Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology

PREFACE

PREFACEI In this book I shall present a detailed account ofwhat Husserl understood phenomenology to be, in what philosophical tradition it is to be understood, what phenomenology tries to accomplish, and what methods it uses in doing so. In harmony with the editors' goals for the volumes of this series in the history of philosophy, the book consists oftext and commentary. The text by Husserl chosen as the basis for the commentary is the fourth and final version ofhis article on phenomenology written for the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1928. Husserl had been invited by the editors of the Encyclopaedia to write an essay on phenomenology for the fourteenth edition of this important work. He was very pleased by the invitation and worked hard to produce an essay that would effectively communicate to the readers of the Encyclopaedia what his new phenomenology was about. At first he had hoped that this article could have been written in close cooperation with Heidegger. Yet when it appeared that Heidegger's idea ofphenomenology was substantially different from that originally developed by himself, Husserl decided to write the article alone. During his long career, Husserl often made an effort to explain what he thought phenomenology ought to be. Thus I could have selected other essays to comment on. The-reason for choosing the Encyclopaedia article as the basis for my commentary is that this essay was written at the high point of Husserl's career, when his conception ofphenomenology had already been fully developed. Furthermore , this text was written with the greatest care; Husserl prepared four different versions, ofwhich the one selected here is the last. It is true that shortly after the completion ofthis text, Husserl prepared a slightly different and a more elaborate text, which was published posthumously under the title "Amsterdam Lectures." I ix xlPREFACE Although this latter text in some sense is superior to the one used here, I have nonetheless decided to use the final version of the Encyclopaedia article, since the "Amsterdam Lectures" are incomplete ; the third part, on transcendental phenomenology, is missing there altogether. I am convinced that ofthe various texts that could have been selected as the basis for my commentary, the final version of the Encyclopaedia article is the best. Yet I have carefully compared the Encyclopaedia version with the text of the three earlier versions and that ofthe "Amsterdam Lectures"; in some instances, I have complemented the former with the help ofthe latter. The reader will see that in this particular article, HusserI appears to be talking about phenomenological psychology more than about transcendental phenomenology proper. One might think that a description of the meaning and function of phenomenology from that particular point of view would be misleading. While Husserl has explained his position in regard to philosophy in ways other than the one selected here-such as the "Cartesian approach," or the approach from the perspective of the "life-world"-it should be noted that in all approaches to phenomenology, HusserI always discussed the intimate relationship between descriptive and transcendental phenomenology, that is, between phenomenological psychology and transcendental phenomenology. This is true for the first volume ofIdeas but also for Formal and Transcendental Logic, Cartesian Meditations, and Crisis. 1 Particularly in the period between 1916 and 1938, Husserl was convinced that an introduction to transcendental phenomenology should be presented from the perspective ofphenomenological psychology. As we shall see in the text of 1928, which will be used here, HusserI gives several reasons for why this is so. Following Husserl himself, I, too, have divided the text into sixteen sections; in each case, I have placed a brief sYnopsis ofthe text between text and commentary to clarify HusserI's text. In these SYnopses , I have often used paraphrases ofpassages ofthe "Amsterdam Lectures." HusserI's essay was meant to become an entry in an encyclopedia , which had set strict limits for the length of each entry. HusserI thus attempted to produce a text that would give a good idea ofthe whole ofphenomenology in as short an essay as possible. This explains why HusserI's text is dense and often difficult to read. In my synopses, I have sometimes proposed a somewhat simpler paraphrase ofthe text to clarify how some cryptic passages are to be understood. The synopses are also helpful in locating the issues to be commented on in each case. In referring to works by HusserI, I have decided not to follow the custom of citing the volumes of the Husserliana edition in view of...