Key Arguments

• Husserl explicitly defines evidence ‘in the broadest sense’ as a ‘universal primal phenomenon of intentional life’, indicating that it is not a special derivative act but a fundamental mode of consciousness.
• He contrasts evidence with other ‘consciousness-of’ that is ‘capable a priori of being “empty”, expectant, indirect, non-presentive’, thereby specifying that evidence is distinguished by a special fullness or presence of the object.
• He characterizes evidence as ‘the quite pre-eminent mode of consciousness that consists in the self-appearance, the self-exhibiting, the self-giving’ of various kinds of objectivities, and thematizes its final mode as ‘“itself there”, “immediately intuited”, “given originaliter”.’
• On the side of the ego, evidence means ‘not aiming confusedly at something, with an empty expectant intention, but being with it itself, viewing, seeing, having insight into, it itself’, emphasizing the lived difference between confused empty intending and fulfilled intuitive presence.
• He notes that ‘Experience in the ordinary sense is a particular evidence’ and generalizes: ‘All evidence, we may say, is experience in a maximally broad, and yet essentially unitary, sense’, thereby integrating ordinary experience into a broadened, essentially unified concept of evidence.

Source Quotes

§ 24. Evidence as itself-givenness and the modifications of evidence In the broadest sense, evidence denotes a universal primal phenomenon of intentional life, namely — as contrasted with other consciousness-of, which is capable a priori of being “empty”, expectant, indirect, non-presentive — the quite pre-eminent mode of consciousness that consists in the self-appearance, the self-exhibiting, the self-giving, of an affair, an affair-complex (or state of affairs), a universality, a value, or other objectivity, in the final mode: “itself there”, “immediately intuited”, / “given originaliter”. For the Ego that signifies: not aiming confusedly at something, with an empty expectant intention, but being with it itself, viewing, seeing, having insight into, it itself.

Evidence as itself-givenness and the modifications of evidence In the broadest sense, evidence denotes a universal primal phenomenon of intentional life, namely — as contrasted with other consciousness-of, which is capable a priori of being “empty”, expectant, indirect, non-presentive — the quite pre-eminent mode of consciousness that consists in the self-appearance, the self-exhibiting, the self-giving, of an affair, an affair-complex (or state of affairs), a universality, a value, or other objectivity, in the final mode: “itself there”, “immediately intuited”, / “given originaliter”. For the Ego that signifies: not aiming confusedly at something, with an empty expectant intention, but being with it itself, viewing, seeing, having insight into, it itself. Experience in the ordinary sense is a particular evidence.

For the Ego that signifies: not aiming confusedly at something, with an empty expectant intention, but being with it itself, viewing, seeing, having insight into, it itself. Experience in the ordinary sense is a particular evidence. All evidence, we may say, is experience in a maximally broad, and yet essentially unitary, sense.

Experience in the ordinary sense is a particular evidence. All evidence, we may say, is experience in a maximally broad, and yet essentially unitary, sense. In the case of most objects, to be sure, evidence is only an occasional occurrence in conscious life; yet it is a possibility — and, more particularly, one that can be the aim of a striving and actualizing intention — in the case of anything meant already or meanable.

Key Concepts

• evidence denotes a universal primal phenomenon of intentional life, namely — as contrasted with other consciousness-of, which is capable a priori of being “empty”, expectant, indirect, non-presentive — the quite pre-eminent mode of consciousness that consists in the self-appearance, the self-exhibiting, the self-giving, of an affair, an affair-complex (or state of affairs), a universality, a value, or other objectivity, in the final mode: “itself there”, “immediately intuited”, / “given originaliter”.
• For the Ego that signifies: not aiming confusedly at something, with an empty expectant intention, but being with it itself, viewing, seeing, having insight into, it itself.
• Experience in the ordinary sense is a particular evidence.
• All evidence, we may say, is experience in a maximally broad, and yet essentially unitary, sense.

Context

Opening of §24, where Husserl introduces and defines ‘evidence’ phenomenologically as a universal and pre-eminent mode of intentional consciousness characterized by self-givenness or original intuition, setting it off against empty or merely expectant intentionality.