Volume 27, 2018
Phenomenology
Huamin Lin
Pages 73-78
Intentionality: With or without Object?
An Investigation of Levinas’ Critique of Husserl’s Theory of Intentionality
This paper aims to examine the argument between Husserl and Levinas on the issue of intentionality: for Husserl, the “noesis and noema” correlation is the basic structure of intentionality, every intentional act has “I-pole” and “object-pole.” However, for Levinas, there is kind of intentionality without object, that is the sensibility of intentionality, and this kind of intentionality keeps the otherness of the other. Levinas modifies Husserlian intentionality and applies a wider meaning to it: for Husserl it’s kind of conscious intentionality, but in Levinas, it represents a kind of bodily intentionality. With the challenge to Husserl’s priority of the presentation of intentionality in consciousness Levinas goes further into the ethical revelation on the face of the other. In Levinas’s view, the face of the other belongs to the exteriority which is totally outside of my consciousness, and the welcoming of the face and the work of justice condition the birth of truth itself.