Key Arguments

• Husserl sharply contrasts his approach with traditional theories that infer from immanence to a supposed transcendent thing‑in‑itself: "Genuine theory of knowledge is accordingly possible [sinnvoll] only as a transcendental-phenomenological theory, which, instead of operating with inconsistent inferences leading from a supposed immanency to a supposed transcendency (that of no matter what 'thing in itself', which is alleged to be essentially unknowable), has to do exclusively with systematic clarification of the knowledge performance".
• He specifies that this clarification must make knowledge thoroughly understandable as intentional: "a clarification in which this must become thoroughly understandable as an intentional performance".
• On this basis, every kind of existent is made understandable as a constituted product: "Precisely thereby every sort of existent itself, real or ideal, becomes understandables as a 'product' of transcendental subjectivity, a product constituted in just that performance."
• He then elevates this intentional‑constitutive understandability to the highest rational form: "This kind of understandableness is the highest imaginable form of rationality."

Source Quotes

This explication therefore concerns my de facto ego, only4 so far as the latter is one of the pure possibilities to be acquired by his free phantasy-variation (fictive changing) of himself.1 Therefore, as eidetic, the explication is valid for the universe of these, my possibilities as essentially an ego, my possibilities namely of being otherwise; accordingly then it is valid also for every possible / intersubjectivity related (with a corresponding modification) to these possibilities, and valid likewise for every world imaginable as constituted in such an intersubjectivity. Genuine theory of knowledge is accordingly possible [sinnvoll] only as a transcendental-phenomenological theory, which, instead of operating with inconsistent inferences leading from a supposed immanency to a supposed transcendency (that of no matter what “thing in itself”, which is alleged to be essentially unknowable), has to do exclusively with systematic clarification of the knowledge performance, a clarification in which this must become thoroughly understandable as an intentional performance2. Precisely thereby every sort of existent itself, real or ideal, becomes understandables as a “product” of transcendental subjectivity, a product constituted in just that performance.

Genuine theory of knowledge is accordingly possible [sinnvoll] only as a transcendental-phenomenological theory, which, instead of operating with inconsistent inferences leading from a supposed immanency to a supposed transcendency (that of no matter what “thing in itself”, which is alleged to be essentially unknowable), has to do exclusively with systematic clarification of the knowledge performance, a clarification in which this must become thoroughly understandable as an intentional performance2. Precisely thereby every sort of existent itself, real or ideal, becomes understandables as a “product” of transcendental subjectivity, a product constituted in just that performance. This kind of understandableness is the highest imaginable form of rationality.

Precisely thereby every sort of existent itself, real or ideal, becomes understandables as a “product” of transcendental subjectivity, a product constituted in just that performance. This kind of understandableness is the highest imaginable form of rationality. All wrong interpretations of being come from naїve blindness to the horizons that join in determining the sense of being, and to the corresponding tasks of uncovering implicit intentionality.

Key Concepts

• Genuine theory of knowledge is accordingly possible [sinnvoll] only as a transcendental-phenomenological theory, which, instead of operating with inconsistent inferences leading from a supposed immanency to a supposed transcendency (that of no matter what “thing in itself”, which is alleged to be essentially unknowable), has to do exclusively with systematic clarification of the knowledge performance,
• a clarification in which this must become thoroughly understandable as an intentional performance2.
• Precisely thereby every sort of existent itself, real or ideal, becomes understandables as a “product” of transcendental subjectivity, a product constituted in just that performance.
• This kind of understandableness is the highest imaginable form of rationality.

Context

Middle of §41, where Husserl redefines 'theory of knowledge' as necessarily transcendental‑phenomenological and intentional, and characterizes all real and ideal being as constituted products of transcendental subjectivity.