Finding the noema

Dallas Willard

pp. 29-47

in: John Drummond, Lester Embree (eds), The phenomenology of the noema, Deventer, Kluwer, 1992

Abstract

In phenomenology, which aims to be nothing else than essence theory confined to pure intuition, we accordingly carry out direct intuitions of the essences given within samples of transcendentally pure consciousness, and we fix those intuitions conceptually, that is, terminologically. Science is possible only where results of thought are retainable in the form of knowledge and are available to further thinking in the form of a system of assertions: assertions which are intelligible as to logical sense, but can be actualized without the clarity of underlying presentations, and thus without insight and in the manner of the [mere] judgment.... To this end it is necessary that words and sentences which are identical be univocally tied to certain intuitively graspable essences that make up their ‘fulfilling sense.’1