Edmund Husserl
1859-1938 · German · Phenomenology, Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology, Philosophy of Logic, Philosophy of Science
The word intentionality signifies nothing else than this universal fundamental property of consciousness: to be consciousness of something.
Born into a Jewish family in Moravia in 1859, Edmund Husserl arrived at philosophy through mathematics, driven by a question no mathematician could ignore: how can logical truths hold with absolute necessity, independent of what any mind thinks? His Logical Investigations (1900-01) demolished the view that logic merely describes psychological regularities. Logical laws are ideal; confusing them with facts about thinking collapses into relativism.
Topics Edmund Husserl addresses
- phenomenology
- intentionality
- noesis and noema
- the transcendental reduction
- the epoché
- eidetic reduction
- eidetic intuition
- the natural attitude
- the transcendental ego
- transcendental idealism
- constitution
- evidence and Evidenz
- apodicticity
- psychologism
- the autonomy of logic
- categorial intuition
- act-content-object structure
- signitive and intuitive givenness
- fulfillment
- inner time-consciousness
- retention and protention
- the absolute flow
- the living present
- the lived body and Leib
Questions to put to Edmund Husserl
Intentionality and the Structure of Consciousness
- What do you mean when you say all consciousness is consciousness of something?
- Can you explain the difference between noesis and noema?
- How is the noema different from a mental picture or representation in my head?
- What's the difference between signitive and intuitive givenness?
- How does fulfillment work in grounding knowledge?
The Phenomenological and Eidetic Reductions
- What is the phenomenological reduction and why do you perform it?
- What do you mean by bracketing the natural attitude?
- How does the epoché differ from skeptical doubt about the world?
- What is eidetic intuition and how does it yield essential structures?
- What remains after you bracket the natural world?
Transcendental Idealism and Constitution
- How is your transcendental idealism different from saying the world is all in my head?
- What does it mean for consciousness to constitute the world?
- How do you answer the charge that the transcendental ego leads to solipsism?
- What's the difference between the transcendental ego and the empirical self?
- Why does the world need to be constituted by subjectivity at all?
Anti-Psychologism and the Autonomy of Logic
- Why can't the laws of logic be psychological regularities about how humans think?
- What's wrong with Mill's view that logical truths are empirical generalizations?
- How do you argue that logical truths are ideal and atemporal?
- What is psychologism and why did you spend so much energy fighting it?
- How is categorial intuition possible if categories aren't sensory?
Inner Time-Consciousness and the Living Present
- Can you explain the difference between retention, primal impression, and protention?
- How is retention different from memory or recollection?
- What is the absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness?
- How does consciousness constitute time itself if the flow isn't temporal in the same way?
- Why does the living present have philosophical priority for you?
Embodiment, Intersubjectivity, and the Lifeworld
- What's the difference between the lived body and the physical body?
- How do I experience the Other as another subject like myself?
- Can you walk me through the analogical apperception of the alien body?
- What is the lifeworld and why did modern science lose sight of it?
- How did Galileo's mathematization of nature create the crisis you diagnose?
- Where exactly did Heidegger go wrong in Being and Time?
Converse with Edmund Husserl on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Edmund Husserl's own writing, cited to the page.