Lecture III

pp. 33-40

in: Edmund Husserl, The idea of phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 1999

Abstract

By the foregoing considerations we have determined precisely and reliably what the critique of knowledge may and may not use. While its riddle is the possibility of transcendence, it may never under any conditions draw the actuality of what is transcendent into its account. The sphere of usable objectivities, of usable knowledge, which present themselves as valid and remain free of the marks of epistemological vacuity, however, does not reduce itself to zero. For we have secured the entire sphere of cogitationes. The being of the cogitatio — more precisely, the phenomenon of knowledge itself — is beyond question and free of the riddle of transcendence. Such existences are already presupposed in the initial statement of the problem of knowledge. The question of how the transcendent enters into knowledge would surely forfeit its sense if not only the transcendent but also knowledge itself were given up. It is also clear that cogitationes present a sphere of absolutely immanent givenness, whatever else we might mean by "mmanence." In the seeing of the pure phenomenon the object is not external to knowledge, or to "consciousness"; rather, it is given in the sense of the absolute self-givenness of what is simply seen.