The Formation of Husserl's Concept of Constitution (review)

184 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Skotheim quickly sketches the works dealing with American thought up to 1900 and at this point focuses the main part of his study upon the rise of the New ~istory or Progressive Tradition in historical writing. The unifying belief among these historians was that ideas reflect, and could be explained in terms of, socio-economic conditions. This trend culminated in the works of Parrington and Curti. Skotheim asserts that much of the debunking that was done by these historians was part of the general reaction among American intellectuals in the twenties against traditions of the American past, particularly Puritanism. During the thirties, the growing threat of totalitarianism helped bring about a re-embracing of traditions. The author places Morison, Miller, and Gabriel in opposition to the Progressive historians in that they opposed the relativistic implications of Progressivism and its general undercutting of American traditions and values. Recent work has tended to focus primarily upon small areas of history in a piecemeal approach rather than attempting the large-scale panoramas once so popular. In addition to this, the influence of sociology is felt in the growing concern with quantification. In the appendix, Skotheim attempts to demonstrate the current acceptance of American intelIectual history. The fact that he deals only with this country is as much out of necessity as it is out of choice, since one is hard pressed to cite any recent significant contributions in the field by Europeans. The overwhelming tradition in this country has been to relate directly ideas to action and to discount those which cannot be so related. In American history, then, ideas are inextricably bound up in that history in fact as well as in their treatment. Skotheim calls for the acceptance of American intellectual history as a separate entity, but at the same time admits that American historians are still more concerned with ideas in history than with the history of ideas. Furthermore, the book itself gives evidence that the very traditions of historical treatment in this country run counter to the possibility of American intellectual history being accepted as a separate field. WILLARDL. HO6EBOOM New York Un.versity The Formation o] Husserl's Convept o] Constitution. By Robert Sokolowski. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964. Pp. xii + 250. ----Phaenomenologica, 18) This book is a critical discussion of the genesis and evolution of the concept of "constitution " in Husserl's philosophy. Sokolowski admirably demonstrates the centrality of this notion, originally borrowed from the Neo-Kantians, in Husserl's philosophy and discusses it with reference to the development of his thought as a whole. The treatment is thorough, clear, rigorous, in every way a model in the genre of which both the author and his publisher may be proud. Though quite properly limited in scope, this is probably the best critical study of Husserl's philosophy which has been published in the English language up to the present time. Sokolowski shows that Husserl's theory of meaning, as stated in the Logical Investigal /ons, is the background from which his theory of constitution emerged. A meaning (Sinn) for Huseerl is an ideal entity distinct from any psychological act of meaning and which remains numerically identical every time it is given expression in some concrete ~ychological act. Such meanings do not have the objectivity of real objects (which are utterly distinct from meanings) but rather the "objectivity" of ideal (or "mental" or "intentional ") entities. By this Husserl means that such "entities" (which he later designates as noemata) exist only as strict correlates to intentional, noetic acts--as the immanent objects of consciousness. They are, he says, cons~,ituted by consciousnes~ and have no other reality. Meanings thus do not exist apart from consciousness; it is consciousness which brings such meanings to be. Consciousness does not create its objects of knowledge; it does constitute the meaning of its objects. Acts of bestowing meaning on objects of knowledge are called "objectivating" acts. The manner in which Husserl first formulated this doctrine was quite dependent on its BOOK REVIEWS 185 usage in Paul Natorp (from whom he seems to have taken the term) and is stated in terms of the famous distinction between the "form" and...