Husserl and Cassirer on the Phenomenology of Perception

Timothy Martell
University of Portland
martell@up.edu

In what follows, I create a dialogue between the last prominent representative of NeoKantianism, Ernst Cassirer, and the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl. Such dialogue,
it seems, did not take place in their lifetimes. Though Husserl acknowledged his intellectual debt
to the Neo-Kantians, especially Natorp, he does not mention Cassirer in any published work.
Cassirer, for his part, frequently sought out dialogue with phenomenologists. His debate with
Heidegger is only the most well-known of these efforts.1 More often in print, Cassirers would-be
phenomenological interlocutor is Husserl.
In a section of Philosophy of Symbolic Forms entitled The problem of representation and the
construction of the intuitive world, Cassirer both appropriates and criticizes aspects of Husserls
phenomenology. The intuitive world referenced in the title is the world of perception, and
Cassirers account of the construction of this world largely consists of what phenomenologists
call noematic descriptions of perceptual consciousness.2 On the basis of these descriptions, he
goes on to criticize Husserls hylomorphic phenomenology of perception. Cassirers account of
perception is implicitly at odds with Husserls phenomenology in two additional respects: he
maintains that perception involves representational objects, and he holds that perceptual
consciousness can be mathematically modeled. In the first section of the paper, I explain
Cassirers criticism of Husserls hylomorphism and briefly recount those other aspects of
Cassirers philosophy of perception that appear to be most at odds with Husserls views. In the
second section, I consider how Husserl might have responded.

Cassirer cites a number of early phenomenologists in Philosophy of symbolic forms, including Max Scheler and,
most interestingly, Wilhelm Schapp, one of Husserls students in Gttingen. In the third volume of the Philosophy of
symbolic forms, Cassirer repeatedly and approvingly quotes Schapps Beitrge zur Phnomenologie der
Wahrnehmung. This is a work to which Merleau-Ponty would also repeatedly make reference in his Phenomenology
of perception.
2
(Kaufmann, 1949, p. 809) and (Luft, 2004, pp. 243-7) suggest that much of the Philosophy of symbolic forms
consists of noematic descriptions of various worlds: e.g. the world of myth, or the world of natural science. Cassirer
confirms this interpretation in a footnote to Philosophy of symbolic forms: volume two: mythic thought in which he
compares his project with Husserls phenomenology. He credits Husserl with having distinguished between acts and
their intentional objects, (i.e. noeses and noemata). Husserls phenomenology makes it clear, moreover, that there are
intentional objects besides those which correspond to cognitive acts. The mythic world is a sphere of such noncognitive objects. Following the path opened by Husserl, Cassirer intends to clarify the significance of the mythic
world (1953, p. 12).

1. Cassirer contra Husserl

According to Cassirer, perceptual objects are, as perceived, necessarily embedded in various
relations to one another. Insofar as these relations are rule-governed, perceptual objects can also
be said to have structural features. Some of these structural features depend upon others.
Cassirer is committed to the view, for instance, that perceptual awareness of a physical thing is
awareness of an object as causally related to other objects, and objects are perceived as causally
related to one another only if they are perceived as spatially and temporally related to one
another. It is in virtue of these relations of dependence among perceptual structures that Cassirer
writes of the Aufbau (i.e., construction or building up) of the perceptual world.
The perceptual world is not just structured; according to Cassirer, it is structured all the way
down. Consider colors. Every color possesses value, saturation, and hue. Colors considered with
respect to value are ordered. Any two colors are such that one is just as bright as or brighter than
the other. This relation, just-as-bright-as-or-brighter-than, is reflexive, transitive, and
antisymmetric. So related, the colors belong to what is nowadays known as a total order. Much
the same can be said of colors vis--vis saturation. Any two colors are such that one is just as
saturated as or more saturated than the other. This relation is, again, reflexive, transitive, and
antisymmetric. The situation is more complex for colors with respect to hue, but they too are
related to one another so as to belong to an order, one that is often depicted by a wheel. The fact
that colors are ordered in three different ways has led to numerous attempts to represent the
structure of color by three-dimensional geometrical figures. Cassirer himself mentions the color
octahedron. He explains that these schemata give us . . . a purely symbolic representation of
relations that are peculiar to color as such, that are implicit in its basic nature, in its sensuousintuitive facticity (1957, p.425). These schemata provide maps of the world of color, maps
depicting how any one color is related to any other. The depicted relations are, moreover, internal
to the relata. Red, for instance, would not be what it is without being closer to purple than blue,
brighter than black, and more saturated than any grey.
What holds for the world of colors holds for sensuous data generally. For us, he writes, there
is no single sensuous datum which does not, though in varying degrees of clarity, stand in such
involvements with others, and which is not thereby articulated with a universal, though for the
present sensuous-intuitive order. In this sense, it is a prejudice from which the traditional
theory of rationalism suffers no less than sensationalism to suppose that the sphere of
universality begins with the concept. For even within the concrete particularity of sensuous
phenomena, definite threads of combination run back and forth from one particular to another,
and through these threads the particulars are woven into a whole (1957, p. 425).
If the world of perception is structured at every level, then Husserls hylomorphic
phenomenology of perception is mistaken. According to the analysis offered in Ideas I,
perception involves two parts: hyl, and morph (1993). In Thing and Space these were called
sensory content and apprehension character respectively (1997). Take, for example, seeing a

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black cell phone. When I see this object, I have patches of black in my visual field. These and
other colors in the field are sensory contents or hyl. Moving away from the phone while still
looking at it, the field changes: it gradually includes less and less of that black. Yet, I go on
perceiving the same phone. In order to account for the fact that I can see the same object even
while sensory contents change, Husserl claims that perception must also involve apprehension
character, or morph. Apprehension character animates the sensory content. Returning to my
example, it is in virtue of apprehension character that the black patches in my visual field present
the surface color of the phone; and it is because the varying sensory content is apprehended in
the same manner throughout the whole perceptual episode that I continually see the same phone.
Apprehending in the same manner is, moreover, a matter of taking the changing contents as
following the same rule. In my example, at least part of the rule goes like this: if I were to move
backwards, then the black patches would take up less of the visual field. Apprehension character
allows for perception of a thing, then, by establishing relations between present sensory content
and sensory content that I would have were my perspective to change. Morph animates hyl by
establishing relations among hyletic data, data which, it seems, are themselves intrinsically
unrelated to one another.
Cassirer objects to this analysis on phenomenological grounds. Reflection on perceptual
consciousness does not reveal a stratum of structureless sensuous data, elements that are not
given as related to one another, that are not given as parts of some whole. The black that I see
when looking at my phone is seen as the color of the facing side of the object. I perceive the
black as an attribute of a thing, as related to a substrate, as part of a whole. And even if I were to
adopt a painterly attitude toward my visual experience, I still would not find atomistic sense data.
I would see, among other plain colors, black, and that means that I would see a completely desaturated color, a color in comparison with which any other is brighter. From the standpoint of
phenomenological inquiry, Cassirer writes, there is no more a matter in itself than a form in
itself (1957, p. 197). There is no hyl as Husserl conceives of it.
That said, distinctions between form and matter can be drawn within perceptual experience. No
matter is formless, according to Cassirer, since all sensuous data are structured, but the same
formed matter can and does enter into additional relations. It is in virtue of this additional
structure that we are perceptually aware of things.
Seeing a thing requires awareness of invariants, such as constant shape, size, and color. In order
to see a book, I must be able to see it as having the same shape and size even as I look at it from
different perspectives. And I must be able to see it as possessing the same colors even as I move
it from a shaded area into direct sunlight. How is this possible? Call the sized shapes that take up
some portion of the visual field images. If I look at my copy of Philosophy of symbolic forms
from directly above, in good light, and at close range, a dark and somewhat washed-out red
rectangular image takes up most of the field. Seeing the constant shape and size of the book is a
matter of grasping this image as transformable into other images, namely, the images that I
would have if my orientation vis--vis the book were to change. Cassirer accounts for color

4
constancy in the same fashion.3 Seeing the constant color is a matter of seeing present colors of
an image as transformable into other colors: namely, those I would see under different lighting
conditions.
Through his account of perceptual constancy, Cassirer implicitly contests Husserls
phenomenology of perception in two additional respects. First, he claims that colored images,
grasped as transformable into other images, function to represent constant shape, size, and color.
Cassirer likens them to signs. Colored images are, he claims, analogous to words. Just as a word
takes on determinate meaning in the context of the other words of the sentence to which it
belongs, so a colored image represents constant shape, size, and color only in relation to the
other colored images into which it might be transformed (1957, p. 136).
Cassirer also argues that the structure involved in perceptual constancy can be mathematically
modeled. He claims, specifically, that perceptual constancy has a group structure (1944). A group
is a set and an operation; together, they satisfy four conditions. Consider the set of integers and
addition. Addition is a binary operation that maps pairs of integers to integers. The set is, in other
words, closed under the operation. Addition is associative: adding the sum of two integers to a
third has the same result as adding the first to the sum of the second and third. The set of integers
includes 0; adding 0 to any integer results in that integer. 0 is the groups identity element.
Finally, for every member of the set of integers, there is some member such that their sum is
equal to the identity element, 0. Elements that function in this way are called inverses.
Recall that seeing constant shape, size, and color is a matter of relating an image to other images
into which it might be transformed. Cassirers suggestion is that the set of transformations
yielding those images has a group structure. The set is closed under an operation: that of
following one transformation with another. If, for example, I bring Cassirers book from my desk
toward the window of my office, the color of the image becomes brighter; if I go on to place the
book in direct sunlight, the color becomes brighter still. Of course, that combination of
transformations yields exactly the same result as would have occurred had I simply moved the
book directly into the sunlight. Explanation for why the combining operation must be associative
would take me beyond the limits of this paper, but it is fairly clear that the other two criteria for a
group are satisfied. With every transformation of color brought about by moving the book, I am
aware that I can undo what I have done, that I can return to the color with which I started. This
means that the set of transformations includes inverses. It also includes an identity element: the
color transformation that corresponds to seeing the book under unchanging conditions of
illumination.

It is in the context of his discussion of color constancy that Cassirer cites Schapps Contributions to the
phenomenology of perception (Cassirer, 1957, pp. 125-7).

2. Husserls Response
Husserl, like Cassirer, was concerned with the phenomenon of perceptual constancy. In Thing
and Space, he introduces the notion of apprehension character precisely in order to account for
the fact that constant shape, size, and color are perceived throughout changes in sensory
contents. In Ideas II, color constancy turns out to be a key to the difference between seeing what
Husserl calls a material thing and seeing what he calls a visual phantom. The latter is a colored
three-dimensional object of sight. A material thing, by contrast, is a three-dimensional object that
is perceived as causally related to its surroundings. We see objects in this fashion when we see
variations in color as functionally dependent on conditions of illumination. Varying colors are
thereby perceived as color states in which some constant color is announced (1989, pp. 44-6).4
Husserls account of perceptual constancy is, then, quite similar to Cassirers.
Husserl, though, consistently opposed analyses of perception on which it must involve
representational, sign-like objects. A characteristic example of his many remarks to this effect
can be found in the lectures on transcendental logic: Perception is that mode of consciousness
that sees and has its object itself in the flesh. To put it negatively, the object is not given like a
mere sign or a likeness, it is not grasped mediately as if the object were merely indicated by
signs or appearing in a reproduced copy, etc. Rather, it is given as itself just like it is meant, and
it stands there in person, so to speak (2001, p. 140). It appears that Husserl and Cassirer would
have to be odds on the issue of whether perception involves representational objects.
But as I read Cassirer, I think he would have agreed that perceptual objects, including things of
constant shape, size, and color, are given in person, in the flesh. Being aware of constant color by
way of varying colors is not, for Cassirer, like being aware of some distant, unseen fire by way of
smoke on the horizon. In likening colored images to signs, Cassirer does not mean to say that
they are objects of the sort that Husserl would call indications. Instead, Cassirers point in
likening colored images to signs is twofold: they function to bring about awareness of something
distinct from themselves, and they do this in virtue of the rule-governed manner in which they
are related to one another. As noted above, Husserl would agree with both of these claims.
Varying colors are not constant colors, but we are able to see the latter in the former so long as
the former change in a rule-governed fashion.
What of Cassirers efforts to mathematically model perceptual consciousness? Husserls position
on efforts to mathematize phenomenology seems, at first, to be quite clear. In Ideas I he states
that transcendental phenomenology belongs to an entirely different group of a priori sciences
than the mathematical sciences (1983, pp. 169-70). Yet, Husserl himself often employs
mathematical concepts and even constructs mathematical models in the course of
phenomenological research. In order to clarify the structure of time consciousness, Husserl
4

Announcement is J.N. Mohantys rendering of Beurkundung, the term that Husserl uses to describe the
relationship between the color state of a thing under some conditions of illumination and the real color property that
is perceived by way of that state (2011, p. 24).

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constructs an immensely helpful graph (1991, p. 343); he repeatedly asserts that the flow of timeconstituting consciousness appears to itself as a one-dimensional rectilinear multiplicity (1997,
pp. 105, 120); he states that there is a visual field insofar as shaped colors belong to a twodimensional manifold, or, as he also puts it, a series of series (2001, p. 194); he claims that there
are functional relationships between kinaesthetic sensations and transformations of images in
that field (1997, p. 143); and he describes the space constituted relative to eye and head
movements alone (i.e., the cephalomotor system) as a Riemannian manifold (1997, p. 274). It is
safe to say, then, that the relationship between phenomenology and mathematics is more
complex than it may at first seem.
Whatever the relationship is supposed to be, three points are clear. First, Husserls remarks on
mathematics and phenomenology in Ideas I are intended to address the question of whether
phenomenology is a material mathematical science. Husserl argues that it is not, since material
mathematical sciences are deductive whereas phenomenology is not (1983, p. 163).
Phenomenology also differs from the material mathematical sciences insofar as it must employ
vague morphological concepts.5 Second, his discussion in these sections does not address the
question of the relationship between formal mathematical sciences and phenomenology.6
Phenomenology is certainly not a formal science. However (and this is the third point), formal
scientific concepts must apply to the object domain of phenomenology, since they apply to
objects as such. I take it that the formal mathematical disciplines include set theory and order
theory. It follows that phenomenologists may employ the concepts of those disciplines in the
course of their research, and it should come as no surprise that Husserl, a trained mathematician,
often does so.7
I doubt, then, he would have objected to Cassirers efforts to find a mathematical model for
perceptual constancy. A group, after all, is a formal structure. Husserls question, I think, would
have been whether this particular formal structure fits the phenomenon in question.
Regarding the hylomorphic account of perception offered in Ideas I, I believe that Husserl could
have accepted Cassirers objections in principle.8 This is because his research on temporality had
5

More precisely, Husserl maintains that any material mathematical science can be axiomatized (1983, pp. 163-4).
This implies both that such sciences are deductive and that their concepts are exact. But transcendental
phenomenology is not deductive and its concepts are inherently vague. Hence, it is not a material mathematical
science.
6
See Husserls marginal comments to Copy A of Ideas I.
7
Husserls remarks on the relationship between phenomenology and mathematics in 74-5 of Ideas I are sketchy in
several places. He claims that many of the morphological concepts of phenomenological analysis are inherently
vague, and thus non-mathematical. But then, in the penultimate paragraph of 75, he leaves open the possibility of
developing as a counterpart to descriptive phenomenology, an idealizing procedure which substitutes pure and strict
ideals for intuitive data and might even serve as the fundamental means for a mathesis of mental processes (1983,
p.169). Thus, it looks as though he allows for the development of a material mathematical science of mental
processes. At the very least, he does not rule it out as a counter-sense. What bearing would the results of such a
mathesis of mental processes have on transcendental phenomenology? Husserl is silent on this issue.
8
I suspect that he would have had doubts about the particulars of Cassirers case. While he would have
acknowledged that the color manifold is ordered, he would deny that this is how we perceive colors to be. The facts
about color order belong to the domain of material ontology; they are discovered through a quite sophisticated

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already provided a basis for rejecting the account of hyl with which Cassirer takes issue.
According to the results of Husserls work on time consciousness, any sensory content given to
me now must be experienced in relation to whatever was just sensed. A sound that I hear right
now must be heard in relation to whatever preceded it, especially whatever sounds preceded it.
Thus, I hear sounds as just beginning or enduring, and if enduring, then either changing or not
(2001, p. 187). Much the same can be said of colors. Looking at the orange hat of someone
passing below my window, I am aware of roughly the same orange successively occupying
different positions in the visual field, and thus enduring for a time, after which it is gone. By the
early 1920s at the latest, Husserls account of the hyletic aspect of lived experience had become
still more complex. In the course of offering a phenomenology of association, Husserl notes that
every color given at any moment is given as belonging with other colors to a single field (2001,
p. 194). Colors are, then, given as pertaining to one another in a manner that is different from
whatever relations they might have to contemporaneous sounds, textures, and so forth. Some
colors in the field are, additionally, more similar to one another than the others. They
approximate one another in location as well as value, saturation, and hue. As such, they stand out
from the rest of the field (2001, p. 184). Much the same holds for sounds. This should be enough
to draw two conclusions. First, the so-called sensory contents are constituted. In other words,
Husserl came to see that hyletic phenomenology has to do with the noematic side of
phenomenological analysis.9 This is the reason, I take it, that Husserl began to use the phrase
hyletische Gegenstnde in preference to terms like sensory content or simply hyl.10 Second,
these hyletic objectlike formations are structured. Minimally, they possess the structural features
of anything given in time.

3. Conclusion
Where perception is concerned, the philosophies of Cassirer and Husserl are remarkably
convergent. Both recognize that the phenomenon of perceptual constancy is essential to the
construction of the world of perception, and their accounts of this phenomenon are quite similar.
It is true that Cassirer likens perceptual phenomena to signs and that Husserl regarded such
analogies as misleading. But the point at which Cassirer is driving is one with which Husserl
would concur: through rule-governed variations of images in the visual field, we become aware
of something other than images, the constant shapes, sizes, and colors of things bound up in
causal relations with their surroundings. It is also true that Cassirer suggests a mathematical
model for perceptual constancy, whereas Husserl does not. But this does not indicate any
aversion, on Husserls part, to the employment of formal mathematical concepts in the course of
judgment process, one that presupposes knowledge of formal relations. Pre-predicative, perceptual awareness simply
does not by itself yield such facts.
9
(Bernet, Kern, Marbach, 1993, p.140) suggest that Husserl struck out on this path in later manuscripts.
10
Steinbock, the English translator of the lectures on transcendental logic, renders this as hyletic objectlike
formations (Husserl, 2001, p. 200).

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phenomenological research. Regarding hylomorphism, Cassirer agrees that it is legitimate to
distinguish between the form and matter of perception. The group, after all, is a form of what
Cassirer calls sensuous data. The focus of Cassirers critique is Husserls account of hyl. In this
respect, Cassirer was ahead of the curve. Later phenomenologists such as Gurwitsch and
Merleau-Ponty would go on to offer similar criticisms (perhaps because both had the benefit of
having read Cassirer). But Cassirer was also taking issue with positions that Husserl had already
abandoned (if, in fact, he ever held them).11 Though the hyletic phenomenology that emerges
from Husserls writings on time and transcendental logic is far from clear, it does seem that he
was moving towards an account of the matter of perception quite like that advocated by Cassirer
himself.

4. References
Bernet, R. Kern, I. and Marbach, E. (1993) An introduction to Husserlian phenomenology.
Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP.
Cassirer, E. (1953). The philosophy of symbolic forms. Volume two: mythic thought. (R.
Manheim, Trans.). New Haven: Yale University Press.
Cassirer, E. (1957) The philosophy of symbolic forms. Volume three: The phenomenology of
knowledge. (R. Manheim, Trans.). New Haven: Yale University Press.
Cassirer, E. (1944) The concept of group and the theory of perception. (A. Gurwitsch, Trans.).
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 5(1), 1-36.
Husserl, E. (1983). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological
philosophy: First book (F. Kersten, Trans.). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer
Academic Publishers.
Husserl, E (1989). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological
philosophy: Second book. (R. Rojcewics and A. Schuwer, Trans.). Dordrecht, The
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, E. (1991). On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time (J. B. Brough,
Trans.). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, E. (1997). Thing and space: Lectures of 1907 (R. Rojcwicz, Trans.). Dordrecht, The
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

11

In the relevant sections of Ideas I, Husserl is a good deal more circumspect about hyletic data and their form than
his critics let on.

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Husserl, E. (2001). Analyses concerning passive and active synthesis: lectures on transcendental
logic (A. J. Steinbock, Trans.). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
Kaufmann, F. (1949). Cassirer, Neo-Kantianism, and phenomenology. In P. A. Schilpp (Ed.) The
philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (pp.799-854). Evanston, IL: Library of Living Philosophers.
Luft, S. (2004). A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Subjective and Objective Spirit: Husserl,
Natorp and Cassirer. The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological
Philosophy, IV, 209-48.
Mohanty, J. N. (2011). Edmund Husserls Freiberg Years: 1916-1938. New Haven, CT: Yale UP.
Schapp, W. (1910). Beitrge zur Phnomenologie der Wahrnehmung. Gttingen: Heymann.