The noun “curiosity” and even more the related adjective “curious” are often equivocal (Ibrahim, 2012: 9‒12). Commonsensically, “curiosity” designates a special kind of desire to know or to get to know something, and a curious person is someone who has the disposition to develop such a desire.Footnote 1 The desire to know is sometimes taken to imply solicitude, commitment to knowledge, and care for what is to be known. However, people are often called curious when they are just attracted by and interested in many different things, possibly even in something that does not concern them. More than care for what it is to be cognized, in this regard, curiosity refers to the drive to collect pieces of information in a somewhat scattered manner, without setting priorities and without aiming for in-depth knowledge. This kind of curiosity is initially satisfied when one gets some information, but this is ephemeral satisfaction as curious persons tend to get immediately attracted by something else.

The ambiguities of this commonsensical understanding of curiosity also permeate philosophical approaches to curiosity. In philosophical contexts, however, the ambivalence in how curiosity is understood has further repercussions: curiosity is not only a topic of interest in and for itself; the interpretation of curiosity also mirrors, to an extent, one’s overall understanding of philosophy (see, Blumenberg, 1973). This is true for—as I wish to argue—Edmund Husserl’s discussion of curiosity. In his work, in fact, the phenomenological analysis of curiosity as an object of inquiry, aimed particularly at its intentional structures, is crucially connected with a specific meta-theoretical understanding of philosophy. More precisely, in this paper, I will show that the theoretical function Husserl attaches to curiosity goes hand in hand with his understanding of phenomenological philosophy as an exploratory and descriptive endeavor, aiming at drawing the “essential lines of demarcation” between different species of acts (Husserl, 2004: 6). This endeavor can be compared to that of a cartographer, insofar as, on the basis of descriptive analysis, phenomenologists identify an order through which to orient oneself in the diversity of experiences, on the basis of the essential structures of each type of experience and the relationships between them. This aspect of phenomenological inquiry is complementary to the foundationalist one (see, Mertens, 1996). Both aspects, considered together, shape phenomenological philosophy as a constitutively critical enterprise. Moreover, in Husserl’s phenomenology, the appreciation of the role of curiosity in philosophy is based on an analysis of the intentional structure of curiosity itself, and particularly of the dynamic structuring of acts animated by curiosity and of the shift between indeterminate and determinate intentionality.Footnote 2

In order to argue for these claims, I begin by schematically presenting what I consider to be a polarization in the appreciation of the role of curiosity for philosophy, thereby providing the framework for the phenomenological inquiry into curiosity (Sect. 1). Subsequently (Sect. 2), I focus on some of the tasks Husserl assigns to philosophy, notably conveyed by the metaphor of exploring. Against this background, I then discuss how Husserl’s appraisal of curiosity in philosophy is tied to his concrete analyses of the intentional structure of ordinary curiosity (Sects. 3, 4 and 5). I also compare Husserl’s view with a recent proposal for an epistemological reassessment of curiosity, thereby discussing the limitations of an exclusively semantic understanding of curiosity. On this ground, I then suggest that an integration of such an account is needed within a broader understanding of curiosity as a drive to see and know, which has the intentional structure of an indeterminate tendency and gets determined in and through experience (Sect. 3). In order to specify this account of curiosity, I focus on Husserl’s description of intentionality as a tendency (Sect. 4) and discuss how it relates to curiosity (Sect. 5). Since these discussions may suggest a straightforward identification of curiosity and tendency, I finally discuss why, although curiosity has the structure of a tendency, it would be wrong to take curiosity as the fundamental structure of consciousness as such (Sect. 6). In the conclusion, I will trace some meta-theoretical implications of the discussion of curiosity for an understanding of philosophy as a rigorously methodologically structured enterprise that is also open and critical.

Polarizing Curiosity

In The Process of Theoretical Curiosity (Der Prozess der theoretischen Neugierde), Hans Blumenberg (1973) suggests that one may read the vicissitudes of the relation between curiosity and philosophy as a “process” in a twofold sense: both as a temporal process of becoming, and as a process in which curiosity is called before a court to defend or justify itself. Accordingly, one can identify authors who, on the one hand, accuse and possibly condemn curiosity for its effects on philosophy, and authors who, on the other hand, defend or absolve it. At the negative end of those assessing how significant curiosity might be in philosophy, one finds authors such as Augustine and Martin Heidegger. Augustine condemns curiosity as “a cupidity which does not take delight in carnal pleasure but in perceptions acquired through the flesh […] a vain inquisitiveness dignified with the title of knowledge and science (vana et curiosa cupiditas nomine cognitionis et scientiae palliata)” (Augustine, 1998: xxxv, 54; see, Blumenberg, 1973: 103–121). Sharing Augustine’s suspicion regarding the “lust of the eyes (concupiscientia oculorum)” (Augustine, 1998: xxxv, 54),Footnote 3 Heidegger emphasizes that such Augenlust is an indeterminate drive apparently without any guidance, the outcome of which is neither an authentic understanding nor a proper philosophical orientation. Based on this idea, curiosity is structurally dispersive; it prevents one from dwelling in any place or on any question and makes one liable to being distracted by ever new objects. Accordingly, the curious person jumps from one object of interest to the next, rather than staying with what demands to be understood. All three features Heidegger attaches to curiosity—not-staying with what is nearest (Unverweilen beim Nächsten), distraction (Zerstreuung), and never dwelling anywhere (Aufenthaltslosigkeit)—contrast with the genuine philosophical attitude. On this view, curiosity is not geared toward comprehension or truth; it cannot be assimilated to philosophical wonder before that which eludes understanding (thaumazein); and, although one may recognize the “care of seeing” (Sorge des Sehens) as the basis of curiosity (Heidegger, 1996: 160‒161; 1984, 156), such care of seeing does not amount to a genuine philosophical attitude. For these reasons, curiosity defines a mode of “falling prey” (Verfallen) of Dasein. Admittedly, Heidegger does emphasize the link between curiosity, the drive to see differences, and the universally human desire to know, to which Aristotle refers in his Metaphysics (Met A 1, 980 a 21). However, unlike other philosophers who read Aristotle as suggesting that curiosity is an epistemic virtue,Footnote 4 Heidegger eventually dismisses the analogy between the attitude of curiosity and the philosophical attitude,Footnote 5 and does so with some evaluative allusions that, at least terminologically, also recalls Augustine’s, not only epistemic and ontological, but also moral condemnation of curiosity.

At the positive end of those assessing how significant curiosity might be in philosophy, one finds David Hume, for whom curiosity is the “love of truth” (Hume, 2000: 2.3.10.1, 2.3.10.12). In the last chapter of Book 1 of his Treatise, Hume claims that curiosity is a passion even capable of healing the malaise of disorientation caused by the lack of certainty in empirical knowledge. Indeed, we thankfully owe it to his curiosity, that Hume did not eventually throw all his “books and papers into fire, and resolve never more to renounce the pleasures of life for the sake of reasoning and philosophy” (Hume, 2000: 1.4.7.10). For what motivates Hume to pursue his philosophical investigation of human nature is the “curiosity to be acquainted with the principles of moral good and evil, the nature and foundation of government, and the cause of those several passions and inclinations, which actuate and govern me” (Hume, 2000: 1.4.7.12). Hume’s position regarding curiosity also has ethical consequences, but they are opposite to the ones deriving from Augustine’s and Heidegger’s accounts. Curiosity and the desire to know represent an openness to the diversity of what we can experience, and this openness, recognition, and consideration of diversity should also guide us in our conduct and choices.

In between these extremes, the history of philosophy testifies to a variety of positions, diversifying forms of curiosity, recognizing some of its cognitive functions, and condemning others, particularly in relation to theological debates. Against this background, it seems that acknowledging or downplaying the role of curiosity in philosophy may relate not only to one’s understanding of curiosity but also to one’s understanding of philosophy and its tasks.

Aligning with the advocates of the philosophical relevance of curiosity—and, in my reading, notably with Hume—Husserl nonetheless shares some basic assumptions of Augustine’s and Heidegger’s theories of curiosity, which I would phrase as follows: the intentionality of curiosity is actually that of an open and indeterminate tendency or drive, which gets focused or progressively determined as a striving or a desire for what one does not know. It is worth noticing, though, that the determination of an indeterminate drive implies the recognition of something missing, a lack. This can be in turn linked to the specific intentional structure of Husserl’s notion of awakening attention. Furthermore, his account of curiosity is clearly connected to an appreciation of its philosophical significance. But before delving deeper into that, more should be said about the tasks of philosophy that are specifically related to curiosity. These, in my view, are the tasks of exploration.

On Curiosity and Unknown Continents

For Husserl, recognizing the philosophical significance of curiosity means advocating a type of philosophy that, while often giving priority to the problem of the ultimate foundation of knowledge, is constantly provoked by the diversity of what is experientially given. Reevaluated in this way, even the characteristics that Heidegger dismissively attaches to curiosity acquire philosophical significance: not-staying with what is nearest, not dwelling anywhere, and—if taken as a kind of glimpse into the outside—even distraction may indeed be extremely significant for philosophy and philosophical commitment. In this sense, taking curiosity as the source and the motor for philosophy means recognizing the limitedness of all research while taking a self-critical attitude with respect to foundational or otherwise universalizing claims, and maintaining at the same time the aspiration for the constant enrichment and refinement of knowledge. This is clearly evinced by the passages in which Husserl compares his philosophical enterprise to an exploration.

Although it may almost seem a commonplace, the figures of the explorer and the traveler embody the disposition of those who make the drive of curiosity a kind of habit.Footnote 6 To be sure, there may be some naively idealizing aspects in this view of travelers and explorers, particularly if we consider how exploration is tied to exploitation in colonial times. However, like any commonplace, also this one has a kernel of truth. Curious persons read, travel, search exchange and dialogue. Some of Heidegger’s descriptions in this regard are cogent: curious persons are not content with staying with what is nearest, they may tend to be distracted or affected by what is foreign, and they have a somewhat nomadic attitude, not properly dwelling anywhere. Yet, it remains questionable whether these attitudes are really at odds with philosophy.

Beyond all pragmatic interests (such as economic or fame interests), curiosity and the attraction to the unknown are among the motives for traveling and exploring. Additionally, according to this ideal–typical view, explorers also tend to interpret what they encounter on the basis of already acquired patterns; yet, when moved by curiosity, explorers are also capable of being surprised, they have an open attitude with regard to what does not fit already established patterns and for this reason they gather and collect all their findings before giving interpretations. Ideal–typical curious explorers are predisposed to let their attention be drawn to the most diverse sources, they are often keen to search even in the meanders of what is inaccessible at first sight, and try to catch most of what the world and others have to offer. They are open to otherness, capable of being affected and attracted by what they do not know or do not immediately understand. But, at variance with what Augustine and Heidegger claim, this is not merely limited to a dispersive and distracted Augenlust. Rather, this propensity for getting to know something new and for being affected by a variety of objects which arouse curiosity, are processes that prompt comparisons, the search for relations and connections, and the attempt to find an order in the variety of what is given. Curious explorers indeed do not just collect, rhapsodically moving from one object of interest to the next; instead, they make inventories and cartographies of what they encounter, trying to find out connections, orders, relations, etc. In this sense, not only the explorer but also the cartographer fit the image of the curious person. Crucially, while searching to build maps and take inventory of what they encounter, out of which they seek rules for orientations, curious explorers are not dogmatic about those maps or inventory. Analogously, philosophers that take up the attitude of curious explorers are attracted by the diversity of what can be given as a philosophical problem and, even if they obviously approach the object of their research not as a tabula rasa but possess some acquired interpretative or conceptual patterns, they generally do not take these patterns as unquestionable truths. Rather, they are keen to reflect on them and are open to questioning, rearranging, or revising them on the basis of new evidence; they even tend to be struck by what does not fit the assumed conceptual order.

Despite being somewhat stereotypical, this image of the curious explorer and cartographer corresponds at least to some extent to Husserl’s view of phenomenological philosophy. And indeed, it is remarkable that Husserl, pursuing this somewhat stereotypical ideal, compares himself several times to an explorer, who finds himself discovering a new continent, of which he feels compelled to know the structures and order in its articulations. It is worth considering two of these passages, since both are not limited to saying what explorers do, but also refer to what they ought to do, when they make a new discovery.Footnote 7 The first passage is from the “Epilogue” to Ideas I, where we read that:

The new works I have started to bring out in the past years […] will adduce far-reaching extensions, clarifications, and supplements to what was begun in the Ideas and, incidentally, prior to that already in the Logical Investigations, so that the claim to have actually set into work the necessary beginning of a philosophy ‘which is to come forth as a science’ will not be regarded as mere self-delusion. In any event, he who for decades did not speculate about a new Atlantis but instead actually journeyed in the trackless wilderness of a new continent and undertook the initial cultivation of some of its areas will not allow himself to be deterred in any way by the rejection of geographers who judge his reports according to their habitual ways of experiencing and thinking and thereby excuse themselves from the pain of undertaking travels in the new land. (Husserl, 1989: 422, translation modified)

In quite emphatic terms, Husserl compares himself here not to a utopian thinker speculating about new terrains of research (the new Atlantis), but to an engaged explorer, who has indeed reached an unexplored land—or at least a land that has not been explored in a way that would do it adequate justice. In this sense, the demand to go back to the things themselves can be also understood as a demand to turn to such yet inadequately explored territory. Despite acknowledging his great discovery of the ego-cogito, Husserl considers Descartes as precisely one of those geographers who are incapable of grasping the scope of their discovery, and thus of appropriately exploring and getting to know the new land, because they are not keen to question and give up prejudices and expectations, and rather remain anchored to their habitual way of conceiving of the world. Descartes, in this sense, is like Columbus, who did not recognize his own discovery as the discovery of a new continent and thought of it as the discovery of a new sea route to India. Similarly, Descartes did not grasp the significance of his own discovery of the ego as calling into question previous patterns of thinking, notably the metaphysics of substance as grounding the interpretation of consciousness and subjectivity. Accordingly, he eventually pursues a philosophy of subjectivity that remains anchored to inherited prejudices and does not accommodate the critical demands of skepticism:

It was the same for Descartes as it was for Columbus, who discovered the new continent but did not know anything about it and believed he had merely discovered a new sea route to old India. In Descartes’s case this was because he failed to grasp the deepest meaning of the problem of grounding philosophy in a new and radical manner. Or, what essentially amounts to the same thing, he did not grasp the genuine sense of a transcendental grounding of knowledge and science rooted in the Ego Cogito. The reason for this failure, in turn, lies in the fact that he never apprenticed himself to [the school of] Skepticism in the right way. (Husserl, 2019: 66)

The genuine attitude of the phenomenological explorer, instead, must be curious and critically open according to the ideal–typical view presented above: one needs to be capable to get surprised, to question expectations and conceptual patterns of interpretation, to seek order in things without uncritically imposing it. This is why Husserl positively evaluates curiosity, and recognizes in this drive and its habitualization a significant contribution to philosophical research.

The Intensional-Intentional Model of Curiosity and its Limitations

Previously neglected by the scholarly literature, in recent years, curiosity has been re-discovered and re-appraised in the research field of epistemology (see, Inan, 2012; Inan et al., 2018; Miščević, 2020). Several authors in this field now consider curiosity as one of the most important epistemic virtues, more precisely, as a truth-focused motivating virtue “having as its general goal reliable arriving at truth” (Miščević, 2020: 7, cf. also 79‒110). Against this background, Ilhan Inan notably argues in favor of the epistemic significance of curiosity while developing an inquiry into the intentionality of cognitive acts. In his monograph, The Philosophy of Curiosity, Inan understands curiosity within the framework of a theory of language and meaning, and focuses on “curiosity that can be put into words,” leaving aside the question as to whether “there can be another form of representation that is not conceptual and does not require the mastering of any language” (Inan, 2018: 11). This approach, as I wish to argue in this section, appears to be compatible with Husserl’s investigation of the intentional structures of cognition, as presented in his Logical Investigations, and can be therefore rephrased, at least partially, in its terms. Such a reformulation shall allow me to bring to the fore the limitations of a merely semantic assessment of curiosity, and to point to the reasons why said semantic theory of curiosity actually requires to be integrated with an inquiry into those forms of curiosity that Inan leaves out. In particular, an analysis of curiosity’s intentional structures capitalizing on Husserl’s concept of tendency, as I will argue in the following paragraphs, allows us to highlight the epistemic relevance of the forms of curiosity that are not primarily semantic.

Inan is only interested in curiosity as a mental state that can be expressed by means of “wh-questions”. Within this framework, expressions of curiosity are intensional, inasmuch as they have a meaning, but they are undeterminated with regard to their extension. For this reason, Inan takes mental states qualified by curiosity as acts bearing an “inostensible reference,” that is to say, as acts that, by means of a term or a proposition, refer to something that is not, or not yet, ostensible:

[…] curiosity that can be put into words may then be said to be intensional. Every case of curiosity that can be put into words can be expressed by an inostensible term whose referent is unknown to the curious being. The referential character of the inostensible term is what makes curiosity intentional, and the conceptual content of it is what makes curiosity intensional. I call this the intentional-intensional model of curiosity. (Inan, 2018: 11)

On this account, curiosity is understood as a desire to know, but it is a desire that is accountable for only to the extent that we have some conceptual content that we understand intensionally, with respect to which we lack any knowledge of the reference or the extension. In other words, we have a term that we understand to be meaningful in a semantic context, even though we do not know what the term refers to; we understand a sentence as being meaningful and well-articulated, but we do not know the state of affairs it refers to. These are the “inostensible references” of our intentional acts. According to Inan, this model applies to both object-related curiosity, namely, to curiosity related to “wh-questions,” and in more complex ways to what he calls “propositional curiosity,” whereby the inostensible reference is an unknown or only partially known state of affairs. In this regard, Inan argues that curiosity is not to be understood in every case as aiming at truth, but rather as aiming at the determination, or ostensibility, of the extensional reference.

Inan further assesses this intentional-intentional model of curiosity in relation to a reinterpretation of Meno’s paradox,Footnote 8 which turns out to be important also for Husserl’s view of curiosity. The paradox is twofold: Meno asks how it is possible to begin looking for something if one does not have a specification of what one is looking for; and he also asks how it is possible to recognize something as corresponding to what one is looking for, and thus also to recognize that one has made a discovery, if one does not have a preliminary knowledge of what one is looking for:

Meno: And how will you search for something, Socrates, when you don’t know what it is at all? I mean, which of the things you don’t know will you take in advance and search for, when you don’t know what it is? Or even if you come right up against it, how will you know that it’s the unknown thing you’re looking for? (Meno, 80 d5‒8)

The paradox suggests that assuming total intentional indeterminacy would turn any inquiry as a kind of search into a paradoxical endeavor. It is also true, however, that a question concerning cognitive determination can only arise on the basis of some indeterminate, partial, vague, or incomplete knowledge. Furthermore, curiosity understood as the striving for knowledge of what is yet unknown seems to share at least some features of looking for something. And, as Manfred Sommer (2002: 17‒47) shows, looking for something has certain conditions: one must grasp in advance that there is something to be looked for, recognize the signs that indicate what is to be looked for, see in what is visible indications to something invisible which may become visible, recognize what one finds as being precisely that which one was looking, and, of course, want to find what one is looking for. Accordingly, assessing curiosity as a desire and search for knowledge certainly means understanding the starting point for any search moved by curiosity not as a total blank.

What I consider to be somewhat problematic is that, on Inan’s (2012: 16‒39) reading, this also means more specifically that what curiosity presupposes is an inostensible intensional reference, that is to say, the consciousness of a meaningful sign without the knowledge of its extension. In his view, this would prevent the paradox, because the preliminary “knowledge” only amounts to a preliminary conceptual or intensional determination of what one looks for, while proper knowledge is reached when one has found and explicitly recognized what corresponds to that concept, i.e., its extension. Some limitations in such a semantic reading of curiosity come to the fore as soon as Inan’s view is reformulated in the terms Husserl adopts, in his Logical Investigations, to describe the structure of the intentionality of objectivating acts underlying cognition, such as perceptions and judgments. Without specifically addressing curiosity in this work, Husserl conceives of objectivating cognitive acts as being either empty or fulfilled: an empty intention is an act that bears a meaningful intentional structure, but to which no intuition corresponds; knowledge arises only when such an act is fulfilled, that is to say, when there is an intuition that corresponds to the empty intention and that is recognized as fulfilling that intention. Indeed, in the account provided in the Logical Investigations, knowledge entails an empty intention, a corresponding intuition, and a synthesis of identification between the two, in which the coincidence between what is emptily intended and what is intuitively given is recognized (Husserl, 2001b: 202‒215).Footnote 9 In this respect, the fulfillment in which knowledge consists is a “unity of identification” (Identifizierungseinheit) or a “unity of cognition” (Erkenntniseinheit), corresponding to the synthesis of identity between the intentional object of the empty intention and the object of the fulfilling act (Husserl, 2001b: 216‒218). Directly stemming from Husserl’s account of the fulfillment of meaning-intentions in meaning-giving acts, this understanding of cognition fits, at least in part, Inan’s view of curiosity: mutatis mutandis, the inostensible reference in Inan’s view of curiosity roughly corresponds to an empty or signitive intention oriented toward fulfillment. Accordingly, if we pursue this analogy, we may consider curiosity as what motivates one to search fulfillment for the empty intention in the fulfilling act, and the synthesis of fulfillment as what satisfies curiosity. However, although it can clarify how certain cognitive acts, motivated by curiosity, are structured, this approach is unable to clarify what curiosity itself is, and what its own intentional structures are. It is probably no coincidence, then, that Husserl explicitly discusses curiosity in about the same years in which he realizes the limitedness of the semantic account of intentionality. In his drafts for the revision of the Sixth Logical Investigations, he suggests that even cognitive intentionality should not be restricted to meaning-intentions and meaning-giving acts and rather be more broadly understood as animated by a “tendency” toward fulfillment.Footnote 10 The investigation of intentionality as a tendency is also at the core of several texts, mostly written between the 1910s and the late 1920s, collected as Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins. I now wish to argue that these contributions provide the clue for an assessment of curiosity and its epistemic significance even beyond semantic intentions.

Intentionality as Tendency

What does it mean to understand intentionality as a tendency? In short, the characterization of intentionality as a tendency goes hand in hand with the interpretation of the process of fulfillment as a continuous process. Having perception—rather than meaning-giving acts—as its paradigm, the starting point of this process is the incompleteness, perspectivalness and partiality of acts, which are taken as embedded in a horizonal consciousness. This implies, from the noetic point of view, a disposition of consciousness to be affected, a drive to unfold in intentional acts, and a striving for fulfillment (Husserl, 2001a: 39‒62).

Although prior from the genetic point of view, the indeterminate drive is approached retrospectively, by starting with a discussion of the incompleteness of perceptual consciousness and the connected striving for completeness. What is given now includes a system of references to what is not immediately given, and it is on the basis of this system of references that intentionality as a tendency is set in motion. This tendency moves from what is actually presented to the discovery of what is only indicated. Empty intentions are thus striving for fulfillment on the basis of the pointing-ahead of what is given. Such “striving” or “tending” is not initially conceptually determined, but it is rather an implicit and vague associative and anticipative consciousness. In perception, the profiles of the object which we actually perceive in the flesh work at the same time as indications in horizonal consciousness, to the extent that they point toward further appearances of the object, as part of “indicative systems” or of a “complex of intentional rays” (Husserl, 2020: 231).Footnote 11 The empty and fulfilled components of a perceptual act are interwoven moments, and in each of them the overall intention of the act “is acted out” (sich auslebt) in a continuous process of fulfillment. As a result, perception “is animated by perceptual tendencies, tendencies of the continuous transition of apperceptions into new apperceptions, tendencies to go through the manifold of sense data and, thus, to get the ‘images’ running-off” (Husserl, 2020: 384). For the experiencing subject, such “indications” are “tendencies” pushing as it were toward the uncovering of profiles that are not presently given (see, Bernet, 1979; Lee, 1993: 83‒96; Rang, 1973: 169‒187; Summa, 2014: 199‒212).

To be sure, perception’s intentional reference is sui generis, and it should not be modeled upon the structure of higher-order cognitive acts. However, while aiming at a bottom-up theory of intentionality, one should recognize that such striving related to the consciousness of a lack presupposes an indeterminate drive, aiming at explicating itself, which progressively acquires determination that reach even higher forms of consciousness, such as the consciousness of meaning-intentions. Indeed, Husserl contends that being animated by tendencies permeates the higher acts of knowledge and notably the relation between meaning-intentions and meaning-giving acts. This is made clear in several texts, where Husserl reassesses his early theory of meaning: the lectures on the theory of meaning from 1908 and the revision of the Sixth Logical Investigation from 1913. In the context of the theory of meaning, prior to the awareness of a determinate meaning, a verbal sound (Wortlaut) awakens a tendency toward something beyond the sound itself (Hinweistendenz), which then assumes a conceptually determinate meaning function. Only once this meaning function is established, we can account for determined acts as fulfilled or empty (see, Husserl, 2005: 119‒224). Thus understood, the tendency yielded by the verbal sound directs the attention of the perceiver of the sign and thereby orients the intentional process. In this regard, tendency also delineates a practical ought (Sollen) arising within both the consciousness of a sign and perception (see, Husserl 1987: 22‒24; 2005: 79‒95; 179‒224). This is however not a normative constraint deriving from conceptual determination—hence excluding all references to what does not fall under a pre-given concept—but rather an orientation of the intentional directedness within certain limits: the consciousness of a sign orients to search for possible meanings in possible semantic areas, while perspectival perceptual consciousness orients toward what is not presently given in an intuitive way but can be intuited. In both cases, such orientation sets limits on the indeterminacy of tending (see, D’Angelo, 2019: 45‒49; Geymant, 2012; Melle, 2005).

Accordingly, the concept of tendency has several nuances. It refers to the consciousness of the pointing-ahead of signs toward what they signify; to the associative consciousness we have of the non-visible profiles of things that we perceive from a certain perspective; to a basic indeterminate striving for fulfillment “without participation of the ego” that accompanies any, theoretical or practical, consciousness of incompleteness; and to a basic indeterminate drive (Husserl, 2020: 67). Although Husserl is cautious in identifying intentionality with tendency (e.g., Husserl, 2005: 146‒149), tendency can be regarded as a primary and still indeterminate mode of pre-egoic intentionality, which permeates even acts characterized by intentionality directed toward determinate objects. It is a form of pre-egoic intentionality inasmuch as it structures our cognitive and practical orientation in the world even when we do not take an explicit stance, when we do not interpret what is given on the basis of concepts, that is to say, when we do not deliberate. All these are already forms of intentional activity, but they are activities that flow by themselves, without us appropriating and acknowledging them as the activities we are doing.

This account of tendency is genetic, to the extent that it does not only recognize a primary layer of intentional openness, but rather addresses intentionality in relation to processes of modulation. It investigates how the primal and indeterminate tendency acquires directedness, followed by explicit determination, and how the ego then comes to acknowledge and appropriate it in an active way. The first step in this direction, which is also the step from egoless passivity to receptivity as the first level of activity, is the affecting awakening of attention, which Husserl also addresses as the moment of “turning-toward” (Zuwendung) (Husserl, 1973: 76‒84). This is the first step for the determination of tendency, which orients us toward something, also making us aware of incompleteness and of a lack inherent to what is given, and thus contributing in turning the indeterminate tendency into a striving for something (Husserl, 2020: 67‒85). This further specifies what I said earlier about the consciousness of a sign: forming an empty intention—be that in perception or in the consciousness of a sign—requires not only a form of indeterminate openness, which is the condition for something to attract attention; it also requires that something catches and orients our attention in a way that we can then actively regulate. Husserl speaks in this respect of voluntary and involuntary attention (willkürliche and unwillkürliche Aufmerksamkeit) (Husserl, 2020: 366), whereby the latter is a form of “being attracted, even ‘violently’ ravished” (ein Angezogensein, ja ‘gewaltsam’ Hingerissensein) (Husserl, 2020: 367). These two sides of attention are captured respectively by two German words for noticing: Auffallen, meaning that something catches my attention, and Aufmerken, meaning that I take notice of something (Blumenberg, 2002; Waldenfels, 2004). And we should also add to such forms of receptive paying attention a more active and willful paying attention. What these concepts hint at is a process of becoming attentive, in which we turn to something to the extent that this catches our attention, that is, affects us passively. The passivity of an affection or a pull, whereby affection is a tendency to awaken our attention, correlates with the response of turning to the source of the pull, first noticing it, and then possibly focusing on it, that is, paying attention to it and thereby following the orientation prescribed by what appears (Husserl, 2020: 306‒307).

Based on such attentional turning of regard guided by what appears, the tendency that passively moves all intentional acts gets appropriated and acknowledged, it also becomes increasingly determined. This is also the case for a passive habitual belief on which we implicitly rely. As soon as we acknowledge something as our belief or our position-taking, it turns in to a belief for which we stand and may provide justification.Footnote 12 Accordingly, tendency is not only presupposed as a precondition for all conscious modulations and determinations of intentional acts, but it also runs through each of them, as a motor that enables precisely the different orientations.

In general terms, then, the tendency that animates the process of fulfillment can be seen as what moves processes of discovery. In this sense an indeterminate tendency is connected to curiosity as well. But, keeping in mind Meno’s paradox, can we properly speak of a discovery on the basis of an indeterminate tendency? Or would such indeterminacy bring the paradox back?

Curiosity as the Interest in the Unknown

The previous account of intentionality as a tendency paves the way to a reassessing of the intentional structure of curiosity. A hint is already provided if we investigate the motive behind an inquiry into what curiosity is. Indeed, to ask such a question seems to already presuppose curiosity: we ask about curiosity because we are curious about curiosity (Manguel, 2015: 1‒11) or, as Blumenberg puts it, “[i]t is curiosity that draws attention to curiosity” (Blumenberg, 1973: 7). That one cannot express the motives for investigating curiosity without already presupposing curiosity is not to be taken as implying circularity, but rather as performatively revealing the distinctiveness of curiosity: being curious about something determinate—even about curiosity—presupposes curiosity as an indeterminate and open tendency. One may also say: prior to being determined as a striving for something missing, curiosity is an indeterminate drive.Footnote 13 In this sense, it is correct to emphasize, as Sommer does, that, in order to look for something “I must experience my not-knowing as a lack and want to remove it” (Sommer, 2002: 41). But this orientation to something that is missing presupposes a tendency and almost a tension that is itself indeterminate, and that somehow has no definite purpose except its own unfolding.

This, on my reading, is what we can draw from Husserl’s remarks on curiosity (see, notably, Husserl, 2020: 157‒171; 361‒369; 369‒372; 476‒481).Footnote 14 To be sure, these remarks are rather scattered; however, connecting them with the discussion concerning the structure of tendency may allow us to reassess the intentionality of curiosity.

Curiosity as the interest in the unknown, in what comes to cognizance, has the Ego adhere to the object. It is an attracting force, which motivates to hold on and which can, however, be prevailed by other allures. (Husserl:, 2020, 476)

This short passage already allows us to connect the discussion of curiosity with the previous remarks concerning tendency, its different modulations, and the relation to attention. Accordingly, curiosity cannot be reduced to the mental state in which we are when we signitively intend something, or when we possess a conceptual content for which we look for an extensional reference. Or, better: these mental states are also understandable in relation to specific actualizations of curiosity, namely as the concrete manifestations of an indeterminate tendency or drive to get to know the unknown.Footnote 15 Such indeterminate tendency is presupposed in order for our attention to be first captured by something and then for us to notice and focus on what attracts our attention or affects us. This, however, does not mean simply assuming that there is a presupposed, vague drive, but rather that the indeterminate tendency and the determination that arises with the turning-toward or the awakening of attention are related and indeed complementary phenomena. There would be no attention if we were not structurally predisposed to be affected and to trace up the tendency coming from the pull of affection; conversely, we could not orient the indeterminate tendency to anything like cognition if there was no primal determination through the awakening and then the turning of attention. Through attention, curiosity as an indeterminate tendency gets channeled and oriented toward something to be cognitively determined. Accordingly, even the moment of attentional turning-toward may be described as “drive” (Zuwendungstrieb). And while Husserl argues that it would be wrong to consider such a drive as deriving from curiosity, he also contends that curiosity is the underlying force that motivates orientation and determination:

Genetically originally one cannot say that the drive to turn toward instinct is led by curiosity. But immediately curiosity must become the motive, as soon as I experience and have experienced a new thing. Still before I turn to it, curiosity, the pleasure in taking cognition, is already anticipatorily awakened, or as I can also say: originally, no ‘object’ affects me, that is, such that is to be grasped in cognition-taking and to be identified in repeated realizations of cognition and repeated perceptions. In the development, however, the ego soon has only affecting ‘objects’. In this context, one should also think of the higher-level constituted objects. The typical character of the affecting contents (Gehalte) soon conditions the awakening of previously instituted apperceptions and apperceptive apprehensions according to these apperceptions; thus anticipatorily something acoustically affecting is already conscious, in a more or less processed way, as a ‘whistle’, as a locomotive whistle and the like, before the attention, and thus an object affects, and an object of a typical, even if indeterminate structure. It is nevertheless unknown as this and excites the curiosity. (Husserl, 2020: 477)

Despite being quite convolute, this quote paves the way to another answer to Meno’s paradox. Assuming that curiosity is an indeterminate tendency, not yet structured in terms of meaningful but empty intentions, does not mean that a total blank or chaos is at the start of cognitive processes. Emptiness here is not to be understood in a privative sense, but rather as indicating an openness to further experience on the basis of what is given. There is no search beginning from a total blank, nor does the assumption that intentionality is an indeterminate tendency, notably due to the lack of conceptual determination, imply that cognition builds upon chaos. As we learn from Meno’s paradox, if this was the case, we would not be able to start looking for something and even less identify what we look for. Curiosity as an indeterminate tendency needs to be taken in relation to the structure and the genesis of conscious experience, which also includes processes of temporal sedimentation, habitualization, association, protentions, as well as the typologization of what we experience as indeterminate generality. Husserl addresses this issue when he points to the horizon within which tendencies emanating from the given profiles of objects develop as a determinable indeterminacy. This amounts to saying that the determination can only occur within certain “leeways” or “realms” (Spielräume) of implicitly pre-delineated possibilities (Husserl, 2001a: 87; 1973, 31‒39). The indeterminacy that moves intentionality as a tendency in general, and in particular the drive of curiosity, is therefore not a total blank (see, Rang, 1973: 172‒179). And this is also suggested by the previously quoted passage. Turning toward something—e.g., a whistle—awakens our attention and, motivated by curiosity, also awakens previous apperceptions and the related typological apprehensions. As a result, the whistle can be heard or can become an allure for me because it associatively recalls and anticipates other experiences within a realm of possibilities, even without my being aware that “this is a whistle”. Sedimented experience with its implicit typologization is part of what allows us to be affected by something, and to let something capture our attention. Yet, to understand curiosity as an indeterminate tendency also means that all typologies and interpretive patterns we have acquired are confronted and challenged by any new encounter with the things themselves, which awaken our attention and demand to be explored for themselves, even tentatively. And this eventually, may also call into question the very patterns acquired via sedimentation.

Is “curiosity” Just a Synonym of “tendency”?

On the basis of what we have seen about the intentional structure of curiosity, there may arise the question whether “curiosity” means simply the same thing as “tendency”.Footnote 16 On the one hand, we have seen that the intentional structure of tendency seems to adequately describe the drive of curiosity. And since tendency is the basic structure of intentionality, one might conclude that curiosity itself—that is, the drive to cognition—is the fundamental structure of consciousness. On the other hand, simply identifying curiosity with tendency would run into at least two problems. First, curiosity would be deprived of any specific character of its own, and so would no longer be treated as a phenomenon in its own right. In this sense, treating “curiosity” as just another name for the fundamental dynamics of intentional consciousness would elide what is generally meant by the word, and would reduce curiosity to something of little theoretical interest in itself. Second, identifying curiosity with tendency would fail to account for the fact that different types of acts, possibly motivated by other tendencies, may be distinctively modulated by the drive of curiosity or not, and that there are tendencies that do not imply curiosity; for example, one might perceive, remember, read, etc. curiously (or not curiously). This adverbial use already suggests that there is something specific to curiosity beyond its having the intentional structure of a tendency.

In order to avoid these problems and better understand curiosity as a phenomenon in its own right, it is worth addressing how the drive of curiosity may impinge on the structure of intentional acts and what its specific teleological nature consists in. The life of consciousness is articulated in many different types of acts, and phenomenological analysis is concerned with defining lines of demarcation between them, through what I have previously called “cartographic analysis”. These lines of demarcation are intended to highlight the specific intentional structure of each type of act. Through such an analysis, Husserl famously distinguishes objectifying acts (such as perceptions, memories, judgments, etc.) from non-objectifying ones (such as the different types of emotions and volitions). Generally, this analysis of classes of acts proceeds by what we may call ideal–typical reflection. For example, by focusing on an act of perception in order to identify its specific structures, we consider it in abstraction from its connections with acts of other types, such as volitional or emotional acts. Concretely considered, however, acts of different kinds are mutually intertwined as partial acts within what Husserl calls the total act (Gesamtakt) (see Husserl, 2001b: 115–116 and passim). For example, in what we may call a total act of perception, the objectivating act of perception, considered purely in and for itself, is often only a partial act, which has a dominant function and is intertwined with acts of other kinds, notably emotional or volitional. Thus, when I am perceiving an object and am immersed in theoretical exploration of it, I may like or dislike the object, feel pleasure in the activity of perceiving, and form the implicit desire to proceed in such an activity.Footnote 17

Curiosity should be considered in relation to the articulation of such total acts. For arguably, someone who performs, for instance, acts of perception or remembering with curiosity will be motivated to carry out these acts in a particular way. We can specify this “particular way” of performing an act with curiosity as the act being tied to a form of interest in and care for what appears and demands to be known, independently of any practical aims. In the structure of a total act, such interest and care may motivate a form of striving, which can be appropriated and actively directed and may arouse a feeling of pleasurable (or at least not unpleasant) inquietude or anticipatory joy which is related to the process of getting to know. In the progressive fulfillment of our curiosity, we experience a specific kind of joy: “joy in this enrichment, and in relation to this horizon of expanding and increasing enrichment, a striving to get ‘closer and closer’ to the object, to appropriate the self [of the object] even more completely” (Husserl, 2001a: 290). This joy is tied to joy in the mere activity of searching, or “joy in the ‘play’ of searching” (Husserl, 2020: 370). Husserl seems to refer to precisely such a function of curiosity in complex acts in passages like the following:

In the egoic action of cognition, e.g., in progressive perception, “curious” looking around, the “driving force” is precisely the drive for cognition and the curiosity satisfying itself. Instinctive joy of perception, pursuing the units of experience, recognizing and determining them continuously closer, more all-round, richer. The evaluative behavior towards an object, the instinctive search for an object of enjoyment, for that which could bring enjoyment in perception and adhere to an object of value with satisfaction. (Husserl, 2020: 160)

In the structure just described of total acts that can be adverbially qualified by curiosity (perceiving, expecting, remembering, exploring, searching, etc. curiously), the tendency is not just a teleological movement aimed at reaching a complete grasp of the object as it is in itself; it is also an autotelic movement which is valuable in itself and generates a feeling of pleasure in and for itself (Husserl, 2020: 157‒172). The latter is this autotelic aspect that marks the distinction between curiosity and other kinds of teleologically oriented tendencies. A striving for cognition that is animated by curiosity is a striving that “goes through objectivating consciousness” and is “directed towards knowledge and cognition (Kenntnis und Erkenntnis) of the objective ‘self’: to true being, the truth of every form” (Husserl, 2020: 158). Such striving finds its satisfaction in both the process of taking cognizance, which is the “way” in which an activity is performed, and the realization of cognition, which is the “end” of such an activity (Husserl, 2020: 158‒159).

More should be said, however, about the intrinsic value of the process of taking cognizance. What does it mean to say that it is valuable in itself? And what about the value determined by full-fledged acts of evaluation? The point at issue might become clearer in reference to the experience of learning more about something we disvalue. To take an example that has affected everyone’s life in the last few years, one might be interested in exploring the biological characteristics of a new virus and its modes of reproduction, and one will then find any discovery about it valuable, but this does not change the fact that the object of inquiry is experienced as having a negative value. In this example, one might think that the pleasure in taking cognizance of the object is practical or pragmatic: it derives from the fact that, even if the object is evaluated negatively, learning more about it is in the service of something we value positively, namely, preventing the spread of the virus. However, Husserl’s remarks apply not only to these cases but even to cases in which we take pleasure in exploring something we disvalue just for the sake of the pleasure in exploring, independently of any further ends. His examples include theoretical interest in something one disvalues or is disgusted by, such as a nasty smell (Husserl, 2020: 163). This is the satisfaction of pure curiosity, or the pleasure in cognition for its own sake. Such pleasure is indifferent not only with respect to the value of the cognized object—which can be something disgusting or even morally abhorrent—but also with respect to any aims other than cognition itself.

In this connection, Husserl makes a distinction between “formal pleasure” and the pleasure that underlies the constitution of the positive value attributed to an object (Husserl, 2020: 164‒171). Formal pleasure is related simply to the satisfaction of curiosity, independently of how the object is evaluated. It is pleasure in the mere accomplishment of the process of taking cognizance, independently of whatever value we may attribute to the object. This pleasure can be called “formal” not because it is deprived of content, but because it does not depend on any specific content: it is the pleasure that derives solely from the satisfaction of curiosity and its associated drive. This is the same pleasure that, according to Augustine, makes curiosity an ultimately dangerous and sinful feeling, precisely because the pleasure related to it does not discriminate between what is good and what is evil.

Based on these observations, we can understand why curiosity, though it is structured according to the intentionality of tendency, is not simply another name for the fundamental structure of consciousness. Rather, it is a specific kind of drive, which, as I have just described it, modulates the structure of total acts in motivational terms, and can in turn become a disposition in the subject. In this sense, a person who has a curious character is a person who has the disposition and motivation to perform acts in a curious way, that is, with a particularized interest in and care for what appears, taking pleasure in discovery for its own sake.

Conclusion

Curiosity and its intentional structure have been discussed in this article in connection with the problem of the relation between determinate and indeterminate intentional structures, and the specific characteristics of the drive for cognition. We have seen how curiosity cannot be understood simply as what qualifies empty meaning-intentions as determinate intentions: they are indeed expressions of curiosity, but are derivative ones. However, when we consider empty intentions more broadly, and more positively, as the expression of an openness to the variety of experiences, curiosity is better understood in connection with the tendency, or pointing-ahead, from what is given to what is not given, and thus with the striving for what one lacks at the present moment. But even this striving presupposes an indeterminate drive, which we can characterize as a tendency, that is, as the motor of any determinate intentionality. However, to connect curiosity with such an indeterminate tendency is not to assume a totally blank state of consciousness as the starting point for research. Rather, it means explaining curiosity within a genetic and dynamic understanding of the structures of consciousness. This requires us to take into account precisely how an indeterminate drive can be modulated and oriented at distinct layers of consciousness and in distinct acts. A central moment for such determination is attentional turning, which Husserl occasionally also characterizes as a drive of “turning toward”. This attentional turning of regard is the response to being affected, and allows us to focus on or pay attention to something, to identify what is lacking, and thus to move from the Indeterminate drive to a striving directed toward what is currently lacking.

At this point, we can briefly turn to the question of whether and how such an understanding of curiosity may impinge on the meta-theoretical assessment of phenomenological philosophy. In my view, curiosity is an important ingredient in amy critical philosophy, which, as Hume remarks, also entails self-critique (Hume, 2000: 1.4.7.1‒1.4.7.15). On my reading, this applies to Husserl too, insofar as the descriptive priority characterizing phenomenology requires one to maintain openness, attention, and care for what appears, and thus also a readiness to reflect on one’s own assumptions and to revise them if necessary. I take this re-evaluation of assumptions, which is entailed by curiosity considered as an essential ingredient of philosophy, to be complementary to the quest for an ultimate foundation that is characteristic of Husserlian phenomenology. Husserl himself draws a connection between curiosity and theoretical interest, even claiming that “theoretical interest is in any case related to or entirely identical (im Ganzen identisch) to curiosity” (Husserl, 2020: 269).Footnote 18

However, it would be hasty to infer that, in Husserl’s view, curiosity exhausts the specific theoretical interest that pertains to philosophical-phenomenological inquiry. In the passage just quoted, Husserl does not specify the theoretical interest at stake as a specifically philosophical theoretical interest: it could just as well describe the interest of scientists. One might therefore better say that curiosity is the motivational force that underlies the formation of all theoretical interests. Nevertheless, curiosity in this sense, considered in and for itself, is still characterized by a form of philosophical, and certainly transcendental, naiveté (see Deodati, 2011: 69–70; Summa, 2014: 227–233). Such naiveté is related to the fact that one may proceed in investigations motivated by curiosity without raising any questions concerning the eidetic structures of experience and the transcendental ground of experience and cognition. Although, as suggested above, a researcher animated by curiosity has an interest not only in accumulating knowledge but also in identifying structures and in critically reexamining unquestioned assumptions, curiosity does not in itself respond to all the tasks that Husserl considers to be proper to phenomenological philosophy. However, the reference to philosophical naiveté should not be misunderstood either. Indeed, the shift to a genuinely phenomenological attitude, leaving naiveté behind, does not leave behind the propulsive drive and the motivation of curiosity. On the contrary, it integrates this drive into a more articulated and methodologically structured project. The task remains to preserve the engagement of research and the vigilance motivated by curiosity, including its self-critical commitment, even within a methodologically rigorous and self-reflexive philosophical enterprise.