S A U L I U S G E N I U S A S

W I L L I A M J A M E S A N D E D M U N D H U S S E R L

O N T H E H O R I Z O N T A L I T Y O F E X P E R I E N C E

A B S T R A C T

The central task of the following analysis is that of answering the question, inwhich sense is the horizon a philosophical notion and a philosophical theme?With this in mind, the paper undertakes an investigation into how Husserl’s no-tion of the horizon derives from James’s analysis of the fringe of consciousness.The paper argues that Husserl is to be considered the founder of the horizon-problematic in philosophy, but not because he was the first to have thematizedthe phenomenon of the horizon. James had already done this at a great depth.The significance of Husserl’s analyses consists in having depsychologized thisproblematic and in having disclosed its transcendental dimensions. Thus, as aphilosophical theme, the horizon is irreducibly transcendental. The single mostsignificant philosophical upshot of such a transformation consists in eliminatingthe dimension of arbitrariness that is inscribed in James’s notion of the fringe.Far from compromising the phenomenon’s objective sense, the subject-relativity ofthe horizon is what allows one to identify and secure the phenomenon’s objectivesignificance.

I would like to tell a story about how the everyday word “the horizon” becamea philosophical notion and a philosophical theme. I am not so much interested inopening up a forgotten chapter in the recent history of ideas. More significantly,my analysis will be guided by the question, in which sense is the horizon a philo-sophical theme and a philosophical notion? For as long as we do not engage inthe question of the historical emergence of the horizon in philosophy, our philo-sophical understanding of the horizon will run the risk of being imprecise anddistorted.

I would like to distinguish between the horizontality of experience and thehorizon. The horizon, as I will interpret this term, is a specifically philosophi-cal notion. The horizontality of experience, as a feature of experience, is open toa number of different analyses, be they psychological, psychiatric, sociological,political, etc.

For our purposes, it is crucial to distinguish between the psychological andthe philosophical interpretations. In fact, the engagement in the question of theemergence of the horizon in philosophy is rewarding precisely because it bringsinto the open the distinction between the psychological and the philosophical di-mensions of the horizontality of experience. A story about the origins of thehorizon is significant for two reasons. First, such a story reveals that philoso-phy borrows the problematic of the horizontality of experience from psychology.

481

A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CVIII, 481–494.DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0624-8_36, C© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

482 S A U L I U S G E N I U S A S

Secondly, such a story also makes clear that philosophy’s contribution to this prob-lematic consists in revealing the transcendental dimension of the horizontality ofexperience.

T H E Q U E S T I O N O F T H E B E G I N N I N G

Where exactly begins the story about the origins of the horizon? It is a well-knownfact that this notion plays a central role in Husserl’s phenomenology. And eventhough in the commentaries on Husserl the horizon does not receive the attention itdeserves, the few interpreters who have addressed this theme suggest that we callHusserl the founder of the horizon-problematic.1

It is, of course, all-too-easy to get lost in the forty thousand pages of Husserl’sunpublished manuscripts. One thus wonders whether the origins of the horizon inphilosophy could be fixed more precisely. Fortunately, Husserl himself providesus with a helpful clue. As he remarks in Formale und Transzendentale Logik,“In den Logischen Untersuchungen fehlte mir noch die Lehre von der Horizont-Intentionalität, deren allbestimmende Rolle erst die Ideen herausgestellt haben”(Hua XVII, 177).2 This brief remark seems to fix the origins of the horizon in aprecise way: it singles out a text whose publication announces the inauguration ofthe horizon-problematic in philosophy. Our path thereby seems to be delineated: itremains to follow the analysis undertaken in Ideen I and on the basis of this analysis,to tell a story about the origins of the horizon.

The few interpreters who have addressed the question of the emergence of thehorizon have followed precisely this path.3 Yet this path is too straightforward and,at the end of the day, it leads one astray. The reason for this has to do with WilliamJames’s Principles of Psychology.

Consider Husserl’s remark in the Krisis: “James war, soviel ich weiß, der einziger,der unter dem Titel fringes auf das Horizontphänomen aufmerksam wurde, aber wiekonnte er es ohne das phänomenologisch gewonnene Verständnis der intentionalenGegenständlichkeit ... befragen” (Hua VI, 267)?4 Consider this remark in relationto an observation made by Cairns:

In 1894 Stumpf called Husserl’s attention to James’ Psychology, and Husserl felt on reading it that Jameswas on the same track as he. The notion of horizon and many others he found there. He had planned topublish a series of articles in the Philosophische Monatshefte, but he published only the first, and decidedto wait to see what James had done. (Cairns, 1976, 36)

Since Husserl had already familiarized himself with James in 1890s and since,as Landgrebe also remarks,5 Husserl had already then spoken of James’ fringes ofconsciousness, why does the discovery of the horizon not take place until 1913?What sense are we to make of a silence that extends for as many as nineteen years?I believe these questions make it patently clear that the short path to the origins ofthe horizon, which begins with Ideen I, remains insufficient. These questions bringto light that an inquiry into the origins of the horizon will remain incomplete foras long as one does not address the relation of Husserl’s notion of the horizon toJames’s fringes of consciousness.

H O R I Z O N T A L I T Y O F E X P E R I E N C E 483

T H E P S Y C H O L O G I C A L I N T E R P R E T A T I O N : W I L L I A M J A M E S

A N D T H E F R I N G E O F C O N S C I O U S N E S S

William James’s notion of the fringe of consciousness emerges as a critical responseto a common assumption held by the rationalists and the empiricists. Accordingto both schools of thought, within the inner-world of consciousness, there is noimpression, or perception of relations. On the one hand, the rationalists take thisassumption to mean that the extra mentem reality of relations does not correspondto anything inter mentem, and thus that our awareness of relations must be, indeedcan be, only known to the pure act of intellect or reason. On the other hand, theempiricists such as Hume go as far as to suggest that just as there are no feelingsof relations within the mind, so there are no relations outside the mind either. Forthis school of thought, relations are to be understood psychologically, i.e., they findtheir intelligibility within the associative laws. James’s response to both approachesis unequivocal: “both Intellectualists and Sensationalists are wrong. If there be suchthings as feelings at all, then so surely as relations between objects exist in rerumnatura, so surely, and more surely, do feelings exist to which these relations areknown” (James, 245).

By giving up this common assumption, James did not intend to step beyond themain principles laid out in these schools of thought. Rather, as Gurwitsch has shown,the target of James’s criticism “is a certain narrowness which had developed in theempiricistic tradition, not the basic principles from which this train of thought hadsprung. . ... James’s ultimate end is to rehabilitate empiricism, not to depart from it”(Gurwitsch, 320–321).

This rehabilitation takes the form of the realization that the traditional empiri-cist conceptions of experience account for only “the smallest part of our minds.”The traditional empiricist accounts are illegitimately restrictive due to the above-mentioned exclusion of feelings of relation from the inner-world of consciousness.So as to overcome this shortcoming, James draws a distinction between the sub-stantive and the transitive parts of consciousness. It is this distinction that puts us inplace to recognize the stream-like nature of consciousness.

Arguably, language constitutes the model according to which the distinction be-tween the substantive and the transitive parts of consciousness is drawn. One couldargue that language is composed of nouns that are (or at least can be) accompaniedby images, while the function of verbs is that of joining the nouns to each other.So consciousness also has substantive parts that are accompanied by sensory im-ages and transitive parts that are filled with thoughts of relations. The genuinelyrevolutionary nature of James’s conception of consciousness consists in the realiza-tion that just as a noun derives its sense from its relation to verbs that surround it(and thus I am capable of picturing not just, let us say, the birch tree but also thebirch-tree-shaking-in-the-wind), so the substantive part of consciousness derives itsintelligibility from the transitive parts from which it is inseparable.

To use one of James’s examples, if I am to recite a, b, c, d, e, f, g, when I utterthe letter d, the other letters are not outside my consciousness. It is crucial to em-phasize that what I am conscious of are these letters themselves, and not just, as

484 S A U L I U S G E N I U S A S

Hume would have it, their imaginary reproductions. No matter what object I mightbe conscious of, it is always accompanied by other objects, some of which havejust disappeared from my field of vision, while others stand at the threshold of anew experience. Yet how can objects, that are no longer present, still be in con-sciousness? For this to be the case, consciousness itself cannot be restricted to theconsciousness of the present. And this means that my consciousness, besides beinga consciousness of objects, is always a consciousness of the passing of time. James’squalification of consciousness as a stream ultimately means that temporality is thefundamental structure of conscious life. As Gurwitsch has it, “what underlies thedoctrine of the ‘transitive states’ is a new conception of consciousness, the definitionof consciousness in terms of temporality” (Gurwitsch, 326).

James’s notion of the fringe of consciousness is meant to specify how the tem-porality of consciousness embraces each and every experience. While the metaphorof the stream first and foremost designates the manner in which consciousness isgiven to itself, the metaphors of fringe, halo, suffusion, horizon, and overtone servethe purpose of qualifying how objects are given to consciousness. These are not twounrelated themes. The qualification of consciousness as a stream needs to answerthe objection that deals with of the discreteness and discontinuity of objects:

Does not every sudden shock, appearance of a new object, or change in a sensation, create a real inter-ruption, sensibly felt as such, which cuts the conscious stream across at the moment at which it appears?Do not such interruptions smite us every hour of our lives, and have we the right, in their presence, stillto call our consciousness a continuous stream? (James, 239–240)

James’s analysis of the fringe of consciousness is meant to answer this objec-tion. His analysis shows the need to distinguish between objects, which are discreteand discontinuous, and the experience of objects, which is always marked by con-tinuity. James illustrates this point in an elegant way: “Into the awareness of thethunder itself the awareness of the previous silence creeps and continues; for whatwe hear when the thunder crashes is not thunder pure, but thunder-breaking-upon-silence-and-contrasting-with-it” (James, 240). The memory of silence gone and theexpectation of silence to come is the fringe or the halo from which the experienceof thunder is inseparable.

This is by far not an unusual experience. A color succeeding another is modifiedby the contrast; silence sounds delicious after noise; in music, one set of soundsalters the feeling of others; and consciousness itself retains, as James has it, “a kindof soreness” as a condition of present consciousness.6 Consider also what happenswhen one is interrupted by someone saying “wait!” or “look!”; or what takes placewhen one tries to remember a forgotten name; or what happens when one is on theedge of saying something; or what consciousness is conscious of in the face of anexperience that one recognizes as familiar. As James perceptively remarks, in allthese cases, “the significance, the value, of the image is all in this halo or penumbrathat surrounds and escorts it, – or rather that is fused into one with it and has becomebone of its bone and flesh of its flesh” (James, 255).

A perceptive reader will have noticed that one of the metaphors James employsrepeatedly to qualify the fringe of consciousness is that of the horizon. “When very

H O R I Z O N T A L I T Y O F E X P E R I E N C E 485

fresh, our minds carry an immense horizon with them. . .. And in states of extremebrain-fag the horizon is narrowed almost to the passing word” (James, 256). James’sdescription of the fringe of consciousness in the Principles is the psychologicalsource from which emerged the philosophical problematic of the horizon. However,let it be noted early on that, as the following section will show, far from being sim-ply borrowed, the horizon underwent significant transformations and ramificationswhen it became a philosophical theme.

It is not just a question of remaining faithful to the title of James’s magnum opuswhen it comes to qualifying his analyses of the fringe as psychological. These anal-yses are psychological due to the manner in which they delimit their central theme.As I have already indicated, this delimitation takes the form of a distinction drawnbetween objects, in themselves discrete and discontinuous, and the experience ofobjects that is marked by irreducible continuity. I call James’s interpretation psycho-logical because, while it in an unprecedented way broadens our understanding of theinner-world of consciousness, it also methodologically limits itself to the analysisof this inner-world and ignores the possibility that objects themselves might also befringed. It is this possibility that is further taken up in Husserl’s phenomenology.

This operative distinction between the inner-world of experience and the outer-world of objects is not without its problems. On the one hand, as James himselfinsists, one needs to draw a distinction between thoughts as subjective facts andthings of which they are aware.7 This distinction underlies James’s analysis ofthe fringe of consciousness. Yet on the other hand, the fringe of consciousness isnonetheless the fringe that embraces objects and not the subjective flow of thinking.This becomes particularly clear when James addresses one of the objections raisedby an Irish philosopher Thomas Maguire. In his Lectures on Philosophy (1885),Maguire interpreted James’s notion of the fringe as some sort of psychic materialby which sensations, in themselves separate, are made to cohere together. Maguirerejects such a position with a witty remark: James should see that “uniting sensa-tions by their ‘fringes’ is more vague than to construct the universe out of oystersby platting their beards" (Maguire, 211).8 To this James responds in his Principlesby saying that the fringe is part of the object cognized. “Some parts – the transitiveparts – of our stream of thought cognize the relations rather than the things; but boththe transitive and the substantive parts form one continuous stream, with no discrete‘sensations’ in it such as Prof. Maguire supposes, and supposes me suppose, to bethere” (James, 258).

Clearly, James’s response is not fully satisfactory. For it remains unclear howthe fringe can qualify our experience of objects (rather than worldly objects them-selves) and at the same time embrace the cognized object (rather than the subjectivestream). One thus wants to ask: What exactly is the relation between the cognizedand the worldly object? And how exactly is one to distinguish between the subjec-tive stream and the cognized object? To these questions, James’s Principles does notrespond.

And it does not respond because of its all-too-close relation to the fundamen-tal principles of British empiricism. The ambiguity we here face is the very samethat we find inscribed at the heart of Lockean sensations or Humean perceptions.

486 S A U L I U S G E N I U S A S

These notions are ambiguous in that they at the same time stand for the sensing andthe sensed, the perceiving and the perceived. Or put somewhat differently, thesenotions are meant to be only subjective, but they inevitably retain an objectivedimension. The same is to be said of James’s notions of the fringe, which is simul-taneously qualified as the fringe of consciousness and as the fringe of the objects ofconsciousness.

It is this ambiguity that allows us to understand the passage from the Krisis towhich I already referred. Husserl is full of surprise when he asks: How could Jamesdiscover the horizon-problematic when he did not have a phenomenological under-standing of intentional objectivity? We are now in the position to understand thisquestion. First, the absence of intentional objectivity indicates the aforementionedambiguity that surrounds Jamesian fringes: It remains unclear in which sense thefringes are subjective and in which sense they are objective. Secondly, and moreimportantly, this passage also intimates that an adequate understanding of the fringeof consciousness brings about a radical reevaluation of the very notion of objectiv-ity: It belongs to the very sense of objectivity, be it qualified as the objectivity of theinner- or of the outer-world, that it always carries with it its own halo or fringes.

As Gurwitsch puts it, “James may be said to have discovered temporality as thefundamental structure of conscious life” (Gurwitsch, 326). This claim, however,needs to be qualified. The temporality in question is exclusively psychological: Itqualifies the inner-world of consciousness, but it does not question, restrict, enrich,or in any way qualify objective time. Within the Jamesian framework, objective timeremains unthematized while it is nonetheless asserted to be primary.

James, let us recall, often speaks of the psychologist’s fallacy.9 This is the fallacythat the psychologist commits when he uncritically projects the fruits of his ownlabor into the subject matter of his own analysis. On the basis of the foregoinganalysis, one is in full right to suggest that James himself fell victim to a similarfallacy, which one could call the physicist’s fallacy. So as to see what this fallacyamounts to, consider James’s remarks in the context of his analysis of the selectiveenterprise of consciousness:

We may, if we like, by our reasonings unwind things back to that black and jointless continuity of spaceand moving clouds of swarming atoms which science calls the only real world. But all the while theworld we feel and live in will be that which our ancestors and we, by slowly cumulative strokes ofchoice, have extricated out of this, like sculptors, by simply rejecting certain portions of the given stuff.Other sculptors, other statues from the same stone! Other minds, other worlds from the same monotonousand inexpressive chaos! (James, 288–289)

If one were to ask what underlies the assumption of such a primordial chaos, theonly response the Principles provide lies in James’s refusal to commit to any meta-physical view. At least according to this interpreter, such a refusal is no less (andpossibly even more) metaphysical than an explicit defense of a particular meta-physical position. What lies at the heart of this refusal to commit is the uncriticalassumption of a privileged scientific discourse, which somehow has the means to es-cape the dominance of fringes and in virtue of this kind of freedom to disclose to us“the only real world” (James, 288). At the heart of the assumption of immunity from

H O R I Z O N T A L I T Y O F E X P E R I E N C E 487

any metaphysical commitments lies an uncritical acceptance of a pregiven notion ofobjectivity.

James’s analysis suffers from yet another significant shortcoming. James calls usto acknowledge the fringed nature of experience, yet he does not provide us withthe means to compare and evaluate the different ways in which a fringed object canmanifest itself to different subjectivities. Is it not a common experience to come tothe realization that the framework of sense in which one had enwrapped a partic-ular object was in fact inappropriate to the object itself? And is it so uncommonto criticize others, or to hear others criticize us, for placing a particular problemwithin a false framework of understanding? Yet if the frameworks of sense are saidto be “different worlds” within which “different statues” get to be formed by “dif-ferent sculptors,” then how is one to distinguish between different fringes of senseon the basis of their appropriateness or inappropriateness to the object in question?Needless to say, the qualification of the object itself with the “inexpressive chaos”complicates these matters even further.

One of Husserl’s central contributions to the problematic of the horizontality ofexperience lies in his explicit realization that the problematic of fringes renders sucha pregiven notion of objectivity indefensible.

H O R I Z O N T , H O F , H I N T E R G R U N D : H U S S E R L ’S D I S C O V E R Y

O F T H E H O R I Z O N

In Ideen I, the work in which the specifically philosophical analysis of the horizonoriginates, Husserl uses the terms Horizont (horizon), Hof (halo), and Hintergrund(background) interchangeably. As he writes in §83, ‘“Horizont’ gilt hier also so-viel wie in §35 die Rede von einem ‘Hof’ und ‘Hintergrund’” (Hua III, 167).10 Aswe saw in the last section, all these terms – halo, background, and horizon – aremetaphors that James himself uses interchangeably as approximations of the fringeof consciousness. One might therefore wonder whether Husserl’s “discovery” ofthe horizon could be nothing more than an uncritical appropriation of the Jamesianfringe.

Yet such a claim would not be satisfactory, if only because it would remain puz-zling why Husserl, besides acknowledging the bond that ties his analysis of thehorizon to James’s analysis of the fringe, would nonetheless identify Ideen I as thetext in which the problematic of the horizon originates. We thus seem to find our-selves in a dilemma: on the one hand, if we were to agree with those who identifyIdeen I as the origin of the horizon, we would remain blind to Husserl’s indebted-ness to James’s fringes. On the other hand, if we emphasized Husserl’s indebtednessto James, we would overshadow the momentous character of Husserl’s analyses ofthe horizon.

Clearly, one can escape this dilemma only by acknowledging the specificity of thenotion of the horizon while simultaneously admitting its dependence upon Jamesianfringes. In order to do so, one needs not only see how closely the notion of thehorizon is related to the notions of background and halo; one also needs to find a

488 S A U L I U S G E N I U S A S

way to extract a dimension of sense that distinguishes the horizon from the othertwo terms that are so closely related to it. If this were possible, one could then spec-ify the sense in which Ideen I is a groundbreaking work. One could then say thateven though the horizon-problematic derives from the problematic of the fringe ofconsciousness, and even though the problematic of the fringe had played a signif-icant role in Husserl’s works prior to the publication of Ideen I, the latter work ismarkedly innovative in that it introduces a distinction between the horizon on theone hand, and the halo and background on the other. And hopefully, one wouldthereby be able to show that Ideen I is a groundbreaking text in that it for the firsttime secures the specifically philosophical sense of the horizon-problematic.

In the face of the outlined dilemma, it is hard to overestimate the significanceof a passing remark Husserl makes in his brief discussion of the arithmetic hori-zon in Ideen I (§27). Husserl suggests that for consciousness transposed into themathematical “world,” the natural world remains in the background, even thoughit no longer functions as a horizon. “[Die Welt] ist für mein AktbewußtseinHintergrund, aber sie ist kein Horizont” (Hua III, 51).11 Yet how exactly are weto understand this distinction between background and horizon? Husserl himself,unfortunately, does not provide us with an explanation. In the remaining partof this section, I would like to show that the sense of this distinction derivesfrom the fundamentally transcendental framework of Ideen I, which significantlydistances this work from Husserl’s earlier published writings and from James’sPrinciples.

In the last section, I spoke extensively of the operative distinction between theinner- and the outer-world that guides over James’s analysis of fringes. What un-derlies this distinction is the assumption that transcendent things can, in principle,be known adequately. If one is willing to hold on to this assumption, what senseis one to make of the undeniable fact that our actual understanding of things is in-adequate? Admittedly, it remains possible to claim that we are actually aware onlyof the inner- and not the outer-world. Husserl, however, unequivocally dismissessuch a position. In §43 of Ideen I, significantly titled “Clarification of a PrincipleMistake,” Husserl argues against the conception of God as the subject of absolutelyperfect knowledge, who, supposedly, possesses what to us finite beings is denied,viz., who possesses an adequate perception of things in themselves (Hua III, 78).Such a view, Husserl goes on to argue, is absurd (widersinnig) in that it rests onthe assumption that something transcendent can be given as though it were some-thing immanent.12 According to Husserl, it belongs to the very sense of transcendentthings that they can be given to us only through their appearances, i.e., given onlyinadequately.

The abandonment of the assumption that transcendent things lend themselves toadequate cognition is of great significance for it indicates an unprecedented broad-ening of the Jamesian doctrine of fringes. While in James’s Principles the fringesqualify only appearances conceived as subjective phenomena, in Husserl’s IdeenI the fringes are shown to embrace things themselves. In virtue of such a broad-ening, the problematic of fringes loses its exclusively psychological character andobtains the transcendental and constitutive dimensions.13 Let us take at least a quick

H O R I Z O N T A L I T Y O F E X P E R I E N C E 489

and curtailed look at how the problematic of fringes leads to the recognition of thetranscendental framework of phenomenology.

In §44 of Ideen I, Husserl argues that a certain inadequacy necessarily belongs tothe perception of things, an inadequacy which springs from the fact that things canbe given to consciousness only “one-sidedly,” only through mere appearances.14 Aparticular appearance of the thing itself is given to consciousness in such a way thatit entails implicit references to the object’s other possible appearances. It is theseimplicit references that co-determine the sense of the object in question. Only dueto this co-givenness of potential modes of appearances is consciousness aware thatthere is more to the thing than is manifest in its present appearance, i.e., that thegivenness of the thing itself implicates a distinction between the thing and its modesof apparition.

As is well known, in his last and unfinished Krisis, Husserl has endorsed thiscorrelation between the object and its manners of givenness as the fundamentalquestion of his phenomenology (Hua VI, §48). This late recognition is by no meansunprecedented. As Husserl puts it still in Ideen I, the functional standpoint is centralto phenomenology (Hua III, 197). The functional standpoint is meant to incorporateall the problems that relate to the constitution of the objectivities of consciousness.And as Husserl further explains, “sie [die funktionellen Probleme] betreffen dieArt, wie z.B. hinsichtlich der Natur, Noesen, das Stoffliche beseelend und sich zumannigfaltig-einheitlichen Kontinuen und Synthesen verflechtend, Bewußtsein vonEtwas so zustande bringen, daß objektive Einheit der Gegenständlichkeit sich darineinstimmig ‘bekunden’, ‘ausweisen’ und ‘vernünftig’ bestimmen lassen kann” (HuaIII, 176).15

Once interpreted within the framework of the phenomenological reduction, thefunctional standpoint proves to be nothing other than the transcendental standpoint.By “transcendental” Husserl means the standpoint that subjects lived-experiences(Erlebnisse) to a “teleological” interpretation so as to extract their sense-giving di-mension, i.e., so as to reveal how consciousness synthesizes lived-experiences andthereby gives rise to unified objectivities. It therefore should come as no surprisethat in §86 of Ideen I, a section dedicated to the analysis of the functional prob-lems, Husserl explicitly acknowledges phenomenology’s transcendental nature: “Inihrer rein eidetischen, jederlei Transzendenzen ‘ausschaltenden’ Einstellung kommtdie Phänomenologie auf ihrem eigenen Boden reinen Bewußtseins notwendig zudiesem ganzen Komplex der im spezifischen Sinne transzendentalen Probleme,und daher verdient sie den Namen transzendentaler Phänomenologie” (Hua III,177–178).16

Having recognized that Husserl’s analysis of the horizon is driven by transcen-dental concerns, we are in the position to take a closer look at what it means toqualify consciousness as horizonal. We are now in the position to ask the crucialquestion: what sense is one to make of the realization that the distinction betweenthe thing itself and its mode of appearance is inscribed within the givenness of phe-nomena? This inscription indicates that consciousness is conscious of the limits thatpertain to each and every appearance of transcendent objectivity. Moreover, this in-scription indicates that the consciousness of limits is itself possible only because

490 S A U L I U S G E N I U S A S

consciousness has always already found a way to transgress them: I know an ap-pearance as an appearance only because it is given to me in the context of othermodes of givenness. Consciousness transcends the limits of appearance by way ofco-intending the horizons of the object’s other modes of apparition. The notion ofthe horizon thereby proves to be inseparable from the notion of limit. One couldeven say that the co-presence of the horizon, due to its limiting force, is what makesappearance into an appearance, i.e., into one of the infinitely numerous modes ofgivenness.

We thereby witness how the Jamesian problematic of the fringes of conscious-ness, once broadened to embrace not only the inner- but also the outer-world, obtainsthe original nuance inscribed in the Greek word horizein, from which our notion ofthe horizon derives. As a Greek word, the horizon is a line that marks the extremityof the visual field. It is related to the word “to delimit” (horizein) and from the outsetis conceived in the context that covers every delimitation. The notion of the horizonthereby shows itself inseparable from that of limits, and it is the sense of limits, ofboundaries, and thus of inadequacy that is at the center of Husserl’s analysis of thedistinction between Horizont, Hintergrund and Hof.

Now we are in the position to see what this distinction amounts to. The naturalworld remains in the background once consciousness transports itself into the math-ematical “world,” but it no longer functions as a horizon, because the pregivennessof the natural world does not co-determine the sense of mathematical objectivities.While the notion of background and halo are ambiguous in that they can, althoughthey need not, determine the sense of the objectivity in question, the determinationof what makes an objectivity into an objectivity is exactly what makes the horizoninto a horizon. The horizon is necessarily a horizon of the irreducible dimensionsof sense, which means: even though the horizons can be, and in fact are, contin-uously modified, they cannot be lost. Far from merely transforming the sense ofthe object, such a loss would simply nullify what makes the object an object at all.While a phenomenal being must be given through appearances if it is to be phe-nomenal, an appearance without references to other appearances is no longer anappearance at all. Thus the loss of the horizonal structure is inconceivable. The lossof Hintergrund, or Hof, on the other hand, is conceivable: their cancellation resultsin the modification of objectivity’s sense, but not in the cancellation of its being. Bylosing their Hintergrund, or Hof, objectivities still remain objectivities, no matterhow radical the alteration of sense this loss brings forth.

Thus the notion of the horizon stands for what consciousness co-intends insuch a manner that the sense of what is co-intended is inseparable from whatmakes the thematic objectivity be an objectivity. By now, we can finally see thedimension of sense that distinguishes the notion of Horizont from those of Hofand Hintergrund. The latter two notions, as they surfaced before the appearanceof Ideen I, remained ambiguous in that they did not entail a distinction betweenthose aspects of co-givenness which pertain to objectivity’s sense and those as-pects which are inseparable from what makes objectivity into objectivity.17 Putconcisely, the notion of fringes is psychological, while the notion of the horizon istranscendental.

H O R I Z O N T A L I T Y O F E X P E R I E N C E 491

T H E S U B J E C T - R E L A T I V I T Y O F T H E H O R I Z O N

How does Husserl’s transcendental analysis of the horizon respond to what I earlieridentified as a shortcoming in James’s psychological analysis of the fringe? As Isuggested at the end of the second section, James’s psychological narrative remainsdeficient in that it does not provide us with the tools necessary for drawing mean-ingful distinctions between different frameworks of sense within which one and thesame objectivity could manifest itself to us. James’s analysis of the fringe faces thedanger of relativism and it does not provide us with any clues regarding how weare to overcome it. I would like to suggest that the single most significant advance-ment of Husserl’s analysis of the horizon over James’s inquiry into the fringe ofconsciousness consists in revealing how the recognition of the horizonal nature ofexperience does not signal a complete relativization of experienced objectivity.

As we just saw, in Husserl’s phenomenology, the distinction between the horizonon the one hand, and the halo and background on the other hand, ultimately amountsto a distinction between a context of sense that is necessary for the manifestationof a particular objectivity (Horizont) and a context of sense that remains arbitraryin regard to the objectivity in question (Hof, Hintergrund). This distinction in animportant way deepens and modifies James’s proclamation, which I have alreadycited earlier: “Other sculptors, other statues from the same stone! Other minds, otherworlds from the same monotonous and inexpressive chaos” (James, 289)! If onewere to follow up with James’s metaphors, one could say that the distinction drawnbetween Horizont, Hof, and Hintergrund allows us to see that the statues in questionare not completely unlike each other; that they are definitely not to be found indifferent worlds; that the “same stone” is not some “inexpressive chaos” that couldnonetheless lend itself to a scientific analysis, but rather a dimension of givennesswhich itself calls for an appropriate horizon of understanding.

If the term “subjective” is taken to mean that the accomplishments of subjectiv-ity, be they visible or hidden, contribute to the manner of the object’s manifestation,then not only background and halo, but the horizon also, is subjective. Yet if the term“subjective” is understood as either something arbitrary, or as something left to thesubject’s discretion, then the horizon is not subjective (while background and haloare subjective). The horizons of which Husserl speaks in Ideen I are first and fore-most objective horizons of sense, i.e., they do not just bespeak the manner in whichany objectivity could be wrapped in an arbitrary context of manifestation, but ratherpoint to those dimensions of sense without which a particular objectivity could nolonger be an objectivity. One could thus say that the transcendental framework ofHusserl’s phenomenology charts the middle course between uncritical objectivismand unsophisticated relativism.

Thus Husserl’s early analysis of the horizon leads to the realization that eventhough there is a sense in which all horizons are subjective, this does not mean thatthey are all arbitrary. To the general insight that all horizons of sense are relativeto subjectivity, Husserl adds a crucial modification: the horizons are relative not inregard to psychological subjectivity, but rather in regard to transcendental subjec-tivity. So as to qualify this modification, one could say that even though all fringes

492 S A U L I U S G E N I U S A S

of sense are subjective, not all of them are equally appropriate to objectivity. Thesubject-relativity of the horizons does not compromise their objective force. Evenmore: in the final analysis, only in virtue of such a subject-relativity of the horizons,can the objective sense of the phenomenon be identified and secured.

C O N C L U D I N G R E M A R K S

One can thus say that Husserl’s analysis of the horizon in Ideen I marks an unprece-dented deepening of the Jamesian doctrine of fringes. Such an acknowledgment,however, should not lead one to overlook that, when viewed from the perspectiveof Husserl’s robust analyses of the horizon that he has unfolded in his later researchmanuscripts and published works, his early notion of the horizon still remains con-strained from a thematic and methodical points of view. While James’s analysiswas limited by the operative distinction between the inner- and the outer-worlds,Husserl’s account in Ideen I is limited by the distinction between the merely phe-nomenal givenness of the transcendent and the absolute givenness of the immanent.Husserl’s subsequent broadening of the horizon-problematic in the so-called ge-netic phenomenology stems from the realization that the immanent givenness ofconsciousness is no less horizonal than the transcendent givenness of the world andof things. From the perspective of Husserl’s mature phenomenology, one could saythat the horizon is a distinctly genetic theme, which in its first appearance is stilldressed in static garb. Arguably, once freed from the distinction between the ab-solute givenness of consciousness and the phenomenal givenness of the world, thehorizon reveals itself as truly universal. Borrowing some of the Jamesian metaphors,one could thus liken the analysis of the horizon in Ideen I to the painter’s first sketchon the canvas. It is as if the contours of the horizon are drawn with a shaking hand,still uncertain of what is to come out of the drawing.

Yet the task of the foregoing analysis has not been that of providing an exhaus-tive account of the problematic of the horizon in phenomenology but only that ofaccounting for how this problematic emerged in philosophy. My foregoing analy-sis leads to the conclusion that the problematic of the horizon stems from, but isnot reducible to, the problematic of the fringes of consciousness, as thematized byJames in his Principles of Psychology. Husserl is to be considered the founder ofthe horizon-problematic in philosophy, but not because he was the first to have the-matized the phenomenon of the horizon. James had already done this with greatelegance and at a great depth. The significance of Husserl’s analyses consists inhaving depsychologized this problematic and in having disclosed its transcendentaland constitutive dimensions.

Such, then, is my answer to the question formulated in the first paragraph of thisessay. I asked, in which sense is the horizon a philosophical notion and a philosophi-cal theme? To this question, my answer is: we still today remain indebted to Husserlfor having shown to us that the horizontality of experience lends itself to a dis-tinctly philosophical analysis, within which the horizon reveals itself as irreduciblytranscendental.

H O R I Z O N T A L I T Y O F E X P E R I E N C E 493

Department of Philosophy and Religion, MSC 8006, James Madison University,Harrisonburg, VA 22807 USAe-mail: geniussh@jmu.edu

N O T E S

1 As, for instance, Tze-Wan Kwan contends in his “Husserl’s Concept of Horizon” “it is Husserlwho first consciously ‘institutes’ the concept of horizon and markedly unfolds it into a full-blownproblematic” (Kwan, 305).2 “In the Logical Investigations I still lacked the theory of horizon-intentionality, the all-determiningrole of which was first brought out in the Ideas” (Hua XVII, 177).3 See Helmut Kuhn’s “The Phenomenological Concept of the ‘Horizon’” and Tze-Wan Kwan’s“Husserl’s Concept of Horizon: An Attempt at Reappraisal.”4 “James was, as much as I know, the only one who, under the title ‘fringes’ became aware of thephenomenon of the horizon – but how could he inquire into it without the phenomenologically acquiredunderstanding of intentional objectivity” (Hua VI, 267)?5 See Landgrebe’s “The Phenomenological Concept of Experience.”6 See in this regard William James, Principles of Psychology, 234–235.7 “The confusion is between the thoughts themselves, taken as subjective facts, and the things of whichthey are aware. It is natural to make this confusion, but easy to avoid it when once put on one’s guard. Thethings are discrete and discontinuous; they do pass before us in a train or chain, making often explosiveappearances and rending each other in twain. But their comings and goings and contrasts no more breakthe flow of the thought that thinks them than they break the time and the space in which they lie” (James,240).8 This reference can be found in James’s Principles of Psychology, p. 258. James’s further response toThomas Maguire’s critique follows this reference.9 See, for instance, James’s Principles of Psychology, p. 196 and p. 278–279.10 “The ‘horizon’ has here the same sense as the notions ‘halo’ and ‘background’ had in §35” (Hua III,167).11 “To my act-consciousness, the world is given as a background, but it is not a horizon” (Hua III, 51).12 For the distinction between the transcendent and immanent givenness, see Ideen I, §42.13 One would be in full right to suggest that Husserl in Ideen I turns James’s analysis of fringes on itshead: Husserl shows that it is not the “inner-,” but rather the “outer-world” that is irreducibly horizonal.Yet such a position, as my concluding remarks will suggest, significantly curtail Husserl’s early analysisof the horizon: according to Husserl of Ideen I, the ideal of knowledge remains “horizonless.”14 “Ein Ding ist notwendig in bloßen ‘Erscheinungsweisen’ gegeben, notwendig ist dabei einKern von ‘wirklich Dargestelltem’ auffassungsmäßig umgeben von einem Horizont uneigentlicher‘Mitgegebenheit’ und mehr oder minder vager Unbestimmtheit” (Hua III, 80). “A thing is necessarilygiven in mere ‘modes of appearing,’ and the necessary factors in this case are a nucleus of what is ‘reallypresented,’ an outlining zone of apprehension consisting of a horizon of non-genuine ‘co-givenness’ anda more or less vague indeterminacy” (Hua III, 80).15 “They [the functional problems] concern the way in which, for instance, in respect of Nature, noeses,animating matter, and weaving themselves into unitary manifolds, into continuous syntheses, so bringinto being the consciousness of something, that in and through it the objective unity of objectivities maypermit of being consistently ‘declared,’ ‘shown forth,’ and ‘rationally’ determined”. (Hua III, 176).16 “From its purely eidetic standpoint which ‘suspends’ the transcendent in every shape and form, phe-nomenology comes inevitably on its own ground of pure consciousness to this whole system of problemswhich are transcendental in the specific sense, and for this reason it merits the title of TranscendentalPhenomenology” (Hua III, 177–178).17 Such being the case, it is understandable how Husserl in his revisions of his lectures Grundproblemeder Phänomenologie from 1910/11 can insert the notion of the horizon even though it did not surfacein the original draft. We find an identical strategy involved in Husserl’s revisions of his Vorlesungen zur

494 S A U L I U S G E N I U S A S

Phänomenologie des Inneren Zeitbewußtseins from 1905. Such a revision does not violate the originaldrafts, but rather clarifies their sense by bringing earlier phenomenology to the level of its more recentachievements, i.e., by introducing a distinction so as to extract the sense which, even though latently, isalready present in the texts which precede the publication of Ideen I.

R E F E R E N C E S

Cairns, D. 1976. Conversations with Husserl and Fink. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.Gurwitsch, A. 1966. William James’s Theory of the transitive parts of the stream of consciousness. In

Studies in phenomenology and psychology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Husserl, E. 1950. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes

Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. B. Walter. The Hague: MartinusNijhoff.

Husserl, E. 1974. Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, ed.P. Janssen. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Husserl, E. 1976. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften un die transzendentale Phänomenologie.Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, ed. W. Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

James, W. 1950. Principles of psychology volume i. New York: Dover Publications.Kuhn, H. 1940. The Phenomenological Concept of the Horizon. In Philosophical essays in memory of

Edmund Husserl, ed. M. Farber. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Kwan, T.-W. 1990. Husserl’s concept of Horizon: An attempt at reappraisal. In Analecta Husserliana,

vol. xxxi, ed. A.-T. Tymieniecka. Kluwer Academic Publishers.Landgrebe, L. 1973. The phenomenological concept of experience. Philosophy and Phenomenological

Research 34(1): 1–13.