world. One cannot, however, abruptly demarcate the phenomena of these worlds from each other, consider them as isolated formations, ask about their mutual relationships, divide them into genera and species, etc. That would already be a deforming, a sliding into epistemology. An epistemologically performed layering and ranking of these three worlds would already be a violation. Nothing is said here about the relation of the life-worlds; the primary point is that they become accessible to factical life experience. One can only characterize the manner, the how, of the experiencing of those worlds; that is, one can ask about the relational sense of factical life experience. It is questionable whether the how—the relation—determines that which is experienced—the content—and how the content is characterized. We will isolate, furthermore, the taking-cognizance-of or the cognitive experiencing, since philosophy is supposed to be cognitive behavior. First, however, the meaning of this taking-cognizance-of must be understood from the motive of experiencing itself.
The peculiarity of factical life experience consists in the fact that “how I stand with regard to things,” the manner of experiencing, is not co-experienced. What belongs to cognition according to its own meaning must be phenomenologically isolated prior to all decrees that philosophy is cognition. Factical life experience puts all its weight on its content; the how of factical life experience at most merges into its content. All alteration of life takes place in the content. During the course of a factically experienced day, I deal with quite different things; but in the factical course of life, I do not become aware of the different hows of my reactions to those different things. Instead, I encounter them at most in the content I experience itself: factical life experience manifests an indifference with regard to the manner of experiencing. It does not even occur to factical life experience that something might not become accessible to it. This factical experience engages, as it were, all concerns of life. The differences and changes of emphasis are found entirely in the content itself. The self-sufficiency of factical life experience is, therefore, grounded upon this indifference, an indifference which extends itself to everything; it decides even the highest matters within this self-sufficiency. Thus, if we pay attention to the peculiar indifference of factical experience to all factical life, a specific, constant sense of the surrounding world, the communal world, and the self-world becomes clear to us: everything that is experienced in factical life experience, as well as all of its content, bears the character of significance. But with this, no epistemological decision has been made, either in the sense of some kind of realism or in the sense of some kind of idealism. All of my factical life situations are experienced in the manner of significance which determines the content of experience itself. This becomes clear if I ask myself how I experience myself in factical life experience:—no theories!
Generally, one analyzes only theoretically and thoroughly formed concepts