Husserl, Edmund
HUSSERL, EDMUND (1859–1938), German philosopher, founder and central figure in the twentieth-century philosophical movement or approach known as phenomenology. Born in Prossnitz (Prostejov), Moravia, Husserl studied at the universities of Leipzig and Berlin and received his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in 1882. After becoming an assistant to the mathematician Karl Weierstrass in Berlin, he moved to Vienna where, largely under the influence of the philosopher Franz Brentano, he changed his field from mathematics to philosophy.
Husserl's three teaching positions roughly correlate with three periods in the development of his phenomenological philosophy. His stay at the University of Halle (1887–1901) coincided with a prephenomenological period, during which he attempted to provide a psychological basis for mathematics and logic; it culminated in the influential Logical Investigations (2 vols., 1900–1901), which laid the foundation for his descriptive phenomenology. During his tenure at the University of Göttingen (1901–1916), Husserl established his role as founder of the "phenomenological movement." He developed the phenomenological project that he had introduced in the second volume of his Logical Investigations and, in his Ideas (1913), he turned to a "pure" or "transcendental" phenomenology—a philosophical turn that was rejected by many of his followers. His work at the University of Freiburg (from 1916 to 1929) brought a radicalization of this phenomenological idealism, in which phenomenology was conceived as a renewal of life, a realization of one's ethical autonomy, and an overcoming of the crisis of European science. The years from 1929 to 1939, during which Husserl lived in Freiburg after his retirement from the university, may be designated as a fourth period. This period comprises the works of the "late Husserl." Though isolated by social and political pressures as a man with Jewish parentage in Nazi Germany and, finally, by illness, Husserl developed, during this period, his existential notion of "life-world" (Lebenswelt) with which he explored the intersubjective and historical dimensions of experience.
Since Husserl was continually rethinking his phenomenological project, his works never formed a closed philosophical system. There are, however, several themes that can be found throughout his writings. Phenomenology, for example, was to be a descriptive, "rigorous science," free from unexamined presuppositions, and each step was to have a sense of self-evident necessity. Husserl continually searched for radical "new beginnings," that is, for an absolute foundation on which to ground his phenomenology and to grasp the constitution of meaning.
Husserl conceived phenomenology to be a radically descriptive approach, free from our normal, unexamined preconceptions; it was to utilize a phenomenological method that would allow it to describe the phenomena that appear in immediate experience and to gain direct intuition into their essential structures and meanings.
Husserl's attitude toward religion is open to several interpretations. Though the majority of Husserl scholars have assumed that he had little or no interest in religion, several scholars, largely on the basis of unpublished manuscripts, correspondence, and conversations, have submitted that religion and "the problem of God" were serious concerns for Husserl.
Born to Jewish parents, Husserl became an Evangelical Lutheran in 1887. A few individuals have claimed that he had a religious conversion on his deathbed, but this report has been widely challenged. In general, Husserl's phenomenological suspension of all judgments about what is real produced a tolerance toward all "genuine" religious phenomena. In addition, many scholars have commented that Husserl often conceived his phenomenological approach in terms of a "conversion," and that he regarded his philosophical mission with a kind of religious fervor. It does seem, however, that Husserl had little interest in a personal God or in any other aspect of traditional religion; he rejected the externals of religion and all theological dogma. On the other hand, scattered references to God appear in Logical Investigations and Ideas; passages with religious reference or implication are found also in later works such as The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936) and in Dorion Cairns's Conversations with Husserl and Fink (1976); and a greater number of religious references appear in Husserl's diaries and in later unpublished manuscripts and correspondence.
Although these passages tend to be vague, underdeveloped, and open to conflicting interpretations, it is apparent that, according to Husserl, God is neither a personal deity nor a cause of the world, but an "idea" within the context of universal teleology. God as idea is the telos, that is, the universal and ideal end and the transcendent motivating force and final principle in the evolution of reason. Furthermore, Husserl cryptically comments that only with an understanding of the "transcendental consciousness" of phenomenology can one "understand the transcendence of God," and that "ethical-religious questions are the last questions of phenomenological constitution" (Cairns, Conversations, 1976, p. 47).
Husserl's major contribution to the study of religion is found in later attempts by scholars to apply a modified Husserlian analysis to religion. Husserl's influence can be seen in the phenomenological works of Max Scheler, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Paul Ricoeur, and many others. Phenomenology of religion has characterized itself as radically descriptive and antireductionistic. It has often adopted Husserlian terms, such as epoche and "eidetic vision," and has sometimes utilized aspects of Husserl's phenomenological method.
To a lesser extent, Husserl's phenomenology has influenced philosophy of religion and theology. In the appendix to his Ecclesial Man (1975), Edward Farley surveys the impact of phenomenology on numerous Catholic and Protestant philosophers and theologians, submitting that Max Scheler was the dominant figure in the field during the period between 1921 and 1934, and that the philosopher and theologian Henri Duméry, who applies a Husserlian method to the study of religion, has dominated the period from the 1950s. Many scholars maintain that French phenomenology, deeply influenced by Husserl, took a religious and even a theological turn in the 1980s and 1990s.
Starting in the 1990s, there has been a revival in philosophical phenomenology of religion. This has involved both renewed interest in older phenomenologists and the emergence of younger phenomenologists of religion. In this renewal of phenomenology of religion, most of these scholars either trace their phenomenology back to Husserl or at least interact with Husserl's foundational formulations. Among philosophers considered by other scholars as contributing to the renewal of phenomenology of religion are Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Michel Henry, and Jean-Luc Marion.
Bibliography
François Lapointe includes a bibliography of Husserl's writings, beginning with 1882, in his Edmund Husserl and His Critics: An International Bibliography, 1894–1974 (Bowling Green, Ohio, 1980). The definitive edition of Husserl's collected works is Husserliana: Edmund Husserl, Gesammelte Werke (The Hague, 1950–). Among translations of Husserl's writings into English, one may cite Logical Investigations (1900–1901), 2 vols. translated by John N. Findaly (New York, 1970); Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1913), translated by Fred Kersten (The Hague, 1982); The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (1936), translated with introduction by David Carr (Evanston, Ill., 1970). A good collection of Husserl's translated writings is The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology, edited by Donn Welton (Bloomington, Ind., 1999).
Although there have been thousands of titles devoted to Husserl (Lapointe lists 3,879 publications), relatively few are concerned with religion. Perhaps the best source on this subject is The Teleologies in Husserlian Phenomenology, edited by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, volume 9 of "Analecta Husserliana" (Dordrecht, Netherlands, 1979). This volume includes several articles on Husserl, religious experience, and theology, of which Stephan Strasser's "History, Teleology, and God in the Philosophy of Husserl" is especially noteworthy. Edward Farley's Ecclesial Man (Philadelphia, 1975) utilizes Husserl's phenomenology in formulating a phenomenological theology and surveys the impact of Husserl's phenomenology on Catholic and Protestant philosophy of religion and theology. Among the works of "the new phenomenology," primarily written by French phenomenologists of religions, one may cite Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology, translated by Thomas A. Carlson (Evanston, Ill., 1998). See also Phenomenology and the "Theological Turn": The French Debate by Dominique Janicaud and others (originally published in French, 1991; New York, 2000).
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