Edmund Husserl

**Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl** (; April 8, 1859, Prostějov, Moravia, Austrian Empire – April 26, 1938, Freiburg, Germany) was an Austrian-German philosopher and mathematician who is deemed the founder of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his time, believing that experience is the source of all knowledge.

Husserl studied mathematics under Karl Weierstraß, completing a Ph.D. under Leo Königsberger, and studied philosophy under Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf.

Then Husserl taught philosophy, as a _Privatdozent_ at Halle from 1887, and as a professor:

- first at Göttingen from 1901,
- then at Freiburg im Breisgau from 1916 until his 1928 retirement.

## Biography

Husserl was born into a Jewish family in a town that was then in the Austrian Empire (after 1918 a part of Czechoslovakia, and since 1993 a part of the Czech Republic). He became a member of the Lutheran Church in 1886.

He initially studied mathematics but then started attending lectures  on psychology and philosophy. Husserl was so impressed by Brentano that he decided to dedicate his life to philosophy.

### Early works

His major written work is _Philosophie der Arithmetik_ (1891). In these first works he tries to combine mathematics, psychology and philosophy with a main goal to provide a sound foundation for mathematics. He analyzes the psychological process needed to obtain the concept of number and then tries to build up a systematical theory on this analysis. To achieve this he uses several methods and concepts taken from his teachers. From Weierstrass he gets the idea that we generate the concept of number by counting a certain collection of objects. From Brentano and Stumpf he takes over the distinction between _proper_ and _improper_ presenting.

In an example Husserl explains 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) if you only can indicate that object through signs, symbols, etc.

### Intentionality

Another important element that Husserl took over from Brentano is intentionality. It is the notion that the main characteristic of consciousness 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_.

### The elaboration of phenomenology

Some years after the publication of his main work, the _Logische Untersuchungen_ (_Logical Investigations_; 1900-1901) 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 object-in-itself, transcendent to consciousness).

Knowledge of essences would only be possible by "bracketing" all assumptions about the existence of an external world. He called this procedure _epoché_.

Husserl then started to concentrate on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness.

The metaphysical problem of establishing what kind of reality we perceive was of little interest to Husserl in spite of his being a transcendental idealist.

Husserl proposed that the world of objects and ways in which we direct ourselves toward and perceive those objects is normally conceived of in what he called the "natural standpoint", which is characterized by a belief that objects materially exist and exhibit properties that we see as emanating from them.

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"** _.

In a later period, Husserl began to wrestle with the complicated issues of intersubjectivity, specifically, how communication about an object can be assumed to refer to the same ideal entity (_Cartesian Meditations_, Meditation V).

Husserl tries new methods of bringing his readers to understand the importance of phenomenology to scientific observation: specifically he refers to psychology) and what he means for "bracketing 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 and science, emphasizing the challenges presented by their increasingly (one-sidedly) empirical and naturalistic orientation.

Husserl declares that mental and spiritual reality possess their own reality independent of any physical basis.

### In German

- 1887. _Über den Begriff der Zahl. Psychologische Analysen_.
- 1891. _Philosophie der Arithmetik. Psychologische und logische Untersuchungen_ (_Philosophy of Arithmetic_)
- 1900. _Logische Untersuchungen. Erste Teil: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik_ (_Logical Investigations_, Vol 1)
- 1901. _Logische Untersuchungen. Zweite 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. Erste Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte_ (_First Philosophy_ Vol 1: _Critical History of Ideas_)
- 1928. _Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins_.
- 1929. _Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft_ (_Formal and Transcendental Logic_)
- 1931. _Méditations cartésiennes_ (_Cartesian Meditations_)
- 1936. _Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzentale 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_)
- 1952. _Ideen II: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution_.
- 1952. _Ideen III: Die Phänomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften_.

### In English

- _Cartesian Meditations_, 1960 [1931]. Cairns, D., trans. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Online.
- _The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy_, 1970 [1936/54], Carr, D., trans. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
- _Experience and Judgement_, 1973 [1939], Churchill, J. S., and Ameriks, K., translators. London: Routledge.
- _Formal and Transcendental Logic_, 1969 [1929], Cairns, D., trans. The Hague: Nijhoff.
- _Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy -- First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology_, 1982 [1913]. 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.
- _Logical Investigations_, 1973 [1913], Findlay, J. N., trans. London: Routledge.
- _On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917)_, 1990 [1928]. Brough, J.B., trans. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
- "Philosophy as Rigorous Science", translated in Lauer, Q., ed., 1965 [1910] _Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy_. New York: Harper.
- _Philosophy of Arithmetic_, Willard, Dallas, trans., 2003 [1891]. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
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.

## Other websites

- Husserl-Archives at the University of Cologne.
- Husserl Archives at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh .
- Edmund Husserl (1859-1938).  -- Marianne Sawicki. Accessed 2008-11-18.
- www.husserlpage.com. Includes a number of online texts in German and English.
- Husserl.net, open content project.
- "Logic and Formal Ontology in the Work of Edmund Husserl." Resource guide on Husserl's logic and formal ontology, with annotated bibliography.
- The Husserl Circle.
- Spanish website  on Husserl and phenomenology.
- Website  devoted to Husserl's phenomenology and its relation to art and architecture, with specific reference to architectural drawings.

## Infobox (philosopher)

- **region**: Western Philosophy
- **era**: 20th-century philosophy
- **image**: Edmund Husserl 1910s.jpg
- **caption**: Husserl c. 1910s
- **name**: Edmund Husserl
- **birth date**: 8 April 1859
- **birth place**: Prostějov, Proßnitz, Margraviate of Moravia, Austrian Empire (present-day Prostějov, Czech Republic)
- **death place**: Freiburg, Nazi Germany, Germany
- **alma mater**: University of Vienna (PhD, 1881)
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, University of Halle (Priv.-Doz., 1887)
- **school tradition**: Phenomenology (philosophy), Phenomenology