ADEQUATE AND INADEQUATE PERCEPTION1
Adequate perception as pure, immanent, and adequate givenness of an object can be grasped in two senses, one of which is closely analogous to external perception, while the other is not. In the immanent hearing of a sound I can take a double line of apprehension: one with regard to what is sensed in the temporal flux, the other with regard to what is being constituted in this flux and yet is still immanent.
1. The sound may fluctuate as regards quality or intensity or may be present to me as enduring in a completely unaltered internal determinateness. In any case, I encounter a flux, and only in this flux can such an individual Objectivity be given to me. The sound begins as a tonal now and there continually follows thereon an ever new now, and every now has its content, on which I can direct my regard as it is. Thus I can swim in the stream of the flux, follow it up with my intuitive regard. Moreover, I can also pay attention not to the momentary content alone but to the whole extension, which here means the flux together with its concrete fullness, or in abstraction from the latter. This flux is not the flux of Objective time, which I determine with watch and chronometer, not world-time, which I fix in relation to the sun and the earth, for this is capable of phenomenological reduction. Rather, we call this flux pre-empirical or pre-phenomenological time. It offers the primordial representatives for the representation of Objective-temporal predicates, speaking analogically: temporal sensations. With the described perception, we attend to the actual temporal content in its temporal extension and in the given mode of its fulfillment of this extension, or we attend to the temporal content in abstracto or to the temporal extension in abstracto—in any case to the really given, to what is really inherent as a moment of perception.
2. On the other hand, however, if the sound, let us say, the tone C endures, our perceptive intention can be directed to the tone C which there endures, i.e., to the object, tone C, which in the temporal flux is one and the same object, ever the same in all phases of the flux. And again, if the tone varies, let us say, on the side of intensity or even as regards its quality, fluctuating, for example, this way of speaking already indicates a line of perception which has something identical in view that changes or remains the same while its quality and intensity vary. What is identical is, therefore, another object than heretofore. There it was the temporal flux of the sounding of the tone; here it is the identical in the flux of time.
The temporal flux of the sounding of the tone is time: time that is filled out and concrete. However, this flux itself has no time, is not in time. But the tone is in time, it endures, it changes. As that which is identical in change, it is “substantially” one. But as the time is pre-empirical, phenomenological time, so the substance of which we are speaking here is pre-empirical, phenomenological substance. This substance is the identical, the “bearer” of the changing or the persisting, for example, of the persisting quality and the changing intensity, or the continuously changing quality and the abruptly altering intensity, etc. In talking of “substance,” our regard is directed toward the identical as opposed to the temporal content, which changes from phase to phase and which now is like, now different. It is something identical which unites all temporal phases of the flux through the unity of the common essence, therefore, of what is generically common, which last, however, is not generally brought out in an essential abstraction and taken for itself. The identical in the flux is the self-maintaining, continuous, common essence in its individuation. In viewing substance, we do not practice abstraction from the flux of the content given in the act of viewing and direct our regard to the general. Rather, the flux of temporal fullness is kept in view and from the flux the identical that is in it and remains bound to it is beheld.
Substance is the identical in the full, concrete flux. If by abstraction we throw into relief a dependent element such as, for example, the intensity of a sound, there is also to be found here an act of identification of the same kind, for we say that the intensity persists or is altered. These identities are phenomenological accidents. The sound, the phenomenological “thing,” has different “properties” and each of these is again something identical in its persistence and alteration. This identical element is, so to speak, a dependent ray of substantial unity, an aspect of substance, a dependent moment of its unity but in itself, and in the same sense, something unitary. Substance and accident in this pre-empirical sense are phenomenological data. They are data in possible perceptions, i.e., adequate perceptions. These perceptions are, as I said, related to external perceptions. In fact, external perceptions are likewise perceptions of things or accidents of things, and the character of these perceptions is analogous to the character of the perceptions of immanent phenomenological substance.2 When we perceive a house, this object has its temporal extensity, and this belongs to the essence (therefore, to the essence of the signification of perception). It appears as enduring unaltered, as the identical in this duration, as persisting in temporal extensity. If we take something in external perception which is changing, a bird in flight or a flame whose light intensity varies, the same thing holds true. The external thing has its phenomenal time and appears as the identical element of this time, namely, as the identical as regards motion and alteration. To be sure, however, all these perceptions are inadequate; time with its fullness is not adequately given, is not exhibitable as sensation. And, likewise, the identity of the thing and its properties is not to be adequately realized, not for example, like the identity of the sound in its sounding, in the flux of its dying away and swelling again, and so on. It is evident, however, that basically the same identification or substantialization which in immanence is adequately given or effected is present in external perception as inadequate, being effected on the basis of transcendent apperception. It is also clear that every analysis of the signification of a thing or property first goes back to the immanent-phenomenological sphere, and here it must bring to light the essence of phenomenological substance and accident—just as every clarification of the essence of time leads back to pre-empirical time.
We have, accordingly, learned to recognize significant types of adequate and inadequate perception. With reference to the terms “internal” and “external” perception, it is now evident that they provoke certain doubts. That is, according to the above it is to be noted that the term “internal perception” is ambiguous. It means something essentially different on both sides, namely, at one time perception of an immanent component of perception, at another perception of something immanent which is seen but not the perception of a part. If we compare both types of adequate perception, we find it common to them that adequate givenness of their objects is achieved and all unauthenticity [Uneigenlichkeit], all transcendent interpretation is excluded. But only in the one mode of perception is the objective a real constituent of the phenomenon of perception. The temporal flux of the sounding is there with all its components in the phenomenon of perception, and makes it up. Every phase, every component of this flux is a part of the phenomenon. On the other hand, what is identical in the temporal flux, the phenomenological substance and its properties, that which persists or varies, is indeed something adequately to be seen in the second mode of perception, but is not to be designated as a real moment or a part of it.
1. To § 44, pp. 122ff.
2. Substance naturally is not understood here as real substance, the bearer of real properties, but merely as the identical substrate of the phantom-perception.