Husserl's concept of existence

Abstract

We do not have any texts that deal extensively with the concept of existence as such. Husserl never discussed the ontological argument, for instance, which might have led to a lengthy consideration of it. When we then try to become clear about it from a general study of his philosophy, we expect to end up with the idea of modes or kinds of existence. For we all know that Husserl held the view that every form of consciousness, by virtue of its intentionality, has its own peculiar object, a view which suggests that he probably thought that each type of intentional object represents a mode of existence. In fact, however, his concept is univocal. His intentionality-thesis introduces objects as indexed with reference to certain belief-contexts whose epistemic status is undecided, a point central to the idea of phenomenological epoch?. As contextualized objects, they are not assigned independent existence; they are internal to a possible doxastic context. This being the case, my essay on the concept of existence also sheds light on the relation between intentional and really existing objects, because the logic of contextualization is such that, if one positively appraises a certain belief-context and thus adopts it, one ipso facto asserts a relation of identity between an intentional object and a really existing object. If the result of epistemic appraisal is negative, or at any rate not such as to lead me to adopt that belief-context, then an object remains indexed and only the doxastic context is asserted to exist, i.e., as a possibility. The way Husserl works out this logic shows his concept of existence. The principal source that inspired my interpretation is a recently published text, written as early as 1894. In this text Husserl argues, very much in the spirit of the later Brentano, that, while talk of intentional objects is in some respects legitimate and unavoidable, such objects can only in an improper sense be said to exist.1 It is true that in various contexts we may speak of objects, but he emphatically denies that there are several modes of existence.2 When we think so, this is either due simply to improper use of language or due to the circumstance that, having enriched the concept of existence and thus narrowed its range of application, we accommodate objects falling outside this range by