Phenomenology in a New Key: Between Analysis and History by Jeffrey Bloechl & Nicolas Warren

Author:Jeffrey Bloechl & Nicolas Warren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Fulfilling Sense and Sense ‘Simpliciter’

There is, however, something more to say about that case of the impossibility of an adequate givenness – and very likely even about the ostensible mere ‘lack’ of such a givenness, like in the case of objects whose existence we have not experienced so far, but that might possibly exist.

In fact, the case is not that clear. Is it to be interpreted to the effect of a mere lack of corresponding intuition, as a naïve interpretation of the latter situation (no experience so far) might suggest? It might seem so at first sight – and I must confess I used to interpret it that way. To elucidate that point, and to understand why it is just not the case, we need consider a Husserlian distinction to which we have not yet paid attention: the distinction Husserl made before at the §14 of the same Ist Logical Investigation, between “fulfilling sense (erfüllender Sinn)” and “sense or meaning simpliciter (Sinn oder Bedeutung schlechthin)”.

This distinction is not absolutely clear in its detail, and it is really difficult to make good sense of it – personally, I felt for a long time really uneasy about it: I was not able to overcome the impression that there remained some opacity in that point. I only recently got the feeling that I had reached some clarity about it, and it was at the cost of a substantial revision of my previous (quite common) reading. What is unclear is what the ‘fulfilling sense’ exactly is.

Husserl defines it this way: “the object’s ideal correlate in the act of meaning-fulfilment that constitutes it (sein ideales Korrelat in dem ihn konstituierenden Akte der Bedeutungserfüllung)” (2001a, p. 199). One must obviously take notice of the use of the verb ‘to constitute’ (konstitutieren), even in the text of the first edition (1901), which means, in Husserl’s mouth: ‘to let appear in some way’, and pertains to what we might call the ‘format’ of appearing of the object. So, the so-called ‘fulfilling sense’ – that Husserl himself introduces with quotation-marks – is something about the (intuitive) acts in which the object that corresponds to the expression endowed with some ‘meaning’ might be given, it is something about the ‘givenness’ of that object.

There would be much to say about that uncontrolled – or let us say loosely controlled – extension of the sphere of ‘sense’ so as to include perceptual acts as well; something of those acts might be described as a kind of ‘sense’. As I have done that elsewhere (cf. Benoist 2001a, pp. 273–280, 2008, pp. 215–235), I am not going to reopen the case.

What seems to be clear is that ‘fulfilling sense’ (that is, as such, ‘fulfilling sense’ for an expression: it is a relative concept, and there is no fulfilment per se) is, in some intuitive acts, what ‘corresponds’ to a given expression.

This supposes some kind of ‘fit’. As ‘fulfilling sense’ is a relative – and, in fact, a semantic – concept, in some sense, the ‘fulfilling sense’ for an expression can be determined a priori.

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