, thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations)
, thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view
, thesis1_year = 1883
, thesis2_title = Über den Begriff der Zahl (On the Concept of Number)
, thesis2_url = https://www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/5870
, thesis2_year = 1887
, doctoral_advisor =
Leo Königsberger (PhD advisor)
Carl Stumpf
Carl Stumpf (; 21 April 1848 – 25 December 1936) was a German philosopher, psychologist and musicologist. He is noted for founding the Berlin School of Experimental Psychology.
He studied with Franz Brentano at the University of Würzburg b ...
(Dr. phil. hab. advisor)
, academic_advisors =
Franz Brentano
Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (; ; 16 January 1838 – 17 March 1917) was an influential German philosopher, psychologist, and former Catholic priest (withdrawn in 1873 due to the definition of papal infallibility in matters of ...
, doctoral_students =
Edith Stein
Edith Stein (religious name Saint Teresia Benedicta a Cruce ; also known as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross or Saint Edith Stein; 12 October 1891 – 9 August 1942) was a German Jewish philosopher who converted to Christianity and became a ...
Roman Ingarden
, birth_name=Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl ( , , ; 8 April 1859 – 27 April 1938) was a
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
philosopher and mathematician who established the school of
phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
.
In his early work, he elaborated critiques of
historicism
Historicism is an approach to explaining the existence of phenomena, especially social and cultural practices (including ideas and beliefs), by studying their history, that is, by studying the process by which they came about. The term is widely ...
and of
psychologism in
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premis ...
based on analyses of
intentionality
''Intentionality'' is the power of minds to be about something: to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs. Intentionality is primarily ascribed to mental states, like perceptions, beliefs or desires, which is why it ha ...
. In his mature work, he sought to develop a systematic foundational science based on the so-called
phenomenological reduction. Arguing that
transcendental
Transcendence, transcendent, or transcendental may refer to:
Mathematics
* Transcendental number, a number that is not the root of any polynomial with rational coefficients
* Algebraic element or transcendental element, an element of a field exten ...
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
sets the limits of all possible knowledge, Husserl redefined phenomenology as a
transcendental-idealist philosophy. Husserl's thought profoundly influenced
20th-century philosophy
Contemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of Western philosophy beginning at the early 20th century with the increasing professionalization of the discipline and the rise of Analytic philosophy, analytic and continental philosop ...
, and he remains a notable figure in contemporary philosophy and beyond.
Husserl studied mathematics, taught by
Karl Weierstrass
Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (german: link=no, Weierstraß ; 31 October 1815 – 19 February 1897) was a German mathematician often cited as the "father of modern analysis". Despite leaving university without a degree, he studied mathematic ...
and
Leo Königsberger, and philosophy taught by
Franz Brentano
Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (; ; 16 January 1838 – 17 March 1917) was an influential German philosopher, psychologist, and former Catholic priest (withdrawn in 1873 due to the definition of papal infallibility in matters of ...
and
Carl Stumpf
Carl Stumpf (; 21 April 1848 – 25 December 1936) was a German philosopher, psychologist and musicologist. He is noted for founding the Berlin School of Experimental Psychology.
He studied with Franz Brentano at the University of Würzburg b ...
. He taught philosophy as a ''
Privatdozent
''Privatdozent'' (for men) or ''Privatdozentin'' (for women), abbreviated PD, P.D. or Priv.-Doz., is an academic title conferred at some European universities, especially in German-speaking countries, to someone who holds certain formal qualific ...
'' at
Halle Halle may refer to:
Places Germany
* Halle (Saale), also called Halle an der Saale, a city in Saxony-Anhalt
** Halle (region), a former administrative region in Saxony-Anhalt
** Bezirk Halle, a former administrative division of East Germany
** Hall ...
from 1887, then as professor, first at
Göttingen
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...
from 1901, then at
Freiburg
Freiburg im Breisgau (; abbreviated as Freiburg i. Br. or Freiburg i. B.; Low Alemannic: ''Friburg im Brisgau''), commonly referred to as Freiburg, is an independent city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With a population of about 230,000 (as o ...
from 1916 until he retired in 1928, after which he remained highly productive. In 1933, under racial laws of the
National Socialist German Workers Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
, Husserl was expelled from the library of the University of Freiburg due to his Jewish family background and months later resigned from the
Deutsche Akademie. Following an illness, he died in
Freiburg
Freiburg im Breisgau (; abbreviated as Freiburg i. Br. or Freiburg i. B.; Low Alemannic: ''Friburg im Brisgau''), commonly referred to as Freiburg, is an independent city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With a population of about 230,000 (as o ...
in 1938.
Life and career
Youth and education
Husserl was born in 1859 in
Proßnitz, a town in the
Margraviate of Moravia
The Margraviate of Moravia ( cs, Markrabství moravské; german: Markgrafschaft Mähren) was one of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown within the Holy Roman Empire existing from 1182 to 1918. It was officially administrated by a margrave in cooperat ...
, which was then in the
Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire (german: link=no, Kaiserthum Oesterreich, modern spelling , ) was a Central- Eastern European multinational great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the realms of the Habsburgs. During its existence ...
, and which today is
Prostějov
Prostějov (; german: Proßnitz) is a city in the Olomouc Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 43,000 inhabitants. The city is known for its fashion industry. The historical city centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban m ...
in the
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. Th ...
. He was born into a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family, the second of four children. His father was a
milliner. His childhood was spent in Prostějov, where he attended the secular elementary school. Then Husserl traveled to
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
to study at the ''
Realgymnasium
''Gymnasium'' (; German plural: ''Gymnasien''), in the German education system, is the most advanced and highest of the three types of German secondary schools, the others being '' Hauptschule'' (lowest) and '' Realschule'' (middle). ''Gymn ...
'' there, followed next by the Staatsgymnasium in
Olomouc
Olomouc (, , ; german: Olmütz; pl, Ołomuniec ; la, Olomucium or ''Iuliomontium'') is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 99,000 inhabitants, and its larger urban zone has a population of about 384,000 inhabitants (2019).
Located on th ...
(Ger.: Olmütz).
[Joseph J. Kockelmans, "Biographical Note" per Edmund Husserl, at 17–20, in his edited ''Phenomenology. The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Its Interpretation'' (Garden City NY: Doubleday Anchor 1967).]
At the
University of Leipzig
Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...
from 1876 to 1878, Husserl studied
mathematics,
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...
, and
astronomy
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...
. At Leipzig he was inspired by philosophy lectures given by
Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (; ; 16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the fathers of modern psychology. Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and ...
, one of the founders of modern psychology. Then he moved to the
Frederick William University of
Berlin
Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...
(the present-day
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin (german: link=no, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public university, public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany.
The university was established ...
) in 1878 where he continued his study of mathematics under
Leopold Kronecker
Leopold Kronecker (; 7 December 1823 – 29 December 1891) was a German mathematician who worked on number theory, algebra and logic. He criticized Georg Cantor's work on set theory, and was quoted by as having said, "'" ("God made the integers ...
and the renowned
Karl Weierstrass
Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (german: link=no, Weierstraß ; 31 October 1815 – 19 February 1897) was a German mathematician often cited as the "father of modern analysis". Despite leaving university without a degree, he studied mathematic ...
. In Berlin he found a mentor in
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Tomáš () is a Czech and Slovak given name, equivalent to the name Thomas.
It may refer to:
* Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937), first President of Czechoslovakia
* Tomáš Baťa (1876–1932), Czech footwear entrepreneur
* Tomáš Berdyc ...
, then a former philosophy student of
Franz Brentano
Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (; ; 16 January 1838 – 17 March 1917) was an influential German philosopher, psychologist, and former Catholic priest (withdrawn in 1873 due to the definition of papal infallibility in matters of ...
and later the first president of
Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
. There Husserl also attended
Friedrich Paulsen
Friedrich Paulsen (; July 16, 1846 – August 14, 1908) was a German Neo-Kantian philosopher and educator.
Biography
He was born at Langenhorn ( Schleswig) and educated at the Gymnasium Christianeum, the University of Erlangen, and the Univ ...
's philosophy lectures. In 1881 he left for the
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich h ...
to complete his mathematics studies under the supervision of
Leo Königsberger (a former student of Weierstrass). At Vienna in 1883 he obtained his PhD with the work ''Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung'' (''Contributions to the
Calculus of Variations
The calculus of variations (or Variational Calculus) is a field of mathematical analysis that uses variations, which are small changes in functions
and functionals, to find maxima and minima of functionals: mappings from a set of functions t ...
'').
Evidently as a result of his becoming familiar with the
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...
during his twenties, Husserl asked to be baptized into the
Lutheran Church
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...
in 1886. Husserl's father Adolf had died in 1884.
Herbert Spiegelberg writes, "While outward religious practice never entered his life any more than it did that of most academic scholars of the time, his mind remained open for the religious phenomenon as for any other genuine experience." At times Husserl saw his goal as one of moral "renewal". Although a steadfast proponent of a radical and rational ''autonomy'' in all things, Husserl could also speak "about his vocation and even about his mission under God's will to find new ways for philosophy and science," observes Spiegelberg.
Following his PhD in mathematics, Husserl returned to Berlin to work as the assistant to
Karl Weierstrass
Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (german: link=no, Weierstraß ; 31 October 1815 – 19 February 1897) was a German mathematician often cited as the "father of modern analysis". Despite leaving university without a degree, he studied mathematic ...
. Yet already Husserl had felt the desire to pursue philosophy. Then professor Weierstrass became very ill. Husserl became free to return to Vienna where, after serving a short military duty, he devoted his attention to
philosophy. In 1884 at the
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich h ...
he attended the lectures of
Franz Brentano
Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (; ; 16 January 1838 – 17 March 1917) was an influential German philosopher, psychologist, and former Catholic priest (withdrawn in 1873 due to the definition of papal infallibility in matters of ...
on philosophy and philosophical
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
. Brentano introduced him to the writings of
Bernard Bolzano
Bernard Bolzano (, ; ; ; born Bernardus Placidus Johann Gonzal Nepomuk Bolzano; 5 October 1781 – 18 December 1848) was a Bohemian mathematician, logician, philosopher, theologian and Catholic priest of Italian extraction, also known for his li ...
,
Hermann Lotze
Rudolf Hermann Lotze (; ; 21 May 1817 – 1 July 1881) was a German philosopher and logician. He also had a medical degree and was well versed in biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad sco ...
,
J. Stuart Mill, and
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment phil ...
. Husserl was so impressed by Brentano that he decided to dedicate his life to philosophy; indeed, Franz Brentano is often credited as being his most important influence, e.g., with regard to
intentionality
''Intentionality'' is the power of minds to be about something: to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs. Intentionality is primarily ascribed to mental states, like perceptions, beliefs or desires, which is why it ha ...
. Following academic advice, two years later in 1886 Husserl followed
Carl Stumpf
Carl Stumpf (; 21 April 1848 – 25 December 1936) was a German philosopher, psychologist and musicologist. He is noted for founding the Berlin School of Experimental Psychology.
He studied with Franz Brentano at the University of Würzburg b ...
, a former student of Brentano, to the
University of Halle
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (german: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), also referred to as MLU, is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg and the largest and oldest university i ...
, seeking to obtain his
habilitation
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including ...
which would qualify him to teach at the university level. There, under Stumpf's supervision, he wrote ''Über den Begriff der Zahl'' (''On the Concept of Number'') in 1887, which would serve later as the basis for his first important work, ''
Philosophie der Arithmetik'' (1891).
In 1887 Husserl married Malvine Steinschneider, a union that would last over fifty years. In 1892 their daughter Elizabeth was born, in 1893 their son
Gerhart Gerhart may refer to:
As a given name
* Gerhart Baum (born 1932), German politician and former Federal Minister of the Interior
* Gerhart Eisler (1897-1968), German communist politician
* Gerhart Friedlander (1916–2009), nuclear chemist who wo ...
, and in 1894 their son Wolfgang. Elizabeth would marry in 1922, and Gerhart in 1923; Wolfgang, however, became a casualty of the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fig ...
.
Gerhart would become a philosopher of law, contributing to the subject of
comparative law
Comparative law is the study of differences and similarities between the law ( legal systems) of different countries. More specifically, it involves the study of the different legal "systems" (or "families") in existence in the world, including t ...
, teaching in the United States and after the war in
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
.
Professor of philosophy
Following his marriage Husserl began his long teaching career in philosophy. He started in 1887 as a ''
Privatdozent
''Privatdozent'' (for men) or ''Privatdozentin'' (for women), abbreviated PD, P.D. or Priv.-Doz., is an academic title conferred at some European universities, especially in German-speaking countries, to someone who holds certain formal qualific ...
'' at the
University of Halle
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (german: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), also referred to as MLU, is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg and the largest and oldest university i ...
. In 1891 he published his ''
Philosophie der Arithmetik. Psychologische und logische Untersuchungen'' which, drawing on his prior studies in mathematics and philosophy, proposed a psychological context as the basis of mathematics. It drew the adverse notice of
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic ph ...
, who criticized its
psychologism.
In 1901 Husserl with his family moved to the
University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded i ...
, where he taught as ''extraordinarius professor''. Just prior to this a major work of his, ''Logische Untersuchungen'' (Halle, 1900–1901), was published. Volume One contains seasoned reflections on "pure logic" in which he carefully refutes "psychologism".
[Cf., ]Paul Ricœur
Jean Paul Gustave Ricœur (; ; 27 February 1913 – 20 May 2005) was a French philosopher best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutics. As such, his thought is within the same tradition as other major hermeneutic ...
''Husserl. An Analysis of His Phenomenology''
(Northwestern University 1967) at 29–30. Ricœur traces Husserl's development from the ''Logische Untersuchungen'' to his later ''Ideen'' (''Ideas'', 1913), as leading from the psychological to the transcendental, regarding the intuition of essences (which the methodology of the phenomenological reduction allows). The book ''Husserl'' contains translations of Ricœur's essays of 1949–1967. This work was well received and became the subject of a seminar given by
Wilhelm Dilthey; Husserl in 1905 traveled to Berlin to visit Dilthey. Two years later in Italy he paid a visit to Franz Brentano his inspiring old teacher and to
Constantin Carathéodory
Constantin Carathéodory ( el, Κωνσταντίνος Καραθεοδωρή, Konstantinos Karatheodori; 13 September 1873 – 2 February 1950) was a Greek mathematician who spent most of his professional career in Germany. He made significant ...
the mathematician.
Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aest ...
and
Descartes were also now influencing his thought. In 1910 he became joint editor of the journal ''Logos''. During this period Husserl had delivered lectures on ''internal time consciousness'', which several decades later his former student Heidegger edited for publication.
In 1912 at Freiburg the journal ''Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschung'' ("Yearbook for Philosophy and Phenomenological Research") was founded by Husserl and his school, and which published articles of their phenomenological movement from 1913 to 1930. His important work ''Ideen'' was published in its first issue (Vol. 1, Issue 1, 1913). Before beginning ''Ideen'' Husserl's thought had reached the stage where "each subject is 'presented' to itself, and to each all others are 'presentiated' (''Vergegenwärtigung''), not as parts of nature but as pure consciousness." ''Ideen'' advanced his transition to a "transcendental interpretation" of phenomenology, a view later criticized by, among others,
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialist, existentialism (and Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter ...
. In ''Ideen''
Paul Ricœur
Jean Paul Gustave Ricœur (; ; 27 February 1913 – 20 May 2005) was a French philosopher best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutics. As such, his thought is within the same tradition as other major hermeneutic ...
sees the development of Husserl's thought as leading "from the psychological cogito to the transcendental cogito." As phenomenology further evolves, it leads (when viewed from another vantage point in Husserl's 'labyrinth') to "
transcendental subjectivity
''Naturphilosophie'' (German for "nature-philosophy") is a term used in English-language philosophy to identify a current in the philosophical tradition of German idealism, as applied to the study of nature in the earlier 19th century. German sp ...
". Also in ''Ideen'' Husserl explicitly elaborates the phenomenological and
eidetic reductions.
Ivan Ilyin and
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers (, ; 23 February 1883 – 26 February 1969) was a German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry, and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspe ...
visited Husserl at Göttingen.
In October 1914 both his sons were sent to fight on the
Western Front of World War I and the following year one of them, Wolfgang Husserl, was badly injured. On 8 March 1916, on the battlefield of
Verdun
Verdun (, , , ; official name before 1970 ''Verdun-sur-Meuse'') is a large city in the Meuse department in Grand Est, northeastern France. It is an arrondissement of the department.
Verdun is the biggest city in Meuse, although the capital ...
, Wolfgang was killed in action. The next year his other son
Gerhart Husserl
Gerhart Adolf Husserl (December 22, 1893 – September 9, 1973) was a German legal scholar and philosopher. He was the son of philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938).
Born in Halle, Saxony, in 1893, Husserl became a Professor of Law at the U ...
was wounded in the war but survived. His own mother Julia died. In November 1917 one of his outstanding students and later a noted philosophy professor in his own right,
Adolf Reinach, was killed in the war while serving in
Flanders
Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to cultu ...
.
Husserl had transferred in 1916 to the
University of Freiburg
The University of Freiburg (colloquially german: Uni Freiburg), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (german: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württe ...
(in
Freiburg im Breisgau
Freiburg im Breisgau (; abbreviated as Freiburg i. Br. or Freiburg i. B.; Low Alemannic: ''Friburg im Brisgau''), commonly referred to as Freiburg, is an independent city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With a population of about 230,000 (as o ...
) where he continued bringing his work in philosophy to fruition, now as a full professor.
Edith Stein
Edith Stein (religious name Saint Teresia Benedicta a Cruce ; also known as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross or Saint Edith Stein; 12 October 1891 – 9 August 1942) was a German Jewish philosopher who converted to Christianity and became a ...
served as his personal assistant during his first few years in Freiburg, followed later by
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centu ...
from 1920 to 1923. The mathematician
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl, (; 9 November 1885 – 8 December 1955) was a German mathematician, theoretical physicist and philosopher. Although much of his working life was spent in Zürich, Switzerland, and then Princeton, New Jersey, he is ass ...
began corresponding with him in 1918. Husserl gave four lectures on Phenomenological method at
University College, London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
in 1922. The
University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin (german: link=no, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany.
The university was established by Frederick Will ...
in 1923 called on him to relocate there, but he declined the offer. In 1926 Heidegger dedicated his book ''Sein und Zeit'' (''
Being and Time
''Being and Time'' (german: Sein und Zeit) is the 1927 '' magnum opus'' of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and a key document of existentialism. ''Being and Time'' had a notable impact on subsequent philosophy, literary theory and many other ...
'') to him "in grateful respect and friendship." Husserl remained in his professorship at Freiburg until he requested retirement, teaching his last class on 25 July 1928. A ''
Festschrift
In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the ...
'' to celebrate his seventieth birthday was presented to him on 8 April 1929.
Despite retirement, Husserl gave several notable lectures. The first, at Paris in 1929, led to ''
Méditations cartésiennes'' (Paris 1931). Husserl here reviews the phenomenological epoché (or phenomenological reduction), presented earlier in his pivotal ''Ideen'' (1913), in terms of a further reduction of experience to what he calls a 'sphere of ownness.' From within this sphere, which Husserl enacts in order to show the impossibility of solipsism, the transcendental
ego
Ego or EGO may refer to:
Social sciences
* Ego (Freudian), one of the three constructs in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche
* Egoism, an ethical theory that treats self-interest as the foundation of morality
* Egotism, the drive to ...
finds itself always already paired with the lived body of another ego, another monad. This '
a priori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...
' interconnection of bodies, given in perception, is what founds the interconnection of consciousnesses known as transcendental
intersubjectivity
In philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, intersubjectivity is the relation or intersection between people's cognitive perspectives.
Definition
is a term coined by social scientists to refer to a variety of types of human inter ...
, which Husserl would go on to describe at length in volumes of unpublished writings. There has been a debate over whether or not Husserl's description of ownness and its movement into intersubjectivity is sufficient to reject the charge of solipsism, to which Descartes, for example, was subject. One argument against Husserl's description works this way: instead of infinity and the Deity being the ego's gateway to the Other, as in Descartes, Husserl's ego in the ''Cartesian Meditations'' itself becomes transcendent. It remains, however, alone (unconnected). Only the ego's grasp "by analogy" of the Other (e.g., by conjectural reciprocity) allows the possibility for an 'objective' intersubjectivity, and hence for community.
In 1933, the
racial laws of the new
National Socialist German Workers Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
were enacted. On 6 April Husserl was banned from using the library at the University of Freiburg, or any other academic library; the following week, after a public outcry, he was reinstated. Yet his colleague Heidegger was elected
Rector
Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to:
Style or title
*Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations
*Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...
of the university on 21–22 April, and joined the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
. By contrast, in July Husserl resigned from the
Deutsche Akademie.
Later Husserl lectured at
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
in 1935 and
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
in 1936, which resulted in a very differently styled work that, while innovative, is no less problematic: ''Die Krisis'' (Belgrade 1936). Husserl describes here the cultural crisis gripping Europe, then approaches a philosophy of history, discussing
Galileo, Descartes, several British philosophers, and
Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aest ...
. The apolitical Husserl before had specifically avoided such historical discussions, pointedly preferring to go directly to an investigation of consciousness.
Merleau-Ponty and others question whether Husserl here does not undercut his own position, in that Husserl had attacked in principle
historicism
Historicism is an approach to explaining the existence of phenomena, especially social and cultural practices (including ideas and beliefs), by studying their history, that is, by studying the process by which they came about. The term is widely ...
, while specifically designing his phenomenology to be rigorous enough to transcend the limits of history. On the contrary, Husserl may be indicating here that historical traditions are merely features given to the pure ego's intuition, like any other. A longer section follows on the "
lifeworld
Lifeworld (or life-world) (german: Lebenswelt) may be conceived as a universe of what is self-evident or given, a world that subjects may experience together. The concept was popularized by Edmund Husserl, who emphasized its role as the ground ...
"
'Lebenswelt'' one not observed by the objective logic of science, but a world seen in our subjective experience. Yet a problem arises similar to that dealing with 'history' above, a chicken-and-egg problem. Does the lifeworld contextualize and thus compromise the gaze of the pure ego, or does the phenomenological method nonetheless raise the ego up transcendent? These last writings presented the fruits of his professional life. Since his university retirement Husserl had "worked at a tremendous pace, producing several major works."
After suffering a fall the autumn of 1937, the philosopher became ill with
pleurisy
Pleurisy, also known as pleuritis, is inflammation of the membranes that surround the lungs and line the chest cavity ( pleurae). This can result in a sharp chest pain while breathing. Occasionally the pain may be a constant dull ache. Other s ...
. Edmund Husserl died at Freiburg on 27 April 1938, having just turned 79. His wife Malvine survived him.
Eugen Fink, his research assistant, delivered his
eulogy
A eulogy (from , ''eulogia'', Classical Greek, ''eu'' for "well" or "true", ''logia'' for "words" or "text", together for "praise") is a speech or writing in praise of a person or persons, especially one who recently died or retired, or a ...
.
Gerhard Ritter
Gerhard Georg Bernhard Ritter (6 April 1888, in Bad Sooden-Allendorf – 1 July 1967, in Freiburg) was a nationalist-conservative German historian, who served as a professor of history at the University of Freiburg from 1925 to 1956. He studied ...
was the only Freiburg faculty member to attend the funeral, as an anti-Nazi protest.
Heidegger and the Nazi era
Husserl was rumoured to have been denied the use of the library at Freiburg as a result of the anti-Jewish legislation of April 1933. However, among other disabilities Husserl was unable to publish his works in Nazi Germany
ee above footnote to ''Die Krisis'' (1936) It was also rumoured that his former pupil
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centu ...
informed Husserl that he was discharged, but it was actually the previous rector.
Apparently Husserl and Heidegger had moved apart during the 1920s, which became clearer after 1928 when Husserl retired and Heidegger succeeded to his university chair. In the summer of 1929 Husserl had studied carefully selected writings of Heidegger, coming to the conclusion that on several of their key positions they differed: e.g., Heidegger substituted ''Dasein''
Being-there"for the pure ego, thus transforming phenomenology into an anthropology, a type of psychologism strongly disfavored by Husserl. Such observations of Heidegger, along with a critique of
Max Scheler
Max Ferdinand Scheler (; 22 August 1874 – 19 May 1928) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Considered in his lifetime one of the most prominent German philosophers,Davis, Zacha ...
, were put into a lecture Husserl gave to various ''Kant Societies'' in Frankfurt, Berlin, and Halle during 1931 entitled ''Phänomenologie und Anthropologie''.
[Husserl, Edmund (1997). ''Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger (1927–1931)'', translated by T. Sheehan and R. Palmer. Dordrecht: Kluwer. , which contains his "Phänomenologie und Anthropologie" at pp. 485–500.]
In the war-time 1941 edition of Heidegger's primary work, ''
Being and Time
''Being and Time'' (german: Sein und Zeit) is the 1927 '' magnum opus'' of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and a key document of existentialism. ''Being and Time'' had a notable impact on subsequent philosophy, literary theory and many other ...
'' (''Sein und Zeit'', first published in 1927), the original dedication to Husserl was removed. This was not due to a negation of the relationship between the two philosophers, however, but rather was the result of a suggested censorship by Heidegger's publisher who feared that the book might otherwise be banned by the Nazi regime.
["Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten". ''Der Spiegel'', 31 May 1967.] The dedication can still be found in a footnote on page 38, thanking Husserl for his guidance and generosity. Husserl, of course, had died three years earlier. In post-war editions of ''Sein und Zeit'' the dedication to Husserl is restored. The complex, troubled, and sundered philosophical relationship between Husserl and Heidegger has been widely discussed.
[
On 4 May 1933, Professor Edmund Husserl addressed the recent regime change in Germany and its consequences:]The future alone will judge which was the true Germany in 1933, and who were the true Germans—those who subscribe to the more or less materialistic-mythical racial prejudices of the day, or those Germans pure in heart and mind, heirs to the great Germans of the past whose tradition they revere and perpetuate.
After his death, Husserl's manuscripts, amounting to approximately 40,000 pages of "'' Gabelsberger''" stenography
Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek ''st ...
and his complete research library, were in 1939 smuggled to the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...
by the Franciscan priest Herman Van Breda. There they were deposited at Leuven
Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest City status in Belgium, city of the Provinces of Belgium, province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. Th ...
to form the ''Husserl-Archives'' of the Higher Institute of Philosophy. Much of the material in his research manuscripts has since been published in the Husserliana The Husserliana is the complete works project of the philosopher Edmund Husserl (April 8, 1859 – April 27, 1938), which was made possible by Herman Van Breda after he saved the manuscripts of Husserl. The Husserliana is published by the Husserl ...
critical edition series.
Development of his thought
Several early themes
In his first works, Husserl combined mathematics, psychology, and philosophy with the goal of providing a sound foundation for mathematics. He analyzed the psychological process needed to obtain the concept of number and then built up a theory on this analysis. He used methods and concepts taken from his teachers. From Weierstrass he derived the idea of generating
the concept of number by counting a certain collection of objects. From Brentano and Stumpf he took the distinction between ''proper'' and ''improper'' presenting. In an example, Husserl explained this in the following way: if you are standing in front of a house, you have a proper, direct presentation of that house, but if you are looking for it and ask for directions, then these directions (e.g. the house on the corner of this and that street) are an indirect, improper presentation. In other words, you can have a proper presentation of an object if it is actually present, and an improper (or symbolic, as he also calls it) one if you only can indicate that object through signs, symbols, etc. Husserl's '' Logical Investigations'' (1900–1901) is considered the starting point for the formal theory of wholes and their parts known as mereology
In logic, philosophy and related fields, mereology ( (root: , ''mere-'', 'part') and the suffix ''-logy'', 'study, discussion, science') is the study of parts and the wholes they form. Whereas set theory is founded on the membership relation be ...
.
Another important element that Husserl took over from Brentano was intentionality
''Intentionality'' is the power of minds to be about something: to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs. Intentionality is primarily ascribed to mental states, like perceptions, beliefs or desires, which is why it ha ...
, the notion that the main characteristic of consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
is that it is always intentional. While often simplistically summarised as "aboutness" or the relationship between mental acts and the external world, Brentano defined it as the main characteristic of ''mental phenomena'', by which they could be distinguished from ''physical phenomena''. Every mental phenomenon, every psychological act, has a content, is directed at an object (the ''intentional object
An object of the mind is an object that exists in the imagination, but which, in the real world, can only be represented or modeled. Some such objects are abstractions, literary concepts, or fictional scenarios.
Closely related are intentional o ...
''). Every belief, desire, etc. has an object that it is about: the believed, the wanted. Brentano used the expression "intentional inexistence" to indicate the status of the objects of thought in the mind. The property of being intentional, of having an intentional object, was the key feature to distinguish mental phenomena and physical phenomena, because physical phenomena lack intentionality altogether.
The elaboration of phenomenology
Some years after the 1900–1901 publication of his main work, the ''Logische Untersuchungen'' (''Logical Investigations''), Husserl made some key conceptual elaborations which led him to assert that in order to study the structure of consciousness, one would have to distinguish between the act of consciousness and the phenomena at which it is directed (the objects as intended). Knowledge of essence
Essence ( la, essentia) is a polysemic term, used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it ...
s would only be possible by " bracketing" all assumptions about the existence of an external world. This procedure he called "epoché
Epoché ( ἐποχή ''epokhē'', "cessation") is an ancient Greek term. In Hellenistic philosophy it is a technical term typically translated as " suspension of judgment" but also as "withholding of assent". In the modern philosophy of Phenomen ...
". These new concepts prompted the publication of the ''Ideen'' (''Ideas'') in 1913, in which they were at first incorporated, and a plan for a second edition of the ''Logische Untersuchungen''.
From the ''Ideen'' onward, Husserl concentrated on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness. The metaphysical problem of establishing the reality of what we perceive, as distinct from the perceiving subject, was of little interest to Husserl in spite of his being a transcendental idealist. Husserl proposed that the world of objects—and of ways in which we direct ourselves toward and perceive those objects—is normally conceived of in what he called the "natural attitude", which is characterized by a belief that objects exist distinct from the perceiving subject and exhibit properties that we see as emanating from them (this attitude is also called physicalist
In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substance ...
objectivism
Objectivism is a philosophical system developed by Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand. She described it as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement ...
). Husserl proposed a radical new phenomenological way of looking at objects by examining how we, in our many ways of being intentionally directed toward them, actually "constitute" them (to be distinguished from materially creating objects or objects merely being figments of the imagination); in the Phenomenological standpoint, the object ceases to be something simply "external" and ceases to be seen as providing indicators about what it is, and becomes a grouping of perceptual and functional aspects that imply one another under the idea of a particular object or "type". The notion of objects as real is not expelled by phenomenology, but "bracketed" as a way in which we regard objectsinstead of a feature that inheres in an object's essence founded in the relation between the object and the perceiver. In order to better understand the world of appearances and objects, phenomenology attempts to identify the invariant features of how objects are perceived and pushes attributions of reality into their role as an attribution about the things we perceive (or an assumption underlying how we perceive objects). The major dividing line in Husserl's thought is the turn to transcendental idealism.
In a later period, Husserl began to wrestle with the complicated issues of intersubjectivity
In philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, intersubjectivity is the relation or intersection between people's cognitive perspectives.
Definition
is a term coined by social scientists to refer to a variety of types of human inter ...
, specifically, how communication about an object can be assumed to refer to the same ideal entity (''Cartesian Meditations
''Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology'' (french: Méditations cartésiennes: Introduction à la phénoménologie) is a book by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, based on four lectures he gave at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, ...
'', Meditation V). Husserl tries new methods of bringing his readers to understand the importance of phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
to scientific inquiry (and specifically to psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
) and what it means to "bracket" the natural attitude. '' The Crisis of the European Sciences'' is Husserl's unfinished work that deals most directly with these issues. In it, Husserl for the first time attempts a historical overview of the development of Western philosophy
Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The wo ...
and science
Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...
, emphasizing the challenges presented by their increasingly (one-sidedly) empirical
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...
and naturalistic orientation. Husserl declares that mental and spiritual reality possess their own reality independent of any physical basis, and that a science of the mind (' Geisteswissenschaft') must be established on as scientific a foundation as the natural sciences have managed: "It is my conviction that intentional phenomenology has for the first time made spirit as spirit the field of systematic scientific experience, thus effecting a total transformation of the task of knowledge."
Husserl's thought
Husserl's thought is revolutionary in several ways, most notably in the distinction between "natural" and "phenomenological" modes of understanding. In the former, sense-perception in correspondence with the material realm constitutes the known reality, and understanding is premised on the accuracy of the perception and the objective knowability of what is called the "real world". Phenomenological understanding strives to be rigorously "presuppositionless" by means of what Husserl calls " phenomenological reduction". This reduction is not conditioned but rather transcendental: in Husserl's terms, pure consciousness of absolute Being. In Husserl's work, consciousness of any given thing calls for discerning its meaning as an "intentional object". Such an object does not simply strike the senses, to be interpreted or misinterpreted by mental reason; it has already been selected and grasped, grasping being an etymological connotation, of ''percipere'', the root of "perceive".
Meaning and object
From ''Logical Investigations'' (1900/1901) to ''Experience and Judgment'' (published in 1939), Husserl expressed clearly the difference between meaning
Meaning most commonly refers to:
* Meaning (linguistics), meaning which is communicated through the use of language
* Meaning (philosophy), definition, elements, and types of meaning discussed in philosophy
* Meaning (non-linguistic), a general te ...
and object. He identified several different kinds of names. For example, there are names that have the role of properties that uniquely identify an object. Each of these names expresses a meaning and designates the same object. Examples of this are "the victor in Jena" and "the loser in Waterloo", or "the equilateral triangle" and "the equiangular triangle"; in both cases, both names express different meanings, but designate the same object. There are names which have no meaning, but have the role of designating an object: "Aristotle", "Socrates", and so on. Finally, there are names which designate a variety of objects. These are called "universal names"; their meaning is a "concept
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs.
They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by s ...
" and refers to a series of objects (the extension of the concept). The way we know sensible objects is called " sensible intuition".
Husserl also identifies a series of "formal words" which are necessary to form sentences
''The Four Books of Sentences'' (''Libri Quattuor Sententiarum'') is a book of theology written by Peter Lombard in the 12th century. It is a systematic compilation of theology, written around 1150; it derives its name from the '' sententiae'' ...
and have no sensible correlates. Examples of formal words are "a", "the", "more than", "over", "under", "two", "group", and so on. Every sentence must contain formal words to designate what Husserl calls "formal categories". There are two kinds of categories: meaning categories and formal-ontological
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exi ...
categories. Meaning categories relate judgments; they include forms of conjunction
Conjunction may refer to:
* Conjunction (grammar), a part of speech
* Logical conjunction, a mathematical operator
** Conjunction introduction, a rule of inference of propositional logic
* Conjunction (astronomy), in which two astronomical bodies ...
, disjunction
In logic, disjunction is a logical connective typically notated as \lor and read aloud as "or". For instance, the English language sentence "it is raining or it is snowing" can be represented in logic using the disjunctive formula R \lor ...
, forms of plural, among others. Formal-ontological categories relate objects and include notions such as set, cardinal number
In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality (size) of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number: the number of elements in the set. T ...
, ordinal number, part and whole, relation, and so on. The way we know these categories is through a faculty of understanding called "categorial intuition".
Through sensible intuition our consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
constitutes what Husserl calls a "situation of affairs" (''Sachlage''). It is a passive constitution where objects themselves are presented to us. To this situation of affairs, through categorial intuition, we are able to constitute a " state of affairs" (''Sachverhalt''). One situation of affairs through objective acts of consciousness (acts of constituting categorially) can serve as the basis for constituting multiple states of affairs. For example, suppose ''a'' and ''b'' are two sensible objects in a certain situation of affairs. We can use it as basis to say, "''a''<''b''" and "''b''>''a''", two judgments which designate the same state of affairs. For Husserl a sentence has a proposition
In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, "meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the no ...
or judgment
Judgement (or US spelling judgment) is also known as '' adjudication'', which means the evaluation of evidence to make a decision. Judgement is also the ability to make considered decisions. The term has at least five distinct uses. Aristotle s ...
as its meaning, and refers to a state of affairs which has a situation of affairs as a reference base.
Formal and regional ontology
Husserl sees ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities ...
as a ''science of essences''. ''Sciences of essences'' are contrasted with ''factual sciences'': the former are knowable a priori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...
and provide the foundation for the later, which are knowable a posteriori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...
. Ontology as a science of essences is not interested in ''actual facts'', but in the essences themselves, whether they ''have instances or not''. Husserl distinguishes between ''formal ontology'', which investigates the essence of ''objectivity in general'', and ''regional ontologies'', which study ''regional essences'' that are shared by all entities belonging to the region. Regions correspond to the highest genera
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial ...
of concrete entities: material nature, personal consciousness and interpersonal spirit. Husserl's method for studying ontology and sciences of essence in general is called eidetic variation. It involves imagining an object of the kind under investigation and varying its features. The changed feature is ''inessential'' to this kind if the object can survive its change, otherwise it belongs to the ''kind's essence''. For example, a triangle remains a triangle if one of its sides is extended but it ceases to be a triangle if a fourth side is added. Regional ontology involves applying this method to the essences corresponding to the highest genera.
Philosophy of logic and mathematics
Husserl believed that ''truth-in-itself'' has as ontological
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exi ...
correlate ''being-in-itself'', just as meaning categories have formal-ontological categories as correlates. Logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premis ...
is a formal theory of judgment
Judgement (or US spelling judgment) is also known as '' adjudication'', which means the evaluation of evidence to make a decision. Judgement is also the ability to make considered decisions. The term has at least five distinct uses. Aristotle s ...
, that studies the formal ''a priori'' relations among judgments using meaning categories. Mathematics, on the other hand, is formal ontology; it studies all the possible forms of being (of objects). Hence for both logic and mathematics, the different formal categories are the objects of study, not the sensible objects themselves. The problem with the psychological approach to mathematics and logic is that it fails to account for the fact that this approach is about formal categories, and not simply about abstractions from sensibility alone. The reason why we do not deal with sensible objects in mathematics is because of another faculty of understanding called "categorial abstraction." Through this faculty we are able to get rid of sensible components of judgments, and just focus on formal categories themselves.
Thanks to " eidetic reduction" (or "essential intuition"), we are able to grasp the possibility, impossibility, necessity and contingency among concepts and among formal categories. Categorial intuition, along with categorial abstraction and eidetic reduction, are the basis for logical and mathematical knowledge.
Husserl criticized the logicians of his day for not focusing on the relation between subjective processes that give us objective knowledge of pure logic. All subjective activities of consciousness need an ideal correlate, and objective logic (constituted noematically) as it is constituted by consciousness needs a noetic correlate (the subjective activities of consciousness).
Husserl stated that logic has three strata, each further away from consciousness and psychology than those that precede it.
* The first stratum is what Husserl called a "morphology of meanings" concerning ''a priori'' ways to relate judgments to make them meaningful. In this stratum we elaborate a "pure grammar" or a logical syntax, and he would call its rules "laws to prevent non-sense", which would be similar to what logic calls today " formation rules". Mathematics, as logic's ontological correlate, also has a similar stratum, a "morphology of formal-ontological categories".
* The second stratum would be called by Husserl "logic of consequence" or the "logic of non-contradiction" which explores all possible forms of true judgments. He includes here syllogistic classic logic, propositional logic and that of predicates. This is a semantic stratum, and the rules of this stratum would be the "laws to avoid counter-sense" or "laws to prevent contradiction". They are very similar to today's logic "transformation rules
In the philosophy of logic, a rule of inference, inference rule or transformation rule is a logical form consisting of a function which takes premises, analyzes their syntax, and returns a conclusion (or conclusions). For example, the rule of ...
". Mathematics also has a similar stratum which is based among others on pure theory of pluralities, and a pure theory of numbers. They provide a science of the conditions of possibility of any theory whatsoever. Husserl also talked about what he called "logic of truth" which consists of the formal laws of possible truth and its modalities, and precedes the third logical third stratum.
* The third stratum is metalogical, what he called a "theory of all possible forms of theories." It explores all possible theories in an ''a priori'' fashion, rather than the possibility of theory in general. We could establish theories of possible relations between pure forms of theories, investigate these logical relations and the deductions from such general connection. The logician is free to see the extension of this deductive, theoretical sphere of pure logic.
The ontological correlate to the third stratum is the " theory of manifolds". In formal ontology, it is a free investigation where a mathematician can assign several meanings to several symbols, and all their possible valid deductions in a general and indeterminate manner. It is, properly speaking, the most universal mathematics of all. Through the posit of certain indeterminate objects (formal-ontological categories) as well as any combination of mathematical axioms, mathematicians can explore the apodeictic connections between them, as long as consistency is preserved.
According to Husserl, this view of logic and mathematics accounted for the objectivity of a series of mathematical developments of his time, such as ''n''-dimensional manifold
In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a ...
s (both Euclidean and non-Euclidean), Hermann Grassmann
Hermann Günther Grassmann (german: link=no, Graßmann, ; 15 April 1809 – 26 September 1877) was a German polymath known in his day as a linguist and now also as a mathematician. He was also a physicist, general scholar, and publisher. His mat ...
's theory of extensions, William Rowan Hamilton
Sir William Rowan Hamilton LL.D, DCL, MRIA, FRAS (3/4 August 1805 – 2 September 1865) was an Irish mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He was the Andrews Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College Dublin, and Royal Astronomer of Ire ...
's Hamiltonians, Sophus Lie's theory of transformation groups
In mathematics, the automorphism group of an object ''X'' is the group consisting of automorphisms of ''X'' under composition of morphisms. For example, if ''X'' is a finite-dimensional vector space, then the automorphism group of ''X'' is the ...
, and Cantor's set theory
Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory, as a branch of mathematics, is mostly concer ...
.
Jacob Klein was one student of Husserl who pursued this line of inquiry, seeking to "desedimentize" mathematics and the mathematical sciences.
Husserl and psychologism
Philosophy of arithmetic and Frege
After obtaining his PhD in mathematics, Husserl began analyzing the foundations of mathematics
Foundations of mathematics is the study of the philosophical and logical and/or algorithmic basis of mathematics, or, in a broader sense, the mathematical investigation of what underlies the philosophical theories concerning the nature of mathe ...
from a psychological point of view. In his habilitation thesis, ''On the Concept of Number'' (1886) and in his '' Philosophy of Arithmetic'' (1891), Husserl sought, by employing Brentano's descriptive psychology, to define the natural number
In mathematics, the natural numbers are those numbers used for counting (as in "there are ''six'' coins on the table") and ordering (as in "this is the ''third'' largest city in the country").
Numbers used for counting are called '' cardinal ...
s in a way that advanced the methods and techniques of Karl Weierstrass
Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (german: link=no, Weierstraß ; 31 October 1815 – 19 February 1897) was a German mathematician often cited as the "father of modern analysis". Despite leaving university without a degree, he studied mathematic ...
, Richard Dedekind
Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind (6 October 1831 – 12 February 1916) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to number theory, abstract algebra (particularly ring theory), and
the axiomatic foundations of arithmetic. His ...
, Georg Cantor
Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor ( , ; – January 6, 1918) was a German mathematician. He played a pivotal role in the creation of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of ...
, Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic ph ...
, and other contemporary mathematicians. Later, in the first volume of his ''Logical Investigations'', the ''Prolegomena of Pure Logic'', Husserl, while attacking the psychologistic point of view in logic and mathematics, also appears to reject much of his early work, although the forms of psychologism analysed and refuted in the ''Prolegomena'' did not apply directly to his '' Philosophy of Arithmetic''. Some scholars question whether Frege's negative review of the ''Philosophy of Arithmetic'' helped turn Husserl towards modern Platonism, but he had already discovered the work of Bernard Bolzano
Bernard Bolzano (, ; ; ; born Bernardus Placidus Johann Gonzal Nepomuk Bolzano; 5 October 1781 – 18 December 1848) was a Bohemian mathematician, logician, philosopher, theologian and Catholic priest of Italian extraction, also known for his li ...
independently around 1890/91. In his ''Logical Investigations'', Husserl explicitly mentioned Bolzano, G. W. Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of math ...
and Hermann Lotze
Rudolf Hermann Lotze (; ; 21 May 1817 – 1 July 1881) was a German philosopher and logician. He also had a medical degree and was well versed in biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad sco ...
as inspirations for his newer position.
Husserl's review of Ernst Schröder, published before Frege's landmark 1892 article, clearly distinguishes sense
A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain which is part of the central nervous system rec ...
from reference
Reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a '' name'' ...
; thus Husserl's notions of noema and object also arose independently. Likewise, in his criticism of Frege in the ''Philosophy of Arithmetic'', Husserl remarks on the distinction between the content and the extension of a concept. Moreover, the distinction between the subjective mental act, namely the content of a concept, and the (external) object, was developed independently by Brentano and his school, and may have surfaced as early as Brentano's 1870s lectures on logic.
Scholars such as J. N. Mohanty
Jitendra Nath Mohanty (also J. N. Mohanty) is an emeritus professor of philosophy at Temple University. Born in Cuttack, in 1928 in Orissa, India, Professor Mohanty had a distinguished career where he stood first in all public examinations a ...
, Claire Ortiz Hill
Claire Ortiz Hill (born 1951) is an American independent scholar, hermit, translator, and author of books on analytic philosophy, specializing in the works of Edmund Husserl, the philosophy of logic, and the philosophy of mathematics.
Life and ed ...
, and Guillermo E. Rosado Haddock, among others, have argued that Husserl's so-called change from psychologism to Platonism
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at ...
came about independently of Frege's review.
For example, the review falsely accuses Husserl of subjectivizing everything, so that no objectivity is possible, and falsely attributes to him a notion of abstraction
Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or " concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods.
"An a ...
whereby objects disappear until we are left with numbers as mere ghosts. Contrary to what Frege states, in Husserl's ''Philosophy of Arithmetic'' we already find two different kinds of representations: subjective and objective. Moreover, objectivity is clearly defined in that work. Frege's attack seems to be directed at certain foundational doctrines then current in Weierstrass's Berlin School, of which Husserl and Cantor cannot be said to be orthodox representatives.
Furthermore, various sources indicate that Husserl changed his mind about psychologism as early as 1890, a year before he published the ''Philosophy of Arithmetic''. Husserl stated that by the time he published that book, he had already changed his mind—that he had doubts about psychologism from the very outset. He attributed this change of mind to his reading of Leibniz, Bolzano, Lotze, and David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment phil ...
. Husserl makes no mention of Frege as a decisive factor in this change. In his ''Logical Investigations'', Husserl mentions Frege only twice, once in a footnote to point out that he had retracted three pages of his criticism of Frege's ''The Foundations of Arithmetic'', and again to question Frege's use of the word ''Bedeutung'' to designate "reference" rather than "meaning" (sense).
In a letter dated 24 May 1891, Frege thanked Husserl for sending him a copy of the ''Philosophy of Arithmetic'' and Husserl's review of Ernst Schröder's ''Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik''. In the same letter, Frege used the review of Schröder's book to analyze Husserl's notion of the sense of reference of concept words. Hence Frege recognized, as early as 1891, that Husserl distinguished between sense and reference. Consequently, Frege and Husserl independently elaborated a theory of sense and reference before 1891.
Commentators argue that Husserl's notion of noema has nothing to do with Frege's notion of sense, because ''noemata'' are necessarily fused with noeses which are the conscious activities of consciousness. ''Noemata'' have three different levels:
* The substratum, which is never presented to the consciousness, and is the support of all the properties of the object;
* The ''noematic'' senses, which are the different ways the objects are presented to us;
* The modalities of being (possible, doubtful, existent, non-existent, absurd, and so on).
Consequently, in intentional activities, even non-existent objects can be constituted, and form part of the whole noema. Frege, however, did not conceive of objects as forming parts of senses: If a proper name denotes a non-existent object, it does not have a reference, hence concepts with no objects have no truth value
In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values ('' true'' or ''false'').
Computing
In some prog ...
in arguments. Moreover, Husserl did not maintain that predicates of sentences designate concepts. According to Frege the reference of a sentence is a truth value; for Husserl it is a "state of affairs." Frege's notion of "sense" is unrelated to Husserl's noema, while the latter's notions of "meaning" and "object" differ from those of Frege.
In detail, Husserl's conception of logic and mathematics differs from that of Frege, who held that arithmetic
Arithmetic () is an elementary part of mathematics that consists of the study of the properties of the traditional operations on numbers—addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and extraction of roots. In the 19th c ...
could be derived from logic. For Husserl this is not the case: mathematics (with the exception of geometry
Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...
) is the ontological correlate of logic, and while both fields are related, neither one is strictly reducible to the other.
Husserl's criticism of psychologism
Reacting against authors such as J. S. Mill, Christoph von Sigwart and his own former teacher Brentano, Husserl criticised their psychologism in mathematics and logic, i.e. their conception of these abstract and ''a priori'' sciences as having an essentially empirical foundation and a prescriptive or descriptive nature. According to psychologism, logic would not be an autonomous discipline, but a branch of psychology, either proposing a prescriptive and practical "art" of correct judgement (as Brentano and some of his more orthodox students did) or a description of the factual processes of human thought. Husserl pointed out that the failure of anti-psychologists to defeat psychologism was a result of being unable to distinguish between the foundational, theoretical side of logic, and the applied, practical side. Pure logic does not deal at all with "thoughts" or "judgings" as mental episodes but about ''a priori'' laws and conditions for any theory and any judgments whatsoever, conceived as propositions in themselves.
:"Here 'Judgement' has the same meaning as 'proposition', understood, not as a grammatical, but as an ideal unity of meaning. This is the case with all the distinctions of acts or forms of judgement, which provide the foundations for the laws of pure logic. Categorial, hypothetical, disjunctive, existential judgements, and however else we may call them, in pure logic are not names for classes of judgements, but for ideal forms of propositions."
Since "truth-in-itself" has "being-in-itself" as ontological correlate, and since psychologists reduce truth (and hence logic) to empirical psychology, the inevitable consequence is scepticism. Psychologists have also not been successful in showing how from induction or psychological processes we can justify the absolute certainty of logical principles, such as the principles of identity and non-contradiction. It is therefore futile to base certain logical laws and principles on uncertain processes of the mind.
This confusion made by psychologism (and related disciplines such as biologism and anthropologism) can be due to three specific prejudices:
1. The first prejudice is the supposition that logic is somehow normative in nature. Husserl argues that logic is theoretical, i.e., that logic itself proposes ''a priori'' laws which are themselves the basis of the normative side of logic. Since mathematics is related to logic, he cites an example from mathematics: If we have a formula like "(a + b)(a – b) = a² – b²" it does not tell us how to think mathematically. It just expresses a truth. A proposition that says: "The product of the sum and the difference of a and b ''should'' give us the difference of the squares of a and b" does express a normative proposition, but this normative statement ''is based on'' the theoretical statement "(a + b)(a – b) = a² – b²".
2. For psychologists, the acts of judging, reason
Reason is the capacity of Consciousness, consciously applying logic by Logical consequence, drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activ ...
ing, deriving, and so on, are all psychological processes. Therefore, it is the role of psychology to provide the foundation of these processes. Husserl states that this effort made by psychologists is a "metábasis eis állo génos" ( Gr. μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος, "a transgression to another field"). It is a metábasis because psychology cannot provide any foundations for ''a priori'' laws which themselves are the basis for all the ways we should think correctly. Psychologists have the problem of confusing intentional activities with the object of these activities. It is important to distinguish between the act of judging and the judgment itself, the act of counting and the number itself, and so on. Counting five objects is undeniably a psychological process, but the number 5 is not.
3. Judgments can be true or not true. Psychologists argue that judgments are true because they become "evidently" true to us. This evidence, a psychological process that "guarantees" truth, is indeed a psychological process. Husserl responds by saying that truth itself, as well as logical laws, always remain valid regardless of psychological "evidence" that they are true. No psychological process can explain the ''a priori'' objectivity of these logical truth
Logical truth is one of the most fundamental concepts in logic. Broadly speaking, a logical truth is a statement which is true regardless of the truth or falsity of its constituent propositions. In other words, a logical truth is a statement whi ...
s.
From this criticism to psychologism, the distinction between psychological acts and their intentional objects, and the difference between the normative side of logic and the theoretical side, derives from a Platonist conception of logic. This means that we should regard logical and mathematical laws as being independent of the human mind, and also as an autonomy of meanings. It is essentially the difference between the real (everything subject to time) and the ideal or irreal (everything that is atemporal), such as logical truths, mathematical entities, mathematical truths and meanings in general.
Influence
David Carr commented on Husserl's following in his 1970 dissertation at Yale: "It is well known that Husserl was always disappointed at the tendency of his students to go their own way, to embark upon fundamental revisions of phenomenology rather than engage in the communal task" as originally intended by the radical new science. Notwithstanding, he did attract philosophers to phenomenology.
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centu ...
is the best known of Husserl's students, the one whom Husserl chose as his successor at Freiburg. Heidegger's magnum opus ''Being and Time
''Being and Time'' (german: Sein und Zeit) is the 1927 '' magnum opus'' of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and a key document of existentialism. ''Being and Time'' had a notable impact on subsequent philosophy, literary theory and many other ...
'' was dedicated to Husserl. They shared their thoughts and worked alongside each other for over a decade at the University of Freiburg
The University of Freiburg (colloquially german: Uni Freiburg), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (german: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württe ...
, Heidegger being Husserl's assistant during 1920–1923. Heidegger's early work followed his teacher, but with time he began to develop new insights distinctively variant. Husserl became increasingly critical of Heidegger's work, especially in 1929, and included pointed criticism of Heidegger in lectures he gave during 1931. Heidegger, while acknowledging his debt to Husserl, followed a political position offensive and harmful to Husserl after the Nazis
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...
came to power in 1933, Husserl being of Jewish origin and Heidegger infamously being then a Nazi proponent. Academic discussion of Husserl and Heidegger is extensive.
At Göttingen in 1913 Adolf Reinach (1884–1917) "was now Husserl's right hand. He was above all the mediator between Husserl and the students, for he understood extremely well how to deal with other persons, whereas Husserl was pretty much helpless in this respect." He was an original editor of Husserl's new journal, ''Jahrbuch''; one of his works (giving a phenomenological analysis of the law of obligations) appeared in its first issue. Reinach was widely admired and a remarkable teacher. Husserl, in his 1917 obituary, wrote, "He wanted to draw only from the deepest sources, he wanted to produce only work of enduring value. And through his wise restraint he succeeded in this."
Edith Stein
Edith Stein (religious name Saint Teresia Benedicta a Cruce ; also known as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross or Saint Edith Stein; 12 October 1891 – 9 August 1942) was a German Jewish philosopher who converted to Christianity and became a ...
was Husserl's student at Göttingen and Freiburg while she wrote her doctoral thesis ''The Empathy Problem as it Developed Historically and Considered Phenomenologically'' (1916). She then became his assistant at Freiburg in 1916–18. She later adapted her phenomenology to the modern school of modern Thomism
Thomism is the philosophical and theological school that arose as a legacy of the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the Dominican philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church. In philosophy, Aquinas' disputed question ...
.
Ludwig Landgrebe became assistant to Husserl in 1923. From 1939 he collaborated with Eugen Fink at the Husserl-Archives in Leuven. In 1954 he became leader of the Husserl-Archives. Landgrebe is known as one of Husserl's closest associates, but also for his independent views relating to history, religion and politics as seen from the viewpoints of existentialist philosophy and metaphysics.
Eugen Fink was a close associate of Husserl during the 1920s and 1930s. He wrote the ''Sixth Cartesian Meditation'' which Husserl said was the truest expression and continuation of his own work. Fink delivered the eulogy for Husserl in 1938.
Roman Ingarden, an early student of Husserl at Freiburg, corresponded with Husserl into the mid-1930s. Ingarden did not accept, however, the later transcendental idealism of Husserl which he thought would lead to relativism
Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. There ...
. Ingarden has written his work in German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
and Polish. In his ''Spór o istnienie świata'' (Ger.: "Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt", Eng.: "Dispute about existence of the world") he created his own realistic position, which also helped to spread phenomenology in Poland.
Max Scheler
Max Ferdinand Scheler (; 22 August 1874 – 19 May 1928) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Considered in his lifetime one of the most prominent German philosophers,Davis, Zacha ...
met Husserl in Halle in 1901 and found in his phenomenology a methodological breakthrough for his own philosophy. Scheler, who was at Göttingen when Husserl taught there, was one of the original few editors of the journal ''Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschung'' (1913). Scheler's work ''Formalism in Ethics and Nonformal Ethics of Value'' appeared in the new journal (1913 and 1916) and drew acclaim. The personal relationship between the two men, however, became strained, due to Scheler's legal troubles, and Scheler returned to Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
. Although Scheler later criticised Husserl's idealistic logical approach and proposed instead a "phenomenology of love", he states that he remained "deeply indebted" to Husserl throughout his work.
Nicolai Hartmann was once thought to be at the center of phenomenology, but perhaps no longer. In 1921 the prestige of Hartmann the Neo-Kantian, who was Professor of Philosophy at Marburg, was added to the Movement; he "publicly declared his solidarity with the actual work of ''die Phänomenologie''." Yet Hartmann's connections were with Max Scheler and the Munich circle; Husserl himself evidently did not consider him as a phenomenologist. His philosophy, however, is said to include an innovative use of the method.
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas (; ; 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jews, Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work within Jewish philosophy, existentialism, and Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology, ...
in 1929 gave a presentation at one of Husserl's last seminars in Freiburg. Also that year he wrote on Husserl's ''Ideen'' (1913) a long review published by a French journal. With Gabrielle Peiffer, Levinas translated into French Husserl's ''Méditations cartésiennes'' (1931). He was at first impressed with Heidegger and began a book on him, but broke off the project when Heidegger became involved with the Nazis. After the war he wrote on Jewish spirituality; most of his family had been murdered by the Nazis in Lithuania. Levinas then began to write works that would become widely known and admired.
Alfred Schutz
Alfred may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
*'' Alfred J. Kwak'', Dutch-German-Japanese anime television series
* ''Alfred'' (Arne opera), a 1740 masque by Thomas Arne
* ''Alfred'' (Dvořák), an 1870 opera by Antonín Dvořák
*"Alfred (Interl ...
's ''Phenomenology of the Social World'' seeks to rigorously ground Max Weber
Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist and political economy, political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of Modernity, ...
's interpretive sociology in Husserl's phenomenology. Husserl was impressed by this work and asked Schutz to be his assistant.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialist, existentialism (and Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter ...
was also largely influenced by Husserl, although he later came to disagree with key points in his analyses. Sartre rejected Husserl's transcendental interpretations begun in his ''Ideen'' (1913) and instead followed Heidegger's ontology.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest an ...
's '' Phenomenology of Perception'' is influenced by Edmund Husserl's work on perception, intersubjectivity, intentionality, space, and temporality, including Husserl's theory of retention and protention Retention and protention (german: Retention und Protention) are key aspects of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology of temporality.
Overview
Our experience of the world is not of a series of unconnected moments. Indeed, it would be impossible to have a ...
. Merleau-Ponty's description of 'motor intentionality' and sexuality, for example, retain the important structure of the noetic/noematic correlation of ''Ideen I'', yet further concretize what it means for Husserl when consciousness particularizes itself into modes of intuition. Merleau-Ponty's most clearly Husserlian work is, perhaps, "the Philosopher and His Shadow." Depending on the interpretation of Husserl's accounts of eidetic intuition, given in Husserl's ''Phenomenological Psychology'' and ''Experience and Judgment'', it may be that Merleau-Ponty did not accept the "eidetic reduction" nor the "pure essence" said to result. Merleau-Ponty was the first student to study at the Husserl-archives in Leuven
Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest City status in Belgium, city of the Provinces of Belgium, province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. Th ...
.
Gabriel Marcel
Gabriel Honoré Marcel (7 December 1889 – 8 October 1973) was a French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian existentialist. The author of over a dozen books and at least thirty plays, Marcel's work focused on the moder ...
explicitly rejected existentialism, due to Sartre, but not phenomenology, which has enjoyed a wide following among French Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...
s. He appreciated Husserl, Scheler, and (but with apprehension) Heidegger. His expressions like "ontology of sensability" when referring to the body, indicate influence by phenomenological thought.
Kurt Gödel
Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( , ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an imm ...
is known to have read ''Cartesian Meditations
''Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology'' (french: Méditations cartésiennes: Introduction à la phénoménologie) is a book by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, based on four lectures he gave at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, ...
''. He expressed very strong appreciation for Husserl's work, especially with regard to "bracketing" or "epoché".
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl, (; 9 November 1885 – 8 December 1955) was a German mathematician, theoretical physicist and philosopher. Although much of his working life was spent in Zürich, Switzerland, and then Princeton, New Jersey, he is ass ...
's interest in intuitionistic logic
Intuitionistic logic, sometimes more generally called constructive logic, refers to systems of symbolic logic that differ from the systems used for classical logic by more closely mirroring the notion of constructive proof. In particular, system ...
and impredicativity
In mathematics, logic and philosophy of mathematics, something that is impredicative is a self-referencing definition. Roughly speaking, a definition is impredicative if it invokes (mentions or quantifies over) the set being defined, or (more co ...
appears to have resulted from his reading of Husserl. He was introduced to Husserl's work through his wife, Helene Joseph, herself a student of Husserl at Göttingen.
Colin Wilson
Colin Henry Wilson (26 June 1931 – 5 December 2013) was an English writer, philosopher and novelist. He also wrote widely on true crime, mysticism and the paranormal, eventually writing more than a hundred books. Wilson called his p ...
has used Husserl's ideas extensively in developing his "New Existentialism," particularly in regards to his "intentionality of consciousness," which he mentions in a number of his books.
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. ...
was also influenced by Husserl, not only concerning Husserl's notion of essential insight that Carnap used in his ''Der Raum'', but also his notion of "formation rules" and "transformation rules" is founded on Husserl's philosophy of logic.
Karol Wojtyla, who would later become Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...
, was influenced by Husserl. Phenomenology appears in his major work, ''The Acting Person'' (1969). Originally published in Polish, it was translated by Andrzej Potocki and edited by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka in the ''Analecta Husserliana''. ''The Acting Person'' combines phenomenological work with Thomistic ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ...
.
Paul Ricœur
Jean Paul Gustave Ricœur (; ; 27 February 1913 – 20 May 2005) was a French philosopher best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutics. As such, his thought is within the same tradition as other major hermeneutic ...
has translated many works of Husserl into French and has also written many of his own studies of the philosopher. Among other works, Ricœur employed phenomenology in his ''Freud and Philosophy
''Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation'' (french: De l'interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud) is a 1965 book about Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, written by the French philosopher Paul Ricœur. In ''Freud and Phil ...
'' (1965).
Jacques Derrida wrote several critical studies of Husserl early in his academic career. These included his dissertation, ''The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy,'' and also his introduction to ''The Origin of Geometry''. Derrida continued to make reference to Husserl in works such as ''Of Grammatology
''Of Grammatology'' (french: links=no, De la grammatologie) is a 1967 book by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. The book, originating the idea of deconstruction, proposes that throughout continental philosophy, especially as philosophers en ...
''.
Stanisław Leśniewski
Stanisław Leśniewski (30 March 1886 – 13 May 1939) was a Polish mathematician, philosopher and logician.
Life
He was born on 28 March 1886 at Serpukhov, near Moscow, to father Izydor, an engineer working on the construction of the Trans-Si ...
and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz were inspired by Husserl's formal analysis of language. Accordingly, they employed phenomenology in the development of categorial grammar
Categorial grammar is a family of formalisms in natural language syntax that share the central assumption that syntactic constituents combine as functions and arguments. Categorial grammar posits a close relationship between the syntax and sema ...
.
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset (; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century, while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism, and dictatorship. His philoso ...
visited Husserl at Freiburg in 1934. He credited phenomenology for having 'liberated him' from a narrow neo-Kantian thought. While perhaps not a phenomenologist himself, he introduced the philosophy to Iberia
The Iberian Peninsula (),
**
* Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica''
**
**
* french: Péninsule Ibérique
* mwl, Península Eibérica
* eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula
A peninsula (; ) is a la ...
and Latin America
Latin America or
* french: Amérique Latine, link=no
* ht, Amerik Latin, link=no
* pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...
.
Wilfrid Sellars
Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (May 20, 1912 – July 2, 1989) was an American philosopher and prominent developer of critical realism, who "revolutionized both the content and the method of philosophy in the United States".
Life and career
His father ...
, an influential figure in the so-called "Pittsburgh School" ( Robert Brandom, John McDowell
John Henry McDowell, FBA (born 7 March 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology ...
) had been a student of Marvin Farber, a pupil of Husserl, and was influenced by phenomenology through him:
Hans Blumenberg received his habilitation in 1950, with a dissertation on ontological distance, an inquiry into the crisis of Husserl's phenomenology.
Roger Scruton
Sir Roger Vernon Scruton (; 27 February 194412 January 2020) was an English philosopher and writer who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views.
Editor from 1982 ...
, despite some disagreements with Husserl, drew upon his work in ''Sexual Desire
Sexual desire is an emotion and motivational state characterized by an interest in sexual objects or activities, or by a drive to seek out sexual objects or to engage in sexual activities. It is an aspect of sexuality, which varies significantly ...
'' (1986).
The influence of the Husserlian phenomenological tradition in the 21st century extends beyond the confines of the European and North American legacies. It has already started to impact (indirectly) scholarship in Eastern and Oriental thought, including research on the impetus of philosophical thinking in the history of ideas
Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual histo ...
in Islam.[Refer also to the book-series published by Springer on ]phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
and Islamic philosophy
Islamic philosophy is philosophy that emerges from the Islamic tradition. Two terms traditionally used in the Islamic world are sometimes translated as philosophy—falsafa (literally: "philosophy"), which refers to philosophy as well as logic ...
Bibliography
In German
* 1887. ''Über den Begriff der Zahl. Psychologische Analysen'' (''On the Concept of Number''; habilitation thesis)
* 1891. ''Philosophie der Arithmetik. Psychologische und logische Untersuchungen'' ('' Philosophy of Arithmetic'')
* 1900. ''Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Teil: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik'' (''Logical Investigations'', Vol. 1)
* 1901. ''Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis'' (''Logical Investigations'', Vol. 2)
* 1911. ''Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft'' (included in ''Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy: Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man'')
* 1913. ''Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie'' (''Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology'')
* 1923–24. ''Erste Philosophie. Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion'' (''First Philosophy'', Vol. 2: ''Phenomenological Reductions'')
* 1925. ''Erste Philosophie. Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte'' (''First Philosophy'', Vol. 1: ''Critical History of Ideas'')
* 1928. ''Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins'' (''Lectures on the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time'')
* 1929. ''Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft'' (''Formal and Transcendental Logic'')
* 1930. ''Nachwort zu meinen "Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie"'' (''Postscript to my "Ideas"'')
* 1936. ''Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie'' ('' The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy'')
* 1939. ''Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik.'' (''Experience and Judgment'')
* 1950. ''Cartesianische Meditationen'' (translation of ''Méditations cartésiennes'' (''Cartesian Meditations
''Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology'' (french: Méditations cartésiennes: Introduction à la phénoménologie) is a book by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, based on four lectures he gave at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, ...
'', 1931))
* 1952. ''Ideen II: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution'' (''Ideas II: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution'')
* 1952. ''Ideen III: Die Phänomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften'' (''Ideas III: Phenomenology and the Foundations of the Sciences'')
* 1973. ''Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität'' (''On the Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity'')
In English
* '' Philosophy of Arithmetic'', Willard, Dallas, trans., 2003 891
Year 891 ( DCCCXCI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Europe
* February 21 – Guy III, duke of Spoleto, is crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Ste ...
Dordrecht: Kluwer.
* '' Logical Investigations'', 1973 900, 2nd revised edition 1913
9 (nine) is the natural number following and preceding .
Evolution of the Arabic digit
In the beginning, various Indians wrote a digit 9 similar in shape to the modern closing question mark without the bottom dot. The Kshatrapa, Andhra a ...
Findlay, J. N., trans. London: Routledge
Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law, ...
.
* "Philosophy as Rigorous Science", translated in Quentin Lauer, S.J.
Quentin Lauer, S.J. (April 1, 1917 – March 9, 1997) was an American Jesuit priest, philosopher and Hegel scholar. Lauer’s academic work helped introduce Hegel's thought to the American philosophical community. He was President of the American ...
, editor, 1965 910''Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy''. New York: Harper & Row
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins based in New York City.
History
J. & J. Harper (1817–1833)
James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishin ...
.
* ''Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy – First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology'', 1982 913
__NOTOC__
Year 913 ( CMXIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* June 6 – Emperor Alexander III dies of exhaustion while playing ...
Kersten, F., trans. The Hague: Nijhoff.
* ''Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy – Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution'', 1989. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer, translators. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
* ''Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy – Third Book: Phenomenology and the Foundations of the Sciences'', 1980, Klein, T. E., and Pohl, W. E., translators. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
* ''On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917)'', 1990 928 Brough, J.B., trans. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
* ''Cartesian Meditations
''Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology'' (french: Méditations cartésiennes: Introduction à la phénoménologie) is a book by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, based on four lectures he gave at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, ...
'', 1960 931 Cairns, D., trans. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
* ''Formal and Transcendental Logic'', 1969 929 Cairns, D., trans. The Hague: Nijhoff.
* ''Experience and Judgement'', 1973 939
Year 939 ( CMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Europe
* Hugh the Great, count of Paris, rebels against King Louis IV ("d'Outremer") and gains su ...
Churchill, J. S., and Ameriks, K., translators. London: Routledge.
* '' The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology'', 1970 936/54 Carr, D., trans. Evanston: Northwestern University Press
Northwestern University Press is an American publishing house affiliated with Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. It publishes 70 new titles each year in the areas of continental philosophy, poetry, Slavic and German literary criticism ...
.
* "Universal Teleology". ''Telos'' 4 (Fall 1969). New York: Telos Press.
Anthologies
* Willard, Dallas, trans., 1994. ''Early Writings in the Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics''. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
* Welton, D., ed., 1999. ''The Essential Husserl''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is an academic publisher founded in 1950 at Indiana University that specializes in the humanities and social sciences. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. IU Press publishes ...
.
See also
* Early phenomenology Early phenomenology refers to the early phase of the phenomenological movement, from the 1890s until the Second World War. The figures associated with the early phenomenology are Edmund Husserl and his followers and students, particularly the mem ...
* List of phenomenologists
Notes
Citations
Further reading
* Adorno, Theodor W., 2013. ''Against Epistemology''. Cambridge: Polity Press.
* Bernet, Rudolf, et al., 1993. ''Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
*
* Derrida, Jacques, 1954 (French), 2003 (English). ''The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy''. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.
* --------, 1962 (French), 1976 (English). ''Introduction to Husserl's The Origin of Geometry''. Includes Derrida's translation of Appendix III of Husserl's 1936 ''The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology''.
* --------, 1967 (French), 1973 (English). ''Speech and Phenomena (La Voix et le Phénomène), and other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''.
*
* Fine, Kit, 1995, "Part-Whole" in Smith, B., and Smith, D. W., eds., ''The Cambridge Companion to Husserl''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Fink, Eugen 1995, ''Sixth Cartesian meditation. The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method'' with textual notations by Edmund Husserl. Translated with an introduction by Ronald Bruzina, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
* Føllesdal, Dagfinn, 1972, "An Introduction to Phenomenology for Analytic Philosophers" in Olson, R. E., and Paul, A. M., eds., ''Contemporary Philosophy in Scandinavia''. Johns Hopkins University Press: 417–30.
* Hill, C. O., 1991. ''Word and Object in Husserl, Frege, and Russell: The Roots of Twentieth-Century Philosophy''. Ohio Univ. Press.
* -------- and Rosado Haddock, G. E., 2000. ''Husserl or Frege? Meaning, Objectivity, and Mathematics''. Open Court.
* Hopkins, Burt C., (2011). ''The Philosophy of Husserl''. Durham: Acumen.
* Levinas, Emmanuel, 1963 (French), 1973 (English). ''The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
* Köchler, Hans, 1983, "The Relativity of the Soul and the Absolute State of the Pure Ego", ''Analecta Husserliana'' 16: 95–107.
* --------, 1986. ''Phenomenological Realism. Selected Essays''. Frankfurt a. M./Bern: Peter Lang.
* Mohanty, J. N., 1974, "Husserl and Frege: A New Look at Their Relationship", ''Research in Phenomenology'' 4: 51–62.
* --------, 1982. ''Edmund Husserl's Theory of Meaning''. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
* --------, 1982. ''Husserl and Frege''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
* Moran, D. and Cohen, J., 2012, ''The Husserl Dictionary''. London, Continuum Press.
* Natanson, Maurice, 1973. ''Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
*
* Ricœur, Paul, 1967. ''Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
* Rollinger, R. D., 1999, ''Husserl's Position in the School of Brentano'' in ''Phaenomenologica'' 150. Kluwer.
* --------, 2008. ''Austrian Phenomenology: Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, and Others on Mind and Language''. Frankfurt am Main: Ontos-Verlag.
* Schuhmann, K., 1977. ''Husserl – Chronik (Denk- und Lebensweg Edmund Husserls)''. Number I in ''Husserliana Dokumente''. Martinus Nijhoff.
* Simons, Peter, 1987. ''Parts: A Study in Ontology''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* Sokolowski, Robert. Introduction to Phenomenology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
*
* Smith, David Woodruff, 2007. ''Husserl'' London: Routledge.
* Stiegler, Bernard, 2009. ''Technics and Time, 2: Disorientation''. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
* Zahavi, Dan, 2003. ''Husserl's Phenomenology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
External links
Husserl archives
Husserl-Archives Leuven
the main Husserl-Archive in Leuven
Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest City status in Belgium, city of the Provinces of Belgium, province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. Th ...
, International Centre for Phenomenological Research.
Husserliana: Edmund Husserl Gesammelte Werke
the ongoing critical edition of Husserl's works.
Husserliana: Materialien
edition for lectures and shorter works.
Edmund Husserl Collected Works
English translation of Husserl's works.
Husserl-Archives
at the University
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...
of Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...
.
Husserl-Archives Freiburg
at the ''École normale supérieure
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education
Secondary education or post-primary education covers two phases on the International Standard Classification of Education sca ...
'', Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...
.
*
Other links
*
*
* Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''IEP'') is a scholarly online encyclopedia, dealing with philosophy, philosophical topics, and philosophers. The IEP combines open access publication with peer reviewed publication of original pa ...
:
Edmund Husserl (1859–1938).
– Marianne Sawicki. Accessed 2011-04-28.
by Barry Smith
English translation of "Vienna Lecture" (1935): "Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity"
The Husserl Page by Bob Sandmeyer
Includes a number of online texts in German and English.
Husserl.net
open content project.
*
Resource guide on Husserl's logic and formal ontology, with annotated bibliography.
The Husserl Circle.
Cartesian Meditations
in Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music ...
''Ideas'', Part I
in Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music ...
Edmund Husserl on the Open Commons of Phenomenology
Complete bibliography and links to all German texts, including ''Husserliana'' vols. I–XXVIII
{{DEFAULTSORT:Husserl, Edmund
1859 births
1938 deaths
19th-century Austrian male writers
19th-century Austrian writers
19th-century German philosophers
19th-century German writers
19th-century German male writers
20th-century Austrian male writers
20th-century Austrian writers
20th-century German philosophers
20th-century German writers
19th-century Austrian Jews
Austrian logicians
Austrian Lutherans
Austrian male writers
Austrian philosophers
Continental philosophers
Converts to Lutheranism from Judaism
Descartes scholars
Epistemologists
Founders of philosophical traditions
German logicians
German Lutherans
German male non-fiction writers
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
Leipzig University alumni
Lutheran philosophers
Jewish philosophers
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni
Metaphysicians
Ontologists
Writers from Prostějov
People from the Margraviate of Moravia
Phenomenologists
Philosophers of culture
Philosophers of education
Philosophers of language
Philosophers of logic
Philosophers of mathematics
Philosophers of mind
Philosophers of psychology
Platonists
Trope theorists
University of Freiburg faculty
University of Göttingen faculty
University of Vienna alumni
Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy
Moravian-German people