Noema

The noema (Greek νόημα, noema, which is thought, knowledge or content of thought, from nous ) is, according to Husserl, the content of thinking, seeing, fantasizing, opining, so for example the imaginary tree fantasized Minotaur, the popular person, but also the content of an imaginary act of judgment ( the judgment ' within the meaning of Geurteilten, nowadays usually, Proposition ' called ).

Conceptual history

The term emerged in the history of philosophy in Plato first, to be precise, the mere thought (Greek νοήματα, noemata ) of the ideas themselves, which we can detect only thinking according to Plato ( Greek νοητά the thinkable, noêta ), but independent of our thinking must be distinguished. In Aristotle, the term is explicitly ( the mental elements of the premises ) used for the terms.

According to Husserl, there are human acts of consciousness directed to objects. Such " reasonable forming " acts of consciousness as Husserl called noesis. A noema is, however, the meaning of an act. Thus so Husserl distinguishes rigid between the act (for example, of seeing a tree ) and the "in" this act intentionally supposed object ( ie the seen tree). Often Husserl calls this noema as the real existing object different, here not an object in the sense of a thing in itself, as Kant understands it, is meant. This noema is for Husserl therefore belong only as ideational correlate of stream of consciousness, whereas the Noesis is its real part. The concept of the noema is a " generalization of the idea of the importance to the total area of the [ Awareness ] Act ".

Effective history

The term noesis and noema pair of Husserl is not even mentioned in the " Logical Investigations ", but only in the " Ideas on a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy I", or " ideas I". However, as a kind of forerunner of the noema can be seen " intentional act in specie " in the Logical Investigations, the concept of. The influenced by Husserl, phenomenologists, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau -Ponty lead these terms are not further from, other phenomenologists like Aron Gurwitsch, but also phenomenologically influenced theorists of analytic philosophy as Dagfinn Follesdal, however, have given the concept a central place in your considerations.