Created Δευτέρα 18 Μαρτίου 2019
idealization el Idealisierung ideation
The geometer is not interested in /de facto /sensuously intuitable
shapes, as the descriptive natural scientist is. He does not, like the
latter, fashion /morphological concepts /of vague configurational
types which are directly seized upon on
the basis of sensuous intuition and which, in their vagueness, become
conceptually and terminologically fixed. The /vagueness /of such
concepts, the circumstances that their spheres of application are fluid,
does not make them defective; for in the spheres of knowledge where they
are used they are absolutely indispensable, or in those spheres they are
the only legitimate concepts. If the aim is to give appropriate
conceptual expression to the intuitionally given essential
characteristics of intuitionally given physical things, that means
precisely that the latter must be taken as they are given. And they are
given precisely as fluid; and typical essences can become seized upon as
exemplified in them only in immediately analytic eidetic intuition. The
most perfect geometry and the most perfect practical mastery of it
cannot enable the descriptive natural scientist to express (in exact
geometrical concepts) what he expresses in such a simple,
understandable, and completely appropriate manner by the words 'notched,'
'scalloped,' 'lens-shaped,' 'umbelliform,' and the like—all to them
concepts which are /essentially, rather than accidentally, inexact /and
/consequently /also non-mathematical (Hua 3/155).
Whereas our vague and inexact descriptions of the phenomena in the lifeworld have an ontological correlate in the morphological structure of the phenomena, the exact sciences seek to overcome this vagueness, thereby making use of something Husserl calls /idealization/. It is not possible to draw a perfectly straight line, since a sufficiently detailed measurement will always reveal small aberrations. It is, however, possible to transcend these imperfections in thought. We can construe an idea about an absolutely straight line and take it as an ideal that can be approximated. In contrast to a morphological concept like the concept 'dog,' which refers to something we can actually see a concrete instantiation of, the concept of a perfectly straight line is an exact (and abstract) concept. It does not describe anything that actually exists in nature, but is an ideal construction.
[Drummond: 27, 30, 32, 68, 99, 128, 198, 209]
EXACT ESSENCE. An exact essence is one that can be given a mathematical or purely formal expression. Exact essences, therefore, are apprehended in idealizing or formalizing abstractions. In the case of idealized essences, there is a limit toward which the series of individuals instantiating the essence are ordered. In the case of formalized essences, there is a logical or mathematical formulation that applies unambiguously to all objects. Exact essences precisely delimit their [instantiations](#instantiation). See also EXACT EXPRESSION; EXACTNESS; FORMALIZATION; IDEALIZATION; MORPHOLOGICAL ESSENCE.
[Drummond: 70]
FORMALIZATION. Formalization is that species of abstraction that occurs when the similar property seized upon is a property of any conceivable object whatsoever. Hence, the universals identified are such as to belong to all genera and species of objects and to every possible individual existent. Formalization can occur either directly from our experience and imaginative variation of objects, from the generalizations achieved by empirical or pure, essential abstraction, or by way of arithmeticizing the exact essences realized in idealizations. Formalizing abstractions isolate the a priori features belonging to any object whatsoever. See also EIDETIC VARIATION.
[Drummond: 79]
IDEAL INDIVIDUAL. An ideal individual is an ideal object that comes to be known in the activity of idealization.
[Drummond: 100]
IDEALIZATION. A kind of abstraction that, like generalization but unlike formalization, yields abstract objects having a determinate material content. Unlike generalization, however, idealization does not focus on the similarities of objects and abstract an identity typifying them all. Instead, the similar objects are arrayed in such a way as to form a progression. What characterizes this progression is an asymptotic approach toward a limit that is not itself realized in any member of the progression. The limit, in other words, exists on a different plane; it is not real (real) but is,
102 • IDEAS I
rather, ideal, and its ideality differs from that of the empirical generalization and the pure essence. The shift of attention to the ideal limit as such apprehends what Husserl calls an “exact essence.”
Idealization is most genuinely achievable when measurement is possible, and the paramount examples of idealization are the figures of Euclidean geometry. Since the array upon which our apprehension of the ideal limit also extends beyond those actually given to those recognized as purely possible, it yields an a priori object rather than an empirical generalization. The universal must be understood against the array through which it is approached; without the awareness of the array, there can be no genuine awareness of, say, the ideal figure of the cube as opposed to the merely empirical concept of the box-like, three-dimensional volume. Moreover, the idealizing abstraction completes—or, better, replaces—the movement begun in the generalization of measurable properties, for the identical element present in all the similar objects is now exactly, mathematically defined in a manner unattainable in the abstraction of the empirical type or even the pure, morphological essence. We see an example of this in the manner in which technical, geometric terms (rather than non-technical terms expressing empirical generalizations) are used in our everyday descriptions of sensible shape.
[Drummond: 101-02]
IDEATING ABSTRACTION. An abstractive act in which the knower grasps an essence. The abstractive act can be either generalization, which grasps an inexact morphological essence, or idealization, which grasps an exact essence. The empty ideating abstraction grasps the concept, that
IMAGE • 105
is the essence as conceived; the fulfilling intention is an eidetic intuition that grasps the essence itself in its direct presence.
IDEATING ACT. See IDEATING ABSTRACTION.
IDEATION. See IDEATING ABSTRACTION.
[Drummond: 104-05]
MORPHOLOGICAL ESSENCE. A morphological essence is an essence
that is characterized by a determinate material content and is known in an ideating act Husserl calls generalization. Morphological essences are distinguished from exact essences; unlike the latter, morphological essences involve a measure of inexactness or vagueness. Determining whether an object belongs to the extension of the morphological concept is sometimes a difficult question. See also EXACT EXPRESSION; EXACTNESS; FORMALIZATION; IDEALIZATION; IDEATING ABSTRACTION.
[Drummond: 138]