of intentions whose demonstration cannot be borne by the simple perception of the subject matter.
But perhaps such a demonstration is still possible in the less complicated expression of a simple naming, a so-called nominal positing of the kind "the yellow upholstered chair." But upon closer inspection we find a surplus even here. I can see the color yellow but not the being-yellow, being-colored; and the expressive element 'yellow,' that is, the attribute, in its full expression in fact means "the chair being yellow." And this 'being' in this expression and in the one above in the form 'is' cannot be perceived.
'Being' is not a real moment in the chair like the wood, the weight, hardness, or color; nor is it something on the chair like the upholstery and screws. 'Being,' Kant already said, whereby he meant being-real, is not a real predicate of the object. This also holds for being in the sense of the copula. There is obviously no adequation between what is expressed and what is perceived. In content, what is perceived falls short of what the assertion asserts of it. The assertion expresses something which is simply not found perceptually. Accordingly, it seems that we must give up the idea of an adequate fulfillment of assertions and the idea of truth associated with it.
But before we draw conclusions, which is always suspect in philosophy, we first wish to examine the matter a bit more closely. We wish to ask what exactly is here at first left unfulfilled: the 'this,' the 'is,' the 'and.'
We said that color can be seen, but being-colored cannot. Color is something sensory and real. Being, however, is nothing of the sort, for it is not sensory or real. While the real is regarded as the objective, as a structure and moment of the object, the non-sensory is equated with the mental in the subject, the immanent. The real is given from the side of the object, the rest is thought into it by the subject. But the subject is given in inner perception. Will I find 'being,' 'unity,' 'plurality,' 'and,' 'or' in inner perception? The origin of these non-sensory moments lies in immanent perception, in the reflection upon consciousness. This is the argument of British empiricism since Locke. This argumentation has its roots in Descartes, and it is in principle still present in Kant and German idealism, though with essential modification. Today we are in a position to move against idealism precisely on this front only because phenomenology has demonstrated that the non-sensory and ideal cannot without further ado be identified with the immanent, conscious, subjective. This is not only negatively stated but positively shown; and this constitutes the true sense of the discovery of categorial intuition, which we now want to bring out more precisely.
Because the 'is,' 'being,' 'unity,' 'thisness' and the like refer to the non-sensory, and the non-sensory is not real, not objective, hence is