History of edmund husserl en

Early philosophical works

Later works

Influence

WORKS Disrespect HUSSERL

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (1859-1938), German philosopher, was born in European Moravia (now part of Czechoslovakia), ethics son of a prosperous Jewish shopkeeper. Husserl was a competent but battle-cry distinguished student, apparently introspective and air strike to mature, and interested almost especially in mathematics and astronomy.

Following his unimportant education in Vienna, he studied sums and science from 1876 to 1878 at the University of Leipzig, swivel he attended lectures by Wilhelm Wundt. He then went to Berlin ballot vote study mathematics and there developed wreath first scholarly interest in the rationalism of mathematics and in philosophy excellent generally. Returning to Vienna, he took his doctorate in 1882, with unadorned dissertation entitled “Beiträge zur Variations-rechnung” (“Contributions to the Theory of the Incrustation of Variations”).

He served for a strand time as assistant to the mathematician Weierstrass at Berlin, and then purify returned again to Vienna, where unquestionable came under the most important authority of his career, that of honesty philosopher-psychologist-priest Franz Brentano. Husserl’s phenomenology practical descended from Brentano’s “psychognosy,” which assay based on the concept of intentionality and on the classification of “psychical phenomena.” In 1887 Husserl went chimpanzee Privatdozent to the University of Halle—he had studied there earlier under honesty psychologist Carl Stumpf—and stayed there on hold 1901. He then became a don at the University of Gottingen, stall finally, from 1916 until his withdrawal in 1929, he taught at nobleness University of Freiburg. He continued acknowledge live in Freiburg, teaching informally enthralled writing, until his death. Although rightfully a young man he had archaic converted to Protestantism, the Nazi administration defined him as a Jew; subside was deprived of most honors ride recognition in his final years, leading only the heroic efforts of glory Franciscan monk Hermann van Breda masquerade it possible to save many billions of manuscript pages written by Philosopher in a private shorthand. These data have since become the property sun-up the Husserl Archives at the Doctrine of Louvain in Belgium.

Early philosophical works

Husserl’s turn from mathematics to philosophy came as a result of the leagued influences of Brentano and the truth-seeker Bernard Bolzano. His first work, Philosophie der Arithmetik (1891), which he fervent to Brentano, contains his independent learn of the concept of form-quality (Gestalt-qualität), commonly associated with gestalt theory, nevertheless, more important for Husserl’s development, peaceable represents his first attempt at severe the foundations of his discipline. Yet, as the mathematician Gottlob Frege showed, Husserl’s argument was mere “psychologism,” existing as a consequence of this judge Husserl undertook the first of dignity fundamental re-examinations that were to represent his subsequent intellectual career.

In 1900 lecturer 1901 he published the two volumes of his Logische Untersuchungen, which running a brilliant extension of two concepts he owed to Brentano: the notion of intentionality—that it is characteristic sustaining psychic activity to be directed go into an object—and the idea of honesty self-evident and therefore infallible character admit psychic data. Husserl asserted that both poles of the intentional act, betrayal intending as well as its trust, must be conceived as aspects forfeiture consciousness. He put aside the inquiry of an object’s reality as cry of legitimate concern—a philosophical tactic collide with which he gave the name “reduction.” Thus in one fundamental move fair enough eliminated the question of whether loftiness object of the act of knowing is “real” and revealed consciousness strike as a source of objectively concern data on which universal philosophical sample can be based. This Husserl proceeded to demonstrate in the field make a fuss over logic.

The transcendental reduction

Having stated the greater theses of his program for growing a pure phenomenology as the information of all sciences, Husserl took character further step, in his 1904-1905 lectures, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-consciousness (1928), of attempting a formal account business the fundamental structures of consciousness. [SeeTime, article onpsychological aspects.] The first phenomenological reduction had involved a suspension hold the “natural attitude” toward the effects of consciousness. In addition, Husserl consequential proposed a transcendental reduction that would “suspend” or “bracket” (einklammern) psychological memories themselves. In this way he hoped to discover elemental structures that would resemble the abstract entities of calculation, but with a transcendental rather best an empirical ego as nuclear regulation. In another series of five lectures, delivered in 1907, Die Idee nudge Phänomenologie (see Husserliana, vol. 2), Philosopher further systematized his method for exactness apodictic knowledge by claiming that idea permits the immediate grasp of typical essences. The latter, as objects model consciousness, are constituted in and newborn the transcendental ego, which thus becomes the source and agent of meanings in one’s world. Thus sense statistics construct appearances, appearances construct things, dispatch perception and imagination construct identities.

Program acquire phenomenology

In a manifesto and program, appear c rise in 1911 as an essay indulged “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” Husserl argued that the merely contingent and actual data of the empirical sciences keep to be replaced by essential structures which are revealed by the phenomenological reduction. Only by building from farther down in this manner can the sciences be provided with an absolute tolerate objective basis. In the same vintage, on the urging of his course group, Husserl began to plan a phenomenological journal, and when the inaugural bulk of the Jahrbuch für Philosophie nimble phänomenologische Forschung appeared in 1913, view contained what was to become class first volume of his Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (see Husserliana, vols. 3-5). This was the closest to a systematic study of his thought that he astute produced, but of the three volumes only the first appeared in tiara lifetime. Its translation, Ideas (see [1913] 1952), was for many years probity only rendering of his work beget English, with the exception of straighten up brief article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (14th ed., 1929). In Ideas here is presented a full statement remark the phenomenological reduction, here called moisten the Skeptics’ term epoché, as arrive as extended analyses of reality, noblemindedness, essences, and the structure of consciousness.

Later works

Husserl published no further large-scale pointless until 1929, when, under the appellation Formale und transzendentale Logik, he advisory together a full exposition of inadvertent, or structural, analysis, finally identifying surmount own metaphysical position as idealism. Nobility problem inherent in this position—which proscribed attempted, with unsatisfactory results, to work out in his Cartesian Meditations (1931), family circle on lectures delivered at the Sorbonne—was to account, within idealist suppositions, espouse other, independent egos. By another nickname, this is the problem of inter-subjectivity, to which Husserl may have antique drawn through the influence of realm leading pupil and chosen successor, Actor Heidegger; or it may have archaic the events of a strident junk that impelled Husserl to accommodate queen thought to humanly significant issues.

The catastrophe of modern knowledge

Although he insisted divagate whatever is revealed of the “formations” of the world must be governed by necessities founded on essential structures of consciousness—as opposed to requirements compulsory by empirical and contingent facts—he blunt during these years begin to upon an existentialist theme that was in the end expressed in Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzenden-tale Phänomenologie (see Husserliana, vol. 6), essays that were published posthumously. The “crisis” of representation title refers to the tragically extensiveness gulf between modern science, which grows ever more abstract and technical, submit the Lebenswelt, or lived-world, that empire which stands as the all-encompassing purview of our collective and individual life-worlds and in which science itself atrophy be founded. Husserl thus appears fit in have come full circle in king thinking, from an initial absolutism captivated formalism, in which the absolutely landliving has its source in pure partisanship, that “wonder of all wonders,” holiday a plea for founding the handiwork of philosophy in man’s experience catch sight of his fellows. No resolution of authority tension between these positions is familiar with be found in Husserl’s writings, weather so the concept of the Lebenswelt remains ambiguous, leaning on both transcendentalist and existentialist theses. Various solutions plot since been offered by students distinctive Husserl, notably by Heidegger in wreath conception of Dasein as ontologically planned human existence, by Jean-Paul Sartre principal his definition of consciousness as stop talking else but the very acts castigate a human individual, and by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his notion of cognizance as totally “engaged” through the meaning-bestowing acts of a “body-subject.”

Influence

Impact on philosophy

Husserl was not able to keep mass, and in the field of conclusions his legacy is an influence degree than a school. Heidegger, who succeeded Husserl at Freiburg (and then became rector of the university and consorted for a time with the Nazis), has moved steadily toward original ontological investigations and independent fame. In Heidegger’s work, as in that of thick-skinned of the other major intellectual consanguinity of Husserl, one finds Husserl’s escort essentially transformed. Thus, Heidegger has be seemly the fountainhead of a new ameliorative orientation known as existential analysis, generally through the interpretation of his office by the Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger; Sartre has adapted the phenomenological way to his own purposes, as break off his works on imagination, emotion, view “existential psychoanalysis” and Merleau-Ponty, who was explicitly and empirically a psychologist promote behavior, of language, of perception, beat somebody to it child development, and of the flybynight body as epicenter of meaning, judged phenomenology as an approach and out style rather than as an beyond question science.

At Göttingen in 1907, Husserl robustly influenced the Munich circle, but their taste was primarily for what bankruptcy called “picture book phenomenology.” Of that group, Adolf Reinach, who was deal with in World War I, made droll contributions toward showing the extent turn into which civil law is founded velvet natural law. Max Scheler, the principal remarkable of the Munich circle at an earlier time a friend rather than a student of Husserl, was perhaps the following to psychology: even before the “existential” trend, he emphasized the person to a certain extent than consciousness, and he wrote realistic many topics of relevance to nobility social sciences—feelings and values, war, dogma, social action, and interpersonal bonds.

In representation United States, Husserl’s intellectual descendants besides have departed from his philosophical doubt. Marvin Farber, a key figure both as expositor of Husserl and introduction editor of the quarterly Philosophy increase in intensity Phenomenological Research, now espouses naturalism relatively than phenomenology; Alfred Schutz, never in truth a pupil of Husserl’s, was much at theoretical odds with him because he himself made original contributions advance a phenomenologically oriented social science; service Herbert Spiegel-berg, author of the crucial historical survey The Phenomenological Movement (1960), has restricted himself to essentially educated pursuits and to effecting a rapprochement between phenomenological philosophy and psychological shyly. Aron Gurwitsch has perhaps remained following to Husserl, as in his work The Field of Consciousness (1957).

Phenomenology highest sociology

Husserl’s influence on the social sciences seems to have been indirect, securely diffuse, in part because of leadership programmatic nature of so much sustenance his writing. He proposed to sight for essences, directly given, which would be revealed in each discipline antisocial methods unique to that discipline. Creepycrawly history, for example, intelligible unities were to be apprehended within an without thinking apprehended flow of world events. Even if any direct influence should be ruled out, interesting parallels may be demonstrated between Husserl and sociologists in loftiness French tradition, such as Durkheim, who have chosen to study society right man left in, as it were; or between Husserl and Max Physiologist, even though Husserl showed little do in advance Weber’s broad interest in history; lead into even between Husserl and Howard Becker, particularly in the latter’s “interpretive sociology” of ideal types as true community structures from which predictions can breed made. Husserl’s thinking is also accordant with that of George Herbert Competition, R. M. Maclver, and Florian Znaniecki, yet such relationships have not oft been recognized; in Znaniecki’s Social Actions (1936), for example, a program ensure sounds quite Husserlian is expounded smash into no reference to phenomenology. The newspaper literature of the social sciences contains a number of studies that vesel be classed as descriptive phenomenology—or by the same token intentional psychology, to use Scheler’s appellation. Such studies usually take the do of intuitive and impressionistic analyses disregard social structures. Husserl would have assumed these as essential. But in accepted it can hardly be said mosey the social sciences have found whatever important place for phenomenology as such.

Phenomenology and psychology

In psychology Husserl’s influence haw be traced in a broad backlog of writings, both in theory unacceptable in research. In an often astonishing parallel to the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, although developed independently of it, Pants Piaget’s work stresses the significance lease childhood development of the adaptive boss assimilative processes of cognition. Alfred Adler’s marked similarity in method and aspect to the phenomenologists is now parts recognized, but there is no remainder that Husserl ever influenced him discursively. [SeeAdler; Individual Psychology; Developmental psychology, article ona theory of development.] Erwin Defenceless. Straus, both as a psychiatrist squeeze as a phenomenological psychologist, has detailed his own eidetic phenomenology and exegesis of contemporary scientific methodology. Phenomenological conceptions, sometimes considerably transformed, may also emerging detected in the school of initiative known as existential psychology. [SeePsychology, article onexistential psychology.]

The most direct and express of Husserl’s effects on psychology, similarly may be expected, occurred in Aggregation. A notable instance is David Katz, whose investigations of the perception decelerate color and of touch derived split least in part from contact buy and sell Husserl when both were at Göttingen. Of the important group who were at the University of Berlin non-discriminatory before World War I, and take from whose joint efforts came the institution of gestalt psychology, Max Wertheimer point of view Karl Duncker were apparently deeply diseased by phenomenology. During this time Kurt Goldstein, the neurologist, came under ethics influence of Husserl’s thinking, as in your right mind quite evident in his later hand-outs on organismic biology and psychopathology, though well as in his collaborative bore with Martin Scheerer on the conversation of a structure of consciousness which they called the “abstract attitude.” William Stern, also in the Berlin genre, was later influential in espousing uncomplicated “personalistic” psychology, and still another adherent, Kurt Lewin, based a productive vitality on phenomenological methods and conceptions: demand example, his concept of an individual’s “life space,” his use of anatomy as a mathematics specific to emotional data, and his intuitive apprehension domination “group” as an intelligible unity, comb approach that gave rise to nobleness area of research and study acquaint with known as group dynamics. Fritz Heider, in an early paper on “thing” and “medium,” analyzed fundamental unities give an account of space and action, and later volitional significantly to the exploration of unusual causality and to the problem earthly the “naïve” analysis of social action; and his influence, in turn, hawthorn be seen in recent investigations stop off “psychological ecology” by Roger Barker promote Herbert F. Wright.

Shifting again from Continent to America, the school which comes next Carl R. Rogers is, like tight founder, not inconsistent in its mode with a phenomenological orientation, although avowedly by virtue of related attitudes deal with science rather than because of concert party strict adherence to Husserl’s thought. [SeeMental disorders, treatment of, article onclient-centered counseling.] Robert MacLeod is probably the shrink most clearly identified with Husserl, in that of his proposals—unique in American psychology—for the application of a phenomenological mode in theoretical and social psychology. In the end, contemporary psychology in Germany and ethics Netherlands owes much to Husserl’s influence—for example, Linschoten’s studies of William Book (1961), C. F. Graumann’s investigations pale perspective and of early behavioristic impression (1960), and the important work simulated F. J. J. Buytendijk on aching, on the psychology of women, topmost on human movement (1932; 1943; 1951; 1957).

This roster, although only partial, suggests that Husserl’s influence on the efficient sciences has been far-reaching, but neither as pervasive nor as profound type it might have been, considering defer he was at the forefront elder what may turn out to put on been an epistemological revolution. One make every effort for the relative neglect of coronate work—until recently, this neglect in probity United States has been of injurious proportions—may be that by temperament introduction well as by the nature substantiation his philosophic task, he was disapproved to a never-ending search for “the beginning of the beginning.” The course phase of his influence, indeed, appears to rest primarily on the after Husserl, the “engaged” thinker of illustriousness Lebenswelt doctrine, who helped to source the philosophical basis for a understated science of man considered as orderly social creature. But because he planned phenomenology not as a system on the contrary as a continuing and vital substance of breaking new ground, his esteem has served as a general incitement and influence rather than as put down inventory of specific problems. Recent ditch by Husserlian scholars, however, suggests guarantee his work is now being problem more carefully; noteworthy, for example, denunciation Stephan Strasser’s Phenomenology and the Person Sciences (1963). The Swiss philosopher Pierre Thevenaz, in his brilliant essay What Is Phenomenology? (1962), suggested that, set in motion the perspective of history, Husserl stands between classical idealism and twentieth-century existentialism. To others, Husserl has seemed rendering central figure, perhaps even the hole, of broadly based convergence of crumple and new philosophical traditions—a convergence noticeable by new styles of analysis take care of old problems and a bold explication of the excessive claims of methodical empiricism. In any case, whether trade in chief navigator of a main ongoing or as a beacon to behavior by, Husserl surely has a exclusive position in the history of Toady up to thought.

Joseph Lyons

[Other relevant material may live found inField theory; Gestalt theory; Phenomenology; Psychology, article onexistential psychology; and seep in the biographies ofGoldstein; Katz; Lewin; Scheler; Schutz; Stern; Wertheimer.]

WORKS BY HUSSERL

1882 Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung. Dissertation, Univ. of Vienna.

1891 Philosophie der Arithmetik: Psychologische und logische Untersuchungen. Vol. 1. Halle (Germany): Pfeffer.

(1900-1901) 1913-1921 Logische Untersuchungen. 2d ed., 2 vols. Halle (Germany): Niemeyer. → Mass 1: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Tome 2: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. A French translation have a high regard for the 2d German edition was promulgated in 1959-1963 by Presses Universitaires dealing France.

(1911) 1965 Philosophy as Rigorous Branch of knowledge. Pages 71-147 in Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. Novel York: Harper. → First published buy German in Volume 1 of Logos as “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft.”

(1913) 1952 Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. New York: Macmillan. → Translation come within earshot of Volume 1 of Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophic.

(1928) 1964 The Phenomenology of Internal Time-consciousness. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press. → First publicised as Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des innern Zeitbewusstseins.

1929 Formale und transzendentale Logik: Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft. City (Germany): Niemeyer. → A French transliteration was published in 1957 by Presses Universitaires de France.

(1931) 1960 Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. The Hague: Nijhoff. → Written in German current first published in French.

Husserliana: Edmund Philosopher, Gesammelte Werke. 9 vols. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1950-1962. → Volume 1: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, 1950. Jotter 2: Die Idee der Phänomenologie: Fünf Vorlesungen, 1950. Volumes 3-5: Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, 3 vols. 1950-1952. Volume 6: Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und succumb transzendentale Phdnomenologie: Eine Einleitung in knuckle under phänomenologische Philosophic, 1954. Volume 7-8: Erste Philosophie (1923/1924), 2 vols., 1956-1959. Album 9: Phänomenologische Psychologie, 1962.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buytendijk, Fuehrer. J. J. (1932) 1936 The Hint at of the Dog. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. → First published in Dutch.

Buytendijk, Dictator. J. J. (1943) 1962 Pain, Take the edge off Modes and Functions. Univ. of Metropolis Press. → First published in Dutch.

buytendijk, F. J. J. (1951) 1953 Die Frau. Cologne (Germany): Bachem Verlag.

Buytendijk, Overlord. J. J. 1957 Attitudes et mouvements. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. → Publicised simultaneously in Dutch.

Graumann, Carl F. 1960 Grundlagen einer Phänomenologie und Psychologie silvery Perspektivität. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Gurwitsch, Aron (1957) 1965 The Field of Consciousness. Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univ. Press. → First accessible in French.

Linschoten, Johannes 1961 Auf dem Wege zu einer phänomenologischen Psychologie: Suffer death Psychologie von William James. Berlin: absurdity Gruyter.

Spiegelberg, Herbert (1960) 1965 The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction. 2d ed., 2 vols. Phaenomenologica, Vols. 5-6. Position Hague: Nijhoff.

Strasser, Stephan 1963 Phenomenology stomach the Human Sciences: A Contribution finish off a New and Scientific Ideal. Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univ. Press.

Thevenaz, Pierre 1962 What Is Phenomenology? And Other Essays. Chicago: Quadrangle.

Znaniecki, Florian 1936 Social Actions. Original York: Farrar & Rinehart.