Husserl Studies

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-018-9235-6

Unifying Agency. Reconsidering Hans Reiner’s

Phenomenology of Activity

Christopher Erhard1 

© Springer Nature B.V. 2018

Abstract
In this paper I argue that the almost forgotten early dissertation of the phenomenolo-
gist Hans Reiner (1896–1991) Freiheit, Wollen und Aktivität. Phänomenologische
Untersuchungen in Richtung auf das Problem der Willensfreiheit (1927) engages
with what I call the unity problem of activity. This problem concerns the question
whether there is a structure in virtue of which all instances of (at least pre-reflec-
tively conscious) human activity—and not only “full-blown”  intentional actions—
can be unified. After a brief systematic elucidation of this problem, which is closely
related to the contemporary “problem of action,” I elaborate and critically discuss
two relevant threads running through Reiner’s work. The first view concerns the
alleged motivational asymmetry between activity and passivity according to which
it is essential only for active experiences to be motivated by an underlying passiv-
ity. The second view focuses on Reiner’s phenomenology of the will, especially on
his notions of “ego-centrality” (Ich-Zentralität) and “inner will” (inneres Wollen)
the latter being introduced in analogy to Brentano’s notion of “inner conscious-
ness.” These two notions are supposed to unify all manifestations of the human will,
including “full-blown” intentional actions (Handlungen) and non-intentional doings
such as laughter. Reiner’s extension of will-based actions to non-intentional activity
is one of the most remarkable aspects of his early work. Finally, I show that Reiner
ultimately answers the unity problem in the negative because he ends up with the
view that besides will-based agency (comprising both intentional and non-inten-
tional actions) he also acknowledges so-called “motor activity” (Bewegungsaktivität)
which is not intrinsically related to the will. I close with a couple of tentative pro-
posals how volitional and motor actions might be unified nonetheless.

At the time of submission Christopher Erhard was Visiting Scholar at the Center for Subjectivity
Research, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Karen
Blixens Plads 8, DK-2300, Copenhagen S, Denmark.

* Christopher Erhard
christopher.erhard@lrz.uni‑muenchen.de
1
Fakultät für Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie und Religionswissenschaft, Ludwig-
Maximilians-Universität München, Geschwister‑Scholl‑Platz 1, 80539 Munich, Germany

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1 Introduction

One of the most intriguing things about human agency is its remarkable diversity:
As I am writing this paper (by thoughtfully typing words on a keyboard), there are
various ways in which I can be said to be active: I am—attentively following the
words on the screen with my eyes and head, looking for illustrative (counter-)exam-
ples and reflecting on conceptual implications, at times deciding (not) to follow a
certain train of thoughts, slightly wiggling the toes of my right foot, adjusting the
position my buttocks from time to time, occasionally frowning in light of a problem-
atic view or an inappropriate choice of words, (more or less) regularly swallowing,
blinking, moistening my lips with my tongue, and finally—humming, as it were,
in the background of all this—I am also breathing by rhythmically inhaling and
exhaling.
Prima facie, all these things are acts, actions, activities, doings, or performances
in a broad but still meaningful sense of the terms,1 i.e. things I am doing in con-
trast to things being done to or with me—like, for instance, a sudden headache or
a tremor. Obviously, since not all these doings are intentional (purposive) actions
in the sense of either proximally or distally planned performances (Davidson 1963,
1971; Bratman 1984), the existence of causally or rationally operative propositional
beliefs, desires, or intentions cannot account for their very activity status. For exam-
ple, the occasional activity of moistening my lips during writing does not seem to be
explainable in terms of a certain triad of propositionally structured beliefs, desires,
and intentions. But it still seems to be a genuine activity of mine, something I do,
and not a process I am merely undergoing. So, given that all the things mentioned
in my opening vignette seem to be genuine activities, it is tempting to raise the Pla-
tonic–Socratic question concerning the one in the many: Is there an invariant feature
or structure in virtue of which all these episodes are active in nature?2 This question
amounts to what I shall call the unity problem of activity (= UPA).3
In this paper, I will address this problem both from a systematic and from a his-
torico-phenomenological perspective by referring to the neglected early work of
Hans Reiner (1896–1991), especially to his dissertation Freedom, Willing and Activ-
ity. Phenomenological Investigations Towards the Problem of Free Will4 (1927)
which was written under Husserl’s supervision (cf. HuaDok III/4, pp. 464–6). One
reason for focusing on Reiner is that he analyzes a great variety of ways of being

1
  In this paper, I will not scrutinize the categorial status of actions, i.e. the question whether actions are
best conceived in terms of events, processes, states of affairs, relations, or as a category sui generis. I
will therefore speak rather loosely and interchangeably of “actions,” “agency,” “acts,” “performances,”
“activities,” and “doings.” However, in Sect. 2, I will to some extent restrict my use of these terms.
2
 For a very similar way of raising this question, see Buytendijk (1956, p. 1). Buytendijk wonders
whether there is a “unified [einheitlicher] methodological point of view” from which this “manifold of
appearances” can be captured.
3
  The opening vignette also gives rise to an utterly different “problem of unity,” i.e. the question how the
various activities in question constitute one (and only one) overall and predominant activity, namely that
of writing a paper. In what follows, I shall not elaborate this problem.
4
  I refer to Reiner (1927) by mentioning the page and/or section number(s) (§§) in brackets. All transla-
tions into English are mine. For a concise summary of his dissertation, see Reiner (1931).

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active, thereby also addressing the unity problem—an approach I take to be highly
fruitful and to some extent neglected in recent discussions, which generally con-
centrate on the notion of “full-blown”  intentional action and not on the notion of
activity simpliciter. Although Reiner elaborates numerous topics, with the ultimate
aim of solving the problem of free will, I will concentrate on UPA, or, as he puts
it, on the “character of activity” (Aktivitätscharakter) (120–1) which is supposed to
be present in various forms of activity as their “common moment” (gemeinsames
Moment). (16).
Given this focus on UPA, the paper is organized as follows: Beginning with sys-
tematic reflections (Sect. 2), I argue that UPA is philosophically relevant not least
because it is closely related to the so-called “problem of action” in contemporary
action theory. I then propose one way of understanding the logical form of UPA.
Against the background of this general exposition, for the rest of the paper I concen-
trate on the role of UPA within the context of Reiner’s 1927 book. In Sect. 3, I shall
argue that Reiner’s early work contains at least two interesting views that might ini-
tially seem good candidates for a unified account of agency—the first view focusing
on the asymmetrical motivational relation between activity and passivity, the second
one elaborating on the intimate connection between an extended notion of human
will and agency. However, I will argue in Sect.  4 that only the first of these two
views might have a chance of unifying the notion of activity. This is because besides
will-related agency Reiner explicitly acknowledges another species of human agency
that appears to be categorically different, namely so-called “motor” (Bewegungsak-
tivität), “instinctive” or “vital” activity, thereby upholding a certain activity dualism.
In this sense, Reiner ultimately answers UPA in the negative. Nevertheless, I will
suggest tentative ideas how Reiner’s dualism might be overcome in favor of a more
monistic account. Finally, the discussion is summarized in Sect. 5.

2 Understanding the Unity Problem of Activity

2.1 Two Systematic Considerations

The unity problem of activity is closely related to what is nowadays known as the
problem of action, namely insofar as the latter is based on the former. According to
Frankfurt (1978, p. 157), the “problem of action is to explicate the contrast between
what an agent does and what merely happens to him.” Similarly, Davidson (1971, p.
3) writes: “What events in the life of a person reveal agency; what are his deeds and
his doings in contrast to mere happenings in his history; what is the mark that distin-
guishes his actions?” In a similar spirit, again, Hanna and Maiese (2009, p. 100) say
that “the problem of action is how to give an adequate account of the categorical dif-
ference between the things we intentionally do, or intentional actions, and the things
that just happen to us, or mere bodily events.”
Despite variations, what these formulations have in common is the view that the
“problem of action” consists in understanding the contrast (in kind) between, most
broadly, the activity and the passivity of a (human) animal. Obviously, assuming that
there is an informative solution to this problem rests on the belief in an underlying

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unity of the notion of action in virtue of which the relevant contrast obtains. Thus,
there is a sense in which the contrast question presupposes a positive answer to the
unity question: You cannot ask for a contrast (in kind) between A’s (or A-ings) and
B’s (or B-ings) without assuming that all A’s (or A-ings) and all B’s (or B-ings)
share a certain common and invariant feature.5 However, the detour contained in
the contrast question is by no means necessary since one can straightforwardly ask:
What is the nature of being active? In this spirit, for instance, Sartre writes: “It
is strange that philosophers have been able to argue endlessly about determinism
and free-will […] without ever attempting first to make explicit the structures con-
tained in the very idea of action.” (Sartre 1956, p. 433). Sartre’s attempt of making
the “structures contained in the very idea of action” explicit is just another way of
expressing UPA. Thus, the very way the contemporary “problem of action” is usu-
ally set up presupposes a positive answer to UPA.
However, it is important to note that most discussions of the problem of action
have not addressed it in its most general form. Usually, the focus has been on “full-
blown” intentional-cum-rational action, as a result of which the more general con-
trast between activity and passivity has somehow shrunk into the contrast between
rational and intentional agency on the one hand and “mere happenings” on the
other. As a matter of fact, there are good reasons for making this move. As David-
son points out, inquiring about the essence of being active “seems to go out of
focus when we start putting pressure on such phrases as ‘what he did,’ ‘his actions,’
‘what happened to him,’ and it often matters to the appropriateness of the answer
what form we give the question. (Waking up is something I did, perhaps, but not an
action.) We should maintain a lively sense of the possibility that the question with
which we began is […] a misguided one” (1971, p. 4).6 In this regard, one might
also think of the Wittgensteinian idea that there is no need to search for a common
unity underlying the various agentive language games we are playing, only because
we are using the same words every time. According to Wittgenstein, the existence of
“family resemblances” is enough to secure the unity of a concept (cf. Wittgenstein
2001, § 66). Taken at its extreme, one could straightforwardly bite the bullet and
accept that “activity” is an equivocal protean term that does not rest on a “deeper”
underlying nature.
There is certainly something true about these skeptical remarks, given the rather
loose sense of agentive vocabulary in ordinary language. However, we should not
get too confused about the way we ordinarily talk about agency, but rather try to
figure out whether the Sachen selbst (and their manifestation in experience) might

5
 One might object that this is not necessary. For instance, assuming a contrast between conscious
beings and non-conscious beings one need not presuppose an essential unity of all non-conscious beings.
However, the contrast between activity and passivity is of a different kind than the contrast between
activity and non-activity. To be more precise, the implication in question (contrast requires unity) should
be restricted to contrary or polar contrasts (to use Aristotle’s terms) since it does not seem generally
valid for contradictory oppositions (being A versus not-being A).
6
  I mention in passing that—contra Davidson—Hanna and Maiese (2009, p. 64) claim that waking up is
“a form of spontaneous or pre-reflective intentional action.” Uncertainties such as these demonstrate the
need to go back to the more fundamental contrast between activity and passivity.

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significantly restrict the meaningful application of agentive vocabulary.7 Besides, if

one takes the Davidsonian path and restricts one’s focus to intentional actions, one
runs into danger of portraying human agency in inadequately dichotomous ways—as
if only our intentional actions were genuinely active, all other things “merely hap-
pening” to us. Just think of the various shades of agency realized in absentmindedly
making one’s way through a street full of puddles, idly wiggling your toes, scratch-
ing and stretching, laughing and crying, smiling and frowning, all of which seem to
involve some sort of activity on the subject’s side. At least, they clearly do not seem
to be mere accidental happenings like hiccups, convulsions, or headaches.
In light of this twofold role of UPA for the contemporary “problem of action”
on the one hand and for the need for a more nuanced picture of human agency on
the other hand, it seems fair to conclude that addressing the unity problem matters
philosophically.

2.2 The Logical Form of UPA

Before exploring UPA in the context of Reiner’s work, it is helpful to make its logi-
cal form more explicit. Obviously, UPA can be spelled out in various ways, depend-
ing on how the notions of “activity” and “unity” are understood.
To begin with the notion of “activity” and in accordance with Reiner, I restrict
my use of this term to those performances that can be genuinely and irreducibly
ascribed to an embodied subject of experiences (cf. § 5). That is, there is always
a “genitive” of the actions in question, which in turn stand in a “accusative” posi-
tion relative to the subject “as a whole,” so to speak: “I do something” or “I move
myself” therefore captures adequately the logical structure of (self-) ascriptions of
actions. This is not a trivial point, given the extent to which contemporary action
theory has often referred to actions in terms of anonymous (bodily) events that
are caused by mental “states,” thereby tending to neglect the fact that actions must
essentially be owned and accomplished by an agent. In doing so, I will also restrict
the scope of UPA to activities performed by a subject with mental capacities which
in turn manifest themselves in its “experiences” (Erlebnisse) (cf. § 10).8
In order to get a grip on the notion of “unity,” I propose to raise two questions:
First, is the unity in question to be understood in terms of necessary and/or suf-
ficient conditions, or rather in terms of a grounding relation such as “in virtue of”
or “because” (cf. Correia and Schnieder 2012)? Secondly, does the relevant sense
of unity formally amount to a for all-there is or to a there is-for all quantificational
structure of UPA, i.e. must there be one unifying feature all activities share, or is it

7
  This does not mean that a conceptual analysis along the lines of a Wittgensteinian investigation of the
“grammar” of agentive vocabulary is rendered superfluous. However, linguistic analysis cannot be the
whole story and must be supplemented by phenomenological considerations.
8
  In other words: in accordance with Reiner, I concentrate on phenomenally manifest or (subjectively)
experiential activities of an embodied subject endowed with mental capacities. Note that pre-reflective
awareness is enough for a subjective activity to count as “phenomenally manifest” or “experience.” I thus
neglect the possibility of utterly non-experiential activities, examples of which might include sleepwalk-
ing or movements performed under hypnosis.

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enough that every activity has one feature in virtue of which it is active in nature?
Without going through all (eight) possibilities, I will opt for the following formula-
tion of UPA, which seems to me both straightforward and faithful to our pre-theoret-
ical understanding of a unity or essence of activity:
(Unity Problem of Activity)
Is there a feature or structure P in virtue of which an experiential activity x of a
human subject S is active in nature?
Put in this way, the unity in question refers to one or more grounding properties in
virtue of which any concrete instance of an action of a subject is active in nature.
Accordingly, the unity of activity is supposed to make or render x active in a con-
stitutive sense. This is more than saying that the sought-after property P is a neces-
sary and/or sufficient condition for being active since there are cases where being F
and being G are both necessary and sufficient for each other, although none or only
one of them grounds the other.9 Saying that being P grounds the activity of a subject
also tells us why the entity in question is what it is. Furthermore, I shall assume that
UPA has a ∃∀-structure, which is stronger than a ∀∃-structure.10 This is because a
mere ∀∃-structure cannot adequately express the idea of a unifying property char-
acterizing all instances of actions of a subject. A ∀∃-structure is compatible with
the view that although each particular instance has a feature in virtue of which it is
active, there is no overarching property all activities uniformly have in common.11
This is surely too weak to account for a veritable unity or essence of activity.
Given this formulation of UPA, basically two sorts of answers are philosophically
relevant: there might be either one or more unifying properties (positive answer), or
there might be no such property (negative answer).12
Against the background of these clarifications, I shall now focus on the way
Reiner addresses UPA in his early work. I will argue that Reiner finally answers
the unity question in the negative, since he claims that there are two fundamentally
different sorts of activity that cannot be conceived as species of a unifying genus
(will-based activity vs. non-volitional/instinctive/vital/motor activity) because  they
are “resting on completely different foundations” [auf gänzlich anderen Grundla-
gen beruhend] (157). However, what makes Reiner’s approach to UPA interesting is
not so much this negative endpoint (which in itself amounts to an important philo-
sophical thesis), but rather the way he arrives at his “dualistic” position. One crucial

9
  The standard example goes back to Aristotle (see Metaphysics 1051b6-8): “That ‘p’ is true” is both
necessary and sufficient for “The state of affairs p obtains,” but only the latter grounds the former (cf.
Correia and Schnieder 2012, pp. 26–27). Although I cannot argue for this interpretation here, I assume
that the phenomenologist’s idea of “eidetic reduction” also aims at uncovering features in virtue of which
an entity is what it is. An entity’s essence therefore involves more than its necessary and/or sufficient
conditions.
10
  Compare: If there is a property P all mammals share, then it holds true for each mammal that it is P.
11
  Compare: From the fact that all mammals have a weight it does not follow that there is a weight all
mammals have in common.
12
  A third view is that there might well be one or several such properties but that we cannot discover
them. I will leave this agnostic proposal aside.

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take-away message of his investigations is that the notion of volitional activity can
legitimately be extended to non-intentional actions. In this way, Reiner challenges
the still predominant view that non-intentional movements are nothing but “mere
happenings.”

3 Reiner and the Unity Problem

Before discussing the status of UPA in Reiner’s early work, I want to suggest that
the very way Reiner addresses this problem was influenced by Husserl. Here is a
relevant passage from Ideas II, whose general views Reiner was probably familiar
with:
Prior to the will with its active thesis of the “fiat!” lies the action as instinc-
tive action, e.g. the [non-]voluntary  “I move,” the [non-]voluntary “I reach”
for my cigar; I desire it and do it “without any further ado,” something which,
to be sure, is not easily distinguished from a case of voluntary willing in the
narrower sense. (Hua IV, p. 258/(1989), p. 270, translation modified; see also
Hua XXVIII, p. 112; Husserl 1973, § 19)
In this quote, Husserl’s draws a distinction between two forms of doing (Tun). The
first one involves a “fiat!,” a sort of internal command, initiating impulse, or deci-
sion, all of which typically (though by no means necessarily) occur before the action
is performed.13 By contrast, “instinctive action” takes place without previous think-
ing about the action to be performed—“without further ado.” As an example of the
first type, think of raising your arm at a conference in order to ask a question. Typi-
cally, you have thought about what to ask before you raise your hand. With respect
to the second kind, take the case of spontaneously scratching your head because
you feel a slight itch. Both Husserl and Reiner would characterize this scratching as
occurring “seamlessly” (bruchlos) (130–4, 148), i.e., without a distinctive starting
point initiated by a “fiat!.” It can be done thoughtlessly and even without attend-
ing to the itching—imagine scratching yourself while being absorbed in watching
a movie. Reiner also frequently uses the phrase “without further ado” (ohne wei-
teres) in order to describe such non-reflective forms of agency (6, 15, 99), which
he, again like Husserl, calls “vital” or “instinctive” (triebhaft, triebmäßig) (58f., 68,
99f., 132).
However, once we start reflecting on these two ways of being active, UPA natu-
rally arises: In virtue of what are “instinctive doings” and “voluntary actions” activi-
ties, however different they may be in other respects? If the fiat is not essential for
human agency, what else might be constitutive for it? This is the question which will
guide my re-reading of Reiner’s early work. How does Reiner tackle it?
Working from the standpoint of a Husserlian “phenomenological psychology”
and applying a methodological toolkit consisting of “eidetic reduction,” intentional

13
  The “fiat!” goes back to chapter XXVI of William James’s famous Principles of Psychology. It was
widely discussed among the (early) phenomenologists.

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description, and mereological analysis,14 Reiner begins his book by focusing on

rather high-level intentional activity in terms of what he calls “self-determination of
one’s own future life” (Selbstbestimmung des eigenen kommenden Lebens) (20) or
“full-fledged activity” (volle Aktivität) (156). According to this notion of agency, the
subject is more or less explicitly and reflectively aware of a future action to be per-
formed by herself. Reiner thus starts with actions initiated by a fiat! and a distinctive
“onset” (Einsetzen) (80) whose structure he spells out in great detail. However, from
the very beginning, Reiner is fully aware of the fact that this notion of activity is by
no means exhaustive. As examples of activities not based on a fiat! he cites unre-
flectively changing one’s uncomfortable position in bed (cf. § 2), walking absent-
mindedly and out of habit in a certain direction while being absorbed in thought (cf.
§§ 21, 26), emotional activities such a laughter and crying (ibid.), but also bodily
movements as basic as breathing (ibid.).
Thus, what makes Reiner’s early work especially interesting is that he begins with
complex and premeditated forms of intentional actions (Handlungen, cf. §§ 18–19,
25–26), and then gradually moves downwards, so to speak, to various forms of sim-
pler and pre-reflective variations. In doing so, he not only discovers all sorts of “par-
tial acts” (Teilakte) involved in intentional actions (e.g. decisions), but also simple
(non-composed) forms of non-intentional agency, so-called “given activity” (gege-
bene Aktivität) (132, 156) whose activity status does not derive from the mereo-
logical arrangement of “partial acts.” It is quite natural that UPA arises within the
framework of such a top down approach (cf. §§ 25–26): In virtue of what (if any-
thing) are both the more complex and the simpler forms of action active in nature?
In what follows, I will critically reconstruct and comment on the way Reiner
arrives at his negative answer to UPA. I shall do this somewhat indirectly by focus-
ing on two threads that might initially point to a unitary account of activity.

3.1 A First Thread: The Motivational Asymmetry Between Activity and Passivity

A first idea refers to an “eidetic law” (Wesensgesetz) (62, 114) according to which
activity essentially is one-sidedly dependent upon passivity: “there is no activity
without a conditional and concretely enabling passivity” (157). In what follows, I
will refer to this “law” as the Activity Requires Passivity Principle (in short: ARP).15
Reiner frequently refers to ARP and applies it to all sorts of active episodes
(24–26, 62–64, 89, 114, 157, 166). Reiner offers several formulations of ARP:

• “[N]o activity is possible without a motivating passivity.” (114)

• “[N]o activity can occur without an antecedent and motivating passivity.” (62)
• “Therefore, every activity necessarily presupposes a motivating passivity.” (25)
• “[E]very active act must be motivated by a passive one.” (26)

14
  Husserl’s famous distinction between independent parts (or “pieces,” Stücke) and dependent parts (or
“moments,” Momente) is also operative in Reiner’s analyses of the structure of voluntary actions.
15
  For similar principles in Husserl, see Hua IV, p. 213/(1989), p. 225, Hua IX, pp. 208–212, and Hua
XXXI, p. 4.

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What is striking about these formulations is that, first of all, Reiner takes the under-
lying truth to be more than an empirical generalization of factual cases. Au con-
traire, he claims that all actual and possible human activities necessarily depend on
passivity. This is why he takes ARP to be an “eidetic law” in the Husserlian sense
of a synthetically (materially) a priori truth. Secondly, the one-sided dependency
in question is more than a mere existential (“no activity without passivity”) and/or
temporal co-occurrence (“no activity without previous or simultaneous passivity”)
because Reiner claims that there must be an internal link between the two experi-
ences in virtue of their intentional contents. This is why he speaks of a “conditional
and concretely enabling passivity” (157). Third, there is a certain ambiguity in the
way Reiner introduces ARP since it is not entirely clear whether the sense of essen-
tiality and necessity invoked is to be understood de dicto or de re. In what follows, I
opt for a de re-reading since this seems to be more faithful to the Reinerian idea that
it belongs to the very essence of activity as such to be motivated by passivity.
Now, taking up ideas from Husserl, Reiner uses the notion of motivation in order
to elaborate this asymmetrical relation between activity and passivity.16 In contrast
to mechanical causation à la Hume, in which the relata stand in an external rela-
tion, motivation is supposed to be a causal relation sui generis, whose relata are
internally related in virtue of their intentional content or “sense” (Sinn). Motivation
thus establishes an “innerly intelligible [sinnmäßige] connection from one act to the
other” (9). A motivational transition from one experience to another always makes
sense and can be further elucidated, whereas brute non-experiential causation is ulti-
mately an unintelligible datum that can only be stated.17 Besides, motivational cau-
sation always gravitates, so to speak, around a subject of experiences which in turn
is in one way or another involved or engaged in the motivational transition. There is
a specific “directional” what-it-is-likeness of motivation such that the subject experi-
ences herself as being moved in a certain direction.18 By contrast, non-motivational
causation requires neither a subject nor a felt direction: “anonymous” events follow
one after another law-wise.
Putting these remarks together, Reiner’s “law” (understood de re-wise) can now
be reformulated as follows:

16
 Reiner takes up Husserl’s “extended” notion of motivation (25, fn. 1) which he contrasts with
Pfänder’s (1911) more narrow notion according to which motivation captures the teleological and non-
causal explanatory structure of rational human agency. For Husserl, but not for Pfänder, motivation is
a species of causation, a so-called “motivational causality” (Motivationskausalität) (Hua IV, p. 216/
(1989), 227), which is not governed by laws couched in purely physical (non-mental) terms. For more on
Husserl’s notion of motivation see Hua III/1, pp. 99–102/1982, pp. 98–100, Hua IV, pp. 211–247/1989,
pp. 223–259, and Hua XXXVII, pp. 103–124.
17
  I also take motivation as a causal, yet non-uniquely determining relation. That is, the fact that x moti-
vates S to y neither entails that S was forced or necessitated to y nor that S “could not have experienced or
done otherwise.” Reiner explicitly acknowledges non-uniquely determining motivation in §§ 27 and 30,
especially in cases of “torn decisions,” in which the subject is confronted with polyvalent and/or incom-
mensurable axiological orientations.
18
  I won’t elaborate the possibility of utterly non-experiential or unconscious motivation.

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(ARP)
For every subject S, and every activity x of S, it is true that: x is essentially of
such a kind that there is an experience y of S such that y is a passivity (i), y
occurs to S (ii), and y motivates S to x (iii).19
According to ARP, thus, activity is essentially motivated by or responsive to
passivity.
To see how this principle works in concreto, here are two examples. (1) Think
of a case in which you upon reflection decide to order Risotto Milanese instead of
Pizza Bufala after several minutes of a balancing dietary deliberation. Before you
can decide and perform the action of ordering the dish, there is a moment in which
you receptively (or passively) have to come to realize that this is the better choice
given your already prevailing (dietary) desires and beliefs. Thus, intentional actions
based on (previous) deliberation are motivated at least by a twofold passivity: there
must be an Aha!-like “idea” (Einfall) (25) in terms of an awareness of the right kind
of thing to do, and a felt underlying desire or “volitional stance” (see below). (2)
But also more simple and non-deliberative forms of activity can be illuminated by
using ARP. In one of his opening vignettes, Reiner describes a situation in which he
spontaneously and without taking a decision changes his uncomfortable position in
bed (§2). This activity performed “without further ado” can be described as being
motivated by a passively given urge to do so. In moving his leg, Reiner thus “simply
follows the tendency” (einfache[s] dem Zuge Folgen) (134) of a passively occurring
experiential tension.
In light of ARP, Reiner explicitly denies the existence of a corresponding inverse
principle since passivity doesn’t essentially require activity (cf. § 3, and Reiner
1931, pp. 55–56). He distinguishes two varieties of passivity or “givenness” (to the
subject): instances of so-called “affective passivity” (10) are neither active nor moti-
vated—think of a sudden headache befalling you out of the blue. A second species
of passivity, so-called “motivated passivity” (10), covers the experiential sphere of
association in a broad sense, instances of which are not necessarily motivated (see
below). Furthermore, while a state of pure passivity is in principle possible, Reiner
claims that pure activity is not even phenomenologically conceivable (24, 160).
Now, given that there seems to be such a motivational asymmetry between activ-
ity and passivity, one can try to exploit this structure in order to address UPA.20 In
order to do so, consider the following train of thought:

1. Activity essentially (de re) is motivated by passivity.

2. Passivity is not essentially (de re) motivated by passivity.
3. Therefore, activity is unified in terms of its essential motivational dependency
upon passivity.

19
  Typically and paradigmatically, y occurs simultaneously with x. In contrast to a mechanical “causal
chain” of events, where the cause temporally precedes the effect, the motivating experience is not sharply
separated from the motivated act, but rather flows or grows into it.
20
  I should note that Reiner himself is not explicitly doing this. He just claims that ARP is an “eidetic
law.” It is therefore an interpretative extrapolation on my part to use ARP for the sake of “unifying” the
notion of activity. This move, however, seems to be in the spirit of Reiner’s early work.

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In other words: an active episode performed by a subject is active in virtue of this

episode’s essentially being motivated by some passive experience. It is thus possible
to insert the complex relational property P1 = being essentially (de re) motivated by
passivity in our formulation of UPA from above.
However, at least four objections can be raised  against the idea of “grounding”
activity in terms of the motivational asymmetry between activity and passivity:
First, one might object that purely spontaneous acts such as arbitrarily raising
one’s right arm or uttering a word that spontaneously pops up into one’s mind are
cases of genuine actions that do not seem to motivated at all—at least not from a
phenomenological perspective. However, it seems to me that such actions are moti-
vated after all, although, crucially, not in a uniquely determined manner. There is
still a sense in which the thought to raise one’s arm or to say something is, so to
speak, “in the air,” and ready for motivating you. For instance, you might arbitrarily
raise your right arm in order to demonstrate immediate control over your body. In
this sense, I would argue that there is always some phenomenally manifest (however
subtle and minimal) motivation going on when we are active. But this does not mean
that our doings are uniquely determined since motivation can come along with a
sense of openness and ambiguity, as it were. The thought to raise your arm might
well motivate you to raise your right arm without uniquely determining you to do
so.
Secondly, it might be objected that P1 is of small value because it already presup-
poses the unity of the notion of passivity. There might be a “unity problem of pas-
sivity” as well as for activity, given the various things that can be called “passive”
or “merely happening” to us. However, I think this is not a devastating problem,
because ARP can be understood as an expression of a certain primacy of passivity
over activity. In this sense, it may well be true that ARP rests on the unity of the
notion of passivity, but this is just an expression of the priority just mentioned.
Thirdly, there seem to be cases in which passive experiences are also motivated
by other passive experiences. As already mentioned, Reiner calls this “higher-order”
passivity motivated passivity of which association (“x makes me aware of y”) is a
typical example (cf. § 3). Motivated passivity thus contrasts with affectivity (e.g.
pain, sensations) which does not need to be experienced as being motivated at all.
So, the property of being motivated by passivity does not seem to be a sufficient, but
only a necessary condition for a phenomenon to count as active in nature. However,
even if a passive association such as the mental imagery of a buffalo passively pops
up by reading the words “Pizza Bufala,” there is a sense in which this dependency
does not hold essentially. This is because it does not seem to belong to the very
nature of imaging a buffalo that it be motivated in this way. It could also occur to me
“out of the blue” due to some unconscious mechanism. By contrast, the motivation
by a previous or simultaneous passive experience is supposed to hold essentially in
the case of activity. Phenomenologically speaking, passive experiences of any kind
could in principle also occur utterly unmotivated. It is thus crucial to stick to the de
re-reading of ARP: while it belongs to the very essence of an active episode to be
motivated by a passive experience, being motivated by another passive experience
is accidental or, as phenomenologists like to say, außerwesentlich for the passive
episode in question.

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Finally, even if ARP could ground the notion of activity in the way just described,
a final worry remains. This is because ARP does not unify agency in terms of the
intrinsic features of active episodes, but rather in virtue of their essential relation-
ship to passivity. In other words: the grounding property expressed in ARP is a rela-
tional property. Although ARP thus enables one to demarcate activity from passiv-
ity, there is still a sense in which we do not know what activity intrinsically is like. I
take this fourth objection to be an important though not devastating one since it does
not show that P1 does not unify phenomenal activity, but rather points to the prob-
lem of characterizing activity intrinsically. Along this line, I will show in the next
section that Reiner offers another, more “intrinsic” proposal (P2).
To conclude this subsection on ARP, it can be said that there are good reasons to
interpret Reiner’s Wesensgesetz as one possible way to unify the notion of activity.
In a phrase: in contrast to passivity, all activity is essentially “responsive” to passiv-
ity. However, a problem of this view is that it does not tell us much about the intrin-
sic nature of activity. This is why in the rest of the paper I shall focus on another
thread running through Reiner’s book, namely the close and possibly intrinsic con-
nection between activity and will.

3.2 A Second Thread: Will and Centrality

In what follows, I concentrate on two notions introduced near the end of the analytic
part of Reiner’s book (cf. §§ 25–26), and I will argue that Reiner uses them to unify
a subset of activities (132, 155–7), all of which are rooted in the mobilization of the
human will. The two relevant notions are “inner will” and “ego-centrality” (Ich-Zen-
tralität). In order to understand these two ideas, it is necessary to outline Reiner’s
will-based account of agency.
What does it mean to will (to act)? On the whole, Reiner employs three notions
of willing, the “inner will” being the most fundamental and pervasive one. The
two other manifestations of the will are called “volitional stance” (Willensstellung-
nahme) and “intention” (Vorsatz), respectively. These two modes of willing are
responsible for the complex intentional structure of actions, the result being that
each Handlung contains a “double intentionality of the will” (69). Here is a passage
which encapsulates Reiner’s mereological account of a full-blown  voluntary and
intentional action with its various “partial acts” (90):
On the whole, we have to distinguish the following moments each of which
can be contained in an action [Handlung]: 1) The representation [Vorstellung]
of the intended state of affairs [Ziel-Sachverhalt]; 2) the character of oughtness
[Soll-Charakter] attributed to this state of affairs by the volitional stance [Wil-
lensstellungnahme] […]; 3) the representation of one’s own agency [eigene
Tätigkeit], which can help to bring the targeted state of affairs about; […]; 5)
the awareness of the “I can” [Bewußtsein des „ich kann“] directed to one’s
own relevant agency; 6) the intention [Vorsatz] determining the agency as

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something to be brought into play by me; 7) the performance [Ausführung-

stätigkeit] itself. (90)21
Not all of these partial acts are relevant for my purpose. In what follows, I will focus
on Reiner’s threefold notion of will. This is because it is only in virtue of certain
voluntary experiences that the emerging action as a whole is active in nature.22
A. Will qua Volitional Stance.23 According to the first sense of “will,” to will
means to take a so-called “volitional stance” (Willungsstellungnahme), which I will
often simply refer to as “stance.”24 As a guiding example, think of the stance under-
lying the action of clearing up one’s desk. Four features are worth mentioning: (1)
Stances are either “latent” intentional attitudes (§§28–29), or “patent” experiences
that are directed towards a “transcendent state of affairs” (34) embracing an axiolog-
ically qualified object (53, 75). The action of clearing up my desk is directed towards
the valuable state of affairs < My desk is cleared up > , whose “realization” (34) is
intended as a mind-independent result of the activity to be taken. (2) Stances are
twofold founded phenomena that depend, on the one hand, on “feelings” in the sense
of what Husserl calls “value-receptions” (Wertnehmungen) (Hua IV, p. 9/(1989), p.
11); on the other hand, they are founded upon objectifying representations which
make the desired state of affairs intentionally present in the first place. In terms of
their psychological genus, stances are emotion-like phenomena (53: Gemütsbewe-
gungen, 74: Gemüts-Akte) that are “interested” (110) in their object in one way or
another. (3) Given their foundation in evaluative experiences, stances are somehow
responsive to the axiologically permeated state of affairs which is posited as some-
thing that “ought” to be the case (74, 90). This positional character turns stances
into genuine “stances” directed towards their correlate, with the consequence that
they can be (in)appropriate and subordinated to the norms of reason.25 (4) Finally,
stances are au fond passive acts, typically exhibiting “motivational passivity.” For
instance, the stance targeted at the tidiness of the desk is typically passively moti-
vated by perceiving and negatively feeling its chaotic condition.
B. Will qua Decision or Making Up One’s Mind.26 In contrast to volitional
stances, Reiner’s second notion of will is called “resolve” (Entschluß) or “intent”

21
  Reiner’s mereological analysis is inspired by Scheler’s rich account of intentional action in his For-
malismus (cf. Scheler 2007, pp. 120–161).
22
  In Erhard (forthcoming) I comment more thoroughly on the other moments of actions.
23
  This notion corresponds to no. 2) in the just quoted passage.
24
  Functionally speaking, volitional stances (and their underlying Vorstellungen) come close to desires
and beliefs in causal belief-desire models of agency (see Davidson 1963). Note, however, that Reiner
argues at length that beliefs and desires are not sufficient to account for intentional action (see esp. §§
18–19) since decisions, intentions, and the inner will are also required. Note further that Reiner (like
Scheler 2007, pp. 123–124) takes willing to be more fundamental than (mere) wishing (Wünschen).
In fact, Reiner defines wishing that p as a volitional stance towards p without the subject being willed
or without the subject trying to perform the required actions to realize that p (cf. 37, 72–3, 83, passim).
25
  Volitional stances can be modified in a number of ways, analogously to cognitive phenomena that can
be subject to what Husserl calls “doxic modalities” (cf. § 19). Accordingly, a stance can be a doubtful
(Willenszweifel), an interrogative (Willensfrage), or a decisive (Willens-Entschiedenheit) one. Moreover,
stances either have an approving or a disapproving positional character.
26
  This notion corresponds to no. 6) in the longer passage quoted above.

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 Husserl Studies

(cf. §§ 18–19), which I will often simply refer to in terms of deciding.27 Here are
three characteristics of decisions: (1) In contrast to stances, decisions are primarily
geared towards a “performance” (Ausführungstätigkeit), and not towards the states
of affairs we thereby attempt to realize.28 A decision aims at “putting into play” (ins
Spiel setzen) (71, 90) one’s own performance. (2) Again, in contrast to stances, deci-
sions are intrinsically active phenomena that must be performed by the subject in
order to exist at all (cf. § 25). Anticipating Ryle’s (1949, Ch. 3) objections against a
Cartesian “will in the machine,” Reiner argues that the activity of a decision cannot
be accounted for in terms of another previous decision without initiating an infinite
regress (cf. 120–4). This entails that volitional activity (of which decisional activity
is a species) does not necessarily need to be pre-determined by a decision (ibid.).
(Reiner will introduce the “inner will” in order to address this issue; see below.) (3)
Decisions are founded on stances, but not necessarily vice versa. We cannot perform
an action without wanting a corresponding state of affairs to be the case, but we
can want that p without making endeavors towards realizing p. Furthermore, deci-
sions are not emotion-like experiences (cf. 75), but rather more akin to spontaneous
“speech acts” such as assertions or promises (cf. Reinach 1913, § 3).
C. Will qua “Inner Will.” While many volitional actions are initiated and sus-
tained by a decision and underpinned by a volitional stance, interestingly enough,
Reiner argues that not all voluntary activities must be predetermined by a deci-
sion.29 Spontaneous actions such a navigating around quickly in traffic or immedi-
ately responding in conversation need not be “chosen” (cf. 76). And even if it were
possible to understand such spontaneous actions in terms of simultaneously deciding
and acting accordingly,30 Reiner explicitly acknowledges cases of genuine activity
that are not based on a decision at all, be it a previous or a simultaneous one (cf. §§
21, 26). Decisions themselves are instances of such non-decision based activities
because deciding to x does not essentially (and paradigmatically) consist in deciding
to decide to x.31
In order to account for volitional activities that are not based on intents or deci-
sions, Reiner’s introduces the idea of “inner will,” which is supposed to be constitu-
tively involved in all varieties of volitional activity. Reiner conceives of the “inner

27
 Besides stances and intents, Reiner also emphasizes the constitutive role of experiences of power
(Bewusstsein des eigenen Könnens, Ich kann). A sense of empowerment is thus also crucial for acting
intentionally (§§ 6, 8, 18–19, 30).
28
  See Kriegel (2015, p. 87): “[I]n the first instance, you decide on an action and want a state of affairs.
[…] More generally, decisions appear primarily directed towards actions […], desires primarily toward
states of affairs.”
29
 Note that, as Kriegel (2015, p. 84) aptly says, the “essential relation” between the parts of inten-
tional action (stance, intent, awareness of power, performance) is “not temporal, but compositional.” For
Reiner, thus, an action is a whole comprising various act-moments that do not necessarily follow one
another in a temporal sequence.
30
  See Husserl’s distinction between “Handlungswille” and “Entschlusswille” (Hua XXVIII, pp. 106–7)
which resembles Searle’s (1980) respective distinction between “intentions in action” and “prior inten-
tions.” Only Handlungswille and intention-in-action are simultaneously inscribed into the action.
31
  Reiner assumes that decisions are essentially active phenomena. Some philosophers have criticized
this, e.g., O’Shaughnessy (2008, p. 543–7) and Dennett (2014, p. 85).

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will” as a volitional variety of Brentano’s act-accompanying “inner consciousness”

(§ 26). For Brentano, consciousness essentially involves self-awareness. Coupled
with his view that all mental phenomena are also characterized by the “intentional
inexistence” of a “content” or “object” (Brentano 1995, p. 68), it follows that every
conscious act has two objects, namely a so-called “primary” and a “secondary”
one32: While a non-mental object is intended primarily, the act itself functions as
its own secondary object, i.e. the act is given to itself in a self-presenting yet non-
thematizing manner33: neither “reflective grasping” nor “noticing” (Bemerken) is
necessary for inner consciousness (129). Now, just like Brentano’s inner conscious-
ness, Reiner’s inner will is not a second-order volitional stance, because there is
only one activity into which the inner will is inscribed. Indeed, Reiner claims that
it is because an experience is willing itself that it is (experienced as) active. Thus,
the inner will is simultaneously and constitutively involved in the activity in ques-
tion. Furthermore, the inner will is supposed to be a pre-reflective and non-atten-
tive “endorsement” (Zustimmung) (128) on the basis of which the subject “devotes”
(124, 134) herself to the primary object.
Given the twofold meaning of “will” pointed out above (qua stance and qua deci-
sion), an important question concerns the classification of the inner will: Is the inner
will more like a decision or more like  a “volitional stance”? Here are two impor-
tant reasons for the latter view. First, the very language Reiner applies to the inner
will suggests that it is a kind of emotion-like stance. Thus, he speaks of a reflexive
“endorsement” (128, 129, 131) of the act towards itself, and also of the active sub-
ject “devoting” (Hingabe: 124, 132) herself to the target of the activity. In contrast
to this, deciding is not an emotion-like evaluative act, no Gemütsakt. Secondly, in
deciding to x, one does not automatically x, whereas innerly willing x immediately
creates an action or “modifies” (125) an already existing episode into an activ-
ity of yours. Thus, for Reiner, the  inner will is a both a maker and a marker of
experiential activity.34
According to Reiner, the inner will is  not only involved in intentional actions
based on stances and decisions, but in all forms of volitional activity. However, it is
only one side of volitional activity. The other side consists in “ego-centrality,” which
I will discuss now.

32
  At times, Brentano (1995, Book II, Ch. 3) goes further than that by claiming that mental acts are
not only inwardly presented (or perceived), but also inwardly judged and felt. Combined with his view
that the will is a species of emotion (Gefühl) (cf. Book II, Ch. 8), it easily follows that every mental act
is inwardly willed. Thus, in some sense, Reiner’s “inner will” is not entirely novel. However, the way
Reiner applies it to characterize only active experiences by coupling it with the notion of “centrality”
seems to be an innovative move.
33
 Brentano (1995, p. 119): “Every mental act is conscious; it includes within it a consciousness of
itself. Therefore, every mental act, no matter how simple, has a double object, a primary and a secondary
object.”
34
  If one conceives the inner will in terms of a “volitional stance,” it can also be subject to “volitional
modalities” (§ 19) some of which were mentioned above. Thus, innerly willed activities can be further
differentiated with regard to their degree and modality of volitional resoluteness, or, if one prefers a
Frankfurtian term, “wholeheartedness” (cf. Frankfurt 1987).

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Reiner claims that inner will and “ego-centrality” are two sides of the same coin.
Put in Husserlian terms, both are mutually dependent “moments” of a unified whole
of volitional activity. Appeals to a rather emphatic notion of the subject or Ich in
order to account for the phenomenal characteristics of human will is a recurring
topic in early phenomenology. In this spirit, Alexander Pfänder and others invoke
the notion of Ich-Zentrum performing “centrical” in contrast to “peripheral” or
“eccentrical” acts (cf. Pfänder 1911; see also Hua IV, p. 257/1989, p. 269; Stein
1922, pp. 46–54; Reinach 1913, § 3). Reiner’s novel contribution consists in his the-
sis that there is an essential connection between the idea of an active subject and the
notion of inner will. According to him, activities (or at least volitional ones) are not
only pre-reflectively willed, but genuinely or properly performed by the subject (cf.
125–126). This “by-me-ness,” as it might be dubbed, is also characterized in “psy-
cho-topological” terms: centrally performed experiences occur in the phenomenal
foreground, while all other experiences are merely happening “in me.”35
It is time for an example. Think of a feeling of anger you might feel towards your
ex-lover who once cheated on you, and with whom you are engaged in an everyday
conversation some time after the fraud. During the talk, which you successively lose
track of, you feel how the “old” anger and jealousy become manifest again, thereby
making you gnash your teeth and clench your fists. But suppose you keep on smiling
and nodding politely, trying to suppress your feelings. However, as soon as s/he is
gone, you surrender to your anger and let yourself go. It’s only now that you freak
out by striking out wildly and insulting him/her in absentia. Metaphorically speak-
ing, you become experientially one with your anger, which was not the case before
the other person left. Before that, you were reflectively torn apart between smiling
and nodding kindly and feeling increasing anger towards your interlocutor. But once
you “devote yourself” to your anger, your experience, as it were, reorganizes itself
on a more unified level again.
Put in Reinerian terms, what (inter alia) happens here can be described as a tran-
sition from a passively experienced anger occurring “in me” to an active anger cen-
trally performed “by me.” It is not just that the anger becomes more salient after
your interlocutor is gone, because it was strongly salient from the very beginning.
The transition involves more, namely a sense of identifying yourself with the epi-
sode in question—not necessarily in terms of a higher-order judgment or a Frank-
furtian “second-order volition” (cf. Frankfurt 1971), but rather in terms of giving
into or going along with the anger on a first-order level of experience. The anger
thus becomes intrinsically (or adverbially) “modified” (125, 156) by inner will and
centrality. Such an internal change of the experience is not entailed by forming a
higher-order judgment or volition. As Reiner puts it, you “devote yourself” or “place
yourself on the ground” (auf den Boden stellen) of the experience in question (125).

35
  Note that centrality and phenomenal saliency (or “foregroundness”) are not the same properties (cf.
97f., 125–127) because centrality entails saliency, but not vice versa. Reiner claims that, e.g., yawning
can occur in the foreground without being performed centrally. However, it seems to me that Reiner has
no cogent argument for the view that centrally performed experiences must occur in the foreground. As
far as I can see, there could be both salient and recessive acts performed by the ego-center. This possibil-
ity will become relevant near the end of Sect. 4.

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To be sure, the anger was, metaphysically speaking, yours all the time. Moreover,
the anger also was, phenomenologically speaking, phenomenally owned in terms of
what Kriegel and Zahavi call the “for-me-ness” of experience (Zahavi and Kriegel
2015). However, “for-me-ness” is only necessary but not sufficient for Reinerian
“by-me-ness.”36 While by-me-ness points to the executive nature of activity, inner
will refers to its endorsing character. This is supposed to hold true even when the
subject implicitly or explicitly rejects the activity in question on a higher-order
reflective level, instances of which include akratically or impulsively (and even com-
pulsively) performed actions and actions based on (external) coercion. The endorse-
ment involved in the inner will and the sense of identification involved in centrality
must therefore be understood in a minimal sense which is relatively robust and inde-
pendent of higher-order cognitive and evaluative attitudes. In other words, not every
centrally and innerly willed performance necessarily manifests the “depths” of the
acting person.
An interesting consequence of Reiner’s notion of inner will and centrality is that
phenomena that prima facie seem to be passive can also be performed by the subject
in an active manner (cf. § 26). In this way, Reiner can (to some extent) overcome the
problematic dichotomy between intentional actions and things “merely happening
to us” in terms of a more nuanced and dynamic picture of human agency. This pos-
sibility of actively (yet non-intentionally) modifying or modulating your experiences
holds good not only for thoughts, mental imagery, perceptions and emotions like
anger, but also for affective reactions like laughter and crying, in which the subject
“without any inhibition or reflection […] devotes herself completely” (132) to the
issue laughed or cried about.37
On my reading, thus, Reiner introduces the supposedly coextensive38 notions of
“inner will” and “centrality” in order to enlarge the scope of agency based on the
will. So, inner will and centrality cover not only (pre)reflective intentional actions,
but also activities that are not based on “intents” at all, such as decisions themselves,
laughter and crying, and other actively lived-through emotional experiences like

36
  Another way to introduce inner will and centrality is with reference to attentional changes in per-
ception (132, 108ff.). According to Reiner, attentively performed perception (Zuwendung) also requires
inner will/centrality.
37
 For a thoroughgoing investigation of laughter (and crying) from a phenomenologically inspired
perspective, see Plessner (1970). According to Plessner, laughter and crying are active performances,
though “limits” of human behavior. Interestingly, especially in the case of crying, Plessner claims that
there is a “reflexive act” of “self-surrender” or “letting oneself go” (1970, pp. 116–17). This does not
seem far away from Reiner’s inner will.
38
  How does Reiner justify his mutual entailment thesis? The central idea seems to be that centrality
requires a specific form of pre-reflective self-awareness which cannot be purely cognitive in nature. This
is why centrality implies inner will. On the other hand, inwardly willing an episode makes the agent, as it
were, experientially one with it, which in turn is why inner will entails centrality. Here is the crucial pas-
sage for the seemingly more problematic implication from centrality to inner will: “But this also holds
conversely, since voluntariness is an essential constituent of centrality! That is, there is no act performed
by the ego-center which could be a pure intuition or a volitional stance exhausting itself in being directed
towards the intentional object. On the contrary, every central act of the ego, even if it is not brought
about by another act of the will, incorporates a certain inner endorsement of the will towards the act
itself!” (128).

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anger or joy, presumably even enjoyment (in contrast to passive pleasure) and suf-
fering (in contrast to passive pain). In contrast to the first view discussed above in
terms of P1 = being essentially (de re) motivated by passivity, the fusion of inner
will and centrality amounts to a complex intrinsic property. This intrinsic characteri-
zation can also be understood as an adverbial modification in virtue of which experi-
ences of various kinds can be performed actively by inwardly willing and centrally
living-through them. In contrast to P1, inner will and centrality do not immediately
invoke causal or motivational relations.39 Using the language of “grounding” again,
we can now formulate a second proposal according to which the property P2 = being
inwardly willed-and-centrally lived-through grounds the unity of activity in our for-
mulation of UPA.
However, in the final Sect. 4, I will critically discuss whether P2 really can unify
all varieties of activity that Reiner acknowledges. Indeed, this is not the case, since
Reiner thinks that besides actions unified by P2 there is another group of activi-
ties that have a different structure and are not immediately connected to inner will/
centrality.

4 Final Discussion: The Unity Problem and Reiner’s Activity Dualism

It is time to take stock and ask where Reiner’s analyses of the will have led us with
regard to UPA. In particular, one must ask how volitional activity is related to activ-
ity simpliciter: Is it possible to ground all activities of a subject in terms of inner
will plus centrality?
As already mentioned, Reiner explicitly answers this question in the negative,
which brings us back to the passage from Husserl quoted above. This amounts to
Reiner’s activity dualism. Similar to Husserl, Reiner calls non-volitional actions
“motor activities,” “vital doings,” “instinctive doings,” or “pre-free doings.”
This set of actions comprises quite heterogeneous activities. It includes absent-
minded and habitual (“mechanical”) actions (e.g. taking the turn towards your work-
place despite wanting to go elsewhere, your attention being absorbed in philosophi-
cal reflection: 100–102). Such “post-free actions” (nachfreie Handlungen) (102),
Reiner claims, are parasitic upon intentional actions insofar as they derive from
type-identical previous actions that once were performed centrally.40 So, there is a
sense in which the set of post-free actions can be integrated into the set of will-based
action.
However, the notion of “motor activities” also comprises much more basic forms
of agency that obviously do not derive from previously centrally performed actions.

39
  However, to some extent, Reiner’s notion of “ego-centrality” resembles the contemporary notion of
agent causation or “self as source.” On such a view, not only events or states of affairs, but also sub-
stances or subjects as such can be causally effective. See, e.g., Pereboom (2015), Horgan et al. (2003),
Lowe (2008), and De Monticelli (1997). Without expanding on this difficult topic, let me just emphasize
that several passages in Reiner point in this direction (140, 152, 165). Like Pereboom and others, Reiner
seems to think that the experience of the ego as cause is particularly salient in cases of “torn decisions.”
40
  Presumably, post-free actions can also always be centrally reactivated.

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Husserl Studies

Unfortunately, Reiner’s discussion of these activities is quite brief and rather cryp-
tic (cf. §§ 21, 30). Surprisingly, one of his main examples is breathing.41 While he
admits that breathing can be centrally (and intentionally) performed and modified,
he denies that it always involves the (inner) will. Nevertheless, he claims that breath-
ing is a veritable activity (cf. 6, 97, 123). Given that Reiner’s focus is on phenom-
enal activity, I take this to entail that breathing (or at least wakeful breathing) is also
experienced as active, however minimal and subtle the related agential awareness
may be. What are his reasons for these claims? One reason he mentions comes from
ordinary language whose grammar suggests that breathing is a process performed
by us, and not a mere happening we passively undergo: we say “I am breathing,”
and not “My lung is breathing.” Reiner seems to take this as evidence for the view
that the subject as such (or as a whole) is engaged in breathing, which in turn is
supposed to be an indication of activity—in contrast to a completely automatic and
autonomous process such as digestion or heartbeat. (However, this is only a neces-
sary and not a sufficient condition for agency since also passive experience such as
pain concern the subject “as such.”) A second reason points to the peculiar motional
or dynamic character of breathing that is supposed to justify its status as active.
Reiner is very hard to understand at this point (at least for me). In a cryptic footnote,
he alludes (without offering quotations) to Husserl and Stein, both of whom are sup-
posed to hold that motions such as breathing feature the phenomenal moment of
“getting out of oneself” (aus sich Herausgehen, 97 fn. 1).42 To my ears, this sounds
like a rather weird justification because breathing seems especially characterized by
the subject not “getting out of itself.”43 Be that as it may be, given the scarcity of
Reiner’s remarks, it is difficult to dwell on them in a non-speculative manner.
Given his categorical distinction between volitional activity and non-volitional
activity, Reiner thus seems to be committed to a certain activity dualism, according

41
  Mossel (2005, p. 129) defends a comparable dualism by distinguishing between actions stricto sensu
and mere activities, only the former involving agential control and “sensations of action.” Interestingly,
Mossel, like Reiner, cites breathing as an instance of such a mere activity (2005, pp. 158, 162–3).
42
  In § 92 of Ideas I, Husserl describes the ego’s “modes of living pertaining to freely going out of
itself” (Hua III/1, p. 214/1982, p. 226). Maybe Reiner has these formulations in mind when he refers
to Aus-sich-Heraustreten. However, Husserl is here exactly not referring to Reiner’s “merely motional”
doings, but rather to cases that Reiner’s notion of centrality is supposed to cover.
43
  Upon closer phenomenological scrutiny, however, this might turn out to be wrong, since breathing
already bears traces of a meaningful responsive intentional relation to the subject’s environment. Think
of cases of emphatic inhaling and exhaling in response to specific situations (e.g. emphatically exhaling
the moment you reach the top of a mountain after a strenuous hiking, or slowing down your respiratory
circles at the sight of the calm blue ocean on a windless sunny day). Other breathing modulating activi-
ties such as sighing or groaning are also relevant in this regard, all of which bear significant traces of
spontaneous and pre-reflective agency, i.e. they don’t seem to be “merely happening to us.” So, after
all, Reiner might be quite right about the status of breathing as an activity. For more on the phenomeno-
logical subtleties of breathing, see Buytendijk (1967, pp. 249-260) and Straus (1954). By focusing on
sighing, Straus argues that it is an expressive and intrinsically meaningful variation of the “fundamental
function” of breathing, and that it cannot be explained in purely physiological (physico-chemical) terms.
Straus thus holds that (wakeful) sighing (and breathing) are active Erlebnisse in which “a person per-
forms his being-in-the world.” He even claims that phenomena such as sighing require a fundamental
“revision of the basic categories of psychology,” since sighing is neither a voluntary “action” nor a mere
happening, but rather an expressive “activity” or “behavior” (1954, pp. 123–24).

13
 Husserl Studies

to which there are two mutually irreducible and essentially different types of activ-
ity, “resting on completely different foundations” (157). While inner will and cen-
trality jointly constitute the unifying essence of will-based actions (which include
but are not exhausted by intentional or decision-based actions), motor activities are
not united with reference to the will.
Although this might be considered an important phenomenological finding (and
also a clarification of the hesitant Husserlian distinction quoted above), I think there
are at least four ideas that could weaken the charge of dualism (if it is a charge at
all). While I take the first thought not to be a viable option for Reiner, I think that the
other proposals (especially the third and fourth) bear some potential:
To begin with, one could argue that the putative activities Reiner cites in
opposition to volitional actions are either not to be classified as active at all (cf.
O’Shaughnessy 2008, pp. 463ff.) (a), or not to be characterized as experiential but
rather as “subliminal” or “subpersonal” activities (b). If (a) were true, then P2 would
after all exhaust all forms of human agency because the set of motor activities would
be empty. The unity of activity would then be grounded in terms of inner will and
centrality. If, on the other hand, (b) were true, the motional activities in question
would fall outside the scope of the Reinerian project of a phenomenological analy-
sis of activity. This reply, to be sure, presupposes that there are good reasons for
holding (a) and/or (b). Reiner himself seems to reject both (a) and (b). He not only
sticks to the view that even basic bodily movements such as breathing or blinking
are active in nature, but he also seems to ascribe at least a minimal degree of agen-
tial phenomenality to them.
Secondly, another way to overcome Reiner’s dualism could consist in applying
P1 to motor activities. The view would then be that movements such as breathing
already rest on a sort of “quasi-motivational” or “proto-motivational” structure
according to which episodes of inhaling are motivated by a passively occurring urge
to exhale, and vice versa. This move would require a significant flexibilization of the
notion of motivation. However, as already pointed out above, P1 and ARP do not
tell us anything about the intrinsic nature of being active.
Third, it is possible to argue that Reiner’s motor activities are directly amenable to
the will—they are still, to use Wittgenstein’s phrase, “subject to the will” (1981, sec-
tion 621).44 Although I cannot voluntarily bring the respiratory cycle into being—
I always already find myself breathing—I can voluntarily influence and modulate
the way I am breathing. In this respect, breathing is remarkably different from other
internal bodily movements such as peristalsis, digestion or heartbeat since the lat-
ter can only indirectly be influenced at will. So, after all, all experiential activities
could be united with reference to the will. While volitional actions in the narrow
sense require an actual exercise of the will, all other forms of activity are poten-
tially related to it. Simply put: activity is either actually or potentially willed activity.
Although this extended (and disjunctive) notion of volitional activity could indeed
formally unify the notion of activity, a worry remains. The problem is that it leaves

44
  All actions that can be directly initiated, sustained and/or terminated by trying to do so belong to the
so-called “absolute sphere of human power” (absoluter menschlicher Machtbereich) (cf. § 10).

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Husserl Studies

the question open in virtue of which categorial structures the potentiality in question
obtains. In other words: what makes it categorially the case that, e.g., breathing in
contrast to heartbeat can be directly voluntarily modulated? Obviously, this question
can be understood both as an empirical and as a phenomenological question. On
the empirical reading, one might say that there must obtain certain neurobiological
facts in virtue of which processes in the (probably cortical) brain are suitably con-
nected to our thorax (but not to our intestine) in such a way that we can voluntarily
influence the former but not the latter. On a phenomenological reading, one might
wonder whether breathing (again in contrast to digestion) requires the mobilization
of a certain amount of phenomenal effort or tension, however minimal it may be.
There might be a subtle sense of felt exertion, tension or trying involved even in
breathing—inhaling and exhaling being similar to tensing and relaxing a muscle.
To be sure, as it stands, this is a rather speculative assumption that requires further
scrutiny. But if something like it were true, there would be a phenomenologically
accessible categorial foundation for our capacity to engage voluntarily in Reinerian
motional activities. The idea being that a minimal sense of occurrent effort or reliev-
ing of tension underlies all experiential doings, not only the ones actually related to
inner will.45
Finally, one could refer to the idea of “letting oneself go” or “going along with”
that is contained in the notion of inner will in order to try to find a deeper unity
between instinctive and volitional doings. Take breathing again. It does not seem
too artificial to describe what is phenomenally going on when we are unreflectively
breathing as a sort of active “going along with” the rhythmically emerging and dis-
appearing urge to inhale and exhale. It is as if we were constantly resonating with
the wave-like coming and going of this elementary tendency. However minimal this
form of agency may be, it seems to be significantly more than a brutely automatic
process such as heartbeat or allergic reaction. If something like this were true, the
experiential aspect of joining in could perhaps provide a common source of both
volitional and non-volitional actions.
To make these last two categorially unifying ideas in terms of minimal (effort-
ful or effortless) trying and “going along with” workable would require a certain
flexibilization of Reiner’s double notion of inner will and centrality, such that not all
inwardly willed and centrally lived-through episodes must necessarily occur in the
experiential foreground the agent “identifies” herself with. It seems to me, however,
that this is not an a priori (or essentially) impossible conceptual or phenomenologi-
cal endeavor.

45
 In this sense, some of the other instinctive movements mentioned by Reiner could also be under-
stood as active. Besides breathing, Reiner cites stretching absentmindedly, yawning, and blinking (97).
Note that the relevant sense of trying can be minimal to such an extent that it could also be described as
“effortless trying” (Hanna and Maiese 2009) since no felt resistance is necessarily involved. A minimal
sense of accomplishment seems enough.

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 Husserl Studies

5 Conclusion

Let me finally sum up the gist of my discussion of the unity problem in Reiner.
On my interpretation, Reiner’s theory leads to a certain dilemma vis-à-vis UPA:
On the one hand, ARP or P1 = being essentially (de re) motivated by passivity can
be plausibly regarded as “unificators” of activity, although they do not tell us what
activity intrinsically is like. On the other hand, Reiner’s second view (P2 = being
inwardly willed-and-centrally lived-through) seems not to be able to cover all cases
of activity, although it significantly enlarges the scope of agency by integrating men-
tal acts such as decisions, perceptions, and emotional and affective behavior.
Despite this difficulty, however, one of the systematically most important
aspects of Reiner’s notion of inner will/centrality is that it can be understood
adverbially, i.e., being active according to P2 can mean either to initiate or to
modulate conscious episodes actively. This leads to a dynamic and nuanced con-
ception of agency in which initially passive experiences can be actively modified.
In this way, Reiner draws a more nuanced picture than still predominant accounts
that dichotomously oppose intentional action and “mere happenings.” By con-
trast, for Reiner, there are intentional actions and non-intentional activities both
of which are “grounded” in the operation of inner will and centrality.
In the end, however, Reiner ends up with a certain activity dualism, accord-
ing to which actions based on the inner will stand in a sharp categorical contrast
to the group of motor activities of which breathing is a paradigmatic instance.
Although Reiner explicitly acknowledges the activity status of these doings, he
only discusses them briefly. Reiner thus subscribes to a negative answer to UPA:
there is not one (or more) feature in virtue of which all activities are active in
nature. Instead of this, there are two seemingly irreducible kinds of activity that
rest on “completely different foundations”.
This activity dualism notwithstanding, I have tried (admittedly rather tentatively
and speculatively) to argue that there might be still be ways open to unify volitional
and vital activities within a broadly Reinerian framework. I basically hinted at three
ideas: first, there could be a sense in which even a vital activity as basic as breathing
(in contrast to peristalsis) requires a minimal amount of active phenomenal effort or
tension; second, ARP/P1 could be extended to include relations such as the one con-
necting inhaling and exhaling, the thought being that both active aspects of a breath-
ing circle are essentially “motivated” by an underlying passive urge. Third, I also
characterized the activity involved in breathing as a form of pre-reflectively “going
along with” the periodically arising tendency to inhale and exhale. To be sure, these
three tentative suggestions would require a considerable flexibilization and enlarge-
ment of Reiner’s notions of motivation, inner will and centrality, which could be
topics for future phenomenological work. But even if the insinuated “synthesis” of
volitional and vital actions did not succeed, Reiner’s negative answer to the unity
problem would still be a valuable contribution to the phenomenology of agency.
Besides its various conceptual distinctions, it is especially his innovative notion of
an “inner will” that can prove helpful in extending the notion of activity to prima
facie merely passive “happenings.”

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Husserl Studies

The project of enlarging human agency beyond the scope of self-reflective, delib-
erative intellectual actions marks an important step in the history of the phenomeno-
logical movement. Just think of Heidegger’s umsichtiges Besorgen (1927, p. 111),
Buytendijk and Plessner’s Umweltintentionalität des Leibes (1925), Sartre’s “magi-
cally” transformative emotive activities (1939), or Merleau-Ponty’s notion of bod-
ily intentionality or intentionnalité motrice (1945). Against the background of UPA,
Reiner’s early work can be understood as part of this significant turning point in the
history of phenomenology. Though not without its problems, Reiner’s views are thus
worth reconsidering seriously, both from a systematic and a historical perspective.
As I have argued in this paper, what is missing in Reiner’s account is a more system-
atic and unified picture of the active subject and its pre-reflective and self-reflective
being-in-the-world. Or, to use Husserl’s words, Reiner’s early work falls short of
offering an “all-embracing understanding […] of the confusing manifolds of indi-
vidual gestalts.” (Husserl 1994, p. 466).46

Acknowledgements  Research on this paper was supported by the Forschungsstipendium (ER 819/2-1
and ER 819/2-2) granted by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). I’m grateful to Thomas Buch-
heim, Dan Zahavi, Søren Overgaard, Christian Martin, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments
on first versions of this paper.

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