Zaner - at Play in The Field of Possibles

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Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884
pheno
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brill.nl/jpp
At Play in the Field of Possibles

Richard M. Zaner
Vanderbilt University
Abstract
This essay focuses on questions central to Husserls essential methodology,
specically his notion of free-fantasy variation, which he regarded as his
fundamental methodological insight. At the heart of this vital element of
phenomenology is what he often terms as-if experience thanks to which anything
whatever (actual or possible) can be considered either for its own sake or as an
example of something else. Further analysis explores the act of exemplication,
the act of feigning (termed possibilizing) and the shifts of attention and orientation
that ground free-fantasy variation. Exemplication and possibilizing are then
examined in daily life to discern what makes the complex act of feigning at all
possible. An examination of the phenomenon of upsets (of what is typically
expected) brings the core sense of possibilizing to light. A focus on the dramatic
force intrinsic to these experiences, and the essential place of reective awareness
inherent to them, makes apparent how the rudimentary sense of self begins to
emerge, and there follows an analysis of this self-referentiality of possibilizing. The
analysis then concludes with a brief examination of Husserls so-called zig-zag
method of constitutive phenomenology.
Keywords
phenomenology, free-fantasy variation, phenomenological method, essence,
exemplication, reection
This essay is presented as the journey I in fact rst embarked upon, and I
hope that this neither detracts from nor unduly confuses matters. In this,
I am cognizant of the extent my method evokes the method of concrete
approaches Gabriel Marcel worked out with amazing depthan approach
that bears more than incidental resemblance to that of Soren Kierkegaards
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010
DOI: 10.1163/156916210X503092
R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884
29
indirect communication. If my own approach nonetheless tends more to

confuse than to illuminate, this is surely due to my own shortcomings and
nothing in what either Marcel, Kierkegaard, or, the one truly at the heart
of my work, Husserl, have accomplished.
A long time ago, I sat down in a rickety chair I had found and placed in
a tiny room o a garage at an old desk on which I had carefully placed a
large stack of blank paper, just so, on it. It was the dead of winter in a place
where this made a great deal of dierencePort Jeerson, Long Island in
the winter of 1972. I had the idea of trying to write about some things that
had been niggling me for some time. Not too long, to be sure, for I was still
quite young, only a whisker past a decade from receiving my doctorate at
the Graduate Faculty of The New School.
I must have been charmed, for I had been able to study with some truly
fabulous mentors: Maurice Natanson rst, while still an undergraduate
(although, it is true, a bit older than most, having already served in the Air
Force as a B-26 gunner in Korea, with 50 combat missions behind me);
then, as a graduate student, with Alfred Schutz, Dorion Cairns, Hans
Jonas, Werner Marx and, after Schutzs death in 1958, Aron Gurwitsch.
All of which was not only instructive in the nest sense, but persistently
raised a bristle of questions that, I sensed, I needed to pursue. I let them
settle into my mind, my soul, my self, leaving them to remain unaddressed
for as long as I could before I felt the urge to begin, ever so slowly and
cautiously, in that cold, cold side room in the dead of winter, hoping
somehow to be able to dig into their grounds, eventually even nurture
them to life.
So, I began a long process of airing out these questions, thinking about
them as thoroughly as I could at that time, so that I might begin to learn
whether they really were worth pursuit, worth spending a long, long time
pondering rst this way then that until, perhaps, things could be a little
settled between us, these questions and myself. Doing all this, I was long
in discovering, was nding myself in a kind of native air.
These questions pestered me, and I wanted to settle things on my own,
as it wereor, as much as I could, engaging in this reective eort for its
own sake and as far as I could on my own; not doing something about
phenomenology, nor laying out what others had done on these topics. I
resolved to do this on my own and for myself, I must add, each time over
the next thirty years whenever I found myself returning to these matters.
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Not that what others might say is uninteresting; not at all. It is rather that
these were issues that I soon came to realize dened my life, and I knew
I would have to settle things on my own.
What eventually emerged was a somewhat lengthy manuscript. Ive
managed to wrest out several articlesthe rst nicely buried in the honorable if neglected cemetery of a Festschriften in memory of Dorion Cairns
(Zaner, 1973a); the second an article (Zaner, 1973b), Examples and Possibles: A Criticism of Husserls Theory of Free-Phantasy Variation, some
of the ideas seemed to me more clearly pursued (note that the spelling of
phantasy stems from Husserls usage: Phantasie. English usage seems to
me to require fantasy which I have used throughout). The labor of that
project also served importantly in much of my subsequent writing. Even
so, I felt I was not yet up to the thing, so I put it to rest, back on the shelf
where nobody but I would be likely to look. And forgot it, returned, forgot
again, over the next thirty years or so.
It was especially Cairns, I must say, whose meticulous study of Husserlwith whom he had spent some years on two dierent occasions
persuaded me that the phenomenon of free-fantasy, which is the central
theme driving much of my writing, deserved as close attention as I could
muster. In what follows, it will soon become apparent that even more basic
issues have become signicant, and that the pursuit of free-fantasy sheds
unexpected light on them.
Examples and Possibles

The Signicance of the As-If
In section 70 of the rst volume of his Ideas, Edmund Husserl (1982)
pondered the specic method he termed free-fantasy variation. It is not,
he emphasized many times, an empirical variation such as that found in
much empirical psychological or social science, which involves inferences
from an inductive empeiria and yields only inductive generalizations
pertaining to a specic class of de facto states of aairs (Husserl, 1969).
Free-fantasy variation, to the contrary must be understood . . . as a variation carried on with the freedom of pure fantasy and with the consciousness of its purely optional characterthe consciousness of the pure
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Anything Whatever (Husserl, 1969, p. 206). Such a method, he went on

to emphasize, invokes a dierent kind of experience from our usual
straightforward kind found, say, in sensory experience. Here, rather, experience in free-fantasy is
neutralized experience, as-if experience, we can also say experience in fantasy, which, with a suitable and freely possible alteration of ones attitudes,
becomes positional experience of a possible individual. Naturally, as-if experience has parallel as-if modalities of its primitive mode, as-if certainty of being.
(Husserl, 1969, p. 206)
This as-if experience forms the basis for the method of free-fantasy, and is
distinguished from any form of empirical variation since it is released from
all restrictions to facts accepted beforehand (Husserl, 1969, p. 248).
The signicance for Husserl of the kinds of inquiry thereby opened up
cannot be over-emphasized. As will be appreciated shortly, as-if experience
is an always-possible modication of any actual experience of anything whatever. Accordingly, Husserl clearly recognized that the free-fantasy variational
method correlated with such neutralized experience is the ground for
an apriori science, which connes itself to the realm of pure possibility (pure
imaginableness) and, instead of judging about actualities of transcendental
being, judges about [its] apriori possibilities and thus at the same time prescribes rules apriori for actualities. (Husserl, 1960, p. 69)
Husserl was quite clear about the signicance of this point: He terms it the
fundamental methodological insight. Indeed, it constitutes the basic
sense of transcendental phenomenology, which for him is the fundamental
philosophical discipline. Once it is grasped, he emphasized, such freefantasy, methodical variation can be seen to pervade the whole phenomenological method (and likewise, in the natural realm, the method of a
genuine and pure internal psychology) (Husserl, 1960, p. 69). Understood as the method of eidetic description, the practice of free-fantasy variation signies a transfer of all empirical descriptions into a new and
fundamental dimension (Husserl, 1960, p. 69). While it can be argued
that the method can be found, in some form, even in Husserls earliest
writings, his most mature insights came much later, especially in Formal
and Transcendental Logic and Cartesian Meditations. By the time of his Paris
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Lectures on which he based the latter work, indeed, Husserl was already
maintaining that free-fantasy variation is the fundamental form of all particular transcendental methods . . . [and gives] the legitimate sense of a transcendental phenomenology (Husserl, 1960, p. 72).
So fundamental is this method that at one point in his early thinking
about the matter Husserl insisted that, as he expressed the point in that
famous section 70 of his Ideas, I, philosophers need to fertilize their ability to fantasy in order to achieve observations in originary intuition which
are as abundant and excellent as possible. He mentions in particular using
examples from history, art and poetry. It is clear that he understood its
implications, as is evident in the immediately following passage: feigning
[Fiktion] makes up the vital element of phenomenology as of every other
eidetic science . . . feigning is the source from which the cognition of eternal
truths is fed (Husserl, 1982, p. 160). Keenly aware of how this must have
appeared, in particular to critics of phenomenology, Husserl observed with
marked sarcasm in a footnote to this passage that such an idea should be
especially suitable for a naturalistic ridiculing of the eidetic mode of cognition (Husserl, 1982, p. 160).
Given the signicance Husserl attached to the free-fantasy variational
method and its connection to the insight regarding as-if experience, it is
all the more surprising that this expression of his fundamental method
did not attract much critical attention in the years after he wrote those
words, even though he continued to insist on its central import for phenomenological work. Moreover, while in his classic study, Field of Consciousness, Aron Gurwitsch (1964) did at least recognize the extraordinary
signicance given to the method by Husserl, his own analysis does not
probe the foundations, presuppositions, or fundamental place of the
method. Even so, Gurwitsch had long recognized the method and its
importance, although his studies focus on free-fantasy as regards eide.
While the method has received some notice, this has for the most part
been up to the reecting philosophers eort to grasp eidetic aairs. This is
accomplished, it is typically understood, by selecting some object, whatever it may be, and then methodically varying that object (while maintaining it as an example of the kind or sort in question), all the while attending
carefully to what stands out as invariant through the variations. This common, then, is said to be at least the initial phases of the reective delineation and explication of the essence.
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In contrast to this usual way of treating free-fantasy variation, I have

long been convinced that there is an issue of far greater signicance: The
very possibility of that free-fantasy focus itself. How is it even possible, no
longer to attend to the individual example and instead focus on the kind
exemplied by that individual? Precisely here is a phenomenological theme
whose explication sheds important light on the foundations of reection
itself, hence is a central topic for understanding the structures of consciousness, the embodying body, the self and still other matters central to
the tasks of phenomenological psychology as well as philosophy. First,
however, it is essential that the method itself be clearly understood.
First Glance at Free-Fantasy
An outstanding exception to the usual manner of treating free-fantasy
variation was Susan Bachelards early and excellent commentary on Husserls Formal and Transcendental Logic, an interpretation that should not be
ignored. In the rst place, her study clearly showed why free fantasy variation cannot be interpreted as a form of empirical generalization (Bachelard,
1968, pp. 17397). In a close reading of section 70 of Husserls Ideas I, and
of relevant passages from others of his works, Bachelard correctly laid out
the close parallel between the attitude of the geometer (working within
one of the other eidetic sciences Husserl has in mind) and that of the
phenomenologist. Clearly impressed with this connection, she then
emphasized
. . . that the method of mathematical idealization has been the very source of
the elaboration of the phenomenological method of investigating essences1
and that the example which served as the starting point for the phenomenological variation has the same role as the particular gure about which the
geometer reasons. (Bachelard, 1968, p. 175)
In thinking geometrically, for example, the geometer operates upon the

gure or the model incomparably more in fantasy than in perception
1)
As is well known, Husserls use of bracketing (Einklammern) to describe (partially) his

method of epoch and reduction has its mathematical analogue, signifying that the bracketed operations are put out of play, not performed but kept in abeyance (see Husserl,
1982, 3132).
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(Husserl, 1982, p. 159), but is not restricted to its particularity even though
the geometer must from time to time return to it and other geometrical
gures. Here, in fact, is the key to the parallel: Actually, the real datum
from which the geometer and the phenomenologist can set out is taken as
an example. An example as such is never considered for its own sake, in its
individuality (Bachelard, 1968, p. 176).
From her analysis, but even more looking into the passages where Husserl himself discusses this method, it is evident that there are four key features he regarded as vital to understanding it.
Exampling and Possibilizing
(1) Any particular aair, thing or object (in the broadest sense) can always
be viewed in one or the other of several ways. First, the individual aair can
be attended to simply for its own sake, in whatever context and with whatever modality it may be. Like the geometer, second, one is also free at any
moment to shift attention and regard the aair strictly as an example.
(2) Bachelard understood the second point to signify that the consciousness which deals with the example is a consciousness that one is able
to substitute another example for this example (Bachelard, 1968, p. 176).
Clearly aware of this, Husserl emphasized that, to take an individual aair
as an example includes the consciousness of its having been chosen arbitrarily or freely [beliebig]. As I understand him, this act is free in at
least three senses.
(a) Any actual or possible example can serve to initiate free fantasy variation. Hence, the method, unlike an inductive empeiria, is not restricted to
anything factual but can begin with any freely chosen actual or possible
example.
(b) The method is in this sense strictly free from what actually exists at the
starting point and throughout the inquiry employing it. About this, Bachelard emphasized that even in the case where actuality is necessarily taken
as [the] starting point, it must be recognized that the necessity of this starting point should not aect the development of the process it initiates. The
necessity of the starting point is not perforce a necessity in principle
(Bachelard, 1968, p. 176).
(c) A third aspect of the freedom-from can now be mentioned. It was
pointed out that free fantasy variational method always has the sense of
free optionalness (Beliebigkeit). Although one is always free to start with
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any actual or possible example, and even to continue through many, indeed
to as many possible pertinent variations as one wishes, there is no need to do
so. Just as one is free to start anywhere, Husserl emphasized, one is also free
to break o an inquiry at any moment. This optionalness of free fantasy
signies a remarkable and extremely important consciousness of and so
forth according to option.
Thus, one is not only free to begin anywhere, and to move freely from
one to other variants, but, as Bachelard also noted, the methodical process
implies the consciousness of a fundamental potentiality, a consciousness
that one can continue without actually being obliged to do so (Bachelard,
p. 178)as distinct from the method of empirical generalization. It is just
because of this fundamental character of the act of viewing ideas (Husserl,
1954, p. 422) that one is able to ascertain what is under inquiry by means
of the method. As Husserl insisted:
. . . all the variants belonging to the openly innite spherewhich includes
the [initial] example, as optional and freed of all its factualnessstand in a
relationship of synthetic interrelatedness and integral connectedness; more
particularly, they stand in a continuous and all-inclusive synthesis of coincidence in conict. But, precisely with this coinciding, what necessarily persists throughout this free and always-repeatable variation comes to the fore:
the invariant, the indissolubly identical in all the dierent and ever-again different, the essence common to all, the universal essence by which all imaginable variants of the example, and all variants of any such variants, are
restricted. This invariant is the ontic essential form (apriori form), the eidos,
corresponding to the example, in the place of which any variant of the example could have served equally well (Husserl, 1954, p. 248).
(3) This passage makes prominent the methods third vital feature. Whatever may be the point of departure, and with respect to no matter which
problem, this shift of attention to view an individual aair as an example
is a sui generis change of orientation (Einstellung), thanks to which the eidos
[is brought] to the fore. In dierent terms, what is exemplied by the
individual aair (in principle by an indenite number of actual and possible examples) is that by virtue of which any freely chosen actual or possible example is what it is, or it is that without which it would not be what
it is. The attentional shift to the what is exempliedrealized thanks to
the free optionalness (the idealization, and so forth according to option
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[und so weiter]) belonging essentially to every variation manifold (Husserl, 1954, p. 413)is a specic and fundamental modication of the
natural attitude. It is an attentional focusing on the region of the eidetic,
an orientation that discloses a universe of conceivability (a pure all-ness),
in such a manner that the negation of any result is equivalent to an intuitable eidetic impossibility, an inconceivability . . . (Husserl, 1968, p. 249).
(4) Finally, it is necessary to point out that it is essential to any eidetic
sciencemathematics, geometry, eidetic phenomenology, for instance
that the method is itself an example of the method in question here. Reection on the method, Husserl contended, shows that it has universal
validity, is unconditionally necessary; and that the method can be followed no matter what conceivable object is taken as an initial example; and
that is the sense in which it is understood. Only in eidetic intuition can the
essence of eidetic intuition become claried (Husserl, 1968, p. 249).
Accordingly, any elucidation of the method is a key part of a theory of
method, that is, of methodology, and is therefore also a matter for phenomenological explication (which includes, as just emphasized, this phenomenological method itself ). Phenomenology is, therefore, that philosophical
discipline or orientation which persistently seeks to explicate and understand whatever underlies, is taken-for-granted, or is presupposed, so far as
possible. Its basic method, nally, is free-fantasy variation.
Universality of Eidetic Intuition
While the method was for Husserl fundamental to any eidetic science
whatever, free-fantasy variation is also found at play in many other types of
inquiry. At this point I only wish to note that although several times Husserl seemed to identify free-fantasy variational method with eidetic intuition (including the practice of eidetic phenomenology), elsewhere he
clearly noted that it pervades the whole phenomenological method (and
likewise, in the natural realm, the method of a genuine and pure internal
psychology) (Husserl, 1960, p. 69).
Still, discussions of the method are rarely clear about this point. It was
already noted that, in Bachelards commentary, free-fantasy variational
method is as she alleges parallel to mathematical idealization, and she
even claims that phenomenology has its very source in mathematics.
Although she denies that she has claimed to reduce phenomenological
thinking to these mathematical antecedents (Bachelard, p. 180), and
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notes Husserls claim that phenomenological philosophy is a genus of

investigation that in a certain sense gives to them all a new dimension, she
nevertheless lays considerable stress on the alleged parallel.
That Husserl was himself an accomplished mathematician may doubtless give some credibility to such a view. The same may be said about his
painstaking manner of philosophizing or his life-long concern for probing
the foundations of logical and mathematical cognitiona direction that
may be as much a source of derision for present-day postmodernists as
Husserl suspected his emphasis on Fiktion would provoke among the naturalists of his time.
However attractive it may seem, the methods of logic and mathematics
must be understood strictly as examples freely chosen (beliebig) from among
many other actual and possible examples, and designed to clarify the
method of free-fantasy variation. To start from the example of the geometer it which, Bachelard asserts, occurs ex abrupto in 70 of Ideas I (Bachelard, p. 174)in no sense justies her interpretation. In any event, she
herself retreats from this very point only a few pages later.
Fertilizing Fantasy
In that crucial section 70 of Ideas I are found a number of highly signicant points for understanding the distinctive features and character of freefantasy variation. It is to them I want now to turn in order to elicit the
crucial dimensions of the method, and at the same time hopefully to correct any misunderstandings of Husserls seminal discovery.
For Husserl, eidetic research also necessarily demands operating in fantasy (Husserl, 1982, p. 159). Its function is not to validate (to establish
truth or falsity), but strictly to clarify eidetic aairs. It serves in other words
strictly to elucidate the essentially possible, impossible, and what is in principle actualizable or inactualizable; it is in this sense the method of formal
ontology, which is the fundamental sense of what Husserl means when he
characterizes phenomenology as critical and self-critical.
Bachelard noted that, to be precise, if we treat [any individual datum]
as an example and not as an actual datum considered for its own sake, the
individual loses its noxiousness [i.e. factuality] and enables the exercising
of the fantasy through which perfect clarication is attained (Bachelard,
p. 177). For this task of clarication, it is necessary not only to exercise
ones fantasy abundantly in the required activity of perfect clarication,
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but, before doing that, in Husserls words, one must fertilize ones fantasy by observations in originary intuitions that are as abundant and excellent as possible (Husserl, 1982, pp. 15960).
It is intriguing to cite more fully the highly suggestive passage alluded to
above, where Husserl suggests in what this fertilization consists:
Extraordinary prot can be drawn from the oerings of history, in even more
abundant measure from those of art, and especially from poetry, which are, to
be sure, imaginary but which, in the originality of their invention of forms
[Neugestaltungen], the abundance of their single features and the unbrokenness of their motivation, tower high above the products of our own fantasy
and, in addition, when they are apprehended understandingly, become converted into perfectly clear fantasies with particular ease owing to the suggestive power exerted by artistic means of presentation. Thus, if one is fond of
paradoxical phrasesone can say in strict truth, that feigning makes up the
vital element of phenomenology as of every other eidetic science, that feigning is
the source from which the cognition of eternal truths is fed (Husserl, 1982,
p. 160).
Despite the only apparent parallels between free fantasy and mathematical idealization, this remarkable passage makes it quite evident that it
would be seriously misleading to draw that parallel so closely as to make
Husserls method little more than an analog of mathematical technique.
Precisely this point was emphasized by Husserl when he reected on the
pure eidetic description sketched in Ideas I:
Here we have one dierence (though not the only one) between the whole
manner of this new apriori science and that of the mathematical disciplines.
[The latter] are deductive sciences, and that means that in their scientically
theoretical mode of development mediate deductive knowledge plays an
incomparably greater part than the immediate axiomatic knowledge upon
which all the deductions are based. An innitude of deductions rests on a very
few axioms. But in the transcendental sphere we have an innitude of knowledge previous to all deduction, knowledge whose mediated connnexions
(those of intentional implication) have nothing to do with deduction, and
being entirely intuitive prove refractory to every methodically devised scheme
of constructive symbolism. (Husserl, 1962, p. 6)
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This new apriori science inquires into the invariant, essentially characteristic structures of a soul, of a psychic life in general. Its way or method
is the systematic, reective consideration and elucidation of every actual
and possible aair taken as an example of some kind or sort, whose progressive clarication eventually enables eidetic judgments. In this sense,
free-fantasy variation is a matter of ction in one of its specic forms.
The Fundamental Methodological Insight
Husserl was unequivocal about in what sense the method of eidetic description constitutes the fundamental methodological insight (Husserl,
1960, p. 69), for in his words, it signies a transfer of all empirical descriptions into a new and fundamental dimension (Husserl, 1960, p. 69).
Starting from no matter which example, the phenomenologist proceeds to
vary it with a completely free optionalness (Husserl, 1960, p. 70), making sure that the example continues to be an example of the kind or sort
under investigation (perception or memory, physical thing or dream object,
or whatever it may be). Husserls example is from perception:
Abstaining from acceptance of its being, we change the fact of this perception
into a pure possibility, one among quite optional pure possibilitiesbut
possibilities that are possible perceptions. We, so to speak, shift the actual
perception into the realm of non-actualities, the realm of the as-if, which supplies us with pure possibilities, pure of everything that restricts to this fact
or to any fact whatever. As regards the latter point, we keep the aforesaid possibilities, not as restricted even to the co-posited de facto ego, but just as a
completely free imaginableness of fantasy. Accordingly from the very start
we might have taken as our initial example a fantasizing [sic] ourselves into a
perceiving, with no relation to the rest of our de facto life. Perception, the
universal type thus acquired, oats in the air, so to speakin the atmosphere
of pure fantasiableness [sic]. Thus removed from all factualness, it has become
the pure eidos perception, whose ideal extension is made up of all ideally
possible perceptions as purely fantasiable [sic] processes. (Husserl, 1960, p. 70)
Because every fact can be thought of merely as exemplifying a pure possibility,

everything formable in free-fantasy variation holds with absolute essential
universality, and with essential necessity for every particular case selected . . .
(Husserl, 1960, p. 71).
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The Fundamental Form of Transcendental Method

Finally, together with phenomenological reduction and epoch, this method
is the fundamental form of all particular transcendental methods (Husserl,
1960, p. 72) and determines thereby the basic sense and direction of all
transcendental phenomenological inquiries. To understand Husserls point
here, I suggest, it is necessary to begin moving into phenomena which did
not directly fall within his range of concerns.
To fantasize or work within the realm of as-if experience is precisely
not to be restricted to the region of facts, the realm of the empeiria. Rather,
one is free to focus on any individualactual or possible, and whether it is
something actualizable but not actualized, or merely possible and inactualizable. More particularly, thanks to that suitable and freely possible
alteration of ones attitude, any individual aair may be taken strictly as
an example of some kindin order to clarify that kind itself. Taking some
aair as an example is accordingly to consider it, not for its own sake
but rather as exemplifying some kind or sort which, while other than
the individual itself, is made salient strictly through the act of apprehending the individual-now-considered-as-an-example. In this sense, whichever kind may be exemplied, the example serves not only as an
exemplication but at the same time as the way, the method or the mode
of access to whatever is exemplied. The kind that is exemplied is experienced by means of the individual which exemplies; the latter thus constitutes, in Husserls own language, the mode of givenness (Gegebenheitsweis)
for the former.
Unfortunately Husserl did not carefully distinguish between several
types of awareness: rst, between imagining and possibilizing, and second, between possibilizing and exampling. Only the latter pair is of
immediate interest in the inquiry into free-fantasy variation. First, though,
a brief excursus into Dorion Cairns (1972) discussion of the main types of
awareness will be helpful.
Cairns Distinctions Among Types of Awareness
I have just suggested that the consciousness or awareness of what is exemplied requires the presentation of some exemplifying individuals in order
to be experienced and subsequently known and judged about. The eidos or
kind, in these terms, is presented only through or by way of the presentation
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of individual examples. Thus, the consciousness of the kind is not itself

strictly presentive. Nevertheless, it is not to be confused with either a nonpresentive consciousness of something (e.g., symbolizing something), or a
representive consciousness of something (e.g., depicting something).
Cairns (1972) has given a general delineation of four modes of awareness: perceiving, remembering, image-awareness, and feigning-awareness.
First, note that perceiving and remembering are presentive, in the specic
sense; they are similar in that each is a more or less clear awareness of something as presented, as given, so to speak, in person, that is, as simultaneous with the awareness. And in this they dier from any completely obscure
awareness of somethingas, for example, merely appresented or merely
represented. But a perceiving diers from a primary memorial awareness or
a rememberingwhich is an awareness of something as presented in an
earlier perceiving.
Distinct from both presented and the appresented or merely represented
is what Cairns terms image-awareness. A more complex kind of awareness,
at the very least image-awareness includes both a presentive awareness
(whether perceptual or memorial) and, founded on that, a non-presentive
awareness of something else as depicted by and, in this specic manner,
represented by the presented aair. An example would be the (non-presentive) awareness of a friend as depicted by a photograph, of whose physical
properties (e.g., whether printed on matte or glossy paper, in black-andwhite or color, etc.) one has a presentive, specically a sense-perceptual,
and even more specically a visual, awareness.
Each kind of awareness (whether presentive or non-presentive) exhibits
its own specic complexities and strata, but each of them is essentially a
serious or straightforward awareness of some state-of-aairs. Both the
presentive and the non-presentive are non-feigning, but each has as its
counterpart a genus or species of feigning awareness (Cairns, 1972a,
p. 260). Thus, I may actually (seriously, straightforwardly) see my cat,
Wally; actually remember seeing Wally, or actually perceive (or remember
perceiving) some physical item (say, a photograph) that represents (= depicts)
him. In contrast to such straightforward awareness, I may feign (play
like or as if I were) perceiving Wally (an as-if perception, in Husserls
phrase), as I may also feign remembering perceiving him, or feign seeing (or feign remembering seeing) a photograph I took of him. Commenting on this usage of feigning, Cairns explains:
42
In everyday discourse I should say that I was imagining a cat. But for purposes
of accurate description and discrimination among kinds of awareness, this
manner of speaking will hardly do. (For precisely this reason, it will be necessary to nd dierent terms to characterize the awareness of something taken
as an example as well as what may turn out to be the root condition of
possibility for feigning awareness itself.) What went on in my mental life
was a feigning awareness of a cat as itself presented, a quasi-perceiving of a real
individual cat in person. I was not seeing something else and taking it to be an
image of a cat; nor was I quasi-seeing something else and taking it to be an
image of a cat. In short, this was not a case of image-awareness of any sort. My
cat-awareness was no more and no less complex that a non-feigning cat perceiving. Structurally it was, in fact, the precise counterpart of unfeigningly
perceiving a cat; it was a modication, not a complication, of seriously perceiving a cat. (Cairns, 1972a, p. 257)
Feigning
Feigning-awareness (Cairns)or, fantasy-modication, as-if experience, or experience in fantasy (Husserl)is a modication of some serious awareness. Just as I can seriously (straightforwardly, actually) perceive
(or remember perceiving) Wally, my cat, so I can have an as-if (feigned)
perceptual experience of him. Moreover, I am not restricted to visual perception in such cases, for I can also enact an as-if perceptual experience of
Wally in one or another manner (tactual, auditory, and the like). (Nor are
we restricted to sensory perception, for the same holds as well for experiences such as liking, wishing-for, etc., as for detesting, believing as worthless and the likealthough, to repeat, there are multiple distinctions that
cannot be pursued in this place.)
Thus, feigning or as-if awareness is not a kind of imagining in a strict
sense, since it is not a representive (or depictive) awareness of the cat. On
the other hand, neither is it a remembering or a perceiving of the cat. Not
an awareness of an actual individual (as perceived or recollected)that is,
it is neither representive nor presentivefeigning is instead an awareness of
a possible individual (Husserl, 1969, p. 206).
To say, then, that as-if experience is a modication of some straightforward awareness of my cat, is to say that this awareness is complex, with at
least two crucial components. (1) In feigning, the object of the awareness
is not experienced (or posited) as actually existent in the world; the object
is not individuated and causally interrelated with other worldly things
43
(whether posited as present, past, future, symbolized or represented by

something present, past, or future). Moreover, it is to say that, as strictly
correlative to its object, (2) the awareness is also modied (from, say, actual
seeing to as-if seeing).
If a straightforward awareness may be said, with Husserl, to involve a
more or less explicit or implicit positing of (Positionalitt) or believingin its particular object as actually existing in one or another modality
of beliefactually existent, probably existent, or even not existentthen
feigning is a similarly lived process of awareness [Bewusstseinserlebnis]
whose sense is that it modies that modality (basically, from actual to asif ). What Husserl terms the doxo-thetic positionality of the Erlebnis is
modied.
This is not to say that feigning does not posit (believe in) its object. It is
rather to say that feigning is a positing of its feigned object as possible; it is
believed-in not as actually existent (really, probably, etc.) but as possibly
existent. In dierent terms, the positing is a quasi-positing, or it is an
as-if positing. The modication brought about by feigning, then, is a neutralization (Husserl) of some actual positional modality.
Feigning involves a specic shift of attention, one that is essentially possible as regards any mode of straightforward awareness. The method of
free-fantasy variation is not, therefore, restricted to the region of actualities
(facts), but is rather free to make use of any possible individual. Feigning
is thus a kind of positional experience of a possible individual (Husserl,
1969, p. 206), for Husserl. Consistent with this, as I see it, feigning is the
ground, the basis, for free-fantasy variation. To understand this method of
eidetic inquiry, it is accordingly necessary to elucidate the sense of that shift
of attention.
Complexity of Feigning: Exampling and Possibilizing
It is important to recognize that there is more than one shift of attention at
play here. By taking any individual as an example, whatever and whichever
it may be, the method allows attending to individuals as possible. Therefore, there is a shift of attention that is specically dierent from feigning
in a strict or narrow sense.
I may feign perceiving a cat. As Cairns noted, this is structurally no more
complex than seriously or unfeigningly perceiving a cat. Feigning is not
an image-awareness. But attending to an as-if cat as such (the correlate of
44
the feigning awareness), the feigned cat is no more thereby considered or

attended to as an example than is the seriously perceived cat. This is even
more apparent if we consider that I may very well focus on either an actual
or a possible cat simply for its own sake (and do this in very dierent
ways: for example, likingly, believingly, expectantly, etc.). On the other
hand, as Bachelard pointed out, the individual taken as an example as such
is never considered for its own sake, in its individuality (Bachelard, 1968,
p. 176), whether it be an actual or a possible one. In short, an awareness of
something as an example must be carefully distinguished from either a
straightforward or a feigning awareness of it for its own sake.
There are thus at least two methodical shifts of attention and orientation
which must be elucidated in order to determine the characteristics and
grounds of free-fantasy variation. It will also be important to determine
precisely how these two attentional shifts are related to one another
whether, for instance, they are but two aspects of the same shift or two
dierent shifts, and whether they are grounded in some other kind of
experience or shift. (Note, too, at this very point how using examples
comes into play without in the least invoking feigninga feature of
method that must itself come under investigation as I proceed.)
To determine precisely where these phenomena stand, it will be necessary to proceed methodically. First, since the shift of attention that takes
something as an example is evidently more pervasive and basic (it can be
engaged whether one feigns or not), this step will require more detailed
focus. Doing this will, second, facilitate the descriptive explication of
feigning more properly and strictlyas well as in which specic ways
the shifts are connected and what implications there may be for other
phenomena.
Exemplication
Delineating Feigning From Exampling
The method of free-fantasy variation serves strictly to clarify eidetic states
of aairs; hence, evidence pertaining to them provides clarication and, as
was already noted, neither verication nor validation. Clarication pertains
to the region of the possible: the essentially possible, impossible, actualizable, and inactualizable. Husserls stress on the necessity to fertilize our
45
fantasies by abundant and excellent observations in originary intuitions is,

accordingly, neither opaque nor odd.
Quite in general, it may be observed that developing and cultivating
such abilities as are required for rigorous feigning in phenomenological
reection is crucial and necessary for cultivating the work of intelligence in
other domains. Equivalently, cognizing such states of aairs as required
here requires quite as much practice as does, say, learning to play a musical
instrument or understanding a new language. Moreover, Husserls otherwise dense statements about the matter need to be claried: feigning is
the vital element of every eidetic science, including phenomenology, and is
the source of the cognition of eternal truths.
For reasons that have already been indicated, however, a kind of opacity
to some extent still remains. Fantasizing or feigning does indeed open
up the region of the possible. Its exercise, however, takes for granted that
other central shift of attention already notedtaking any individual as an
example, exemplifying. Thus, to focus on feigning does not focus on nor
does it elucidate exemplication.
Furthermore, even an initial distinguishing between feigning and exemplifying makes it evident that in various passages Husserl confused imageawareness with feigning awareness, or at least did not suciently analyze
these to permit their distinction (as Cairns has, on the other hand). In fact,
since anything whateveractual or possiblemay be (indeed, often is)
considered as exemplifying, it appears that what I will formally term the
exemplicative shift (and subsequent methodical orientation correlated
with it) is more fundamental than, and is taken for granted by, the feigning shift (and its subsequent methodical orientation).
It seems already clear at this point that exemplifying is precisely what
makes feigning possible. Nevertheless, at the present point it is only a
hunch that this pervasive and not well explicated phenomenontaking
something as an exampleconstitutes the basic clue to delineating and
understanding the phenomena examined thus far.
Bachelard provided something of a clue. If we are precise, and
. . . if we treat [any particular individual] as an example and not as an actual
datum considered for its own sake, the individual loses its noxiousness [factuality] and enables the exercising of the phantasy [sic] through which perfect
clarication is attained (Bachelard, 1968, p. 177; emphasis added).
46
The crucial question, accordingly, is this: what is it, to take something as

example? While Bachelard strikes me as having moved in the right direction, she does not take up the key question: how does treating any particular individual as an example enable the exercise of the fantasy, hence of
free-fantasy variation? These specic issues must now be taken up.
Pervasiveness of Exampling
If we focus on actual or possible individual aairs as examples, it becomes
obvious how pervasive it is in every aspect of human life. Literally anything
can be considered as an example, from trivial to weighty matters. But this
must include, obviously and importantly, my own current considering
itself, since for me to focus on the exemplicative shift requires making use
of that very kind of considering, that is, taking something as an example.
If I therefore wish to explicate and understand taking something as an
examplemore simply, examplingthere is nothing for it but to choose
freely or arbitrarily some examples of taking something as an example.
(This peculiarity will be taken up at a later point.)
Merely to indicate its signicance: beyond its pervasiveness, the exemplicative shift lies at the root of such central phenomena as concept (as
Husserl, 1960, p. 71 also noted) and conceptualizing, category and
categorization, universal and universalization, general and generalization, form and formalization, idea and idealization, and even
such rudimentary phenomena as particular and particularization, as
well as individual and individualization. Exemplication is essential to
each of these, as it is also to the modes of awareness or experience through
or by means of which they are at all presented. Without exemplication,
attending to these objectivities (noemata) or paying attention to their correlative processes of awareness (noeses) would not be possible.
It is also evident that exemplication is one of the basic clues to understanding the objectivity of objects, hence the worldliness of the world
(mundaneity). Doubtless, too, it will be found to be at the heart of many
fundamental issues in the history of philosophyfrom the One and the
Many of the early Greeks, Platos Form/Particular distinction, to such matters as the meanings of a posteriori and a priori, logical induction, scientic generalization, medical diagnosis and a host of other methodological
and epistemological matters. Obviously, a phenomenon having such pervasive and profound range and depths cannot be treated fully in a few
47
pages. The attempt to focus on the phenomenon itself, however, may be

fruitful in opening up some lines of inquiry into such other matters as
appear essential on even such a cursory review.
The Exemplicative Shift
Several features of the exemplicative shift have already been elicited.
(1) As noted, anything whatever can be considered (taken up, viewed,
apprehended, attended to) in either of at least two ways. Thus, I am able
to view something just for its own sake, and may do so in whatever way
and in whichever context of concern it may be, simply by preoccupying
myself with it itself in its own individuality or uniqueness. For example,
I may focus on a physical thing (hammer) or on any of its qualities (weight,
function, etc.), a geometrical expression ([a2 + b2] = c2), a musical composition or any of its particular parts or notes (the opening refrain of a song),
an imaginary creature (a ogre or a character in a novel), a past event (the
day I taught my rst class), a universal (that every visual seeing is adumbrational or one-sided), a patient hospitalized from an injury or illness, or
any other aair just for its own sake.
I may consider any of these, or other individual aairs, moreover, in
dierent ways: for example, liking the color of a wine, cognitively working
out a geometrical expression, recalling and feeling moved by the memory
of some student in my rst class, and so on. Furthermore, each of these
ways of experiencing (in a maximally broad sense of the term2) such aairs
may also be considered each for its own sake: the liking, the cognizing, the
recalling, and the like. Whatever may be needed to enable such exampling,
as well as considering what is thereby experienced as also exemplifying, it
is clear that I can do so and that we all in fact do so throughout our lives.
I may also, secondly, at any time shift my attention away from the individual aair for its own sake and consider it now as an example. This shift
is an act in Husserls strict sense (Ich-Akt; Husserl, 1982, 80). It is something which I do, just as the awareness of the thing-as-example is my awareness; each is an awareness by means of which I actively engage something
or other, and do so in the specic manner under examination here.
2)
For which Husserl uses Erfahrung and its cognates, reserving Erlebnis and its cognates for
intentive experiences in the narrower sense (and often translated as life-process or lived
experience).
48
I shift my attention, for whatever reason, even though my attentional

shift may be, and most frequently is in daily life, something I do without
particularly noticing it. Indeed, among the interesting features of this
phenomenon, as with everyday life more generally, is that no particular
notice is required. Furthermore, taking the individual aair as an example,
this individual aair is thereby considered as exemplifying. As such, I am
now oriented toward, or my attention or focus is now directed to, what is
exemplied in, by or through the example (or examples). The individual
aair is still held in view, it is clear, though no longer for its own sake but
rather as the vehicle, so to speak, of the now dierent awareness of the kind
exemplied.
To be sure, in the usual course of my life, I can hardly be said to be fully
or explicitly aware of what is exemplied as such (and even less explicitly
aware of the exemplifying of it as such). Indeed, even if I do become more
attentive to these matters, I am often unable to say very much about the
exemplied-exemplifying complex itselfexcept perhaps that what is
exemplied is this or that sort or type of thing whose specic features
may be more or less obscure to me, or that I was doing math or remembering what my wifes father said to me on our wedding day.
Still, I may become thus attentive, and if I do I have before me (as
noema) a complex objectivity: no longer merely the individual thing or
things (the math formula, my father-in-laws words), but the complex
objectivity: thing-as-exemplifying/what-is-exemplied (the slash-mark is
intended to convey the sense of the complexity at issue here). Moreover,
I may now go on to note that whatever the latter component of the complex may bewhat is exemplied as suchit is never presented to me all
by itself but rather always along with (because it is presented essentially by
means of ) its exemplication(s). Further, although that complex objectivity is inherent to each awareness of it, one of its central characteristics is
that the complexity may be simply taken for granted in the course of my
paying attention to one or the other of its components.
To use Husserls terms, the mode of givenness (Gegebenheitsweise) specic
to what is exemplied (that is, the way or manner by which it is presented, and thanks to which I am at all aware of it) is precisely the exemplifying aair or aairs: the sort or kind is presented through or by
means of the example. Similarly, the consciousness of some sort or kind is
grounded on and presented by the consciousness of some exemplifying
49
individual as such. Although I may also focus on and consider what is

exemplied as itself also an example (of whatever sort it may be, and even
if the process itself can be iterated endlessly), it maintains its complexity
throughout: one aair is apprehended as exemplifying and by means of it
another is apprehended as exemplied. Indeed, even my taking this or that
example of exampling shows the same complexity, and thanks to this that
I am then able to say anything about its mode of givenness.
Every such shift of attention is rst of all an ego-activity (Ich-akt) that
focuses (or objectivates) a complex object (or, in Husserls term, noematic-objective sense). The shift is deliberate and attentive, thus the
consequent attentional focusing is a thematizing of the complex: individual-as-exemplifying/kind-as-exemplied, whether the latter is grasped with
clarity or only relatively obscurely. (Here I diverge slightly from Cairns, in
that, as I shall point out in a moment, the kind must be relatively obscure
when only a single example is being considered: it progressively becomes
claried only through the process of free-fantasy variation.)
(2) I can now notice a second feature of this attentional shift. I may shift
my attention in the manner indicated: that is, I am free at any time to do
so. As Husserl emphasizes (Husserl, 1969, p. 247.), in other words, this
act of taking something as an example carries with it the awareness of the
aairs having been freely chosen [beliebig]: each awareness of a complex
example/kind exemplied includes an awareness that I could have taken
something else as an example. This being-able or being-free to take this
or that as an example will be seen to have certain limitsbasically, limits
dened by what is of interest at the time, what occasioned the shift of
attention within the specic circumstances, along with the restrictions
imposed by which specic kind I am interested inthat is, by what set o
the inquiry in the rst place. But for the moment, it is important to look
more closely at this free optionalness [Beliebigkeit].
(3) Whatever may be my particular interest at the moment, and whatever it may be that occasioned my interest, the attentional shift (and resulting orientation) to the complex, exemplifying/exemplied, reveals two
crucial senses of being-free.
In the rst place, the attentional shift is a shifting-away-from and in
that specic sense is a freeing-from attending to the individual aair for
its own sake. This shift of attentional focus, thus, has the sense of a beingreleased-from, it is a sort of deliverance from the region of particularity or
50
individuality (whether actual or possible). This characteristic will occupy

me at greater length later, for it gives every sign of being a critical moment,
perhaps one that makes everything else possible. For now, I want to continue this survey of the terrain, attending to its geography, so to speak,
leaving its archeology for later.
A second sense of being-free is also evident. As Husserl expresses
it, the optionalness (Beliebigkeit) in question signies a remarkable and
extremely important consciousness of and so forth according to option
(Husserl, 1954, p. 413). Not only may anything whatever be taken as an
example, but also the performance of this attentional shift signies that
I am thereby simultaneously enabled to go on considering other individuals as
examples and to do so as long as I want. I can but need not go on and on.
I can freely focus on and consider all sorts of examples.
This can signies, in Bachelards words, the consciousness of a fundamental potentiality, a consciousness that one can continue without actually being obliged to do so (Bachelard, 1968, p. 178). So to speak, the
rst act of considering anything as an example initiates the possibility of
doing it again and again; the rst shift opens up the possibility of subsequent attentional shifts.
What is then inaugurated and opened upthe openly innite sphere
of possible variations whose inspection forms a principal task of phenomenologyis not of immediate concern here. It is necessary to keep focus
on the attentional shift itself.
Exemplicative Awareness
Because this specic mode of awareness seems suciently dierent from
those analyzed by Cairns (perceiving, remembering, image-awareness,
feigningalthough its relationships to the latter (feigning) have yet to be
elicited and determined), I propose, following his analysis, to term it exemplicative awareness (consistent with presentive and non-presentive). To
be sure, it is similar to perceiving, in that it is in a sense presentive. The
what-is-exemplied is indeed itself presented but the presentedness is far
more complex, for the what-is-exemplied is presented strictly in, by or
through a range of examples, which are themselves also presented, albeit
dierently from what is exemplied.
51
This attending to the what-is-exemplied is an attending to some (and

potentially an indenite number of ) individuals as exemplications of
what-is-exemplied. But the examples do not stand to the exemplied in
the way that, say, the perspectival adumbrations (Abschattungen) of a perceived thing stand to the thing as perceived. I see a chair, for example, now
from this side, now from that side, and so on; perceptions of this type
are adumbrational: the chair is perceptually apprehended through or by
means of each and every such adumbration. Clearly, examples are not perspectival adumbrations of the exemplied kind; correlatively, the perspectival adumbrations of a chair are not examples of the chair. Accordingly,
even though in order to take an actual physical thing as an example I must
perceive or in some sense be aware of it in ways proper to it, my shift of
attention in the case of exemplication is precisely a shifting away from
perceptual to exemplicative attentiveness.
There are, Husserl and Cairns both point out, other types of presentive
awareness. Conceived as a clear awareness of something as presented
simultaneously with this clear awareness (in other words, a now-awareness
of something itself, in person [leiblich]) (Cairns, 1972a, p. 257), reection, for example, is in this sense a presentive consciousness of some particular aair as such. Exemplicative awareness, however (supposing it for
the moment to be clear and not obscure, with the qualication mentioned
above), while in a sense presentive, nevertheless involves several complications. The what-is-exemplied is present, not for its own sake or alone,
but rather solely by way of something else, namely its exemplicationsand
not merely through one but every possible one. Indeed, the what-is-exemplied may not be fully revealed in or by any one exemplicationnor can
it be, as will become more evident shortly. What-is-exemplied is in a sense
presented simultaneously with this clear awareness; however, due to the
fact that every individual (potentially) exemplies many kinds, it is only
certain aspects (or, facets) of an individual that exemplies a specic kind.
Moreover, depending on which individual facets are thematized, that may
well mean that it is not one such awareness but an indenite number of them
that is required in order to bring the what-is-exemplied to full consciousness, presentedness, or awareness. As Husserl noted many times, apprehending an essence or eidos requires what he termed a coincidence in
conict among many variants. The One, the common, stands out from
52
but also by means of the Many. In any case, this characteristic suggests why
it is, as Husserl repeatedly emphasized, that judgments about kinds must
essentially be open to error and, therefore, to continual criticism.
Similarly, while exemplicative awareness is in a way similar to symbolic
awareness (a mode of appresentive awareness)in that it always involves a
complex of noetic and noematic stratait is signicantly dierent. Whatever serves as the symbol stands for something else that is not itself present
but is rather, specically, symbolizedi.e., is appresented (Husserl, 1960,
4954). The aair-as-example, however, does not stand for something
else not itself presented; the exemplied as such is rather presented in, by
or through its examples, and thus is neither a matter of symbolic awareness
of any sort, nor of appresentive awareness in general.
While in a sense presentive, then, exemplicative awareness displays a
sui generis structure. It is specically complex, involving an awareness of
at least one individual aair as that through which some kind or other
is exemplied. The exemplifying individual presents only partially, as it
wereor, it may be, is a faceted or, perhaps better, it is an aspectual
presentationin that only certain aspects of the individual aair serve to
exemplify the exemplied, but at the same time the kind itself is itself presented (well or poorly) thereby. Not every aspect of an individual exemplies the same kind. For just that reason, each individual aair as a whole is
capable of exemplifying any number of dierent kindshence the necessity, in Husserls phrase, to run through some number of examples in
order to make the exemplied stand out clearly and thus be focally apprehended and eventually enable judgments to be made about it.
By freely varying the examples, the exemplied comes to the fore for
exemplicative awareness precisely as the common, the invariant. It is
helpful to recall Husserls words, in the important passage cited before:
all the variants belonging to the openly innite spherewhich includes the
[initial] example, as optional and freed of all its factualnessstand in a
relationship of synthetic interrelatedness and integral connectedness; more
particularly, they stand in a continuous and all-inclusive synthesis of coincidence in conict. But, precisely with his coinciding, what necessarily persists
throughout this free and always-repeatable variation comes to the fore: the
invariant, the indissolubly identical in all the dierent and ever-again dierent, the essence common to all, the universal essence by which all imagin-
53
able variants of the example, and all variants of any such variants, are
restricted. (Husserl, 1969, p. 248)
Noetically, the exemplicative awareness is thus a synthetic process, that is,

the awareness ranges over many (in principle, an indenite number of )
examples, each of them individual aairs considered as exemplifying and
throughout the process retained as such. Every such awareness is an awareness of certain facets or aspects of an individual aair that are apprehended
as exemplifying the exemplied (the invariant standing out in a synthesis
of coincidence in conict).
With not simply one but an openly innite sphere of variants, each of
which is complex (exemplifying-exemplied), exemplicative awareness is
thereby an awareness of a specic sort of coincidence in conictthat is,
of aspects of something invariantly appearing and persisting throughout
the variational process. It is precisely this aspectual invariance persisting
throughout the synthetic process which, as a coinciding of aspects apprehended through one, then another, and another, example, and so on indefinitely, comes to stand out saliently as the common or the invariant.
This aspected common, if I may so term it, then, is the initial presentation of essence, the eidos that is apprehended by means of free-fantasy variation. The eidos thus apprehended is, as it were, that without which the
exemplications would not be what they are (in other words: that by
virtue of which examples, through certain aspects, at all present or function as the presentation of some kind). Equivalently, the presented common (or invariant) is that by virtue of which the exemplications are
what they are. Hence, exemplicative awareness is the foundation of that
synthetic process. Understood as the apprehension of that aspectual invariance itself, of the common through all variations, eidetic intuition is
distinct from, but is founded on and necessarily involves exemplicative awareness.3
3)
It should be noted, however, that a more complete descriptive explication of such individuals would need to account as well for the fact that while some facets exemplify a particular kind, other facets do not; they are ignored so far as the point is to attend to the
exemplied kindbut do not for that reason simply drop out of existence. Indeed, they
continue to be presented, but now as not pertinent to the task at hand.
54
Reective Apprehension
An individual aair is experienced not merely in its particularity, as having
individual parts and standing in individual relations to other individual
things. It itself is also experienced and, in Cairns words, may be explicitly
seized upon as an individual (an instance of that category), as an instance
of a specic sort of individuals, as having parts specic sorts, etc. (Cairns,
1972b, p. 232).
Such categories and specic sorts may themselves be directly attended
to by means of or through the specic aspects of the exemplifying aair,
and grasped as such. On the basis, then, of a clear presentedness of such a
kind, one is then able to form clear and cogent judgments about individuals as exemplifying this or that sort, or as falling within or under this or
that category. Furthermore, on the basis of clearly apprehending the category, concept, or specic sort, such kinds themselves then can be cognitively and judgmentally distinguished, identied, or otherwise considered
and examined.
Cairns points out, however, that such straightforward seizing upon,
observing, and judging about generic and specic things that are themselves given are not, however, Husserlian phenomenological activities
(Cairns, 1972b, p. 232). For example:
The Husserlian phenomenologist as such observes and describes color in general as intended to, as seized upon, in its manner of being given, etc., not
color in general simpliciter. And, correlatively, he describes the mental processes in which color in general is variously intended to, seized upon, judged
about, etc. He observes that the generic and specic pure essences instanced
[apparently, instance and example are used synonymously; perhaps further inquiry may result in the necessity to distinguish between them] by individuals straightforwardly intended to are, in a strict sense, themselves given;
he describes the manner of their straightforward givenness, and the straightforward method of seizing upon them and judging with evidence about them.
But he himself, qua Husserlian phenomenologist, practices the observation of
only such generic and specic pure essences as are instanced by reectively
given individuals, i.e., by his own mental processes and their intentional
objects. (Cairns, 1972b, p. 232)
These considerations help to clarify the systematic place of my present study,

at least as thus far carried out. In particular, although I have been doing or
55
practicing phenomenological observing, describing, judging and, of course,

writingand have thus been reexively concerned with taking something
as an exampleI have not been concerned to delineate anything about
this phenomenological-reective practice and its disengagements. I have
not been straightforwardly grasping and judging about generic and specic
kinds simpliciter, but have been attempting to describe the ways in which
they (that is, the examples of taking something as an example) are given
straightforwardly, and the equally straightforward ways in which they are
seized upon, judged about, and eventually put into written form.
I have also gone on to try and describe some of the salient features of
these awarenesses themselves (for example, attentional shifting and its
complex disengagements) and their dierences from other awarenesses
and their objective correlates (for example, presentive, representive, appresentive and, now, exemplicative awarenesses). I have been concerned, more
generally, with describing that crucial shift of attention inherent to takingas-an-example, but have not yet been focused on or concerned with the
specically reexive shift of attention characteristic of phenomenological
attending to something.
Obviously, I could proceed to so concern myself; but that is not my
specic program at this point. I am, rather, still interested in the phenomenon mentioned, for it has still not been suciently displayed to enable
me to be fully clear about what was strongly indicated at the end of the last
section, namely that exemplicative awareness appears to be the foundation
for free-fantasy variation. That suggestion will have to be probed (and,
hopefully, grounded), but to do so will require additional probing.
In any event, it already seems apparent that most of us (it is unclear
whether or not mentally retarded persons exemplify, though it may be that
many of them cannot possibilize) actively grasp individuals as well as generic
and specic pure essencesif only naively, that is, without paying express
attention to what it is one is doing, and more particularly without noticing
that these individual aairs and their exemplied kinds, categories, or
essences are intended-to as such. That noticing involves a further shift of
attention that has not yet been focused upon. Still, as Cairns points out,
as a naive method it [i.e. the grasping of essences] has been practiced by
everyone. To paraphrase Lockes aphorism: God has not been so sparing to
men to make them barely able to seize upon individuals and left it to Husserl
to make them able to seize upon pure essences. It should be emphasized that,
56
according to the Husserlian phenomenologist, reection and the observing of

pure essences are not his prerogatives but the de facto practices of even the
narrowest empiricist. (Cairns, 1972b, p. 233)
Before explicating that phenomenological shift, before seeking to focus on

and ground the method of free-fantasy variation, it will be necessary rst
to look into some further features of exemplicative awareness. Second, the
shift of attention evidently at work in feigning awareness needs to be more
fully explicated. Finally, it will then be possible to make certain observations about the interrelationships between exemplication and feigning,
and, later, to turn to feigning and free-fantasy variation themselves.
The Drama of Possibilizing

Daily Life
It is time now to consider what makes it possible to take something as an
example. What is necessary for that shift of attention to occur, from considering something for its own sake, to considering it as exemplifying
something else? If, as was indicated earlier, this shift is a freeing-from the
one and thus is a release or disengagement from the region of particularitythe awareness of an actual or possible individual this as suchthe
question can be rephrased. How is it possible to become released- or freedfrom the awareness of a particular and thus free-for apprehending it no
longer for its own sake but now precisely as exemplifying some kind
(whether this be understood as concept, category, or essence)?
This way of putting the question, however, immediately brings out
something quite dierent: exemplicative awareness, in the specic (and
still somewhat unclear) sense disclosed thus far, presupposes an awareness
of some particular aair as such, that is, for its own sake. Yet, as was hinted
at earlier, the course of our usual lives is for the most part a preoccupation
with various particular things in the world, with various people and objects
(in the broadest sense) with respect to which I, you, we, them, etc., have
one or another sort of interest (practical, aesthetic, volitional, emotional,
merely perceptual, etc.). The interest is not so much for its own sake
(although at times it is, of course) but rather as typied, experienced as this
or that type of person or thing.
57
Our daily dealings with the many aairs constituting our life-world, in
whatever context of concern it may be, are usually in terms of typications
of one or another kind and at one or another level of typicality (ranging
from the more or less anonymous to the more or less familiar). Thus, as
Alfred Schutz (Schutz, 1967; Schutz & Luckmann, 1973, 1983) has shown,
at any moment in the life of the wide-awake, normally functioning adult,
any particular item is at the outset experienced, interpreted, acted upon, and
otherwise dealt with, in the framework of the persons specic biographical
situation, by means of his/her coordinate stock of knowledge-at-hand, and
within the habitualities (cognitive, emotive, valuative, volitional) included
therein. This stock of knowledge is, in Schutzs phrase, a relatively coherent
system of typicality-constructs built up in the course of any persons life,
experiences and encounters, whose texture is formed by the conjoining of
tradition and the persons own way or style of life. The fundamental characteristic of the usual or everyday is its taken-for-grantedness. So far as, or
to the extent that, the course of life goes on with no, or with relatively few,
disturbances or upsets, things (objects, people, relations among these, etc.)
are quite without question interpreted and experienced in terms of the prevailing stock of typications thus far built up as habitual possessions: thats
a (type of ) dog, or thats (some sort of ) reed, etc.
Without entering here into the highly complex structures of everyday
lifewhich Schutz (1967), Aron Gurwitsch (1979), Jos Ortega y Gasset
(1957), Max Scheler (1961, 1973), Maurice Natanson (1962, 1970), and
others have already probed in depthI only note that, in our daily lives we
typically just take it for granted that things (in the broadest sense indicated) will for the most part and until further notice continue to be and be
organized, interpreted and experienced more or less as they have been up
to now. Until further notice, that is, we simply accept without question
that the typical course, content and style of our own and others lives and
the world around us will continue to be more or less what they have been
up to now (Husserls classic phrase is apropos: the past casts its shadow
over the future). We take it for granted: that is, each of us in our daily aairs
typically proceeds with our lives and preoccupations on the assumption
that, for all practical purposes and until further notice, people and the
world and things generally are pretty much as we typically experience them
to be, and they will for the most part (typically) continue to be this way
(and so, too, for other persons and ourselves).
58
Upsets and Disturbances

Of course, upsets of various sorts and degrees of seriousness do occur from
time to time. Something may turn out to be (more or less) otherwise than
typically expected or taken for granted. For the most part, however, such
disturbances within the usual course of aairs get handled with relative
ease, within the self-same framework of taken for granted typications. If
something unexpected occurs, it is, as Husserl remarks, experienced as a
not so but otherwise; it is experienced as not this (sort of aair) but
that (sort of aair). The typicational scheme does not itself break down
in such cases, but rather undergoes modication, correction, and/or further sub-division, to one degree or anotherbut almost never totally.4
The obscure shape in the distance that is typically taken to be, say, a
sleeping dog (itself also typied) turns out on closer approach to be merely
a pile of leaves and twigs on the ground (again, a typical aair), and you
walk on, relieved or disappointed, as the case may be. The object on the
table turns out not to be an ashtray but an art object (and you forthwith
apologize to the host for emptying ashes from your pipe). What I at rst
heard a person say turns out to be dierent, or perhaps intended dierently, than I rst thought, and I correct my interpretation and understanding accordingly (apologizing to her). The noise I took to be a childs cry
turns out to be a kettle of boiling water with an odd whistle in its spout,
and I sit back down in my chair, relievedand so on throughout every
range of experience of things, people, relations, sounds, and the like
encountered in the usual course of daily life.
In general, of course, any upset is itself interpreted by means of still
other typications. Something unexpected is usually experienced as not
so but otherwise, which is itself experienced as also expected, in its own
usually speciable way (an illness is said at times to manifest just these sorts
of typical side-eects or deviations from its normal course). In each case,
4)
A total breakdown would be equivalent to the total shattering of absolutely every construct, typication, expectation, whateversomething, i.e., which might be interpreted as
death. But even a cursory look at the experience of illness or injury, or the potential debilitating eects of genetic compromise (whether heritable or congenital) demonstrates that
there are numerous phenomena short of death which challenge that typicational scheme
(Zaner, 1988).
59
what was seen in one way is now typied dierently, as falling under a
dierent typicality-construct, or perhaps obliging me typically to revise,
modify, sub-divide one or another set of typicality-constructs.
Other sorts of disturbance in the usual, typical course of experience also
occur, but everyday life also has typied ways of handling them as well. I
may, for example (keeping in mind that precisely this methodical procedure
(taking as an example) is the target of my probing through these matters),
walk into a building looking for my friend, and wander into a room
I thought was his oceonly to nd myself in the midst of a group of
strangers conducting what appears to be a meeting of some sort (another
typication). The event is then typied as one of those sorts of things
that can happen, as we say, interpreting this sort of mismatch of provinces or contexts of concern. Indeed, the embarrassment felt on such occasions is precisely the realization that quite dierent contexts or provinces
of concern have intruded upon each other.
Similarly, being busied with trying to nd relevant material in connection with an investigation, I may overhear someones remarks and take
them as relevant to the ongoing inquiryonly later to learn that they were
not at all relevant, and I nd myself having to make apologies (ocial or
otherwise) for mixing dierent provinces or contexts of concern. Again,
I may chance into my friends empty oce, spot what seems an empty
container and proceed to rinse it out and get a drink of wateronly later
to learn, to my chagrin and his anger, that he had merely laid aside momentarily what was not at all an empty water glass but a container he planned
to use in an experiment, now aborted because my use contaminated it.
I may see a man attacking a woman in the park and rush to her side, only
to learn not only that the act was not serious, not an actual attack on her,
but that I have just spoiled a scene being lmed for a movie.
In other words, our everyday life-world is structured into dierent
nite provinces of meaningwhich I have here also called contexts of
concerneach having its own style of action, time, thought, involvement,
and framework, any of which we may sometimes get confused. Oh, now
I see, I may say after ruining the movie scene, meaning that what I thought
was going on was not, and now I understand the sort of thing the man and
woman were doing. Such an upset is, typically, readily straightened out for
all practical purposes, by being interpreted by means of other typicalityconstructs having to do with some other province or context.
60
Even moving deliberately from one province or context to another,

moreover, may bring about or be accompanied by a kind of felt disturbance in the typical ow of life. One may, for example, have diculty reorienting oneself to the workaday world after viewing an automobile
accident or even a particularly moving lm. On the other hand, it may also
be that one context or province intrudes into another without my wanting
it: while studying, for example, the telephone rings and jolts me out of my
ongoing concerns and I am forced to re-orient myself to a dierent context.5
Clearly, then, many dierent sorts of upsets occur frequently in daily
life. It would be an interesting and important task to delineate and study
each sort, following Schutzs many works, as part of a general theory of
sociality.6 That is not my concern here. What is important is the issue even
this brief over-view makes plain: how can it happen that I come to focus
my attention, no longer on something as typied, but rather on something
just for its own sake? And, beyond that, what does this suggest as regards
the possibility of a further shift of attention, not merely to something for
its own sake, but specically to the thing as an example (and, beyond these,
to something as exemplifying some kind or sort, then to the something
merely as possible)?
Structure of Upsets: An Example
Although delineating the various upsets, shocks, and disturbances in daily
life is not my immediate concern here, there is something about these
routine occurrences which may serve as a signicant clue for what does
concern me.
Whatever may be the specic sort of upset, and regardless of particular
sources and circumstances, undergoing disturbances in the social fabric
(such as the illness experience) (although I have not expressly attempted to
show this, there seems to me a signicant convergence with Schutzs analysis of enclaves) turns out to have a structure that is decisive for accounting for exemplicative awarenesseven, as will be seen, for feigning
5)
Schutzs (1970) notion of imposed relevances speaks to this. See Alfred Schutz, Reections on the Problem of Relevance, ed., annotated, and intro. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1970).
6)
I think especially of Schutzs intriguing analysis of enclaves in his last work, with
Thomas Luckmann (Schutz & Luckmann, 1989).
61
awareness, and thus for free-fantasy variation. It does not matter here
whether the upset be considered as relatively minor or as quite serious.
Once again, any such upset may serve as an example, one that can be freely
variedthat is, I can free myself from its specic particularity and for
whatever may be exemplied by it, and I must do so if I wish to delineate
the process of shifting attention from the one to the other.
Quite in general, such upsets reveal the same basic structure: what was
earlier termed the aspectual invariance stands out and so to speak shines
through each example. Consider no matter which example as the starting
point (as I am free to do). Suppose, then, you live in a lovely, mountainous
area in which you enjoy daily walks. You are, say, on your way home taking
a dierent route than usual, and are walking along a very narrow path you
havent been on before; on the left is a spectacular, scenic ravine youve
never seen before; on the right is the sheer cli on the mountain just above
your homea path that is becoming increasingly narrow as you walk
along, but which you have to follow to reach your home, although you
could, of course, turn around and retrace your steps. And, besides, being
curious and captivated by the dazzling scene of the valley below, however,
you would prefer not to turn back; so you push on. You are walking along
carefully, but then become preoccupied with thoughts of family, dinner,
the book youre currently reading, or whatever, as you place one foot after
the other and do not pay much attention to this set of by now automatic
bodily movements. You are also taking it for granted that these relatively
simple activations of bodily movements will get you where you want to
goas they have each time youve taken such walks.
Fine; now, however, as you come around a bend, you nd yourself up
against a large boulder that, apparently because of the heavy rain several
nights before, has nudged down onto the path. Lodged there, it now eectively blocks your way. Your typical course of taken for granted actions is
unsettled, your way home is blocked. You can no longer simply proceed as
you have been doing up to now, placing one foot after another and thinking the thoughts youve been thinking. What has happened?
The path is obstructed; the boulder prevents you from going on, and, as
you realize that your family expects you shortly, anxiety creeps in. As noted,
you might, of course, decide to turn around and go back, perhaps to phone
your wife from the gas station you passed earlier and tell her about what
happenedthat youll be very late, because the only other way to your
62
house is back up the trail, to the station then down a short but precipitous
drop, over the stream, and so on. What to do?
Whatever you decide, even in this somewhat simple example, something quite signicant should be noted. Your way is blocked; you now are
confronted with an obstacle that prevents you from proceeding. In the rst
place, what you now experience is, in Husserls well-known phrase, a not
so but otherwisean obstacle, something which as such obliges, indeed
forces, you to do something, to reckon with it as you may never have done
before; now, you must do something dierent from what you had be doing
up till thenmore or less automatically placing one foot ahead of the
other, not paying much attention to these actions even while you were
carefully noting the particulars of the new path and the dramatic, new
perspective on the scenery. What you have up to now been taking for
granted can no longer be taken for granted, for just these typical movements landed you where you now are and what you were doing (walking
along, placing one foot after the other, etc.) is no help for getting you on
your way back home to dinner and the coziness of family life.
If nothing else, you must now try, perhaps, to raise your legs so that you
can get a foot up on, then over, the boulder, or use your arms and hands
(perhaps to try and shove it out of the way), or whateveractions which
you have not been doing up to now and which running up against the
boulder obliges you to doif, that is, you want to continue along this
path toward home. You turn side-ways, and see if you can wiggle your
body around so as to try to slide around it or push the boulder a bit away
from the cli. Unable to do that, unable likewise to climb over the rock,
and unable to shove it out of the way (which might in any case put the
boulder in your kitchen below), you face the now what? issue.
Of course, even if you decide to turn around and go back the way you
came, this too is a set of bodily movements you have not been actuating up
to now. Thus, it is clear, confronting such an obstacle forces you to stop
and thinkin Deweys phrase, you must now stop and considerhowever minimal may be your considering. The obstacle forces you, as Ive
noted elsewhere, to think (and do) otherwise than you have been doing
up to now. You realize, too, that if you tried to continue your hitherto
easy, ongoing movements, you would merely be blocked, might skin you
knees, etc., and even then nd that these movements (walking) could not
be continued.
63
The rst point of interest here, then, is that, nding yourself in such a
situation you have no choice but to think otherwise than before and
subsequently that doing something about it means that you must do
something dierent. If you want to continue, if that is important enough
to you, the obstacle is encountered as having-to-be-overcome, -surmounted, -gotten beyond, in short, as having-to-be-resolved. If you
decide, perhaps, to turn around and go back, it is then clear that the boulder loses its sense as obstacle-before-me, for your path now is dierent.
To be sure, the boulder still stands out as needing resolution at some time,
if you continue to want to use that path for your walks, but then youll
have to gure out how to dislodge the boulder and not endanger your
house; etc. But any such decision was itself arrived at in the light of your
having been prevented from going the way you were going; the decision
was still something done in light of your being blocked and obliged to
stop, consider and do otherwise.
Complexity of Seeking Alternatives
A second feature thus stands out: this stopping and considering has the
characteristic of being a calling into question, however minimally it may be.
Within the situation just outlined you now nd that, so far as what you
have been doing and taking for granted up to now is not only what led you
to that impasse, but is also itself experienced now as ineectual for getting
you on your way. You have by that very fact been obliged to become cognizant of what you have been doing, you now apprehend that as ineffectual, that is, what you have been doing is now called into question
precisely by or through the concrete circumstance of encountering the
obstacle. Blocked, you are now obliged to do something quite critical:
namely, to assess your situation, to determine whether it is worth it to continue or not, and eventually to decide what to do. You now must notice
what you havent hitherto noticed, and on that basis question what you
have not been questioning up to that point.
But the thinking or considering here also shows another feature: it
has the characteristic of a thinking otherwise than before. It thus entails
an eort to nd a dierent way to proceed, and then of course doing it. You
are obliged to seek for other ways, and that signies that the encounter
with the boulder, come upon and apprehended as an actual obstacle in
64
your path, forces you to seek elsewhere and do otherwise in order to be

able to continue, in whatever way it may be.
This thinking otherwise, seeking other ways, or seeking elsewhere,
is precisely the fundamental clue. Expressed in usual terms, the thinking
occasioned by coming upon and apprehending the obstacle is a search for
alternatives; but such a term conceals something crucial. To search for
alternatives (for other ways) in this mannerwhether such alternatives
invoke other typical recipes for action or even relatively novel ones (Ive
never done this before, but I know that other people have . . .)is a complex activity.
Seeking alternatives necessarily involves at least two signicant shifts.
On the one hand, you cannot look elsewhere unless you have already
apprehended the boulder for its own sake, as this actual blockage preventing your actual going on your way. It is that with respect to which
the elsewhere or otherwise at all crops up in the rst place, and which
in this way gives meaning to the elsewhere and otherwise. It, the boulder-as-obstacle, stands there as an impasse, and only if apprehended as
such does the very notion of an elsewhere or otherwise make its appearance for your situated experience.
On the other hand, the occurrence of this thinking otherwise or seeking elsewhere presupposes and requires a kind of disengagement from the
actual, in the sense that it is a freeing-from attending to some actual state of
aairs which thus permits you to be free for focusing on it dierently
seeking a possible way (that is, method = meta + hodas) to get out of the
impasse. Although that state of aairs is by no means, so to speak, out of
mind, you now shift your attention to the possibly otherwise, to what is
not actual in the situation or at least to what is not yet recognized as actual.
You move, shift, from the actual, for the other than (now) actual.
The Drama of Problma
Reviewing the territory covered thus far, it is clear that the phenomenon of
upset is an instance of what the Greeks termed problma. Following the
lead of Ortega y Gasset (1957) and especially that of his student, Julian
Maras (1956) the term originally designated a jutting-out-place, either
in the sense of obstacle or of a shelter, although it seems also clear that the
latter sense has dropped out of the current usages of problem. It is an
impasse, a hindrance, a sort of no exit.
65
Something blocks my path and is thereby experienced as an obstacle to

whatever it is I am then doing. It refers me, I should note immediately, to
myself and to what I am engaged in at that moment. It is my path or way
that is blocked; that is, the problematic situation is such only for meor
for any someone (perhaps even, by modal extension, any group of someones), capable of encountering and of apprehending it as such. It is my
way that is blocked; the problematical situation is also essentially contextual:
it occurs within and constantly refers to my prevailing context of concern
or actions, goals, plans, and their appurtenant recipes for action, typications, and the like, as well as the specic environing world.
Furthermore, the impasse has an essentially dramatic force, or weight: it
crops up in the course of my ongoing life, within my circumstances, and
obliges me to pay attention dierently. Something happens to me (whether
I am alone or among other people). Confronted with the stalemate, this
impasse, I can no longer simply do what I have been doing, for what I have
been doing in taken for granted fashion is precisely what landed me in
the log jam and thus cannot be called on to get me out of it (whether
the problma is physical, social, emotional, moral, religious, scientic, or
whatever).
I am blocked, but that is not all; my being thwarted of itself provokes
my eort to get out of it. That is, I am forced to stop and think in order to
doto continue on my way or with my lifeand my thinking is thus rst
of all a critical assessing of whether I can, I want, perhaps even whether
I ought to continue: is it worth the eort, to me, the one whose path is
blocked? The impasse thus forces me to bring or call into question what has
hitherto not been in question, especially the question of worth, and with
that, the question of ought: what should I do, right here and now? Obviously, the more serious the problem, the more important it is for me to go
on, and consequently the more radically am I forced to think, seek, assess
and bring what has hitherto been unquestioned into question (beliefs,
goals, values, actions, and the like)in order, precisely, to get out of it and
go on with what Im doing, ultimately with my life.
This dramatic stopping and considering make it plain that it is ultimately me myself who am at stake. Even if the impasse is in the end or of
less inconsequential, I need only think it through to see that I am myself
the stake, at stake. In thinking, noticing, seeking, assessing, questioning,
deciding, gearing up to carry out my decision, and nally acting in the
world, it is I myself who am at issue, my what and who I am and even
66
what I shall or should be. If I want to continue to be the person I am or

seek to become, such problmas ultimately force me into an impasse and
therefore I am faced with having to do something other than what I have
been doing. I must become someone at least somewhat dierent from
what I am and have been. I must do all this, and must do it within the
contextual awareness of the concrete circumstances within which the actual
impasse is actually encountered. In this sense, this must is expressive of a
need arising in my own life, a need to keep my bearings while reckoning
with things around me, to learn what I have to contend with, to know what
I want or ought to hold by or believe in. I must know in order to continue
to live my life, to be who and what I am and hope to become (these themes
will be taken up at a later point)even, in my simple example, to be able
to face and somehow remove the boulder blocking my path home.
The dramatic force of the impasse is evident. By its very occurrence it
cannot be ignored, I cannot ignore the now actual obstacle blocking my
way. But, somewhat paradoxically, I must keep it precisely before me while
yet seeking to resolve it by stepping back from it. While literally living it, I
yet must yet disengage from it, keep it at a distance in order to assess it and
myself, my past, my goals, my valuesin short, my prevailing stock of
experience and knowledge.
To seek, much less nd alternatives, in dierent terms, I must keep the
impasse vividly before me. I hold it before me in order to get beyond it.
Since I am at issue, since it is thus vitally urgent to me or to the aspect of
my life that is now blocked (the more serious, the more vitally urgent), to
my life, the impasse is essentially a dramatic tension; my orientation is a
practical distantiation.
Freeing-From and Freeing-For: Possibilizing
What has been with some precision termed seeking for the otherwise
above, I noted, provides the basic clue for my theme. The funnel of issues
that have emerged in the course of the analysis of upset ( problma) has
been narrowed down to a small but decisive opening. What has up to now
been somewhat innocuously termed taking something as an example can
now be seen not only as pervasive to human life, but is also critically dramatic and vitally urgent: it is a fundamental characteristic of human life,
which is always lived as mine.
67
I stop and think in order to resolve (the problem). This means, to be

disengaged (or: to disengage myself ) while yet confronting, thus to distantiate myself from the actual situation and its immediately surrounding
circumstances, to stand-back-from what stands around (my immediate
environs) while yet remaining vitally in the midst of my environing circumstances. Hence, to think in search of (or for) the otherwise is, more
precisely, to free myself (or: to become freed) from the press of the actual as
such, in its dramatic and tensioned particularity (what Suzanne Bachelard
[1968] terms the noxious: that is, the actual boulder, the actual moral
values in conict with each other, the actual pointer-reading which should
be dierent from what I see, the actual social struggle, and the like).
This complex act, then, is at once a freeing-from the actual circumstances
and a looking for other ways, for whatever is dierent from what is
actual, in order to resolve the impasse so I may then continue on my way,
ultimately with my life. Expressed equivalently, the act signies that the
agent nds him/herself undergoing the experience of being-freed-from the
actual, and thereby confronted with the dierent, in the specic form of
the other than the actual here-and-now.
Regarding these other ways or alternatives, moreover, what has occurred
is the emergence of the thing-qua-obstacle, as for itself (or: as itself )
and at the same time as merely one of (many) other waysthat is, it is
apprehended as an example. Inherent to this complex act is at the same
time the emergence of exemplicative awareness, a shift or leap to the possibly-otherwise, to the as-if. To consider how to get around the blockage is
to play as if the actual situation confronting me is dierent from what now
blocks my path. The freeing-from the region of the singularly actual is thus
a freeing-for the region of the possibly otherwise, in the rst place so as
to probe the region of the possibly other ways to proceed or live, as these
are at stake in this concrete situation.
The emergence of this possibly-otherwise is founded on (in Husserls
sense of Fundierung) and thus stems from the recognition of the specically
actual, or of particularity as such, along with apprehending some specic,
particular actuality as merely one way that is blockedthat is, as an example. The alternatives, then, as possible other ways, are likewise apprehended straight-away as other examples of the kind brought into focus and
into question by the obstacle (i.e. as other possible ways or means by which
to resolve the impasse or problem). However, in so far as this complex act
68
has indeed opened up the region of the possibly-otherwise, there is here as

well the ground for that remarkable and universal act of feigning, of experience in fantasy (possibly, too, more generally of imagination).
The upsets, obstacles, disturbances and the like which open up and
thrust me into exemplicative and feigning awareness, thanks to the circumstantially reexive apprehension of myself as at issue, as at stake, seems
part of the elemental core of personal freedom, and is as well the core of
what Husserl, as I read him, apparently means by ction (with all its
appertaining senses of free optionalness already explicated). Expressed
most succinctly, freedom in this sense has its locus within this complex set
of circumstantially motivated shifts of attention, the totality of which I
propose to call the act of possibilizing.
In dierent terms, a creature locked to the actual, to the immediate, is a
creature capable neither of history, culture, education, nor thinking in
their most fundamental and dramatic senses. Such a creature does not have
problems, probably not even needs in the sense of reexively apprehended urgencies calling for seeking the possibly-otherwise. Nor, nally,
can such a creature take something as an example, and therefore neither
can it feign, shift to the region of the non-actual, the possibly-otherwise.
In its most fundamental sense, consciousness, the mental life I concretely
live, emerges at its core as a drama.
Upset and the Social

Upset and the Stock of Knowledge
There has been a noticeable change of mood in the last few sections, and
this calls for some comment. In phenomenological inquiry, free-fantasy
variation is for the most part understood as a theoretical method. I have
tried to show, however, that this central methodological feature of phenomenology is a fundamental component of daily life as well, that it therefore harbors the utmost signicance for human life, and that it necessarily
involves several highly signicant shifts of attention. These are activities
accomplished by what Schutz terms the wide-awake human individual;
they are, in Husserls technical usage, ego-activities which to be sure have
their own modes of habitualization as they are repeatedly practiced and
carried on in specic theoretical-reective tasks.
69
I have also found it necessary to emphasize, following Schutz, that every

wide-awake human being, including each of us who carries out such theoretical inquiries, is always-already socialized. He or she, like everyone else,
is born into specic socio-historical circumstances, grows up within a particular milieu (including language, mores, folkways, laws and the like),
and lives, acts, and thinks in or at a certain time and place within a common familial heritage and socio-cultural tradition. Whatever he or she may
actually become engaged in or withparticular activities, careers, professions, vocations, and the likethese also go on within that milieu which
not only shapes and inuences his or her life and range of choices for possible engagements, but also serves to encourage and promote certain of these
over other engagements, and thus also tends to discourage some of them.
Whichever milieu in which one nds oneself, however, certain structures of sociality as such appear to be invariant (as the work of Schutz,
Ortega, Natanson and others seems to me to have demonstrated, and
which I take for granted in this inquiry): taken-for-grantedness, for
instance, or what Schutz termed the relevancy structures of social action.
Among others, to help set up my specic theme, it was pointed out that
each of us develops, within his or her biographical situation, a more or less
organized and typied stock of experiences (knowledge, interpretations,
recipes for acting, thinking, talking, and the like) that is more or less at
hand at any moment of life, in terms of which the world and its objects are
experienced, encountered, and in general dealt with in all the many ways
that have been detailed by those for whom this theme is paramount.
At the same time, it was noted that upsets invariably occur in the usual
course of daily life. The stock of knowledge at hand, in Schutzs terms,
consisting of a relatively well-organized and more or less coherent set of
typications in the prevailing stock of knowledge at hand, may be said to
pre-dene what is familiar and unfamiliar, expected and unexpected,
and the like.
The upset phenomenon, I suggested, is a kind of dramatic signal initiating an eort to reorganize, to make sense, ultimately to resolve or bring
what is unexpected into the stock of typicality-constructs at hand: to
make it familiar, or to familiarize it. This bringing-within may and frequently does signify an adjustment, a modication, an accommodation, a
revision, in some part of the stock of knowledge at hand: the unusual is
either found to be usual after all (typical, familiar, expected, sensible)
70
within the constructs at hand, or those having their usual placement in

another province of concern; or it may force the sub-dividing of a construct (sub-typication). In extreme cases, the development of a new construct may become necessary (this is something I have never even thought
of before!). Even in the latter case, though, the typical ways of handling
or managing the unusual and rare are themselves parts of the stock of
knowledge at hand.
The Impasse and the Urgency to Think
In any event, if one focuses even briey on the occurrence of upsets, no
matter how trivial, a certain common structure stands out and can be
apprehended: what is invariant becomes prominent from within the range
of variations. To be sure, the trivial upset hardly shows the full dramatic
force of the genuine, life-threatening impasse. Even so, something of its
structure can be detected without exaggeration, without elevating the
really trivial to a place of vital urgency.
It seems clear that but little eort is required in order to make this dramatic tension inherent to upsets stand out saliently. In their placement
within the dramatic tension of the a-poria, the Socratic dialogues are a
good case in point. Obviously, few persons make, or are obliged to make,
that eort to focus clearly on such elements as have been indicated in
much of their daily lives (still, what is here under thematic probing seems
evidently closely tied in with becoming a self ). Even so, that fact does not
belie the structure in question. Because we all are for the most part and
most of the time able to live typically untroubled and relatively unperturbed in the midst of numerous problems of dierent kinds and degrees
of seriousness, does not in the least signify that nothing is at stake in them,
or that nothing vital actually goes on in the trivial disturbances of
daily life.
In any event, one hardly needs to hang the inquiry on such considerations. In the rst place, each of us at some point in life does become
entangled in impasses, paradoxes, enigmas, contradictions, serious upsets.
For many of us, it is serious illness or injury to ourselves or to our loved
ones which frequently functions in precisely this manner.
In the second place, each of us thereby undergoes a kind of dramatic
tension and urgency, as I have hopefully made plain in many studies of the
illness experience (Zaner, 1988, 1994a, 1994b, 2000, 2004). In the third
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place, even if some people do not sustain the complex experience of possibilizing, for whatever reasons, the essential connection between the vital
impasse and this remarkable act seems evident enough to have warranted
attention.
Finally, the way in which Henry Johnstone (1970) analyzes what he
calls pragmatic contradictions seems to me well taken:
The self necessarily arises only if pragmatic contradictions necessarily occur
only if they belong to the human condition. . . . The phenomenon I have in
mind is simply that of a persons self-reference. . . . It is clear, however, that a
being incapable of referring to itself, or even a being which never in fact did
refer to itself, could not be a person. Stripped of our power to self-reference,
we are stripped of our humanity. . . . [A] person must use some self-referential
device [i.e. not necessarily the rst-person pronoun]; and it is in this sense
that I regard self-reference, and hence contradiction, as necessary. (Johnstone,
1970, pp. 1213)
The convergence with my reections is obvious. The act of possibilizing

emerges because of and in the midst of concrete upsets (pragmatic contradictions), and such disturbances are essentially part of human life. Such
upsets necessarily bring out or provoke the vital urgency to think the possibly otherwise, to question, assess and reassess, and necessarily reveal that
it is self which emergesin the rst place as what is at issue and at stake.
Hence, self in its characteristic sense emerges only in such concrete contexts, precisely because any being capable of recognizing and undergoing
upsets is a being that is necessarily already self-referential, or, more potently
as I have maintained before, it is reexive.
A creature incapable of such problematic encounters is a being locked
to the actual and therefore is one incapable of culture, history, thinking,
and more particularly of possibilizing. Hence, pragmatic contradictions,
in Johnstones phrase, are necessary to the human condition, and therefore
so, too, is self-reference or reexivity (Zaner, 1981). But, as should by now
be clear in the light of my inquiry thus far, while what I have termed the
act of possibilizing bears clear resemblances to Johnstones pragmatic contradictions, there are important dierencesprimarily, possibilizing, as I
hope to show, underlies Johnstones pragmatic contradictions, and if the
latter are necessary, then all the more so is possibilizing an essential component of self s emergence.
72
To focus on upsets more fully, however, forces the change in mood

noted. For, as is by now evident, this experiential phenomenon is by no
means trivial for human lifenot even the so-called trivial disturbances in
daily life are trivial. Commonsense life is interlaced with the altogether
uncommon; the usual is charged with the unusual; the trivial harbors the
momentous, for at stake in each is the emergence, determination, and
continuation of self, of who and what I am (who and what each of us is).
More particularly still, even the most apparently trivial upset necessarily
presupposes the operative, tacit presence of possibilizing. I would go even
further, though the full explication of this cannot be undertaken here, to
emphasize that the emergence of self and subsequently of person is
founded on the act of possibilizing. That, however, is the subject of another
inquiry.
What is relevant here is only that the change of mood is one made necessary by the things themselves: the ground for taking something as an
example and for feigning is the encounter with upsetsthe act of possibilizing. This self, and this is hardly uninteresting or immaterial, especially for the self at stake. Moreover, just because it is I myself who must
explicitly decide to philosophize, if I ever do, inquiring into the grounds
(reasons, phenomenological motivations) for that decision leads directly to
the descriptive analysis of that dramatic, vitally urgent situation of impasse.
I think, if you will, because at some point in my life I must, just as I act at
those points in my life when I am blocked because I must.
When Husserl remarks, almost in passing, that it is necessary for we
philosophers to fertilize our fantasies, specically (he says) by turning to
history and especially poetry, it has seemed to me that we can do no better
than take him quite seriously, even if in so doing regions that might otherwise seem at best peculiar must then be grappled with. Thus far, I hope
only to have opened up that region as one that harbors the most serious
and profound consequences for human life and for serious thinking about
it, that is, for philosophy. I now must undertake the further probing of
that region.
Possibilizing is Self-Referential
The example of upset used above was merely one among many that could
just as readily (i.e. freely) been selected. Still, it clearly was only one; in a
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sense, the aspectual invariance characteristic of exemplication stood out

only partially. In other words, it may have been that only operative use was
made of other examples even though only one was detailed. It can be seen,
for example, that upsets arise in many dierent contexts and ways: asking
questions through puzzles generated in linguistic usages, giving examples
of deeply emotive encounters such as witnessing a gran mal seizure, through
the realization that someone dear to me is going to die, and doubtless others.
In whichever way and in no matter what specic context any upset
occurs, the phenomenon of the otherwise or elsewhere becomes salient,
as does its ground in possibilizing. What stands out most strikingly, however, is that the otherwise has the signicance of otherness; and the rst
taste, so to speak, of otherness at this point is exemplicative awareness. It is
only on condition of being capable of seizing upon the actual and the otherwise as examples that fantasy at all comes into play, as noted earlier.
More particularly, noticing and apprehending the actual as what it is for
its own sake, it can now be noted, is already to shift to seizing it as exemplifying; correspondingly, shifting attention to the exemplifying as such is
itself already to shift to the as-if, to feigning. This act is complex and has
the force of being a distantiation, or being-freed-from the entire region
of the actually taken for granted, and thus is a being-freed-for the possible
(in the form, rst of all, of the possibly-otherwise-than-actual).
In dierent terms that could just as readily have been used: to be capable
of questioning, much less then to engage in the probing set out by the
question, presupposes and is founded on the complex act of possibilizing:
distancing myself from the actual and the prevailing stock of taken for
granted typicationshowever eeting it may beand thinking the possibly otherwise. In more common terms, to question requires stepping
back from, and this stepping-back itself has the signicance of being a
searching (by means of thinking) for the possibly otherwise, regardless
what is specically brought into question.
In its most fundamental sense, then, possibilizing turns out to be the concrete actional root of thinking itselfor, in the terms utilized by both Husserl and Gurwitsch, at the root of ideation and thence thematization.
Thinking necessarily involves both exemplicating and feigning. If one says
that thinking is a mental functioning or operation that makes use of categories or concepts which serve to organize experience, this merely conceals the evident fact that even in this sense (which may well be questionable)
74
thinking cannot go on without exemplicating: categories, after all, are

kinds or sorts pertaining, or pertain-able, to a possibly indenite sphere of
experienced or experience-able individual aairs (of whatever sort).
Hence, to become cognizant, through specic acts of consciousness
(mind or the understanding), of categories or conceptsi.e. ideas with
which (con-) to seize upon (-cept) real or ideal individualsI must rst of
all have possibilized: (1) become aware of and focused on the exemplifying-exemplied complex, (2) grasped that such a complex is already but
one possible such complex, and (3) fantasized or feigned such other possible such complexes. What is actually experienced must itself be grasped
(con-ceived) as exemplicative; what is experience-able presupposes feigning.
Therefore, thinkingideating in its root sense (which accordingly modies and claries Husserls and Gurwitschs usages)is exemplicating-withand-among-other-examples (that is, the-possibly-otherwise or so-called
alternatives). In short, the emergence of otherness through possibilizing is
the ground for thinking (hence, ideating and, furthermore, thematizing).
At the same time, however, precisely because possibilizing is necessarily
self-referential, it is, more accurately, reexive. Just this, it will later become
clear, makes possible and is the ground for reection as well as introspection, retrospection, or simply thinking (something) over as when I mull
over some past event. Since this facet of the eidos, thinking, will occupy
me later to a much greater extent, I wish now to turn to further dimensions of the act of possibilizing, dimensions that will help elicit thinking
itself more fully.
What is Already-At-Hand
It has appeared quite proper to characterize the situation of impasse as
invoking the emergence of self. As Johnstone suggests, to the extent that
pragmatic contradictions occur (as they necessarily must), the emergence
of self likewise necessarily occurs. I have tried to make it plain that this
emergence-through-impasse is highly complex and presupposes the act of
possibilizing.
In a way, this emergence is not only spontaneous, self-generative, dramatic, and the like, but it has also in a sense been already prepared. The
structurally complex subjective capability of responding to an impasse
situation is ripe (stands in readiness) for the occurrence of just that spe-
75
cic spontaneity. This is evident enough from one perspective: such situations happen in the course of daily life, in the midst of whatever it may be
that currently preoccupies me; and I invariably nd that my daily life is
already ongoing. This indicates that there are already at hand a great many
typications included in my stock of taken for granted constructs and
experiences which, even if they do not as yet include such clear impasses,
nevertheless include something like the explicit acts of focusing on aairs
both actual and possible.
Although it would be incorrect to say, for example, that taking something explicitly as an example is the same as dealing with it in a taken for
granted way as being of this or that type, still there are clear similarities.
But to move from the usual, commonsense way of routinely interpreting
individuals in typied ways, to the precise and deliberate thematic act of
taking them as exemplications, requires a set of crucial and deliberate
shifts of attention, recognitions and apprehensions (along with their correlative objects). To take something as typically this or that sort of thing
is quite dierent from expressly apprehending the type as type, the individual item as typical, and the further shifts to exemplicative and feigning
awareness.
At the root of these is precisely the act of possibilizing. This act is motivated, in Husserls sense, by and within the occurrence of an impasse; part
of its force is precisely to bring into explicit self-awareness (noticing, questioning, assessing, and so forth) the set of taken for granted typications
which otherwise merely form the background of unnoticed and unquestioned (though, as was also seen, always able to be questioned) stock of
prevailing knowledge and experience in commonsense life.
Further reection on possibilizing, however, shows that it is already prepared in quite another sense. Every explicit ego-activity occurs within or
stands out from a complex background context of always-ongoing experiencings (Erfahrungen) or intendings (noeses) with their respective
intended noematic-objective correlates (noemata) and which are not characterized by an explicit ego-presence. If the self emerges or arises, it does
so from an experiential base consisting of the already-always owing context of intentional life, of the complex of already-ongoing intendings-to
noemata with which the self is not occupied at the moment (to which self
is only marginally attentive), and still other noetic-noematic strata of mental life within which the self cannot be alertly occupiedsynonymously,
76
strata of intentive processes [Erlebnisse] with whose noematic correlates the

self cannot be livingly busied, as they form what Husserl terms primary
passivity.
Thus, for instance, while I am, say, busied with replacing an ink cartridge in my printer, there are clusters of awarenesses going on simultaneously but to whose objects I am not in the least actively attentive: the
feelings of movement of my hands, arms, neck, and the like (kinesthesias),
the sets of coenesthetic and interoceptive feelings of my body and its organs
(for example, the itch on my knee, the growling of my stomach), not to
mention the clusters of subtle emotive, volitive, and other sorts of wantings, wishings, strivings, and the like which are constantly ongoing without my having to activate or attend to their respective noemata.
On the other hand, while tossing out the old cartridge, I am focally
attentive to it and its markings, to the trashcan and the like, and only marginally attentive to the printers receptacle, the table on which the printer
rests, the window and what lies beyond, the clutter of other things in my
room, on my desk, and so on. To be sure, I may become attentive to at least
some of these. Noting my growling stomach, I may wonder when I last ate;
a ash of light at my window may catch my eye; if I drop the cartridge, I
advert to it, perhaps disgruntled; and so on.
Shifting the Focus of Attention
Any concrete situation within a human life is complex in at least the ways
just delineated. Whatever I may be focally attentive to at any moment is
richly fringed by these many simultaneously ongoing awarenesses and their
respective noematic-objective correlates. But this fringing is not as simple
as it may appear. To the contrary, any ego-activity goes on not only in the
midst of numerous other (marginally-egoic and non-egoic) processes of
awareness, but in Husserls term is made possible by these pre-predicative
processes.
This can be made evident by considering a relatively simple example.
Suppose I look at a cup that was given to me by one of my students, and is
at the moment on my desk. Much more than seeing the cup, of course, is
going on: I look at it warmly, anticipating a drink of the new coee I just
purchased and is still brewing; I remember when and how I acquired the
cup, and do so fondly; I smell and am pleased with the coees aroma;
I tactually feel the surface of the cups edge as my lips touch it; etc.
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For the sake of getting a manageable example, I can and indeed sometimes do simply ignore or screen o all or most of these other simultaneously ongoing awarenesses and their respective objective correlates, and
merely focus in on the visual one, perhaps noticing what appears to be a
chipped edge. This is, clearly, a perceiving, specically a visual seeing of the
cup itself as given simultaneously with the awareness of it, now in one or
several manners then others. Indeed, each sensory perceiving of the cup
(tactual, olfactory, and the like) is such an awareness.
However, Cairns points out, although
each is an awareness of some physical reality as itself presented, each is a perceiving of this reality itself through an appearance, or through appearances.
Frequently, the appearance or appearances through which the reality itself is
perceived goes unnoticed. It stands out, however, and attracts attention in
case the reality is perceived as the same through dierent appearances, or as
unchanging through a changing appearance, or as changing in a manner that
diers from the manner in which the appearance changes, or the like (Cairns,
1972a, p. 252).
To illustrate: I see the cup now from this (side, or) facet, now with my
glasses on, now with them o; or now from a dierent aspect as I pick it
up and move it toward my lips. Or, I see the cup as the same cup which I
now also grasp and tactually perceive, as the same cup which I now put to
my lips, as the same cup which makes a noise as I put it back down, and as
the same cup my students once gave me.
Normally, we just dont notice such appearances; equivalently, we look
or perceive through such appearances, so to speak, and attend straightforwardly and simply to the cup itself, not to the ways in which it appears, not
to its appearances. But only a little reection shows that what I see is the
cup itselfnow this way and now that way, now visually, now tactually,
and so on. These appearances, although in a clear sense intermediary, are
themselves also presented, and they are presented as simultaneous with the
perceiving. However, to follow Cairns analysis, they are not the terminal
objects of the sensuous perceivings; and, as a rule, when we speak of what
is perceived, we refer to the terminal objects of a perceivingwhich are, in
the case of normal perceivings, physical realities (Cairns, 1972, p. 253). (As
Cairns also shows, there are certain unusual or abnormal perceivings, but these
can be understood only on the basis of the analysis of the normal cases.)
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One could go further and, in Cairns language, shorten the focus of

attention still further, and thereby locate elds of sensationvisual, tactual, and othersin each of which particular sensa, particular data of
sensation stand out from a background. It is important to note, however, that
as the name data suggests, these sensa are indeed given, themselves presented. But they are no more truly given, no more truly themselves presented,
than are the physical realities and the appearances through which the physical
realities are perceived. We may indicate the situation by saying that, on the
basis of sensa which stand out in elds of sensation, physical realities are perceived through appearances. The perceiving of the physical realities includes
presentive awarenesses of all three: the sensa, the appearances, and the physical realities. Or, to describe the situation more precisely, we may say that a
sensuous perceiving of something physical includes three strata of presentive
awareness. The lowest of these strata is a presentive sensing of sensa in some
presented sensuous eld or other; the intermediate stratum, a presentive
awareness of appearances; the highest stratum, a presentive awareness of physical realities (Cairns, 1972a, 25354).
The complexity inherent to even this relatively simple example could be

shown to have still other featuresfor example, appresentive awarenesses
of the cup as having now-non-presented other sides, as having an interior,
and so on. These strata, however, are essential to every perceiving of a physical reality, even if we normally focus only on the terminal object itself (the
cup). Sometimes, of course, as happens with a painter or sketch artist, one
does focus on the appearance itself; and sometimes, too, as when one is
attempting to locate a particular painin response, say, to a physicians
question about the location and intensity of a painone may well focus to
some extent on the sensa within a particular eld of sensation.
Stratication of Consciousness
The point of the brief excursus in the last sections is or should now be
evident: there are strata to every experience as well as to every explicit egoactivity, and these are related specically as basis to intermediate to
terminal. The lowest stratum, in Husserlian terms, founds the next higher
stratum and it, in turn, founds the next higher stratum, and so on. Equivalently, without sensa we could not notice appearances, and without both
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sensa and appearances, no physical thing could be perceived. Accordingly,

apprehending and explicating this critical facet of experience requires,
indeed dictates, a certain method. Once locating strata thus related, the
lower or founding stratum needs to be explicated rst: the indication is to
proceed, rst, downward in a sort of methodical unbuilding (in Husserls term, Abbau). Only after having explicated as far as possible does it
become possible to build up (Aufbau) or to begin detecting how it happens that one stratum suggests, leads to, or motivates the next higher stage
or stratum.
Cairns suggests, nally, that any of these strata can be made reectively
salient and subsequently grasped as such by means of a kind of variation.
I can note that appearances are (or acquire the sense of being) that through
which a physical aair is perceived as it-itself in person (leiblich). Thanks
to the foundedness of strata, I am thus able to perceive the same physical
aair while varying the ways or the appearances through which it is itself
presented. Similarly, other strata essential to any intentive process can
through cautious reection be made to stand out saliently by varying (or
attempting to vary) one component while keeping others the same. If it
turns out that such a varying can be done (actually or in an as-if or feigning
manner), I can then go on to determine more precisely their interconnections and characteristics, and especially determine whether a specic
founding-founded connection is thereby revealed.
Expressed in still dierent terms, if such a founding connection becomes
salient, I can then say that what is founded presupposes the founding in the
specic sense that the latter is that on the basis of which the former at all can
occur and stand out for apprehension. Thus, perceiving in some modality
(say, visual) some actual physical aair (a cup, for instance) presupposes (or
functionally depends on, is founded on) intermediate appearances (visual;
for other perceivings, tactual, auditory, etc.) through which it is perceived,
appearances which are themselves also perceived but only in the precise
sense that they are perceived-through-to the physical aairand so, too, for
the relationship between appearances and sensa.
The methodological task is thus two-fold. On the one hand, I must
methodically carry out a kind of phenomenological geography, as it were:
I need to nd out what components there are, to lay them out as clearly as
possible, and then to lay them out with respect to one another. On the
other hand, I must conduct a kind of phenomenological archeology.
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I must then go on to un-layer (Abbau) these strata (and, at a later point, to

uncover or lay-out [Aufbau] precisely in which ways the various strata are
layered), thence to determine the founding-founded connections among them.
At every point, I must keep clearly in mind that I have to do with noetic
intendings-to (awarenesses-of ) noematic correlates (what is intended-to
precisely and only as intended-to). Accordingly, in order to inquire into
the bases (founding strata) of any phenomenon, the method required by
the phenomenon itself must be a constant going-back-and-forth among
noeses and noemata, and a constant digging-down or going-deepward to
the founding strata. This battery of methodswhich, to be sure, is in a
sense a single, though complex methodis in no way brought into play ad
hoc; it rather has its roots, and justication, in the structures of awarenesses
and their correlates themselves.
Main Thematic Clues for Subsequent Reection

My current task, then, has been to uncover the presuppositions (in the
sense of founding strata) which specically underlie the act of possibilizing, therefore, as well, exemplicative and feigning awarenesses; and, nally,
free-fantasy variation. For my present purposes, it is not necessary to lay
out the entire grounding strata of mental life itselfa task whose outlines
have at least been laid out by Husserl, Cairns, Schutz, Gurwitsch, and others, as was noted already several times. To be sure, that task is at some point
necessary, as certain corrections or modications may be in order.7 Here,
in any case, I am concerned with a more limited inquiry.
The basic clues (Leitfaden) for my theme are to be found in the act of
possibilizing, along with its specic noematic correlate. What is it in the
impasse situation which, most fundamentally, calls out in the rst place
7)
For instance, while Husserl and others are apparently convinced that mental life is essentially a temporal ux (a stream of owing noeses), there is some reason to consider that it
also displays its own kind of spatialityperhaps, it may be, the roots of spatiality. This
becomes evident when one considers that mental life is essentially embodied and in that
sense also spatialized, but it may also turn out that there is an even lower, founding, stratum
of spatialitywithin the ow itself, a stratum within which the dierentiation of time
and space are not yet accomplished and set upon their respective courses. I have suggested
this sense of spatiality in a presentation but have not yet published on the matter (Zaner,
1966).
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for there to be an advertence to the impasse, eventually awakening self and

self-awareness? More specically, what calls for a turning away from a
particular ongoing course of life, demanding attention to some actual aair
as problematic? What is it, then, which calls the self to advert to the aair
as itself, for its own sake, then as an example, and thence to other possible
examples?
Noetically, possibilizing has the mood or tonality of what I may term a
sort of startle (surprise, astonishment, wonder); noematically, it is the
emergence of a blockage or obstacle to whatever is ongoing in my life and
which therefore is experienced as upset or shock. But, still more particularly, the obstacle is as such fundamentally the occurrence of something
unexpected, that is, dierent, and hence is capable of provoking that startle
or wonder.
So long as the course of life meets with no upsetsin Husserls phrase,
so long as there are no aairs that are experienced as not so but otherwisethe characteristic tendency is for objectivities to continue to be
more or less accepted as typically expected: they are not startling or surprising. Indeed, so long as there is relative fulllment of such automatic
expectations, the tendency to expect the future course of experience to be
more or less like the past itself receives weight; it is fullled or, equivalently,
armed as an expectation which like others is also relatively fullled. The
past casts its shadow over the present and future, in Husserls well-known
phrase, and so long as this tendency is itself more or less conrmed, this
shadow-casting, as it were, is itself progressively armed and secured; the
tendency itself thereby receives weight as going (more or less) to continue.
The happening of something otherwise than expected, something different, thus appears in the form of a kind of beckoning, a more or less serious solicitation for me to pay attention: as Husserl (1954) notes, it solicits
ego-advertence. So long as, in daily life, the many aairs experienced can
with little or no diculty be in-corporated 8 into the prevailing schemata of
8)
In view of the special phenomena herein described, I use the hyphenated term rather
than the more usual non-hyphenated one, in the interest of linguistic consistency and
remaining faithful to the phenomena. See Husserl: Owing to the instability and ambiguity
of common language and is much too great complacency about completeness of expression, we require, even where we use its means of expression, a new legitimization of signications by orienting them according to accrued insights, and a xing of words as
expressing the signications thus legitimated. That too we account as part of our normative
principle of evidence. (CM, pp. 1314).
82
typications (here, it should be obvious, I have Jean Piaget in mind), no

signicant upset of expectation occurs, hence no startle of recognition of
anything dierent. What determines a dierent as weighted, as something suciently signicant to evoke alertness, in other words, is the failure, whether temporary or more enduring, to be able to be in-corporated
into the prevailing course of experience, or into the prevailing schemata of
typications. The more serious the non-fulllment of prevailing expectations, the more does the experienced failure startle and thereby solicit
noticeand if adverted to, the more it tends to awaken ego-advertance,
explicit alertness. The dierent-than-expected provokes or evokes notice,
and activating that notice is an ego-activity, however minimal it may be.
The clues, then, are evident: dierence (the root occurrence of the elsewhere, thus of otherness), and failure to in-corporate (non-fulllment or
dis-armation of expectation). The phenomenon of expectational-upset
(which is far more specic than Johnstones rather global pragmatic contradiction) is thus founded on the noematic-objective appearance of the
dierent-than-expected. The what is not expected provokes ego-advertence, and the quality or type of failure to in-corporate into then-prevailing schemata will determine the quality or type of that advertencefrom
mere noticing through more active detecting, surprise, astonishment, and
wonder, to genuine startle or shock and, built on that, explicit possibilizing, exemplicating and feigning. (The specic sense to be given to startle
can emerge only after further explication, but cannot be included here.)
It is to these themes that I must turn in subsequent uncoverings of these
phenomena, a task that will undertaken in subsequent parts of this analysis.
References
Bachelard, S. (1968). A study of Husserls formal and transcendental logic. (L. Embree trans.).
Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Cairns, D. (1972a). Perceiving, remembering, image-awareness and feigning awareness. In
F. Kersten and R. Zaner (eds.), Phenomenology: Criticism and continuation: Essays in
honor of Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijho.
Cairns, D. (1972b). An approach to Husserlian phenomenology. In F. Kersten and
R. Zaner (eds.), Phenomenology: Criticism and continuation: Essays in honor of Dorion
Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijho.
Husserl, E. (1954). Erfahrung und urteil (Experience and judgment). Hamburg: Claassen
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Husserl, E. (1960). Cartesian meditations. (D. Cairns, trans.) The Hague: Martinus
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Husserl, E. (1969). Formal and transcendental logic. (D. Cairns, trans.) The Hague: Martinus Nijho.
Husserl, E. (1982). General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, Vol. II of Edmund Husserl:
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Den Haag: Martinus Nijho, 1950, 1952.)
Gurwitsch, A. (1964). The eld of consciousness. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University
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CA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.
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Schutz, A. (1967). Collected papers, Vol. I. The Hague: Martinus Nijho.
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Scheler, M. (1973). Selected philosophical essays. (D. R. Lacht, trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973); and
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Northwestern University Press.
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Zaner - at Play in The Field of Possibles

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Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

At Play in the Field of Possibles

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

indirect communication. If my own approach nonetheless tends more to

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

Examples and Possibles

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

Anything Whatever (Husserl, 1969, p. 206). Such a method, he went on

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

In contrast to this usual way of treating free-fantasy variation, I have

In thinking geometrically, for example, the geometer operates upon the

As is well known, Husserls use of bracketing (Einklammern) to describe (partially) his

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

notes Husserls claim that phenomenological philosophy is a genus of

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

Because every fact can be thought of merely as exemplifying a pure possibility,

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

The Fundamental Form of Transcendental Method

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

of individual examples. Thus, the consciousness of the kind is not itself

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

(whether posited as present, past, future, symbolized or represented by

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

the feigning awareness), the feigned cat is no more thereby considered or

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

fantasies by abundant and excellent observations in originary intuitions is,

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

The crucial question, accordingly, is this: what is it, to take something as

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

pages. The attempt to focus on the phenomenon itself, however, may be

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

I shift my attention, for whatever reason, even though my attentional

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

individual as such. Although I may also focus on and consider what is

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

individuality (whether actual or possible). This characteristic will occupy

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

This attending to the what-is-exemplied is an attending to some (and

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

Noetically, the exemplicative awareness is thus a synthetic process, that is,

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

These considerations help to clarify the systematic place of my present study,

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

practicing phenomenological observing, describing, judging and, of course,

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

according to the Husserlian phenomenologist, reection and the observing of

Before explicating that phenomenological shift, before seeking to focus on

The Drama of Possibilizing

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

Upsets and Disturbances

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R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884

Even moving deliberately from one province or context to another,

R. M. Zaner / Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 2884