Abstract

We often expect Husserl’s concept of intentionality to be the key to opening our minds to the world. The phenomenological sphere of consciousness is not a closed encapsulated sphere, but open to the world. The phenomenological method, however, forbids appealing to naïve realism exclusively as it concentrates on immanently accessible conscious experiences. How can these two features be compatible with one another? This paper examines this question while seeking to justify Husserl’s claim that an intentional object is the real and actual object itself, and transcendent in the sense that it is beyond our grasp of meanings.