Symbolization and appresentational orders in lifeworldly meaning constitution

1 Introduction

Given Göran Sonesson’s phenomenological approach to semiotics, according to which “[i]t can hardly be denied that perception is imbued with meaning[,]” we agree with his conclusion: “[b]ut this does not mean that it is built up of signs” (Sonesson 2010: 180) – but we have to add: it is not solely built up of signs. Sonesson is right when he states with Ernst Cassirer that “all [human] experience is mediated” and then emphasizes Cassirer’s failure to see “the similarity between signs and other meanings” (Sonesson 2010: 196–197). By acknowledging the mediative function of every human experience, Cassirer as well as Sonesson proposed a universal approach to meaning constitution. Cassirer called this grounding aspect of mediation “symbolic formation” or “symbolic pregnance” (cf. Cassirer 2021: 226–242) and saw in it the origin of all human living: culture. “A cultural symbolic form opens up an understanding of everything; it is a way of having a world” (Krois 1987: 51; my emphasis). Cassirer’s notion of mediation is connected to his teacher Paul Natorp’s idea of ‘pure relating’ (reines Beziehen) which itself shares a common ground with Edmund Husserl’s concept of ‘intentional relating’ (intentionales Beziehen; Stuck 2022: 379–392; cf. Husserl 1983: 73–78; Natorp 1912: 41–60). Both concepts are not just mere functions of the capacity of human consciousness to comprehend, but they are an integral part of the complex meaning constitution of the human world (Stuck 2022: 392–401), as Cassirer put it, or of the social-cultural lifeworld, as Husserl, or rather his successor Alfred Schutz (1990 [1962b]), had shown. Because the cultural meaning constitution of the human world, or the lifeworld respectively, is always a social one (Landmann 1961a: 36), it is

a cosmion, illuminated with meaning from within by the human beings who continuously create and bear it as the mode and condition of their self-realization. It is illuminated through an elaborate symbolism, in various degrees of compactness and differentiation – from rite, through myth, to theory … The self-illumination of society through symbols is an integral part of social reality, and one may even say, its essential part, for through such symbolization the members of a society experience it as more than an accident or a convenience; they experience it as of their human essence. (Voegelin 1952: 27)

Reasoning from this, I understand Sonesson’s phenomenological-semiotic account of “How to build a lifeworld?,” which he proposed for the Fifteenth World Congress of Semiotics “Semiotics in the Lifeworld” in 2022 as a call to devote more attention to the question of lifeworldly meaning constitution by means of a concept of symbolization in the broadest sense. Since Sonesson (1989, 2012, 2015, 2022) developed a phenomenological approach to semiotics in which he highlighted the relation between signs and meaning by invoking appresentation in general, I will contribute to this approach by, in addition to signs, clarifying the significance of sign-like relations and symbols regarding the meaning constitution of the lifeworld. As he focused mostly on signs, including appresentation as their constitutional element, Sonesson often skipped the importance of symbols, which, phenomenologically, seem to differ from signs. He neglects to systematically address symbols understood as appresentational relations in the “building” of lifeworld and culture, as well as, on a constitutional level, the significance of appresentational orders – even if he addressed those points sometimes (cf. Sonesson 2022).

As a philosopher of culture and a phenomenologist mainly preoccupied with the particular significance of symbolic thinking for human culture, I first heard of Sonesson and his work in 2022, when I was invited to submit a paper to the panel of the Fifteenth World Congress of Semiotics co-organized by him and Jan Strassheim. Since 2023, gradually exploring Sonesson’s wide ranging efforts to provide a phenomenological foundation for semiotics, I came to realize the convergence – even though we differ considerably in our areas of research and approaches, as well as in most of our analyses and results – of some of our findings as far as the constitution of signs is concerned. Thankfully, my attention was drawn to an important point by an anonymous reviewer, which I would like to mention here. Even if my conclusions and foundational notions may contrast with his, Sonesson, as I do, points to what he calls the “double asymmetry” of signs. According to him, signs are “appresentation[s]” in a doubly asymmetrical way, as “something that is directly present but not thematic refers to something that is indirectly present but thematic …” (Sonesson 2010: 165, original emphasis; cf. 1989: 50; 2012: 226; 2015: 54). Since we, on an analytical level, meet in this aforementioned conclusion (cf. Stuck 2022: 232–271) and since I, unfortunately, could not discuss some problems involved in his analysis from a phenomenological point of view,^[1] I would like to take this opportunity to add some crucial points from my perspective on appresentational relations that (1) may further support a phenomenological foundation of signs and exceptionally symbols in semiotics, and which (2) further clarify the significance of appresentational orders for lifeworldly meaning constitution. This also goes beyond my own (2022: 210–271) earlier thoughts that also lack clarity in certain points, a clarity I know hope to achieve here.

Sonesson’s and my concept of “symbols” may differ, for, as it seems to me, as a semiotician, he understands what I would call symbols as signs (Sonesson 2010: 180), so that we are not as close as it seems at first sight. We will come to this later. Given the differences between semiotics and transcendental phenomenology and/or the philosophy of culture as far as the notions of sign and symbol are concerned, I will focus on their significance from the view of phenomenology and the philosophy of culture. One reason for this is that “symbolization” as seen from this perspective corresponds largely with the semiotic idea of “meaning” (Sonesson 2010: 148–149). At the same time, my focus acknowledges that the lifeworldly constitution of experience is not just an eminent subject of phenomenology in general, but also concerns the question of the significance of signs and symbols (understood here as meaning) for the constitution of the lifeworld. In short, it concerns Sonesson’s question: “How to build a lifeworld?”

From a phenomenological and/or philosophy of culture perspective signs and, moreover, symbols are involved in the lifeworldly ‘building’ (Aufbau) of any cultural dimension, e.g., of language, science, history, religion, etc.^[2] As Husserlian phenomenology has shown, humans avail themselves of different and contrasting styles of consciousness from which to gain an “idea” of lifeworldly reality: “Only he who lives in experience and from there ‘dips into’ imagination, whereby what is imagined contrasts with what is experienced, can have the concepts of fiction and actuality” (Husserl 1973: 298–299, original emphasis). Moreover, it is not only that humans need those styles to “grasp” reality, but they also need symbols in order to hold together a reality that transcends their direct experience in multiple ways (Srubar 1988: 230). Therefore, “contrasting” ways of experience in particular, which are the pre-eminent target of symbolic thinking and symbols (Schutz 1990 [1962c]), are among the main constituents of cultural life in the lifeworld. The “sociocultural world … is permeated by appresentational reference” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 347), which, as we will see, is symbolic reference in particular.

Insofar as we acknowledge processes of lifeworldly “building” as something that comprises meaning currently not directly perceivable – such as the idea of fellow humans, institutions, history, or objects of myth – Husserlian phenomenology introduces a concept which helps to understand how the complex structure of lifeworldly meaning is constituted. This is the concept of appresentation, which Sonesson took up in order to found his work on signs, but which has even more power to explain lifeworldly building if one applies it to symbolization and sign-like relations, too. In general, appresentation means that along with a directly perceived object, an absent element is co-presented – “absent” relative to an actual “consciousness date.”^[3]

Therefore, in order to focus Sonesson’s question of “How to build a lifeworld?,” I will further elaborate on the phenomenal structures of signs and symbols, i.e., appresentational relations and orders, from a phenomenological as well philosophy of culture point of view. Taking up Sonesson’s idea of a connection between semiotics and phenomenology, this is likewise relevant because it will allow us to inquire further into the structure of signs and, in particular, symbols.

Since in the phenomenological tradition of a theory of the lifeworld the concept of appresentation marks a turn to the understanding of symbols, I will, after outlining the concept of lifeworld (Section 1), start with a clarification of what appresentation and appresentational relation is (Sections 2 and 3), and I will then inquire deeper into their structure by highlighting the appresentational orders involved in each relation (Section 3). We will then arrive at three more specific appresentational relations, namely marks, indications, and signs, and their structural arrangement in terms of appresentational orders in Sections 4 to 6. Before reaching the conclusion, we will focus on the complex structure of symbols and symbolization involving appresentational orders and their connection to systems of relevance (Section 7). Since phenomenological analysis comprises a very large number of elements, we must, for reasons of space, omit many of them. For instance, we will not be able to focus on the phenomenological aspects of transcendence, or the structure of time consciousness. We need to reserve this for another investigation. Furthermore, we cannot treat Husserl’s considerations of “image consciousness” (cf. Husserl 2005). This is primarily because I focus on the question of the constitution of the lifeworld. And secondly because Husserl’s ever-developing reflections on image consciousness are so rich that they sometimes appear irreconcilable and even aporetic.^[4] This may in fact be in accordance with Husserl’s method of philosophical thinking, but the topic would necessarily require an adequate discussion, a task we cannot accomplish here (but see Stuck 2022: 94–145). In the following, I will instead dwell on the problem of lifeworldly meaning constitution – i.e., on “How to build a lifeworld,” by concentrating on appresentation and, furthermore, on appresentational orders, in the hope to have a discussion with Göran Sonesson – most unfortunately, a posthumous one.

2 Lifeworldly meaning: multiple realities and symbolization

According to Alfred Schutz’s phenomenological theory of the lifeworld, reality is neither just a single realm of meaning(s), nor is there a single ‘state of mind’ that makes the world meaningful. With reference to Husserl, Schutz states: “It is misleading to say that [lived] experiences have meaning. Meaning does not lie in the [lived] experience. Rather, those [lived] experiences are meaningful which are grasped reflectively. The meaning is the way in which the Ego regards its [lived] experience. The meaning lies in the attitude of the Ego …”^[5] (Schutz 1967: 69; original emphasis, my new emphasis). Hence, according to Husserlian phenomenology, the constitution of sense or meaning is regarded as an “intentional” capacity of consciousness which, in Schutz’s early view,^[6] renders “elapsed” lived experience meaningful. For Schutz, this means that not all lived experiences are meaningful, but just those which are reflected upon and those which are later sedimented.^[7] In this way the “total content of all my experience [Erfahrungszusammenhang], or of all my perceptions of the world in the broadest sense, is, then, brought together and coordinated in the total context of my experience. This total context grows larger with every new lived experience” (Schutz 1967: 76–77). We cannot here discuss the whole process of meaning constitution as Schutz understands it, nor all the problems and aporias that come along with it. For the inquiry at hand, it suffices to say that meaning in general depends on the way or style people experience reality (Husserl 1983: 73–93). And, with a view to our subsequent analysis, since appresentation depends on analogical apprehension in accordance with our sedimented foreknowledge, each appresentational relation is – at least minimally – meaningful to somebody (cf. Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 295–297; Husserl 1982: 111). A corollary of this is that there are “styles of consciousness” or “cognitive styles” which constitute different “finite provinces of meaning” as Schutz (1990 [1962b]) points out, referring to William James (1950 [1890b]: 291–306). Insofar as humans can bestow an “accent of reality” upon each of these finite provinces of meaning, such provinces are experienced as real (Schutz 1990 [1962b]: 230). “Reality means simply relation to our emotional and active life; whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 340). Therefore, as Schutz goes on, “it is the meaning of our experiences, and not the ontological structure of the objects, which constitutes reality” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 341).

In a nutshell: Insofar as a particular style of experiencing reality forms a set of experiences that are “consistent in themselves” and “compatible with one another” (Schutz 1990 [1962b]: 230), these experiences constitute a specific province of meaning, or reality. For example, there is the “reality of phantasm,” the “reality of dreams,” the “worlds” – as Schutz also calls such realities – “of scientific theory” and the “world of everyday life” (Schutz 1990 [1962b]: 234–259).

Each province of meaning – the paramount world of real objects and events into which we can gear by our actions, the world of imaginings and fantasms, such as the play world of the child, the world of the insane, but also the world of art, the world of dreams, the world of scientific contemplation – has its particular cognitive style. (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 340)

Except for the world of dreams and daydreams, intersubjective participation is possible in most of these realities. This means that almost every province of meaning, every world, or reality, is capable of socialization (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 342) and objectification.

Since culture is both a social, or “objective,” realm and an “individual,” or subjective, one (Lazarus 2003; Simmel 2008), and since sociality and culturality are dialectically related, as the philosophical anthropologist Michael Landmann (1961a: 36; Bohr 2011: 44) pointed out, the Schutzian realities too are neither simply “products” of subjectivity, nor purely social spheres. Instead, provinces of meaning are social-cultural domains which are “self-illuminated” by their participants with meaning through symbolism (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 312, 336; Voegelin 1952: 27).

In this perspective, the ‘lifeworld’ [Lebenswelt], understood as the “whole universe of life” (Schutz 1990 [1962b]: 247), is as a first approximation among the many different meanings of this term (Bergmann 1981: 60–61; Brand 1971: 89–94; Claesges 1972; Hohl 1962: 46–52; Landgrebe 1977; Lee 2020; Theodorou 2010: 145–150), the full universe of different multiple realities. The lifeworld, thus, as the ground and as the full horizon of meaning possible, founds and comprises the various realities.^[8] Anticipating the analysis of this treatment, we can say that symbols as appresentational relations connect meaning from different realities within the lifeworldly building.

Lifeworld is thus an appropriate term to grasp and describe the “forms of [hu]man[ity]’s cultural life in all their richness and variety,” as Cassirer (1945 [1944]: 26) put it with a view to the “nature” of humankind. Cassirer specifies “das Kulturelle als Inbegriff menschlicher Objektivierungsleistung” (Seitz 2019: 45) [‘culturality as the epitome of human objectivation’], the latter being a symbolic process (Krois 1987: 50–57; Schwemmer 1997: 116–125, 2011: 108–112; Seitz 2019: 45–50). In Cassirer’s philosophy of culture, the term “symbolic pregnancy” describes this fundamental process more precisely. “By ‘symbolic pregnance,’ we mean how a lived-perceptive-experience, as a ‘sensible’ lived-experience, contains in itself at the same time a certain non-intuitive ‘sense’ and brings it to immediate concrete presentation” (Cassirer 2021: 239, original emphasis). The human being, therefore, is an “animal symbolicum” (Cassirer 1945 [1944]: 26) who “objectifies” meaning in the (life)world culturally. As a result, the cultural world is a symbolical world objectified in and by society. Insofar this objectification is realized by a concrete presentation of a non-intuitive sense, Cassirer’s account can, in my opinion, be specified by pointing to appresentational meaning constitution of the lifeworld. Whereas for Cassirer, symbolic constitution is a unitary and immediate act (Köhnke 2000: 96), the concept of an appresentational relation, taken from transcendental phenomenology, allows us to “access” the very structures of the constitutional processing.

Nevertheless, the aim of this paper is neither to discuss the meaning of the term “lifeworld” with all its problems and faults, nor to clarify Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms in the light of a Schutzian phenomenology of the lifeworld.^[9] I have tried to do both elsewhere (Stuck 2022: 147–203, 379–401). In the following, I want to elaborate instead how appresentational relations and (in a second step) appresentational orders have a “place” within meaning constitution beyond Sonesson’s considerations of appresentational signs. Cassirer’s reflections regarding symbolization in the philosophy of culture will simply help us to exemplify the context of symbolic formation for the constitution of the lifeworld in general. Again, this is a common ground that Cassirer and Schutz share in their treatment of how such (life)worldly meaning is built. Both highlight the significance of symbolic formation for cultural reality and lifeworldly meaning in the widest sense by highlighting the relation between “absent” and “present” data.

According to Schutz, there are four different appresentational relations – marks, indications, signs, and symbols – which bring meaning into the cultural (life)world. This “includes, however, in addition, all the appresentational functions of such objects, facts, or events which transform things into cultural objects, human bodies into fellow men, their bodily movements into actions or significant gestures, waves of sound into speech, etc.” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 328). Beginning with the originator of the concept of appresentation, Husserl, we will now have a closer look at what appresentation, appresentational relation, and appresentational orders mean.

3 Appresentation in Husserl’s fifth Cartesian Meditation

Schutz’s approach to the significance of appresentation as an element of the constitution of socio-cultural phenomena is, on the one hand, mainly based in Husserl’s phenomenology, but on the other hand, it markedly differs from it. We cannot elaborate on Husserl’s observations in detail here, nor can we fully point out where Schutz’s theory relates to Husserlian philosophy as far as appresentation is concerned. Besides scattered but illuminating notes in his manuscripts, Husserl introduced the term “appresentation” – and, with it, “pairing”^[10] – especially in his fifth Cartesian Meditation. There, his concern was, in particular, to explicate the “mediate intentionality of experiencing someone else” that is at play in our experience of the external world (Husserl 1982: 108–128). His question was: How can we have meaning relating to something or somebody that we cannot perceive directly? The problem arises because we obviously understand others, even if we cannot experience their feelings or thoughts in a direct way. We do comprehend memorials and equivocal pieces of art, or even have a sense of the whole world of objects even if we cannot experience their backsides, meaning relations, etc., in a direct way. Clarifying the constitutional ground of such phenomena, Husserl introduced the concept of appresentation. To Husserl (1982: 109), appresentation means, in a nutshell, “making intended as co-present.” Beginning with the perception of mere objects, he states:

An appresentation occurs even in external experience, since the strictly seen front of a physical thing always and necessarily appresents a rear aspect and prescribes for it a more or less determinate content. … Appresentation of this sort involves the possibility of verification by a corresponding fulfilling presentation (the back becomes the front) … (Husserl 1982: 109)

In such experience of mere physical things, the appresented part of the coupling can potentially also be directly given (e.g., if I turn an object around and I look at its backside). The experience of another person as such is different, even if in both cases, a given or presented term is coupled with a member that is not directly there or given, that is, so to speak, ‘absent’. A coupling of something immediately given with an absent member is possible to “the extent that there was givenness [of the now absent] beforehand.” This means that a sense originally posited is “analogically transferred” to “a new case,” while the coupled object is apprehended “as having a similar sense” (Husserl 1982: 111, original emphasized, my new emphasis). In short, the – mostly typified – transfer of meaning is grounded in knowledge, i.e., in sedimented experience. Thus, Husserl sometimes uses the term “analogical apperception” for appresentation regarding mere physical things as well as other people. But insofar the experience of someone else includes the appresentation of a different consciousness, which can never be directly perceived, it is a “making present to [my] consciousness a ‘there too’, which nevertheless is not itself there and can never become an ‘itself-there’” (Husserl 1982: 109).

We cannot go into detail here, but the accentuation of the role that appresentation plays in the meaning constitution of the lifeworld as a cultural world is in need of justification. One can deduce this role from Cassirer, who emphasized the eminent importance of symbols in the formation of culture as an organized whole. On a very general level, Husserl’s above-mentioned definition of appresentation can be seen in the light of Cassirer’s concept of symbolic pregnance, and vice versa. If we remember Cassirer’s (2021: 239) point cited above, the correspondence becomes clearer. We cannot acknowledge the different backgrounds of each philosophy due to the limited space, but the general approach to meaning constitution they share is obvious: Something which is not directly perceivable or given becomes present to consciousness.

Furthermore, to Cassirer, each social-cultural symbol forms reality through a “spiritual” processes: “Not only does the human being think and comprehend the world through the medium of language, but also the way the human intuitively sees the world and lives in this intuition is conditioned by this medium: the human apprehension of an ‘objective’ reality … ” (Cassirer 2021: 245, original emphasis) Whereas Husserl, from his transcendental philosophical perspective, asks how the different types of fulfilment, be it in the case of mere objects or the other’s consciousness, are realized within the appresentational process,^[11] Cassirer, from his point of view, regards every perception and/or experience as mediated by a symbolic form such as language. Language, as a system always constituted through the interaction of different people with singular (and mutually “absent”) consciousnesses, is, to him, involved in the constitution of the object world. “[W]e see how much the world of ‘perception,’ which one tends at first sight to take as a datum of the senses, owes to the spiritual medium of language and how every impediment or complication of the spiritual process of mediation that takes place in language also affects and alters the ‘immediate’ constitution and ‘character’ of perception itself” (Cassirer 2021: 247). Therefore, the “symbolic” aspect of pregnance, which constitutes culture as a meaningful world, can be identified in Husserl’s parallel concept of appresentation insofar as

with the systematic progress of transcendental-phenomenological explication of the apodictic ego, the transcendental sense of the world must also become disclosed to us ultimately in the full concreteness with which it is incessantly the life-world for us all. That applies likewise to all the particular formations of the surrounding world, wherein it presents itself to us according to our personal upbringing and development or according to our membership in this or that nation, this or that cultural community. (Husserl 1982: 136, original emphasis, my new emphasis)

In a nutshell: An understanding of lifeworldly constitution is theoretically as well empirically grounded in an analysis of subjective meaning constitution. Whereas Cassirer fails to disclose the detailed process of symbolic formation because he focuses on cultural constitution in general, Husserl proposes meaning constitution to be investigated within subjective consciousness against the background of the socio-cultural world. Yet both, Cassirer, and Husserl, meet in outlining the world as a cultural world we live in, as a lifeworld. As both approaches adequately describe cultural reality as meaningful, what is especially relevant to our inquiry is the role of the symbolic (Cassirer) and/or appresentational relation (Husserl and Schutz), and thus the reconciliation of both standpoints against the background of cultural and/or lifeworldly meaning constitution.

For Husserl, every appresentation – of someone else or of a mere thing – needs a directly perceived (or “given” and/or “presented”) member, or “core,” with which the appresented is co-presented (Husserl 1982: 122). In the case of a mere thing, the latter may be its backside or inside, for example. In the case of someone else, there is at first the other’s given ‘body’ [Körper]. To some extent, the experience of mere physical things and of the other’s body share the possibility of direct givenness of formerly absent parts and aspects. You can walk around me and you will see my back, for example. But the perception proper of another body is in most cases connected with an experience of the other person’s consciousness, a phenomenon Husserl calls an ‘animate body’ [Leibkörper]. Except for corpses, we seldom experience people as mere physical bodies. Yet according to Husserl, the consciousness of the other can never be present to me in the same manner as a mere thing. He describes the sphere of the other as grounded in an analogical apprehension – in analogy to my own body and consciousness, both are paired ‘such as I should be if I were there’ [wie wenn ich dort wäre] (Husserl 1982: 118–119). Even if Husserl separates the presented and the appresented member on a theoretical level, he knows that in “everyday experience,” both are apprehended together.

In other words, the two are so fused that they stand within the functional community of one perception, which simultaneously presents and appresents, and yet furnishes for the total object a consciousness of its being itself there. Therefore, in the object of such a presentive-appresentive perception (an object making its appearance in the mode, itself-there), we must distinguish noematically between that part which is genuinely perceived and the rest, which is not strictly perceived and yet is indeed there too. Thus every perception of this type is transcending: it posits more as itself-there than it makes “actually” present at any time. (Husserl 1982: 122, original emphasis)

As said before, I have no direct experience of the other’s private sphere. Nevertheless, I can verify someone else’s “governing Ego” based on their experienced animate body. If I see a smile on my counterpart’s face, I may be certain she is happy. Phenomenologically speaking, we may say that the Ego “connected” to the directly experienced body over there exists and is, for example, happy. Furthermore, as far as every experience directs to further experiences, as Husserl writes, the appresentations include consonant anticipations of those experiences in a non-intuitive way.

The experienced animate organism of another continues to prove itself as actually an animate organism, solely in its changing but incessantly harmonious “behavior.” Such harmonious behavior (as having a physical side that indicates something psychic appresentatively) must present itself fulfillingly in original experience, and do so throughout the continuous change in behavior from phase to phase. (Husserl 1982: 114, original emphasis, my new emphasis)

As outlined, Schutz takes a similar approach to appresentational intersubjectivity. On this basis, Husserl and Schutz similarly describe the constitution of a cultural world in terms of appresentational socio-cultural communities. But with the social constitution of the lifeworld in mind, Schutz makes the following point clear:

I take it for granted that certain objects, facts, and events within our common social environment have for him [or for her and them] the same appresentational significances as for me, which significances transform mere things in the outer world into so-called cultural objects. (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 327; cf. Husserl 1982: 120–136)

Unlike Schutz, Husserl chose the path of an exploration of the opposition between “own culture” and “alien culture” as “personalities of a higher order.” The latter are constituted by stages of reciprocal appresentational “formations” of “my world” and “your world” though empathy and, in a second step, of my culture and an alien culture, respectively (Husserl 1982: 131–136). This is an approach that Schutz criticized (cf. Schutz 1975 [1970b]), but we cannot discuss his critique here. Instead, Schutz was interested in the significance of appresentation in terms of concrete configurations of meaning in and between multiple realities and their socio-cultural functions, which illuminate and hold together (Srubar 1988: 230) the lifeworld, especially through symbols. According to Schutz, appresentation does so in the form of different appresentational relations. To understand how meaning is constituted, “building up” the lifeworld, we need to have a closer look at Schutz’s concepts of appresentational relations and, especially, of appresentational orders.

4 Appresentational relations and appresentational orders

As said before, Schutz based his considerations of appresentational meaning constitution on Husserl’s fifth Cartesian Meditation. Even in Schutz’s elaboration, the basic idea behind the concept of appresentation remains the same:

The most primitive case of a coupling or pairing association [here: appresentation, BS] is characterized by the fact that two or more data are intuitively given in the unity of consciousness, which, by this very reason, constitutes two distinct phenomena as a unity, regardless of whether or not they are attended to. (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 295, my emphasis)

It is part of such a coupling of data that an appresenting part is directly or immediately experienced. This is the present one which is coupled with one or more appresented terms (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 295). In this manner a present term is coupled with a – strictly speaking – absent one. Even if the latter is “there” in an indirect way or, more precisely, co-presented, the coupling is non-inferential (cf. Husserl 1982: 111; Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 295).

In this very brief deduction of the concept of appresentation from Husserl and Schutz, we cannot focus on the significance of Husserl’s second book of Ideas or his considerations from Experience and Judgement for Schutz and our topic (but cf. Husserl 1973, 1989; Stuck 2022: 83–93). We need to point out, however, that even where the appresenting term is presented, the appresented term may be a “recollection, a fantasm, a dream, etc.” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 297). As far as the meaning of the “fused” terms is concerned, each of them may have a determinate influence on the other. For example, it makes a difference if one apprehends smoke as an indication of fire or if the appresented term, as, for instance, the outcome of the papal election, “posits” the meaning of the soaring smoke. To contribute to Sonesson’s work where he mostly focused on the latter case of an appresentational sign, we should concentrate on Schutz’s notion of an appresentational relation, a concept Schutz introduced to clarify the complex constitution of symbolic and sign-like lifeworldly building.

With the notion of terms that are related appresentationally, Schutz developed a concept which reflects how the appresentational terms are related, as we have seen in the example of smoke. Incorporating Bergson’s (1954 [1911]: 196–286) concept of “orders,” Schutz states that, in general, “in any appresentational situation … four orders are involved” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 299). Roughly speaking, Schutz distinguishes between the appresenting and the appresented “side” of the relation. The orders, or “schemes,” as he also calls them, focus firstly on the appresenting term and secondly on the appresented one.

First, there is the “apperceptual scheme.” If an object is experienced as a self, regardless of its possible appresentational references, then Schutz designates it as “immediately” or directly apperceived in this scheme, even if the appresentation of adumbrations is included here. This is what is sometimes called “mere appresentation.” It is important always to consider the involved schemes, for even in the apperceptual scheme, terms are related. Flags, for example, may be taken simply as colored pieces of cloth if the reference to a certain nation is unknown or neglected. In contrast, even when objects are apperceived immediately, they can be taken not as a self but grasped “as a member of an appresentational pair.” In other words, if the appresenting part refers “to something other than itself,” Schutz speaks of the appresenting member being experienced in an “appresentational scheme” instead (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 299). Regarding smoke merely as related to something without knowing if it is related to, say, a fire or a vaporizer, illustrates this scheme.

The third order or scheme Schutz introduces is the “referential scheme.” This order designates the scheme to which the appresented part belongs when it is apperceived merely analogically. The latter involves, as will be remembered, the analogical transfer from pre-experienced objective or subjective data to the object or person in actual experience. Using the example of an apple as a symbol of “temptation,” the referential scheme could comprise “the fall of humankind” or just “a test.” Even if we must not neglect the connection of the appresented term to its appresenting term on an analytical level, Schutz’s classification of these appresentational orders reflects what he considers one of the key points of the phenomenology of lifeworldly knowledge: People may select any one of these schemes as their “starting point” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 299).

The last scheme to be mentioned here is

the order to which the particular appresentational reference itself belongs, that is, the particular type of pairing or context by which the appresenting member is connected with the appresented one, or, more generally, the relationship which prevails between the appresentational and the referential scheme. We shall call this order the “contextual or interpretational scheme.” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 299, original emphasis)

In the following we will elaborate further on the role of these orders. Here we need to underline once more what we have already mentioned: When describing appresentational relations scientifically, one may select any one of the four schemes as the prime system of the relation. The same is true of everyday life thinking, where people may “live” in any one of the schemes. When we do so, we apprehend the constitutional ground of a given scheme in its totality. We are then fully directed towards the meaning of the appresented or appresenting term, respectively. For example, if I listen to a friend’s words closely, I am apprehending her words not as connected to external sounds, but I am primarily taking in the meaning of those words. Thus, if I “live” in a certain scheme, any other order or scheme may be characterized as contingent or absent (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 299–300, 314; cf. Husserl 1962: 392–401, 1978: 353–383). Nevertheless, insofar the contextual or interpretational scheme comprises the very relationship between the three other schemes, we should note that we may also choose the constitutional basis of an order which includes more than one scheme as our starting point – as we do in the case of symbols.

To emphasize how appresentational relations constitute meaning and to illustrate how these relations play an important role in the building of the lifeworld, we will now have a closer look, first, at sign-like appresentational relations (marks, indications); we will then, secondly, focus on signs before we, thirdly, move on to symbols seen in the light of phenomenological lifeworld theory.

5 Sign-like appresentational relations: marks and indications

Within Schutz’s theory of the lifeworld, multiple realities or provinces of meaning are constituted by a particular “cognitive style.” As we may “live” in any one of the orders of an appresentational situation, we can also live in any one of those realities, or – to put it differently – use any one of the cognitive styles as our “starting point” for experiencing reality. “As long as our experiences of this world [a specific multiple reality] … partake of this style we may consider this province of meaning as real, we may bestow upon it the accent of reality” (Schutz 1990 [1962b]: 231). As long as we do so, we consider the accented reality as valid and consistent in itself. From the standpoint of the accented reality, any other province of meaning may appear inconsistent, fictional, or invalid. Thus, switching between two different multiple realities can only be realized by a “Kierkegaardian leap” (Schutz 1990 [1962b]: 232).

As a consequence, Schutz distinguishes between, on the one hand, appresentational relations between terms within one province of meaning, and, on the other hand, relations which connect an appresenting element based in one currently accented reality with an appresented part belonging to one or more provinces other than the accented one. Schutz calls the latter appresentational relation a symbol, whereas the former are sign-like relations, such as “marks” and “indications” in addition to “genuine” signs. We call indications and marks “sign-like” because they, like signs, are based in one reality.

As people often assume that certain relevant elements of their lifeworld will be relevant again in the future, they are, according to Schutz, motivated to select particular actual objects that help them “return” to formerly relevant elements and/or situations (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 308–309). Such appresentational relations, in which the appresenting member functions as sort of a “reminder” – Schutz uses John Wild’s (1947: 224) terminology –^[12] of something that is now appresented, Schutz calls marks. Connected arbitrarily, and thus functioning as “subjective reminders,”

all these marks, themselves objects of the outer world, will from now on be intuited not as mere “selves” in the pure apperceptual scheme. They entered [at first] for me, the interpreter, into an appresentational scheme. (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 309)

Since marks are used to remind people of something, there must be a clear subjective insight into the relation, which means that there is a “knowledge about” why the appresentational members are coupled. Otherwise, if I have no clue about what the appresenting term of the mark appresents, the mark can hardly function as a reminder. We will come back to the problem of knowledge later.

We cannot discuss in detail here whether marks are “detached from any intersubjective context” as Schutz (1990 [1962c]: 309, my emphasis) writes, or indeed if marks are subjectively motivated at all. However, marks must be seen in a larger socio-cultural context in which people have also learned to use specific types of objects to mark other objects, acts, or events not immediately given (cf. Stuck 2022: 228–232). For example, as we usually use a certain type of bookmark instead of writing page numbers down, people in the past may have tended to use landmarks to find their way, but nowadays we consult apps instead. Thus, even if marks originate in a merely subjective positing, Schutz adds: “In truth, man finds himself [themselves] from the outset in surroundings already ‘mapped out’ for by Others, i.e., ‘premarked,’ ‘preindicated,’ ‘presignified,’ and even ‘presymbolized’” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 347–348, original emphasized, my new emphasis). This would suggest that marks are included in social and intersubjective contexts and therefore have a certain kind of intersubjective meaning, too.

Whereas marks are posited subjectively and with clear insight into the appresentational relation, indications ground in a “typical and plausible relationship” between objects, facts, and events.

The indicating member of the pair is not only a “witness” for the indicated one, it does not only point to it, but it suggests the assumption that the other member exists, has existed, or will exist. Again, the indicating member is not perceived as a “self,” that is, merely in the apperceptual scheme, but as “wakening” or “calling forth” appresentationally the indicated one. (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 311)

In a phenomenological perspective, indications also have meaning, as they can belong to social contexts and be apperceived conventionally, e.g., as memorials, etc. (cf. Husserl 2001: 184; Melle 1998: 170; Münch 1993). Given this rather short outline of indications, we will return to a deeper discussion of them after we have had a closer look at appresentational signs.

6 The appresentational relations of signs

According to Schutz, the appresentational relations of signs are first of all constituted by the appresentation of the “cogitations of a fellow-man” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 319). This means that objects, facts, or events which co-present another person’s act of consciousness are interpreted as signs. Because we can never have direct access to such acts on the part of somebody else, signs refer to the bodily existence of other humans in a direct or indirect way, as Schutz points out:

In the simplest case, that of a face-to-face relationship, another’s body, events occurring on his body (blushing, smiling), including bodily movements (wincing, beckoning), activities performed by it (talking, walking, manipulating things) are capable of being apprehended by the interpreter as signs. (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 319)

In other cases, i.e., in non-face-to-face relationships, a memory or imagination, as well as a result or product which refers back to the act of its production can, according to Schutz, suffice as an appresenting term of a sign. I can read a letter by my aunt who lives on a different continent, just as I can cook according to my grandmother’s old recipes, even if she has already passed away. Therefore, the comprehension of a sign by an interpreter does not depend on whether the sign was intended to be interpreted as a sign by someone in particular or by anybody at all. The crucial aspect that constitutes a sign is that with something given or appresenting, another person’s acts of consciousness are co-presented. This is why the appresentational relations of signs are primarily used in communication.

Here is not the place to elaborate Schutz’s ideas on communication (cf. Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 321–325), even if we will need to highlight some points later on. For our purpose, it suffices to say that in communicative situations, the interpretational scheme has to “match” both the communicator’s as well as the interpreter’s point of view, and vice versa. Therefore, in Schutz’s words,

[t]o be understood the communicator has, before producing the sign, to anticipate the apperceptual, appresentational, and referential scheme under which the interpreter will subsume it. The communicator has, therefore, as it were, to perform a rehearsal of the expected interpretation and to establish such a context between his cogitations and the communicative sign that the interpreter, guided by the appresentational scheme he will apply to the latter, will find the former an element of the related referential scheme. (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 322)

Of course, the interpretational schemes shared in communication do not have to coincide entirely, but only “substantially.” This implies that the people involved take for granted each other’s will to apply an interpretational order which they reciprocally understand (cf. Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 328). Sociologically speaking, they share the same scheme of interpretation in an approximate way.

Since our task is to elaborate and highlight the significance of orders of appresentational relations, which requires a focus on the constitutional ‘level’ of signs and symbols, we need not dwell on the topic of communication here. Instead, we need to introduce some Husserlian ideas about signs, as we cannot yet distinguish signs and indications on the basis given so far, due to Schutz’s sometimes ambiguous remarks on both. In any case, Schutz’s thinking in general, though he deviates from Husserl, picks up much of the latter’s work. Thus, Schutz states:

By the mere continuous visual perception of the Other’s body and its movements, a system of appresentations, of well ordered indications of his psychological life and his experience is constituted, and here, says Husserl, is the origin of the various forms of the systems of signs, or expressions, and finally of language. (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 314)

In accordance with what we have said about signs before, such “well ordered indications” include the “capability” of being interpreted as signs. But with this in mind we cannot say, for example, if a medal appresents the intent of its owner to show her social rank – this would be a sign in the Schutzian sense – or if the medal is “just” an indication of some social hierarchy. The medal, in this latter case, “just” shows that certain social or military ranks exist. This is what Schutz would call an indication. But Schutz’s differentiation lacks concrete characteristics to single out signs from indications. Their particular understanding depends on the specific knowledge of the interpreter. The kinds of knowledge of interest to us here are “knowledge of acquaintance” and “knowledge about.”^[13] With the help of this distinction, we can gain constitutional-analytical access to signs and indications. We should briefly clarify both kinds of knowledge in order to separate marks and indications from signs by way of phenomenological description.

Since Schutz’s adoption of the two kinds of knowledge introduced by William James (1950 [1890a]: 221–222, 258–260), is sometimes confused, as is their rendering in the Collected Papers and the Alfred-Schütz-Werkausgabe (Stuck 2022: 203–209), we will refer to James directly. To avoid misunderstanding, we will cite the entire, rather long passage from the first volume of the Principles of Psychology. James writes:

There are two kinds of knowledge broadly and practically distinguishable: we may call them respectively knowledge of acquaintance and knowledge-about. Most languages express the distinction; thus, … noscere, scire; kennen, wissen … I am acquainted with many people and things, which I know very little about, except their presence in the places where I have met them. I know the color blue when I see it, and the flavor of a pear when I taste it; …; but about the inner nature of these facts or what makes them what they are, I can say nothing at all … I cannot describe them, make a blind man guess what blue is like, define to a child a syllogism, or tell a philosopher in just what respect distance is just what it is, and differs from other forms of relation. At most, I can say to my friends, Go to certain places and act in certain ways, and these objects will probably come. All the elementary natures of the world, its highest genera, the simple qualities of matter and mind, together with the kinds of relation that subsist between them, must either not be known at all, or known in this dumb way of acquaintance without knowledge-about … Things can at least be classed, and the times of their appearance told. But in general, the less we analyze a thing, and the fewer of its relations we perceive, the less we know about it and the more our familiarity with it is of the acquaintance-type … That is, the same thought of a thing may be called knowledge-about it in comparison with a simpler thought, or acquaintance with it … (James 1950 [1890a]: 221, original emphasis, my new emphasis)

As we can see in this quotation, James applies his ideas about knowledge to things as well as to other persons. But what we need to remember for our subsequent analysis and description of appresentational relations and orders is that we are acquainted with many things about which we have no extensive or substantial knowledge. As we may know, on the one hand, in the manner of acquaintance that fire produces smoke without knowing why this is so, and therefore without knowledge about the chemical, etc., processes involved, we may know, on the other hand, why we get sunburned in terms of knowledge about. However, knowledge about, as every knowledge, must not necessarily be “true” in the sense of a scientific or formal logic statement (Schutz 1976 [1964]: 94–95). It is enough if we believe that our knowledge of something consistently serves the requirements of a certain accented reality. Anticipating later findings, we can say that our insight into the relation that characterizes marks is of the “about” kind. We will come back to the constitutional significance of knowledge later. Before, we need to introduce another phenomenological concept.

In order to describe appresentational signs, we can follow Schutz’s tracks to Husserl’s considerations. Insofar as Schutz remained oriented towards the framework of transcendental philosophy, he adopted Husserl’s notion of “expression,” as we have already seen (cf. also Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 319–320, 328). It takes far too much space to reproduce the Husserlian notions of sign and expression here, but we can say that in his Logical Investigations, Husserl exemplifies meaningful signs as expressions (Husserl 2001: 187). These expressions are characterized by a structure in which meaning persists in the “foreground,” whereas its “physical,” or directly given, side remains in the background:

[I]f we reflect on the relation of expression to meaning, and to this end break up our complex, intimately unified experience of the sense-filled expression, into the two factors of word and sense, the word comes before us as intrinsically indifferent, whereas the sense seems the thing aimed at by the verbal sign and meant by its means: the expression seems to direct interest away from itself towards its sense, and to point to the latter. (Husserl 2001: 190–191)

Unlike in the case of indications, where an appresenting member, just as a physical object, fact, or term directly points to the existence of something else as something “indicated” (angezeigt) without being expressed (ausgedrückt) – “somehow mediated” – by the very meaning (Bermes 1997: 106), we are, in the case of signs, focused on the meaning itself. In other words, phenomenologically speaking – and we will come to this point shortly – the meaning is “thematic.” In the Logical Investigations, Husserl states:

If we seek a foothold in pure description, the concrete phenomenon of the sense-informed expression breaks up, on the one hand, into the physical phenomenon forming the physical side of the expression, and, on the other hand, into the acts which give it meaning and possibly also intuitive fullness, in which its relation to an expressed object is constituted. In virtue of such acts, the expression is more than a merely sounded word. (Husserl 2001: 191–192, original emphasized)

7 The significance of the orders involved in each appresentational situation for the classification of marks, indications, and signs

As mentioned above, appresentational orders play an important role in the formation of appresentational relations. According to Thomas S. Eberle (2011: 36), Schutz tried to elaborate the four different appresentational relations on the basis of Bergson’s concept of orders. But unfortunately, despite some hints here and there in his oeuvre, Schutz gave little explanation of the order’s specific capacities to build up certain appresentations within the lifeworld.

However, from these allusions, we can develop both a theoretical approach that provides a clarification of the structure of sign-like relations, signs, and symbols, as well as a further understanding of their significance for lifeworldly meaning constitution. What is decisive here is not just the coupling of the concrete orders, but the status of each scheme or order within the appresentational relation itself. It is important to note that it will not suffice to focus just on the appresentational terms – and here I go beyond Sonesson – for this would fail to take note of multiple meanings overlaid in symbols for which there is phenomenological evidence. In addition, we must emphasize appresentational orders. This is because only within such orders does the simultaneity of appresented “meanings” in the background of a certain reality accentuation become comprehensible.

Insofar as in each appresentational relation two, or more terms – objects, facts, or events – are co-presented with an appresenting one directly given, the relation of the appresentational and referential scheme(s) is of interest. For it makes a difference whether we are ‘aware’ of both ‘sides’ of an appresentational relation, or if one appresentational scheme is in our focus. As we will see later, the former is the case with marks and indications; the latter is the case with signs. Phenomenologically speaking, the question is what we pay attention to, or, in other words, what is the topic of our consciousness. With reference to Schutz, the question is which scheme of the appresentational relation is thematically relevant.

By “thematical” or “topical relevance”^[14] Schutz means that a “relevant element … becomes a theme for our knowing consciousness, a process which in traditional psychology has usually been treated under the heading of ‘attention’” (1975 [1970a]: 124, my emphasis). Since “there is always a theme within the field of consciousness” (Schutz 2011: 112, original emphasized), thematical or topical relevance means “to segregate it from the background of [the] unquestionable and unquestioned …” (Schutz 2011: 107).

If we transfer this notion to the subject of our inquiry, it sheds light on the constitutional process. As far as indications and marks are concerned, we can thus say that the appresentational scheme and the referential scheme are of equal rank within the appresentational relation. To put it more exactly: In the case of marks, a certain object – the mark – refers to an absent object, fact, or event that I wish to remember. Both the particular appresentational scheme assigned to the appresenting member as well as the referential order assigned to the appresented one are “thematically relevant” – which simply means that they are grasped consciously or attentionally. If I wish to remember the place where my treasure is buried, I may mark it with an X. This X merely points to the treasure and is not seen as the treasure itself. Thus both, the X as well as the absent treasure I have in mind, are terms that I need to grasp along with their respective schemes as part of the relation. In a nutshell: In order to refer to something in the way of a mark, the appresentational as well as the referential scheme are thematic within consciousness. This means that both sides of the appresentational relation are of “equal rank.” Whereas the X mark is comprehended as referring to something in the appresentational scheme, the referential scheme “analogically” comprises the hidden treasure – in analogy to my existing foreknowledge of it. Additionally, and insofar as Schutz’s proposition of a mostly subjective constitution of marks (I have set the meaning of the marks wishing to remind myself) is correct, we can state that marks are characterized by a mostly subjective – even if socially derived – established relation, and thus by “knowledge about” the appresenting as well as the appresented member and their respective schemes.

With a view to the involved appresentational orders, the same applies to indications. Within the indicational process a given – appresenting – term indicates an absent – appresented – one. Thus, an attentional thematization of both the indicating member as well as the indicated, i.e., the appresentational as well as the referential scheme, is needed. As in the case of marks, in the appresentational relation of indication, both the appresenting as well as the appresented term and their schemes need to be experienced as related to each other in order to constitute an appresentational indication. In other words: Both orders, the appresentational and the referential one, give meaning to “their” terms separately; it is not that the referential order gives meaning to the appresentational one as in the case of signs.

In contrast to marks, however, indications are characterized by a covert knowledge, i.e., by knowledge of the acquaintance-type, of the specific relation. With marks I know why the appresentational members are related, as I posited them myself. In the case of indications, I am merely acquainted, in the sense of James and Schutz, with the relation. As far as the constitution of indications is concerned, it is “important that the particular nature of the motivational connection remain opaque” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 311; cf. Husserl 2001: 184). I am “acquainted” with the fact that low-flying swallows indicate coming rain, but have no clue about why swallows fly just above the ground before the rain sets in. In the terms of our analysis, we can say: Low flying swallows appresent future rain. These particular birds with this specific behavior are apprehended in the appresentational scheme as indicating (appresenting) coming (appresented) rain, which latter is comprehended in the referential scheme as still absent but likely to be present some time later. In short: The birds and the rain are coupled. Even if one does not know anything about the nature of their interrelation, both are experienced in the functional community of one perception, as Husserl said, with the characteristic that both, the appresentational as well as the referential order, give meaning to the respective terms and are both thematically or topically relevant, i.e., equal in rank. In this sense, our finding contrasts with Sonesson’s (2012: 22–24) approach of assigning such equality to retention and protention, as well as to what he calls “mere appresentation.” The latter I would rather understand as apprehension in the apperceptual scheme.^[15]

As suggested above, the constitution of appresentational signs is different from that of marks and indications insofar as signs first of all refer exclusively to other egos, or to intersubjective and sociocultural contexts. For Schutz, somewhat ambiguously, sociocultural contexts are on the one hand restricted to the “outer world of everyday life” as the “paramount reality.” This is “because … within this realm, and only within this realm, we can communicate with our fellow-[wo]men and thus establish a ‘common comprehensive environment’”. On the other hand, Schutz argues,

[t]he preceding characteristics of the reality of everyday life do not mean, however, that other finite provinces of meaning are incapable of socialization. To be sure, there are certainly finite provinces of meaning which cannot be intersubjectively shared, such as my dreams or even my daydreams. There are others, such as the play world of children, which permit intersubjective participation and even interaction in terms of the shared fantasms. In the world of religious experiences there is, on the one hand, the lonely vision of the mystic or of the prophet and, on the other hand, the community service – there are lonely prayers and prayers offered by the congregation. (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 342)

We cannot discus all the problems that result from this determination of the world of everyday life. I have done this elsewhere (Stuck 2022: 172–203, 240–296). But we need to keep the following in mind: One still cannot make a clear distinction between signs and indications on this basis. Schutz’s explication of signs as the only appresentational relation referring to social situations is not sufficient when, on the one hand, he ambiguously determines the everyday world as predominantly social and when, on the other hand, he equivocally explicates that the other’s body gives “well ordered indications of his psychological life and his experience” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 314) within any social situation of any kind of multiple reality. Therefore, the question arises again: Can we distinguish appresentational indications and signs further on the level of their schemes?

My suggestion is that in the case of signs, the appresenting term, or rather its scheme, is not attentionally grasped as a member of the appresentational relation, even if it is part of it. In this result, which I only recently discovered in Sonesson’s work, he and I obviously agree – even if I do not agree with his derivation.^[16] The appresentational order in which the appresenting term is comprehended stays, so to say, at the “rim” of the “field of consciousness.” This is a notion for which Aron Gurwitsch (2010) is best known for, but which Schutz understands in relation to the ego rather than to noematic meaning (cf. Waldenfels 1983: 23–25).^[17] Unlike for Gurwitsch, for Schutz, elements in the margin of the field are relevant too, e.g., motivationally relevant (Schutz 2011: 131; cf. Gurwitsch 2010: 331–343). Even if the appresenting and the appresented elements remain in functional community, the directly given term and scheme are intentionally “unfocused.” For example, we mostly experience the letters of words in terms of meaning rather than apprehend particular lines which then refer to something else, etc. Within the phenomenological tradition, this idea goes back to considerations from Husserl’s Logical Investigations (Husserl 2001: 183–205), as we have seen: “[T]he sense seems the thing aimed at by the verbal sign and meant by its means: the expression seems to direct interest away from itself towards its sense, and to point to the latter” (Husserl 2001: 190–191). Moreover, as Schutz (1990 [1962c]: 299–301, 314; cf. Husserl 1978: 369, 373–374) points out vividly, “we may ‘live in’ any of these orders,” that is, we can comprehend the term according to any of the schemes involved. Hence, as Schutz is elaborating on signs as appresenting other egos – with reference to Husserl – he comes to this conclusion:

The physical object “the Other[’]s body,” events occurring on this body, and his bodily movements are apprehended as expressing the Other’s “spiritual I” toward whose motivational meaning-context I am directed. So-called “empathy” in the other person is nothing but that form of appresentational apprehension which grasps this meaning. (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 314, my emphasis)

In short, expressions and meaningful signs in Husserl’s oeuvre are constituted by a relation where an object, bodily movements, etc., are grasped as their meaning – as the letter A, as delight, etc. If we recall Schutz’s proposition that people may choose one of the appresentational schemes as a starting point to approach the world, it becomes clear that for Schutz, both notions, appresentational signs as well as Husserl’s “expressions,” coincide in that there is not just the appresenting term apprehended in the meaning of the appresented elements but that one “lives in the meaning” of the appresented side of the relation (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 314), i.e., on the ground of referential scheme. On the basis of this constitutional analysis we may thus say that in the appresentational relation of signs, the referential scheme is thematic or of “dominant” rank, whereas in indications and marks, both orders are “equally” coupled (Stuck 2022: 240–271).

The spiritual meaning of … [signs] is appresentationally apperceived as being founded upon the actually appearing object which is not apprehended as such but as expressing its meaning. And if we listen to somebody, we do not experience the meaning of what he says as something connected with the words in an external way. We take the words apprehensively as expressing their meaning, and we live in their meaning by comprehending what the Other means and the thought he expresses. (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 314, my emphasis)

Rather than focus on the appresentational terms solely, the importance of centering on the whole situation of the appresentational orders/schemes within the relation is obvious. This is necessary because it highlights the multicomplex interweaving of meaning and systems of meaning in appresentational relations – especially within symbols – and not just the mere co-presentation of one term, “meaningful” or not. Schutz exemplifies this in his notebooks as follows: “Neither the appresenting nor the appresented object is involved (as was previously assumed) [solely in an appresentational situation]. Each [object] stands within a field, carries along its horizon, belongs to an order with its own particular style …” Thus, he goes on, “[c]onsequently, in any appresentative relation, several orders are involved. This is the case whether the appresenting and the appresented object belong to one or several realms [provinces] of meaning” (Schutz and Luckmann 1989: 245, my emphasis).

This applies to the fourth appresentational relation Schutz had established: the symbol. Its constitutional structure is far more complex than that of marks, indications, and signs, for in contrast to the all of them, appresentational symbols do interrelate provinces of meaning. Since we have pointed out the exceptional significance of symbolic pregnancy for cultural and, therefore, lifeworldly meaning, we must now examine appresentational-symbolic constitution thoroughly.

8 The appresentational relation of symbols and the structural formation of the schemes involved

In contrast to appresentational marks, indications, and signs, which are characterized by their appresentational members belonging to the everyday life exclusively, Schutz categorizes symbols in his essay “Symbol, Reality, and Society” as an

appresentational reference of a higher order in which the appresenting member of the pair is an object, fact, or event within the reality of our daily life, whereas the other appresented member of the pair refers to an idea which transcends our experience of everyday life. (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 331)

Since Schutz upholds his principle of the everyday life world’s paramount priority over any other of the multiple realities – a problem we cannot discuss here in detail (but see Stuck 2022: 163–272) – he defines

the symbolic relationship as an appresentational relationship between entities belonging to at least two finite provinces of meaning so that the appresenting symbol is an element of the paramount reality of everyday life. (We say “at least two” because there are many combinations such as religious art, etc., which cannot be investigated within this paper.) (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 343)

Irrespective of the problems stemming from this definition which we must omit here – e.g., what if not a symbol is a scientific examination of religious practices where the analyzed practices as appresenting members are grounded in the scientific world while referring to an element of religion as reality? –^[18] we can describe a symbol as an appresenting reference that involves elements belonging to two or more different realities. Regarding Cassirer’s and Voegelin’s considerations of the relation between individuals, culture, and society, Schutz too highlights the outstanding significance of symbolization for the experience of society through culture.

Social collectivities and institutionalized relations … are as such not entities within the province of meaning of everyday reality but constructs of common-sense thinking which have their reality in another subuniverse [province of meaning] … (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 353)

Therefore, social collectives or institutions are experienced through symbols. Even the “we-relationship,” i.e., the relationship of people mutually directed and related to each other,^[19] “can be appresented only by symbolization” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 353). We cannot discuss here the reality mainly involved in this, i.e., James’s (1950 [1890b]: 292, 668–669) reality of “ideal relations,” which helps people classify the world in general. But we can say, and this will have to do with the symbolization or symbolic pregnance (Cassirer) involved in such social relations, that their constitution is far more complex than the aforementioned definition implied. Since Schutz did not explicate the structure of appresentational symbols on the constitutional level any further in his “Symbol, Reality, and Society,” we need to have a closer look at his “Reflections on the Problem of Relevance.” In this treatise, he focused on appresentation only indirectly but elaborated on the significance of systems of relevance for the very constitution of symbols. Therefore, only after an analysis of Schutz’s thoughts about relevance and symbols, and only after combining both concepts, can we achieve a deeper understanding of how symbols are constituted appresentationally.

Talking about the task of his discourse in “Reflections on the Problem of Relevance,” Schutz asks about the change of meaning in the schemes involved which happens when appresenting elements are coupled with appresented ones. In other words: What happens when two realities are related appresentationally? Neither is this just a direct combination in the sense of meanings within a currently accented reality brought together, nor is there a change in the fundamental reality in the sense of leaving the current world of meaning. For example, we do not necessarily leap from the world of science into the world of religion when we describe a crucifix scientifically.

We must keep in mind Schutz’s point that “it is the meaning of our experiences and not the ontological structure of the objects which constitutes reality.” The particular finite province of meaning, or set of provincial experiences, upon which “we may bestow the accent of reality” makes us “consider this province of meaning as real” (Schutz 1990 [1962b]: 230–231). Since symbols are a coupling of elements from two or more different provinces/realities, the question is: How is the accentuation of an element from a reality that is currently not accented with regard to the currently accented one? Approaching this question, Schutz writes:

A symbol … is … an enclave in the actual level of reality resulting from the annihilation of a topically relevant theme of experiences originating on another level of reality. (Schutz 2011: 154, original emphasized, my new emphasis)

With the somewhat vague notion of an “enclave,” Schutz faces the problem of what happens with the whole system of relevance when two appresentational terms that, in terms of their positional character, “oppose” each other, become related. Two Schutzian concepts of “relevance” will bring more light into the problem.

First, there is “interpretational relevance,” which is the scope of elements of foreknowledge that were formerly thematically relevant and are now used to solve a current problem (Schutz 1975 [1970a]: 126–127). The second concept is that of “motivational relevance,” i.e., the interest determining which subjective and worldly elements are necessary in order to “come to terms” with the actual situation (Schutz 1975 [1970a]: 122–123). Whereas in the case of symbols, the topical or thematic relevance ‘enters’ from an opposing reality into the currently accented one, interpretational as well as motivational relevance still belong to this accented reality. In general, symbols, therefore, result “from the dropping of a topic on one level of reality and reinterpreting the vacancy created by this annihilation by means of systems of relevances belonging to other levels of reality” (Schutz 2011: 154, original emphasized, my new emphasis).

The symbolic topic “initially” grounded in a reality other than the currently accented one, thus, undergoes a change in quality: It is interpreted from the perspective of a stock of knowledge belonging to the reality which is now valid. Referring to Eric Voegelin, we may put it this way: “The symbols exist in the world, but their truth belongs to the nonexistent experience which by their means articulates itself” (Voegelin 1967: 235–236). If we wake up from a dream of riding a dragon, whose existence we may not question while dreaming (cf. Husserl 1973: 298–302), the theme or topical relevance of riding a dragon, formerly comprehended under the interpretationally relevant knowledge and the motivational interest of the dream-world, exchange their qualitive determination of reality for that of the awake world of everyday life. In Husserl’s (1973: 298–299) words, this means that the theme gains a different “predication of actuality”: it changes from dream to waking daily life. The dragon then becomes “fictional.” In other words, the theme dragon from the dream remains topical within the everyday life world and is now interpreted from the everyday point of view, as, e.g., fictional. The ride is now considered under the conditions motivated by everyday terms. Thus, from the standpoint of everyday life, the dragon ride is an occurrence of a dream with minor significance to daily life where, as I know, no dragons appear at all, whereas before, within the reality of the dream, riding the dragon may have occupied my whole mind and time.

Focusing on the appresentational orders involved, this implies an alteration of their qualitative organization. Since within symbolic appresentation, the appresented term is “initially” grounded in an opposing world, we may first focus on the referential scheme belonging to the appresented term to explicate the topical transition Schutz metaphorically labeled “annihilation.” Insofar as a new thematical relevance, i.e., the appresented term’s order (dreamed dragon), “strikes out” the actual theme, i.e., the appresenting member (remembered dream), and gives meaning to the latter, we can say that the referential scheme is, just as in the case of signs, dominant within the relation. In the symbolic understanding of a crucifix, the Latin Cross may, for instance, be interpreted as a symbol for the suffering of Jesus, for the Christian church, for death, etc. Thus, within the interpretational scheme, i.e., in the particular coupling, the referential scheme constitutes the theme and, as an order, constitutes the topical field (cf. Gurwitsch 2010: 49–54) around the theme. In contrast, the appresentational scheme, i.e., the order of the appresenting member “referring to something other than itself” (Schutz 1990 [1962c]: 299), is relegated to the attentional background. In our last example: The meaning of Christ’s suffering is situated within the referential scheme’s field-like center of attention, whereas the Latin Cross itself and its appresentational scheme remain at the margin of the field of consciousness. In my view, this is how the “annihilation” of a topic needs to be understood.

However, insofar as the meaning of a symbolic appresentation is determined not only by the relation between the appresentational terms and the schemes involved, but by the predominant system of relevance, we must specify this account further. Though the theme “arises” from the referential scheme of the symbol, its interpretation, i.e., the interpretational scheme brought to bear on it, also includes the appresenting term that originates in the currently accented reality. Thus, the annihilating topic is also brought into the light of the cognitive style currently accented. Since the respective relevancies constitute a system of relevance, neither interpretational relevance nor thematic relevance are independent of each other (cf. Schutz 2011: 131–133). Since, in addition, the interpretational relevancies consist of formerly thematically relevant material (Schutz 2011: 117), the interpretation of the symbol remains determined by the appresenting term’s order, including its correlated interpretational and motivational relevancies – even if the referential scheme is dominant (Stuck 2022: 276). Therefore, in the case of appresentational symbolization, the arrangement of the schemes is not simply the same as it is with signs, but it compromises (1) a focus on the appresented term along with its referential scheme, both contrasting with the current cognitive style, and (2) a positing of the thematic elements, terms and orders, on the basis of the current reality’s style.

Even if Sonesson, as we do, tends to understand Schutzian indications, signs and marks as meaningful and, as it seems, sometimes assigns a “double asymmetry” (Sonesson 2012: 226) to each of them, our constitutional analysis contrast with his, even if we agree with him on an understanding of appresentational signs as asymmetrical. Firstly, our results show that indications and marks are rather determined by equally – symmetrically – ranked appresentational members and schemes. Secondly, our analysis has revealed a far more complex structure of symbols. This structure is specified by a thematically focused appresented term’s order, which is at the same time determined by the positional character of the actual motivational and interpretational relevancies belonging to the sphere of the appresenting elements. Thus, our concept of symbols, developed from a phenomenological and philosophy of culture point of view, differs from Sonesson’s concept of signs, even if he (2010: 180) tends to equate the two.

Therefore, we should stress that in the case of appresentational symbols, their constitution is far more complex than can be described in terms of “representation” (Stuck 2022: 284–296). In representation, something stands for something else. In contrast, the appresentational relation of symbols involves the phenomenal co-presentation of a topic not directly perceivable and belonging to an opposed province of meaning, whose referential scheme transforms the directly given object. This happens because the appresented theme largely converts the formerly topical appresentational scheme and displaces its appresenting member to the attentional rim of consciousness. To be in the core of the field of consciousness means to be brought under the prevailing sense of the current cognitive style, i.e., its interpretational and motivational relevancies. Whereas the terms of sign-like appresentations (marks, indications) and appresentational signs only belong to a single reality, the meaning constitution of appresentational symbols involves, so to say, a balance between elements inherent in the currently accented reality and elements transcending it, and an interweaving of all of these elements on the ground of the currently accented reality.

9 Conclusions

The present phenomenological analysis has neglected, one might object, the many lifeworldly circumstances under which signs and symbols, etc., occur in multicomplex situations that, instead of being readily classifiable as groups of appresentational relations, open up new horizons of interpretation instead. These horizons leave open, for example, if a sign can be interpreted as a symbol, or a symbol as a sign, if an object, fact, or event may be apprehended as an indication and symbol at the same time, etc. Of course, the comprehension of signs, symbols, and sign-like appresentations always depends on the singular socio-biographical situation of the interpreter.

From the standpoint of the treatment presented here, we can address this objection with the following concluding statement. The detailed analyses of sign-like relations, signs, and symbols regarding the dimension of the appresentational orders involved which I proposed here may help understand theoretically as well es empirically if and how certain appresentational relations are “stacked up” both individually and socially. An example of this is the fact that symbols can be communicated by signs. Furthermore, an understanding of the appresentational character as well as the multifactored nature of symbols may give us access to a description of various interrelations between different cognitive styles and meanings against the background of a plurality of socio-cultural horizons.

This brings us back to Sonesson’s question: “How to build a lifeworld?” If we take seriously Cassirer’s proposal that symbolization is the medium through which human beings have a world, we can, with knowledge of Schutz’s appresentational theory, say that the world, or better: the lifeworld, is not only built up of different “symbolic forms” like myth, religion, language, etc., but that it is multifariously interwoven with diverse meanings from various subworlds, or worlds of meaning compressed in symbols and communicated through signs. The lifeworld, hence, is not just the sum of “regional” meanings. Rather, it is a network of interrelations built up appresentationally. As we have seen above, it is not the mere symbolization of meanings, i.e., the coupling of appresentational terms, that gives us the world we live in, but it is this network, i.e., the specific relations, of the appresentational orders involved which builds up the rich meaningful structure of the lifeworld. Therefore, we can say, appresentational relations in general and the specific relations of appresentational orders, both those orders as such and their hierarchy among each other, make the world “symbolically pregnant” and, thus, build up a human lifeworld.

For example (for the following, cf. Stuck 2022: 213–228, 274–284, 364–379), the appresentational coupling of wine and bread with Christ’s blood and body during the consecration in a Roman Catholic service illustrates how the referential order of the appresenting term eclipses the appresentational scheme. Although wine and bread keep their form as part of the outer world, Jesus Christ is supposed to be really present in them (cf. Apfalter 2024: 173). As was said, in such a process of trans substantiation, the referential order dominates the appresentational one. Insofar as this happens exclusively within the single realm of a cognitive style and/or subworld, in this case that of religion, and insofar as each appresentational term belongs to one single world, this relation is an appresentational sign in the Schutzian sense, which Sonesson characterized by the double asymmetry of signs.

In contrast, the consubstantiation of a Lutheran service, couples the appresenting and the appresented members – the wine with Christ’s blood, and the bread with his body – on an equal footing. Even if the body and blood of Christ are present here as well, the bread and wine continue to exist in their materiality and essence (cf. Wenz 1997: 645–711). In the light of our proposal to explain lifeworldly meaning constitution by means of appresentational orders, this kind of coupling is an indication of the presence of Christ rather than a sign of it. On the one hand, the co-presentation occurs within a single reality, i.e., religion; on the other hand, the respective appresentational orders are equally related, each giving meaning to its particular term: the wine and bread are considered to be there substantially with Christ’s body and blood. Here Christ’s body and blood is not present in wine and bread as in a Roman Catholic service. Instead, all are four are present at the same time.

This is different from the case of a dinner, for instance, where I think of Christ’s body while eating bread. Even though the former, appresented term belonging to the currently non-actual reality of religion becomes thematic within my field of consciousness, the topic as a whole is apprehended in the perspective of the actually accented world of my secular, everyday life. It is therefore determined by the current interpretational and motivational relevancies as, e.g., fictional. According to Schutz, this would be a symbol. Thus, the meaning of signs, symbols, etc., always depends on the socialized meaning structure of the lifeworld.^[20] This means, for example, that in a non-secular culture, everyday life could be determined by religious customs in such a way that people would experience the presence of Christ through signs and indications in their daily course of affairs in a non-fictional, “real” manner, i.e., with the motivational, interpretational, and thematic relevancies of the currently accented reality.^[21]

In a nutshell: Our socio-cultural world is never simply based on some ontological determination or structure, but it is always an outcome of (pre)signification and (pre)symbolization, as well as of (pre)marking and (pre)indication, and, thus, of a process of “building,” or meaning constitution. With the help of Schutz’s theory of appresentational orders, the philosophically fundamental concept of “symbolic pregnancy,” fundamental to an understanding of the built meaning structure of the socio-cultural world, can be described in more detail. Whereas the significance of symbolization was highlighted by Cassirer, the process of building that goes beyond one single cognitive style or symbolic form becomes explicable only with Schutz. In this light, the lifeworld, and the plurality of cultural worlds, is seen to be built up by appresentational orders, insofar as it presupposes not only meanings represented by symbols, etc., but certain structural couplings between meanings from different realms that give meaning to the lifeworld as a whole. Cultural objects, facts, or events, therefore, may show differences not just on the level of concrete meaning, but in the very structure of how this meaning is built up, “brought together,” or appresented.