PRESENTATION (Vorstellung). Husserl identifies numerous senses of the term “presentation,” a fact that indicates the danger in the use of the word and that motivates Husserl’s language of “objectifying act.”
The senses important for logic and the theory of knowledge are: 1. A presentation is the act-matter by virtue of which an object is presented in a determinate manner, as such and such; 2. A presentation is a “mere presentation,” that is, a qualitative modification of belief such that the existence of the object is neither posited nor denied; 3. A presentation is a nominal act; 4. A presentation is an objectifying act; 5. A presentation is an intuition of the presented object.
Among these logical senses, the first and the fourth are primary. A presentation, in other words, is an act that presents an object to an experiencing subject, an objectifying act; presentations in this sense are on a par with and include perceptions, judgments, memories and the like. Such objectifying acts by virtue of their matter present the object in a determinate manner, as such and such. The presentation in this latter sense underlies the concrete act whether it is a “mere” presentation (in the sense of a non-positing objectifying act), a positing objectifying act, a complex act that includes either categorial or non-objectifying moments (for example, an emotion), or an intuition, whether simple or categorial.
Husserl also identifies additional, ordinary senses of “presentation”: 6. an imagining or remembering (as opposed to a perceiving); 7. a physical image of a thing, such as a painting; 8. a representation (Repräsentation) that provokes presentations and does duty for them, that is, a sign, whether a depiction or a linguistic sign; 9. an image; 10. a presented object; 11. a content of consciousness; 12. an opinion.
Husserl believes that these equivocations in the term “presentation” are dangerous. Most important is to isolate those that are important for logic and the theory of knowledge (that is, senses 1–5) from the everyday uses and to use the logical senses clearly and distinctly. See also CATEGORIAL ACT; CATEGORIAL FORM; CATEGORIAL OBJECT; CATEGORY; POSITING; POSITION-TAKING; PRESENCE.
