Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (; 8 April 1859 – 27 April 1938Smith, D. W. (2007). Husserl. p. xiv.) was an Austrian and German philosopher and mathematician who established the school of phenomenology.
In his early work, he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic based on analyses of intentionality. In his mature work, he sought to develop a systematic foundational science based on the so-called phenomenological reduction. Arguing that transcendental consciousness sets the limits of all possible knowledge, Husserl redefined phenomenology as a transcendental idealist philosophy. Husserl's thought profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy, and he remains a notable figure in contemporary philosophy and beyond.
Husserl studied mathematics, taught by Karl Weierstrass and Leo Königsberger, and philosophy taught by Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf. He taught philosophy as a Privatdozent at Halle from 1887, then as professor, first at Göttingen from 1901, then at Freiburg from 1916 until he retired in 1928, after which he remained highly productive. In 1933, under racial laws of the Nazi Party, Husserl was banned from using the library of the University of Freiburg due to his Jewish family background and months later resigned from the Deutsche Akademie. Following an illness, he died in Freiburg in 1938.
Biography Youth and education Husserl was born in 1859 in Proßnitz in the Margraviate of Moravia in the Austrian Empire (today Prostějov in the Czech Republic). He was born into a Jewish family, the second of four children. His father was a milliner. His childhood was spent in Prostějov, where he attended the secular primary school. Then Husserl traveled to Vienna to study at the Realgymnasium there, followed next by the Staatsgymnasium in Olmütz.Joseph J. Kockelmans, "Biographical Note" per Edmund Husserl, at 17–20, in his edited Phenomenology. The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Its Interpretation (Garden City NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1967).
At the University of Leipzig from 1876 to 1878, Husserl studied mathematics, physics, and astronomy. At Leipzig, he was inspired by philosophy lectures given by Wilhelm Wundt, one of the founders of modern psychology. Then he moved to the Frederick William University of Berlin (the present-day Humboldt University of Berlin) in 1878, where he continued his study of mathematics under Leopold Kronecker and Karl Weierstrass. In Berlin, he found a mentor in Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (then a former philosophy student of Franz Brentano and later the first president of Czechoslovakia) and attended Friedrich Paulsen's philosophy lectures. In 1881, he left for the University of Vienna to complete his mathematics studies under the supervision of Leo Königsberger (a former student of Weierstrass). At Vienna in 1883, he obtained his PhD with the work Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of variations).
Evidently, as a result of his becoming familiar with the New Testament during his twenties, Husserl asked to be baptized into the Lutheran Church in 1886. Husserl's father, Adolf, had died in 1884. Herbert Spiegelberg writes, "While outward religious practice never entered his life any more than it did that of most academic scholars of the time, his mind remained open for the religious phenomenon as for any other genuine experience." At times Husserl saw his goal as one of moral "renewal". Although a steadfast proponent of a radical and rational autonomy in all things, Husserl could also speak "about his vocation and even about his mission under God's will to find new ways for philosophy and science," observes Spiegelberg.Spiegelberg, H. The Phenomenological Movement. A historical introduction. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 2d ed. . Vol. I, pp. 85–87. It was reported "from witnesses of Husserl's last days – that Husserl had something like a deathbed conversion." Spiegelberg (1971) at I:85.
Following his PhD in mathematics, Husserl returned to Berlin to work as the assistant to Karl Weierstrass. Yet already Husserl had felt the desire to pursue philosophy. Then Weierstrass became very ill. Husserl became free to return to Vienna, where, after serving a short military duty, he devoted his attention to philosophy. In 1884, at the University of Vienna he attended the lectures of Franz Brentano on philosophy and philosophical psychology. Brentano introduced him to the writings of Bernard Bolzano, Hermann Lotze, J. Stuart Mill, and David Hume. Husserl was so impressed by Brentano that he decided to dedicate his life to philosophy; indeed, Franz Brentano is often credited as being his most important influence, e.g., with regard to intentionality. Following academic advice, two years later in 1886 Husserl followed Carl Stumpf, a former student of Brentano, to the University of Halle, seeking to obtain his habilitation which would qualify him to teach at the university level. There, under Stumpf's supervision, he wrote his habilitation thesis, Über den Begriff der Zahl (On the Concept of Number), in 1887, which would serve later as the basis for his first important work, Philosophie der Arithmetik (1891).Kockelmans, "Biographical Note" per Edmund Husserl, 17–20, at 17–18, in his edited Phenomenology (Doubleday Anchor 1967). Husserl's 'Philosophie der Arithmetik is further discussed here below.
In 1887, Husserl married Malvine Steinschneider, a union that would last over fifty years. In 1892, their daughter Elizabeth was born, in 1893 their son Gerhart, and in 1894 their son Wolfgang. Elizabeth would marry in 1922, and Gerhart in 1923; Wolfgang, however, became a casualty of the First World War. Gerhart would become a philosopher of law, contributing to the subject of comparative law, teaching in the United States and after the war in Austria.
Professor of philosophy
Following his marriage, Husserl began his long teaching career in philosophy. He started in 1887 as a Privatdozent at the University of Halle. In 1891, he published his Philosophie der Arithmetik. Psychologische und logische Untersuchungen which, drawing on his prior studies in mathematics and philosophy, proposed a psychological context as the basis of mathematics. It drew the adverse notice of Gottlob Frege, who criticized its psychologism.Cf., "Illustrative extracts from Frege's Review of Husserl's Philosophie der Arithmetik", translated by P. T. Geach, at 79–85, in Peter Geach and Max Black, editors, Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1977).
In 1901, Husserl, with his family, moved to the University of Göttingen, where he taught as extraordinarius professor. Just prior to this, a major work of his, Logische Untersuchungen (Halle, 1900–1901), was published. Volume One contains seasoned reflections on "pure logic" in which he carefully refutes "psychologism".Husserl's Logische, in its disentangling of psychology from logic, also served as preparation for the later development of his work in phenomenological reduction. Marvin Farber, "Husserl and Philosophical Radicalism. The ideas of a presuppositionless philosophy" 37–57 at 47–48, in Kockelmans, ed., Phenomenology (1967). This work was well received and became the subject of a seminar given by Wilhelm Dilthey; Husserl in 1905 traveled to Berlin to visit Dilthey. Two years later, in Italy, he paid a visit to Franz Brentano, his inspiring old teacher, and to the mathematician Constantin Carathéodory. Kant and Descartes were also now influencing his thought. In 1910, he became joint editor of the journal Logos. During this period, Husserl had delivered lectures on internal time consciousness, which several decades later his former students Edith Stein and Martin Heidegger edited for publication.Husserl, Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1928), translated as The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness (Indiana University Press, 1964).
In 1912, in Freiburg, the journal Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschung ("Yearbook for Philosophy and Phenomenological Research") was founded by Husserl and his school, which published articles of their phenomenological movement from 1913 to 1930. His important work IdeenHusserl, Ideen au einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (1913), translated as Ideas. General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (New York: Macmillan, 1931; reprint Collier), with "Author's Preface to the English Edition" at 5–22. Therein, Husserl in 1931 refers to "Transcendental Subjectivity" being "a new field of experience" opened as a result of practicing phenomenological reduction, and giving rise to an a priori science not empirically based but somewhat similar to mathematics. By such practice, the individual becomes the "transcendental Ego", although Husserl acknowledges the problem of solipsism. Later he emphasizes "the necessary stressing of the difference between transcendental and psychological subjectivity, the repeated declaration that transcendental phenomenology is not in any sense psychology" but rather (in contrast to naturalistic psychology) by the phenomenological reduction "the life of the soul is made intelligible in its most intimate and originally intuitional essence" and whereby "objects of the most varied grades right up to the level of the objective world are there for the Ego" (Ibid. at 5–7, 11–12, 18). was published in its first issue (Vol. 1, Issue 1, 1913). Before beginning Ideen, Husserl's thought had reached the stage where "each subject is 'presented' to itself, and to each all others are 'presentiated' (Vergegenwärtigung), not as parts of nature but as pure consciousness".Ricoeur, Paul (1967). Husserl. An Analysis of His Phenomenology. p. 33. In his "Ideen period" (1911–1925) Husserl also produced two unpublished manuscripts later referred to as Ideen II and Ideen III. Ricœur (1967) at 35. Ideen advanced his transition to a "transcendental interpretation" of phenomenology, a view later criticized by, among others, Jean-Paul Sartre.Jean-Paul Sartre, "La Transcendance de L'Ego. Esquisse d'une description phénoménologique" in Recherches Philosophiques, VI (1937), translated as The Transcendence of the Ego. An existentialist theory of consciousness (New York: The Noonday Press 1957). Sartre's "disagreement with Husserl seems to have facilitated the transition from phenomenology to the existentialist doctrines of L'Être et le Néant ." F. Williams and R. Kirkpatrick, "Translator's introduction" 11–27, at 12, to Transcendence of the Ego (1957). In Ideen Paul Ricœur sees the development of Husserl's thought as leading "from the psychological cogito to the transcendental cogito". As phenomenology further evolves, it leads (when viewed from another vantage point in Husserl's 'labyrinth') to "transcendental subjectivity".Ricoeur, Paul (1967). Husserl. An Analysis of His Phenomenology. Northwestern University. pp. 29, 30; cf., 177–178. Also in Ideen Husserl explicitly elaborates the phenomenological and eidetic reductions.Husserl, Ideen (1913), translated as Ideas (1931), e.g., at 161–165.Ricoeur, Husserl (1967) at 25–27. Ideen does not address the problem of solipsism. Ricœur (1967) at 31. Ivan Ilyin and Karl Jaspers visited Husserl at Göttingen.
In October 1914, both his sons were sent to fight on the Western Front of World War I, and the following year, one of them, Wolfgang Husserl, was badly injured. On 8 March 1916, on the battlefield of Verdun, Wolfgang was killed in action. The next year, his other son, Gerhart Husserl was wounded in the war but survived. His own mother, Julia, died. In November 1917, one of his outstanding students and later a noted philosophy professor in his own right, Adolf Reinach, was killed in the war while serving in Flanders.