four legs,” we can equivalently say, though not with the same meaning: “If a lion exists here, then it has four legs, if [it exists] there, likewise, etc.” Instead of “Any lion at all will be able to make this leap,” I can say: “Pick out this one, and he’ll be able to do it; that one too; etc.”156

187 Similar transformations are possible with propositions of the form “All S are p” or “These S are p” – unless I am aiming at the plurality in the subject, which in fact represents a new ontological object.157

188 A similar procedure applied to the statement “The lion often reaches age 40” would yield nothing but impossibilities.

3.

189Of course, the disputed issue would by no means be settled with this. One might ask whether the sense of the proposition “The lion is dangerous” lends itself to being paraphrased with the formulation: “Lion is dangerous – this holds in general,”158 whereby the question to be faced would surely be what is meant here by “lion.” The greatest difficulties would then be posed by the interpretation of a proposition such as this: “The lion is often dangerous.” The question would arise whether perhaps an incorrect formulation of the following thought is here at hand: “‘S is p’ – that holds for the most part (as a rule, sometimes, etc.).” At this juncture, we must rest satisfied with pointing out this problem, especially since the separation of idea on the one hand, and of universality and genus on the other – which was our chief concern – is surely beyond any reproach. One more remark, if we may: It almost seems as if positing of universals 543 in and for themselves never implies the positing of factual particulars, whereas that certainly does hold in the case of genus, insofar as it is genus to real particulars. “The mammoth has long tusks”; the sense is: there actually existed such an animal, and therewith also such single animals. Likewise, the judgment “The wolf roams in packs” posits the factual existence of single wolves (“the wolf actually exists”). It is otherwise when I posit a universal proposition [eine Allgemeinheit]: “The centaur has a human head.” In this case it is not stipulated whether such creatures actually exist; here the relationships obtain in like fashion to those in statements about things “transposed onto the level of ideas,” which as we know do not posit the existence of the factual, and precisely for this reason can also be easily distinguished in particular cases from statements about genera.159

Appendix: Hering’s Greek Terminology

190In 1912, after having been an active member of the Göttingen Circle for two years, studying under both Husserl and Reinach, Hedwig Martius received her doctorate in Munich, and that same year she married Theodor Conrad. Because women philosophers were not yet able to pursue an academic career, she and Theodor purchased an orchard in Bergzabern in the hope that this would enable Hedwig to continue her philosophical research and at the same time provide them with a steady income. While the outbreak of World War I destroyed the hope for financial security from the orchard, their home did allow Hedwig to continue her research. Also, since the war had brought an abrupt end to the Göttingen Circle, Bergzabern could serve as a new meeting place for the young Göttingen philosophers. A new “Bergzabern Circle” of phenomenology arose, with its members including Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Hans Lipps, Alfred von Sybel, Alexander Koyré, Edith Stein and Jean Hering. “Their aim,” according to Rodney Parker, “was twofold: on the one hand, they wanted to create an informal institute in honor of their teacher Adolf Reinach, on the other, they wanted to create a counter movement to Martin Heidegger.”160 It was Reinach who encouraged in all of these young philosophers a deep respect for religion and spiritual matters and a commitment to a realist approach in phenomenology, and this “institute” enabled them to meet, at least occasionally, to pursue their work together throughout the decade following the end of the war.161 It is not surprising, then, that we should see similarities in their work, and perhaps the most obvious of these is the foundational status accorded to Aristotelian philosophy (also a lesson learned from Reinach). The use of Aristotelian Greek terms, as well as new terminology to convey these thoughts in German, is especially apparent in the “ontological phenomenology” of Conrad-Martius, Stein, and Hering.

191 Each of the three chapters of Hering’s essay is devoted to one of the topics announced in its title; respectively: Essence, Ideal Quality, and Idea. The ten pages of the First Chapter, “On Essence,” are divided into 6 sections (§§), each of these having numbered subsections. In the title of the chapter, we see Aristotle’s expression τὸ τί ἦν εῖναι ( to ti ēn einai), which is commonly translated as “essence.” 162 Hering will use this Greek expression only one more time in this essay – at the very end of subsection 2 of § 6, the final section of this chapter. In the two paragraphs and “Note” that comprise the first subsection of § 1 (“Preliminary Determination of ‘Essence’”) Hering introduces more German and Greek technical terms that he will employ throughout the essay: Eigenart, Sosein, and ποῖον εῖναι ( poion einai).

192 The German term Eigenart is a compound of eigen, an adjective meaning “one’s own,” and Art, a noun meaning “kind, sort, species”; the combined form Eigenart refers, then, to the “particular nature” or “characteristic feature” belonging to a person, animal or object, or to a group (or species) of these. Hering will sometimes combine this term with another; e.g., Wesenseigenart, which he employs in reference to “the specific character of the essence” of a particular repainted house at <504>. The German Sosein combines two words: so, which means basically the same as the English word “so,” or “such,” or “thus,” and the word sein, the infinitive of the verb “to be.” Hering regularly employs the capitalized So as a noun, speaking of “the So” of something. (This is an uncommon usage in German.) Hering also uses the infinitive “to be” as the (neuter) noun Sein, which we usually translate as “Being” when it stands alone. Combining so and sein gives us the single noun Sosein, here translated as “being-so.”163 In the concluding two sentences of the second paragraph, Hering writes: “This enigmatic structure [i.e., the essence of something] is what we also designate as the being-so of the object, taken in the whole fullness of its constitution. The single features of being-so (ποῖον εῖναι) are features of its essence.” This is the first appearance of the expression ποῖον εῖναι ( poion einai).

[pages of Hering’s original text (pages of this translation);

this list contains most but not all appearances of every term included]

• ποῖος, -α, -ον (poios, -a, -on) of a certain kind or nature; this is the Aristotelian category of quality: 496 (55, 55n5, 56), 506 (65 & 65n42), 507 (67), 508 (67), 511 (71), 532 (91)
• ποῖον εἶναι (poion einai), Sosein, being-so: 496 (55, 55n5), 497 (56), 499 (59), 502 (62, 62n30), 503 (62), 505 (65), 507 (67), 508 (67), 511 (71), 512 (72, 72n71), 514 (74n80), 522 (81), 532 (91)

193The importance of this expression is underlined by its use in the Note (Anmerkung) inserted into the body of the text immediately following its first appearance. “An object’s being-so (ποῖον εἶναι), the complete ensemble of which coincides with its essence, is to be sharply distinguished from the existent’s So (ποῖον) – its qualitative endowment [Beschaffenheit] in the broadest sense.” The expression combines the verb εῖναι (einai), to be, with the neuter form of the interrogative adjective ποῖον (poioν), of what sort?, in such a way as to mean, roughly, “to be characterized or qualified in some way.” When Hering speaks in this essay of the “ποῖον εἶναι” of a thing, he’s speaking of the thing as always possessing qualities of one kind or another, or of the general character of a thing always to be in some way qualified, whereas when he speaks (simply) of the “ποῖον” of a thing, he’s speaking of the thing with respect to the specific or particular qualities (most often all of the qualities) that it actually possesses. Hering will employ other Aristotelian categories in the same way as he does ποῖον:

• ποιεῖν (poiein), to do, act, make, create; the category of action (acting)
• πάσχειν (paschein), to be acted upon, suffer; the category of passion (being acted upon)
• ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν (poiein kai paschein), doing and being affected:
• 499 (59n22), 504 (63), 528 (87)
• πoσόν (poson), of some magnitude, size, etc.
• πόσον (poson), how much, how many?; the category of quantity: 506 (65n42)
• πότε (pote), when?; the category of temporal determination
• ποτέ εἶναι (pote einai), to be at some (indefinite) time: 499 (59n22)
• ποῦ (pou) where? the category of location, or spatial determination: 506 (65n42)
• ποῦ, πότε εἶναι (pou, pote einai), to be where, when?: 499 (59n22)
• πρός τι (pros ti), lit. “toward something”; the category of relation: 504 (63)
• οὐσία (ousia), being, substance: this is Aristotle’s first-listed “category”
• πρῶτη οὐσία [ΠΡΩΤΗ ΟΥΣΙΑ] (protē ousia), primary substance: 511 (71)
• πρῶται οὐσίαι, (protai ousiai), primary substances: 522 (81)
• δευτέρα οὐσία, (deutera ousia), secondary substance: 512 (72n71), 514 (74)
• δευτέραι οὐσίαι (deuterai ousiai), secondary substances: 515 (75n81), 520 (79), 536 (94)

194The concept of primary substance is central to the accounts of both Aristotle and Hering. The Greek term is πρώτη οὐσία (protē ousia). The word οὐσία is a feminine noun, constructed from ousa, which is the singular feminine nominative present participle of the verb εἰμί ( eimi), εἶναι ( einai), to be; so the word conveys an activity, it has a basic sense of “being,” or “a being,” or “an instance of being.” Aristotle lists ousia164 as the first of his categories, and he states that the term is used in two senses, a primary and a secondary. When we speak of substance in the primary sense, we are speaking of an individuated entity as it exists without relation to any other entities – for example, an individual person or an individual horse – and this the Aristotelians referred to as the τόδε τι (tode ti). This modified indefinite pronoun is used to stress the particular “thisness” of an unknown individual substantial entity. As Edith Stein explains: “ Ousia thus understood is τόδε τι (a ‘this-something-there’ or ‘this-there’ [ein “dieses Etwas da” oder “Diesda”]) which can be pointed out and identified in its individuality.165

• τί (ti), [das/the] what: 506 (65, 65n42), 507 (67), 508 (67, 68), 510 (70), 511 (71), 524 (83), 525 (84)
• τί εἶναι (ti einai), being-such: 496 (55n5), 505 (65), 506 (66), 508 (67, 68), 509 (68), 510 (70n66), 512 (72, 72n71), 514 (74), 532 (90)
• τόδε τι (tode ti), a “this-something-there” or “this-there”; used in reference to an individual or particular substantial entity’s “thisness”: 502 (61), 513 (73), 524 (83), 525 (84), 532 (90, 91), 534 (92, 93), 535 (93)

195When we speak of what defines the individual person or the individual horse, or that which “makes the individual what it is,” we are speaking of substance in the secondary sense; in other words, that which makes the individual entity a person, or the horse a horse. The secondary substance is in this respect the source of the essence of the primary substance, while at the same time the secondary substance can exist only as “embodied” in the primary substance. Pri|mary substances and their corresponding secondary substances must therefore be regarded as dependent on each other for their existence. However, since the secondary substances (e.g., human being, horse) are always predicated of individuated entities (e.g., Alexander, Bucephalus) and the converse does not hold true, the latter are referred to as the primary substances. This is explained in Aristotle’s Categories (2a11-16) as follows: “A substance – that which is called a substance most strictly, primarily [πρώτως], and most of all – is that which is neither said of a subject nor in a subject, e.g., the individual man or the individual horse. The species [εἲδεσιν ( eidesin)] in which the things primarily called substances are, are called secondary substances [δευτέραι οὐσίαι (deuterai ousiai)], as also are the genera [γένη (genē)] of these species [εἰδῶν (eidon)].”166

• εἶδος [ΕΙΔΟΣ] (eidos), form, species: 495 (54n2), 505 (65), 510 (70), 512 (72n71)
• eidos: 508 (67), 509 (68n50, 69n52), 510 (70n65), 511 (71, 71n67, 71n68), 512 (73), 513 (74), 514 (74), 519 (78, 78n87, 79), 524 (83), 526 (85), 529 (87), 531 (89), 533 (91n123), 534 (92)
• εἴδη (eidē) plural of εἶδος: 509 (68n50) 522 (81), 524 (83)
• eidē: 519 (78, 79n88), 534 (92)

196The terms εἶδος, μορφή, and μέθεξις have long held center stage in the deciphering of Plato’s Dialogues and the interpretation of the Aristotelian corpus. With the following passage, Hering explicitly states the novel challenge to metaphysical tradition that he was offering in his essay (< 510–511>; pp. 70–71 of the translation):

If there were no ideal qualities, there would be no objects. Only because there are ideal qualities are morphes possible which prescribe to the object the content of its τί, and – as we shall yet see – its essence generally [überhaupt] in all its plenitude. The ideal qualities are the ultimate conditions for the possibility of objects, and of their very selves.

197 Unlike the object, the ideal quality – or εἶδος, which is what we wish to call it from here on – does not sustain its existence by partaking (Μέθεξις) in something outside of itself that would confer “essence” on it, just as it itself confers it on the object, but rather prescribes its essence to itself, if we may put it that way. The conditions of its possibility do not lie outside of it, but wholly and completely in its very self. The ideal quality, and it alone, is a ΠΡΩΤΗ ΟΥΣΙΑ.

198It was that passage that prompted this response from Edith Stein:

It should be understood that the Aristotelian term πρώτη οὐσία is used by Hering in a sense differing entirely from the way Aristotle uses it. It is applied by him to the very thing to which Aristotle emphatically refused to have it applied. Hering’s entire treatise may therefore not be regarded as an attempt to interpret Aristotle notwithstanding his heavy leaning on the language of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. His is rather a thoroughly independent and objective approach to the problems with which both Plato and Aristotle were concerned, and in some respects he offers a progressive clarification of these problems.167

199This view of primary substance may indeed appear to be opposed to Aristotle’s, and while Hering may or may not have been attempting to “interpret Aristotle,” he most certainly did employ in a novel manner a number of the basic concepts of Aristotelian metaphysics, most obviously those involving εἶδος, μορφή, and μέθεξις.

• μορφή (morphe), shape, physical form: 509 (69, 70), 510 (70, 70n64)
• μορφαί (morphai; plural of μορφή): 524 (83)
• morphe, morphes: 508 (67), 509 (68n50, 69n58, 69n59), 510 (70), 511 (71, 71n67, 71n70), 512 (71, 72), 513 (73), 514 (74), 515 (75), 516 (75, 76), 517 (76, 77), 518 (77, 78), 519 (78, 79, 79n89, 79n92), 520 (79), 521 (81), 522 (81, 82), 523 (82, 83), 524 (83), 526 (85), 529 (87), 532 (90), 534 (92), 535 (93)
• Μέθεξις (methexis), participation: 511 (70)
• Methexis: 524 (83n101)

200 Other Greek terms appearing in the essay

• ἀγέννητος (agennētos), originary: 528 (86)
• ἄνθρωπος (anthropos), human: 506 (66)
• ἀνώλεθρος (anolethros), indestructible: 528 (86)
• άκίνητος (akinētos), immovable: 528 (86)
• γένος (genos), genus, species: 525 (84), 540 (97)
• ἐρυθρότης (eruthrotēs), the state or quality of being red: 509 (68)
• θερμός (thermos), warm, hot: 506 (65)
• ἰδέα (idea), idea: 525 (84)
• ἵππον εἶναι (hippon einai), to be (a) horse: 508 (68n48)
• ἵππος (hippos), horse: 506 (66), 532 (90)
• ἱππότης (hippotēs), the state or quality of being a horse:
• 508 (68), 509 (69), 510 (70), 513 (73), 521 (81), 524 (83), 532 (90), 534 (92)
• ἱππότης καθ᾽αὑτὸ (hippotēs kath hauto ), the state or quality in itself of being a horse: 510 (70), 534 (92)
• καθ᾽ αὑτό (kath hauto), in itself, by or by virtue of itself: 511 (71), 522 (81)
• καθ᾽ ὅλου (kath holou), generally, universally: 525 (84)
• τὸ καθ᾽ὅλον (to kath holou), the general, the universal: 540 (97)
• λευκός (leukos), white: 506 (65)
• λευκότης (leukotēs), the state or quality of being white: 524 (83)
• συμβεβηκός (sumbebēkos), a non-essential accident or property of a thing
• [κατὰ συμβεβηκός (kata sumbebēkos), coincidentally, by virtue of accident(s) or non-essential attributes: 511 (71)]
• τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι [ΤΟ ΤΙ ΗΝ ΕΙΝΑΙ] (to ti ēn einai), essence: 496 (55), 504 (64)
• ὕλη, hyle (noun), matter, stuff: 509 (69n58), 510 (70n64)

Jeff Mitscherling

Notes

• 1 Ingarden, Controversy over the Existence of the World, v. II, 362n1299 (360n19).
• 2 Hering, “Bemerkungen über das Wesen, die Wesenheit und die Idee,” 495–543.
• 3 Ingarden, Essentiale Fragen, 125–304.
• 4 Spiegelberg, Über das Wesen der Ideen, 1–238.
• 5 Ingarden, Controversy, 357n1281 (355n1).
• 6 Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, 155n57.
• 7 Schapp, In Geschichten verstrickt. Schapp acknowledges Hering’s work by referring (61n) to the “very fine [schöne] investigations” in it that are relevant to Schapp’s own discussions.
• 8 Ingarden, Controversy, 357n1281 (355n1).
• 9 I first discovered it several decades ago in the course of studying and translating Ingarden’s Essentiale Fragen.
• 10 Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, 237–238f.
• 11 Stein, Endliches und Ewiges Sein, especially Chapters III and IV.
• 12 Ingarden, Essentiale Fragen, §§ 10, 11.
• 13 Ingarden, Essentiale Fragen, 168 n3.
• 14 Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik, 188.
• 15 Hering, Observaciones sobre la Esencia, la Esencialidad y la Idea.
• 16 Stein, Endliches und Ewiges Sein, 63n5.
• 17 Stein, Endliches und Ewiges Sein, 87.
• 18 [“Bemerkungen über das Wesen, die Wesenheit und die Idee,” Jahrbuch für Philo|sophie und Phänomenologische Forschung [henceforth, Jahrbuch], IV, Halle, 1921, pp. 495–543. Pagination of the original is signaled in the body of the text between triangular brackets < >; the translator’s notes are enclosed in square brackets [ ] or braces { }.]
• 19 [“Essentiality” has become the generally accepted translation of Wesenheit. With “ideal quality,” I am adopting Ingarden’s coinage of this term into Polish. He explains his choice as follows: “It turns out, however, that we can speak not only of redness as a nature that constitutes a ‘red color,’ but also of ‘redness for itself’ – in other words, of an ideal quality [jakość idealna] ‘redness.’ Such an ideal quality Hering calls eine Wesenheit, or in the Greek – εἶδος.” Ingarden, O pytaniach esencjalnych, 363–364). Ingarden preserved this coinage when he later “translated” the work into German: Ingarden, Essentiale Fragen, 171). This explanation may well have been adopted from Hering’s own characterization on p. <507>: “‘Its (the object’s) color’ means not only: the coloration [Färbung] that adheres to the object as hic et nunc moment, but [means] also: the ideal color which is realized and attains appearance in that coloration.” (my emphasis)]
• 20 These notes, which in essentials originated in 1913, go back in part to discussions in Husserl’s and Reinach’s Göttingen seminars. We have not since then [by 1921] become acquainted with any new arguments or observations that would compel us to revise the position we held at the time. [Ingarden claims to have read Hering’s essay in manuscript form as early as 1916 (Ingarden, Essentiale Fragen, 168n21).]
• 21 “Its stock of essential predicables” [Sein Bestand an wesentlichen Prädikabilien] (cf. Husserl, Ideen, § 2).
• 22 [The identification Sosein = Wesen appears to have become canonical in the literature, owing perhaps to E. Stein’s apparent endorsement of it when in her opus magnum she asserts: “Hering has designated the essence as ποῖον εἶναι (being-so).” {Hering hat das Wesen als ποῖον εἶναι (So|sein) bezeichnet.} However, that implied identity is immediately qualified by a constraint: “In this connection, the ποῖον, the So, is to be taken so broadly as to also include the τί – what the thing is.” {My emphasis; Stein, Endliches und Ewiges Sein, 84.} Hering reflects that constraint here in the modifier “the complete ensemble of which,” and in numerous similar phrases elsewhere.
  In n1 of p. <506> (n42 of this translation) Hering distinguishes three senses of ποῖον, only the broadest of which (ποῖον3) includes the τί, and it is to this sense of ποῖον that Stein must be referring. Yet, Hering does not always employ this broadest sense, as evidenced in n1 on p. <512> (n71 of this translation), where he feels compelled to warn explicitly that the “overall essence” consists of the “τί εἶναι and ποῖον εἶναι together.” Hence, caution must be exercised in asserting this identification. Besides, there is ample textual evidence within the essay itself to challenge this purported identity.
  After reproducing the first three sentences in Ch. I, § 1 of Hering’s essay almost verbatim in the opening of his “free excerpts” from the Anhang (“Appendix”) of Hering’s Staatsexamensarbeit, Husserl appears to be anticipating Stein when he comments: “Gesamtheit ‘konstitutiver Merkmale’ = Sosein = poion einai = Wesen” {totality of ‘constitutive characteristics’ = being-so = poion einai = essence}, provided we take Gesamtheit to include the τι. Still, several sentences later Husserl expresses a reservation about the identity of ‘being-so’ and ‘essence’: “Ich finde es unpassend, das Sosein als Wesen zu bezeichnen {I find it unsuitable to designate being-so as essence}.” (Husserl, “Exzerpte” zu Jean Herings Staatsexamensarbeit, 28.) I shall henceforth omit the quotation marks surrounding Exzerpte.]
  
• 23 [In his Exzerpte, Husserl summarizes this sentence as follows: “Hering distinguishes between the essence poion einai and the poion (the So of the existent).” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 28) He also replaces the remainder of this paragraph with the following text: “The Red belongs to the poion of the table, for example. The Red has greater intensity than that Blue of the blotting paper. But being-Red does not have greater intensity than being-Blue. Being-Red is no essence-characteristic, no moment of the essence.” (The underlining is Husserl’s.)]
• 24 [For a parallel example, cf. “Zur Theorie des Negativen Urteils,” in: Reinach, Sämtliche Werke, 113: “...we must sharply distinguish the being-red of the rose from the red rose itself. Statements that hold of the one do not hold of the other. The red rose is in the garden, and can wilt. The being-red of the rose is neither in the garden, nor does it make sense to speak of its wilting away.”]
• 25 [In his Exzerpte Husserl inserts here the phrase, “no negative correlate {Negativum} to being p-qualified.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 28)]
• 26 [For a parallel example, cf. Reinach, Sämtliche Werke, 116: “Alongside A’s being-b there is an A’s not-being-b [nicht-b-sein]. The two states of affairs are mutually contradictory. On the other hand, there is...no negative Red alongside a Red.”]
• 27 [Husserl’s commentary from the Exzerpte continues: “Yet there are negative predicates: Predicate = that, which accrues (Zukommendes), and a {case of} not-being is something that accrues {ein Nichtsein ist Zukommendes}. I would separate out essence as (constitutive) moment and property from just any qualitative attribute {Beschaffenheit}. Essence-property – that is a predicate derived from the essence. I find it unsuitable to label being-so as essence.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 28)]
• 28 By “individuality” we provisionally wish to have understood here that feature which distinguishes an object A from an A′ that is completely like it [ihm völlig gleichen]. Two congruent triangles are therefore necessarily individual – not, however, the idea “triangle,” for example, which occurs only once [die es nur einmal gibt].
• 29 [“Bestand sämtlicher wesentlichen Prädikabilien, die dem Gegenstand zukommen müssen, als Seiendem, wie er in sich selbst ist.” This quotation appears to be Husserl’s most cited characterization of essence from § 2 of Ideas I. Hering’s citation is inaccurate enough to warrant quoting the original for comparison: “Bestand an wesentlichen Prädikabilien, die ihm zukommen müssen (als ‘Seiendem, wie er in sich selbst ist’)….” The ellipses are important. Hering truncates Husserl’s full description by leaving out the following qualification: “damit ihm andere, sekundäre, relative Bestimmungen zukommen können.” Husserl’s full description runs: “Ensemble of essential predicables that must accrue to it (as ‘existent as it is in itself’), in order to enable other, secondary, relative determinations to accrue to it.”]
• 30 [Husserl’s version of the principal thesis reads as follows: “Every existent [Seiende] has one and only one essence, through which that existent is determined in compliance with [nach] its whole constitution.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 28)]
• 31 [The paragraph to this point is “excerpted” by Husserl as follows: “Say we are speaking about the essence of this pen: the capability to write finely belongs to it, but not to lie here – or anywhere else(!). Essence in this sense of ours is therefore not ‘idea’ of the pen, hence at issue is the essence of this determinate object.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 29)]
• 32 [The paragraph to this point is “excerpted” by Husserl as follows: “Thus, unthinkable without ‘bearer.’ And the essence itself has a certain index, insofar as it is the essence of a; the index [is] just as fully determined as the object to which it points.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 29)]
• 33 Cf. Schapp, Beiträge zur Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung, 144, where “essence” and “idea” have admittedly not yet been distinguished.
• 34 [After “excerpting” this sentence, Husserl ruminates: “(Can objects of nature have ‘the same’ essence, namely, one that is completely alike [völlig gleiches]?)” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 29)]
• 35 [Husserl “excerpts” this sentence as follows: “They [two like flowers] have completely like colors (moments), say – they have the same color (species [Art], idea).” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 29)
• 36 Correspondingly, in two similar mathematical triangles I must distinguish between their like forms and the identical form common to both. It is therefore completely irrelevant whether we are dealing with real or non-real objects.
• 37 [I adopt D. Gierulanka’s rendition of this signature phrase of Husserl’s from her stellar Polish translation of Ideas I.]
• 38 [The term “affection” doesn’t occur in the body of the text until § 6.1 of this chapter, where it is first defined.]
• 39 The ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν never belongs to the essence. Conversely, on the other hand, not everything that does not belong to the essence falls under the ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν. Examples: a philosophical relation from a to b, such as a’s being greater in comparison to b; in addition, all ποῦ, πότε εἶναι; further, all “inessential” properties of a real thing, those that do not belong to the ensemble that constitutes its character proper. Incidentally, Reinach’s concept of “being-so” seems to be broad enough to encompass every kind of being-p of S. Otherwise, the question as to whether the being-so does or does not belong to the essence of that-which-is-so [Soseienden] could not arise. Cf. Jahrbuch I, 2, p. 687. [The text of the referenced page, from Reinach’s Die apriorische Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechtes, has no bearing on the issue at hand.]
• 40 We are not speaking here of the state of affairs that the hexameter has been employed, but rather of the applicability [Verwandtwerden] itself. Easily derived consequences follow for states of affairs.
• 41 [This paragraph is “excerpted” by Husserl as follows: “It belongs to the essence of the hexameter verse to have six feet. That it shows up for the first time in C. Gessner does not belong to its essence, but belongs to it as ‘(stroke of) fate’ (Schicksal); the poiein kai paschein as opposed to what belongs to the stock of poion einai. The constitution (of poion einai) is not altered by the ‘fortuitous’ (Schicksal); the opposition [belongs to the essence/does not belong to the essence] does not coincide with [the opposition] ‘essential and contingent.’” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 29)]
• 42 [Husserl “excerpts” the last two sentences as follows: “‘It is grounded in the essence of this kind of verse that it finds preferential application, if at all, in this and not in other cases,’ that it is exceedingly suited for precisely this kind of poetry.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 30) Husserl’s quotes imply either 1) that he is paraphrasing the first of the two sentences, or 2) that he is quoting directly from Hering’s “Appendix.”]
• 43 [After “excerpting” with minimal changes the entire preceding paragraph and this sentence, Husserl adds the following: “The blue house (for as long as people can remember): Here the Blue belongs to the essence. Essences of mutable [veränderliche] objects are themselves mutable; essence of a [has] nothing to do with idea of a.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 30)]
• 44 As a matter of fact, if S is an ideal (timeless) object, then the propositions about S that pertain to essence are apriori simpliciter. Those laws that state something contingent [Zufälliges] about S presuppose experience also in this case. In order to be able to speak of such propositions we first of all have to bring in statements about realizations of the ideal in the empirical, or about what is disclosed in acts of apprehending. (E.g., “The high A was easily scaled by the diva.” – “This theorem was already known to the ancient Hindus.”)
• 45 [Es besteht sozusagen nur i n i h m, freilich nicht a u s i h m.]
• 46 Cf., Ch. Two, § 8.3, below.
• 47 [This statement certainly suggests that ποῖον εἶναι ≠ Wesen.]
• 48 [After Husserl “excerpts” this sentence (with minor changes), he adds: “Differentiation [Scheidung] between a) blind seeing of the essence and its bearer = blind description of the same and b) making [the object] intelligible [Verständlichmachung].” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 28)]
• 49 Of course, these characteristics [Merkmale] that are basic to the essence need in no way coincide with those that geometry assembles when defining that figure. A conic section can be very easily defined without knowing the essential or fundamentally essential constituents [Konstituentien] of such curves, or those that are basic to the essence. [It may be worth noting that Hering appears to treat Konstituentien, Ingredienzen, and Prädikabilien as synonymous.]
• 50 Why we do not say that the being-soft accrues to it qua soft object and the being-green qua green object, will not become apparent until the expositions of the next chapter.
• 51 [Husserl “excerpts” this entire paragraph as follows: “The ‘essence’ of this ink blotter. Being-extended, being-heavy – both belonging to different strata than being-soft, different still than being-green. But these are entirely different relationships – structural relationships – that have nothing to do with the existence [Vorhandensein] of an ‘essence-core.’ It is impossible to grasp [einzusehen] how the complexity of the ink blotter could be seen as anything other than a haphazardly thrown-together contingency, rather than as something whose being would be intelligible in a manner analogous to the essence of J Caesar – as based on [aus] an essence-core of greater or lesser complexity.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 29)]
• 52 Needless to say, a stance is also possible in which, in contrast to the house in its previous state, we grasp the house in its current state as something isolated and new, without bothering about the factual identity of the two – as, for instance, when gathering examples of brown and white houses, we present the house as it was before and the house as it is now under two separate rubrics [Rubriken].
  We then certainly have before us objects to whose essence also the being-white or being-brown belongs. But these objects are different from the house about which we spoke above, and which remains the same object, with the same so-component [Soheit] of its constitution, even though countless alterations may have occurred within its scope [a n i h m]. [For Soheit, see also notes 53 and 54 below.]
  
• 53 [Perhaps more literally: “passed over.”]
• 54 [ “... und dennoch Identisch es selbst bleiben.” We can either read identisch for Identisch, which would correspond to the same construction in the second sentence above this one (<504> bot.), and which I adopt (in agreement with Rovira): “…daβ es ein identisch es selbst Bleibendes ist…”; or, we can read “Identisches” for “Identisch es” – in which case the text would translate: “…and yet itself remain something identical.”]
• 55 To be sure, we must observe in this context the law of essence that features of the essence cannot vary entirely arbitrarily for essence-cores that remain the same. Since the presence of these features can be made intelligible on the basis of the essence-core, the range of their variability is prescribed a priori. Conversely, alterations of the core will as a rule imply alterations of the shell. A more thoroughgoing study of these relationships would still be necessary.
• 56 [Again, to avoid terminological confusions, it is worth noting that the suffix “-haftigkeit” of substantives that refer to quiddities alludes to this verb.]
• 57 [Husserl refers to eidos as “pure essence,” e.g., in Ch. 1 of Ideas I; for Hering it is synonymous with “ideal quality {Wesenheit},” as the title of the chapter suggests.]
• 58 [Reading “So” for “so”. There is no other instance of the latter (lower case “so”) in the essay, and nothing to indicate that its sense here differs from that of the former.]
• 59 Aristotle (Metaphysics Z, first chapter) does indeed on occasion contrast three different items to the τί: the ποῖον, the πόσον, the ποῦ. It is clear however that the ποῦ, totally irrelevant as it is to the essence, can be bypassed here, whereas the sense of ποῖον can be so broadly conceived as to also encompass the πόσον, but not the ποῦ. It then expresses the qualitative endowment as opposed to the whatness [Washeit]. We have, accordingly, to distinguish: 1) ποῖον, in contrast to πόσον; 2) ποῖον as qualitative endowment in contrast to the whatness (ποῖον2 = ποῖον1 + πόσον); 3) ποῖον as the So in the broadest sense (ποῖον3 = ποῖον2 + τί). When in the following we oppose the τί to the ποῖον, we do of course always mean ποῖον2.
• 60 [Husserl boils down the above footnote to the following: “poion in a narrower sense (of the bare π) – τί (according to Aristotle: for him [Hering?] still the poion). But Aristotle also opposes poion to poson. The object is white, warm: How is the object qualified? The object is a horse: What is the object?” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 31) Presumably, π = poion, and the dash = “is opposed to” (as the immediately following sentence suggests). The How-questions and What-questions are asked and answered, with the answers stated first.]
• 61 [The passage from here to the end of the paragraph is summed up by Husserl as follows (substituting “table” for Hering’s “rose”):
  “1) The table is red. Equivalently: The table has a red color.
  2) The color of the table is red: absurd [verkehrter] expression. Here one cannot say: red
  color.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 31)]
  
• 62 [The one quibble I have with Rogelio Rovira’s exceptionally fine translation of this work into Spanish, from which I derived much benefit, is that it does not make the terminological distinction between rot and Rot – which for Hering denote fundamentally different notions. Husserl sums up the distinction between propositions (1) and (2) in his Exzerpte (Husserl, Exzerpte, 31; see also n46, below). He begins by restating the correlate of Hering’s 2a: “The color c of the table is Red” and then offers the following clarification of the relation between the two terms: “The table is red, but not Red [Der Tisch ist rot, aber nicht Rot]. But Red is name for the ideal Spezies, not for the individual color-moment.”]
• 63 [Here is Husserl’s summation of these two sentences: “We must say, moreover: the color of the table is a Red, a single instance of the lowest difference which is designated by the general name of the Spezies, of the kind – hence, once again directing us to: difference in kind. But it is correct that talk of ‘a Red’ points to the ti einai.” He concludes discussion of the red table with the following reflections: “The coloration of the table is what? A singular case [Einzelfall] of something correspondingly general. The table is red – it is not singular case of something general, but rather it has something that is a singular case, etc. The being-Red of the table-color: that, identical with being Red (proper name Red) or being singular case of the difference (being ‘a’ Red).” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 31)]
• 64 As examples for this last linguistic usage, compare, “the Blue of the sky,” “the Red of the blood,” etc.
• 65 The Greek language is not fortunate enough here to be able to keep these situations apart through the use or non-use of the indefinite article, which is what makes it impossible to decide straightforwardly what Aristotle means when he speaks of the ἵππον εἶναι. We have the growing impression that he is concerned with “being-horse”; still, a separate study would be called for in this regard.
• 66 [eine bestimmte Washeit: In his “free” rendition of this sentence, Husserl replaces the given phrase with die Washaftigkeit (the quiddity). (Husserl, Exzerpte, 31)]
• 67 [Hering seems to be proposing the three German terms as equally viable (“or if one wishes”) candidates for rendering the Greek term ἐρυθρότης. Although Rovira employs a distinct term for each of them, English does not support such variety of abstract endings. Hering’s offer of Rothaftigkeit as an option is also unfortunate in that it muddies his terminological waters: Substantives ending with “-haftigkeit” normally refer to a morphe rather than an eidos (Wesenheit) – in this case termed Washeit – which are distinctly different. Witness the title of this §, and p. <514>, where Hering refers to a Washaftigkeit as a concretized Wesenheit. As to Washeit, on p. <522> he speaks of “Wesenheiten, which we have also called Washeiten or εἴδη ….” Husserl scrambles the phrasing a bit when he reproduces this statement in his Exzerpte (Husserl, Exzerpte, 31), but the point is preserved: “we wish to call these Washeiten: Wesenheit or eidos.” See also n52, below.]
• 68 [Husserl’s version of this sentence in the Exzerpte is: “The whatness makes the object into what it is, into that which has such and such essence.” He continues by rendering the first sentence of the next paragraph as follows: “Redness (and likewise all expressions for quiddities: horseness, etc.) would be ambiguous.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 30)]
• 69 [Equally unfortunately, Hering himself does little to alleviate these ambiguities in his own use of this terminology: e.g., he refers to “Röte” in various contexts as Wesenheit, Washeit, Eidos, and Washaftigkeit. If we bear in mind that Wesenheit = Eidos, and that Washeit proves to be equivalent to Wesenheit, the scope of the ambiguity reduces to that between Wesenheit and Washaftigkeit. See n54 on Washeit.]
• 70 [It is worth pointing out that “itself” is likely a modifying adjective here, which functions to transform the meaning of Washaftigkeit into that of Wesenheit. Elsewhere (p. <520>), instead of “itself” he employs the modifiers “in and for itself” and “as such” in the same sense. This is consistent with Hering’s use of Washeit and Soheit (see next note) as differentiated types of Wesenheit; see pp. <517>, <519>, <520>.]
• 71 [“Soheit” and “Washeit” may well be Hering’s own coinages, meant to correspond to the differentiation of Wesenheit into Wiewesenheit and Waswesenheit, respectively, that was invoked in Reinach’s seminar. (Reinach, Sämtliche Werke, 361.)]
• 72 [In the Exzerpte, the phrase “this so-quality” is replaced by “the quiddity.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 30)]
• 73 [The printed text reads here “…by the latter. (Its being horse)….” This text is in some way corrupt. I adopt Rovira’s resolution of the issue.]
• 74 [A comment on 1) and 2) follows in the Exzerpte: “As example [of 1], the being-Red, being-horse that belongs to it [object]. We exclude No. 2.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 30)
• 75 [The first sentence in the following Husserl “excerpt” summarizes this last sentence; the second addresses Hering’s (next) footnote: “The quiddity itself (according to 1) is the morphe that ‘forms’ {formt} the object into what it is. Hyle {ὕλη}, that which undergoes ‘forming’ {Formung}.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 30)]
• 76 It is in fact possible to see the opposition of quiddity to that which receives its determination through it as an opposition of form and material [Stoff] (although the reverse could also be asserted, so as to view the whatness as the material), except that in such an event one must guard against thinking of material as something that has itself already been “formed” by morphes. If for this reason one wishes to designate that material as ὕλη, then even in the world of the real this term should conjure up neither something like matter [Materie] nor something like empty space – besides, all of this is just metaphors [Bilder].
• 77 [Husserl’s version of this sentence: “Two objects can have like but not identical quiddity; non-selfsufficient object.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 30)]
• 78 [Husserl’s rendition of this sentence is: “In contrast, redness as such, quiddity as such: resting selfsufficiently within itself, not in need of any bearer. Horseness as such.” He immediately follows with his own comment: “With that is not meant the redness transposed onto the level of ideas of some entity [Etwas]. This idea is just as non-selfsufficient as that of which it is idea (otherwise it would be no idea as Hering conceives it).” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 30)]
• 79 We ask the reader to refrain from reading more into our words than they expressly set forth [besagen]. First of all, we do not mean the “something like an object’s redness,” which would have to be characterized as something’s redness as transposed onto the level of ideas. This idea is – otherwise it would be no idea – just as non-selfsufficient as that of which it is idea. This idea cannot be thought without the idea of an object which is of the same type as the one to whose quiddity it is the idea. Concerning this issue, see also Ch. 3, § 6, below.
• 80 [Husserl revisits this passage, starting at the opening of the paragraph, as follows: “This redness in and for itself belongs to an entirely different sphere than that of objects, but there can be objects that partake of it.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 30)]
• 81 If we persist in speaking of the ideal quality [Wesenheit] as “realizing itself,” then we could speak of the μορφή as its realization, of the object – as its realizer (not, to be sure, in the sense of something that brings about the realization, or makes it possible – something of the sort could certainly be said of the ὕλη – but rather in the sense of something into which the ideal quality embodies itself in the guise of a quiddity). We shall also designate the object as the bearer of a μορφή.
• 82 [Husserl’s version of this sentence reads: “Objects are unthinkable if there were no eidē [Washeiten].” Here he adds: “These Washeiten we wish to call ideal quality or eidos.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 31)]
• 83 By “objects” we understand here all entities (real or otherwise) insofar as we can speak in their case of a τί εἶναι, i.e., simply everything except the ideal quality and her maidservant, the quiddity.
• 84 [The apparent inconsistency in the use of terminology by referring to “redness” as both eidos and morphe is resolved if we bear in mind that for Hering, an indirect morphe can be a Wesenheit.]
• 85 [Since “this quiddity” refers to the “eidos ‘redness’,” here too “eidos ‘redness’” is alluded to as an indirect quiddity. Husserl certainly appears to concur in his version of this entire paragraph in the Exzerpte: “The red table. The table partakes of the ideal quality redness not directly, but rather indirectly. Aristotle’s kata symbebekos. The table partakes of the eidos (redness) not kath’hauto, but kata symbebekos. Primary and secondary partaking. Immediate and mediate ‘realization of the eidos.’ Immediate and mediate bearer of the ‘form’ redness, the table – mediate [bearer].” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 31) See also second paragraph below.]
• 86 Cf. Aristotle, Met. 1022a, 1029b, 1031a.
• 87 This does not yet imply that the converse would also be correct: every direct morphe of a part is indirect morphe of the whole. It would perhaps be good to investigate whether this proposition would continue to remain valid even if “part” (simpliciter) were to be replaced by “abstract moment.”
• 88 We also see now how the overall [gesamte] essence of an object, which is built up from τί εἶναι and ποῖον εἶναι together, is determined by the object’s partaking of ideal qualities; indeed, in accordance with its sense, it first becomes altogether possible owing to that partaking. Consequently, as we have already emphasized, the object in its entirety is δευτέρα οὐσία relative to the εἶδος.
• 89 [This too is a dissonant coupling, since Hering normally reserves substantives ending with“-haftigkeit” for quiddities, not ideal qualities. However, he also speaks of Washaftigeit an und für sich where, on his account, an und für sich modifies the Washaftigeit to what it was prior to becoming an embodiment, namely – a Wesenheit. It is as if an sich neutralizes “-haftigkeit.” To put it crudely, a Washaftigkeit stripped of its “haften” [adhesion] becomes a Wesenheit. It seems that on occasion, as in this case, Hering simply implies an und für sich. Cf. § 6B, 5(a), p.<520>. Rovira, incidentally, employs “chromaticity” as his Spanish equivalent for Farbhaftigkeit, which I employ for the corresponding Wesenheit.]
• 90 [What is actually “named here” are ideal qualities or, equivalently, eidē.]
• 91 [In his “free” rendition of this passage in the Exzerpte (Husserl, Exzerpte, 32), Husserl replaces the phrase “does not accrue to it as such” with “accrues to it as redness.”]
• 92 [The opening phrase of this sentence, “It is…that,” is replaced by Husserl in the Exzerpte with “This something new” {dieses Neue} (Husserl, Exzerpte, 32).]
• 93 [In the closing of this sentence, the phrase “qualitative peculiarities” is replaced in the Exzerpte by “qualities, peculiarities.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 32)]
• 94 Where we speak of “redness” simpliciter, we mean redness in the second sense.
• 95 [This last sentence is summarized by Husserl in the Exzerpte as follows: “Authentic specific differentiation: being-Red {Rot-Sein} as opposed to being-color {Farbe-Sein} but not being-domestic-animal {Haustier-Sein} as opposed to being-horse {Pferd-Sein}.” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 32)]
• 96 See, in this regard, the note at the conclusion of § 6B, 4.
• 97 [Husserl adds here in Exzerpte: “Their [ideal objects] entire being-so consists in a ti einai. We can hardly speak of a poion einai in their case. The note c, as ideal object of the pure theory of sound, has no detachable fragment {Stück}, no duration, etc. Its So coincides with its What (in the third sense).” (Husserl, Exzerpte, 33) The referent of this parenthetical phrase is probably “So,” since Hering distinguishes three senses of it in n42, above.]
• 98 Just as different is the way in which ideal object and ideal quality come to be given. Concerning this issue we may venture to say no more than this: We can in a quite pointed sense catch sight and get a glimpse of [hinsehen und hinblicken auf] ideal objects (the color Red, the note c, the equilateral triangle), by way of ideation, to be sure, and yet in a way that has something essential in common with the apprehending [Ansehen] of empirical objects (compare also Ch. III, § 8, below). In contrast, we can certainly apprehend ideal qualities in acts by means of which we immerse ourselves in them, so that they “dawn” on us, but a glimpsing intuition [hinblickendes Anschauen] as in the case of (secondary) objects (δευτέραι οὐσίαι) does not appear to be possible here. More detailed investigations would also be called for on this topic.
• 99 With reference to this, compare below § 6, B 4.
• 100 The existence of the latter is just about as likely as that of a “pacific [i.e., silent] ocean liner,” to mention a well-known jest.
• 101 [It is not clear what the referent of “both” is – most likely, “parts” and W.]
• 102 [In lieu of neologizing, I am taking advantage of the relation between quiddity (here, Rothaftigkeit) and ideal quality as characterized by Hering in § 5.1.]
• 103 We presuppose here for the sake of simplicity that a sound of unvarying [gleichbleibende] pitch is involved, e.g., the sound of a piano.
• 104 [This is my way of avoiding the literal, but abrasive, “whatnesses.” Hering alludes on several occasions to the fact that for him Washeit = Wesenheit, and that Wesenheit = Eidos.]
• 105 At this point we are deliberately speaking of “constituent parts” and not of “aspects [Seite],” “features [Zügen],” or mere moments. For even within original eidē, e.g., thingness [Dinghaftigkeit], features can be discriminated despite their simplicity. Of course, it would have to be investigated in greater detail what “components” might meaningfully signify in this context. [The suffix “-haftigkeit” is here once again in discord with eidē. See also notes 51, 53, 54, above.]
• 106 We can augment the law of specific differentiation by formulating it as follows: m2 is a specific difference to m1, if the morphe µ2 of m2 determines more precisely the morphe µ1 of m1 in such a way that µ2 satisfies µ1’s need for completion. Examples: m1 [=] quality of a note (d or d' or D), m2 [=] its pitch; or, m1 [=] color of a surface, m2 [=] Red of that surface.
• 107 Let us recall that we are speaking here only of quiddities as attached to something, and not of eidē in and for themselves. The latter, insofar as they actually exist in some particular instance, are selfsufficient and never in need of completion.
• 108 [Dostoyevsky, in describing the character Isay Fomich in The House of the Dead, says of him that he is “cunning and at the same time decidedly stupid” (Dostoyevsky, House of the Dead, 93). I believe this is the amalgam Hering had in mind with his term Dummschlauheit (apart from grammatical form), and have coined my correlate to reflect Dostoyevsky’s description. Ingarden’s rendition of this term as an idiomatic Polish expression [cf. Ingarden, O pytaniach esencjalnych, 429] translates as “playing the fool.” Other suggestions I received were: “being clever by a half”; “cunning stupidity”; “foolish cleverness”; “dumb like a fox”.]
• 109 That is to say, it is neither a mere juxtaposition [Nebeneinander] of “stupidity” and “cunning,” nor even an ultimately simple morphe, like “stupidity” or “cunning.”
• 110 The hues of [Stich ins] brown and pink – which do in fact inhere as abstract moments in the color “auburn” – are not to be confounded with “brown” and “pink” [themselves]. [Hering’s choice of Braunrosa was somewhat unfortunate, since it vitiates the thrust of the point he is trying to make: that a novel, homogeneous color is produced by mixing the components. This objective would better have been served by choosing a combination yielding a new color with its own distinctive name in German. The same objection could be leveled against the choice of Dummschlauheit. The caution he expresses in the preceding note regarding that example certainly applies here as well.]
• 111 [I am translating the sentence as is. It seems to me, however, that since Hering appears to be objecting to the importation of physical science into the theory of color, the passage should read “…those who do not avoid…” (here in agreement with Rovira).]
• 112 Therefore, in order to recognize a color as mixed color – generally, an ideal quality as complex – it suffices to ascertain in it the manifestation of simpler ones; conversely, a color (ideal quality) is however not yet simple (an original ideal quality) just because it participates in the construction of more complicated ones; indeed, this, in and of itself, only shows its relative simplicity in contrast to others. [It is not clear why “Pure” is capitalized in the two instances.]
• 113 [The three terms in quotation marks render Pferdhaftigkeit, Löwenhaftigkeit, and Bärenhaftigkeit, respectively.]
• 114 See also § 9 of this Chapter, below.
• 115 See Chapter One, § 5.
• 116 We here conceive the mediate founding in the sense of § 6B, 2, above.
• 117 [The end of the sentence is certainly suggestive, but not definitive, of the identification Sosein = Wesen.]
• 118 Naturally, there can be no talk here of essence in the precise sense that presupposes a Methexis.
• 119 [The word “Schimmel” is left untranslated, as the editors were unable to locate an English equivalent to the German word for a white and grey spotted horse.]
• 120 Such names were at their genesis preferred to others because they expressed a property of the object that was especially important in a practical sense. (“Horse” [Pferd] = vehi-rota). Since this [Latin] meaning has been lost, can we today still speak at all of a meaning of the word “horse,” as we can of that of the term “Red”?
• 121 If we may anticipate here what is to be indicated in Chapter Three, we would say: assuming that we see it in the idea “Schimmel in general.”
• 122 [I have rendered the definite article by “per se” in this particular instance, since in this context (contrary to its “normal” function) it is meant to signal generality, rather than individuality.]
• 123 [Namely, “idea of this lamp,” as defined by Hering in the preceding paragraph, and as he stresses once more on the next page.]
• 124 Schapp, Beiträge zur Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung [Contributions to the Phe|nomenology of Perception] (Göttingen, Dissertation, 1910), in the brilliant fourth Section, pp. 133 ff. Let us recall how the merchant in fact conveniently labels the various wares in which he trades with proper names (“Helios,” and the like) – rather arbitrarily conjured up. No one thinks to name the single lamps in such a manner; it is rather the item as idea that is so called.
• 125 Normative notions that might also be suggested by this designation could not be further removed from our considerations in this context.
• 126 [Quotation marks inserted by translator.]
• 127 Not in words but certainly in substance, Schapp says in agreement with us: “Therewith we have both loci where the idea comes into contact with the sensible; that is to say, in the first place it comes into contact with the thing which embodies it, which partakes of it. Then it comes into contact with the consciousness that knows [weiβ] the idea, but both contacts are contingent to the idea.” (p. 144)
• 128 Chapter Two, § 9.
• 129 [Here, as in the last sentence of § 2.3, just above, “so etwas” serves Hering as a catch-phrase for signaling “idea.”]
• 130 [Reading unzeitlich for zeitlich; cf. end of first paragraph of § 3, 2., below.]
• 131 [I follow Rovira in the rendering of this term.]
• 132 Schapp, op. cit.
• 133 [In the idiomatic sense of “transposed onto the level of ideas.”]
• 134 [Quotation marks surrounding “something...entity” inserted by translator.]
• 135 Husserl had already made this point years ago in his lecture courses. Who would dare say something similar about an ideal quality?
• 136 Husserl: “eidetic singularities.”
• 137 Schapp, op. cit., p. 136.
• 138 Cf. Husserl’s Ideas I, § 12.
• 139 Cf. above, Chapter One, § 1.
• 140 Here we again direct the reader to the seminal §§ of Husserl’s Ideas I, especially § 13. In effect, Husserl wants to reserve the term “idea” for idea in the Kantian sense; but since we employed the term “eidos” for the ideal qualities – not without good reason as we hope to have shown – we feel compelled to invoke once again Husserl’s earlier terminology.
• 141 The discussion here, of course, concerns the concept of idea just as little as our discussion above concerned the concept of lamp. To be sure, everyone is free to signify [bezeichnen] with the concept of concept precisely what we have called “idea.” But this would run against the grain of ordinary linguistic usage. In concert with the latter, we have in mind with the concept of lamp a sense-formation [Sinngebilde] related to the sphere of meanings that can never instantiate itself with this or that frequency in single lamp-things (as can an idea).
• 142 [This sort of Einordnung will soon be designated as “subordination.”]
• 143 [This sort of Einordnung will be designated as “subsumption.”]
• 144 [The expression in quotes has no referent in the preceding text.]
• 145 [Reading eine for einer.]
• 146 Concerning this, compare Ch. Two, § 7, above.
• 147 If we see it correctly, the distinction between “contingent” and “eternal” ideas made by Conrad-Martius in a note of her inaugural publication in the Jahrbuch goes in the same direction (Jahrbuch III, p. 350).
• 148 Logik, § 331.
• 149 Cf., above, Chapter Two, § 6B, 4.
• 150 This term stems from Reinach.
• 151 Cf., above, § 2 of this Chapter.
• 152 There certainly are empirical individuals that are perceivable by the senses in other distinct ones. Thus, e.g., a musical composition (originating at a specific time, therefore empirical) comes alive in its [multiple] individual performances. Yet, obviously, there can be no talk here of an existing in varying multitude [Anzahl].
• 153 And of course that which dies often is not the same as that which dies once.
• 154 Our differentiation of “genus” and “universality” is primarily oriented toward our examples 4a) and 4b). We are by no means fully certain whether the oppositions spelled out in 1–3 coincide with each other and with the one in 4.
• 155 It need hardly be emphasized that “genus” has nothing to do with “multitude” [Menge] – much less with “plurality.”
• 156 We assume here that no positing of factual existence is to be effected in the propositions “Every lion has four legs” and “Any lion at all will be able to make this leap.” In the other case, the conversion is even simpler.
• 157 The proposition “All witnesses’ statements have been submitted in deposition” is equivalent to: “This witness’s statement has been deposed, that of the other also, etc., until the last one.” This conversion [Auffassung] is impossible with respect to the judgment: “The number of witnesses amounted to seven”; in this last case, it is the plurality “witnesses” (and their number) that is spoken about.
• 158 Husserl speaks at this point of categoride [kategoroiden] judgments. [The term kate|goroid occurs in Hua XXX, with a good explanation by the editor, U. Panzer, on pp. xlix-l, and by Husserl on pp. 182–192. (I am indebted to George Heffernan for this reference.)]
• 159 Of course, there are also ideas of genera (“the genus ‘centaur’ does not actually live, but it exists as idea”) and genera of ideas (“the material idea of something real is partially idea of some|thing physical, partially idea of something mental, etc.”). From these are to be separated ideas “in general [in Allgemeinheit]” (the material idea is always basis for material judgments a priori).
• 160 Rodney Parker, Hedwig Conrad-Martius (accessed 15 October 2021).
• 161 At least some members of the group would continue to visit the orchard well into the 1930s. In a letter to Conrad-Martius dated 10 October 1936, Stein writes: “If Hering is with you or you are still expecting him, please give him my kind regards. I haven’t heard from him for a very long time.” Edith Stein, Briefe an Hedwig Conrad-Martius, 46.
• 162 Countless etymologies and interpretations of τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι have been offered from antiquity to the present day. One literal translation is “that which was to be,” an English formulation that has the singular virtue of being as awkward to use in a sentence as was the original Greek. Regarding some of the difficulties involved in the translation of the Aristotelian terminology – particularly words and expressions having to do with being, substance or essence – we refer the reader to Joseph Owens’s remarkable study, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian ‘Metaphysics’.
• 163 Sosein has also been translated as “being-such” and “being-thus.” It appeared as a philosophical term as early as Fichte and was employed also by several other philosophers over the course of the nineteenth century, including Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. (See Ritter and Gründer, Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie) The term gained new significance with the late nineteeth- and early twentieth-century studies of psychology, intentionality, and objectivity, most notably those of Meinong and Husserl [although Husserl uses the term Sosein only in passing; first in Husserl, Ideen I, 111: “Was die Dinge sind, die Dinge, von denen wir allein Aussagen machen, über deren Sein oder Nichtsein, Sosein oder Anderssein wir allein streiten und uns vernünftig entscheiden können, das sind sie alle als Dinge der Erfahrung”]. The term Sosein continued to be employed in different senses by the early phenomenologists, including Reinach, Hering, Stein, Spiegelberg, and Scheler.
• 164 The traditional English translations as “substance” or “essence” were derived from the Latin translations as substantia and essentia.
• 165 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 127; Stein, Endliches und ewiges Sein, 122–3.
• 166 Aristotle, Categories, 4.
• 167 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 559n5 (63n5 in the German text). We have slightly modified the translation, replacing “sense differing from” with “sense entirely differing from” [durchaus nicht entsprechenden Sinn], and “ousia” with “οὐσία” [as in Stein’s text].