The phenomenon of affection

pp. 196-221

in: Edmund Husserl, Analyses concerning passive and active synthesis, Berlin, Springer, 2001

Abstract

We must not get embroiled in a phenomenology of the sensefields here. It must suffice to have pointed to it. There is still another direction of research bringing us much closer to questions of association, a direction characterized under the familiar rubric of affection, and even though we are familiar with it, we especially want to focus on it now. By affection we understand the allure given to consciousness,¹²³ the peculiar pull that an object given to consciousness exercises on the ego; it is a pull that is relaxed when the ego turns toward it attentively, and progresses from here, striving toward self-giving intuition, disclosing more and more of the self of the object, thus, striving toward an acquisition of knowledge, toward a more precise view of the object.