In this article I address the idea that in Husserl’s eidetic ontology all possibilities are fixed ‘in advance’ so that actual objects and events—despite their contingency—can only ever unfold possibilities that are ‘permitted’ to them by their essences. I show how this view distorts Husserl’s ontology and argue that this distortion stems from a misconstrual of the relations between essences and facts, and between ideal and real possibilities. These ‘local’ misconstruals reflect, I contend, a ‘global’ misunderstanding that mistakes descriptive distinctions for ‘real’ separations, and that remains indebted to a non-Husserlian understanding of the a priori–a posteriori-distinction. In support of this argument, I first lay out the relevant objection to Husserl’s eidetics as I understand it. Then, I clarify the relation between ideal and real possibilities in the context of Husserl’s eidetics as I see it. Finally, I make a general point about the status of Husserl’s ontological differentiations ‘in the midst of life,’ namely in how what they differentiate is effective and (tacitly) manifest ever only as one moment (amongst many) of the complex whole that is a concrete life of consciousness. I end with some remarks on what this might mean for future phenomenological research on the imagination.

中文翻译：

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生活中的想象：重新思考理想与现实可能性之间的关系

在这篇文章中，我提出了这样一个观点，即在胡塞尔的本质本体论中，所有可能性都是“预先”确定的，因此实际的对象和事件——尽管它们是偶然的——只能展现它们的本质“允许”给它们的可能性。我展示了这种观点如何扭曲胡塞尔的本体论，并认为这种扭曲源于对本质与事实之间以及理想与现实可能性之间关系的误解。我认为，这些“局部”误解反映了一种“全球”误解，这种误解将描述性区别误认为“真正的”分离，而这种误解仍然归功于非胡塞尔对先验-后验-区分的理解。为了支持这个论点，我首先根据我的理解对胡塞尔的本质论提出相关的反对意见。然后，我在胡塞尔的本质论的语境中阐明了理想和现实可能性之间的关系，正如我所看到的。最后，我对胡塞尔“在生命中”的本体论区分的地位提出了一个一般性观点，即它们如何区分是有效的，并且（默契地）仅作为复杂整体的一个时刻（在许多中）表现出来。意识的具体生活。最后，我就这对未来关于想象的现象学研究可能意味着什么进行了一些评论。