What is eidetic intuition?

Edmund Husserl, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Edmund Husserl answers

Any object whatsoever — no matter how indeterminately conceived, even if thought of as a wholly contentless Anything Whatever — is thinkable only as the correlate of an intentional constitution inseparable from it.1 This is the ground from which eidetic intuition proceeds: not the investigation of facts, but the investigation of what must hold of any conceivable object of a given kind.

The eidos — the pure essence — can be exemplified intuitively in instances drawn from experience, from perception, from memory; but equally, and with no diminishment of rigor, it can be exemplified in instances of mere phantasy.2 What is required is not that the example exist, but only that it be intuited as an instance of its kind. If in free phantasy I produce a melody, a spatial figure, an act of willing, I can discern through ideation the pure essence of melody, of spatial form, of willing as such — and this discernment is originary, not derivative.3

The existence or non-existence of the imagined instance changes nothing: pure truths of essence contain no claim about facts whatsoever, and from them alone not the slightest truth of fact can be inferred.4 The method by which the eidos is brought to givenness I call eidetic variation. One takes an example — any suitable instance — and varies it freely in phantasy, releasing it from all factual restrictions, proceeding with the consciousness of pure optionality, the "Any Whatever." The variants multiply into an open, endlessly extendable horizon.5

And precisely through this free, always-repeatable variation, something comes to the fore: what necessarily persists throughout all the variants, the invariant, the indissolubly identical in the different and ever-again different — this is the eidos, the universal essence by which all imaginable variants are restricted.6 Any variant could have served equally well as the initial example; the essence is not the property of this particular instance but what any instance of the kind must exemplify.

A judgment about essences can always be converted equivalently into an unconditionally universal judgment about all instances of those essences as such.7 When I judge, in pure eidetic universality, that any color is different from any tone, I need not appeal to experience of actual colors and tones; a phantasy-presentation of instances suffices, and the judgment, once grounded in the discernment of the essences, holds with unconditional necessity for every conceivable instance.8

The noetic justification of such judgments — their being rendered patently discernible — requires that the essence be seen, not that any individual existence be posited.9 One further point, which I regard as decisive: eidetic intuition is not a mystical faculty, and the concept of eidos carries no Platonic mythology with it once it is properly clarified.10

To explicate the eidetic method is not to describe an empirical psychological fact — a procedure that happens, as a matter of fact, to be repeatable. Its universal validity is unconditionally necessary; it is a method that can be followed no matter what conceivable object is taken as the initial example.11 And — here is the point that closes the circle — only in eidetic intuition can the essence of eidetic intuition itself become clarified.12

The eidos, I should add, is understood by me in the broadest possible sense: it comprehends not only material essences but syntactical objectivities of every kind, and accordingly the a priori — wherever that expression occurs in my writings — means precisely this eidetic apriority and nothing else.13

Sources

  1. any object thought of as a 'wholly optional' Anything Whatever, is thinkable only as the correlate of an intentional constitution inseparable from it.
    Formal and Transcendental Logic, pp. 268–269
  2. eidos, pure essence, can be exemplified intuitively in instances of givenness in experience, in such instances in perception, memory, and so forth but also in those in mere phantasy just as well.
    Ideas I, pp. 14–15
  3. If in free phantasy we produce any kind of spatial formations, melodies, social processes, and the like, or if we concoct acts of experiencing, of liking or disliking, of willing, and the like, then in these we are able, through 'ideation,' to discern manifold pure essences in an originary way.
    Ideas I, pp. 14–15
  4. Positing and apprehending essences by way of initially intuiting them does not in the least imply a positing of any kind of individual existence; pure truths of essences do not contain any claim about facts at all.
    Ideas I, pp. 14–15
  5. it must be understood, not as an empirical variation, but as a variation carried on with the freedom of pure phantasy and with the consciousness of its purely optional character — the consciousness of the 'pure' Any Whatever.
    Formal and Transcendental Logic, p. 268
  6. what necessarily persists throughout this free and always-repeatable variation comes to the fore: the invariant, the indissolubly identical in the different and ever-again different, the essence common to all, the universal essence by which all 'imaginable' variants of the example, and all variants of any such variant, are restricted.
    Formal and Transcendental Logic, p. 268
  7. each judgment about essences be converted equivalently into an unconditionally universal judgment about instances of these essences as such instances.
    Ideas I, pp. 16–17
  8. If, for example, in terms of essential universality ('unconditioned,' 'pure' universality) we make the judgment 'any color at all is different from any tone at all,' the judgment confirms what was just said. An instance of the essence of color and an instance of the essence of tone can be 'presented' intuitively and, to be sure, an instance of its essence; at the same time and in a certain way, an intuition of phantasy (without positing existence) and an intuition of an essence are both on hand.
    Ideas I, pp. 16–17
  9. such judgments require that an essence be seen in a certain way, and they require it for their noetic justification, i.e., for them to be rendered patently discernible.
    Ideas I, pp. 16–17
  10. any partway mystical thought attaching itself especially to the concepts eidos (idea) and essence cleanly eliminated.
    Ideas I, pp. 14–15
  11. The universal validity of the eidetic method is unconditionally necessary; it is a method that can be followed, no matter what conceivable object is taken as an initial example.
    Formal and Transcendental Logic, pp. 268–269
  12. Only in eidetic intuition can the essence of eidetic intuition become clarified.
    Formal and Transcendental Logic, pp. 268–269
  13. object [Gegenstand] is always understood by me in the broadest sense, which comprehends likewise all syntactical objectivities. Accordingly, the concept eidos is also given a maximally broad sense. At the same time, this sense defines the only concept belonging to the multisignificant expression, a priori, that I recognize philosophically.
    Formal and Transcendental Logic, pp. 268–269