Abstract

This article presents itself as an attempt to explain Proust’s expression, “The matter of experience”, from Husserl’s concept of Materie in the Logical Investigations. This Husserlian concept will enable us to rethink the “matter” of experience, as being both intrinsically determined and intrinsically “relational”. Husserl uses this concept of Materie in two main senses. In the fifth Logical Investigation, it is used in order to define the “content” of the act and this concept will be explained in its own equivocation, as it both means the direction of the act and the ideal “signification” which prescribes this very determination. The concept of Materie is also used in the third Logical Investigation to designate the “content” of the object, and will also be explained in its own equivocation, as it both means the individual determination of the object and its essential determination. In the last part of this study, a few of the difficulties which are brought by this double equivocation of Husserl’s concept of Materie will be exposed, and a few programmatic solutions for its redefinition as the unique “matter” of our experience, will be proposed. This investigation might eventually imply a definition of phenomenology itself, as the very experience of this matter