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Philosopher

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Edmund Husserl

1859–1938 · Phenomenology · Modern

Edmund Husserl, born in Moravia, founded phenomenology: the careful description of experience as it is lived, before theories about it. Consciousness, he held, is always intentional, about something. His method of the epoché, 'bracketing', sets aside the question of whether the world exists so as to describe how it appears. In Logical Investigations he attacked psychologism, the reduction of logic to psychology.

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Late in life, barred from his university as a Jew under Nazi law, he wrote The Crisis of European Sciences on the lifeworld that science forgets. His student Heidegger turned phenomenology in a new direction.

One translated card.

Start here

Dan Zahavi, Husserl's Phenomenology, then Cartesian Meditations I.

A clear guide first, then his own voice.

Quotations

Key ideas

  • Intentionality

    Every act of consciousness is of or about something.

  • Epoché

    Bracket belief in the world to study how it appears.

  • Lifeworld

    The lived world science starts from and forgets.

Major works

  • Logical Investigations (1900–1901)

    Against psychologism.

  • Ideas I (1913)

    Transcendental phenomenology.

  • The Crisis of European Sciences (1936)

    The lifeworld.

Influences

Influenced

Common misreadings

  • Bracketing is not denying the world exists.
  • Phenomenology is not introspective psychology.

Famous lines Edmund Husserl never said

None of the lines this library files for Edmund Husserl is marked Questionable or Misattributed. That is only a fact about these cards. It is not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.

FAQ

What is the best book to start with?

Dan Zahavi, Husserl's Phenomenology, then Cartesian Meditations I. A clear guide first, then his own voice.

What is the most famous quote?

This library does not measure fame, and it does not rank lines by how often they are shared. The first line it files for Edmund Husserl that is not marked Questionable or Misattributed is “We must go back to the 'things themselves'.” (Logical Investigations, vol. II, Introduction, §2, tr. J. N. Findlay (Routledge ed., vol. 1, p. 168), Paraphrase or translation).

What is the most misquoted line?

None of the lines this library files for Edmund Husserl is marked Misattributed or Questionable. That is a fact about these cards, not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.

What is one key idea, in a sentence?

Intentionality: Every act of consciousness is of or about something.