Edmund Husserl (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Edmund Husserl (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Browse
Table of Contents
What's New
Random Entry
Chronological
Archives
About
Editorial Information
About the SEP
Editorial Board
How to Cite the SEP
Special Characters
Advanced Tools
Contact
Support SEP
Support the SEP
PDFs for SEP Friends
Make a Donation
SEPIA for Libraries
Entry Contents
Bibliography
Academic Tools
Friends PDF Preview
Author and Citation Info
Edmund Husserl
First published Fri Aug 8, 2025
Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) is the founding father of
phenomenology and a figure with a decisive impact on the development
of twentieth century philosophy. He influenced not only thinkers like
Martin Heidegger, Edith Stein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul
Sartre, but also many other figures in European philosophy. Husserl is
primarily known for his analyses of intentionality, perception,
temporality, embodiment and intersubjectivity, for his rehabilitation
of the lifeworld and his commitment to a form of transcendental
idealism and for his criticism of reductionism, objectivism, and
scientism. In recent years, his analyses have influenced discussions
in social philosophy, philosophy of mind and the cognitive
sciences.
1. Life and work
2. Ideality and intentionality in the Logical Investigations
3. The transcendental turn: Epoché, phenomenological reduction, and transcendental idealism
4. Time- and self-consciousness
5. Embodiment, intersubjectivity and objectivity
6. The lifeworld
7. Personhood and ethics
Bibliography
A. Primary Literature
A.1 Husserliana (Cited Hua)
A.2 Husserliana Materialenband (cited Hua Mat)
A.3 Other Cited Works by Husserl
B. Secondary Literature
B.1 Cited works
B.2 Other major critical works
Academic Tools
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries
1. Life and work
Husserl was born on April 8, 1859, in a Jewish family in
Proßnitz, Moravia. The city is currently located in the Czech
Republic but was then part of the Austrian Empire. In 1876 Husserl
moved to Leipzig to commence university studies in astronomy,
mathematics, physics and philosophy. One of his philosophy teachers in
Leipzig was Wilhelm Wundt, one of the founders of experimental
psychology. In 1878, Husserl continued his studies in mathematics in
Berlin under the supervision of Leopold Kronecker and Karl
Weierstrass. During his time in Berlin, he became a close friend of
Tomáš Masaryk, who later became the first president of
Czechoslovakia. In 1881, Husserl left for Vienna to complete his PhD
in mathematics. He obtained the degree in January 1883 with a work
entitled
Contributions to the Calculus of Variations
Soon after, Husserl started as Weierstrass’ assistant in Berlin.
But when Weierstrass became seriously ill, Masaryk suggested that
Husserl should return to Vienna to study with the prominent
psychologist and philosopher Franz Brentano, the author of
Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint
(1874). Husserl
attended Brentano’s lectures from 1884 to 1886, and they made
such an impression on him that he decided to switch to philosophy.
Brentano recommended Husserl to his pupil Carl Stumpf in Halle, and it
was in Halle that Husserl submitted his habilitation thesis
On the
Concept of Number
in 1887.
After having obtained his habilitation, which was a requirement for a
university career, Husserl became a Privatdozent at the University of
Halle, where he would spend the next 14 years. In 1891, he published
his first book
Philosophy of Arithmetic
that combined his
interests in mathematics, philosophy and psychology and which sought
to provide a psychological foundation for mathematics. The book was
critically reviewed by Gottlob Frege, who accused Husserl of
psychologism (Frege
1894).
In the following years, Husserl worked on foundational problems in
epistemology and theory of science. His reflections on these themes
ultimately led to the publication of the monumental
Logical
Investigations
in 1900–1901, which Husserl himself
considered his “breakthrough” to phenomenology (Hua 18/8
[2001/I: 3]). The publication secured Husserl a position at the
Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, where he taught from
1901 to 1916, first as an
Extraordinarius Professor
, and from
1906 as an
Ordinarius Professor
. Due to the resounding
success of
Logical Investigations
and because of
Husserl’s steadily increasing reputation, a number of young
scholars including Adolf Reinach, Alexandre Koyré, Edith Stein,
Helmuth Plessner, Moritz Geiger, and Roman Ingarden gathered in
Göttingen (Salice 2015 [2020]), and the university quickly became
one of the most important centers for philosophy in Germany.
Husserl’s initial criticism of psychologism, his sustained
defense of the irreducibility of ideality, and his focus on things as
they are encountered in experience were interpreted by many of his
early followers as a turn away from the subject and toward the objects
and as a legitimization of essentialism (Reinach 1914 [1968]). In the
first decade of the twentieth century, Husserl continued to refine and
modify his phenomenological approach, and it caused consternation when
he in his next major work
Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology
and to a Phenomenological Philosophy I
(commonly referred to as
Ideas I
) from 1913 endorsed a form of transcendental
idealism. For many of the early phenomenologists, such a move
constituted a betrayal of the core ideas of phenomenology, whereas
Husserl often complained that their reluctance to follow his
transcendental turn simply meant that they had failed to fully
understand his philosophical project, had failed to really grasp what
phenomenology was all about.
In 1916, Husserl moved to Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg,
where he took over the chair in philosophy from the neo-Kantian
Heinrich Rickert. In the years 1916–1918, Edith Stein worked as
his assistant. Stein’s primary work was to edit Husserl’s
research manuscripts and prepare them for publication. She worked on
Husserl’s
Ideas II
(eventually published in 1952) and
on his
Lectures on the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of
Internal Time
, which was published by Martin Heidegger in 1928
(with only the slightest acknowledgment of Stein’s work). Rather
than engaging with Stein’s revisions, Husserl tended to produce
new texts and in the end this lack of engagement with her work made
Stein resign from her position in frustration. In the period
1919–1923, Heidegger then became Husserl’s assistant.
Husserl had great hopes for the collaboration and worked hard to
ensure that Heidegger would become his successor in Freiburg, but
while Heidegger was eager for Husserl to help him secure a permanent
position and even dedicated
Being and Time
“to Edmund
Husserl in friendship and admiration”, he also attacked and
ridiculed Husserl in his own seminars and letters. As Heidegger wrote
to Karl Löwith in 1923,
In the final hours of the seminar, I publicly burned and destroyed the
Ideas
to such an extent that I dare say that the essential
foundations for the whole [of my work] are now cleanly laid out.
Looking back from this vantage point to the
Logical
Investigations
, I am now convinced that Husserl was never a
philosopher, not even for one second in his life. (quoted in Sheehan
1997: 17)
When Husserl retired in 1928, he was succeeded by Heidegger. Shortly
after his retirement, Husserl was invited to Paris to give a series of
lectures meant to introduce a French audience to the basic ideas of
phenomenology. These lectures were later translated into French by
Emmanuel Levinas and Gabrielle Peiffer and published as
Cartesian
Meditations
in 1931. During the thirties, Husserl came to suffer
under the German National Socialist regime. Husserl had converted to
Protestantism already in 1886, but was now barred from any kind of
official academic activity due to his Jewish ancestry, and lost his
right to teach and publish, and eventually also his German
citizenship. Husserl was deeply affected by this development. As he
wrote to his longtime friend Dietrich Mahnke on May 4, 1933,
Finally, in my old age, I had to experience something I had not deemed
possible: the erection of a spiritual ghetto, into which I and my
children … are to be driven … We are no longer to have
the right to call ourselves German; our spiritual work is no longer to
be included in German cultural history. It shall only live on with the
stamp of “Jewishness”… as a poison that German
people should be wary of and that must be eradicated. (Husserl 1994:
iii 491–2)
In the same letter, Husserl also expressed bitterness vis-à-vis
Heidegger and accused him of not only propagating a caricature of
Husserl’s own philosophy, but also of giving vent to more and
more explicit antisemitic sentiments (Husserl 1994: iii 493). Despite
all, Husserl continued his work, insisting ever more passionately on
the relevance of philosophy at a time when Europe was descending into
irrationalism. In 1935, he was invited to give lectures in Vienna and
Prague, and these lectures constituted the foundation for his last
work,
The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology
(1936). Only the first two parts of
Crisis
initially appeared in print and were published in a Belgrade
philosophy journal.
The books published by Husserl during his lifetime only made up a very
small part of his enormous production. He had the habit of writing
every day, and when he died on April 27, 1938, these so-called
research manuscripts (together with his lectures manuscripts and still
unpublished books) amounted to some 45,000 pages. In Husserl’s
own estimate, the most important part of his writings was to be found
in these manuscripts (Husserl 1994: iii 90). All these writings were,
for evident reasons, not safe in Germany. (Almost the entire first
edition of the posthumously published work
Experience and
Judgment
, published in Prague in 1939, was destroyed by the
Germans after their annexation of Czechoslovakia.) But shortly after
Husserl’s death, a young Franciscan, Hermann Leo Van Breda,
succeeded in smuggling Husserl’s research manuscripts out of
Germany and to safety in a monastery in Belgium. Before the start of
the Second World War, the Husserl Archives were established at the
Institute of Philosophy in Leuven, where the original manuscripts are
still to be found. The first international visitor to the archives was
Merleau-Ponty, who in the spring of 1939 gained access to the
unpublished third part of
Crisis
as well as to the
typescripts for
Ideas II
and
Experience and
Judgment
At the time of the founding of the archives, the critical edition of
Husserl’s works—
Husserliana
—began. The
critical edition, which so far contains forty-four volumes, consists
not only of new editions of the works that were published during
Husserl’s life, but also, and more importantly, of previously
unpublished works, articles, lectures, papers, and research
manuscripts. The continuing publication of the Husserliana has made it
necessary to revise and modify a number of widespread and dominant
interpretations. This is so not only because the new material has
offered a plethora of analyses and descriptions that allow for a more
precise grasp of Husserl’s phenomenological core concepts, but
also because they have disclosed aspects of his thinking, including an
interest in facticity, embodiment, sociality, passivity, historicity,
and ethics that it would have been difficult to anticipate through a
study of the few works published during Husserl’s life.
Husserl’s influence on the development of twentieth-century
philosophy has been immense. This is not to say, of course, that
everybody agreed with him; but the fact that subsequent
phenomenologists, including Heidegger, Stein, Ingarden, Schutz, Fink,
Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Henry, and
Marion, as well as leading theorists from a whole range of other
traditions, including hermeneutics, critical theory, deconstruction,
and post-structuralism, felt a need to react and respond to
Husserl’s project and program testifies to his importance.
Given its size, how to offer a concise presentation of Husserl’s
work? In the following, the focus will be on the development of what
is arguably the centerpiece of Husserl’s philosophy, namely his
phenomenology.
As Husserl’s continuing efforts to write a comprehensive
introduction to phenomenology makes clear, he thought of the latter as
the cornerstone and framework for whatever other topics he was
engaging with philosophically:
Phenomenology in our sense is the science of “origins”, of
the “mothers” of all cognition; and it is the maternal
ground of all philosophical method: to this ground and to the work in
it, everything leads back. (Hua 5/80)
2. Ideality and intentionality in the Logical Investigations
In the preface to the massive 700+ pages
Logical
Investigations
(1900–01), Husserl writes that his
overarching aim is to provide a new foundation for logic and
epistemology (Hua 18/6 [2001/I: 2]; for in depth discussions of the
work, see, e.g., de Boer 1966 [1978], Benoist 2001). The main task of
the first part,
Prolegomena to Pure Logic
, is twofold: To
offer a criticism of psychologism and to argue that scientific
knowledge presupposes ideality. The position Husserl is targeting
claims that the task of epistemology is to investigate the nature of
our perceiving, believing, judging, and knowing. Since all of these
phenomena are psychical processes, it may seem that only psychology
can investigate them. This also holds true for our scientific and
logical reasoning, and ultimately logic must therefore be regarded as
part of psychology and the laws of logic as psycho-logical
regularities, whose nature and validity must be empirically
investigated and established (Hua 18/64, 89 [2001/I: 40, 56]).
As Husserl argues, this line of reasoning commits the mistake of
ignoring the fundamental difference between the domains of logic and
psychology, “between ideal and real laws, between normative and
causal regulation, between logical and real necessity, between logical
and real grounds” (Hua 18/80 [2001/I: 50]). Logic is not an
empirical science and is not concerned with the genesis of
spatiotemporal objects or processes, but with the validity of ideal
structures and laws. Psychology by contrast is an empirical science
that investigates the empirical nature of consciousness. Whereas the
domain of logic is characterized by certainty and exactness, the
domain of psychology is characterized by the same mere probability as
all empirical sciences (Hua 18/181 [2001: I/113–114]). A further
mistake made by psychologism is that it doesn’t distinguish
sufficiently between the
object
of knowledge and the
act
of knowing. Whereas the act of knowing is a subjective
process that elapses in time and has a beginning and an end, the
objects of logic, the logical truths, theories, principles,
propositions, sentences, and proofs are not subjective experiences
with temporal duration, but atemporal idealities. When I think of the
theorem of Pythagoras and when you think of it, we must be able to
think about the same theorem, even if our respective thought processes
are different (Hua 19/49, 97–98 [2001/I: 195, 224–225]).
If the content of our thought was reducible to our processes of
thinking, we would never be able to repeat and retain the same content
across numerically different acts. And that would preclude not only
ordinary communication and understanding, but also the development of
scientific theory. The reduction of atemporal idealities (including
the universally valid laws of logic) to temporal psychic processes is
consequently not only a category mistake; it also undermines the very
possibility of psychologism itself qua scientific theory.
As Husserl then emphasizes, however, even though logic and psychology
differ, we are still confronted with the puzzling fact that the
objectivity and ideality of logic are known in and by subjective acts
of cognition. And he then insists that a comprehensive analysis of the
possibility of knowledge calls for a more detailed investigation of
the relation between the objective and the subjective (Hua 18/7
[2001/I: 2]). This is precisely the goal of the second part of the
Logical Investigations
, entitled
Investigations into
Phenomenology and the Theory of Knowledge
, which not only
culminates in an extended analysis of intentionality, but also offers
a new philosophical method, a method called
‘phenomenology’ (Hua 9/28).
It is in the introduction to the second part of
Logical
Investigations
that we find Husserl’s initial formulation
of a phenomenological core idea:
We can absolutely not rest content with “mere words”
[…]. Meanings inspired only by remote, confused, inauthentic
intuitions—if by any intuitions at all—are not enough: we
must go back to the “things themselves”. (Hua 19/10
[2001/I: 168])
The central idea articulated in this quote is an aversion against
empty speculation and high-flying abstract theorizing and an
insistence on the importance of carefully attending to what is
actually given with the aim of avoiding what Spiegelberg would later
call the “premature straitjacketing of the phenomena by
preconceived theories” (Spiegelberg 1972: 308).
This focus on the experiential given had a decisive impact on what is
arguably Husserl’s main accomplishment in the
Logical
Investigations
, namely his detailed analysis of intentionality.
Every intentional experience is an experience of a specific type,
i.e., an experience of hoping, desiring, regretting, affirming,
doubting, wondering, fearing, etc., and each of these experiences is
characterized by being of or about or directed at an object in a
particular and distinctive way. For Husserl, a central task was to
analyze these differences in detail, to map out the way they are
systematically interrelated, and more generally to inquire into and
investigate how objects can appear to us in the way they do and with
the meaning they have.
For Husserl, intentionality is a distinctive feature of our
experiential life (although he also allows for a subset of
non-intentional sensations such as pain or dizziness) (Hua 3/192). It
is a feature that is inherent to the conscious states in question, it
is an integral part of their being and is not one they only come to
possess in virtue of being influenced by an external cause. As Husserl
would formulate it in a later text:
The specific experience of this house, this body, of a world as such,
is and remains, however, according to its own essential content and
thus inseparably, experience “of this house”, this body,
this world; this is so for every mode of consciousness which is
directed towards an object. It is, after all, quite impossible to
describe an intentional experience—even if illusionary, an
invalid judgment, or the like—without at the same time
describing the object of that consciousness as such. (Hua 9/282; see
also Hua 19/451 [2001/II: 133])
One important conceptual distinction drawn by Husserl is between what
he calls the
matter
and the
quality
of the
intentional experience. On the one hand, we have the component that
determines not only
what
the intentional experience is about,
but also
as what
it is intended. Husserl calls this component
the matter of the act. Thinking about Bilbao as the de facto capital
of the Basque Country and thinking about Bilbao as the city with a
Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry, are intentional experiences
with different matters. Occasionally, Husserl also designates the
matter of the act as the ideal
meaning
or
sense
of
the act and argues that the intentional reference to an object is
secured through the meaning (Hua 19/54 [2001/I: 198]; Hua 24/53, 150).
As he writes “In meaning, a relation to an object is
constituted” (Hua 19/59 [2001/I: 201]). Importantly, however,
when assigning this important role to meaning, Husserl does not merely
have linguistically articulated meanings in mind, since he also
operates with notions of pre-predicative and perceptual meaning (Hua
3/285).
On the other hand, we have the component that determines the specific
character of the intentional reference. I can doubt, hope or firmly
believe that the Frank Gehry designed Guggenheim Museum is located in
Bilbao. Husserl calls this component the quality of the act (Hua
19/425–426 [2001/II: 119–120]). The same act-quality can
be combined with different matters, and the same matter can be
combined with different act-qualities. It is possible to
doubt
“that the financial crisis will continue”,
to
doubt
“that the election was fair”, or to
doubt
“that the climate crisis is fake news”,
just as it is possible to
doubt
“that it rains”,
hope
“that it rains”, or
deny
“that it rains” (Hua 19/381 [2001/II: 96]). Although the
matter and quality are independently variable, they cannot occur
independently of each other. You cannot simply judge, or imagine, or
fear, nor can you be intentionally directed at a certain object
without being directed at the object in a specific manner.
As long as we focus on our ability to mean something, we can make do
with the quality-matter dyad, or with what Husserl also calls the
intentional essence
(Hua 19/431 [2001/I: 122]). But as
Husserl then points out, two intentional acts can have one and the
same intentional essence and still differ descriptively, namely in
terms of how their object is given. A further central distinction in
Logical Investigations
is that between
signitive
and
intuitive
forms of givenness
I can think that my passport is lying in my desk drawer. I can also
perceive that it is lying in my desk drawer. In the latter case, the
passport is not simply meant or represented, but presented. As long as
I am simply thinking about the passport, the passport is my
intentional object, but it is not given in any intuitive manner. When
I, by contrast, look at the passport, it is given to me directly in
its bodily presence (
leibhaftig
) (Hua 19/365
[2001/II: 86]). Husserl also talks of the perceptual givenness as the
self-givenness or self-presentation of the object (Hua 19/646
[2001/II: 260]). As he writes in
Thing and Space
the object stands in perception as there in the flesh, it stands, to
speak still more precisely, as actually present, as self-given there
in the current now. (Hua 16/14)
First having a belief about the location of the passport and then
seeing it being there constitutes a situation where what was initially
merely meant is then also intuitively given. The
object that is
intended
remains one and the same, but the
how of its
givenness
differs between being ‘empty’ and being
intuitively ‘fulfilled’ (Rang 1973: 23), and this
difference in the mode of givenness of the object along the
signitive-intuitive spectrum is not due to any difference in the
intentional essence (Hua 30/72; Hua 19/435 [2001/II: 124]). Thinking
about the passport being in the drawer and seeing it in the drawer are
two acts with the same quality and matter; they target the same
intentional object, but the object is given differently in the two
cases. Apart from the quality and the matter of the act, there is
consequently a further feature of intentionality, which is of
particular relevance for knowledge, namely intuitive content (
Fülle
).
While present in intuitive acts, it is
absent in signitive acts (Hua 19/600, 626 [2001/II: 229, 246]).
For Husserl, justification and truth must be understood on the basis
of a model of epistemic fulfillment. If I happen to believe that my
passport is in the desk drawer, and if I want to know whether my
belief is true, the obvious thing to do is to look. Perceiving that
the passport is in the drawer offers a very different kind of reason
for believing that the passport is in the drawer than simply thinking
or imagining that the passport is in the drawer. It offers an
immediate non-inferential form of justification by bringing us the
fullness of the thing itself. Another term used by Husserl in this
context is that of
evidence
(Hua 11/72). For Husserl,
evidence is not some ineffable feeling of certainty (Hua 24/156), but
the name for a synthesis of coincidence (
Deckungssynthesis
between the meant and the given.
When an object is given intuitively just as it is meant, it is given
evidentially, and as Husserl then continues, the objective correlate
of this evidence is “
being in the sense of truth
or
simply
truth
” (Hua 19/651 [2001/II: 263]).
Given the central role ascribed to intuition, it cannot wonder that it
figures prominently in an epistemic principle that Husserl would
endorse in
Ideas I
, and which he called the
principle of
all principles
that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of
cognition, that everything originarily (so to speak, in its
“personal” actuality) offered to us in
“intuition” is to be accepted simply as what it is
presented as being, but also only within the limits in which it is
presented there. (Hua 3/51, italics removed)
There has been ample discussion of how exactly to interpret this
principle, but Wiltsche has recently proposed the following
reconstruction:
If object P is exhibited to a subject S in intuitive givenness, then S
has at least prima facie justification for believing that P exists and
that P has those properties which are exhibited intuitively. (Wiltsche
2015: 68; for more on Husserl’s theory of truth and knowledge,
see Tugendhat 1970; Hopp 2011, 2020: 217–235)
To complicate matters, epistemic fulfillment can come in degrees and
it is therefore also necessary to distinguish different types of
evidence. When an empty or signitive intention is completely fulfilled
by a corresponding intuition, Husserl speaks of the object as being
given with
adequate evidence
(Hua 19/647 [2001/II:
260–261]). But this ideal is never satisfied in ordinary
perception, which always remains inadequate. When I look at my desk,
the desk is my intentional object, but I never see the entire desk
from all sides at once. There is always more to the intended desk than
what shows itself at any given moment (Hua 11/3). This is not to say
that there is no room for evidence in perceptual experience, but it is
precisely a type of
inadequate evidence
(Hua 3/319), i.e.,
one that is “
capable of being increased and
decreased
” (Hua 3/321). More generally speaking, Husserl
readily recognizes that our beliefs can be overturned and that what
seemed evident can turn out not to be so—though only on the
basis of further evidence. As he writes in
Formal and
Transcendental Logic
The possibility of deception is inherent in the evidence of experience
and does not annul either its fundamental character or its effect
[…]. This too holds for
every
evidence, for every
“experience” in the amplified sense. Even an ostensibly
apodictic evidence can become disclosed as deception and, in that
event, presupposes a similar evidence by which it is
“shattered”. (Hua 17/164)
A further complication to add, concerns Husserl’s distinction
between simple intentions and more complex or categorial intentions. I
can think about and see a passport. But I can also see that the
passport is purple and that the passport is lying in the drawer, i.e.,
I can not only perceive individuals and individual properties, but
also the passport’s-being-purple and state of affairs with
formal or categorial elements. Importantly, just as one can
distinguish between merely thinking about a tree and intuiting the
tree in its self-presence, Husserl argues that, say, state of affairs
can be given not only signitively, but also intuitively. It is
possible to intuit that the passport is lying in the drawer, but only
by means of a higher-order act which, although based or founded on
perceptions of the passport and the drawer, nevertheless intends
something that transcends these objects, namely their relationship.
Husserl consequently operates with an enlarged concept of intuition:
We can not only speak of a
sensuous intuition
, but also of a
categorial intuition
(Hua 19/670–685 [2001/II:
280–289]). Formally speaking, the intuition is an act that
brings us the object itself
in propria persona
, and
this often calls for a complex intellectual performance (see also
Zahavi 2003: 35–37).
Given the way Husserl speaks of perception, it should by now not come
as a surprise that he explicitly rejects the idea that perceptual
consciousness is representationally mediated (Hua 22/305). Nothing
might seem more natural than to say that the objects I see are outside
my consciousness and that I am able to do so because my consciousness
contains internal representations of these external objects. However,
as Husserl argues, this theory does not only not offer any real
clarification of perceptual intentionality (Hua 19/436 [2001/II: 125];
Hua 24/151), but is ultimately countersensical. It conceives of
consciousness as a box containing representations that resemble
external objects, but it forgets to ask how the subject is supposed to
know that the representations are in fact representations of external
objects. As Husserl writes,
The ego is not a tiny man in a box that looks at the pictures and then
occasionally leaves his box in order to compare the external objects
with the internal ones etc. For such a picture observing ego, the
picture would itself be something external; it would require its own
matching internal picture, and so on
ad infinitum
(Hua 36/106)
If we actually do pay attention to perceptual intentionality, we
should realize that it does not confront us with pictures or signs of
objects—except, of course, in so far as we are perceiving
paintings or photographs—but with the objects themselves. When
we see a photo of the Guggenheim Museum or Dürer’s portrait
of Emperor Maximilian, we are faced with a complicated form of
intentionality, where our awareness of one entity (the photo or
painting) allows us to be aware of another thing (the building or
person). We are directed not at that which we perceive, but through
it, at something else. In ordinary perception, by contrast, the
perceptually given does not function as a sign or picture of something
else. Some have argued that a picture is something that resembles what
it depicts, and that it is the resemblance that imbues the picture
with its pictorial or representational quality. But mere resemblances
will not do. A matchbox contains numerous matches that resemble each
other, but that does not make one a picture or sign of the other.
Rather, according to Husserl we should realize that a picture must be
consciously apprehended
as
a picture in order to function as
a representation of something else (Hua 36/106–107). It only
acquires its representational quality by means of a special cognitive
apprehension (Hua 19/437 [2001/II: 125–126]). More specifically,
we must perceive the object that is to function as a sign or picture
in order to confer its representational quality upon it. This is why
the representational theory of perception must be rejected. It
presupposes that which it seeks to explain (for recent discussions of
Husserl’s theory of perception, see Overgaard 2022, Doyon
2024).
3. The transcendental turn: Epoché, phenomenological reduction, and transcendental idealism
The very attempt to offer a careful description of our psychological
life, the very idea that intentionality is a distinctive feature of
mental states, can already be found in the work of Brentano, whose
lectures in Vienna, as we have seen, Husserl had attended in the
1880s. It is consequently natural to ask whether Husserl was not
simply continuing the project commenced by Brentano. There are good
reasons to resist this conclusion, however. One reason is that
Brentano explicitly defended the claim that psychology is the
theoretical science on which other disciplines including logic ought
to be based (Brentano 1874 [1973: 15–16]). A further number of
reasons is listed by Husserl in a late letter to Marvin Farber from
June 18, 1937:
Even though I began in my youth as an enthusiastic admirer of
Brentano, I must admit I deluded myself, for too long, and in a way
hard to understand now, into believing that I was a co-worker on his
philosophy, especially, his psychology. But in truth, my way of
thinking was a totally different one from that of Brentano already in
my first work […]. In a formal sense, Brentano asks for and
provides a psychology whose whole topic is the “psychic
phenomena” which he on occasions defines also as
“consciousness of something”. But his psychology is
anything but a science of intentionality, the proper problems of
intentionality never dawned upon him. He even failed to see that no
given experience of consciousness can be described without a
description of the correlated “intentional object ‘as
such’” (for example, that this perception of the desk can
only be described, when I describe this desk as what and just as it is
perceived). (Husserl 1994: iv 82)
One important feature of Husserl’s theory of intentionality that
is highlighted in the quote is the idea that one cannot analyze
intentional experiences properly without also considering their
objective correlate, i.e., the intended object (Hua 9/282).
Ultimately, however, Husserl would also argue for the reverse
implication: We cannot philosophically comprehend what it means for
something to be a perceived object, a remembered event, a judged state
of affairs, if we ignore the intentional states (the perception, the
remembering, the judging) that reveal these objects to us. In his last
work
Crisis
, Husserl would refer to this discovery of the
correlational a priori
as the decisive accomplishment of
Logical Investigations
The first breakthrough of this universal a priori of correlation
between experienced object and manners of givenness (which occurred
during work on my
Logical Investigations
around 1898)
affected me so deeply that my whole subsequent life-work has been
dominated by the task of systematically elaborating on this a priori
of correlation. (Hua 6/169 [1970: 166]; see also Beck 1928: 611)
In the first edition of
Logical Investigations
, Husserl had
been so imprudent as to characterize phenomenology as descriptive
psychology (Hua 19/23–24 [2001/I: 176]). He soon came to regret
this as a serious mischaracterization (Hua 22/206–208), and a
few years later, Husserl would argue that if one really wishes to
develop phenomenology as an a priori epistemology, if one really
wishes to understand the intentionality of consciousness and the
phenomena, then one would have to leave a purely descriptive
phenomenology behind in favor of a transcendental phenomenology (Hua
24/425–427).
For Husserl, Descartes should always be recognized as the thinker who
inaugurated a new epoch-making type of philosophy by effectuating a
radical first-personal turn from “naïve Objectivism to
transcendental subjectivism” (Hua 1/46, see also Hua 6/83 [1970:
81]). At the same time, however, Husserl also considered
Descartes’ own execution of this turn so flawed that he found it
necessary to “reject nearly all the well-known doctrinal content
of the Cartesian philosophy” (Hua 1/43). As for Kant, Husserl
had initially been strongly influenced by Brentano’s negative
appraisal, but he eventually came to realize the deep affinity between
his own project and that of Kant (Husserl 1994: v 4). And as Husserl
explicitly admits, when he decided to designate his own phenomenology
as ‘transcendental’, he was precisely pointing to the
Kantian legacy (Hua 7/230, 240).
Ideas I
from 1913 marks Husserl’s explicit embrace of
transcendental philosophy. One significant difference between
Logical Investigations
and
Ideas I
is that Husserl
in the intervening years came to the realization that certain
methodological steps—the epoché and transcendental
reduction—were required if phenomenology was to accomplish its
designated task. Whereas both methodological concepts are absent in
Logical Investigations
, they came to play a decisive role as
part of Husserl’s transcendental turn. In his introductory
remarks to the third part of
Ideas I
, which contains an
in-depth analysis of intentionality, Husserl writes that one can use
the term ‘phenomenology’ without having apprehended the
transcendental attitude, but that one in this case will be using the
term with no proper grasp of what it designates (Hua 3/200). But what
is the epoché and the reduction? One way to answer this
question is by looking closer at their motivation. Why were they
introduced in the first place?
Husserl kept revising and refining his account in the years following
the publication of
Ideas I
, but one recurrent idea is his
emphasis on the difference between the philosophical attitude and
other modes of experience and thinking. In ordinary life we are so
absorbed in the world that we simply take its reality for granted; it
is simply there waiting to be discovered and investigated. This stance
towards the world is so fundamental and deeply rooted that Husserl
calls it the
natural attitude
. It is an attitude that also
pervades positive science, but it must be contrasted with the properly
philosophical attitude, which critically questions the very foundation
of experience and scientific thought (Hua 25/13–14). Philosophy
is a discipline that does not simply contribute to or augment the
scope of our positive knowledge, but which instead investigates the
basis of this knowledge and asks how it is possible. Rather than
simply taking reality as the unquestioned point of departure, rather
than focusing on
what
the world contains, we need to attend
to the question of what it means for something to be given as real in
the first place, we need to focus on the
how
of its
givenness. Every object-oriented investigation presupposes that
objects can appear in such a manner that they can be targets of
further exploration and explanation. And in order to examine the
structures that allow and enable such object-manifestation, a new type
of inquiry is called for, a type of reflective inquiry that
is prior to all natural knowledge and science and is on an
entirely different plane than natural science
” (Hua
24/176). But for this investigation to be possible, we cannot simply
continue to live in the natural attitude. We keep it, in order to be
able to investigate it, but we bracket its validity. It is this
procedure that is known by the name of
epoché
The purpose of the epoché is not
to doubt, neglect, abandon, or exclude reality from our research;
rather its aim is to suspend or neutralize a certain dogmatic
attitude
towards reality. We must take a step back from our
naive and unexamined immersion in the world and thematize the fact
that reality is always revealed and examined from some perspective or
another. As Husserl points out in a lecture from 1931, the only thing
that is excluded as a result of the epoché is a certain
naivety, the naivety of simply taken the world for granted, thereby
ignoring the contribution of consciousness (Hua 27/173). And as
Husserl repeatedly insists in this 1931 lecture, the turn from a
naïve exploration of the world to a reflective exploration of its
givenness does not entail a turning away from the world, rather, it is
a turn that for the first time makes the world accessible for
philosophical inquiry (Hua 27/178). We do not lose the world as a
result of the epoché, but from now on it must be considered
solely as an intentional correlate (Hua 34/58):
“The” world is not lost as a result of the epoché.
The epoché is by no means a suspension of the being of the
world and of every world-oriented judgment; rather, it is the path
leading to the discovery of correlational judgements. (Hua 15/366)
The world as “phenomenon”, as world in the epoché,
is merely a modality, in which the same ego, for whom the world is
pregiven, reflects on this pregivenness and on what it contains, and
for that reason doesn’t abandon the world and its validity, nor
makes it disappear. (Hua 34/223)
To put it differently, by adopting the phenomenological attitude, we
do not turn the gaze inwards in order to examine the happenings in a
private interior sphere. Rather we look at how the world shows up to
the subject. We pay attention to how and as what worldly objects are
given to us. But in doing so, by analyzing how and as what any object
presents itself to us, we also come to discover the intentional acts
and experiential structures in relation to which any appearing object
must necessarily be understood. We realize our own subjective
accomplishments and the intentionality that is at play in order for
worldly objects to appear in the way they do and with the validity and
meaning that they have. This is why Husserl in
Crisis
can
compare the performance of the epoché to the transition from a
two-dimensional to a three-dimensional life (Hua 6/121 [1970: 119]).
It is a reflective move that allows for an expansion rather than a
narrowing of the field of research (Hua 1/66, 6/154 [1970: 151]).
Strictly speaking, the epoché can be seen as the first step
towards what Husserl terms the
transcendental reduction
which is his name for the systematic analysis of the intentional
correlation between subjectivity and world. This is a more prolonged
analysis that
leads
from the natural sphere
back to
re-ducere
) its transcendental foundation (Hua
1/21). Both epoché and reduction can consequently be seen as
elements of a transcendental reflection, the purpose of which is to
liberate us from our natural(istic) dogmatism and make the
“correlation between constituting subjectivity and constituted
objectivity intelligible” (Hua 9/336). Indeed, as Husserl
already pointed out in
Ideas I
, the greatest and most
important problems in phenomenology are related to the question of how
objectivities of different kinds, from the prescientific to those of
the highest scientific dignity, are constituted by consciousness (Hua
3/196). It is for this very reason, that Husserl can write that there
is not only a phenomenology of natural scientific thinking, but also a
phenomenology of nature (qua correlate of consciousness) (Hua 3/159).
That Husserl’s philosophical development has led him beyond any
kind of (Brentanian) descriptive psychology is also made clear by the
following quote:
His [Kant’s] eternal significance lies in the much discussed but
little understood “Copernican” turn to a fundamentally new
and, what is more, strictly scientific interpretation of the sense of
the world; but at the same time it lies in the first establishment of
a corresponding, and “entirely new”, science—the
science of the transcendental. (Hua 7/240)
In
Crisis
, Husserl describes phenomenology as the final
gestalt (
Endform
) of transcendental philosophy (Hua
6/71 [1970: 70]); a transcendental philosophy that is characterized by
its criticism of objectivism and by its elucidation of subjectivity as
the locus of all objective formations of sense and validity (Hua 6/102
[1970: 99]). Rather than simply amounting to a limited exploration of
the psychological domain, for Husserl an in-depth investigation of
intentionality led towards a transcendental philosophical elucidation
of reality and objectivity and eventually towards a form of
transcendental idealism that insisted on the essential interconnection
between reason, truth, and being (Hua 1/117). As Husserl writes in a
lecture course from 1924,
In the phenomenological reduction
, rightly understood, is
predelineated in essence
the marching route towards transcendental
idealism
, just as
phenomenology as a whole
is nothing
but
the first rigorous scientific form of this idealism
. (Hua
8/181)
That Husserl is an idealist is incontestable, but the precise
character of this idealism remains contested. For some,
Husserl’s idealism amounts to nothing more than a defense of the
irreducibility of ideality (Willard 2011) or an insistence on the
extent to which our intentional directedness relies on ideal meaning
(D. W. Smith 2013: 166). For others, Husserl is a reductive idealist
for whom every being is to be deduced from or created by consciousness
(Ingarden 1963 [1975]; Philipse 1995). There are also interpreters who
argue that Husserl’s transcendental method is concerned with
meaning rather than being; that it is the meaning of the world, rather
than its being, that is constituted by transcendental subjectivity,
and that Husser’s transcendental idealism can precisely be
distinguished from metaphysical idealism in that the latter, but not
the former, makes first-order claims about the nature of objects (Carr
1999, Crowell 2001, Thomasson 2007).
Matters are not made easier by the fact that Husserl often insisted
that his own idealism differed radically from traditional forms of
idealism (Hua 5/149–53, 17/178, 1/33–34, 118),
which—precisely in their opposition to realism—betrayed
their inadequacy (Hua 5/151), and in the end, it is easier to say what
Husserl’s idealism is not, than to characterize it positively.
Husserl is quite explicit in his rejection of phenomenalism and
subjective idealism. As he writes in
Ideas I
, a material
thing “is intrinsically not an experience but instead a totally
different kind of being” (Hua 3/71). That his idealism amounts
to more than simply an emphasis on the irreducibility of ideality, is
on the other hand clear from Husserl’s rejection of the idea
that the world is completely mind-independent:
The being-in-itself of the world might make good sense, but one thing
is absolutely certain, it cannot have the sense that the world is
independent of an actually existing consciousness. (Hua 36/78)
And as for attempts to read Husserl as somebody not interested in
metaphysical questions, they are hard to reconcile with
Husserl’s unequivocal dismissal of any non-metaphysical
interpretations of transcendental phenomenology:
[T]ranscendental phenomenology in the sense I conceive it does in fact
encompass the universal horizon of the problems of philosophy
[…] including as well all so-called metaphysical questions,
insofar as they have possible sense in the first place. (Hua
5/141)
As Husserl also writes, the topics of existence and non-existence, of
being and non-being, are all-embracing themes for phenomenology (Hua
1/91), and it is the latter that offer a genuine transcendental method
for dealing with metaphysical problems (Hua 9/253). Indeed, as Eugen
Fink, Husserl’s last assistant and close collaborator, wrote in
an article from 1939, only a fundamental misunderstanding of the aim
of phenomenology would lead to the mistaken but often repeated claim
that Husserl’s phenomenology is not interested in reality or the
question of being, but only in subjective meaning-formations in
intentional consciousness (Fink 1939 [1981: 44]).
That there is a tight link between Husserl’s phenomenological
method and his account of intentionality, and that one’s
understanding of the former will influence one’s understanding
of the latter (and
vice versa
) can be further
illustrated by considering and comparing two very different
interpretations of Husserl’s concept of
noema
In
Ideas III
, Husserl writes that a phenomenological
investigation of consciousness doesn’t merely have to include an
analysis of the act of consciousness, the
noesis
, but also of
the correlate of consciousness, the
noema
(Hua 5/84). But
what exactly is this correlate? According to what has become known as
the Fregean interpretation, an interpretation originally proposed by
Føllesdal (1969), the noema must be interpreted in line with
the Fregean notion of sense (‘Sinn’) (D. W. Smith &
McIntyre 1982: 81–82), and the intentionality of consciousness
in analogy with the reference of linguistic expressions
(Føllesdal 1974: 96). According to this interpretation, the
noema must be sharply distinguished from both act and object. It is an
abstract meaning or sense that mediates the intentional relation
between act and object. The noema is consequently not that toward
which consciousness is directed, but that by means of which it is
directed, that by virtue of which we achieve a reference to the
external object. As Smith and McIntyre write, “for Husserl, an
act is directed toward an object
via
an intermediate
‘intentional’ entity, the act’s noema” (D. W.
Smith & McIntyre 1982: 87), or as McIntyre puts it a later
article, “Intentionality, or representation, is again a
‘mediated’ affair: a mental state represents an object
only ‘via’ its noema” (McIntyre 1986: 105). This
representationalist
interpretation often goes hand in hand
with a particular understanding of Husserl’s transcendental
methodology according to which Husserl is a committed methodological
solipsist and internalist. The very purpose of the epoché and
reduction is to bracket all questions concerning external reality. It
is to turn our attention away from objects transcendent to
consciousness and towards the internal mental representations, the
noemata, in virtue of which we can be said to be directed at said
objects (Dreyfus 1982: 108; McIntyre 1986: 102). On this account, our
mental representations have the function they have regardless of how
the world is and regardless of whether that which we are intentionally
directed at exists at all (Dreyfus & Hall 1982b: 14). Indeed, as
McIntyre puts it, for Husserl, the problem of intentionality was not a
question of how mental states relate to the world, but rather of how
mental states come to have an internal representational character,
“which makes them
as though
actually related to
extra-mental things whether they are so or not” (McIntyre 1986:
108).
An alternative interpretation has been offered by Sokolowski and
Drummond. On their understanding, we continue to be concerned with
worldly objects after the reduction, but we now no longer consider
them naively, rather we examine them precisely as they are intended
and given, that is qua intentional correlates. But to investigate the
correlate of consciousness, the noema, the object-as-it-is-intended,
i.e., the perceived object as perceived, the recollected episode as
recollected, the judged state-of-affair as judged etc., is precisely
to investigate the object itself in its significance for us
(Sokolowski 1987: 525, 527); it is not to suddenly redirect the
attention towards some abstract representational intermediary between
subject and object. On this
presentationalist
interpretation
of Husserl, the object-as-it-intended and the object-that-is-intended
are consequently not two different ontological entities (Drummond
1990: 108–109), but two different perspectives on one and the
same, and it is paramount not to conflate the ordinary worldly object
considered in a non-ordinary (transcendental) attitude with a
non-ordinary abstract mental representation, and to suggest that
Husserl’s concern is with the latter (Drummond 1992: 89).
One possible explanation for the existence of such divergent
interpretations is the ambiguity of Husserl’s early discussion
of the noema (Bernet 1990). Some interpreters have argued that
Husserl’s discussion in
Ideas I
vacillates between a
psychological and a transcendental conception of the noema and both
Ströker and Fink have argued that whereas it is possible to
distinguish between the noema and the intended object as long as one
remains within the natural attitude, such a distinction is no longer
appropriate the moment one adopts a transcendental attitude. From that
perspective, the noema is the constituted object and it would be a
mistake to suggest that the real object should lie beyond the noematic
sphere (Fink 1933 [2000: 117]; Ströker 1987: 194–200).
As these disagreements make clear, however, any plausible
interpretation of Husserl’s theory of intentionality must go
hand-in-hand with a proper grasp of his phenomenological method, and
that will also involve taking a stance on the nature of his
transcendental idealism (Zahavi 2017).
Husserl’s transcendental idealism is not a form of monism. Its
adversary is not materialism, or dualism, and it is not making any
claims about the ultimate ‘stuff’ of reality. Its core
claim is that the study of intentionality doesn’t merely tell us
something about the workings of the mind, but also provides us with
insights into the status of reality. It does so since mind and world
are bound together. For Husserl, the world cannot be reduced to or
dissolved in consciousness, but nor can it be divorced from
consciousness. Already in
Logical Investigations
, Husserl
argued that the facile divide between inside and outside has its
origin in a naïve metaphysics and is inappropriate for a proper
understanding of the nature of intentionality (Hua 19/673, 708
[2001/II: 281–282, 304]). Husserl’s dismissal of the
commonsensical divide between mind and world is even more pronounced
after his transcendental turn. For Husserl, it is as misleading to
regard the world as somehow external to the mind as it is to conceive
of consciousness as some kind of container. It is as wrong to claim
that consciousness absorbs the world in knowing it as it is to say
that consciousness must literally get outside of itself in order to
reach the world. The lesson of intentionality is precisely that
consciousness is open to the world, a world that is accessible to and
constituted by consciousness.
Husserl’s main objection to naturalism is that it by reducing
consciousness to an object in the world fails to recognize the
transcendental dimension of consciousness. As he occasionally puts it,
the “naturalization of the psychic” and more generally,
the rise of “physicalistically oriented naturalism” (Hua
6/64 [1970: 63]) is due to a “blindness to the
transcendental” (Hua 6/269 [1970: 265]). Rather than simply
being an object in the world, consciousness is also a subject for the
world, i.e., a necessary condition of possibility for any entity to
appear as an object in the way it does and with the meaning it has.
Husserl would agree with Kant that reality is necessarily a reality
for-us and that the right place to locate objectivity is in, rather
than beyond, the world of experience. But since Husserl also rejects
the Kantian notion of an inaccessible and ungraspable thing-in-itself
Ding an sich
) as unintelligible and
countersensical (Hua 1/38–39, 11/19–20, 39/726), he
removes any reason to demote the status of the reality we experience
to one that is “merely” for us.
4. Time- and self-consciousness
Husserl’s first significant writings on temporality can be found
early on, namely in his
Lectures on the Phenomenology of the
Consciousness of Internal Time
(1905). It was a topic that in
Husserl’s own words, would constitute one of the most difficult
and fundamental areas in phenomenology (Hua 10/276, 334, 3/182), and
which would preoccupy him for the rest of his life (for extensive
treatments of Husserl’s philosophy of time, see Held 1966,
Brough 1972, Kortooms 2002, Rodemeyer 2006, Lohmar & Yamaguchi
2010, de Warren 2009).
Husserl early on recognized that his investigation of intentionality
would remain incomplete as long as he ignored the temporal dimension
of the intentional acts and intentional objects. We can explore the
different sides of a table, we can hear an enduring tone, we can see
the flight of a bird. In each of these cases, the object under
investigation is temporally extended. But how is it that the different
sides of the table are perceived as synthetically integrated moments,
rather than as disjointed fragments? How is it that we can actually
see the smooth continuous movement of the bird? Husserl’s main
claim is that a perception of a temporally extended object as well as
the perception of succession and change would be impossible if
consciousness provided us only with a momentary or pure now-slice of
the object and if the stream of consciousness itself was a series of
unconnected points of experiencing, like a line of pearls. If our
perception was restricted to being conscious of what exists right now,
it would be impossible to perceive anything with temporal extension
and duration, for a succession of isolated, punctual, conscious states
does not, as such, enable us to be conscious of succession and
duration. Since we obviously do experience succession and duration, we
must acknowledge that our consciousness, one way or the other, can
encompass more than what is given right now—it must be
co-conscious of what has just been, and what is just about to occur.
The crucial question is how? One suggestion would be to say that we
perceive what occurs right now, remember what is no longer and imagine
what has not yet occurred. But according to Husserl, we do have an
intuitive presentation of succession and he would consequently insist
on the phenomenological difference between hearing a melody or seeing
a movement (that necessarily extends in time) and remembering or
imagining either.
Husserl’s own alternative is to insist on the
width of
presence
. Consider the case where we are hearing a short sequence
of a melody consisting of the tones C, D, and E. If we focus on the
last part of this perception, the one that occurs when the tone E
sounds, we do not find a consciousness that is exclusively conscious
of the tone E, but a consciousness that is still conscious of the two
former notes D and C. And not only that, we find a consciousness that
still
hears
the first two notes (it neither imagines nor
remembers them). This does not mean that there is no difference
between our consciousness of the present tone E and our consciousness
of the tones D and C. D and C are not simultaneous with E, on the
contrary, we are hearing a temporal succession. D and C are tones that
have been and they are being perceived as sinking into the past, which
is why we are experiencing the sequence in its temporal duration,
rather than isolated tones that replace each other abruptly.
Husserl employs three technical terms to describe the temporal
structure of consciousness: There is (i) a ‘primal
impression’ narrowly directed toward the strictly circumscribed
now-phase of the object. The primal impression never occurs in
isolation and is an abstract component that by itself cannot provide
us with a perception of a temporal object. The primal impression is
accompanied by (ii) a ‘retention’, or retentional aspect,
which provides us with a consciousness of the just-elapsed phase of
the object thereby furnishing the primal impression with a
past-directed temporal context, and by (iii) a
‘protention’, or protentional aspect, which in a
more-or-less indefinite way intends the phase of the object about to
occur thereby providing a future-oriented temporal context for the
primal impression (Hua 9/201).
In this way, it becomes evident that concrete perception as original
consciousness (original givenness) of a temporally extended object is
structured internally as itself a streaming system of momentary
perceptions (so-called primary impressions). But each such momentary
perception is the nuclear phase of a continuity, a continuity of
momentary gradated retentions on the one side, and a horizon of what
is coming on the other side: a horizon of ‘protention’,
which is disclosed to be characterized as a constantly gradated
coming. (Hua 9/202)
The concrete and full temporal structure of any ongoing experience is
consequently
primal impression-retention-protention.
Although
the specific experiential contents will change progressively from
moment to moment, at any given moment this threefold structure of
inner time-consciousness is present as a unified field of
experiencing.
Let us take another look at the sequence C, D, and E. When C is first
heard, it is presenced in the primal impression. When it is succeeded
by D, D is given in the primal impression, whereas C is retained in
the retention, and when E sounds, it replaces D in the primal
impression, whereas D is retained in the retention. However, the
retention is not merely a retention of the tone which has just passed.
Every time a new tone is presenced in a primal impression, the entire
retentional sequence is recapitulated and modified. When the tone C is
succeeded by the tone D, our impressional consciousness of D is
accompanied by a retention of C (Dc). When D is succeeded by the tone
E, our impressional consciousness of E is accompanied both by a
retention of D (Ed) and by a retention of the tone retained in D (Ec),
and so forth (Hua 10/81, 100). Each phase of consciousness retains the
previous phase of consciousness. Since the previous phase includes its
own retention of a previous phase, there is a retentional continuum
that stretches back through prior experience. When a tone sinks into
the past, it retains its identity and position vis-à-vis the
other tones, although its mode of givenness changes, i.e., although it
is constantly given in new temporal perspectives (for instance, C, Dc,
Ec, Fc).
It is important to distinguish retention and protention, which are
structural components of any ongoing intentional act and which occur
without our active or deliberate contribution, from episodic memory
and episodic future thinking that are intentional acts in their own
right, which presuppose the work of retention and protention. There is
a clear difference between retaining notes that have just sounded and
remembering listening to a certain melody last summer. Unlike episodic
memory, retention offers an intuitive grasp of the just-past; it
doesn’t just re-present or reconstruct it. Likewise, there is a
clear difference between protending notes about to sound and looking
forward to tonight’s concert. As Husserl also points out, it is
protention that allows for the experience of surprise. If I am
listening to a favorite melody and someone hits the wrong note, I am
surprised or disappointed. I will likewise be surprised if I open a
door and find a stone wall behind it. But it only makes sense to speak
of surprise in the light of a certain anticipation of what the
imminent course of experience will provide (Hua 11/7).
Why does Husserl ascribe such fundamental importance to this analysis
of time-consciousness? We have already come across one reason. Were it
not for the specific temporal organization of the stream of
consciousness, it would be impossible to experience temporally unified
objects. When I move around a tree in order to gain a fuller
perceptual presentation of it, then the various profiles of the
tree—its front, sides, and back—are perceived as
synthetically integrated moments. Temporal synthesis is a precondition
for this perceptual synthesis. But let me point to two further
reasons.
Towards the end of World War I, Husserl’s growing appreciation
of the persisting influence of the past made him start operating with
a distinction between what he called
static
and
genetic
phenomenology. Static phenomenology is the type of
phenomenology that we encounter in
Logical Investigations
. If
we consider some of its formative analyses of perceptual
intentionality, they were all conducted with no regard for genesis and
historicity. The primary task was to account for the relation between
the act and the object, but in either case the type of intentional act
and the type of object were taken to be readily available. As Husserl
came to realize, however, what appears as a straightforward experience
might in fact be enabled by earlier experiences. Through a process of
sedimentation
, prior experiences leave their trace in us and
thereby contribute to the formation of cognitive schemas and different
forms of apprehension and expectations which guide, motivate, and
influence subsequent experiences. As Husserl writes in
Ideas
II
The Ego always lives in the medium of its ‘history’; all
its earlier lived experiences have sunk down, but they have
aftereffects in tendencies, sudden ideas, transformations or
assimilations of earlier lived experiences, and from such
assimilations new formations are merged together. (Hua 4/338)
More generally speaking, Husserl would not only argue that more
complex and demanding forms of intentionality (say conceptual
judgments) presuppose more basic types of pre-predicative, perceptual,
intentionality (Husserl 1939: 66 [1973: 64]), but also that even the
most primitive intentional activity presupposes a preceding passivity,
since to be active is to react to something, something that is
affecting us passively (Hua 4/213, 337, 11/64, 84; see also Holenstein
1972, Montavont 1999). The task of genetic phenomenology was then to
explore these temporally layered processes of constitution (Hua
11/345). The scope of genetic phenomenology remained restricted to the
experiential life of an individual ego, but in the last phase of his
thinking, Husserl ventured into what has been called
generative
phenomenology
(Steinbock 1995). The focus was broadened to
investigate the constitutive role of tradition and history. In what
way are the accomplishments of previous generations operative in our
individual experiences? As Husserl would put it in a manuscript from
the twenties, “everything of my own is founded, in part through
the tradition of my ancestors, in part through the tradition of my
contemporaries” (Hua 14/223).
The most important reason for Husserl’s insistence on the
importance of time is, however, to be located elsewhere. In
Logical Investigations
, Husserl had confined himself to an
analysis of the relation between the constituted object and the
constituting consciousness. He accounted for the way in which the
givenness of objects is conditioned by intentional subjectivity, but
apart from stressing that experiences are not given in the same way as
spatial objects, he did not pursue the question concerning the
givenness of subjectivity itself in any detail. This was, however, a
clear lacuna. As Husserl writes,
[E]very experience is ‘consciousness’, and consciousness
is consciousness
of
… But every experience is
itself experienced
erlebt
], and
to
that extent
also ‘conscious’ [
bewußt
].
(Hua 10/291)
The reason why Husserl came to speak of the analysis of temporality as
constituting the bedrock of phenomenology was precisely because it was
supposed to account for the temporal self-givenness of consciousness.
On the one hand, Husserl was faced with the following conundrum. Our
perceptual objects are temporal, but what about our very perceptions
of these objects. Are they also subjugated to the strict laws of
temporal constitution? Are they also temporal unities, which arise,
endure, and perish? And if they are, how do we avoid an infinite
regress? If the experienced duration and unity of a melody are
constituted by consciousness, and if our consciousness of the melody
is itself experienced with duration and unity, are we then not forced
to posit yet another consciousness to account for the experience of
this duration and unity, and so forth
ad infinitum
(Hua 10/80)? To avoid this conclusion, Husserl rejected the assumption
that the temporality of the objects of consciousness and the
temporality of the consciousness of objects coincide:
Is it inherently absurd to regard the flow of time as an
objective
movement
Certainly
! On the other hand, memory is surely
something that itself has
its now
, and the same now as a
tone, for example. No. There lurks the fundamental mistake.
The
flow of the modes of consciousness is not a process; the consciousness
of the now is not itself now.
The retention that exists
‘together’ with the consciousness of the now is not
‘now’, is
not simultaneous
with the now, and it
would make no sense to say that it is. (Hua 10/333)
One way to understand this enigmatic statement is by recognizing that
consciousness is not simply a consciousness
of
time, but is
itself a form of time, and that it might be problematic to ascribe
temporal predicates to time itself. Just as my experience of a red
circle is neither circular nor red, the primal impressions,
retentions, and protentions are not ‘present’,
‘past’, or ‘future’ in the way empirical
objects are (Hua 10/75, 376). Their relations are not relations among
items located within the temporal flow; but are relations that
constitute the flow in question. It is their very conjunction which in
the first instance makes possible the senses of present, past, and
future.
On the other hand, Husserl’s analysis of the temporal structure
of consciousness eventually led him to the vexed problem of
self-consciousness (Zahavi 1999), where he would defend the existence
of
pre-reflective
self-consciousness and argue that
consciousness is characterized by an inherent reflexivity already
prior to any act of reflection (Hua 17/279–80, 4/118,
15/492–3). As a central passage has it:
The flow of the consciousness that constitutes immanent time not only
exists
but is so remarkably and yet intelligibly fashioned
that a self-appearance of the flow necessarily exists in it, and
therefore the flow itself must necessarily be apprehensible in the
flowing. The self-appearance of the flow does not require a second
flow; on the contrary, it constitutes itself as a phenomenon in
itself. (Hua 10/83)
Whereas objects, by definition, appear as objects for a subject, and
not for themselves (Hua 35/278), subjects are self-manifesting or
self-constituting. This is one reason why Husserl occasionally speaks
of objects as relative and dependent, and subjects as absolute (Hua
35/282).
Husserl’s view on whether phenomenology had something
significant to say about not only intentional experiences, but also
about the subject, I, or ego of these experiences underwent decisive
changes over the years. In the first edition of the
Logical
Investigations
, Husserl denied that intentional states are
necessarily owned by anybody and explicitly rejected the existence of
some kind of pure identical ego-pole (Hua 19/390 [2001/II: 100]).
Indeed, referring to the Kantian notion of the ego of pure
apperception, Husserl writes that he has been “quite unable to
find this ego, this primitive, necessary centre of relations”
(Hua 19/374 [2001/II: 92]). By the time of the second edition of
Logical Investigations
(1913), Husserl had, however, changed
his mind, and now writes that he no longer endorses his old attitude
regarding the existence of the pure ego. As he remarks, he had in the
meantime learned to find it or rather learned not to let his aversion
to different forms of ego-metaphysics blind him to its
phenomenological presence (Hua 19/374 [2001/II: 92], see also Marbach
1974). On Husserl’s later view, a consideration of experiences
such as concentrating on a task, making a decision, suffering a
slight, feeling ashamed or scolding somebody, will not only disclose
that the experiences are intentional, are experiences of
something
, but also that they are for
someone
, they
also include a reference to the subject as the agent or patient of the
act (Hua 4/310, 9/315), for which reason their full intentional
structure must be named
ego-cogito-cogitatum
(Hua
6/173 [1970: 170]). As Husserl makes clear, however, the pure ego is
not something “mysterious or mystical” but simply another
name for the subject of experience (Hua 4/97). It doesn’t
“harbor any hidden inner richness” (Hua 4/105). It is not
only pure, but also poor in terms of content.
Although the pure ego must be distinguished from the experiences in
which it lives and functions, since the former preserves its identity,
whereas the latter arise and perish in the stream of consciousness, it
cannot in any way exist independently of them, or be thought in
separation from them (and
vice versa
):
On the one hand, we must definitely here distinguish the pure Ego from
the acts themselves, as that which functions in them and which,
through them, relates to Objects; on the other hand, this distinction
can only be an abstract one. It is abstract to the extent that the Ego
cannot be thought of as something separated from these lived
experiences, from its ‘life’, just as, conversely, the
lived experiences are not thinkable except as the medium of the life
of the Ego. (Hua 4/99)
Despite the obvious changes that occur after the first edition of
Logical Investigations
, it is noteworthy that Husserl never
argued that the temporal unity of consciousness is secured by the ego.
This remains true even after Husserl’s “egological”
turn. As he repeatedly emphasizes, the most fundamental constitutive
synthesis of them all, the very process of temporalization, is a
purely passive process that by no means is controlled by the ego (Hua
11/235–236). Indeed, as Husserl would eventually put it, a
“structural analysis of the primal present (the standing living
stream) leads us to the ego-structure and to the constant substratum
of egoless streaming which founds it” (Hua 15/598).
5. Embodiment, intersubjectivity and objectivity
Already in lectures on
Thing and Space
from 1907, Husserl
stressed the importance of embodiment for perceptual intentionality
(see also Heinämaa 2003, Taipale 2014). Spatial objects appear
perspectivally. When we perceive an object, it never appears in its
totality, but always from a certain limited perspective. When we
realize that that which appears spatially always appears at a certain
distance and from a certain angle, the implication is straightforward:
Every perspectival appearance presupposes that the experiencing
subject is itself located in space, and since the subject only
possesses a spatial location due to its embodiment (Hua 4/33), spatial
objects can only appear for and be constituted by embodied subjects.
There is no pure point of view and there is no view from nowhere,
there is only an embodied point of view. As an experiencing, embodied
subject, I am the point of reference, the experiential zero-point or
absolute here, in relation to which all of my perceptual objects, be
they near or far, left or right, up or down, are uniquely related:
It is thus that all things of the surrounding world possess an
orientation to the body […]. The ‘far’ is far from
me, from my body; the ‘to the right’ refers back to the
right side of my lived body, e.g., to my right hand. […] I have
all things over and against me; they are all
‘there’—with the exception of one and only one,
namely the body, which is always ‘here’. (Hua 4/158)
More generally, Husserl argues that the body is essentially involved
in the perception of and interaction with spatial objects, and that
every worldly experience is mediated by and made possible by our
embodiment (Hua 4/56). In fact, we cannot first study the body and
next investigate it in its relation to the world. The world is given
to us as bodily explored, and the body is revealed to us in its
exploration of the world (Hua 15/287).
A central distinction introduced by Husserl is the one between (a) our
original unthematic, pre-reflectively lived body-awareness that
accompanies and conditions every spatial experience, and (b) the
subsequent thematic experience
of
the body as an object. It
is necessary to distinguish the body as it is subjectively lived
through (
Leib
), and the body as an object among
others (
Körper
). As Husserl insists, the
latter form of body-awareness depends upon the former:
Here it must also be noted that in all experience of things, the lived
body is co-experienced as a functioning lived body (thus not as a mere
thing), and that when it itself is experienced as a thing, it is
experienced in a double way—i.e., precisely as an experienced
thing and as a functioning lived body together in one. (Hua 14/57)
But why is it that the tactually or visually explored body can still
be experienced as the exteriority of
my own
body? Husserl
here highlights the importance of double-sensation or double-touch
(something that was subsequently picked up by Merleau-Ponty (1945
[2012: 194])). When my left hand touches my right hand, the left
touching hand feels the surface of the right touched hand. But the
touched right hand is not simply given as a mere object, since it
feels the touch itself (Hua 4/145). Moreover, the relation between the
touching and the touched is reversible, since the right hand can also
touch the left hand. The reversibility demonstrates not only that the
bodily interiority and exteriority are different manifestations of the
same (Hua 14/75) but also points to the dual nature of the body, which
is “simultaneously a spatial externality and a subjective
internality” (Hua 9/197).
Husserl’s discussion of embodiment did not only feed into his
account of perceptual intentionality and self-consciousness, but also
influenced his extensive and wide-reaching investigation of
intersubjectivity, which ranges from explorations of concrete
interpersonal encounters, through investigations of the constitution
of various forms of sociality and historical communities, to the
development of a new type of transcendental philosophy. Let me discuss
each of these topics in turn.
Whereas Husserl’s investigation of intentionality in
Logische
Untersuchungen
(1900–1) paid scant
attention to the problem of intersubjectivity, the situation soon
changed. Within five years, Husserl was working on empathy (as shown
by texts gathered in
Husserliana
13). Initially,
Husserl’s discussion of empathy was informed by his encounter
with the work of Theodor Lipps, the influential philosopher and
psychologist, who was also the teacher of a number of Munich
phenomenologists. In various writings, Lipps had defended the view
that empathy is a
sui generis
kind of knowledge,
one that provides us with knowledge of other minds, and which could be
explained in terms of specific mechanisms of imitation and projection
(Lipps 1909). Husserl disagreed with Lipps’ explanation and in
his own writings often used the term empathy (
Einfühlung
interchangeably with the terms
other-experience (
Fremderfahrung
) or
other-perception (
Fremdwahrnehmung
). In
Phenomenological Psychology
, Husserl declared that “the
so-called ‘empathy’” is “the intentionality in
one’s own ego which leads into the alien ego” (Hua 9/321),
and one of the recurrent questions that kept preoccupying Husserl was
precisely how to understand the intentional structure of empathy (see
also Depraz 1995; A. D. Smith 2003; Zahavi 2014).
The answer provided by Husserl is remarkably consistent throughout his
career, though it is an answer that remains characterized by an
important vacillation: Empathy is both like and unlike perception. In
some places, Husserl writes that empathy is a distinct and direct kind
of empirical experience, one that allows the empathizing ego to
experience the psychical life of other subjects (Hua 13/187). Husserl
also claims that empathy is what allows the other to be present to me,
perceptually present (Hua 15/514), and that the other is given in his
being-for-me (
für-mich-sein
) in empathy, and
that this counts as a form of perception (Hua 14/352, 15/641).
Indeed,
It would be countersensical to say that it [alien subjectivity] is
inferred and not experienced when given in this original form of
empathic presentation. For every hypothesis concerning an alien
subject presupposes the ‘perception’ of this subject as
alien, and empathy is precisely this perception. (Hua 14/352; see also
Hua 8/63)
The link between empathy and embodiment comes to the fore, when
Husserl writes that the mindedness of others is present in their
gestures, in their facial expressions and intonation, and that it is
empathy that allows us to grasp the psychological significance of the
others’ expressivity (Hua 4/235, 244).
At the same time, however, Husserl also insists that even the most
perfect perception of the psychical life of another lacks the
originality of self-experience. There will always, and by necessity,
be a difference in givenness between that which I am aware of when I
empathize with the other, and that which the other is experiencing.
Empathy cannot give us the empathized experience itself in its
original first-personal presence (Hua 13/347, 440).
As Husserl repeatedly stresses, however, the fact that my experiential
access to the minds of others differs from my experiential access to
my own mind is not an imperfection or shortcoming. On the contrary, it
is a difference that is constitutional. It is precisely because of
this difference, precisely because of this asymmetry, that we can
claim that the minds we experience are
other
minds. As
Husserl points out, had I had the same access to the consciousness of
the other as I have to my own, the other would cease being another and
would instead become a part of me (Hua 1/139).
That we can actually experience (rather than merely infer or imagine)
the minds of others is not to say that everything is open to view.
Directness does not entail infallibility or exhaustiveness. Another
person’s psychical life is not exposed in such a way that we
immediately, effortlessly, and infallibly have complete access to her
innermost thoughts and feelings. As Husserl points out, the perception
of others is always partial and is always open for correction (Hua
13/225). In fact, there will always be an indeterminate horizon of not
expressed interiority (Hua 20–2/70), and a complete knowledge of
the other will forever remain impossible. Furthermore, sometimes our
direct acquaintance with others might be limited to the bare
recognition of their existence.
When I empathically understand the embodied other, the other is not
given to me as a pure nucleus of experience, but as a centre of
intentionality, as a different perspective on the very world that I
also inhabit. Rather than facing the other as an isolated object, her
intentionality will typically pull me along and make me co-attend her
worldly objects (Hua 13/411, 14/140, 287, 4/168).
This is, of course, one reason why our perception of others is so
unlike our ordinary perception of objects. As soon as the other
appears, my relation to the world will change, since the other will
always be given to me in a situation or meaningful context that points
back to the other as a new centre of reference. The meaning the world
has for the other affects the meaning it has for me. In general, my
own perspective on the world will be enriched through my empathic
understanding of the other. Husserl consequently emphasizes the
interrelation between the experience of others and the constitution of
a shared world.
We are in a relation to a common surrounding world—we are in a
personal association: these belong together. We could not be persons
for others if a common surrounding world did not stand there for us in
a community, in an intentional linkage of our lives. Correlatively
spoken, the one is constituted essentially with the other. (Hua
4/191)
At the same time, however, as Husserl notes, I can also be part of
what the other intends. So again, when I experience others, I do not
merely experience them as psychophysical objects in the world, rather
I experience them as subjects who experience worldly objects, myself
included (Hua 15/4–5, 1/158). We encounter others as such when
we encounter them as experiencing subjects, and this means as subjects
that have a perspective not just upon the world of objects, but upon
us as well. In fact, through my experience of others, I can also come
to attain a new experience of myself. To that extent, empathy can
function as an important source of self-knowledge (Hua 1/149). It is,
for instance, by indirectly experiencing myself as one viewed by
others, i.e., through a process of mediated self-experience, that I
according to Husserl can come to experience myself as a human being
(Hua 15/13, 665).
In manuscripts from the early twenties and thirties, Husserl argues
that my empathic experience of another, who is, in turn,
experientially directed at myself, such that my experience of the
other involves a co-experience of myself, is a condition of
possibility for we-intentionality (Hua 8/136–137). More
specifically, Husserl explores what happens when I address the other
and when the other is aware that he is being addressed and when he
reciprocates. When both of us become aware that we are being
experienced and understood by the other, we are dealing with
communicative acts through which a higher interpersonal unity—a
we—can be established (Hua 4/192–194, 242). Husserl
consequently emphasizes the centrality of communication for the
constitution of the we (Hua 14/473). It is precisely by
“speaking, listening, and replying” that subjects
“form a we that is unified, communalized in a specific
way” (Hua 15/476). Husserl often refers to the we that is
generated out of this intentional co-determination or interlocking as
an “I-you community” (Hua 15/476) or as a
“communicative community” (
Mitteilungsgemeinschaft
(Hua 15/475).
Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of communities, which can
be seen as a contribution to both social philosophy and social
ontology (the latter concept was already used by Husserl in 1910 (Hua
13/98)) is wide-ranging and characterized by a distinct bottom-up
approach (Perreau 2013, Szanto 2016, Zahavi 2025). Not only does his
investigation move from dyadic relations to increasingly complex
social formations, but he also emphasizes the extent to which social
formations that are established through specific forms of intentional
activity are founded upon pre-theoretical, passive, and instinctual
forms of connectedness (Hua 9/486, 514). Husserl speaks of the
parent-child connection as the most original of all, and then explains
how the scope of one’s social environment as a result of
one’s socialization increasingly widens to include siblings,
friends, the local community and eventually “my nation with its
customs, its language, etc.” (Hua 15/511).
An idea that gained increasing prominence in Husserl’s thinking
was that a proper clarification of objectivity understood as that
which is ‘valid for everybody’ requires an in-depth
analysis of intersubjectivity (Hua 17/209). In § 61 of
Cartesian Meditations
, Husserl criticized Scheler for having
overlooked that our experience of others has transcendental
implications, insofar as objectivity is intersubjectively constituted.
Or as he also puts it, only constitutive (or transcendental)
phenomenology can capture the true sense of the problem of empathy
(Hua 1/173). How should one understand a claim like this? One of
Husserl’s arguments is that it is through my encounter with
another subject that I can come to realize that my own perspective on
the world is only one among many, and that it is when I realize that
others experience the same objects as I do, that I can come to
experience said objects as being more than merely objects-for-me,
i.e., as objective and real. In this way, the very notion of objective
reality becomes linked to intersubjective availability or negatively
formulated, that which in principle is inaccessible to others cannot
be ascribed objective validity (17/248, 13/382, 388–89,
14/277).
Husserl occasionally writes that his phenomenological treatment of
intersubjectivity has the goal of bringing his constitutive analyses
to completion; a completion that is achieved the moment it is realized
that transcendental intersubjective sociality is the basis in which
all objective truth and all true being have their intentional source
(cf. Hua 1/35, 182, 8/449, 9/344). As he writes in a late text:
Transcendental intersubjectivity is the absolute and only
self-sufficient ontological foundation [
Seinsboden
],
out of which everything objective (the
totality of objectively real entities, but also every objective ideal
world) draws its sense and its validity. (Hua 9/344)
When claiming that there is no other meaningful true reality than the
one we would agree upon at the end of the road of inquiry, and that
objectivity is the correlate of an ideal intersubjective concordance
(Hua 1/138), Husserl comes close to the position of Peirce (1868
[1955: 247]).
In one of his longest texts on Kant, the text
Kant and the Idea of
Transcendental Philosophy
, a text written for and presented in
commemoration of Kant’s bicentennial in 1924, Husserl writes
that transcendental philosophy should be based upon a systematic
description and analysis of consciousness in all of its modalities
(Hua 7/234–235). It is this demand which eventually necessitates
an
extension
of Kant’s concept of the transcendental,
since it proves necessary to include the humanities and the manifold
of human sociality and culture in the transcendental analysis (Hua
7/282). This line of thinking is further elaborated some years later,
when Husserl writes that
as long as one interprets transcendental subjectivity as an isolated
ego and—like the Kantian tradition—ignores the whole task
of establishing the legitimacy of the transcendental community of
subjects, any prospect of a transcendental knowledge of self and world
is lost. (Hua 29/120)
It is consequently no coincidence that Husserl at times describes his
own project as a
sociological
transcendental philosophy (Hua
9/539) and even declares that the development of phenomenology
necessarily implies the move from an
‘egological’ … phenomenology into a transcendental
sociological phenomenology having reference to a manifest multiplicity
of conscious subjects communicating with one another. (Husserl 1981:
68)
In research manuscripts subsequently published in
Zur
Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität III
, we find
Husserl developing these ideas further, for instance through extensive
analyses of the role of normality.
Initially, Husserl had primarily discussed the extent to which our
experiences and apprehensions are guided by anticipations of normality
as part of his investigation of individual intentionality. But as he
came to realize, what counts as normal is primarily something I learn
from others (Hua 15/428–29, 569, 602–4). Normality is also
a tradition-bound set of norms. Husserl also refers to
normal
life
as
generative life
and states that every (normal)
human being is
historical
by virtue of being constituted as a
member of a historically enduring community (Hua 15/138–39,
431). Already in
Ideas II
, Husserl had pointed to the fact
that there, next to the tendencies originating from other persons,
also exist indeterminate general demands made by custom and tradition:
‘One’ judges thus, ‘one’ holds the fork in
such and such a way, etc. (Hua 4/269). Eventually, Husserl would go on
to claim that the subject's birth into a living tradition has
constitutive implications. It is not merely the case that I live in a
world, which is permeated by references to others, and which others
have already furnished with meaning, or that I understand the world
(and myself) through a traditional, handed down, linguistic
conventionality. The very meaning that the world has for me is such
that it has its origin outside of me, in a historical past. As Husserl
writes in
Crisis
, being embedded in “the unitary flow
of a historical development”—in a generative nexus of
birth and death—belongs as indissolubly to the I as does its
temporal form (Hua 6/256 [1970: 253]). We are typically born into the
natural community of a family, and the family is embedded within a
larger cultural community, a community with its own transmitted
beliefs, practices, customs, and rules. By being socialized, we
inherit and appropriate a tradition that is passed down over
generations; a tradition that comes to normatively regulate, orient,
and organize our experiences and actions by serving as a guide for how
one ought to act and think (Hua 15/136). In the volume
Zur
Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität
III
, Husserl even argues that the being and truth of absolute
objectivity corresponds to a subject-relative normality (Hua 15/35),
and that its constitution can be understood as the culmination of the
development of transcendental intersubjectivity, which is to be
conceived precisely as an ongoing unified process of cultivating ever
newer system of norms at ever higher levels (Hua 15/421).
The fact that Husserl’s phenomenology operates with an enlarged
notion of the transcendental, the fact that it includes topics such as
embodiment and intersubjectivity in its transcendental analysis, the
fact that reality for Husserl is transcendentally correlated with a
community of embodied subjects (Hua 36/135) gives Husserl’s
conception of transcendental philosophy a quite different scope and
character than the classical Kantian conception (Zahavi 1996 [2001]).
As Merleau-Ponty rightly points out in the preface to
Phenomenology of Perception
“Husserl’s
transcendental is not Kant’s” (1945 [2012: lxxvii]), or as
it has been articulated more recently by Heinämaa, Hartimo, and
Miettinen:
Husserl’s relation to the very content of transcendental
philosophy can be viewed as a radicalization, a rearticulation, and a
distention of the Kantian concept of the transcendental. It was a
radicalization insofar as Husserl extended the transcendental critique
also to logic that Kant had taken for granted. It was a rearticulation
insofar as Husserl, by emphasizing the idea of givenness rather than
deduction, located the domain of transcendental within the individual
ego, thus making the transcendental ego inextricably
personal
and
singular.
But it was also a distention, as Husserl
significantly broadened the scope of transcendental investigation to
include the temporal development of the ego, its bodily existence, and
intersubjective relations. (Heinämaa, Hartimo, & Miettinen
2014: 8)
It must also, however, be admitted that this distention or
transformation generates new challenges of its own. If a
transcendental investigation cannot ignore the historicity of human
life, if transcendental structures develop over the course of time and
can be modified under the influence of experience, it is faced with
the task of countering the threat of historicism and cultural
relativism. It should be clear, however, that Husserl, by endorsing
the view that the only justification obtainable and the only
justification required is one that is internal to the world of
experience and to its intersubjective practices, offers a view on the
transcendental that points forward in time rather than backwards to
Kant. To that extent, Husserl’s conception of the transcendental
is distinctly modern.
6. The lifeworld
Husserl’s dictum “to the things themselves” can be
seen as an endorsement of the idea that the investigation should be
guided by the subject matter itself, rather than by what we expect to
find given our prior theoretical commitments: “The true method
follows the nature of the things to be investigated and not our
prejudices and preconceptions” (Hua 25/26 [1965: 102]). In
Formal and Transcendental Logic
, Husserl explicitly warns
against the danger of letting oneself be dazzled by the methodology
and ideals of the exact sciences, as if they constituted the absolute
norms for what counts as true and real (Hua 17/245). As he points out,
the scientists might well employ more exact measurements than the
market sellers, but this precision also has its own limitations. In
fact, it is not of much use to the trader. If you want to sell a
kilogram of oranges, you do not want to and do not need to measure the
weight in micrograms. What is sufficient and appropriate and precise
enough depends on the concrete context and cannot be defined in
absolute terms (Hua 17/245).
In the course of discussing the accomplishments and limitations of
science, Husserl brings up the importance of the
lifeworld
The lifeworld is, not surprisingly, the world we live and feel at home
in. It is the world of experience, which we are all acquainted with,
which we take for granted and which forms the basis for our daily
actions. It is a subject-relative world that contains objects with
affordances—cups to drink from, spoons to eat with, chairs to
sit on, trees to climb in or seek shelter under. It is also a
historically and culturally shaped world, a world of cumulative
traditions and sedimented meaning that we as bodily subjects are
anchored and socialized into. The natural sciences are often praised
for their attempt to surpass the limitations of our bodily experience
of the world. On a widespread view, science seeks to offer a
description from a view from nowhere, where all traces of ourselves
have been removed, and to acquire knowledge not of how the world is
for us, but of how it is “in itself” independently of any
thought and experience (6/309, 13/381, 4/207). For Husserl, this
understanding of science is, however, fundamentally mistaken. It is
not that Husserl doesn’t respect science, but as he put it in
Ideas I
When it is actually natural science that speaks, we listen gladly and
as disciples. But it is not always natural science that speaks when
natural scientists are speaking; and it assuredly is
not
when
they are talking about “philosophy of Nature” and
“epistemology as a natural science”. (Hua 3/45)
For Husserl, the rise of modern science owes a crucial debt to
Galileo, whose great accomplishment was the “mathematizing
reinterpretation of nature” (Hua 6/54 [1970: 53]). Mathematics
became the method to unlock the inner workings of nature, but very
quickly this quantifying method of theoretical abstraction and
idealization was subjected to an ontological hypostatization; to be
was to be measurable and people started, as Husserl writes, to
“take for
true being
what is actually a
method
” (Hua 6/52 [1970: 51]). The insistence that
everything that exists can and must be studied with natural scientific
methods and is ontologically reducible to natural scientific facts,
led not only to a depreciation of the lifeworld, but also to what
Husserl viewed as the crisis of modern science, its alienation from
human experience, and its inability to address questions of
existential significance, of value and meaning.
The distrust in everything that cannot be quantified led to the view
that the perceptually appearing world is itself nothing but a
subjective illusion, a misleading representation of the physically
existing world, and the claim was then made that science must
transcend the realm of the given if it is to capture reality as it
truly is (Hua 6/54 [1970: 54]). For Husserl, however, the idea that
true reality is to be identified with some kind of behind-the-scenes
world that transcends every kind of experiential evidence is nothing
but a piece of mythologizing (Hua 3/115). More generally speaking,
Husserl would insist that the difference between the world of
perceptual experience and the world as determined by the natural
sciences is not a difference between the world for us and the world in
itself, but rather a difference between two ways in which one and the
same world can appear to us. The world as described by science is not
an autonomous world, a world behind or below the manifest world.
Rather, it is the same world as that of everyday
experience—namely, manifest reality—but now enriched
theoretically.
Although there are divergent accounts available regarding
Husserl’s final position on the status of theoretically
postulated unobservable entities, especially when it comes to the
question of whether Husserl is an instrumentalist (see, e.g., Soffer
1990, Wiltsche 2012, Hardy 2013, Trizio 2020), most interpreters would
agree that the lifeworld for Husserl remains the basis and
meaning-foundation for scientific research, even if the latter in its
precision and abstraction supersede that which is intuitively given
(Hua 6/48 [1970: 48]).
The physical thing which [the physicist] observes, with which he
experiments, which he continually sees, takes in his hand, puts on the
scale or in the melting furnace: that physical thing, and no other,
becomes the subject of the predicates ascribed in physics, such as
weight, temperature, electrical resistance, and so forth. (Hua
3/113)
It is the planetary bodies I observe in the sky, the water I drink,
the flower I admire, etc. that the natural scientist is also
investigating and whose true nature she seeks to determine in as exact
and objective a manner as possible. Even in those cases, where the
object of the scientific investigation is far removed from everyday
practice, the shared lifeworld remains in play, when planning and
setting up the experiments, when reading the measuring instruments,
when interpreting, comparing, and discussing the results with
one’s colleagues. In fact, as Husserl argues at length in his
last work
The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology
, as much as the search for objectivity is laudable,
we should never forget that scientifically valid knowledge has
first-person plural intentionality as its precondition. Science is a
theoretical attitude
we
can adopt upon the world. It is an
intersubjective achievement with its own presuppositions and genesis.
Its abstract idealized models have their roots in the lifeworld, which
serves as the soil from which scientific concepts grow, and depend not
only on the world of immediate, perceptual, experience, but also on a
long tradition of cultural and linguistic acquisitions and
accomplishments (Carr 1970). To make the latter observation is also to
acknowledge that one should not conceive of the relation between
lifeworld and the world of science as a static relation. Science draws
on the lifeworld, but it also affects the lifeworld, and gradually
some of its theoretical claims and insights will be absorbed by and
integrated into the latter.
The lifeworld is not simply a brute given, but is itself an
achievement of intentional constitution. Indeed, Husserl’s
discussion and analysis of the lifeworld was not only meant to clarify
the relation between the manifest image and the scientific image, to
use Sellars’ terms, but also to show to what extent both involve
and presuppose transcendental subjectivity (Hua 6/147 [1970: 144]). To
put it differently, Husserl’s lifeworld analysis can be seen as
a particular entry point into his transcendental phenomenology (Kern
1977) and serve as a reminder that Husserl is not only a
transcendental idealist, but also an empirical realist, if this is
understood as someone who defends the reality of the world of
experience. At the same time, however, and this adds another level of
complexity to Husserl’s analysis, Husserl is also offering an
ontology of the lifeworld, i.e., attempting to map out those essential
structures that will always characterize the lifeworld, regardless of
how diverse it might otherwise be geographically, historically and
culturally. Sometimes Husserl points to the existence of certain
fairly formal features, such as a common spatiotemporal structure (Hua
1/161, Hua 6/145 [1970: 142]), but on other occasions, he highlights
the role of embodiment and argues that every conceivable lifeworld is
structured with reference to the lived body (Hua 15/433). In either
case, however, it is the existence of certain universal structures
which is supposed to allow for transhistorical and intercultural
understanding.
In writings from the 1930s, Husserl introduces the distinction between
the
homeworld
Heimwelt
) and the
alienworld
Fremdwelt
), both of which can
be seen as different sections of the lifeworld (Held 1991, Steinbock
1995). We are all situated in a homeworld of our own, a familiar and
communal background of shared traditions, norms and meaning where we
feel at home. This is then contrasted with the alienworld(s), which
denote unfamiliar and divergent cultural norms and practices. Central
to Husserl’s late reflections on these topics is the
interdependence of the two notions. Without a basis in one’s
homeworld, one cannot encounter and recognize an alienworld. But it is
only by doing the latter, that one comes to recognize one homeworld
for what it is, a particular communal perspective on the world:
An alien humankind is constituted, an alien humanity, an alien people,
for example. Precisely thereby, there is constituted for me and for us
‘our own’ community of homecomrades. (Hua 15/214)
Husserl’s reflections on intercultural encounters reaches a
certain culmination in
Crisis
, where he explicitly links the
birth of
theōría
in Greece to the fact
that its maritime trade allowed for cultural exchange and contact with
“the great and already highly cultivated nations of its
surrounding world” (Hua 6/331–332 [1970: 285]). It was on
his view precisely this encounter with different cultures and
alternative worldviews and practices that made the Greeks realize the
relativity and specificity of their own cultural-historical normality
and thereby launched them on a search for a truth that would be valid
for everybody (Hua 6/142, 326 [1970: 139, 280], see also Held 1989,
Moran 2011, Miettinen 2020).
7. Personhood and ethics
As we saw in section 4, Husserl assigns an important role to the pure
ego in his account of consciousness, consciousness is egologically
structured, but as Husserl also points out, each of us has character
traits, abilities, dispositions, interests, habits and convictions,
and since this is all something that the pure ego lacks, the latter
should not “be confused with the Ego as the real person, with
the real subject of the real human being” (Hua 4/104). If I want
to get to know the latter, if I want to know who I am as a real
person, I have to enter the “infinity of experience” (Hua
4/104). In fact, obtaining that kind of self-knowledge is ultimately
an unending quest since the person, as Husserl explains, is a unit of
infinite development (Hua 14/204). Whereas the pure ego is a given, a
basic feature of conscious life, the personal ego is not merely under
constant development, but also the result of an accomplishment.
Given the right conditions and circumstances, you can become a person
(Hua 4/265–6). How does this happen? As Husserl points out, the
ego isn’t simply a dead pole of identity (Hua 9/208). Passing
through the stages of life—infancy, youth, maturity, and old
age—the ego continuously lives through intentional acts of
different kinds. These acts leave their mark behind in consciousness
and might create lasting tendencies and habitualities (Hua
1/100–1, 9/211, 4/265–266). The moment experiences are
acquired, sedimentations accrue, and enduring habits are established,
the subject will acquire a more concrete and personalized kind of
individuality, a personal style, and individual history (Hua 4/253,
300). This process does not take place in isolation, however. On the
contrary, it is very much a matter of a continuing socialization.
Every child is “raised into the form of a tradition” (Hua
15/144), and ultimately my being as a person is not my own achievement
but the result of what Husserl would call my “communicative
intertwinement” with others (Hua 15/603). As a central passage
has it:
The
origin of personality
is found in empathy and in the
further
social acts
that grow out of it. For personality, it
is not enough that the subject becomes aware of itself as the center
of its acts; rather, personality is constituted only as the subject
enters into social relations with others. (Hua 14/175)
Even though my experiential life will come to possess a content based
type of individuality as a result of the particular surrounding world
it finds itself in and as a result of the passive-associatively
established sedimentations and habits (Hua 13/407), Husserl, however,
also insists that none of this will suffice for true personhood (Hua
27/24). The personal ego is not—as Husserl adds in a critical
note to earlier work of his—an associative-inductive unit (Hua
13/435), but rather something that requires active and critical
deliberation and position-taking (
Stellungnahme
):
I can only be a person insofar as I do not merely have persisting
apperceptions and through them a resisting and opposed world that is
given to me as non-egoic, but also have persisting
‘convictions’, valuations, and volitions; convictions that
I have acquired through my own activities, through my own active
position-taking. (Hua 14/196)
Our identity as persons, our personal character and individuality, is
accordingly also constituted by our personal convictions, commitments
and decisions (Hua 9/214). Husserl is not blind to the fact that many
of an individual’s convictions do not have their origin in that
individual. In many cases, I come to hold convictions simply because I
qua community member accept the beliefs and values of other members.
Sometimes, I am able to reconstruct the rational reasons behind
others’ convictions and actively make them my own. In other
cases, I am simply yielding passively to the influences and
suggestions of others without even realizing it. Husserl is
consequently quite clear about the distinction between acting in
accordance with norms and acting in the light of norms and he
differentiates situations where I simply go along, situations where I
actively endorse and appropriate the opinions of others, and
situations where my opinions, decisions and convictions are based on
rational motives, on intuited evidence. In the latter case, I am able
to justify my decision to myself and for Husserl this exemplifies a
virtuous and authentic type of rational self-responsibility, one in
which my autonomy is affirmed. As he writes at one point “Be a
true person; lead a life that you can consistently justify with
insight, a life of practical reason” (Hua 27/36). Occasionally,
Husserl also brings up the issue of self-preservation (
Selbsterhaltung
and discusses how the identity of the
personal ego is secured through the unity and coherence of its
different convictions. In this context, self-preservation is clearly
to be understood as a normative ideal, as an achievement rather than
as a given (Hua 9/214).
As should be readily apparent, Husserl’s notion of personal ego
is very much situated in the ethical-normative domain. It is by being
committed and devoted to a certain set of central values and by
leading a life in the light of specific norms, that I come to have a
view and voice of my own, that I come to be a true individual in the
robust sense of the term. This is where the deepest center or kernel
of my being is located. It is only here that the very notion of being
true or faithful to oneself starts to make sense. To abandon the
values that I love with “my entire soul” and which belong
inseparably to the person that I am (Hua 27/28), would be to
“betray one’s true ego”, as Husserl states in a
manuscript from the mid-twenties (quoted in Melle 1991: 131).
Husserl is not ordinarily thought of as a moral philosopher, but he
regularly lectured on ethics, and the posthumous publication of some
of these lectures (Hua 28, Hua 37, Hua 42, Husserl 2025) has generated
an increasing interest in this aspect of his thinking (Melle 1991,
Hart 1992, Drummond 1995, Donohoe 2004, Loidolt 2009, Heinämaa
2024).
It has become customary to distinguish at least two phases in
Husserl’s ethical thought. In his early lectures on ethics from
the Göttingen period, Husserl defended a rationalist and
consequentialist ethics. The rationalism comes to the fore in
Husserl’s claim that our valuing and willing are subjected to
rational norms just like our theoretical reasoning and that ethics is
comparable in its rigor and universality to logic. Husserl even speaks
of formal axiology and formal praxeology as being analogous to formal
logic (Hua 28/36). On the one hand, Husserl’s efforts are
directed at developing a theory about how to value and will reasonably
and consistently. Central to these efforts is what Husserl refers to
as the highest formal principle or axiom of willing, namely an
imperative formulated by Brentano: “Do what is best among what
is achievable” (Hua 28/221). As Drummond has argued,
Husserl’s elaboration of this imperative eventually commits him
to an idealized consequentialism where we should always act “for
the greatest summative good” (Drummond 2018: 140). On the other
hand, however, Husserl also argues that our ethical judgments should
be tied to intuitive evidence and our decisions be guided by
axiological intuitions or value experiences. For Husserl, values are
disclosed in intentional feelings of value-perceptions (
Wertnehmung
(Hua 4/9), and part of Husserl’s
early ethics is consequently taken up by an analysis of the
intentionality of evaluative acts.
In the following decades, partially as a result of his continuing
philosophical work on the person and partially as a result of the
traumatic war years, where his youngest son was killed in battle,
Husserl abandoned his rationalist consequentialism (Hua
42/391–392) in favor of an ethics of love that eventually made
Husserl engage with a number of more existential themes (Cavallaro
& Heffernan 2022, Heinämaa with Steinbock 2024). Husserl
still highlights the importance of leading a life in evidence, a life
where one bears responsibility for one’s cognitive, evaluative
and practical beliefs. He explicitly refers to the Socratic-Platonic
idea of philosophy as involving a commitment to a way of life
characterized by unremitting self-reflection and a radical critique of
one’s own lifegoals (Hua 7/9) and insists that phenomenology
itself is a praxis of decisive personal and existential significance
(Hua 6/140 [1970: 137]). But Husserl also speaks of how certain values
can be experienced by one individual as an ethical call (Hua
42/388–90), as a vocation and absolute duty. An example he often
mentions is that of the mother who is faced with the choice of saving
her child and where he then rejects the idea that her choice ought to
be based on a deliberation about the highest practical good (Husserl
42/344, 391). Indeed, as he even puts it in a lecture from 1919/20,
“It is clear that an ethics realized merely on the basis of the
categorical imperative […] is no ethics at all” (Hua Mat
9/146). In cases such as that of the mother, there might be an
unconditional “you should and must” which precedes any
rational explanation and deliberation, and whose legitimacy is
experienced in the form of an “I would betray myself if I acted
differently” (Hua 42/392).
Husserl often talks of the effort of being true to oneself, i.e., of
leading one’s life in accordance with one’s central
values, in terms of an individual renewal. And it is at this stage
that his preoccupation with sociality then reasserts itself, since
there for Husserl cannot be an individual renewal without a social and
cultural renewal. As he emphasizes in a text from 1924, as an
individual subject I am a member of a community, and as such my
self-responsibility encompasses also a responsibility for the other
community members. I am responsible for helping others to act
properly. Indeed,
my self-responsibility extends to all others […]. [I]t belongs
to my self-responsibility that I make the other responsible, that I
possibly turn against him and against the violations that he commits
against the demand of his self-responsibility. (Hua 8/198)
The same holds true for others, and so ultimately “Everybody is
co-responsible for everybody else” (Hua 8/198). Husserl’s
later ethics is also a social ethics (Hua 27/22), which culminates in
the ideal of a love community (
Liebesgemeinschaft
(Hua 14/174–175, 42/512) where subjects reciprocally can help
each other realize their true selves (Hart 1992).
Bibliography
A. Primary Literature
References to the Husserliana, the text critical edition of
Husserl’s work, are given by volume number, with the page
number(s) following a slash (e.g., Hua 25/104–5). Most English
translations include references to the Hua pagination in the margin or
inserted into the text. Where translations lack such references, a
parallel citation is provided to the translation.
A.1 Husserliana (Cited Hua)
Husserliana 1:
Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser
Vorträge
, Stephan Strasser (ed.), The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1950. Pages 3–39 translated as
The Paris
Lectures
, Peter Koestenbaum (trans.), The Hague: M. Nijhoff,
1964. Pages 43–183 translated as
Cartesian Meditations: An
Introduction to Phenomenology
, Dorion Cairns (trans.), The Hague:
M. Nijhoff, 1960.
Husserliana 2:
Die Idee der Phänomenologie: Fünf
Vorlesungen
, Walter Biemel (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1950. Translated as
The Idea of Phenomenology
(Edmund Husserl
Collected Works 8), Lee Hardy (trans.), Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer
Academic, 1999.
Husserliana 3, 1–2:
Ideen zu einer reinen
Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes
Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine
Phänomenologie
, Karl Schuhmann (ed.), The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1976. Translated as
Ideas Pertaining to a Pure
Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book:
General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology
, F. Kersten
(trans.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982.
Husserliana 4:
Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und
phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch:
Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution
, M. Biemel
(ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952. Translated as
Ideas
Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological
Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of
Constitution
, R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (trans), Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic, 1989.
Husserliana 5:
Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und
phänomenologischen Philosophie. Drittes Buch: Die
Phänomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften
, M.
Biemel (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952. Pages 1–137
translated as
Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a
Phenomenological Philosophy. Third Book: Phenomenology and the
Foundations of the Sciences
, T. E. Klein and W. E. Pohl (trans),
The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980. Pages 138–62 translated as
Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological
Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of
Constitution
, R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (trans.), Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic, 1989, 405–30.
Husserliana 6:
Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften
und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die
phänomenologische Philosophie
, Walter Biemel (ed.), The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954. Translated as
The Crisis of
European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to
Phenomenological Philosophy
(Northwestern University Studies in
Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy), David Carr (trans.),
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970.
Husserliana 7:
Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Erster Teil:
Kritische Ideengeschichte
, Rudolf Boehm (ed.), The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1956. Translated as
First Philosophy: Lectures
1923/24 and Related Texts from the Manuscripts (1920–1925)
(Collected Works 14), Sebastian Luft and Thane M. Naberhaus (trans),
Dordrecht: Springer, 2019.
Husserliana 8:
Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Zweiter Teil:
Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion
, Rudolf Boehm
(ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959. Translated in
First
Philosophy: Lectures 1923/24 and Related Texts from the Manuscripts
(1920–1925)
(Collected Works 14), Sebastian Luft and Thane
M. Naberhaus (trans), Dordrecht: Springer, 2019.
Husserliana 9:
Phänomenologische Psychologie: Vorlesungen
Sommersemester 1925
, Walter Biemel (ed.), The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1962; second edition 1968. Pages 3–234 translated as
Phenomenological Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925
J. Scanlon (trans.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977. Pages
237–349, 517–526 translated as
Psychological and
Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger
(1927–1931)
, Thomas Sheehan and Richard E. Palmer
(eds/trans), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1997.
Husserliana 10:
Zur Phänomenologie des inneren
Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917)
, Rudolf Boehm (ed.), The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Translated as
On the Phenomenology
of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917)
(Collected Works 4), John B. Brough (trans.), Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic, 1991.
Husserliana 11:
Analysen zur passiven Synthesis: Aus
Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926
, Margot
Fleischer (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Translated as
Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on
Transcendental Logic
(Edmund Husserl Collected Works 9), Anthony
J. Steinbeck (trans.), Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic, 2001.
Husserliana 12:
Philosophie der Arithmetik. Mit
ergänzenden Texten (1890–1901)
, Lothar Eley (ed.), The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970. Translated as
Philosophy of
Arithmetic: Psychological and Logical Investigations with
Supplementary Texts from 1887–1901
(Collected Works 10),
Dallas Willard (trans.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2003.
doi:10.1007/978-94-010-0060-4
Husserliana 13:
Zur Phänomenologie der
Intersubjektivität: Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster Teil:
1905–1920
, Iso Kern (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1973. Pages 8–9, 77–98, 111–235 translated as
The Basic Problems of Phenomenology: From the Lectures, Winter
Semester, 1910–1911
(Collected Works 12), Ingo Farin and
James G. Hart (trans), Dordrecht: Springer, 2006.
Husserliana 14:
Zur Phänomenologie der
Intersubjektivität: Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil:
1921–1928
, Iso Kern (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1973.
Husserliana 15:
Zur Phänomenologie der
Intersubjektivität: Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil:
1929–1935
, Iso Kern (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1973.
Husserliana 16:
Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907
, Ulrich
Claesges (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. Translated as
Thing and Space: Lectures of 1907
(Collected Works 7),
Richard Rojcewicz (trans.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1997.
Husserliana 17:
Formale und transzendentale Logik: Versuch
einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft
, Paul Janssen (ed.), The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974. Translated as
Formal and
Transcendental Logic
, Dorion Cairns (trans.), The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1969. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-4900-8
Husserliana 18:
Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band:
Prolegomena zur reinen Logik
, Elmar Holenstein (ed.), The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1975. Translated in
Logical Investigations
Volume 1
, Dermot Moran (ed.), J. N. Findlay (trans.), London:
Routledge, 2001, 1–161. doi:10.4324/9780203879054
Husserliana 19, 1–2:
Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter
Band: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der
Erkenntnis
, Ursula Panzer (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1984. Translated in
Logical Investigations Volumes 1 and 2
Dermot Moran (ed.); J. N. Findlay (trans.), London: Routledge, 1:
162–331, 2: 1–364.
Husserliana 20, 1:
Logische Untersuchungen:
Ergänzungsband. Erster Teil: Entwürfe zur Umarbeitung der
VI. Untersuchung und zur Vorrede für die Neuauflage der Logischen
Untersuchungen (Sommer 1913)
, Ullrich Melle (ed.), Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic, 2002.
Husserliana 20, 2:
Logische Untersuchungen:
Ergänzungsband. Zweiter Teil: Texte für die Neufassung der
VI. Untersuchung. Zur Phänomenologie des Ausdrucks und der
Erkenntnis (1893/94–1921)
, Ullrich Melle (ed.), Dordrecht:
Springer, 2005.
Husserliana 21:
Studien zur Arithmetik und Geometrie. Texte
aus dem Nachlass (1886–1901)
, Ingeborg Strohmeyer (ed.),
The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983.
Husserliana 22:
Aufsätze und Rezensionen
(1890–1910)
, Bernhard Rang (ed.), The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1979. Translated in
Early Writings in the Philosophy of
Logic and Mathematics
(Collected Works 5), Dallas Willard
(trans.), Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994.
Husserliana 23:
Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung. Zur
Phänomenologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen. Texte
aus dem Nachlass (1898–1925)
, Eduard Marbach (ed.), The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980. Translated as
Phantasy, Image
Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925)
(Collected Works 11),
John B. Brough (trans.), Dordrecht: Springer, 2005.
doi:10.1007/1-4020-2642-0
Husserliana 24:
Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie:
Vorlesungen 1906/07
, Ullrich Melle (ed.), Dordrecht: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1984. Translated as
Introduction to Logic and Theory of
Knowledge: Lectures 1906/07
(Collected Works 13), Claire Ortiz
Hill (trans.), Dordrecht: Springer, 2008.
doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6727-3
Husserliana 25:
Aufsätze und Vorträge
(1911–1921)
, Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp (eds),
Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987. Pages 3–62 translated as
“Philosophy as rigorous science”, in Q. Lauer
(ed./trans.),
Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy
, New
York: Harper & Row, 1965, 71–147.
Husserliana 26:
Vorlesungen über Bedeutungslehre.
Sommersemester 1908
, Ursula Panzer (ed.), The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1987.
Husserliana 27:
Aufsätze und Vorträge
(1922–1937)
, Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp (eds),
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1989.
Husserliana 28:
Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre
(1908–1914)
, Ullrich Melle (ed.), The Hague: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1988.
Husserliana 29:
Die Krisis der europäischen
Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie:
Ergänzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachlass 1934–1937
, R.
N. Smid (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1993.
Husserliana 30:
Logik und allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie.
Vorlesungen 1917/18. Mit ergänzenden Texten aus der ersten
Fassung 1910/11
, Ursula Panzer (ed.), The Hague: Kluwer Academic,
1995. Translated as
Logic and General Theory of Science: Lectures
1917/18 with Supplementary Texts from the First Version of
1910/11
(Collected Works 15), Claire Ortiz Hill (trans.), Cham,
Switzerland: Springer, 2019. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-14529-3
Husserliana 31:
Aktive Synthesen: Aus der Vorlesung
“Transzendentale Logik” 1920/21. Ergänzungsband zu
“Analysen zur passiven Synthesis”
, Roland Breeur
(ed.), The Hague: Kluwer Academic, 2000.
Husserliana 32:
Natur und Geist: Vorlesungen Sommersemester
1927
, Michael Weiler (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic,
2001.
Husserliana 33:
Die ‘Bernauer Manuskripte’
über das Zeitbewußtsein (1917/18)
, Rudolf Bernet and
Dieter Lohmar (eds), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2001.
Husserliana 34:
Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion: Texte
aus dem Nachlass (1926–1935)
, Sebastian Luft (ed.),
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2002.
Husserliana 35:
Einleitung in die Philosophie: Vorlesungen
1922/23
, Berndt Goossens (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic,
2002.
Husserliana 36:
Transzendentaler Idealismus: Texte aus dem
Nachlass (1908–1921)
, Robin D. Rollinger (ed.), Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic, 2003.
Husserliana 37:
Einleitung in die Ethik. Vorlesungen
Sommersemester 1920 und 1924
, Henning Peucker (ed.), Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic, 2004.
Husserliana 38:
Wahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit. Texte aus dem
Nachlass (1893–1912)
, Thomas Vongehr and Regula Giuliani
(eds), New York: Springer, 2005.
Husserliana 39:
Die Lebenswelt: Auslegungen der vorgegebenen
Welt und ihrer Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass
(1916–1937)
, Rochus Sowa (ed.), Dordrecht: Springer.
Husserliana 40:
Untersuchungen zur Urteilstheorie. Texte aus
dem Nachlass (1893–1918)
, Robin Rollinger (ed.), Dordrecht:
Springer, 2009. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6897-3
Husserliana 41:
Zur Lehre vom Wesen und zur Methode der
eidetischen Variation. Texte aus dem Nachlass, 1891–1935
Dirk Fonfara (ed.), Dordrecht: Springer, 2012.
doi:10.1007/978-94-007-2625-3
Husserliana 42:
Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie.
Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte. Metaphysik. Späte
Ethik. Texte aus dem Nachlass 1908–1937
, Robin Sowa and
Thomas Vongehr (eds), New York: Springer, 2013.
doi:10.1007/978-94-007-6801-7
Husserliana 43:
Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins.
Teilbände I–IV
, Ullrich Melle and Thomas Vongehr
(eds), Dordrecht: Springer, 2020.
Husserliana 44:
Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und
phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch:
Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution und
Wissenschaftstheorie sowie das Nachwort zu meinen Ideen
, Dirk
Fonfara (ed.), Cham: Springer, 2025).
A.2 Husserliana Materialenband (cited Hua Mat)
Husserliana Materialienband 1:
Logik. Vorlesung 1896
, E.
Schuhmann (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.
Husserliana Materialienband 2:
Logik. Vorlesung 1902/03
E. Schuhmann (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.
Husserliana Materialienband 3:
Allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie.
Vorlesung 1902/03
, E. Schuhmann (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 2001.
Husserliana Materialienband 4:
Natur und Geist. Vorlesungen
Sommersemester 1919
, ed. M. Weiler, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 2002.
Husserliana Materialienband 5:
Urteilstheorie. Vorlesung
1905
, E. Schuhmann (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
2002.
Husserliana Materialienband 6:
Alte und neue Logik. Vorlesung
1908/09
, E. Schuhmann (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 2003.
Husserliana Materialienband 7:
Einführung in die
Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis. Vorlesung 1909
, E. Schuhmann
(ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2005.
Husserliana Materialienband 8:
Späte Texte über
Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Die C-Manuskripte
, D. Lohmar
(ed.), New York: Springer, 2006.
Husserliana Materialienband 9:
Einleitung in die Philosophie.
Vorlesungen 1916–1919
, H. Jacobs (ed.), Dordrecht:
Springer, 2012.
Husserliana Materialienband 10:
Einleitung in die
Phänomenologie. Vorlesung 1912
, T. Vongehr (ed.), Dordrecht:
Springer, 2023.
Husserliana Materialienband 11:
Manuskripte zur Konstitution
von Raumdingen – aus den D-Manuskripten
, D. Lohmar (ed.),
Dordrecht: Springer, 2024.
A.3 Other Cited Works by Husserl
1939 [1973],
Erfahrung Und Urteil: Untersuchungen Zur
Genealogie Der Logik
, Ludwig Landgrebe (ed.), Prague: Academia
verlagsbuchhandlung. Translated as
Experience and Judgment:
Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic
(Northwestern University
Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy), James S.
Churchill and Karl Ameriks (trans), Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 1973.
1981.
Shorter Works
, P. McCormick and F. A. Elliston
(eds.), Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.
1994,
Briefwechsel I–X
(Husserliana Dokumente, Bd.
3), Elisabeth Schuhmann and Karl Schuhmann (eds), Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic.
2024,
Values of Love and Ethical Reflection
(Husserlian
Legacies: Themes for the 21st Century), Sara Heinämaa and Anthony
J. Steinbock (eds), Andrew D. Barrette (trans.), Cham: Springer.
doi:10.1007/978-3-031-68698-6
B. Secondary Literature
B.1 Cited works
Beck, Maximilian, 1928, “Die Neue Problemlage der
Erkenntnistheorie”,
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für
Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte
, 6:
611–639.
Benoist, Jocelyn, 2001,
Intentionalité et langage dans
les «recherches logiques» de Husserl
(Epiméthée), Paris: Presses universitaires de
France.
Bernet, Rudolf, 1990, “Husserls Begriff des Noema”, in
Husserl-Ausgabe und Husserl-Forschung
(Phaenomenologica 115),
Samuel IJsseling (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
61–80. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-2427-7_5
Bernet, Rudolf, Iso Kern, and Eduard Marbach, 1993,
An
Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology
(Northwestern University
Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press.
Brentano, Franz, 1874 [1973],
Psychologie vom empirischen
Standpunkt
, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. Translated from the
1924 edition as
Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint
(International Library of Philosophy and Scientific Method), Oskar
Kraus (ed.) and Linda L. McAlister (English ed.), Linda L. McAlister,
Antos C. Rancurello, and D. B. Terrell (trans), London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1973.
Brough, John, 1972, “The Emergence of an Absolute
Consciousness in Husserl’s Early Writings on
Time-Consciousness”,
Man and World
, 5(3):
298–326. doi:10.1007/BF01248638
Carr, David, 1970, “Husserl’s Problematic Concept of
the Life-World”,
American Philosophical Quarterly
7(4): 331–339.
–––, 1999,
The Paradox of Subjectivity: The
Self in the Transcendental Tradition
, New York: Oxford University
Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780195126907.001.0001
Cavallaro, Marco and George Heffernan (eds), 2022,
The
Existential Husserl: A Collection of Critical Essays
(Contributions to Phenomenology 120), Dordrecht: Springer.
doi:10.1007/978-3-031-05095-4
Crowell, Steven Galt, 2001,
Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space
of Meaning: Paths toward Transcendental Phenomenology
(Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential
Philosophy), Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
De Boer, Theodore, 1966 [1978],
De ontwikkelingsgang in het
denken van Husserl
(Wijsgerige teksten en studies 14), Assen: Van
Gorcum. Translated as
The Development of Husserl’s
Thought
(Phaenomenologica 76), Theodore Plantinga. (trans.), The
Hague/Boston: Nijhoff, 1978. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-9691-5
de Warren, Nicolas, 2009,
Husserl and the Promise of Time:
Subjectivity in Transcendental Phenomenology
(Modern European
Philosophy), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
doi:10.1017/CBO9780511657412
Depraz, Natalie, 1995,
Transcendance et incarnation: le statut
de l’intersubjectivité comme altérité
à soi chez Husserl
(Bibliothèque d’histoire
de la philosophie Nouvelle série), Paris: Vrin.
Donohoe, Janet, 2004,
Husserl on Ethics and Intersubjectivity:
From Static to Genetic Phenomenology
, Amherst, NY: Humanity
Books.
Doyon, Maxime, 2024,
Phenomenology and the Norms of
Perception
, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
doi:10.1093/9780191993527.001.0001
Dreyfus, Hubert L., 1982, “Husserl’s Perceptual
Noema”, in
Dreyfus and Hall (eds) 1982a
97–123.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Harrison Hall (eds), 1982a,
Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science
, Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.
–––, 1982b, “Introduction”, in
Dreyfus and Hall (eds) 1982a
1–27.
Drummond, John J., 1990,
Husserlian Intentionality and
Non-Foundational Realism: Noema and Object
(Contributions to
Phenomenology 4), Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
doi:10.1007/978-94-009-1974-7
–––, 1992, “An Abstract Consideration:
De-Ontologizing the Noema”, in
The Phenomenology of the
Noema
(Contributions to Phenomenology 10), John J. Drummond and
Lester Embree (eds), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
89–109. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-3425-7_7
–––, 1995, “Moral Objectivity:
Husserl’s Sentiments of the Understanding”,
Husserl
Studies
, 12(2): 165–183. doi:10.1007/BF01417589
–––, 2018, “Husserl’s Middle Period
and the Development of His Ethics”, in
The Oxford Handbook
of the History of Phenomenology
, Dan Zahavi (ed.), Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 135–154 (ch. 7).
Fink, Eugen, 1933 [2000], “Die phänomenologische
Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der gegenwärtigen Kritik”,
Kant-Studien
, 38(1–2): 319–383. Translated as
“The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edumund Husserl and
Contemporary Criticism”, in
The Phenomenology of Husserl:
Selected Critical Readings
, R. O. Elveton (ed./trans.), Chicago:
Quadrangle Books, 1970. Second edition, Seattle: Noesis Press, 2000,
70–139. doi:10.1515/kant.1933.38.1-2.319 (1933)
–––, 1939 [1981], “Das Problem der
Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls”,
Revue Internationale
de Philosophie
, 1(2): 226–270. Translated as “The
problem of the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl”, in
Apriori
and World: European Contributions to Husserlian Phenomenology
, W.
McKenna, R. M. Harlan, and L. E. Winters (eds), R. M. Harlan (trans.),
The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981, 21–55.
Frege, Gottlob, 1894, “Rezension von: E. Husserl,
Philosophie der Arithmetik I
”,
Zeitschrift für
Philosophie und philosophische Kritik
, 103: 313–332.
Føllesdal, Dagfinn, 1958,
Husserl und Frege: ein
Beitrag zur Beleuchtung der Entstehung der phänomenologischen
Philosophie
(Avhandlinger utgitt av det Norske videnskaps-akademi
i Oslo. 2:Hist.-filos. klasse, 1958, no. 2), Oslo: I kommisjon hos
Aschehoug.
–––, 1969, “Husserl’s Notion of
Noema”,
The Journal of Philosophy
, 66(20):
680–687. doi:10.2307/2024451
–––, 1974, “Husserl’s Theory of
Perception”,
Ajatus
, 36: 95–103.
Hart, James G., 1992,
The Person and the Common Life: Studies
in a Husserlian Social Ethics
(Phaenomenologica 126),
Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
doi:10.1007/978-94-015-7991-9
Hardy, Lee, 2013,
Nature’s Suit: Husserl’s
Phenomenological Philosophy of the Physical Sciences
(Series in
Continental Thought 45), Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
Heinämaa, Sara, 2003,
Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual
Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir
, Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield Publishers.
–––, 2020, “Values of Love: Two Forms of
Infinity Characteristic of Human Persons”,
Phenomenology and
the Cognitive Sciences
, 19(3): 431–450.
doi:10.1007/s11097-019-09653-2
Heinämaa, Sara, Mirja Hartimo, and Timo Miettinen, 2014,
“Introduction: Methodological, Historical, and Conceptual
Starting Points”, in
Phenomenology and the
Transcendental
, Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo, and Timo
Miettinen (eds), New York: Routledge, 1–18.
doi:10.4324/9780203797037
Heinämaa, Sara in collaboration with Anthony J. Steinbock,
2024, “Husserl’s Investigations into Love and Values of
Love: Axiology, Praxeology, and Ethics” in
Values of Love
and Ethical Reflection
(Husserlian Legacies: Themes for the 21st
Century 1), by Edmund Husserl, Sara Heinämaa and Anthony J.
Steinbock (eds), Cham: Springer, xi–xxxviii.
doi:10.1007/978-3-031-68698-6
Held, Klaus, 1966,
Lebendige Gegenwart: die Frage nach der
Seinsweise des Transzendentalen ich bei Edmund Husserl, entwickelt am
Leitfaden der Zeitproblematik
(Phaenomenologica 23), The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff.
–––, 1989, “Husserl und die
Griechen”,
Phänomenologische Forschungen
, 22:
137–176.
–––, 1991, “Heimwelt, Fremdwelt, die eine
Welt”,
Phänomenologische Forschungen
, 24/25:
305–337.
Holenstein, Elmar, 1972,
Phänomenologie der Assoziation:
Zu Struktur und Funktion eines Grundprinzips der passiven Genesis bei
E. Husserl
(Phaenomenologica 44), Den Haag: Nijhoff.
Hopp, Walter, 2011,
Perception and Knowledge: A
Phenomenological Account
, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge
University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511758621
–––, 2020,
Phenomenology: A Contemporary
Introduction
(Routledge Contemporary Introductions to
Philosophy), New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003047216
Ingarden, Roman, 1963 [1975], “Motywach, które
doprowadziły Husserla do transcendentalnego idealizmu”, in
his
Z badań nad filosofia̦
współczesna̦
, Państwowe Wydawn. Naukowe.
Translated as
On the Motives Which Led Husserl to Transcendental
Idealism
(Phaenomenologica 64), Arnór Hannibalsson
(trans.), Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Kern, Iso, 1962 [1977], “Die drei Wege zur
transzendentalphänomenologischen Reduktion in der
Philosophie Edmund Husserls”,
Tijdskrift voor
Filosofie
, 24: 303–349. Translated as “The Three Ways
to the Transcendental Phenomenological Reduction in the Philosophy of
Edmund Husserl”, in
Husserl: Expositions and
Appraisals
, Frederick A. Elliston and Peter McCormick (eds),
Notre Dame, IN/New York: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977,
126–149.
Kortooms, Antonie Johannes Maria, 2002,
Phenomenology of Time:
Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of Time-Consciousness
(Phaenomenologica 161), Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
doi:10.1007/978-94-015-9918-4
Lipps, Theodor, 1909,
Leitfaden der Psychologie
, 3.
teilweise umgearb. aufl, Leipzig: W. Engelmann.
Loidolt, Sophie, 2009,
Anspruch und Rechtfertigung: eine
Theorie des rechtlichen Denkens im Anschluss an die
Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls
(Phaenomenologica 191),
Dordrecht: Springer.
Lohmar, Dieter and Ichirō Yamaguchi (eds), 2010,
On Time:
New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time
(Phaenomenologica 197), Dordrecht/New York: Springer.
doi:10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9
Marbach, Eduard, 1974,
Das Problem des Ich in der
Phänomenologie Husserls
(Phaenomenologica 59), The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff. doi:10.1007/978-94-010-2020-6
McIntyre, Ronald, 1982, “Intending and Referring”, in
Dreyfus and Hall (eds) 1982a
215–231.
–––, 1986, “Husserl and the
Representational Theory of Mind”,
Topoi
, 5(2):
101–113. doi:10.1007/BF00139224
Melle, Ullrich, 1991, “The Development of Husserl’s
Ethics:”,
Études
Phénoménologiques
, 7(13–14): 115–135.
doi:10.5840/etudphen1991713/144
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1945 [2012],
Phénoménologie de la perception
(Bibliothèque des idées), Paris: Gallimard. Translated
as
Phenomenology of Perception
, Donald A. Landes (trans.),
London/New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203720714
Miettinen, Timo, 2020,
Husserl and the Idea of Europe
(Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential
Philosophy), Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Mohanty, J. N., 1977, “Husserl and Frege: A New Look at
Their Relationship”, in
Readings on Edmund Husserl’s
Logical Investigations
, J. N. Mohanty (ed.), The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 22–32. doi:10.1007/978-94-010-1055-9_3
Moran, Dermot, 2011, “‘Even the Papuan Is a Man and
Not a Beast’: Husserl on Universalism and the Relativity of
Cultures”,
Journal of the History of Philosophy
, 49(4):
463–494. doi:10.1353/hph.2011.0088
Montavont, Anne, 1999,
De la passivité dans la
phénoménologie de Husserl
, Paris: Presses
universitaires de France.
Overgaard, Søren, 2022, “Phenomenologists on
Perception and Hallucination: Husserl and Merleau‐Ponty”,
Philosophy Compass
, 17(8): e12861.
doi:10.1111/phc3.12861
Peirce, C. S., 1868 [1955], “Some Consequences of Four
Incapacities”,
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy
2(3): 140–157. Abridged version in
Philosophical Writings of
Peirce
(Dover Books on Philosophy T217), Justus Buchler (ed.),
New York: Dover Publications, 228–250 (ch. 16).
Perreau, Laurent, 2013,
Le monde social selon Husserl
(Phaenomenologica 209), Dordrecht/New York: Springer.
doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5401-0
Philipse, Herman, 1995, “Transcendental Idealism”, in
The Cambridge Companion to Husserl
, Barry Smith and David
Woodruff Smith (eds), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press,
239–322 (ch. 6). doi:10.1017/CCOL0521430232.007
Rang, Bernhard, 1973,
Kausalität und Motivation:
Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Perspektivität und
Objektivität in der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls
(Phaenomenologica 53), Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
doi:10.1007/978-94-010-2393-1
Reinach, Adolf, 1914 [1968], “Über
Phänomenologie”. Lecture at Marburg, January, 1914.
Published as
Was ist Phänomenologie?
, München:
Kösel-Verlag, 1951. Translated as “What Is
Phenomenology?”, Derek Kelly (trans.),
Philosophical
Forum
, 1(2): 234–256.
Rodemeyer, Lanei M., 2006,
Intersubjective Temporality:
It’s about Time
(Phaenomenologica 176), Dordrecht:
Springer. doi:10.1007/1-4020-4214-0
Salice, Alessandro, 2015 [2020], “The Phenomenology of the
Munich and Göttingen Circles”,
The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Winter 2020), Edward N. Zalta and Uri
Nodelman (eds), URL =
>.
Sheehan, Thomas, 1997, “Husserl and Heidegger: The making
and unmaking for a relationship”, in
Psychological and
Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger
(1927–1931)
, Thomas Sheehan and Richard E. Palmer
(eds/trans), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1–32.
Smith, A. D., 2003,
Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Husserl
and the Cartesian Meditations
(Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks),
London/New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203422663
Smith, David Woodruff, 2013,
Husserl
(Routledge
Philosophers), second edition, London/New York: Routledge. First
edition, 2007. doi:10.4324/9780203742952
Smith, David Woodruff and Ronald McIntyre, 1982,
Husserl and
Intentionality: A Study of Mind, Meaning, and Language
(Synthese
Library 154), Dordrecht: D. Reidel. doi:10.1007/978-94-010-9383-5
Soffer, Gail, 1990, “Phenomenology and Scientific Realism:
Husserl’s Critique of Galileo”,
The Review of
Metaphysics
, 44(1): 67–94.
Sokolowski, Robert, 1987, “Husserl and Frege”,
The
Journal of Philosophy
, 84(10): 521–528.
Spiegelberg, Herbert, 1972,
Phenomenology in Psychology and
Psychiatry: A Historical Introduction
(Northwestern University
Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press.
Steinbock, Anthony J., 1995,
Home and beyond: Generative
Phenomenology after Husserl
(Northwestern University Studies in
Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press.
Ströker, Elisabeth, 1987,
Husserls transzendentale
Phänomenologie
, Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann.
Szanto, Thomas, 2016, “Husserl on Collective
Intentionality”, in
The Phenomenological Approach to Social
Reality: History, Concepts, Problems
(Studies in the Philosophy
of Sociality 6), Alessandro Salice and Bernhard Schmid (eds),
Dordrecht: Springer, 145–172.
doi:10.1007/978-3-319-27692-2_7
Taipale, Joona, 2014,
Phenomenology and Embodiment: Husserl
and the Constitution of Subjectivity
(Northwestern University
Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press.
Thomasson, Amie L., 2007, “In What Sense Is Phenomenology
Transcendental?”,
The Southern Journal of Philosophy
45(S1): 85–92. doi:10.1111/j.2041-6962.2007.tb00114.x
Trizio, Emiliano, 2020,
Philosophy’s Nature:
Husserl’s Phenomenology, Natural Science, and Metaphysics
London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003007470
Tugendhat, Ernst, 1970,
Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und
Heidegger
, Berlin: de Gruyter.
Willard, D. 2011. “Realism sustained? Interpreting
Husserl’s progression into idealism”, paper presented at
the Early Phenomenology Conference held at Franciscan University of
Steubenville, April 29–30, 2011.
Wiltsche, Harald A., 2012, “What Is Wrong with
Husserl’s Scientific Anti-Realism?”,
Inquiry
55(2): 105–130. doi:10.1080/0020174X.2012.661572
–––, 2015, “Intuitions, Seemings, and
Phenomenology”,
Teorema: Revista Internacional de
Filosofía
, 34(3): 57–78.
Zahavi, Dan, 1996 [2001],
Husserl und die transzendentale
Intersubjektivität: eine Antwort auf die sprachpragmatische
Kritik
(Phaenomenologica 135), Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic
Publishers. Translated as
Husserl and Transcendental
Intersubjectivity: A Response to the Linguistic-Pragmatic
Critique
(Series in Continental Thought 29), Elizabeth A. Behnke
(trans.), Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2001.
–––, 1999,
Self-Awareness and Alterity: A
Phenomenological Investigation
(Northwestern University Studies
in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press.
–––, 2003,
Husserl’s
Phenomenology
(Cultural Memory in the Present), translated by the
author, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
–––, 2014,
Self and Other: Exploring
Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame
, Oxford: Oxford University
Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199590681.001.0001
–––, 2017,
Husserl’s Legacy:
Phenomenology, Metaphysics, and Transcendental Philosophy
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
doi:10.1093/oso/9780199684830.001.0001
–––, 2025,
Being We: Phenomenological
Contributions to Social Ontology
, Oxford/New York: Oxford
University Press. doi:10.1093/9780191915482.001.0001
B.2 Other major critical works
Bernet, Rudolf, Donn Welton, and Gina Zavota (eds), 2005,
Edmund Husserl: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers
5 vols., London/New York: Routledge.
Beyer, Christian, 2000,
Intentionalität und Referenz:
Eine sprachanalytische Studie zu Husserls transzendentaler
Phänomenologie
, Paderborn: Brill/mentis.
doi:10.30965/9783969751985
Boehm, Rudolf, 1968,
Vom Gesichtspunkt der
Phänomenologie
(Phaenomenologica 26), Den Haag: Nijhoff.
doi:10.1007/978-94-010-3436-4
Carr, David, 1987,
Interpreting Husserl: Critical and
Comparative Studies
(Phaenomenologica 106), Dordrecht/Boston: M.
Nijhoff. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-3595-2
Centrone, Stefania, 2010,
Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics
in the Early Husserl
(Synthese Library. Studies in Epistemology,
Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science 345), Dordrecht/New
York: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-90-481-3246-1
Claesges, Ulrich, 1964,
Edmund Husserls Theorie der
Raumkonstitution
(Phaenomenologica 19), Den Haag: M. Nijhoff.
doi:10.1007/978-94-010-3573-6
Gallagher, Shaun, 1998,
The Inordinance of Time
(Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential
Philosophy), Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Gander, Hans-Helmuth (ed.), 2010,
Husserl-Lexikon
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Gurwitsch, Aron, 1966,
Studies in Phenomenology and
Psychology
(Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology
& Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Press.
Hartimo, Mirja, 2021,
Husserl and Mathematics
Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
doi:10.1017/9781108990905
Ierna, Carlo, Hanne Jacobs, and Filip Mattens (eds), 2010,
Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences: Essays in Commemoration of
Edmund Husserl
(Phaenomenologica 200), Dordrecht/New York:
Springer. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-0071-0
IJsseling, Samuel (ed.), 1990,
Husserl-Ausgabe und
Husserl-Forschung
(Phaenomenologica 115), Dordrecht/Boston:
Kluwer Academic Publischers.
Jacobs, Hanne (ed.), 2021,
The Husserlian Mind
, London:
Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429243790
Jardine, James, 2022,
Empathy, Embodiment, and the Person:
Husserlian Investigations of Social Experience and the Self
(Phaenomenologica 233), Cham: Springer.
doi:10.1007/978-3-030-84463-9
Lee, Nam-in, 1993,
Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie der
Instinkte
(Phaenomenologica 128), Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer
Academic Publishers.
Luft, Sebastian, 2011,
Subjectivity and Lifeworld in
Transcendental Phenomenology
, Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press.
Mohanty, J. N., 1989,
Transcendental Phenomenology: An
Analytic Account
, Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
Moran, Dermot, 2012,
Husserl’s “Crisis of the
European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology”: An
Introduction
(Cambridge Introductions to Key Philosophical
Texts), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
doi:10.1017/CBO9781139025935
Moran, Dermot and Joseph D. Cohen, 2012,
The Husserl
Dictionary
(Continuum Philosophy Dictionaries), London/New York:
Continuum.
Overgaard, Søren, 2004,
Husserl and Heidegger on Being
in the World
(Phaenomenologica 173), Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer
Academic Publishers. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-2239-5
Peucker, Henning, 2008, “From Logic to the Person: An
Introduction to Edmund Husserl’s Ethics”,
The Review
of Metaphysics
, 62(2): 307–325.
Rinofner-Kreidl, Sonja, 2000,
Edmund Husserl: Zeitlichkeit und
Intentionalität
(Phänomenologie 8), München:
Alber.
Rollinger, R. D., 1999,
Husserl’s Position in the School
of Brentano
(Phaenomenologica 150), Dordrecht/Boston, MA: Kluwer
Academic.
Schuhmann, Karl, 1977,
Husserl-Chronik: Denk- und Lebensweg
Edmund Husserls
(Husserliana Dokumente 1), Den Haag: Martinus
Nijhoff.
–––, 1988,
Husserls Staatsphilosophie
(Alber-Reihe Praktische Philosophie, Bd. 29), Freiburg/Br.: K.
Alber.
Sokolowski, Robert, 1964,
The Formation of Husserl’s
Concept of Constitution
(Phaenomenologica 18), The Hague: M.
Nijhoff. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-3325-0
–––, 1974,
Husserlian Meditations; How Words
Present Things
(Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology
& Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Press.
Volonté, Paolo, 1997,
Husserls Phänomenologie der
Imagination: zur Funktion der Phantasie bei der Konstitution von
Erkenntnis
(Phänomenologie, Bd. 2), Freiburg im Breisgau: K.
Alber.
Waldenfels, Bernhard, 1971,
Das Zwischenreich des Dialogs:
Sozialphilosophische Untersuchungen in Anschluss an Edmund
Husserl
(Phaenomenologica 41), Den Haag: M. Nijhoff.
doi:10.1007/978-94-010-3000-7
Welton, Donn, 2000,
The Other Husserl: The Horizons of
Transcendental Phenomenology
(Studies in Continental Thought),
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
––– (ed.), 2003,
The New Husserl: A Critical
Reader
(Studies in Continental Thought), Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Academic Tools
How to cite this entry
Preview the PDF version of this entry
at the
Friends of the SEP Society
Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry
at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO).
Enhanced bibliography for this entry
at
PhilPapers
, with links to its database.
Other Internet Resources
The Husserl Page
The Open Commons of Phenomenology
Husserl Archives Leuven
Beyer, Christian, “Edmund Husserl”,
Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Summer 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta
& Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL =
>.
[This was the previous entry on this topic in the
Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
– see the
version history
.]
Related Entries
consciousness
consciousness: and intentionality
Heidegger, Martin
idealism
intentionality
Kant, Immanuel
Kant, Immanuel: transcendental idealism
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice
other minds
phenomenology
psychologism
Sartre, Jean-Paul
self-consciousness: phenomenological approaches to
Stein, Edith
Copyright © 2025
by
Dan Zahavi
zahavi
hum
ku
dk
Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative.
The Encyclopedia Now Needs Your Support
Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia Free
Browse
Table of Contents
What's New
Random Entry
Chronological
Archives
About
Editorial Information
About the SEP
Editorial Board
How to Cite the SEP
Special Characters
Advanced Tools
Contact
Support SEP
Support the SEP
PDFs for SEP Friends
Make a Donation
SEPIA for Libraries
Mirror Sites
View this site from another server:
USA (Main Site)
Philosophy, Stanford University
Info about mirror sites
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is
copyright © 2025
by
The Metaphysics Research Lab
, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University
Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054