The status of hyletic data in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology

The theory of hyletic data has a crucial function in Husserl’s phenomenology. Relying on this theory, he works out a double schema from sensuous hyle and intentive morphe which allows to cope adequately with many problems in theory of perception and intentionality. In contrast, some phenomenologists and commentators of Husserl, including Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Quintin Smith, Gurwitsch and Sokolowski have questioned this theory and, according to their lights, shown that by removing hyletic data and substituting it with a unitary schema of noetic acts not only theory of intentionality would remain unharmed, but Husserl’s phenomenology could get rid of an unreasonable, untenable element without any explanatory value and intuitive validity. In this essay, I would try to show that without the theory of hyletic data, a substantial part of theoretical system of phenomenology, such as theory of constitution, would become dysfunctional. In responding to these criticisms, my emphasis is mainly on the contribution of hyletic data to the theory of constitution, the formal ontological status of hyletic data as an object under the formal category of dependency, as well as the phenomenological status of these data as foreign entities to ego.