Husserl founded phenomenology. Consciousness is always consciousness of something (intentionality), and philosophy must describe the structures of experience before any theory.
Central question
How can philosophy become a rigorous science grounded in what is given to consciousness?
Method
Husserl's phenomenology describes consciousness and its objects exactly as they are given: it suspends the natural belief in the world (the epoché), leads back to the consciousness for which the world has sense (the reduction), and seeks essential structures by varying examples in imagination. How Edmund Husserl works ↓
›Being and realityTranscendental idealism* (contested reading)
Transcendental consciousness is absolute being, and the world is its intentional correlate, with no sense of being outside the acts that constitute it. Unlike Kant, Husserl admits no unknowable things in themselves.
Across the works. The Logical Investigations (1900–1901) are metaphysically neutral descriptive psychology, and many early students (the Munich and Göttingen circles) refused the transcendental turn as a relapse into idealism.
Another reading. Deflationary or metaphysically neutral readings take constitution as a claim about sense only, not about what exists, so that Husserl holds no metaphysical stance.
Contested readingIdeas I (1913); Cartesian Meditations (1931)transzendentales Bewusstsein, Konstitution, Korrelat, WeltvernichtungDraft — not yet reviewed
Zahavi (Husserl's Legacy, 2017) argues against the neutrality reading and for transcendental idealism with metaphysical import. Realist critics (Ingarden; the Munich and Göttingen circles) agree that Husserl is an idealist and reject the position.
›UniversalsRealism before things
Species and essences are ideal objects, genuinely given and genuinely meant, and not reducible to general words, mental images or resemblances among particulars. Husserl insists this is not a metaphysical hypostasis of universals into a separate realm.
Scholarly consensusLogical Investigations II (1901); Ideas I (1913)ideale Spezies, Wesen, EidosDraft — not yet reviewed
Husserl accepts the realism of the option (independent of particulars and of minds) but rejects the label "Platonic realism" (Ideas I §22) where it implies real existence apart from the world.
›God and the fundamentalBracketed
The transcendence of God is put out of action along with the world: whatever its role as ground of the rational order of consciousness, it is not a datum of pure phenomenology. Husserl, baptised a Lutheran in 1886, leaves the question to a later, non-phenomenological inquiry.
Across the works. Late research manuscripts (Hua XV; Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie, Hua XLII) treat God as the telos or entelechy of a universal teleology of transcendental intersubjectivity. No option expresses this.
Stated in the textIdeas I (1913); late research manuscripts (1930s; Hua XV, Hua XLII) for the developmentAusschaltung, Transzendenz Gottes, TeleologieDraft — not yet reviewed
›Soul and bodyEmbodied, world-involved existence* (contested reading)
The lived body (Leib) is not one physical thing among others but the bearer of sensation, the organ of the will and the zero-point of orientation; through it the soul is part of nature as a psychophysical unity. The person is first met in the personalistic attitude, as an embodied subject in a surrounding world.
Another reading. The thought experiment of the annihilation of the world (Ideas I §49) leaves pure consciousness intact, which critics such as Heidegger read as a residual Cartesian separation of consciousness from body and world.
Contested readingIdeas II (manuscripts 1912–1928)Leib, Körper, Nullpunkt der Orientierung, personalistische EinstellungDraft — not yet reviewed
Transcendental consciousness is not the soul, which belongs to the world (Ideas I §53); the coding concerns the human being as constituted, not the transcendental ego.
›Death and immortalitySuspends judgment* (contested reading)
Suspends judgment. Husserl separates the human person, who belongs to the world and dies, from the transcendental ego. The published works suspend the question; the late manuscripts treat the ego's birth and death as limit problems without affirming or denying personal survival.
Phenomenology describes how the soul is constituted as part of the world, and suspends claims about its fate. Late manuscripts argue that the transcendental ego cannot experience its own beginning or end, which bears on, but does not answer, personal survival.
Across the works. In the late manuscripts the transcendental ego, as the field in which every beginning and end is constituted, cannot itself be thought to begin or end. This concerns the transcendental ego, not the human person, and no option expresses it.
Contested readingIdeas I (1913); research manuscripts (1920s–1930s; Hua XI appendices, Hua XLII)Draft — not yet reviewed
Not addressed. Whether the world had a beginning is a question for the natural sciences or metaphysics, whose theses the epochē suspends; no layer answers it.
The epochē puts out of action all sciences of the natural world together with their results. Husserl's interest is the world as the correlate of consciousness and as the pregiven life-world, not its origin in time.
Scholarly consensusIdeas I (1913); Crisis (written 1936–1937; Part III first published 1954)Draft — not yet reviewed
›Freedom and determinismFreedom as rational self-determination* (contested reading)
The life of persons is governed by motivation, not by natural causality, and a person is free to the extent that they take positions on the basis of their own reason. Husserl's ideal is a life of self-responsibility, in which reason becomes autonomous.
Another reading. The contrast between the naturalistic attitude, in which the psyche is causally dependent on the body, and the personalistic attitude, in which persons act from motives, can be read as a version of Kant's two standpoints.
Contested readingIdeas II (manuscripts 1912–1928); Crisis §73 (manuscript, first published in Hua VI, 1954)Motivation, Selbstverantwortung, Autonomie der Vernunft, Ich kannDraft — not yet reviewed
Causality belongs to material nature: a real thing is what it is through its causal dependencies on other things. The life of spirit is governed by motivation, in which a subject is moved by what it takes as a reason, and that is not causation. Natural causality is constituted in consciousness and its exact form is an idealisation of the life-world's typical regularities, so it cannot explain consciousness itself.
Scholarly consensusIdeas II (manuscripts 1912–1928, published 1952); Ideas I (1913); Crisis §9 (1936)Kausalität, Motivation, Realität, Natur, Geist, Umwelt, LebensweltDraft — not yet reviewed
Ideas II is a manuscript edited by Stein and Landgrebe, so the position is not textual. The bounded domain is a region (material nature); transcendental consciousness, which constitutes it, stands in no causal relation to it (Ideas I §49).
Epistemology
›Sources of knowledgeIntuition of what is given
Every originary giving intuition, sensory or eidetic, is a legitimate source of knowledge: whatever presents itself in intuition in person is to be accepted as it gives itself, within the limits in which it gives itself. Even categorial forms and essences can be seen, not only inferred.
Stated in the textLogical Investigations (1900–1901); Ideas I (1913)originär gebende Anschauung, Wesensschau, kategoriale Anschauung, EvidenzDraft — not yet reviewed
›Certainty, doubt and the limits of knowledgeYes* (contested reading)
Philosophy must begin from apodictic evidence, and the ego's own experiencing is given with an indubitability that the existence of the world lacks. Adequate evidence of physical things, by contrast, is never complete and remains an idea in the Kantian sense.
Another reading. Some readers stress that for Husserl evidence admits degrees and every perception of a transcendent thing stays open to correction (Ideas I §§138, 143), so his epistemology is fallibilist about almost everything.
Across the works. The late Husserl subjects even apodictic evidence to a critique of its range and reach (CM §9; also Formal and Transcendental Logic, 1929), which moves the later work toward fallibilism.
Contested readingIdeas I (1913); Cartesian Meditations (1931)apodiktische Evidenz, adäquate Evidenz, ego cogitoDraft — not yet reviewed
›Innate knowledgeRejects the question* (contested reading)
Rejects the question. Innateness is a psychological, natural-scientific notion; the a priori is an ideal law grasped in eidetic intuition, valid whatever the make-up of any real mind.
Logical and essential laws are not facts about how human minds happen to work, so the question of whether they are inborn or learned confuses validity with psychological genesis. A priori truths are seen in eidetic intuition, not found stored in the mind.
Across the works. Genetic phenomenology describes a universal a priori of the transcendental ego, such as time as the form of all genesis, that precedes and structures all experience.
Contested readingLogical Investigations, Prolegomena (1900); Ideas I (1913)Psychologismus, Wesensgesetz, Apriori, EidosDraft — not yet reviewed
Truth is the identity between what is meant in an empty intention and what is given in the intuition that fulfils it; evidence is the experience of that agreement. This adequation is an act of identification, not a comparison of a picture with a thing outside consciousness.
Stated in the textLogical Investigations VI (1901)Erfüllung, Deckung, Evidenz, adaequatioDraft — not yet reviewed
LI VI §39 also gives an ontological sense of truth: the object that makes true, being in the sense of truth. It is not coded as `being-itself`, which gives being primacy over statements as a source of intelligibility. The standard treatment is Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger (1967).
›Epistemic justificationEvidence of what is given
Every originary giving intuition is a legitimate source of cognition: what presents itself in person is to be accepted as it gives itself, within the limits in which it gives itself. Evidence is the experience of the agreement between what is meant and what is given, and a rational positing is justified by such fulfilling intuition, immediately or through mediation. Genuine science must go back to evidences, and philosophy to apodictic ones, whose non-being is inconceivable.
Stated in the textLogical Investigations VI (1901); Ideas I (1913); Cartesian Meditations (1931)Evidenz, originär gebende Anschauung, Erfüllung, Rechtsquelle, Vernunftsetzung, ApodiktizitätDraft — not yet reviewed
The option fits closely, but Husserl's evidence is graded (adequate and inadequate, apodictic and assertoric) and most evidence of things is open to correction by further experience (Ideas I §138), so the view is not infallibilist about perception.
Axiology
›The highest goodFlourishing through virtue* (contested reading)
The best possible life is one of absolute self-responsibility, in which a person examines and justifies every goal by reason and lives from a vocation they recognise as their own; the satisfaction of such a life is the true happiness open to a human being.
Another reading. The Vienna Lecture and the Crisis present the theoretical life of philosophy as the telos of European humanity, which suggests a primacy of contemplation.
Of Husserl's practical writings only three of the five Kaizo articles, including this one, appeared in his lifetime (Kaizo, 1923–1924); the other two were first published in Hua XXVII. The option fits only loosely, since self-responsibility is not virtue in Aristotle's sense.
›The basis of moralityDuty* (contested reading)
Ethics rests on a formal axiology and practics with a priori laws, parallel to formal logic. Its highest law, which Husserl calls a categorical imperative, is to do the best among what is attainable in one's whole practical sphere.
Another reading. The imperative to choose the best attainable (taken from Brentano) maximises value rather than testing maxims, so it is not a duty ethics in Kant's sense; no option fits this rationalist value ethics.
Across the works. In the 1920s Husserl moves to an ethics of personal vocation and love, in which absolute obligations arise from what a person loves, not from a formal rule (Einleitung in die Ethik, lectures 1920/1924, Hua XXXVII; Kaizo articles, Hua XXVII). Melle, the editor of Hua XXVIII, traces this development.
Contested readingLectures on ethics and value theory (1908–1914; Hua XXVIII)formale Axiologie, formale Praktik, kategorischer Imperativ, das Beste unter dem ErreichbarenDraft — not yet reviewed
Codebook gap: no option for a rationalist value ethics. `duty` is the nearest option (an a priori, formal law of practical reason that Husserl names after Kant), but the codebook defines it by the universalisable maxim, while Husserl's imperative, taken from Brentano, maximises value; hence `contested`.
›Virtue and knowledgeNot addressed
Not addressed. No layer asks whether virtue is knowledge or whether one can know the good and fail to do it.
Husserl's practical writings treat valuing and willing as founded on, but distinct from, cognitive acts, and describe a life of rational self-responsibility; they do not take up the Socratic question.
Scholarly consensusIdeas I (1913); Kaizo articles (1923–1924)Draft — not yet reviewed
Not addressed. Husserl describes communities of persons and calls for a cultural renewal led by philosophy, but never says what the best political order is.
Higher-order communities and cultures are constituted intersubjectively, and the Crisis casts philosophers as working on behalf of humanity's self-understanding. He proposes no form of government.
Not addressed. Husserl analyses image-consciousness and the neutrality of aesthetic contemplation, but never says what the value of art or beauty is.
An engraving is seen through a neutralised, imaginative consciousness that does not posit its figures as real, and a 1907 letter to Hofmannsthal compares the phenomenological attitude to the aesthetic one. These analyses answer how artworks are given, not what they are worth.
Scholarly consensusIdeas I (1913); letter to Hofmannsthal (1907); lectures on phantasy and image consciousness (1904/05, Hua XXIII)Draft — not yet reviewed
Not addressed. Husserl's ethics lectures build a formal axiology and practice, and the Kaizo articles call for a cultural renewal of communities under reason, but no work says what justice is or what grounds it.
Husserl writes about rational willing and the renewal of communities, not about justice.
Own position. Values are objective correlates of valuing acts of feeling, given with their own kind of evidence and governed by a priori formal laws of value parallel to the laws of logic.
Feeling and willing are founded acts with objects of their own: in valuing we are directed to something as valuable, and these acts admit rightness and evidence as judgments do. A formal axiology states a priori laws that hold for any values, as formal logic does for any truths. Values are thus neither properties of bare things nor arbitrary attitudes; their validity is that of reason in the sphere of feeling.
Across the works. In the 1920s ethics of renewal and vocation, absolute values are disclosed in personal love and a calling, which the formal ranking of values cannot fully capture.
Scholarly consensusGöttingen ethics lectures (1908–1914); Ideas I (1913)Wert, Werten, Wertnehmen, formale Axiologie, axiologische Vernunft, fundierte AkteDraft — not yet reviewed
Close to the realism of value-intuition (Brentano, Scheler), which no other profile thinker holds, so it is an own position.
* contested reading · open a row for the explanation and its sources
Method روش و شیوه اندیشهورزی فلسفی
Husserl's phenomenology describes consciousness and its objects exactly as they are given: it suspends the natural belief in the world (the epoché), leads back to the consciousness for which the world has sense (the reduction), and seeks essential structures by varying examples in imagination. The method changes across his work, from descriptive analyses in the Logical Investigations to transcendental phenomenology in Ideas I and a historical path through the life-world in the Crisis.
Posing questions
Husserl's maxim is to go back to the things themselves: a question is posed by turning from theories and words to the intuitive givenness of what they are about. He asks of any object how it is given to consciousness and what makes the givenness of that kind of object possible, so that questions about logic, perception, time or other minds become questions about the correlation of acts and their objects. Philosophy is to be a rigorous science that justifies itself from the ground up, and every question is posed in view of that aim.
Phenomenology does not deduce; it describes and justifies by showing. The "principle of all principles" is that every originary giving intuition is a legitimate source of knowledge, within the limits in which it gives itself. Essences are seen by eidetic variation: one changes an example freely in imagination and notes what cannot be changed without the object ceasing to be of its kind. The epoché brackets the existence of the world without denying it, and the reduction turns attention to the acts and meanings in which the world is given.
His first major critique, of psychologism, shows that logical laws cannot be empirical laws about how people think, since that view makes truth relative and undermines itself. He then criticises naturalism and historicism for treating consciousness as a thing in nature or truth as a product of its time. In the Crisis he traces the crisis of the sciences to the mathematisation of nature since Galileo, which covered over the life-world from which scientific concepts draw their sense, and he reads the history of modern philosophy as a struggle over that forgotten ground.
Intuition, in a broad sense that includes the intuition of essences and of categorial forms, is the final source of evidence; signitive or merely verbal thinking must be fulfilled by it. Reflection turns the regard from objects to the experiences in which they appear, and imagination, as free variation, is the working medium of eidetic inquiry. In the later work the experience of others (empathy) and passive syntheses below active judgement become themes of their own.
Husserl wrote patient, detailed analyses in numbered sections, revising them constantly; many of his books are introductions to phenomenology that restart from the beginning. A large part of his work survives in research manuscripts and lecture notes written in shorthand, edited after his death in the Husserliana. The Cartesian Meditations recast phenomenology as a renewal of Descartes' meditations, ending with Augustine's call to turn inward.
Zu den Sachen selbst, Epoché, Reduktion, eidetische Variation, Wesensschau, Prinzip aller Prinzipien, Intentionalität, Lebenswelt, Noesis, Noema
Arguments
›The phenomenological epochē and the absolute being of consciousnessPhilosophy can become a rigorous science by describing, under the epochē, the structures through which anything at all is given; transcendental consciousness, not the world, is the field of absolute being.
1In the natural attitude the world is simply there as existing; this "general thesis" underlies everyday life and every positive science (Ideas I §§27–30).
2The thesis can be put out of action, "bracketed", without denying the world as the sophist does or doubting it as the sceptic does (§§31–32).
3What remains is consciousness with its intended objects exactly as intended; nothing given is lost, only its validity is no longer used (§§33, 50).
4Transcendent things are given only through adumbrations and could turn out to be illusions, while an experience grasped in reflection is given absolutely (§§42–46).
5So consciousness forms a region of its own, which would remain even if the world were annihilated, while the world has its sense only as the correlate of consciousness (§49).
∴Philosophy can become a rigorous science by describing, under the epochē, the structures through which anything at all is given; transcendental consciousness, not the world, is the field of absolute being.
Martin Heidegger objects. The reduction leaves the being of the intentional, and of consciousness itself, unasked (History of the Concept of Time, a 1925 lecture course). Being and Time adds, against Descartes and Kant and naming Husserl only implicitly, that Dasein is always already in a world, knowing is a founded mode of being-in-the-world, and the proof of an external world should never have been demanded.
›Logical laws are not psychological lawsLogical laws are ideal laws about meanings and truths, valid whatever the make-up of real minds, so logic cannot be founded on psychology.
1If logical laws were psychological laws, they would be empirical generalisations about how people think, and so vague and merely probable (Prolegomena §21).
2But logical laws are exact and are known with apodictic evidence, not by induction (§21).
3Psychological laws concern real mental events and imply their existence; logical laws imply the existence of no mind or mental fact (§23).
4If truth depended on the constitution of the human species, the same proposition could be true for one species and false for another, which is absurd and makes the theory self-refuting (§§34–38).
∴Logical laws are ideal laws about meanings and truths, valid whatever the make-up of real minds, so logic cannot be founded on psychology.
intentionalityThe defining mark of conscious experience: to be consciousness of something, directed at an object whether or not that object exists.1 link to other thinkers →
bracketing · suspensionSuspending the natural attitude's belief in the world's existence, not to doubt it but to put it out of play, so that experience can be described just as it is given.1 link to other thinkers →
act of meaning · object as meantEvery experience has two correlated sides: the act of meaning (noesis) and what is meant, just as it is meant (noema). Phenomenology describes both and how they correspond.
intuition of essencesSeeing an essence (Eidos) by freely varying an example in imagination until what cannot vary stands out. Essences are given in intuition, not reached by induction.1 link to other thinkers →
evidence · self-givennessThe experience of truth: an intention fulfilled by the object itself, given just as it was meant. Truth is the correlate of that fulfilment.
lived body · physical bodyMy body as I live it, the zero point from which things are oriented and the organ of my will, as against a body among bodies. It is constituted through touch, movement and feeling.
life-worldThe world of everyday experience, always already there and taken for granted, from which the sciences abstract and on which their meaning depends. Forgetting it is the crisis of the European sciences.
