Abstract
In this paper I argue that the almost forgotten early dissertation of the phenomenologist Hans Reiner (1896–1991) Freiheit, Wollen und Aktivität. Phänomenologische Untersuchungen in Richtung auf das Problem der Willensfreiheit (1927) engages with what I call the unity problem of activity. This problem concerns the question whether there is a structure in virtue of which all instances of (at least pre-reflectively conscious) human activity—and not only “full-blown” intentional actions—can be unified. After a brief systematic elucidation of this problem, which is closely related to the contemporary “problem of action,” I elaborate and critically discuss two relevant threads running through Reiner’s work. The first view concerns the alleged motivational asymmetry between activity and passivity according to which it is essential only for active experiences to be motivated by an underlying passivity. The second view focuses on Reiner’s phenomenology of the will, especially on his notions of “ego-centrality” (Ich-Zentralität) and “inner will” (inneres Wollen) the latter being introduced in analogy to Brentano’s notion of “inner consciousness.” These two notions are supposed to unify all manifestations of the human will, including “full-blown” intentional actions (Handlungen) and non-intentional doings such as laughter. Reiner’s extension of will-based actions to non-intentional activity is one of the most remarkable aspects of his early work. Finally, I show that Reiner ultimately answers the unity problem in the negative because he ends up with the view that besides will-based agency (comprising both intentional and non-intentional actions) he also acknowledges so-called “motor activity” (Bewegungsaktivität) which is not intrinsically related to the will. I close with a couple of tentative proposals how volitional and motor actions might be unified nonetheless.
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Notes
In this paper, I will not scrutinize the categorial status of actions, i.e. the question whether actions are best conceived in terms of events, processes, states of affairs, relations, or as a category sui generis. I will therefore speak rather loosely and interchangeably of “actions,” “agency,” “acts,” “performances,” “activities,” and “doings.” However, in Sect. 2, I will to some extent restrict my use of these terms.
For a very similar way of raising this question, see Buytendijk (1956, p. 1). Buytendijk wonders whether there is a “unified [einheitlicher] methodological point of view” from which this “manifold of appearances” can be captured.
The opening vignette also gives rise to an utterly different “problem of unity,” i.e. the question how the various activities in question constitute one (and only one) overall and predominant activity, namely that of writing a paper. In what follows, I shall not elaborate this problem.
One might object that this is not necessary. For instance, assuming a contrast between conscious beings and non-conscious beings one need not presuppose an essential unity of all non-conscious beings. However, the contrast between activity and passivity is of a different kind than the contrast between activity and non-activity. To be more precise, the implication in question (contrast requires unity) should be restricted to contrary or polar contrasts (to use Aristotle’s terms) since it does not seem generally valid for contradictory oppositions (being A versus not-being A).
I mention in passing that—contra Davidson—Hanna and Maiese (2009, p. 64) claim that waking up is “a form of spontaneous or pre-reflective intentional action.” Uncertainties such as these demonstrate the need to go back to the more fundamental contrast between activity and passivity.
This does not mean that a conceptual analysis along the lines of a Wittgensteinian investigation of the “grammar” of agentive vocabulary is rendered superfluous. However, linguistic analysis cannot be the whole story and must be supplemented by phenomenological considerations.
In other words: in accordance with Reiner, I concentrate on phenomenally manifest or (subjectively) experiential activities of an embodied subject endowed with mental capacities. Note that pre-reflective awareness is enough for a subjective activity to count as “phenomenally manifest” or “experience.” I thus neglect the possibility of utterly non-experiential activities, examples of which might include sleepwalking or movements performed under hypnosis.
The standard example goes back to Aristotle (see Metaphysics 1051b6-8): “That ‘p’ is true” is both necessary and sufficient for “The state of affairs p obtains,” but only the latter grounds the former (cf. Correia and Schnieder 2012, pp. 26–27). Although I cannot argue for this interpretation here, I assume that the phenomenologist’s idea of “eidetic reduction” also aims at uncovering features in virtue of which an entity is what it is. An entity’s essence therefore involves more than its necessary and/or sufficient conditions.
Compare: If there is a property P all mammals share, then it holds true for each mammal that it is P.
Compare: From the fact that all mammals have a weight it does not follow that there is a weight all mammals have in common.
A third view is that there might well be one or several such properties but that we cannot discover them. I will leave this agnostic proposal aside.
The “fiat!” goes back to chapter XXVI of William James’s famous Principles of Psychology. It was widely discussed among the (early) phenomenologists.
Husserl’s famous distinction between independent parts (or “pieces,” Stücke) and dependent parts (or “moments,” Momente) is also operative in Reiner’s analyses of the structure of voluntary actions.
For similar principles in Husserl, see Hua IV, p. 213/(1989), p. 225, Hua IX, pp. 208–212, and Hua XXXI, p. 4.
Reiner takes up Husserl’s “extended” notion of motivation (25, fn. 1) which he contrasts with Pfänder’s (1911) more narrow notion according to which motivation captures the teleological and non-causal explanatory structure of rational human agency. For Husserl, but not for Pfänder, motivation is a species of causation, a so-called “motivational causality” (Motivationskausalität) (Hua IV, p. 216/(1989), 227), which is not governed by laws couched in purely physical (non-mental) terms. For more on Husserl’s notion of motivation see Hua III/1, pp. 99–102/1982, pp. 98–100, Hua IV, pp. 211–247/1989, pp. 223–259, and Hua XXXVII, pp. 103–124.
I also take motivation as a causal, yet non-uniquely determining relation. That is, the fact that x motivates S to y neither entails that S was forced or necessitated to y nor that S “could not have experienced or done otherwise.” Reiner explicitly acknowledges non-uniquely determining motivation in §§ 27 and 30, especially in cases of “torn decisions,” in which the subject is confronted with polyvalent and/or incommensurable axiological orientations.
I won’t elaborate the possibility of utterly non-experiential or unconscious motivation.
Typically and paradigmatically, y occurs simultaneously with x. In contrast to a mechanical “causal chain” of events, where the cause temporally precedes the effect, the motivating experience is not sharply separated from the motivated act, but rather flows or grows into it.
I should note that Reiner himself is not explicitly doing this. He just claims that ARP is an “eidetic law.” It is therefore an interpretative extrapolation on my part to use ARP for the sake of “unifying” the notion of activity. This move, however, seems to be in the spirit of Reiner’s early work.
Reiner’s mereological analysis is inspired by Scheler’s rich account of intentional action in his Formalismus (cf. Scheler 2007, pp. 120–161).
In Erhard (forthcoming) I comment more thoroughly on the other moments of actions.
This notion corresponds to no. 2) in the just quoted passage.
Functionally speaking, volitional stances (and their underlying Vorstellungen) come close to desires and beliefs in causal belief-desire models of agency (see Davidson 1963). Note, however, that Reiner argues at length that beliefs and desires are not sufficient to account for intentional action (see esp. §§ 18–19) since decisions, intentions, and the inner will are also required. Note further that Reiner (like Scheler 2007, pp. 123–124) takes willing to be more fundamental than (mere) wishing (Wünschen). In fact, Reiner defines wishing that p as a volitional stance towards p without the subject being willed or without the subject trying to perform the required actions to realize that p (cf. 37, 72–3, 83, passim).
Volitional stances can be modified in a number of ways, analogously to cognitive phenomena that can be subject to what Husserl calls “doxic modalities” (cf. § 19). Accordingly, a stance can be a doubtful (Willenszweifel), an interrogative (Willensfrage), or a decisive (Willens-Entschiedenheit) one. Moreover, stances either have an approving or a disapproving positional character.
This notion corresponds to no. 6) in the longer passage quoted above.
Besides stances and intents, Reiner also emphasizes the constitutive role of experiences of power (Bewusstsein des eigenen Könnens, Ich kann). A sense of empowerment is thus also crucial for acting intentionally (§§ 6, 8, 18–19, 30).
See Kriegel (2015, p. 87): “[I]n the first instance, you decide on an action and want a state of affairs. […] More generally, decisions appear primarily directed towards actions […], desires primarily toward states of affairs.”
Note that, as Kriegel (2015, p. 84) aptly says, the “essential relation” between the parts of intentional action (stance, intent, awareness of power, performance) is “not temporal, but compositional.” For Reiner, thus, an action is a whole comprising various act-moments that do not necessarily follow one another in a temporal sequence.
See Husserl’s distinction between “Handlungswille” and “Entschlusswille” (Hua XXVIII, pp. 106–7) which resembles Searle’s (1980) respective distinction between “intentions in action” and “prior intentions.” Only Handlungswille and intention-in-action are simultaneously inscribed into the action.
At times, Brentano (1995, Book II, Ch. 3) goes further than that by claiming that mental acts are not only inwardly presented (or perceived), but also inwardly judged and felt. Combined with his view that the will is a species of emotion (Gefühl) (cf. Book II, Ch. 8), it easily follows that every mental act is inwardly willed. Thus, in some sense, Reiner’s “inner will” is not entirely novel. However, the way Reiner applies it to characterize only active experiences by coupling it with the notion of “centrality” seems to be an innovative move.
Brentano (1995, p. 119): “Every mental act is conscious; it includes within it a consciousness of itself. Therefore, every mental act, no matter how simple, has a double object, a primary and a secondary object.”
If one conceives the inner will in terms of a “volitional stance,” it can also be subject to “volitional modalities” (§ 19) some of which were mentioned above. Thus, innerly willed activities can be further differentiated with regard to their degree and modality of volitional resoluteness, or, if one prefers a Frankfurtian term, “wholeheartedness” (cf. Frankfurt 1987).
Note that centrality and phenomenal saliency (or “foregroundness”) are not the same properties (cf. 97f., 125–127) because centrality entails saliency, but not vice versa. Reiner claims that, e.g., yawning can occur in the foreground without being performed centrally. However, it seems to me that Reiner has no cogent argument for the view that centrally performed experiences must occur in the foreground. As far as I can see, there could be both salient and recessive acts performed by the ego-center. This possibility will become relevant near the end of Sect. 4.
Another way to introduce inner will and centrality is with reference to attentional changes in perception (132, 108ff.). According to Reiner, attentively performed perception (Zuwendung) also requires inner will/centrality.
For a thoroughgoing investigation of laughter (and crying) from a phenomenologically inspired perspective, see Plessner (1970). According to Plessner, laughter and crying are active performances, though “limits” of human behavior. Interestingly, especially in the case of crying, Plessner claims that there is a “reflexive act” of “self-surrender” or “letting oneself go” (1970, pp. 116–17). This does not seem far away from Reiner’s inner will.
How does Reiner justify his mutual entailment thesis? The central idea seems to be that centrality requires a specific form of pre-reflective self-awareness which cannot be purely cognitive in nature. This is why centrality implies inner will. On the other hand, inwardly willing an episode makes the agent, as it were, experientially one with it, which in turn is why inner will entails centrality. Here is the crucial passage for the seemingly more problematic implication from centrality to inner will: “But this also holds conversely, since voluntariness is an essential constituent of centrality! That is, there is no act performed by the ego-center which could be a pure intuition or a volitional stance exhausting itself in being directed towards the intentional object. On the contrary, every central act of the ego, even if it is not brought about by another act of the will, incorporates a certain inner endorsement of the will towards the act itself!” (128).
However, to some extent, Reiner’s notion of “ego-centrality” resembles the contemporary notion of agent causation or “self as source.” On such a view, not only events or states of affairs, but also substances or subjects as such can be causally effective. See, e.g., Pereboom (2015), Horgan et al. (2003), Lowe (2008), and De Monticelli (1997). Without expanding on this difficult topic, let me just emphasize that several passages in Reiner point in this direction (140, 152, 165). Like Pereboom and others, Reiner seems to think that the experience of the ego as cause is particularly salient in cases of “torn decisions.”
Presumably, post-free actions can also always be centrally reactivated.
Mossel (2005, p. 129) defends a comparable dualism by distinguishing between actions stricto sensu and mere activities, only the former involving agential control and “sensations of action.” Interestingly, Mossel, like Reiner, cites breathing as an instance of such a mere activity (2005, pp. 158, 162–3).
In § 92 of Ideas I, Husserl describes the ego’s “modes of living pertaining to freely going out of itself” (Hua III/1, p. 214/1982, p. 226). Maybe Reiner has these formulations in mind when he refers to Aus-sich-Heraustreten. However, Husserl is here exactly not referring to Reiner’s “merely motional” doings, but rather to cases that Reiner’s notion of centrality is supposed to cover.
Upon closer phenomenological scrutiny, however, this might turn out to be wrong, since breathing already bears traces of a meaningful responsive intentional relation to the subject’s environment. Think of cases of emphatic inhaling and exhaling in response to specific situations (e.g. emphatically exhaling the moment you reach the top of a mountain after a strenuous hiking, or slowing down your respiratory circles at the sight of the calm blue ocean on a windless sunny day). Other breathing modulating activities such as sighing or groaning are also relevant in this regard, all of which bear significant traces of spontaneous and pre-reflective agency, i.e. they don’t seem to be “merely happening to us.” So, after all, Reiner might be quite right about the status of breathing as an activity. For more on the phenomenological subtleties of breathing, see Buytendijk (1967, pp. 249-260) and Straus (1954). By focusing on sighing, Straus argues that it is an expressive and intrinsically meaningful variation of the “fundamental function” of breathing, and that it cannot be explained in purely physiological (physico-chemical) terms. Straus thus holds that (wakeful) sighing (and breathing) are active Erlebnisse in which “a person performs his being-in-the world.” He even claims that phenomena such as sighing require a fundamental “revision of the basic categories of psychology,” since sighing is neither a voluntary “action” nor a mere happening, but rather an expressive “activity” or “behavior” (1954, pp. 123–24).
All actions that can be directly initiated, sustained and/or terminated by trying to do so belong to the so-called “absolute sphere of human power” (absoluter menschlicher Machtbereich) (cf. § 10).
In this sense, some of the other instinctive movements mentioned by Reiner could also be understood as active. Besides breathing, Reiner cites stretching absentmindedly, yawning, and blinking (97). Note that the relevant sense of trying can be minimal to such an extent that it could also be described as “effortless trying” (Hanna and Maiese 2009) since no felt resistance is necessarily involved. A minimal sense of accomplishment seems enough.
The original final sentence of Husserl’s assessment of Reiner’s thesis reads as follows: “Bei aller Gründlichkeit, Tüchtigkeit, auch analytischen Feinheit vermisst man doch den großen Zug einer urkräftigen philosophischen Originalität, die tiefer nach innen dringend und in weitsichtiger Umfassung die verwirrende Mannigfaltigkeit der Einzelgestalten zusammenschließen ließe zur Einheit eines klaren allverbindenden Verständnisses.” This verdict seems well in line with my claim that Reiner ends up with a certain activity dualism.
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Research on this paper was supported by the Forschungsstipendium (ER 819/2-1 and ER 819/2-2) granted by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). I’m grateful to Thomas Buchheim, Dan Zahavi, Søren Overgaard, Christian Martin, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on first versions of this paper.
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At the time of submission Christopher Erhard was Visiting Scholar at the Center for Subjectivity Research, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Karen Blixens Plads 8, DK-2300, Copenhagen S, Denmark.
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Erhard, C. Unifying Agency. Reconsidering Hans Reiner’s Phenomenology of Activity. Husserl Stud 35, 1–25 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-018-9235-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-018-9235-6