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Document Details : Title: Husserl on Perception's Inadequacy Subtitle: A Critique Author(s): BOWER, Matt Journal: Etudes phénoménologiques - Phenomenological Studies Volume: 10 Date: 2026 Pages: 179-213 DOI: 10.2143/EPH.10.0.3295012 Abstract : One of Edmund Husserl’s signature ideas is that perceptual experience is structured into fulfilled and empty components. When visually inspecting a cup, for example, only some of its exterior and interior fall into your line of sight and to that extent is experienced in 'fulfillment'. However, you are perceptually sensitive to the fact that the cup’s exterior and interior exceed what falls into your line of sight. The contents of that sort of awareness are experienced 'emptily', without fulfillment. Husserl’s view that perceptual experience is structured into fulfilled and empty components is the immediate consequence of his thesis that perceptual experience is inherently inadequate. That means, roughly, there is always more to how things are perceptually taken to be than how they are presented. Here I explicate the conceptual pair adequacy/inadequacy, locate it in Husserl’s larger philosophical program, and sketch his rationale for thinking perceptual experience is inherently – always and in every instance – and radically – through and through and in every respect – inadequate. I then present a series of arguments challenging Husserl’s conception of perception as radically inadequate and undermining the case for its inherent inadequacy. |
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