Possibility and consciousness in Husserl's Thought

The nature of possibility, intrinsically tied to the ontological status of essences, is a core question in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. At first sight, a Platonic interpretation, where essences and possibilities are conceived as entities separately existent from consciousness, seems plausible. However, this account is inacceptable in a phenomenological framework, where the reference to any non-actual dimension must be accounted for by constituting acts of consciousness. Husserl mentions two distinct levels of possibility: empty possibilities and motivated possibilities. Some appearances notwithstanding, it turns out that even empty possibilities (which provide the basis for formal ontology) rest on an experiential ground: empty possibilities appear as a borderline case of motivated possibilities. The experiential basis of empty possibilities is the ‘absolute fact’ (Absolute Tatsache) according to which something in general there is (for a consciousness). However, the notion of ‘absolute fact’ leads to inextricable paradoxes and neither the idea of contingency nor the one of essentiality can be meaningfully applied to ‘it’. A way out from this theoretical cul-de-sac can be found by reading the general notion of possibility through the Husserlian notion of Vermöglichkeit. By interpreting possibilities as Vermöglichkeiten, we end up conceiving of them as ‘emergent properties’ born by the originating ‘encounter’ of consciousness and transcendent ‘otherness’. This does not imply any ‘naturalization’ of consciousness, but affirms the ontological priority of actuality and motivation in the definition of the space of possibilities. The foundational prominence of actuality and motivation does not lead to a contingentist view of possibilities, while not supporting a Platonic interpretation either. We must make room for a vision of reality and possibility where motivation (and teleology) lies at its core. This implies that what is truly grounding should not be conceived after the model of ‘solidity’, as a thing-like substance, but rather after a teleological model, as resilience of ideal goals in intentional processes. The teleology of consciousness neither mirrors, nor creates limits and laws, but actively looks for them and by so doing let them emerge. In the last instance, being is regarded as founded in an “axiological” dimension exercised on actual givenness and driven by the instances of possibilization. What is recognized a parte subjecti as possibilization is to be represented a parte objecti as emergence of intelligible properties.