Conversation with Husserl and Fink, 25/11/31

pp. 51-52

in: Dorion Cairns, Conversations with Husserl and Fink, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1976

Abstract

I asked Husserl to say something about Teleologie. "Teleologie, das ist Zukunftsmusik",⁵³ he replied. He described again the various levels of constitution which phenomenological analysis finds and he emphasized the fact that, though analysis proceeds by abstraction, still the concrete whole is always before the phenomenologist. Though his first results are an understanding of more general and of formal structures, he may always return to what is given and by comparison make clear what he has overlooked. He may, for example, come to see that when he has described the mind merely according to its structure he has left out the higher level of purposiveness which is present in the mind.