That may not be understood as though everything experienced factically had for me in each case the explicit character of the particular meaning for me. On the contrary, this relatedness-to-me, in such an explicit way, is simply missing. That means that for this experiencing there are no bounds, no barriers. Questions such as: whether the world exists in itself independently of my thoughts, are senseless. There are no thoughts which merely exist somewhere and of which an existing world is supposed to be independent (external world-internal world, etc.)

Factical life does not run across epistemological theories. These are not possible impediments, insofar as it lives in factical relations of meaningfulness.

When I see the acquaintance greeting me and in factical seeing warmly return his greeting, I saw him greeting. I did not at all see the movement of a material body in objective space, which I grasp as a sign of greeting and thereby conclude: now I must also actualize a movement, which is the cause for the other to perceive these particular movements and interpret them as my greeting. Rather, I see him greeting. And the existence of the acquaintance is his particular meaningfulness for me in this situation. If I am in doubt, I do not ask my companion, "Was that arm movement over there real?" rather I ask, "Did that gentleman send a greeting or not?" Or if I jokingly inquire of an acquaintance, "Does he still exist?" and [106] someone answers me, "Yes, I sat down with him the other day in Café Schanz" or: "Today he is having an important book published." Experiencing what is said, I experience his existence, not in such a way that I grasp and hence conclude: Alright, he really is in space and time, just like Mars or the Feldberg, rather the experience of existence terminates in and is satisfied in the characteristic of meaningfulness.²

So, the excitement of the gentleman behind the store-counter who was relating a story exists factically; the despondency of the beginning phenomenologist; the uncouthness of the boy on the street; the infatuation of a friend, and the like; the failure of my expressing myself; my momentary anger over it; my weariness. The meaning of "existence" lies in factical life in the currently experienced, remembered, or expected meaningfulnesses, so that memory-wise, experience-wise, or expectation-wise, experiencing, determined in such and such a way, actualizes itself in a full, concrete unity (opened situation). Also, where theoretical elements are invested in what is particularly experienced, these are there inclusively, entered into the temporally particular living meaningfulness. They do not come into their own according to their stubborn own-meaning [Eigen-Sinn]. Correspondingly, no theoretical comportment is phenomenally demonstrable. They are not intended in the "as" of theoretical objectivity-so, as one says, one already uses certain concepts in daily life, but not as concepts.

84 BASIC PROBLEMS OF PHENOMENOLOGY