Edmund Husserl

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), German philosopher, founder of phenomenology. Born in Prossnitz, Moravia (now in the Czech Republic), on April 8, 1859, Husserl studied science, philosophy, and mathematics at the universities of Leipzig, Berlin, and Vienna and wrote his doctoral thesis on the calculus of variations. He became interested in the psychological basis of mathematics and, shortly after becoming a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Halle, wrote his first book, Philosophie der Arithmetik (1891). At that time he maintained that the truths of mathematics have validity regardless of the way people come to discover and believe in them.

Husserl went on to argue against his early position, which he called psychologism, in Logical Investigations (1900-1901; trans. 1970). In this book, regarded as a radical departure in philosophy, he contended that the philosopher's task is to contemplate the essences of things, and that the essence of an object can be identified by systematically varying that object in the imagination. Husserl noted that consciousness is always directed towards something. He called this directedness intentionality and argued that consciousness contains ideal, unchanging structures called meanings, which determine what object the mind is directed towards at any given time.

During his tenure (1901-1916) at the University of Göttingen, Husserl attracted many students, who began to form a distinct phenomenological school. He wrote his most influential work, Ideas: A General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology in 1913 (trans. 1931), in which he introduced the term phenomenological reduction for his method of reflection on the meanings the mind employs when it contemplates an object. Because this method concentrates on meanings that are in the mind, whether or not the object present to consciousness actually exists, Husserl said the method involves “bracketing existence”, that is, setting aside the question of the real existence of the contemplated object. He proceeded to give detailed analyses of the mental structures involved in perceiving particular types of objects, describing in detail, for instance, his perception of the apple tree in his garden. Thus, although phenomenology does not assume the existence of anything, it is none the less a descriptive discipline; according to Husserl, phenomenology is devoted, not to inventing theories, but rather to describing the “things themselves”.

After 1916 Husserl taught at the University of Freiburg. Phenomenology had been criticized as an essentially solipsistic method, confining the philosopher to the contemplation of private meanings, so in Cartesian Meditations (1931; trans. 1960), Husserl attempted to show how the individual consciousness can be directed towards other minds, society, and history. Husserl died in Freiburg on April 26, 1938.

Husserl's phenomenology had a great influence on a younger colleague at Freiburg, Martin Heidegger, who developed existential phenomenology, and on Jean-Paul Sartre and French existentialism. Phenomenology was one of the most vigorous tendencies in 20th-century philosophy, and its impact has also been felt in theology, linguistics, psychology, and the social sciences.