ABSTRACT
As Husserl develops his understanding of imagination in the years leading up to the publication of Ideas I in 1913, the pivotal role of imaginative presentations in making possible phenomenological analysis emerges more clearly. Already in 1905 he is drawing attention to the possibility of imaginative reflection and drawing parallels with the method of phenomenological reduction: ‘Just as I can “reflect in imagination (Phantasie)”, so too can I phenomenologically reduce in imagination’ (Hua 23, p. 187). This possibility of imaginative reduction is itself derived for Husserl from the universal potential of consciousness to convert a positional act of perception (i.e. consciousness absorbed, so to speak, in the sensuous presence and reality of the object) into a nonpositional act of imagination that ‘suspends’ the reality of the intuited thing. A remark, again from the 1904/5 period, makes clear that this conversion into modified nonpositional consciousness in no way compromises the givenness of the object’s phenomenal being: ‘To fantasize means to let this object hover before one’s eyes (vorschweben lassen), that is, to let it appear presently as itself (ihn als selbst daseienden erscheinen lassen) (to let something appear, hover before one’s eyes and appear presently as itself, is the same thing)’ (op. cit., pp. 174-5).1 But if Husserl constantly returns to his postulation that ‘in accord with ideal possibility every concrete lived experience can also undergo a modification’ (op. cit., p. 103), what does this claim indicate with respect to his basic concept of experience?
