Edmund Husserl Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (German: [
hsl]; April 8, 1859 April 27, 1938[3]) was a philosopher

r and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic. Not limited to empiricism, but believing that experience is the source of all knowledge, he worked on a method of phenomenological reduction by which a subject may come to know directly an essence. Although born into a Jewish family, Husserl was baptized as a Lutheran in 1886. He studied mathematics under Karl Weierstrass and Leo Knigsberger, and philosophy under Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf. Husserl himself taught philosophy as a Privatdozent at Halle from 1887, then as professor, first at Gttingen from 1901, then at Freiburg from 1916 until he retired in 1928. Thereafter he gave two notable lectures: at Paris in 1929, and at Prague in 1935. The notorious 1933 race laws of the Nazi regime took away his academic standing and privileges. Following an illness, he died at Freiburg in 1938. Youth and education[edit source | editbeta] Husserl was born in 1859 in Prostjov (German: Prossnitz), a town in the Bohemian province of Moravia, which was then in the Austrian Empire, after 1918 in Czechoslovakia, and since 1993 in the Czech Republic. He was born into a Jewish family, the second of four children (boy, boy, girl, boy). His father was a milliner (one who designs, makes, trims, or sells hats). His childhood was spent in Prostjov, where he attended the elementary school. Then Husserl traveled to Vienna to study at the Realgymnasium there, followed next by the Staatsgymnasium in Olomouc (Ger: Olmtz).[4][5] 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 Humboldt University of Berlin (at that time called the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitt) in 1878 where he continued his study of mathematics under Leopold Kronecker and the renowned Karl Weierstrass. In Berlin he found a mentor in Thomas Masaryk, then a former philosophy student of Franz Brentano and later the first president of Czechoslovakia. There Husserl also 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 Knigsberger (a former student of Weierstrass). At Vienna in 1883 he obtained his Ph.D. with the work Beitrge zur Variationsrechnung ("Contributions to the Calculus of Variations").[4] Evidently as a result of his becoming familiar with the New Testament during his twenties, he asked to be baptized into the Lutheran Church in 1886. Husserl's father Adolf had died in 1884. Prof. 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.[6]

Following his doctorate in mathematics, he returned to Berlin to work as the assistant to Karl Weierstrass. Yet already Husserl had felt the desire to pursue philosophy. Then professor 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.[citation needed] 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 ber 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).[7] In 1887 he married Malvine Steinschneider, a union that would last over fifty years. In 1892 their daughter Elizabeth was born, in 1893 their son Gerhard, and in 1894 their son Wolfgang. Elizabeth would marry in 1922, and Gerhard in 1923; Wolfgang, however, became a casualty of the First World War.[5] Gerhard would become a philosopher of law, contributing to the subject of comparative law, teaching in the USA and after the war in Austria. Professor of philosophy[edit source | editbeta] Following his marriage Husserl began his long teaching career in philosophy. He started where he was in 1887 as a Privatdozent at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. 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.[8][9] In 1901 Husserl with his family moved to the Georg-August University of Gttingen where he taught as extraordinarius professor. Just prior to this a major work of his, Logische Untersuchungen (Halle 19001901), was published. Volume One contains seasoned reflections on "pure logic" in which he carefully refutes "psychologism".[10][11] 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 Constantin Carathodory the mathematician. 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 student Heidegger edited for publication.[12] In 1912 at Freiburg the journal Jahrbuch fr Philosophie und Phnomenologische Forschung ("Yearbook for Philosophy and Phenomenological Research") was founded by Husserl and his school, and which published articles of their phenomenological movement from 1913 to 1930. His important work Ideen[13] was published in its first issue. Before beginning Ideen Husserl's thought had reached the stage where "each subject is 'presented' to itself, and to each all others are 'presentiated'

(Vergegenwartigung), not as parts of nature but as pure consciousness."[14] Ideen advanced his transition to a "transcendental interpretation" of phenomenology, a view later criticized by, among others, Jean-Paul Sartre.[15] In Ideen Paul Ricur 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".[16] Also in Ideen Husserl explicitly elaborates the eidetic and phenomenological reductions.[17][18] In 1913 Karl Jaspers visited Husserl at Gttingen. In October 1914 both his sons were sent to the fighting on the Western Front of World War I. The next year his son Wolfgang was badly injured at the front. On March 8, 1916, on the battlefield of Verdun, Wolfgang Husserl was killed in action. The next year his son Gerhard was wounded in the war but survived, and his 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.[5] Husserl had transferred in 1916 to the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg (Freiburg im Breisgau) where he continued bringing his work in philosophy to fruition, now as a full professor.[19] Edith Stein served as his personal assistant during his first few years in Freiburg, followed later by Martin Heidegger from 1920 to 1923. The mathematician Hermann Weyl began corresponding with him in 1918. Husserl gave four lectures on Phenomenological method at University College, London in 1922. The University of Berlin in 1923 called on him to relocate there, but he declined the offer. In 1926 Heidegger dedicated his book Sein und Zeit ("Being and Time") to him "in grateful respect and friendship."[20] Husserl remained in his professorship at Freiburg until he requested retirement, teaching his last class on July 25, 1928. A Festschrift to celebrate his seventieth birthday was presented to him on April 8, 1929. For Husserl 1933 was an ugly year, when the racial laws of the new Nazi regime were enacted. On April 6 Husserl was suspended from the University of Freiburg by the Badische Ministry of Culture; the following week he was disallowed any university activities. Yet his colleague Heidegger was elected Rektor of the university on April 2122, and joined the Nazi party. By contrast, in July Husserl resigned from the Deutsche Academie.[5] Despite retirement, Husserl gave several notable lectures. The first, at Paris in 1929,[21] led to Mditations cartsiennes (Paris 1931).[22] Husserl here reviews the epoche and transcendental reduction, presented earlier in his pivotal Ideen (1913), in terms of a further reduction of experience to what he calls a 'sphere of ownness.' From within this sphere, which Husserl enacts in order to show the impossibility of solipsism, the transcendental ego finds itself always already paired with the lived body of another ego, another monad. This a priori interconnection of bodies, given in perception, is what founds the interconnection of consciousnesses known as transcendental intersubjectivity, which Husserl would go on to describe at length in volumes of unpublished writings. There has been a debate over whether or not Husserl's description of ownness and its movement into intersubjectivity is sufficient to reject the charge of solipsism, to which Descartes, for example, was subject. One argument against Husserl's description works this way: instead of infinity and the Deity being the ego's gateway to the Other, as in Descartes, Husserl's ego in the Cartesian Meditations itself becomes transcendent. It remains, however, alone (unconnected). Only the ego's grasp "by analogy" of the Other (e.g., by conjectural reciprocity)

allows the possibility for an 'objective' intersubjectivity, and hence for community.[23] But more recently, scholars such as Kathleen Haney, James Mensch, and Dan Zahavi have worked to prove that Husserl's descriptions of intercorporeality and intersubjectivity might actually work much more efficiently to show how intersubjectivity in fact is given through embodiment. In 1934 Jos Ortega y Gasset came to visit him. Later Husserl lectured at Prague in 1935 and Vienna in 1936, which resulted in a very differently styled work that while innovative is no less problematic: Die Krisis (Belgrade 1936).[24][25] Husserl describes here the cultural crisis gripping Europe, then approaches a philosophy of history, discussing Galileo, Descartes, several British philosophers, and Kant. The apolitical Husserl before had specifically avoided such historical discussions, pointedly preferring to go directly to an investigation of consciousness. Merleau-Ponty and others question whether Husserl here does not undercut his own position, in that Husserl had attacked in principle historicism, while specifically designing his phenomenology to be rigorous enough to transcend the limits of history. On the contrary, Husserl may be indicating here that historical traditions are merely features given to the pure ego's intuition, like any other.[26][27] A longer section follows on the "life world" [Lebenswelt], one not observed by the objective logic of science, but a world seen in our subjective experience.[28] Yet a problem arises similar to that dealing with 'history' above, a chicken-and-egg problem. Does the life world contextualize and thus compromise the gaze of the pure ego, or does the phenomenological method nonetheless raise the ego up transcendent?[29] These last writings presented the fruits of his professional life. Since his university retirement Husserl had "worked at a tremendous pace, producing several major works."[4] After suffering a fall the autumn of 1937, the philosopher became ill with pleurisy. Edmund Husserl died at Freiburg on April 27, 1938, having just turned 79. His wife Malvine survived him. Eugen Fink, his research assistant, delivered his eulogy.[30] Gerhard Ritter was the only Freiburg faculty member to attend the funeral, as an anti-Nazi protest. Heidegger and the Nazi era[edit source | editbeta] Husserl was incorrectly rumoured to have been denied the use of the library at Freiburg as a result of the anti-Jewish legislation of April 1933.[31] However, among other disabilities Husserl was unable to publish his works in Nazi Germany; cf., above footnote to Die Krisis (1936). It was also rumoured that his former pupil and Nazi Party member, Martin Heidegger, informed Husserl that he was discharged, but it was actually the former rector.[32] Apparently Husserl and Heidegger had moved apart during the 1920s, which became clearer after 1928 when Husserl retired and Heidegger succeeded to his University chair. In the summer of 1929 Husserl had studied carefully selected writings of Heidegger, coming to the conclusion that on several of their key positions they differed, e.g., Heidegger substituted Dasein ["Being-there"] for the pure ego, thus transforming phenomenology into an anthropology, a type of psychologism strongly disfavored by Husserl. Such observations of Heidegger, along with a critique of Max Scheler, were put into a lecture Husserl gave to various Kant Societies in Frankfurt, Berlin, and Halle during 1931 entitled Phnomenologie und Anthropologie.[33][34] In the war-time 1941 edition of Heidegger's primary work, Being and Time (first published in 1927), the

original dedication to Husserl was removed. This was not due to a negation of the relationship between the two philosophers, however, but rather was the result of a suggested censorship by Heidegger's publisher who feared that the book might otherwise be banned by the Nazi regime.[35] The dedication can still be found in a footnote on page 38, thanking Husserl for his guidance and generosity. Husserl, of course, had died several years earlier. In post-war editions of Sein und Zeit the dedication to Husserl is restored. The complex, troubled, and sundered philosophical relationship between Husserl and Heidegger has been widely discussed.[36][37] On May 4, 1933, Professor Edmund Husserl addressed the recent regime change in Germany and its consequences: "The future alone will judge which was the true Germany in 1933, and who were the true Germans--those who subscribe to the more or less materialistic-mythical racial prejudices of the day, or those Germans pure in heart and mind, heirs to the great Germans of the past whose tradition they revere and perpetuate."[38] After his death, Husserl's manuscripts, amounting to approximately 40,000 pages of "Gabelsberger" stenography and his complete research library, were in 1939 smuggled to Belgium by the Franciscan priest Herman Van Breda. There they were deposited at Leuven to form the Husserl-Archives of the Higher Institute of Philosophy.[39] Much of the material in his research manuscripts has since been published in the Husserliana critical edition series.[40]