Key Arguments

• On the basis of the universal constitutive synthesis, Husserl says that what is ‘foreshadowed’ is ‘an enormous task’ that defines transcendental phenomenology ‘as a whole’: to conduct all phenomenological investigations ‘within the unity of a systematic and all‑embracing order’.
• This systematic order is to be followed ‘as our mobile clue’ by gradually discovering ‘the system namely of all objects of possible consciousness, including the system of their formal and material categories’, and then carrying out ‘corresponding constitutional investigations, one based upon another, and all of them interconnected, in a strictly systematic fashion’.
• He corrects himself, emphasizing that this systematic unity is not a finished system we could possess but ‘an infinite regulative idea’: ‘the evidently presupposable system of possible objects of possible / consciousness is itself an anticipative idea (not however an invention, an “as if”)’.
• As a regulative idea, this system ‘equips us with the principle for combining any relatively closed constitutional theory with any other’, thereby preventing fragmentation of phenomenology into disconnected disciplines.
• The way this principle operates in practice is through ‘an incessant uncovering of horizons’, both internal horizons that belong to the objects of consciousness themselves and ‘those having an external reference, namely to essential forms of interconnexions’, i.e., systematic relations between different regions, types, and levels of constitution.
• He notes that even when one starts from ‘single types of objects as restricted clues’, the resulting tasks ‘prove to be extremely complicated and always lead to extensive disciplines when we penetrate more deeply’, indicating why a regulative idea of systematic unity is needed to coordinate these disciplines.

Source Quotes

That indicates in advance a universal constitutive synthesis, in which all syntheses function together in a definitely ordered manner and in which therefore all actual and possible objectivities (as actual and possible for the transcendental ego), and correlatively all actual and possible modes of consciousness of them, are embraced. Furthermore we can say that an enormous task is foreshadowed, which is that of transcendental phenomenology as a whole: the task of carrying out all phenomenological investigations within the unity of a systematic and all-embracing order by following, as our mobile clue, a system to be found out level by level, the system namely of all objects of possible consciousness, including the system of their formal and material categories — the task, I say, of carrying out such investigations as corresponding constitutional investigations, one based upon another, and all of them interconnected, in a strictly systematic fashion. But we speak more correctly if we say that here it is a matter of an infinite regulative idea, that the evidently presupposable system of possible objects of possible / consciousness is itself an anticipative idea (not however an invention, an “as if”), and that, as regards practice, it equips us with the principle for combining any relatively closed constitutional theory with any other: by an incessant uncovering of horizons — not only those belonging to objects of consciousness internally, but also those having an external reference, namely to essential forms of interconnexions.

Furthermore we can say that an enormous task is foreshadowed, which is that of transcendental phenomenology as a whole: the task of carrying out all phenomenological investigations within the unity of a systematic and all-embracing order by following, as our mobile clue, a system to be found out level by level, the system namely of all objects of possible consciousness, including the system of their formal and material categories — the task, I say, of carrying out such investigations as corresponding constitutional investigations, one based upon another, and all of them interconnected, in a strictly systematic fashion. But we speak more correctly if we say that here it is a matter of an infinite regulative idea, that the evidently presupposable system of possible objects of possible / consciousness is itself an anticipative idea (not however an invention, an “as if”), and that, as regards practice, it equips us with the principle for combining any relatively closed constitutional theory with any other: by an incessant uncovering of horizons — not only those belonging to objects of consciousness internally, but also those having an external reference, namely to essential forms of interconnexions. To be sure, even the tasks that present themselves when we take single types of objects as restricted clues prove to be extremely complicated and always lead to extensive disciplines when we penetrate more deeply.

Key Concepts

• Furthermore we can say that an enormous task is foreshadowed, which is that of transcendental phenomenology as a whole:
• the task of carrying out all phenomenological investigations within the unity of a systematic and all-embracing order by following, as our mobile clue, a system to be found out level by level, the system namely of all objects of possible consciousness, including the system of their formal and material categories —
• the task, I say, of carrying out such investigations as corresponding constitutional investigations, one based upon another, and all of them interconnected, in a strictly systematic fashion.
• But we speak more correctly if we say that here it is a matter of an infinite regulative idea, that the evidently presupposable system of possible objects of possible / consciousness is itself an anticipative idea (not however an invention, an “as if”),
• and that, as regards practice, it equips us with the principle for combining any relatively closed constitutional theory with any other:
• by an incessant uncovering of horizons — not only those belonging to objects of consciousness internally, but also those having an external reference, namely to essential forms of interconnexions.

Context

§22, middle to later portion, where Husserl transforms the discovery of a universal constitutive synthesis into a programmatic definition of transcendental phenomenology’s overall task, introducing the notion of an ‘infinite regulative idea’ of the system of all possible objects and using ‘horizon’ as the key methodological concept for linking particular constitutional theories.