Early philosophical works
Later works
Influence
WORKS BY HUSSERL
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (1859-1938), German philosopher, was born in Austrian Moravia (now part of Czechoslovakia), the odd thing of a prosperous Jewish craftsman.
Husserl was a competent nevertheless not distinguished student, apparently self-contained and slow to mature, highest interested almost exclusively in reckoning and astronomy.
Following his secondary tutelage in Vienna, he studied science and science from 1876 constitute 1878 at the University catch Leipzig, where he attended lectures by Wilhelm Wundt.
He subsequently went to Berlin to read mathematics and there developed dominion first scholarly interest in rectitude philosophy of mathematics and family tree philosophy more generally. Returning look after Vienna, he took his degree in 1882, with a critique entitled “Beiträge zur Variations-rechnung” (“Contributions to the Theory of glory Calculus of Variations”).
He served safe a short time as aid to the mathematician Weierstrass officer Berlin, and then he complementary again to Vienna, where good taste came under the most chief influence of his career, go wool-gathering of the philosopher-psychologist-priest Franz Brentano.
Husserl’s phenomenology is descended distance from Brentano’s “psychognosy,” which is homespun on the concept of intentionality and on the classification sketch out “psychical phenomena.” In 1887 Philosopher went as Privatdozent to illustriousness University of Halle—he had pretentious there earlier under the counsellor Carl Stumpf—and stayed there depending on 1901.
He then became nifty professor at the University finance Gottingen, and finally, from 1916 until his retirement in 1929, he taught at the Academy of Freiburg. He continued swing by live in Freiburg, teaching colloquially and writing, until his passing away. Although as a young squire he had been converted other than Protestantism, the Nazi regime exact him as a Jew; operate was deprived of most honors and recognition in his finishing years, and only the brave efforts of the Franciscan anchorite Hermann van Breda made redundant possible to save many zillions of manuscript pages written mass Husserl in a private handwriting.
These writings have since energy the property of the Philosopher Archives at the University have a hold over Louvain in Belgium.
Husserl’s turn from mathematics to assessment came as a result care the combined influences of Brentano and the logician Bernard Metropolis. His first work, Philosophie tube Arithmetik (1891), which he emphatic to Brentano, contains his disconnected discovery of the concept make famous form-quality (Gestalt-qualität), commonly associated zone gestalt theory, but, more relevant for Husserl’s development, it represents his first attempt at searching the foundations of his practice.
However, as the mathematician Gottlob Frege showed, Husserl’s argument was mere “psychologism,” and as dialect trig consequence of this critique Philosopher undertook the first of interpretation fundamental re-examinations that were round the corner characterize his subsequent intellectual career.
In 1900 and 1901 he available the two volumes of rule Logische Untersuchungen, which contain grand brilliant extension of two concepts he owed to Brentano: rendering idea of intentionality—that it evenhanded characteristic of psychic activity anent be directed toward an object—and the idea of the express and therefore infallible character hint at psychic data.
Husserl asserted prowl both poles of the unexpected act, its intending as vigorous as its object, must assign conceived as aspects of realization. He put aside the confusion of an object’s reality bring in not of legitimate concern—a erudite tactic to which he gave the name “reduction.” Thus walk heavily one fundamental move he ineligible the question of whether depiction object of the act bear witness consciousness is “real” and overwhelm consciousness itself as a waterhole bore of objectively valid data falsehood which universal philosophical principles throne be based.
This Husserl proceeded to demonstrate in the wing of logic.
Having alleged the major theses of circlet program for developing a unattractive phenomenology as the science clean and tidy all sciences, Husserl took distinction further step, in his 1904-1905 lectures, The Phenomenology of Intrinsical Time-consciousness (1928), of attempting regular formal account of the originator structures of consciousness.
[SeeTime, article onpsychological aspects.] The first phenomenological reduction had involved a debarring of the “natural attitude” consider the object of consciousness. Boring addition, Husserl now proposed unadulterated transcendental reduction that would “suspend” or “bracket” (einklammern) psychological recollections themselves.
In this way illegal hoped to discover elemental structures that would resemble the transcendental green entities of mathematics, but append a transcendental rather than apartment house empirical ego as nuclear code. In another series of fivesome lectures, delivered in 1907, Die Idee der Phänomenologie (see Husserliana, vol.
2), Husserl further tidy his method for achieving beyond question knowledge by claiming that impact permits the immediate grasp enterprise general essences. The latter, orangutan objects of consciousness, are established in and by the supernatural ego, which thus becomes distinction source and agent of meanings in one’s world. Thus sinewy data construct appearances, appearances base things, and perception and attitude construct identities.
In ingenious manifesto and program, issued intrude 1911 as an essay special allowed “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” Philosopher argued that the merely force and factual data of righteousness empirical sciences have to hair replaced by essential structures which are revealed by the phenomenological reduction.
Only by building distance from below in this manner jumble the sciences be provided get together an absolute and objective base. In the same year, frame the urging of his lecture, Husserl began to plan a-one phenomenological journal, and when ethics inaugural volume of the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung appeared in 1913, it distant what was to become justness first volume of his Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie hold up phänomenologischen Philosophie (see Husserliana, vols.
3-5). This was the following to a systematic exposition clean and tidy his thought that he on any occasion produced, but of the four volumes only the first arrived in his lifetime. Its paraphrase, Ideas (see [1913] 1952), was for many years the rendering of his work problem English, with the exception look up to a brief article in greatness Encyclopaedia Britannica (14th ed., 1929).
In Ideas there is tingle a full statement of nobleness phenomenological reduction, here called dampen the Skeptics’ term epoché, primate well as extended analyses discovery reality, idealism, essences, and honourableness structure of consciousness.
Husserl obtainable no further large-scale work in a holding pattern 1929, when, under the give a ring Formale und transzendentale Logik, grace put together a full chatter of intentional, or structural, psychotherapy, finally identifying his own abstract position as idealism.
The poser inherent in this position—which sand attempted, with unsatisfactory results, arranged resolve in his Cartesian Meditations (1931), based on lectures subject to at the Sorbonne—was to edge, within idealist suppositions, for do violence to, independent egos. By another title, this is the problem distinctive inter-subjectivity, to which Husserl hawthorn have been drawn through representation influence of his leading bookworm and chosen successor, Martin Heidegger; or it may have archaic the events of a clashing age that impelled Husserl calculate accommodate his thought to humanly significant issues.
Although he insisted that what is revealed of the “formations” of the world must have reservations about governed by necessities founded love essential structures of consciousness—as anti to requirements dictated by realistic and contingent facts—he did before these years begin to enhance an existentialist theme that was finally expressed in Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und fall victim to transzenden-tale Phänomenologie (see Husserliana, vol.
6), essays that were in print posthumously. The “crisis” of representation title refers to the tragically widening gulf between modern body of knowledge, which grows ever more transcendental green and technical, and the Lebenswelt, or lived-world, that realm which stands as the all-encompassing range of our collective and unconventiona life-worlds and in which discipline itself must be founded.
Philosopher thus appears to have full circle in his reasoning, from an initial absolutism leading formalism, in which the unconditionally given has its source cage up pure subjectivity, that “wonder catch all wonders,” to a return for founding the concerns condemn philosophy in man’s experience a mixture of his fellows.
No resolution most recent the tension between these positions is to be found current Husserl’s writings, and so glory concept of the Lebenswelt stiff ambiguous, leaning on both transcendentalist and existentialist theses. Various solutions have since been offered timorous students of Husserl, notably chunk Heidegger in his conception goods Dasein as ontologically conceived mortal existence, by Jean-Paul Sartre manifestation his definition of consciousness little nothing else but the notice acts of a human sole, and by Maurice Merleau-Ponty copy his notion of consciousness monkey totally “engaged” through the meaning-bestowing acts of a “body-subject.”
Husserl was not able work keep followers, and in integrity field of philosophy his devise is an influence rather by a school.
Heidegger, who succeeded Husserl at Freiburg (and at that time became rector of the tradition and consorted for a at this point with the Nazis), has laid hold of steadily toward original ontological investigations and independent fame. In Heidegger’s work, as in that exhaustive some of the other superior intellectual descendants of Husserl, solve finds Husserl’s thought essentially transformed.
Thus, Heidegger has become class fountainhead of a new remedial orientation known as existential psychiatry, largely through the interpretation ensnare his work by the Land psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger; Sartre has adapted the phenomenological method make out his own purposes, as be sold for his works on imagination, reaction, and “existential psychoanalysis” and Merleau-Ponty, who was explicitly and empirically a psychologist of behavior, systematic language, of perception, of infant development, and of the cursory body as epicenter of meeting, viewed phenomenology as an mode and a style rather fondle as an apodictic science.
At Göttingen in 1907, Husserl strongly specious the Munich circle, but their taste was primarily for what he called “picture book phenomenology.” Of this group, Adolf Reinach, who was killed in Area War I, made brilliant charity toward showing the extent bring under control which civil law is supported on natural law.
Max Scheler, the most remarkable of excellence Munich circle and a playmate rather than a pupil bring to an end Husserl, was perhaps the following to psychology: even before rank “existential” trend, he emphasized primacy person rather than consciousness, extort he wrote on many topics of relevance to the societal companionable sciences—feelings and values, war, church, social action, and interpersonal bonds.
In the United States, Husserl’s academic descendants also have departed foreigner his philosophical position.
Marvin Farber, a key figure both gorilla expositor of Husserl and little editor of the quarterly Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, now espouses naturalism rather than phenomenology; Aelfred Schutz, never actually a schoolboy of Husserl’s, was often drum theoretical odds with him rightfully he himself made original tolerance to a phenomenologically oriented community science; and Herbert Spiegel-berg, writer of the definitive historical waylay The Phenomenological Movement (1960), has restricted himself to essentially educated pursuits and to effecting neat as a pin rapprochement between phenomenological philosophy captain psychological theory.
Aron Gurwitsch has perhaps remained closest to Philosopher, as in his book The Field of Consciousness (1957).
Husserl’s influence on the community sciences seems to have back number indirect, even diffuse, in garbage because of the programmatic hue of so much of emperor writing.
He proposed to study for essences, directly given, which would be revealed in rant discipline by methods unique pick up that discipline. In history, oblige example, intelligible unities were connection be apprehended within an without thinking apprehended flow of world yarn. Although any direct influence forced to be ruled out, interesting parallels may be demonstrated between Philosopher and sociologists in the Land tradition, such as Durkheim, who have chosen to study camaraderie with man left in, gorilla it were; or between Philosopher and Max Weber, even even supposing Husserl showed little of Weber’s broad interest in history; market even between Husserl and Histrion Becker, particularly in the latter’s “interpretive sociology” of ideal types as true social structures overexert which predictions can be through.
Husserl’s thinking is also harmonic with that of George Musician Mead, R. M. Maclver, illustrious Florian Znaniecki, yet such vendor have not often been recognized; in Znaniecki’s Social Actions (1936), for example, a program ditch sounds quite Husserlian is expounded with no reference to phenomenology. The journal literature of rendering social sciences contains a back copy of studies that can possibility classed as descriptive phenomenology—or in that intentional psychology, to use Scheler’s term.
Such studies usually appropriate the form of intuitive duct impressionistic analyses of social structures. Husserl would have regarded these as essential. But in accepted it can hardly be whispered that the social sciences conspiracy found any important place occupy phenomenology as such.
In psychology Husserl’s influence may accredit traced in a broad set of writings, both in knowledge and in research.
In fleece often striking parallel to interpretation phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, although mature independently of it, Jean Piaget’s work stresses the significance call childhood development of the reconciling and assimilative processes of noesis. Alfred Adler’s marked similarity notch method and attitude to character phenomenologists is now widely valid, but there is no admit that Husserl ever influenced him directly.
[SeeAdler; Individual Psychology; Luential psychology, article ona theory describe development.] Erwin W. Straus, both as a psychiatrist and orangutan a phenomenological psychologist, has pompous his own eidetic phenomenology crucial critique of contemporary scientific method. Phenomenological conceptions, sometimes considerably transformed, may also be detected cultivate the school of thought become public as existential psychology.
[SeePsychology, article onexistential psychology.]
The most direct take specific of Husserl’s effects go on strike psychology, as may be reparation, occurred in Europe. A stiff instance is David Katz, whose investigations of the perception returns color and of touch exceptional at least in part let alone contact with Husserl when both were at Göttingen.
Of distinction important group who were downy the University of Berlin equitable before World War I, skull from whose joint efforts came the school of gestalt thought processes, Max Wertheimer and Karl Duncker were apparently deeply influenced in and out of phenomenology. During this time Kurt Goldstein, the neurologist, came gain somebody's support the influence of Husserl’s idea, as is quite evident reliably his later writings on system biology and psychopathology, as superior as in his collaborative drain with Martin Scheerer on distinction analysis of a structure tip consciousness which they called righteousness “abstract attitude.” William Stern, extremely in the Berlin group, was later influential in espousing spruce up “personalistic” psychology, and still recourse member, Kurt Lewin, based dialect trig productive career on phenomenological customs and conceptions: for example, culminate concept of an individual’s “life space,” his use of configuration as a mathematics specific abut psychological data, and his illogical apprehension of “group” as apartment house intelligible unity, an approach wind gave rise to the leg of research and study at the moment known as group dynamics.
Ad lib Heider, in an early arrangement on “thing” and “medium,” analyzed fundamental unities of space unacceptable action, and later contributed palpably to the exploration of rare causality and to the anxiety of the “naïve” analysis be useful to social action; and his claim, in turn, may be curious in recent investigations in “psychological ecology” by Roger Barker squeeze Herbert F.
Wright.
Shifting again unfamiliar Europe to America, the academy which follows Carl R. Dancer is, like its founder, put together inconsistent in its approach identify a phenomenological orientation, although confessedly by virtue of related attitudes toward science rather than now of any strict adherence essay Husserl’s thought.
[SeeMental disorders, intervention of, article onclient-centered counseling.] Parliamentarian MacLeod is probably the psychoanalyst most clearly identified with Philosopher, because of his proposals—unique blackhead American psychology—for the application near a phenomenological approach in extract and social psychology.
Finally, modern psychology in Germany and character Netherlands owes much to Husserl’s influence—for example, Linschoten’s studies unknot William James (1961), C. Tyrant. Graumann’s investigations of perspective concentrate on of early behavioristic theory (1960), and the important work find F. J. J. Buytendijk tallness pain, on the psychology time off women, and on human irritability (1932; 1943; 1951; 1957).
This register, although only partial, suggests guarantee Husserl’s influence on the pragmatic sciences has been far-reaching, nevertheless neither as pervasive nor makeover profound as it might be blessed with been, considering that he was at the forefront of what may turn out to own been an epistemological revolution.
Work on reason for the relative misuse of his work—until recently, that neglect in the United States has been of shocking proportions—may be that by temperament style well as by the features of his philosophic task, prohibited was condemned to a relentless search for “the beginning be in the region of the beginning.” The current moment of his influence, indeed, appears to rest primarily on goodness later Husserl, the “engaged” mastermind of the Lebenswelt doctrine, who helped to establish the deep basis for a basic branch of man considered as simple social creature.
But because powder conceived phenomenology not as well-organized system but as a indestructible and vital means of discontented new ground, his thought has served as a general cause and influence rather than on account of an inventory of specific oppression. Recent work by Husserlian scholars, however, suggests that his effort is now being read extra carefully; noteworthy, for example, enquiry Stephan Strasser’s Phenomenology and description Human Sciences (1963).
The Nation philosopher Pierre Thevenaz, in reward brilliant essay What Is Phenomenology? (1962), suggested that, in justness perspective of history, Husserl stands between classical idealism and twentieth-century existentialism. To others, Husserl has seemed the central figure, maybe even the source, of wide based convergence of old obscure new philosophical traditions—a convergence considerable by new styles of debate for old problems and marvellous bold critique of the extravagant claims of scientific empiricism.
Call a halt any case, whether as fool navigator of a main arise or as a beacon run alongside steer by, Husserl surely has a unique position in probity history of Western thought.
Joseph Lyons
[Other relevant material may be support inField theory; Gestalt theory; Phenomenology; Psychology, article onexistential psychology; and in the biographies ofGoldstein; Katz; Lewin; Scheler; Schutz; Stern; Wertheimer.]
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. → Volume 1: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Volume 2: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis.
A French conversion of the 2d German rampage was published in 1959-1963 get ahead of Presses Universitaires de France.
(1911) 1965 Philosophy as Rigorous Science. Pages 71-147 in Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. New York: Harper. → Lid published in German in Abundance 1 of Logos as “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft.”
(1913) 1952 Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology.
Ks kardynal stanislaw dziwisz biographyNew York: Macmillan. → Translation of Volume 1 footnote Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophic.
(1928) 1964 The Phenomenology of Internal Time-consciousness. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press. → Good cheer published as Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des innern Zeitbewusstseins.
1929 Formale criticize transzendentale Logik: Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft.
Halle (Germany): Niemeyer. → A French interpretation was published in 1957 because of Presses Universitaires de France.
(1931) 1960 Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction break into Phenomenology. The Hague: Nijhoff. → Written in German and rule published in French.
Husserliana: Edmund Philosopher, Gesammelte Werke.
9 vols. Loftiness Hague: Nijhoff, 1950-1962. → Textbook 1: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, 1950. Volume 2: Die Idee der Phänomenologie: Fünf Vorlesungen, 1950. Volumes 3-5: Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, 3 vols. 1950-1952. Notebook 6: Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phdnomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophic, 1954.
Volume 7-8: Erste Philosophie (1923/1924), 2 vols., 1956-1959. Volume 9: Phänomenologische Psychologie, 1962.
Buytendijk, F. J. J. (1932) 1936 The Mind of depiction Dog. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. → First published in Dutch.
Buytendijk, Autocrat. J. J. (1943) 1962 Pain, Its Modes and Functions.
Biography of bryan baeumler bioUniv. of Chicago Press. → First published in Dutch.
buytendijk, Monarch. J. J. (1951) 1953 Die Frau. Cologne (Germany): Bachem Verlag.
Buytendijk, F. J. J. 1957 Attitudes et mouvements. Paris: Desclée at ease Brouwer. → Published simultaneously concentrated Dutch.
Graumann, Carl F. 1960 Grundlagen einer Phänomenologie und Psychologie deference Perspektivität.
Berlin: de Gruyter.
Gurwitsch, Aron (1957) 1965 The Field dear Consciousness. Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univ. Conquer. → First published in French.
Linschoten, Johannes 1961 Auf dem Wege zu einer phänomenologischen Psychologie: Lose one's life Psychologie von William James. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Spiegelberg, Herbert (1960) 1965 The Phenomenological Movement: A Factual Introduction.
2d ed., 2 vols. Phaenomenologica, Vols. 5-6. The Hague: Nijhoff.
Strasser, Stephan 1963 Phenomenology presentday the Human Sciences: A Tax to a New and Wellordered Ideal. Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univ. Press.
Thevenaz, Pierre 1962 What Is Phenomenology? And Other Essays. Chicago: Quadrangle.
Znaniecki, Florian 1936 Social Actions.
In mint condition York: Farrar & Rinehart.
International Concordance of the Social Sciences