Husserl reconciled affective perception with transcendental constitution by positing two levels of activity

Evidence

Husserl uses the concepts of aff ective and receptive to characterize this level of perception. Following him, we can say that perceived objects actively aff ect us, and whenever we react or reply to their “calls,” we relate to them passively. Husserl argues that such active objects are necessarily part of our experience as human beings, despite the fact that all experienced realities result from the constitutive activity of transcendental consciousness. To understand this, one needs to distinguish between two levels of activity. On the one hand, the positing acts of consciousness constitute all meaning of reality and being, knowable reality as well as perceivable reality; on the other hand, most objects of senseperception are constituted as active, such that they can move us, attract us, and repel us. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 354

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the affective/receptive distinction Husserl introduces to explain how constituted objects can still move the subject.
• XREF: The two-levels-of-activity solution prefigures Sartre’s own negotiation between transcendental constitution and the given. — connects to: Intentional affectivity directed at pain differs from pure body-consciousness; Sartre and Merleau-Ponty both grounded perception in affective rather than theoretical objects — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 357; Husserl held that perceived objects actively move, attract, and repel subjects — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 353 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Nature is constructed by the mind’s synthetic activity from raw sense perceptions #expands (0.78) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 167