Introduction

Husserl’s phenomenology is well known for offering a description of a variety of experiences from the viewpoint of intentionality. Intentionality characterizes “the essence common to the class of experience […] of intending, of referring to what is objective, in a presentative or other analogous fashion” (^{Husserl, 2001b, p. 101}). With intention is associated the act-character of being directed towards the object. From this perspective, it seems obvious to connect intention (Intention) to attention (Aufmerksamkeit). Husserl, however, carefully avoids a straightforward identification. Instead, he examines the role of attention with respect to intention and the intentional object. Even though his examination of attention is rooted in the description of perception, it also extends to the intuitive presentifications (Vergegenwärtigung), such as fantasy or memory (^{Husserl, 2004, p. 7, 294}; ^{1991, pp. 165f}). Attention is generally conceived of as a “fundamental species of intentive modification” (^{Husserl, 1998, p. 226}) that does not imply an alteration of the act-quality or a completely new act. We live attentively in a memory without changing its character as memory; at the same time, in a sort of double act, we don’t pay attention to the act itself. Rather, “intentional objects of acts, and only intentional objects, are the things to which we are at any time attentive,” whether they are objects of perceptions or presentifications (^{Husserl, 2001b, pp. 118-119}).¹ But attention is not in and of itself an independent objectifying act, because it relies on the apprehension (Auffassung) that makes an object appear as such (2001b, p. 243). In this sense, during Husserl’s Halle and Göttingen years, attention is defined as “attentive meaning” or “special meaning” (meinen), which represents a higher function than apprehension, i.e., a preferential (bevorzugend) and formative (gestaltend) one (^{Husserl, 2004, pp. 74-5}). It allows for specific object intentions to take place and, by this means, it introduces a modification in the consideration of the intentional object on the basis of apprehension.²

Attentive meaning is investigated in detail in the 1904/5 lecture, Principal Parts of the Phenomenology and Theory of Knowledge, in the third part of which Husserl offers his famous description of fantasy, image-consciousness and memory. Here, Husserl refers to the intention of the image subject (Bildsujet) in a complex apprehensional intertwining that characterizes the experience of a physical image. In experiencing a portrait, we do not immediately intend the appearing image, but-while it appears perceptually in front of us-we mean (meinen) the image subject represented as something that cannot be there. Thus, Husserl’s description has stimulated a broad discussion of two questions: the nature of this intention, and the status of the image subject.

In this context, we look into the following hypothesis: if it is correct to investigate the nature of the intention and objects involved in image consciousness, the phenomenological description would benefit from the interpretation of the subject’s “meaning” or “intending” in the sense of “attentive meaning” as defined in the second part of the 1904 Lecture. This makes it possible to shed some light on the role played by attention in the perception of a physical image (which had been recognized by Husserl since 1898 but has scarcely been examined by the commentators), and to offer a renewed interpretation of image consciousness in a phenomenological approach.

Hence, the argument follows three steps: (I) the relationship between apprehension and attentive meaning is explained; (II) an examination is made of how attention and attentive meaning had already been introduced in the 1898 description of image consciousness; (III) attentive meaning is contextualized in the 1904 lecture, where the topic is explored further. We propose to interpret the intention of the image subject in the sense of a special meaning which introduces a change in the objective consideration motivated by a conflict between apprehensions. In the concluding and critical remarks (IV), we briefly refer to attentive meaning in Husserl’s later interpretation of image consciousness.

I. Apprehension, intention, and meaning

After the investigation of perception as the most original kind of act, the third part of the 1904/5 Lecture offers a description of the acts called presentifications. The core question is how, as modifications of perception, presentifications (e.g., memory, fantasy, etc.) intend their object (given the fact that the object appears in them but not in person). Image consciousness is certainly a perceptual representation insofar as it arises from the special case of perception we have with photographs and portraits.³ But Husserl recognizes its intentional complexity insofar as it differs, not only from the experience of other kinds of perceptually representative objects (e.g., a flag representing a nation), but also from normal perception, because of the intertwining and ontological status of the intentional objects experienced.⁴ Perception is normally characterized by a single intention directed towards an object present in person, i.e., “the intention aims at the thing itself” (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 192}). By contrast, image consciousness encompasses as many as three objects, only one of which is present in person: 1) the “physical image” or “image thing”, which is normally a painting, sculpture, or photograph as a physical thing (canvas, papers, etc.); 2) the “image object” as the representing object; 3) the “image subject” as the represented object (2005, pp. 19f). When we perceive an object as an image, the three objects are fused together in a unitary act and each of them is normally not grasped in isolation, while the image subject is what is immediately intended or, as Husserl says, “meant” (gemeint) (pp. 29-30). The peculiarity of image consciousness is that the object intended is not the object present in person, i.e. the physical image, but rather the subject (not present in person), with which, thanks to the image object that appears in the form of a fictum in the physical image, a regime of resemblance is established. This peculiarity results from two apprehensions, the intertwining of which enables the meaning of the image subject as such and the resulting experience of the physical object as image. In fact, the portrait is experienced as a portrait only because of the subject represented, which makes us reconfigure the experience of this perceptual object as the image of something apprehended as not there in person. Still, image consciousness seems to present an intentional structure akin to perception, for it is based, ultimately, on a perception. In fact, Husserl’s strategy is to see if “kindred distinctions” correspond mutually within presentation and presentifications, especially if understanding apprehension, meaning and intention in perception helps in the case of image consciousness (p. 17).

In the Logical Investigations, apprehension is defined as the surplus that is to be found in the contents of consciousness and which differs from raw sensations by means of an objective interpretation. This surplus manifests itself as a “mindedness” (Zumutetsein) through which the object is presented to consciousness with a certain quality of being perceived, memorized, etc. (^{Husserl, 2001b, pp. 103-105}). This is because the function of apprehension is to produce the appearing of something as something by interpreting the contents in accordance with a certain objective sense.⁵ Hence, apprehension has primarily a “character of presenting”, thanks to which there are the contents’ apprehended function as “presentative” (Präsentant) of the object and its moments intuited and eventually intended (^{Husserl, 2004, pp. 12, 137, 208f}; ^{2001b, p. 242}). In this way, apprehension establishes the intentional relation to an object in the general sense of having it in consciousness, as something giving itself. Thanks to apprehension, we are in the presence of something and not a chaos of unintelligible sensations. Along with the presentative function of apprehension, Husserl speaks of a representative one (Repräsentation).⁶ That is, in every experience the contents function also as “representative” of moments not actually given. The representative function of apprehension is evident when we think about the moments of an object pointing to others while not actually giving themselves, like the color of the reverse side of this sheet of paper. Both functions (presentative and representative) are present in the objectifying acts (^{Husserl, 1979, p. 117}; ^{2001b, p. 244}). The object intention is normally performed on this kind of apprehensional basis, especially in the case of perception, where part of the object is presented adequately and another part is only announced. But object intentions are performed also on a representative basis. As we will see, a refined examination of these functions and, in particular, a better understanding of representation is presented by Husserl in the analysis of image consciousness. Fundamental differences are found between different kinds of representation to which distinctive modes of consciousness correspond-for example, intuitive, when a strong and necessary connection between representing content and moment holds, or symbolic, when the relationship is contingent (e.g., a sign and its meaning) (2001b, p. 243).

Moreover, apprehension does not limit its presentation to the mere object, but extends to its moments, its closely related objects, and even its less distinct background. As Husserl says, apprehension presents to us an “organized space” in the broadest sense of the word (^{Husserl, 2004, p. 158}). A unitary act embraces more than one apprehensional function, and one specific apprehension is always “part of a more comprehensive apprehension unity” (2004, pp. 157-158; 1979, pp. 278f). We have before us the object not only with its physical form, its coloring, its particular qualities, etc., but also with what is close to it, its sides not seen, and what is representationally deployable from the contents apprehended.

However, thanks to attention, in every experience, one element stands out with respect to the others, whether it is one object among others, a part of an object, or even an object towards which we are not intuitively directed. In fact, we have to consider the objective salience introduced by attention. An object intention is favored within the field of experience while the elements not actually attended to are still presented by the apprehension and we can eventually direct our attention towards them. Husserl defines “attention” in 1898 as “attentive meaning” and describes it as “hovering over” (schweben) what appears thanks to apprehension. Thus, the relationship between meaning and apprehension is described as follows: “When we exclusively pay attention to a particular part of the thing, i.e., when we intend it [meinen] perceptively in an exclusive manner, the entire thing is still present, it appears and is certainly not perceived, properly speaking” (^{Husserl, 2004, p. 158}). To allow such exclusive intention, “there must be a basic act in which what we attend to becomes objective, presented in the widest sense of this word” (^{Husserl, 2001b, p. 119}). In this sense, attentive meaning is a higher function based on apprehension, i.e., a preferential and formative one. In fact, “the meaning can even cease while apprehension still persists”, allowing changes in what is now objective in experience (^{Husserl, 2004, p. 157}).

Concurrently, Husserl defines a general and unitary sense of object intention and a specific one, often called “meaning-intention” (meinende Intention) (^{Husserl, 2004, pp. 157, 251}; ^{2005, p. 41}). This distinction is the result of interpreting apprehension as a complex variety, that is, the idea of a unitary apprehension encompassing further possible intentions and apprehensions. In the Logical Investigations, attention and intention are further distinguished. “An intentional object need not […] always be noticed or attended to,” an example being the case of complex intentional objects where some of them are not actually attended to (^{Husserl, 2001b, pp. 101-102}). More generally, several acts are present and interwoven within the unitary apprehension, but attention is active and emphasizes only one of them. The unitary apprehension and all possible further apprehensions are not, in themselves, meaning acts. Still, the apprehensional object is before us with an intentional specification within the unitary intention founded by apprehension itself: “The meaning act is directed towards what the apprehension offers as objective [das Gegenständliche]” (^{Husserl, 2004, p. 157}). The attentive meaning not only introduces the special intention of a moment or object with respect to others which are co-intended in a unitary objective grasping (e.g., the character “e” in the word “America”) but, more importantly, attentive meaning does not create a new object by itself; instead, it introduces a change of the objective correlate. This becomes clear when it is observed that, on the basis of the same object appearance, from time to time we change the object intended, i.e., we can move to a special intention while maintaining the unity and continuity of the object appearance or introducing an irrelevant modification of the latter, for example, when we intend the red color of the object in front of us rather than its shape (^{Husserl, 2020, pp. 242f}). The “singling out” performed by attentive meaning motivates the “something new” in experience that is linked to a different consideration of what is given (^{Husserl, 2004, pp. 32-33}). The same apprehension allows for differences in meaning. Beyond the irrelevant ocular adjustment (present only in visual perception), it is clear that “we have in front of us the one and same object, of which we attend to and intend [meinen] now this and now that <element>”, i.e., “with the wandering of the meaning, a certain change also takes place in what is the objective of apprehension” (2004, p. 81). Once a certain attentive meaning is established, the same object can be attentively meant also in the change of appearance.

We are now in a position to understand the “objective tendency” of attention underscored in the Logical Investigations (^{Husserl, 2001b, pp. 118-119}). Since it is founded on apprehension, attentive meaning does not emphasize the sensuous content itself, but rather a strong relation to the objectifying of apprehension is established. In this context, in 1898 Husserl examines the relationship between the sense-bestowing quality of apprehension and the contents. What the sensuous contents present and represent, once objectively apprehended, depends on and reflects to some extent their nature. A legality rules in the intuitive connection between contents and objective moments, because the contents cannot present any kind of moment whatsoever. Therefore, the apprehension establishes a “concretely closed connection”, a “really existing unity” between contents, act, and object (^{Husserl, 2004, p. 137}). Instead, the meaning relation between act and object is properly intentional and manifests a certain activity and reactivity on the part of the subject. The result is that, starting from a unitary apprehension, objects intuitively (or even non-intuitively) given are grasped in a corresponding segregated act.

This enables us to understand in what sense a meaning act is an attentive act. The entire “sphere of objectivity in the sense of experience” founded by apprehension is wider than the “positively intended [gemeint] and reaches beyond the act of meaning”-but “it surely requires again segregating acts [abgrenzend]” (^{Husserl, 2004, pp. 121-122}). This segregation can be traced back to the meaning which “can be indicated as attention”. Thus, according to Husserl, “what I am especially occupied with, that is, what I have objectively in a specific, segregating act” is what I am now attending to, and “the segregating act is the intending [Meinen]” (p. 117). The phenomenological counterpart of attentional segregation is the articulation of the field of regard in accordance with an order which runs from what is now in focus to what is less and less attended to, i.e., patency and latency. Thus, the distinction between attending, noticing, and background is introduced: the sphere of noticing extends as far as the apprehended contents taken up or which we are simply directed to, while attention is a special preference within this sphere (^{Husserl, 1979, p. 278}; ^{2001a, p. 275}). The object’s background is a complex of ordered, yet blurred, contents. Not all apprehension is attention-the latter is a privileging act-modification within the sphere of givenness. The moments presented but not intended still play their role in the object constitution and establish a web of possible further intentions. In this sense, attentive meaning does not permanently erase other elements; it maintains other objects or “any part or moment of such an object” as co-intended or excluded, but never canceled (^{Husserl, 2004, p. 117}).

To summarize: the object or moment is attentively intended on the apprehensional basis and, as the object of intention, it overcomes, in the sense with which it is apprehended, the merely sensuous contents. Attentive meaning hovers over the apprehension and articulates it, allowing “partial apprehensions” to take place; that is, it establishes “the possibility of relations, comparisons, complex formations etc.” to be intuitively intended (2004, p. 81). The appearing “thing” remains the same while the meaning introduces all the new considerations which are possible and motivated on the basis of the same appearance (2004, pp. 74-75). Through such hovering, a certain change in what is objective in apprehension results, which is not a creative act. Instead, it confers a specific apprehension of a certain autonomy and relevance. In this sense, attentive meaning is a “preferential and formative factor” (2004, p. 72; see 2004, p. 74) which enables the emergence of the “new, to which the different ‘form of consideration’ of the object has to be linked” (2004, p. 74). This different consideration does not depend on the thing’s peculiarity-the thing remains mostly unaltered in its appearance-but on the peculiarity of meaning. To the privileged object there corresponds, finally, a segregating intentional act.

II. Attention in the early notes on image consciousness

As we have already seen, Husserl asks whether similar distinctions in the structure of the act (e.g., apprehension and meaning) can be made with respect to the kind of experiences described in the third part of the 1904 Lecture. What makes Husserl’s 1904 description of image consciousness complex is the peculiar intertwining of apprehensions in a unitary act that characterizes the experience of a physical object lived as an image. At first glance, this complexity seems to contradict evidence: while we are looking at the picture, we immediately “see” the subject. But Husserl’s description aims to make a fundamental difference understandable. If we look at a photograph of Husserl, the physical object “picture” differs qualitatively from its subject. The photosensitive surface of which the photograph is made has its own colors and characteristics, which show, for instance, different shades of gray. But because of the surface’s shapes of lines and colors, another object appears before us, whose characters are perceived as incompatible with the ones of the physical image. Then, both objects (the physical image and the appearing image object) differ from the subject of the photograph of Husserl, which is what is directly intended (gemeint) and what the picture is about. The image subject partially differs from the image which makes it intuited. In fact, it is meant with its own characteristics (e.g., colors, size, etc.), but nevertheless pictorially, that is, on the basis of the image object which is “not identical to it but more or less like it” (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 31}).

It is important to stress that the subject intention is not necessarily the result of an act of comparison with a real subject outside the picture, or of an act of signification.⁷ When we look at a dragon drawn on paper, we have no real dragon to compare it with. Nevertheless, the picture stimulates the consciousness of this image subject. Husserl’s description aims to clarify our seeing the subject in the picture. Moreover, image consciousness only resembles the acts of signification. There are images which serve as signs because associative moments establish external relations with another object. But normally “the image points into and beyond itself” in a different way from what symbols do (^{Husserl, 2005, pp. 37-38}). Besides resemblance, partial identity and a certain degree of the adequacy of representation are also needed in image consciousness.⁸ For that, two aspects come to the fore in Husserl’s analysis. First, the sensuous elements are arranged in the picture with the precise aim of making image consciousness take place (not every perceptual object functions as an image). Second, a new kind of apprehension plays a role: “It belongs to the essence of the imaginative apprehension from the beginning that, while this object colored violet gray appears to it, it does not mean this object, but a different object that only resembles it” (^{Husserl, 2005, pp. 21-22}).

But attentive meaning also plays an important role. Husserl writes in 1898 that perceptual and imagining presentations (Vorstellungen) “have in common that a present content is apprehended as an object, or […] an object makes its appearance through a content […]. But a different mode of presenting is combined with the apprehension of the object in the two cases-a different mode of presenting in the sense of focusing one’s attention on something, of being occupied with it, of being aimed at it, of meaning it” (2005, p. 150).⁹ In both perceptual presentation and imaging presentation, attentive meaning combines with apprehension. But in the case of an imaging presentation, attentive meaning is connected with a different mode of presenting that characterizes it. As we have seen, attention conveys in every intuitive act the special intending of an object on the basis of apprehension, which introduces a distinction of patency and latency between different acts and objects, and a different object consideration. This formative and preferential function of attentive meaning seems already present in these notes on image consciousness. Hence, we shall try to understand this different mode of presenting connected to attention by exposing the role of attentive meaning in image consciousness.

In experiencing a picture, an apprehension animates the sensuous contents of the physical image and excites an appearance by means of which the subject is intended. In this way, the intention points beyond what is actually presented but on the basis of what intuitively appears. That is, thanks to the appearance, I do not see only the image, but also a subject. Husserl speaks of “directly intuitive presentation” when the object meant is directly grasped, as in perceptual presentations, and of “indirectly intuitive presentation” when the object meant is represented by an appearing image in the form of a sensuous semblance (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 151}). Every image is the bearer of a sensuous semblance, for it makes us have the intuition of an “image object”, different from the physical image, built along with it on the same presentational foundation (Präsentationsgrundlage), but in conflict with it (2005, p. 155). That is, the same color sensations of the surface of the photograph are interpreted, at one time, as the objective distribution of colors on the paper and, at another, as composing the image object. Better: a perceptual apprehension presentationally animates the contents of the physical image, but the latter does not appear as such, because the appearance of the image object is excited instead and assumes immediately a representing function (Repräsentation). The color sensations in their concrete complex are not themselves the image, “but first acquire the image-characteristic by means of an apprehending,” i.e., a new apprehension, which is connected with the image object (2005, p. 119). Hence, the image object is the representing (repräsentierend) object and the subject the represented one. Husserl stresses here the difference between presentation (Präsentation) and representation (Repräsentation): in the former, the object appears in itself, while in the latter we have the representant of the subject associated with a different function of apprehension.

Therefore, in this early description of image consciousness we find two apprehensional relationships: the presentative (physical object and image object) and the representative (image object and image subject). Husserl first undertakes the task of clarifying the relationship between image object and image subject. In order to do so, he starts by analyzing the easier case of a fantasy. This is a methodological move that will reveal itself as problematic later on in Husserl’s understanding of all phenomena involving images, but two aspects can be picked out which will help us understand image consciousness as described later on-in 1904-and that give us important elements for understanding the relationship between image apprehension and meaning:

This gives us the opportunity to better characterize the two apprehensions which together constitute every image contemplation. The imaging representation is defined in contrast to the presentative apprehension, in particular, the indirect or non-genuine presentation (Präsentation). This latter is in play when we achieve an indirect grasp of certain object determinations by making what appears as representants of them. This apprehension establishes presentifications of, for example, an unseen side of a perceptual object. In this sense, there is, as we saw above, an analogy between representation and indirect presentation as long as it makes it possible for an object to function as the representant of another, non-appearing one. But, importantly, Husserl distinguishes the two cases. The representation in the case of the indirect presentation is not an imaging (bildlich): “Its performance in perceptual presentation does not consist in representing the presentified [vergegenwärtigen] determinations in image,” but in bringing together the appearing determinations and the non-appearing, and “both in their unity constitute the one meant object” (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 127}).¹¹ That is: we don’t have the reverse side of the paper sheet “in image.” In other words, in indirect presentation “the representant does not sacrifice itself in order to draw its counterpart into the luminous circle of the act of meaning”; both determinations are accepted together (2005, p. 127). Instead, through its representation in an image, the relationship between representant and represented becomes an imaging resemblance, where the representant sacrifices itself because only the represented is meant. Here we can clearly see the peculiar yet problematic status of the “imaging presentifications.”

According to Husserl, similar observations can be made with respect to the physical picture. But the apprehensional basis seems more complex than in fantasy. This increased complexity leads us back to the fact that, in fantasy presentations, the entire complex of contents is used by “one presentation” (Präsentation), which constitutes the fantasy image. The presentation coincides in appearance with the image once the representing apprehension is superimposed on it. In image consciousness, by contrast, we have three objects in a peculiar relationship, and there is only partial coincidence between the appearance originated by the presentation and the image appearance. Therefore, we must investigate further the relationship between image object and image subject in image consciousness also taking into account the relationship between physical image and image object.

In contemplating a picture, we are normally turned towards the pictorial representation of the image subject; we live in the representing. We have the image object in view; it appears, but it simply presentifies the subject, which is what is meant in the proper sense. According to Husserl, it is in the changing of attention and, especially, of the way of considering it (Betrachtungsweise) that one object comes to the fore: “In the shift from one to another, a change in the intending relation [meinend] takes place, by means of which a different object always comes to the fore out of an apprehensional unity that, so it seems, is the same throughout” (2005, p. 132). The physical image is not meant, and we would need a change in attention to have it as a corresponding presentation (Vorstellung). But the apprehension of the physical image, i.e., a perceptual apprehension, is always there. A part of its contents presents the picture’s surroundings: “In a unitary apprehension, the depicted object, <the subject>, is apprehended along with the surrounding objectivity in one objective complex. What is depicted is brought into prominence in the manner of what is particularly noticed [Beachteten]; what frames it is put aside in the manner of ‘what is incidentally noticed’” (2005, p. 133). It is important that Husserl refers here to a unitary apprehension, which is a complex one, because the apprehension of the depicted object is there too, but an attentional relationship is established between the objects within the unitary apprehension. Accordingly, an apprehensional basis in both the narrower and the wider sense is established, where the former constitutes the meant object exclusively (2005, p. 134, note 26).

Now, the distinction between image and surroundings is a distinction between reality and pictoriality. The physical image connects with its surroundings but the part within the frame is missing from this constituted space because the “presenting contents” of the physical image “undergo an entirely different sort of apprehension from the sort the image thing requires; namely, the apprehension in which the representing [repräsentierend] and represented objectivity are given” (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 134}). The physical image does not come into consideration in the “pictorial presentation”; it is but the instigator of pictorial (image) apprehension, which has the representative function. Accordingly, the apprehension of the physical image and surroundings has the presentative function, which simply makes all perceptual objects appear. Here, it raises the question of the image appearance on the basis of a perceptual apprehension. The physical image excites the image appearance, i.e., the appearance therefore functions representatively. This appearance is the image object, based on a presentational foundation and as a result of a perceptual apprehension. But this image object manifests itself with the character of mere depiction, that is, its appearance is felt as not belonging to the same reality as that of the surroundings. This character is due to the change in the act character, itself the result of the always present differences between image and “original”. The features showing themselves in the image appearance are experienced as incompatible with what is immediately meant. At stake here are the internal differences we find in the way the object appears with respect to the “appearing habitus” of the things in perception, and not with respect to the original object (2005, p. 146). The differences are not linked to the individual outside the picture. This character change also takes place in the ontological status of the image object and, consequently, the subject. “The image objects are truly nothing”, says ^{Husserl (2005, p. 119)}. The image object as appearance or semblance is felt as the representant of the image subject, of something that cannot be there. In other words, it “functions as a representant [Repräsentant] by means of its resemblance” to the image subject and its habitual features (2005, p. 150). The change in the act character can only correspond to a change of apprehension, which is why, as we will see in the 1904 lecture, the objectification of the sensuous contents by the image apprehension is not a perceptive presentation.

On the aforementioned question, one final observation is worthwhile before moving on to the lecture. The consciousness of the image object is intimately connected with the perception of the physical image. In fact, we cannot freely constitute how the image object appears, nor can we image it as we wish; it is not a free fantasy. It depends constitutionally on the contents of the physical image and their arrangement. The study of attention makes this dependence clear, because one can switch, with some effort, back and forth from the image object to the physical image. This shows also how attention does not on its own make up the correspondence between physical image and image object in its appearance. Attention makes more salient what is now explicit in the appearance. However, in terms of intention, the case of the perception of an image is more complex than normal perception. It is not like the case of attentively intending a specific part of an object compared to others. The image object is not a part or a side of the physical image (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 118}). In perceiving a picture, we attentively mean another object felt different from what appears, although on the basis of the same appearance. Another apprehension occurs in this case. Husserl’s reference to “inner analogizing motivations” gives us the key to understanding the general “case of imaging”, that is, every case in which “the appearing object appears but is not taken independently”, because “it holds good for something else and thus is taken to be an analogical representant [Räpresentant]” (2005, p. 26). Hence, the image apprehension is an analogical representing. Still, the sensuous semblance allowed by the physical image must remain co-intended. We intend the subject on the semblance in front of us: the picture is “perceptually expressive” (^{Jacquette, 2016, p. 79}).¹² In the unitary act, the physical image remains noticed even if not attentively intended. What is delimited, singled out, segregated by attention, defines what is separated. The “prescind from” and the “point to” [absehen von / auf] of attentive meaning are necessary functions for an object to be considered by us in the unitary maintaining of others (^{Husserl, 2004, p. 122}).

To sum up, two points are important for us: 1) the idea that the change in the intending (Meinen) lets a different object come to the fore out of an apprehensional unity. When we attentively live in the pictorial representation (Repräsentation) of the subject, the image object is in view and in its appearing represents the subject which does not actually appear, although it is presented (vorgestellt). 2) Husserl affirms that when we shift from one object to others in changing our attentive regard, a change in the object consideration (Betrachtungsweise) takes place, to which a change of the intending relation (meinende Beziehung) corresponds (2005, pp. 131-132). This is a key point in Husserl’s description. It makes it clear that attentive meaning introduces the change in the object consideration that makes it possible to mean the image subject on the basis of the image appearance. In other words, attentive meaning introduces the different presentation (Vorstellung): the subject is what is properly intended-not perceptually-as an object segregated from others.

III. Image consciousness from the viewpoint of attentive meaning

In 1904, the intertwining of apprehensions involved in image consciousness is explored in greater depth. The same sensuous content is apprehended by two apprehensions, which generate the sensuous appearance that allows for the subject to be meant. On the role performed by the meaning, Husserl is now clear: “To produce an act of meaning on the basis of this apprehending and to be related in the meaning to the object are […] one and the same” (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 24}). We do not mean the object “image” (Bildgegenstand) and we experience the image object directly as the image of a subject. A “bare act of meaning cannot be of help,” because in the perception of the picture we don’t find a mere perceptual apprehension as a basis for an attentive meaning. Instead, we have an image apprehension already attentively segregated from the perceptual one. It is on the double apprehensional basis that “the act of meaning,” as “something different from the apprehending”, i.e., as a “pointing function,” can “pick out one object among a plurality of apprehended objects and mean it specifically” (2005, p. 25). In this sense, according to what is expounded in the second part of the 1904/5 Lecture, meaning and attention are explicitly connected: “The sense of speaking about meaning appears […] to express something identical with <attention>. That which is attended to is what is specially meant [Gemeinte]” (^{Husserl, 2004, p. 73}; 1991, p. 175)^.

The reference to the double apprehension is introduced again in the act unity: “If we speak of two apprehensions belonging essentially to the constitution of imaginative presentation,” we don’t speak “of two separate apprehension experiences on the same level that would merely be held together by some bond” (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 28}). The apprehensions share the same sensuous content (that of the physical image), otherwise, we would have two separate object presentations. But the attentive meaning segregates the image apprehension from the perceptual one. As a result of this segregation, the appearance of the image thing is overlapped by the image object; alongside it, on this apprehensional basis, a special intention happens. The image apprehension establishes the regime of depiction (Abbild) between image object and image subject, i.e., the image object is the representant of the subject and the image object’s appearance exhibits the subject in the changing of the object consideration performed by the attentive meaning on the basis of the image apprehension. In this sense, the image subject intention is the condition for having image consciousness and not a simple perception. It is only because the intention immediately heeds the subject that what appears is experienced as an image. All apprehensions feature a meaning intention, but the case of image consciousness is not one of a simple perceptive presentation. In fact, the double-apprehension structure¹³ is a feature of “imaginative presentation”. We don’t have two presentations or two separate appearances, because the two apprehensions are interwoven (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 28}). The two apprehensions perform, on the one hand, the appearance of the object that is not meant, and on the other, the representative resemblance which is the apprehension that constitutes the relation to the image subject. This is common to every experience where an object “image” is constituted: “The apprehension that constitutes the object ‘image’ [Bildgegenstand] is at the same time the foundation for the presentation [Vorstellung] that, by means of that object image, constitutes the other object; and in normal phantasy presentation and image presentation, the act of meaning is aimed at the latter, directed toward it alone” (2005, p. 29).¹⁴ The representing object and the object represented (the subject) (Repräsentation) belong to the same apprehension that constitutes the appearing object as a representing object. In fact, we don’t find two separate presentations, but one appearance and one presentation, and to the image subject there is no corresponding separate appearance. In other words, “an appearing objectivity was always taken not for itself but for another, non-appearing objectivity represented in image” (2005, p. 30).

Now, in 1904, Husserl makes more explicit some assumptions already seen in the 1898 notes. The first deals with the relationship between the presenting and representing apprehensions. We know, in the case of image consciousness, that the presenting apprehension uses the sensuous contents and the image object appears, but in the form of a sensuous appearance which presents the subject. We don’t find here another appearance belonging to the subject: we have one appearance and one presentation (Vorstellung). Husserl now takes the founding apprehension (the apprehension of the image object appearance) as presentative (Präsentation) (2005, p. 43). The presenting apprehension uses the sensuous contents (e.g., visual contents), and the different objects appear in the form of a direct appearance. Thus, “I can focus on either of these two objects; I can mean either one of them presentationally [vorstellend]” (2005, p. 47).¹⁵ That is, by changing the direction of my consideration, either the physical image or the image object comes to the fore as object. Do we have here two perceptual apprehensions, one presenting the physical image and the other the image object? The problem is that, even if they share the same contents, they cannot make two object appearances which stand out simultaneously. The answer is, therefore, that the perceptual apprehension presents all that belongs to the field of regard, part of which is made of the apprehension of the picture-paper; but within the picture frame, another apprehension uses the contents fully for making the image object appear as image of the subject.

Secondly, Husserl again contrasts fantasy and image consciousness to clarify the attentive meaning on its apprehensional basis. In the case of fantasy, we find “just one appearance […] belonging to the image object,” but we have “a second objectivating characteristic […], a new apprehension with a new apprehension sense that is founded in the apprehension belonging to the image object, […] that brings about for consciousness what we express when we say: ‘With the appearing image we mean the subject’” (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 31}). Basically, the appearing image object obtains a new character thanks to a new apprehension, a representing apprehension. This second apprehension permeates, in fact, the old one (the apprehension which originally made the image object intuited) and is the same apprehension on the basis of which the attentive meaning heeds the subject (2005, p. 25). Thus, as we saw above, in the case of the representing apprehension we have two directions, one apprehensional and one intentional. The representing apprehension is the image apprehension, i.e., “an apprehension that represents its object in image,” which is at work analogously in fantasy presentation and image consciousness (2005, pp. 19-20). On the same apprehensional basis, different acts of presentation (Vorstellung) can be performed depending on a change in the meaning intention (meinende Intention), to which a “change of object” corresponds: “To mean the image object, to mean the image subject, and again to mean the image object as the image of the subject are different objectivating states. Since in speaking of the object of our presentation we normally denote that object to which our objectivating act of meaning refers, a change in the direction of the meaning-intention also signifies a change of object” (2005, p. 41). Attention changes the meaning intention and, by means of that, changes what is presented, properly speaking.

This intention is motivated by a condition proper to images alone, i.e., the consciousness of a difference which avoids the simple intending of the image as a semblance not being an image. On this point, Husserl’s analyses are now far more detailed than in 1898. The image object always resembles the subject with a certain degree of difference; resemblance does not mean perfect likeness. The intuition of the image object awakens the presentation (Vorstellung) of the image subject, which is not a new appearance, but a presentation which coincides with and permeates the intuitive appearance of the former, “and in this permeation gives it the characteristic of the image object” (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 33}). The coinciding relates to the moments of resemblance; in particular, the coinciding of both objects is with the analogizing moments. But there must also be moments of no coincidence, of difference between image object and subject. Without such differences, there would be no image: “If the appearing image were absolutely identical phenomenally with the object meant […], a depictive consciousness could scarcely come about” (2005, p. 22). As we have already seen, this resemblance is not understood in the sense of the contrast between external individual and reproduction. The regime of depiction is established by the fact that, according to the features it exhibits, the object we see cannot be there. Accordingly, what we see can only be the representant of something that resembles it, whose possible exhibition is the image felt as unreal. The difference consciousness originates, now, from the conflict between apprehensions, which does not result in a reciprocal exclusion, but without which the subject intending would resolve itself into a simple special intention of a moment of the image thing. Let’s look at this point in detail, for it makes the meaning of the image subject descriptively clear.

Husserl stresses how image consciousness happens in a continuously united apprehension pertaining to our field of regard. This unitary perceptive apprehension, we know, is the basis of the second apprehension. The regard towards the picture is attentively articulated: “In spite of the identity of their sensory foundation, the two apprehensions certainly cannot exist at once,” i.e., “they cannot make two appearances stand out simultaneously. By turns, indeed, and therefore separately, but certainly not at once” (^{Husserl, 2005, pp. 48-49}). The perceptual apprehension presents the perceptual field of regard (the physical image, its frame, this part of the wall, etc.) while within the picture frame the sensuous contents are fully used by the image apprehension. The physical image and the image object cannot stand out simultaneously; they cannot have the same prominence in consciousness. Two “competing perceptual apprehensions” can be simultaneous only if they are “each of a different kind” (^{Brough, 1992, p. 250}).¹⁶ The image apprehension both couples with and competes with the perceptual one because, although it uses the same contents, it introduces a modification of the act quality and a different object exhibition due to its representational (representative) function. This raises the question about the nature of image apprehension. If image apprehension had the same quality as the perceptual one, it would be simply a special apprehension presenting a particular element within the unity of the perceptual apprehension and would not be in contrast with it. The physical image apprehension, for its part, is present in a certain way, but it is not a proper appearance so long as the image object’s appearance triumphs over it. No intention is directed towards it: we “transform it into a (non-intentional) moment of an image-intentionality” (^{Lotz, 2010, p. 170}). Still, the perceptual apprehension has its stable connection with the background, and the background is established by the appearance of the image object, which does not let the physical-image appearance as such come to the fore. Between the different appearances within the picture frame there is, in fact, no spatial displacement; on the contrary, in the picture, the objects are inter-penetrated. The belonging of the perceptive apprehension to the same contents generates the conflict with the image apprehension (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 50}). This conflict is evidently merely potential because the direction of attention that lets us attend to the subject depends precisely on how the sensuous contents are organized and effectively excite the attentional articulation of our field of view.

In fact, the image object comes to the fore in the noticing (bemerken) of particular details that are fundamental to the physical image, for example, the black lines on the photograph of Husserl demarcating the lines of what appear now to be his eyes, or the tones of the colors and shadows above his eyes showing the curvature of his forehead.¹⁷ Surely, the perceptual apprehension presents moments according to their character and quality. But, due to their arrangement, the moments appearing and the object they belong to are, already in the noticing, set apart from the rest of this object’s traits, which are felt to be incompatible with them (for example, a certain roughness in the correspondence to the pupil). That is, when our attention is directed towards the picture, its contents present moments which are felt partly compatible and partly incompatible with the unitary object presented. The consciousness of the subject is stimulated by the traits immediately noticed and “distinguished” (ausgezeichnet), which present now “analogizing moments” (^{Husserl, 2005, pp. 29-30}). Thus, the apprehension of the contents according to an analogizing function is proper to image apprehension, and differs from the presenting function of perceptual apprehension. In particular, the analogizing function of apprehension interprets a presented moment as “an analogue of another” (^{Husserl, 2004, p. 208}). In belonging to a unitary act, the image apprehension is already special: we are attentively living in it, but in the form of a noticing. As such, its moments (and object) are segregated from the perceptual moments that would emerge if attention segregated the perceptual apprehension and its moments (the different shades of grays on the surface of the photograph as merely presenting a grayscale). The image object exhibits the subject by means of the analogizing moments. At the same time, the non-analogizing moments compete with the former, preventing the fulfillment of the intentions directed to the image subject with the perceptually actual moments (the grayscale as a grayscale). Every moment lets the manner in which the subject is made present emerge and also exclude it, i.e., “how the subject presents itself there” in contrast with perfect coincidence (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 40}). This clarifies why the exhibition of the subject is not arbitrary, but “extends throughout the consciousness of the image object with respect to aspects of the analogizing moments” (2005, p. 33).

Now, on the basis of these traits, in the “image presentation, the act of meaning is aimed at the <image subject>, directed towards it alone”, while it does not appear “separately”, but only “in and with the image” (2005, pp. 29-30). Image object and subject are in this strict sense inter-penetrated. For the subject to be meant on the image apprehension, it is enough that the image apprehension remains segregated: “Several essentially different apprehensions showed themselves to be based on one another or in one another, corresponding to the number of objectivities that are produced and, depending on changes in attention, come to the fore for the privileging act of meaning” (2005, p. 30). The segregation of the image apprehension results from the tendency of the attention to focus on the most relevant object in our experience, this being motivated by the prominent analogizing moments. In other words, it has a prevailing directionality towards objects that somehow stand out, in this case, due to the fact that they resemble what we experience (e.g., persons), but in photo format.¹⁸ Once attention is called by the moments noticed and in the passage between noticing and attending, the attentive meaning conveyed by attention establishes the consciousness of the difference between the representing image and the image subject, between the object that genuinely appears and the object meant by means of it: “Only the diversely functioning act of meaning posits the difference, and […] a duality of apprehension always presents itself” (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 29}). That is, the segregation concerns the favored analogical moments, but without the exclusion of non-analogical moments that contrast with the identification between representing image and subject in the (possible) going back to perceptual apprehension.

Finally, image apprehension is also a modifying apprehension: “The image object […] is given in a perceptual apprehension modified by the characteristic of imagination” (2005, p. 51). The physical image (the canvas, the paint, etc.) has the character of actuality due to its continuous connection with the actual surroundings, while the image object interrupts this character by conflicting with it. The image object manifests a non-actual character, a fictional status, by conflicting with actuality (^{Eldridge, 2017, p. 563}). Thus, in the noticing of the distinguished moments of the physical object, intentions directed to presentified moments result from apprehension, i.e., the object’s exhibited moments are presentified. Presentifications are intuitive, for the object or moment is not signitively exhibited in them, but rather appears through the contents (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 96}). Hence, in image consciousness the presentifications are sustained by the analogizing moments. At the same time, these presentifications interact constantly with the presentations. The entire idea of the contrast in Husserl’s description revolves around the incompatibility of the two modes of appearance: the image object and the perception of the physical object and its surroundings. Here, it manifests the problem of the “intuitive” yet “imaginary” status of the image object, of the “pictorial presentifications” (^{Wiesing, 1996, pp. 255-256}). Husserl formulates it clearly: “The objects seen and the objects quasi-seen, the image objects, enter into relationship. But why do they not in fact produce a coherent whole of objects, and, more precisely, a perceptual coherent whole?” (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 51}).¹⁹ Given the relationship between image object and subject, the contrast shows itself in “the different intentional contexts into which the subject fit<s>,” while it prevents, at the same time, an unmodified, “simple object-intention from becoming constituted” (2005, p. 34).²⁰ The contrast avoids a bare act of meaning, the kind we would have through the perception of a portion of reality: the image subject and the image object are felt like a portion of unreality in a space of reality. This is because part of the attention is concerned, even if only in the form of a noticing, with the sensuous contents presenting perceptual moments and non-analogizing moments, thereby avoiding a case of illusion.²¹ The contrast is certainly potential, for it would emerge as such only in a reflectively performed passage from image apprehension to the perceptive background.²² But attentive meaning segregates the image from the visual field of perception without erasing the perceptual field-“on the contrary, we have the perception of our surroundings, even if not in the form of a primary act of meaning” (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 49}). Still, as we will see briefly in the concluding remarks, attentive meaning never resolves the conflict that, in its problematic aspect, announces a change in Husserl’s interpretation of presentifications.

IV. Concluding and critical remarks

The subject’s intention in image consciousness has been understood as attentive meaning, a sense emerging in the study of attention. Attentive meaning is the favoring of an objectifying apprehension and its segregation from constitutive apprehensions. It operates a non-excluding articulation of the field of regard and establishes the salience of one special intention among those possible intentions founded on a unitary apprehensional basis. Its function is formative and preferential, for it introduces a distinction in the object consideration and a different following presentation (Vorstellung). The formative aspect is traced back to the emergence of new objective correlates in the maintenance of the appearing “thing”, something that does not imply a new appearance but the favoring of an already existing one. All experiences show this feature. However, in image consciousness, the peculiar intertwining of the double apprehensions makes the immediate meaning of the image subject peculiar. A simple meaning on the apprehension basis would not be sufficient, because the object of the image apprehension is intended as not present in person. Image apprehension modifies the act-quality, while the image subject is the object immediately intended. This intention implies, also, a peculiar attentive articulation of noticing and attention. The image object is noticed because of the specific arrangement of the sensuous contents belonging to the physical image while the special intention of the image subject is favored and therefore segregated from the perceptual apprehension. Image consciousness is similar to other kinds of object perceptions that imply a motivation for the intending of something beyond what actually appears, but it differs from other experiences due to the nature of this motivation. The “distinguished” moments of the picture are interpreted as analogizing and non-analogizing moments of another object due to the analogizing representation of image apprehension. At the same time, attentive meaning generates the consciousness of the difference between representing image and subject.

As we have seen in this paper, Husserl’s early description of image consciousness conceives the intention of the image subject as founded on a very complex apprehensional basis. As traditionally emphasised by the critics, this results in difficulties in the understanding of the subject intention. One critical point concerns Husserl’s definition of the relationship between image object and subject in terms of depiction, which interprets the image object as the representant of the subject. In particular, the “ambiguous” status of the image object, according to which it presents an absence, i.e., an object not present in person, shows how image consciousness is paradoxically “the making present of a non-appearance in an appearance, a rendering visible of the invisible” (^{De Warren, 2010, p. 306}). Here, we return to what was explained in the third part, that is, the problem of the pictorial presentification involved in the intention of the image subject. The act positing the image subject does not have the character of pure imagination, for such an act implies a certain activity, of which the ego performing it is aware, a kind of “double-consciousness” or “quasi-perception” lived at a distance (^{De Warren, 2012, p. 464}; see ^{Bernet, 2004, p. 112}). The image object is, for its part, neither imaginary nor freely imagined, at least because it is anchored in a perceptual thing which conveys a form of (spatiotemporal) individuation-a character not proper to purely imaginative objects-and whose appearance is defined by the presenting function of apprehension. A picture can “function as a ‘catalyst for imagination’”, but in this case “we would have left the image in favor of engaging in a fantasy,” and that presupposes a change of attitude or a completely new act (^{Rozzoni, 2017, p. 119}).²³ By stressing the possible moving back and forth of attention from the image object to physical image, the problematic status of the image object emerges even more clearly. At the same time, the attentive meaning does not imply a modification of the quality of its object or a new act of taking a position. The “variations of meaning” are not identifiable with the “variations of the qualitative characterization as being, not being, doubtful,” etc. (^{Husserl, 2004, p. 123}; ^{2001a, p. 275}).²⁴ In this sense, attentive meaning is surely neither an act nor the creation of a new appearance, but it lets a different objective correlate come to the fore on the basis of the same appearance once this is established with its own act quality.

Rozzoni has recently explained Husserl’s change of mind on the relation between image object and subject in terms of a change in the conception of “imagination”. Husserl would have conceived imagination as “conversion into image” (Verbildlichung), interpreting image consciousness and fantasy with this model (^{Rozzoni, 2017, p. 125}). Around 1904, presentification in image consciousness was still conceived as a case of Verbildlichung, while a new conception of imagination was introduced later, not conceived solely as a conversion into image, but as “a fantasy” as a “quasi-actual experience”. Behind this change is Husserl’s awareness of the problems of interpreting fantasy as an image presentation (see supra, p. 196). One aspect of describing attention in presentifications may have helped Husserl in a renewal of his description. ^{Shum (2015, p. 223)} stresses that the possibility “of turning one’s attention to the picture-thing is an essential part of the structure of picture-consciousness itself,” a possibility that reveals an infinite regress through the interpretation of fantasy as a case of image consciousness. Certainly, along with the review of the apprehension-content schema, the idea of a direct meaning of the image subject becomes prominent after 1904.²⁵ In fantasy, “the fantasy meaning can be directed toward the thing itself”, resulting in a “direct consciousness of <its> object”, although in the form of “something not present” (^{Husserl, 2005, pp. 193-194}). Fantasy is no longer conceived along the lines of an image. The intention is directed immediately towards the subject itself and not towards the image of a subject. In image consciousness, the meaning is also directed towards the subject. But now there is no “positional modality” involved in apprehension (^{Husserl, 1998, pp. 260-262}). The object of the image is intuited in the form of a perceptio, i.e., an “aesthetic appearance” that is perceptual while lacking the belief that belongs to perception, where the aesthetic appearance refers solely to the appearance itself of the object (^{Husserl, 2004, pp. 209, 358}).²⁶ Thus, we have the direct meaning of the subject, and in image consciousness a presentification implying a perceptio: a perceptual fantasy. Around 1918, image consciousness is an immediate imagination “in the sense of a perceptual fantasy”, where the immediacy overcomes the problem of the intention of the subject in the resembling sensuous semblance, i.e, the idea of the “presenting to be depicting” (^{Husserl, 2005, p. 616}). Still, a picture motivates attention in the peculiar way stated: “certain things show themselves to be suited to excite a double apperception; specifically, a double perceptual apprehension”, where the excited presenting is a fantasy constituted in perception (2005, p. 619).²⁷ This concept of fantasy redefines the concept of presentification, which in the case of image consciousness is presentification complying with perception-or presentification in image (cfr. ^{Husserl, 2005, p. 565}). In this context, this paper hopefully offers a valid contribution to the interpretation of image consciousness also in its development: the function of attentive meaning was explained in the early works of Edmund Husserl, but it maintains the same function also in the revised description of this complex phenomenon.