[Editor’s Note: The following new entry by Dan Zahavireplaces theformer entry on this topic by the previous author.]

Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) is the founding father ofphenomenology and a figure with a decisive impact on the developmentof twentieth century philosophy. He influenced not only thinkers likeMartin Heidegger, Edith Stein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-PaulSartre, but also many other figures in European philosophy. Husserl isprimarily known for his analyses of intentionality, perception,temporality, embodiment and intersubjectivity, for his rehabilitationof the lifeworld and his commitment to a form of transcendentalidealism and for his criticism of reductionism, objectivism, andscientism. In recent years, his analyses have influenced discussionsin social philosophy, philosophy of mind and the cognitivesciences.

• 1. Life and work
• 2. Ideality and intentionality in the Logical Investigations
• 3. The transcendental turn: Epoché, phenomenological reduction, and transcendental idealism
• 4. Time- and self-consciousness
• 5. Embodiment, intersubjectivity and objectivity
• 6. The lifeworld
• 7. Personhood and ethics
• Bibliography
  • A. Primary Literature
    • A.1 Husserliana (Cited Hua)
    • A.2 Husserliana Materialenband (cited Hua Mat)
    • A.3 Other Cited Works by Husserl
  • B. Secondary Literature
    • B.1 Cited works
    • B.2 Other major critical works
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Life and work

Husserl was born on April 8, 1859, in a Jewish family inProßnitz, Moravia. The city is currently located in the CzechRepublic but was then part of the Austrian Empire. In 1876 Husserlmoved to Leipzig to commence university studies in astronomy,mathematics, physics and philosophy. One of his philosophy teachers inLeipzig was Wilhelm Wundt, one of the founders of experimentalpsychology. In 1878, Husserl continued his studies in mathematics inBerlin under the supervision of Leopold Kronecker and KarlWeierstrass. During his time in Berlin, he became a close friend ofTomáš Masaryk, who later became the first president ofCzechoslovakia. In 1881, Husserl left for Vienna to complete his PhDin mathematics. He obtained the degree in January 1883 with a workentitledContributions to the Calculus of Variations.

Soon after, Husserl started as Weierstrass’ assistant in Berlin.But when Weierstrass became seriously ill, Masaryk suggested thatHusserl should return to Vienna to study with the prominentpsychologist and philosopher Franz Brentano, the author ofPsychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874). Husserlattended Brentano’s lectures from 1884 to 1886, and they madesuch an impression on him that he decided to switch to philosophy.Brentano recommended Husserl to his pupil Carl Stumpf in Halle, and itwas in Halle that Husserl submitted his habilitation thesisOn theConcept of Number in 1887.

After having obtained his habilitation, which was a requirement for auniversity career, Husserl became a Privatdozent at the University ofHalle, where he would spend the next 14 years. In 1891, he publishedhis first bookPhilosophy of Arithmetic that combined hisinterests in mathematics, philosophy and psychology and which soughtto provide a psychological foundation for mathematics. The book wascritically reviewed by Gottlob Frege, who accused Husserl ofpsychologism (Frege 1894).^[1] In the following years, Husserl worked on foundational problems inepistemology and theory of science. His reflections on these themesultimately led to the publication of the monumentalLogicalInvestigations in 1900–1901, which Husserl himselfconsidered his “breakthrough” to phenomenology (Hua 18/8[2001/I: 3]). The publication secured Husserl a position at theGeorg-August-Universität in Göttingen, where he taught from1901 to 1916, first as anExtraordinarius Professor, and from1906 as anOrdinarius Professor. Due to the resoundingsuccess ofLogical Investigations and because ofHusserl’s steadily increasing reputation, a number of youngscholars including Adolf Reinach, Alexandre Koyré, Edith Stein,Helmuth Plessner, Moritz Geiger, and Roman Ingarden gathered inGöttingen (Salice 2015 [2020]), and the university quickly becameone of the most important centers for philosophy in Germany.

Husserl’s initial criticism of psychologism, his sustaineddefense of the irreducibility of ideality, and his focus on things asthey are encountered in experience were interpreted by many of hisearly followers as a turn away from the subject and toward the objectsand as a legitimization of essentialism (Reinach 1914 [1968]). In thefirst decade of the twentieth century, Husserl continued to refine andmodify his phenomenological approach, and it caused consternation whenhe in his next major workIdeas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenologyand to a Phenomenological Philosophy I (commonly referred to asIdeas I) from 1913 endorsed a form of transcendentalidealism. For many of the early phenomenologists, such a moveconstituted a betrayal of the core ideas of phenomenology, whereasHusserl often complained that their reluctance to follow histranscendental turn simply meant that they had failed to fullyunderstand his philosophical project, had failed to really grasp whatphenomenology was all about.

In 1916, Husserl moved to Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg,where he took over the chair in philosophy from the neo-KantianHeinrich Rickert. In the years 1916–1918, Edith Stein worked ashis assistant. Stein’s primary work was to edit Husserl’sresearch manuscripts and prepare them for publication. She worked onHusserl’sIdeas II (eventually published in 1952) andon hisLectures on the Phenomenology of the Consciousness ofInternal Time, which was published by Martin Heidegger in 1928(with only the slightest acknowledgment of Stein’s work). Ratherthan engaging with Stein’s revisions, Husserl tended to producenew texts and in the end this lack of engagement with her work madeStein resign from her position in frustration. In the period1919–1923, Heidegger then became Husserl’s assistant.Husserl had great hopes for the collaboration and worked hard toensure that Heidegger would become his successor in Freiburg, butwhile Heidegger was eager for Husserl to help him secure a permanentposition and even dedicatedBeing and Time “to EdmundHusserl in friendship and admiration”, he also attacked andridiculed Husserl in his own seminars and letters. As Heidegger wroteto Karl Löwith in 1923,

In the final hours of the seminar, I publicly burned and destroyed theIdeas to such an extent that I dare say that the essentialfoundations for the whole [of my work] are now cleanly laid out.Looking back from this vantage point to theLogicalInvestigations, I am now convinced that Husserl was never aphilosopher, not even for one second in his life. (quoted in Sheehan1997: 17)

When Husserl retired in 1928, he was succeeded by Heidegger. Shortlyafter his retirement, Husserl was invited to Paris to give a series oflectures meant to introduce a French audience to the basic ideas ofphenomenology. These lectures were later translated into French byEmmanuel Levinas and Gabrielle Peiffer and published asCartesianMeditations in 1931. During the thirties, Husserl came to sufferunder the German National Socialist regime. Husserl had converted toProtestantism already in 1886, but was now barred from any kind ofofficial academic activity due to his Jewish ancestry, and lost hisright to teach and publish, and eventually also his Germancitizenship. Husserl was deeply affected by this development. As hewrote to his longtime friend Dietrich Mahnke on May 4, 1933,

Finally, in my old age, I had to experience something I had not deemedpossible: the erection of a spiritual ghetto, into which I and mychildren … are to be driven … We are no longer to havethe right to call ourselves German; our spiritual work is no longer tobe included in German cultural history. It shall only live on with thestamp of “Jewishness”… as a poison that Germanpeople should be wary of and that must be eradicated. (Husserl 1994:iii 491–2)

In the same letter, Husserl also expressed bitterness vis-à-visHeidegger and accused him of not only propagating a caricature ofHusserl’s own philosophy, but also of giving vent to more andmore explicit antisemitic sentiments (Husserl 1994: iii 493). Despiteall, Husserl continued his work, insisting ever more passionately onthe relevance of philosophy at a time when Europe was descending intoirrationalism. In 1935, he was invited to give lectures in Vienna andPrague, and these lectures constituted the foundation for his lastwork,The Crisis of European Sciences and TranscendentalPhenomenology (1936). Only the first two parts ofCrisisinitially appeared in print and were published in a Belgradephilosophy journal.

The books published by Husserl during his lifetime only made up a verysmall part of his enormous production. He had the habit of writingevery day, and when he died on April 27, 1938, these so-calledresearch manuscripts (together with his lectures manuscripts and stillunpublished books) amounted to some 45,000 pages. In Husserl’sown estimate, the most important part of his writings was to be foundin these manuscripts (Husserl 1994: iii 90). All these writings were,for evident reasons, not safe in Germany. (Almost the entire firstedition of the posthumously published workExperience andJudgment, published in Prague in 1939, was destroyed by theGermans after their annexation of Czechoslovakia.) But shortly afterHusserl’s death, a young Franciscan, Hermann Leo Van Breda,succeeded in smuggling Husserl’s research manuscripts out ofGermany and to safety in a monastery in Belgium. Before the start ofthe Second World War, the Husserl Archives were established at theInstitute of Philosophy in Leuven, where the original manuscripts arestill to be found. The first international visitor to the archives wasMerleau-Ponty, who in the spring of 1939 gained access to theunpublished third part ofCrisis as well as to thetypescripts forIdeas II andExperience andJudgment.

At the time of the founding of the archives, the critical edition ofHusserl’s works—Husserliana—began. Thecritical edition, which so far contains forty-four volumes, consistsnot only of new editions of the works that were published duringHusserl’s life, but also, and more importantly, of previouslyunpublished works, articles, lectures, papers, and researchmanuscripts. The continuing publication of the Husserliana has made itnecessary to revise and modify a number of widespread and dominantinterpretations. This is so not only because the new material hasoffered a plethora of analyses and descriptions that allow for a moreprecise grasp of Husserl’s phenomenological core concepts, butalso because they have disclosed aspects of his thinking, including aninterest in facticity, embodiment, sociality, passivity, historicity,and ethics that it would have been difficult to anticipate through astudy of the few works published during Husserl’s life.

Husserl’s influence on the development of twentieth-centuryphilosophy has been immense. This is not to say, of course, thateverybody agreed with him; but the fact that subsequentphenomenologists, including Heidegger, Stein, Ingarden, Schutz, Fink,Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Henry, andMarion, as well as leading theorists from a whole range of othertraditions, including hermeneutics, critical theory, deconstruction,and post-structuralism, felt a need to react and respond toHusserl’s project and program testifies to his importance.

Given its size, how to offer a concise presentation of Husserl’swork? In the following, the focus will be on the development of whatis arguably the centerpiece of Husserl’s philosophy, namely his phenomenology.^[2] As Husserl’s continuing efforts to write a comprehensiveintroduction to phenomenology makes clear, he thought of the latter asthe cornerstone and framework for whatever other topics he wasengaging with philosophically:

Phenomenology in our sense is the science of “origins”, ofthe “mothers” of all cognition; and it is the maternalground of all philosophical method: to this ground and to the work init, everything leads back. (Hua 5/80)

2. Ideality and intentionality in the Logical Investigations

In the preface to the massive 700+ pagesLogicalInvestigations (1900–01), Husserl writes that hisoverarching aim is to provide a new foundation for logic andepistemology (Hua 18/6 [2001/I: 2]; for in depth discussions of thework, see, e.g., de Boer 1966 [1978], Benoist 2001). The main task ofthe first part,Prolegomena to Pure Logic, is twofold: Tooffer a criticism of psychologism and to argue that scientificknowledge presupposes ideality. The position Husserl is targetingclaims that the task of epistemology is to investigate the nature ofour perceiving, believing, judging, and knowing. Since all of thesephenomena are psychical processes, it may seem that only psychologycan investigate them. This also holds true for our scientific andlogical reasoning, and ultimately logic must therefore be regarded aspart of psychology and the laws of logic as psycho-logicalregularities, whose nature and validity must be empiricallyinvestigated and established (Hua 18/64, 89 [2001/I: 40, 56]).

As Husserl argues, this line of reasoning commits the mistake ofignoring the fundamental difference between the domains of logic andpsychology, “between ideal and real laws, between normative andcausal regulation, between logical and real necessity, between logicaland real grounds” (Hua 18/80 [2001/I: 50]). Logic is not anempirical science and is not concerned with the genesis ofspatiotemporal objects or processes, but with the validity of idealstructures and laws. Psychology by contrast is an empirical sciencethat investigates the empirical nature of consciousness. Whereas thedomain of logic is characterized by certainty and exactness, thedomain of psychology is characterized by the same mere probability asall empirical sciences (Hua 18/181 [2001: I/113–114]). A furthermistake made by psychologism is that it doesn’t distinguishsufficiently between theobject of knowledge and theact of knowing. Whereas the act of knowing is a subjectiveprocess that elapses in time and has a beginning and an end, theobjects of logic, the logical truths, theories, principles,propositions, sentences, and proofs are not subjective experienceswith temporal duration, but atemporal idealities. When I think of thetheorem of Pythagoras and when you think of it, we must be able tothink about the same theorem, even if our respective thought processesare different (Hua 19/49, 97–98 [2001/I: 195, 224–225]).If the content of our thought was reducible to our processes ofthinking, we would never be able to repeat and retain the same contentacross numerically different acts. And that would preclude not onlyordinary communication and understanding, but also the development ofscientific theory. The reduction of atemporal idealities (includingthe universally valid laws of logic) to temporal psychic processes isconsequently not only a category mistake; it also undermines the verypossibility of psychologism itself qua scientific theory.

As Husserl then emphasizes, however, even though logic and psychologydiffer, we are still confronted with the puzzling fact that theobjectivity and ideality of logic are known in and by subjective actsof cognition. And he then insists that a comprehensive analysis of thepossibility of knowledge calls for a more detailed investigation ofthe relation between the objective and the subjective (Hua 18/7[2001/I: 2]). This is precisely the goal of the second part of theLogical Investigations, entitledInvestigations intoPhenomenology and the Theory of Knowledge, which not onlyculminates in an extended analysis of intentionality, but also offersa new philosophical method, a method called‘phenomenology’ (Hua 9/28).

It is in the introduction to the second part ofLogicalInvestigations that we find Husserl’s initial formulationof a phenomenological core idea:

We can absolutely not rest content with “mere words”[…]. Meanings inspired only by remote, confused, inauthenticintuitions—if by any intuitions at all—are not enough: wemust go back to the “things themselves”. (Hua 19/10[2001/I: 168])

The central idea articulated in this quote is an aversion againstempty speculation and high-flying abstract theorizing and aninsistence on the importance of carefully attending to what isactually given with the aim of avoiding what Spiegelberg would latercall the “premature straitjacketing of the phenomena bypreconceived theories” (Spiegelberg 1972: 308).

This focus on the experiential given had a decisive impact on what isarguably Husserl’s main accomplishment in theLogicalInvestigations, namely his detailed analysis of intentionality.Every intentional experience is an experience of a specific type,i.e., an experience of hoping, desiring, regretting, affirming,doubting, wondering, fearing, etc., and each of these experiences ischaracterized by being of or about or directed at an object in aparticular and distinctive way. For Husserl, a central task was toanalyze these differences in detail, to map out the way they aresystematically interrelated, and more generally to inquire into andinvestigate how objects can appear to us in the way they do and withthe meaning they have.

For Husserl, intentionality is a distinctive feature of ourexperiential life (although he also allows for a subset ofnon-intentional sensations such as pain or dizziness) (Hua 3/192). Itis a feature that is inherent to the conscious states in question, itis an integral part of their being and is not one they only come topossess in virtue of being influenced by an external cause. As Husserlwould formulate it in a later text:

The specific experience of this house, this body, of a world as such,is and remains, however, according to its own essential content andthus inseparably, experience “of this house”, this body,this world; this is so for every mode of consciousness which isdirected towards an object. It is, after all, quite impossible todescribe an intentional experience—even if illusionary, aninvalid judgment, or the like—without at the same timedescribing the object of that consciousness as such. (Hua 9/282; seealso Hua 19/451 [2001/II: 133])

One important conceptual distinction drawn by Husserl is between whathe calls thematter and thequality of theintentional experience. On the one hand, we have the component thatdetermines not onlywhat the intentional experience is about,but alsoas what it is intended. Husserl calls this componentthe matter of the act. Thinking about Bilbao as the de facto capitalof the Basque Country and thinking about Bilbao as the city with aGuggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry, are intentional experienceswith different matters. Occasionally, Husserl also designates thematter of the act as the idealmeaning orsense ofthe act and argues that the intentional reference to an object issecured through the meaning (Hua 19/54 [2001/I: 198]; Hua 24/53, 150).As he writes “In meaning, a relation to an object isconstituted” (Hua 19/59 [2001/I: 201]). Importantly, however,when assigning this important role to meaning, Husserl does not merelyhave linguistically articulated meanings in mind, since he alsooperates with notions of pre-predicative and perceptual meaning (Hua3/285).

On the other hand, we have the component that determines the specificcharacter of the intentional reference. I can doubt, hope or firmlybelieve that the Frank Gehry designed Guggenheim Museum is located inBilbao. Husserl calls this component the quality of the act (Hua19/425–426 [2001/II: 119–120]). The same act-quality canbe combined with different matters, and the same matter can becombined with different act-qualities. It is possible todoubt “that the financial crisis will continue”,todoubt “that the election was fair”, or todoubt “that the climate crisis is fake news”,just as it is possible todoubt “that it rains”,hope “that it rains”, ordeny“that it rains” (Hua 19/381 [2001/II: 96]). Although thematter and quality are independently variable, they cannot occurindependently of each other. You cannot simply judge, or imagine, orfear, nor can you be intentionally directed at a certain objectwithout being directed at the object in a specific manner.

As long as we focus on our ability to mean something, we can make dowith the quality-matter dyad, or with what Husserl also calls theintentional essence (Hua 19/431 [2001/I: 122]). But asHusserl then points out, two intentional acts can have one and thesame intentional essence and still differ descriptively, namely interms of how their object is given. A further central distinction inLogical Investigations is that betweensignitive andintuitive forms of givenness

I can think that my passport is lying in my desk drawer. I can alsoperceive that it is lying in my desk drawer. In the latter case, thepassport is not simply meant or represented, but presented. As long asI am simply thinking about the passport, the passport is myintentional object, but it is not given in any intuitive manner. WhenI, by contrast, look at the passport, it is given to me directly inits bodily presence (leibhaftig) (Hua 19/365[2001/II: 86]). Husserl also talks of the perceptual givenness as theself-givenness or self-presentation of the object (Hua 19/646[2001/II: 260]). As he writes inThing and Space,

the object stands in perception as there in the flesh, it stands, tospeak still more precisely, as actually present, as self-given therein the current now. (Hua 16/14)

First having a belief about the location of the passport and thenseeing it being there constitutes a situation where what was initiallymerely meant is then also intuitively given. Theobject that isintended remains one and the same, but thehow of itsgivenness differs between being ‘empty’ and beingintuitively ‘fulfilled’ (Rang 1973: 23), and thisdifference in the mode of givenness of the object along thesignitive-intuitive spectrum is not due to any difference in theintentional essence (Hua 30/72; Hua 19/435 [2001/II: 124]). Thinkingabout the passport being in the drawer and seeing it in the drawer aretwo acts with the same quality and matter; they target the sameintentional object, but the object is given differently in the twocases. Apart from the quality and the matter of the act, there isconsequently a further feature of intentionality, which is ofparticular relevance for knowledge, namely intuitive content (Fülle).While present in intuitive acts, it isabsent in signitive acts (Hua 19/600, 626 [2001/II: 229, 246]).

For Husserl, justification and truth must be understood on the basisof a model of epistemic fulfillment. If I happen to believe that mypassport is in the desk drawer, and if I want to know whether mybelief is true, the obvious thing to do is to look. Perceiving thatthe passport is in the drawer offers a very different kind of reasonfor believing that the passport is in the drawer than simply thinkingor imagining that the passport is in the drawer. It offers animmediate non-inferential form of justification by bringing us thefullness of the thing itself. Another term used by Husserl in thiscontext is that ofevidence (Hua 11/72). For Husserl,evidence is not some ineffable feeling of certainty (Hua 24/156), butthe name for a synthesis of coincidence (Deckungssynthesis)between the meant and the given.When an object is given intuitively just as it is meant, it is givenevidentially, and as Husserl then continues, the objective correlateof this evidence is “being in the sense of truth orsimplytruth” (Hua 19/651 [2001/II: 263]).

Given the central role ascribed to intuition, it cannot wonder that itfigures prominently in an epistemic principle that Husserl wouldendorse inIdeas I, and which he called theprinciple ofall principles:

that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source ofcognition, that everything originarily (so to speak, in its“personal” actuality) offered to us in“intuition” is to be accepted simply as what it ispresented as being, but also only within the limits in which it ispresented there. (Hua 3/51, italics removed)

There has been ample discussion of how exactly to interpret thisprinciple, but Wiltsche has recently proposed the followingreconstruction:

If object P is exhibited to a subject S in intuitive givenness, then Shas at least prima facie justification for believing that P exists andthat P has those properties which are exhibited intuitively. (Wiltsche2015: 68; for more on Husserl’s theory of truth and knowledge,see Tugendhat 1970; Hopp 2011, 2020: 217–235)

To complicate matters, epistemic fulfillment can come in degrees andit is therefore also necessary to distinguish different types ofevidence. When an empty or signitive intention is completely fulfilledby a corresponding intuition, Husserl speaks of the object as beinggiven withadequate evidence (Hua 19/647 [2001/II:260–261]). But this ideal is never satisfied in ordinaryperception, which always remains inadequate. When I look at my desk,the desk is my intentional object, but I never see the entire deskfrom all sides at once. There is always more to the intended desk thanwhat shows itself at any given moment (Hua 11/3). This is not to saythat there is no room for evidence in perceptual experience, but it isprecisely a type ofinadequate evidence (Hua 3/319), i.e.,one that is “capable of being increased anddecreased” (Hua 3/321). More generally speaking, Husserlreadily recognizes that our beliefs can be overturned and that whatseemed evident can turn out not to be so—though only on thebasis of further evidence. As he writes inFormal andTranscendental Logic:

The possibility of deception is inherent in the evidence of experienceand does not annul either its fundamental character or its effect[…]. This too holds forevery evidence, for every“experience” in the amplified sense. Even an ostensiblyapodictic evidence can become disclosed as deception and, in thatevent, presupposes a similar evidence by which it is“shattered”. (Hua 17/164)

A further complication to add, concerns Husserl’s distinctionbetween simple intentions and more complex or categorial intentions. Ican think about and see a passport. But I can also see that thepassport is purple and that the passport is lying in the drawer, i.e.,I can not only perceive individuals and individual properties, butalso the passport’s-being-purple and state of affairs withformal or categorial elements. Importantly, just as one candistinguish between merely thinking about a tree and intuiting thetree in its self-presence, Husserl argues that, say, state of affairscan be given not only signitively, but also intuitively. It ispossible to intuit that the passport is lying in the drawer, but onlyby means of a higher-order act which, although based or founded onperceptions of the passport and the drawer, nevertheless intendssomething that transcends these objects, namely their relationship.Husserl consequently operates with an enlarged concept of intuition:We can not only speak of asensuous intuition, but also of acategorial intuition (Hua 19/670–685 [2001/II:280–289]). Formally speaking, the intuition is an act thatbrings us the object itselfin propria persona, andthis often calls for a complex intellectual performance (see alsoZahavi 2003: 35–37).

Given the way Husserl speaks of perception, it should by now not comeas a surprise that he explicitly rejects the idea that perceptualconsciousness is representationally mediated (Hua 22/305). Nothingmight seem more natural than to say that the objects I see are outsidemy consciousness and that I am able to do so because my consciousnesscontains internal representations of these external objects. However,as Husserl argues, this theory does not only not offer any realclarification of perceptual intentionality (Hua 19/436 [2001/II: 125];Hua 24/151), but is ultimately countersensical. It conceives ofconsciousness as a box containing representations that resembleexternal objects, but it forgets to ask how the subject is supposed toknow that the representations are in fact representations of externalobjects. As Husserl writes,

The ego is not a tiny man in a box that looks at the pictures and thenoccasionally leaves his box in order to compare the external objectswith the internal ones etc. For such a picture observing ego, thepicture would itself be something external; it would require its ownmatching internal picture, and so onad infinitum.(Hua 36/106)

If we actually do pay attention to perceptual intentionality, weshould realize that it does not confront us with pictures or signs ofobjects—except, of course, in so far as we are perceivingpaintings or photographs—but with the objects themselves. Whenwe see a photo of the Guggenheim Museum or Dürer’s portraitof Emperor Maximilian, we are faced with a complicated form ofintentionality, where our awareness of one entity (the photo orpainting) allows us to be aware of another thing (the building orperson). We are directed not at that which we perceive, but throughit, at something else. In ordinary perception, by contrast, theperceptually given does not function as a sign or picture of somethingelse. Some have argued that a picture is something that resembles whatit depicts, and that it is the resemblance that imbues the picturewith its pictorial or representational quality. But mere resemblanceswill not do. A matchbox contains numerous matches that resemble eachother, but that does not make one a picture or sign of the other.Rather, according to Husserl we should realize that a picture must beconsciously apprehendedas a picture in order to function asa representation of something else (Hua 36/106–107). It onlyacquires its representational quality by means of a special cognitiveapprehension (Hua 19/437 [2001/II: 125–126]). More specifically,we must perceive the object that is to function as a sign or picturein order to confer its representational quality upon it. This is whythe representational theory of perception must be rejected. Itpresupposes that which it seeks to explain (for recent discussions ofHusserl’s theory of perception, see Overgaard 2022, Doyon2024).

3. The transcendental turn: Epoché, phenomenological reduction, and transcendental idealism

The very attempt to offer a careful description of our psychologicallife, the very idea that intentionality is a distinctive feature ofmental states, can already be found in the work of Brentano, whoselectures in Vienna, as we have seen, Husserl had attended in the1880s. It is consequently natural to ask whether Husserl was notsimply continuing the project commenced by Brentano. There are goodreasons to resist this conclusion, however. One reason is thatBrentano explicitly defended the claim that psychology is thetheoretical science on which other disciplines including logic oughtto be based (Brentano 1874 [1973: 15–16]). A further number ofreasons is listed by Husserl in a late letter to Marvin Farber fromJune 18, 1937:

Even though I began in my youth as an enthusiastic admirer ofBrentano, I must admit I deluded myself, for too long, and in a wayhard to understand now, into believing that I was a co-worker on hisphilosophy, especially, his psychology. But in truth, my way ofthinking was a totally different one from that of Brentano already inmy first work […]. In a formal sense, Brentano asks for andprovides a psychology whose whole topic is the “psychicphenomena” which he on occasions defines also as“consciousness of something”. But his psychology isanything but a science of intentionality, the proper problems ofintentionality never dawned upon him. He even failed to see that nogiven experience of consciousness can be described without adescription of the correlated “intentional object ‘assuch’” (for example, that this perception of the desk canonly be described, when I describe this desk as what and just as it isperceived). (Husserl 1994: iv 82)

One important feature of Husserl’s theory of intentionality thatis highlighted in the quote is the idea that one cannot analyzeintentional experiences properly without also considering theirobjective correlate, i.e., the intended object (Hua 9/282).Ultimately, however, Husserl would also argue for the reverseimplication: We cannot philosophically comprehend what it means forsomething to be a perceived object, a remembered event, a judged stateof affairs, if we ignore the intentional states (the perception, theremembering, the judging) that reveal these objects to us. In his lastworkCrisis, Husserl would refer to this discovery of thecorrelational a priori as the decisive accomplishment ofLogical Investigations:

The first breakthrough of this universal a priori of correlationbetween experienced object and manners of givenness (which occurredduring work on myLogical Investigations around 1898)affected me so deeply that my whole subsequent life-work has beendominated by the task of systematically elaborating on this a prioriof correlation. (Hua 6/169 [1970: 166]; see also Beck 1928: 611)

In the first edition ofLogical Investigations, Husserl hadbeen so imprudent as to characterize phenomenology as descriptivepsychology (Hua 19/23–24 [2001/I: 176]). He soon came to regretthis as a serious mischaracterization (Hua 22/206–208), and afew years later, Husserl would argue that if one really wishes todevelop phenomenology as an a priori epistemology, if one reallywishes to understand the intentionality of consciousness and thephenomena, then one would have to leave a purely descriptivephenomenology behind in favor of a transcendental phenomenology (Hua24/425–427).

For Husserl, Descartes should always be recognized as the thinker whoinaugurated a new epoch-making type of philosophy by effectuating aradical first-personal turn from “naïve Objectivism totranscendental subjectivism” (Hua 1/46, see also Hua 6/83 [1970:81]). At the same time, however, Husserl also consideredDescartes’ own execution of this turn so flawed that he found itnecessary to “reject nearly all the well-known doctrinal contentof the Cartesian philosophy” (Hua 1/43). As for Kant, Husserlhad initially been strongly influenced by Brentano’s negativeappraisal, but he eventually came to realize the deep affinity betweenhis own project and that of Kant (Husserl 1994: v 4). And as Husserlexplicitly admits, when he decided to designate his own phenomenologyas ‘transcendental’, he was precisely pointing to theKantian legacy (Hua 7/230, 240).

Ideas I from 1913 marks Husserl’s explicit embrace oftranscendental philosophy. One significant difference betweenLogical Investigations andIdeas I is that Husserlin the intervening years came to the realization that certainmethodological steps—the epoché and transcendentalreduction—were required if phenomenology was to accomplish itsdesignated task. Whereas both methodological concepts are absent inLogical Investigations, they came to play a decisive role aspart of Husserl’s transcendental turn. In his introductoryremarks to the third part ofIdeas I, which contains anin-depth analysis of intentionality, Husserl writes that one can usethe term ‘phenomenology’ without having apprehended thetranscendental attitude, but that one in this case will be using theterm with no proper grasp of what it designates (Hua 3/200). But whatis the epoché and the reduction? One way to answer thisquestion is by looking closer at their motivation. Why were theyintroduced in the first place?

Husserl kept revising and refining his account in the years followingthe publication ofIdeas I, but one recurrent idea is hisemphasis on the difference between the philosophical attitude andother modes of experience and thinking. In ordinary life we are soabsorbed in the world that we simply take its reality for granted; itis simply there waiting to be discovered and investigated. This stancetowards the world is so fundamental and deeply rooted that Husserlcalls it thenatural attitude. It is an attitude that alsopervades positive science, but it must be contrasted with the properlyphilosophical attitude, which critically questions the very foundationof experience and scientific thought (Hua 25/13–14). Philosophyis a discipline that does not simply contribute to or augment thescope of our positive knowledge, but which instead investigates thebasis of this knowledge and asks how it is possible. Rather thansimply taking reality as the unquestioned point of departure, ratherthan focusing onwhat the world contains, we need to attendto the question of what it means for something to be given as real inthe first place, we need to focus on thehow of itsgivenness. Every object-oriented investigation presupposes thatobjects can appear in such a manner that they can be targets offurther exploration and explanation. And in order to examine thestructures that allow and enable such object-manifestation, a new typeof inquiry is called for, a type of reflective inquiry that“is prior to all natural knowledge and science and is on anentirely different plane than natural science” (Hua24/176). But for this investigation to be possible, we cannot simplycontinue to live in the natural attitude. We keep it, in order to beable to investigate it, but we bracket its validity. It is thisprocedure that is known by the name ofepoché.The purpose of the epoché is notto doubt, neglect, abandon, or exclude reality from our research;rather its aim is to suspend or neutralize a certain dogmaticattitude towards reality. We must take a step back from ournaive and unexamined immersion in the world and thematize the factthat reality is always revealed and examined from some perspective oranother. As Husserl points out in a lecture from 1931, the only thingthat is excluded as a result of the epoché is a certainnaivety, the naivety of simply taken the world for granted, therebyignoring the contribution of consciousness (Hua 27/173). And asHusserl repeatedly insists in this 1931 lecture, the turn from anaïve exploration of the world to a reflective exploration of itsgivenness does not entail a turning away from the world, rather, it isa turn that for the first time makes the world accessible forphilosophical inquiry (Hua 27/178). We do not lose the world as aresult of the epoché, but from now on it must be consideredsolely as an intentional correlate (Hua 34/58):

“The” world is not lost as a result of the epoché.The epoché is by no means a suspension of the being of theworld and of every world-oriented judgment; rather, it is the pathleading to the discovery of correlational judgements. (Hua 15/366)

The world as “phenomenon”, as world in the epoché,is merely a modality, in which the same ego, for whom the world ispregiven, reflects on this pregivenness and on what it contains, andfor that reason doesn’t abandon the world and its validity, normakes it disappear. (Hua 34/223)

To put it differently, by adopting the phenomenological attitude, wedo not turn the gaze inwards in order to examine the happenings in aprivate interior sphere. Rather we look at how the world shows up tothe subject. We pay attention to how and as what worldly objects aregiven to us. But in doing so, by analyzing how and as what any objectpresents itself to us, we also come to discover the intentional actsand experiential structures in relation to which any appearing objectmust necessarily be understood. We realize our own subjectiveaccomplishments and the intentionality that is at play in order forworldly objects to appear in the way they do and with the validity andmeaning that they have. This is why Husserl inCrisis cancompare the performance of the epoché to the transition from atwo-dimensional to a three-dimensional life (Hua 6/121 [1970: 119]).It is a reflective move that allows for an expansion rather than anarrowing of the field of research (Hua 1/66, 6/154 [1970: 151]).

Strictly speaking, the epoché can be seen as the first steptowards what Husserl terms thetranscendental reduction,which is his name for the systematic analysis of the intentionalcorrelation between subjectivity and world. This is a more prolongedanalysis thatleads from the natural sphereback to(re-ducere) its transcendental foundation (Hua1/21). Both epoché and reduction can consequently be seen aselements of a transcendental reflection, the purpose of which is toliberate us from our natural(istic) dogmatism and make the“correlation between constituting subjectivity and constitutedobjectivity intelligible” (Hua 9/336). Indeed, as Husserlalready pointed out inIdeas I, the greatest and mostimportant problems in phenomenology are related to the question of howobjectivities of different kinds, from the prescientific to those ofthe highest scientific dignity, are constituted by consciousness (Hua3/196). It is for this very reason, that Husserl can write that thereis not only a phenomenology of natural scientific thinking, but also aphenomenology of nature (qua correlate of consciousness) (Hua 3/159).That Husserl’s philosophical development has led him beyond anykind of (Brentanian) descriptive psychology is also made clear by thefollowing quote:

His [Kant’s] eternal significance lies in the much discussed butlittle understood “Copernican” turn to a fundamentally newand, what is more, strictly scientific interpretation of the sense ofthe world; but at the same time it lies in the first establishment ofa corresponding, and “entirely new”, science—thescience of the transcendental. (Hua 7/240)

InCrisis, Husserl describes phenomenology as the finalgestalt (Endform) of transcendental philosophy (Hua6/71 [1970: 70]); a transcendental philosophy that is characterized byits criticism of objectivism and by its elucidation of subjectivity asthe locus of all objective formations of sense and validity (Hua 6/102[1970: 99]). Rather than simply amounting to a limited exploration ofthe psychological domain, for Husserl an in-depth investigation ofintentionality led towards a transcendental philosophical elucidationof reality and objectivity and eventually towards a form oftranscendental idealism that insisted on the essential interconnectionbetween reason, truth, and being (Hua 1/117). As Husserl writes in alecture course from 1924,

In the phenomenological reduction, rightly understood, ispredelineated in essencethe marching route towards transcendentalidealism, just asphenomenology as a whole is nothingbutthe first rigorous scientific form of this idealism. (Hua8/181)

That Husserl is an idealist is incontestable, but the precisecharacter of this idealism remains contested. For some,Husserl’s idealism amounts to nothing more than a defense of theirreducibility of ideality (Willard 2011) or an insistence on theextent to which our intentional directedness relies on ideal meaning(D. W. Smith 2013: 166). For others, Husserl is a reductive idealistfor whom every being is to be deduced from or created by consciousness(Ingarden 1963 [1975]; Philipse 1995). There are also interpreters whoargue that Husserl’s transcendental method is concerned withmeaning rather than being; that it is the meaning of the world, ratherthan its being, that is constituted by transcendental subjectivity,and that Husser’s transcendental idealism can precisely bedistinguished from metaphysical idealism in that the latter, but notthe former, makes first-order claims about the nature of objects (Carr1999, Crowell 2001, Thomasson 2007).

Matters are not made easier by the fact that Husserl often insistedthat his own idealism differed radically from traditional forms ofidealism (Hua 5/149–53, 17/178, 1/33–34, 118),which—precisely in their opposition to realism—betrayedtheir inadequacy (Hua 5/151), and in the end, it is easier to say whatHusserl’s idealism is not, than to characterize it positively.Husserl is quite explicit in his rejection of phenomenalism andsubjective idealism. As he writes inIdeas I, a materialthing “is intrinsically not an experience but instead a totallydifferent kind of being” (Hua 3/71). That his idealism amountsto more than simply an emphasis on the irreducibility of ideality, ison the other hand clear from Husserl’s rejection of the ideathat the world is completely mind-independent:

The being-in-itself of the world might make good sense, but one thingis absolutely certain, it cannot have the sense that the world isindependent of an actually existing consciousness. (Hua 36/78)

And as for attempts to read Husserl as somebody not interested inmetaphysical questions, they are hard to reconcile withHusserl’s unequivocal dismissal of any non-metaphysicalinterpretations of transcendental phenomenology:

[T]ranscendental phenomenology in the sense I conceive it does in factencompass the universal horizon of the problems of philosophy[…] including as well all so-called metaphysical questions,insofar as they have possible sense in the first place. (Hua5/141)

As Husserl also writes, the topics of existence and non-existence, ofbeing and non-being, are all-embracing themes for phenomenology (Hua1/91), and it is the latter that offer a genuine transcendental methodfor dealing with metaphysical problems (Hua 9/253). Indeed, as EugenFink, Husserl’s last assistant and close collaborator, wrote inan article from 1939, only a fundamental misunderstanding of the aimof phenomenology would lead to the mistaken but often repeated claimthat Husserl’s phenomenology is not interested in reality or thequestion of being, but only in subjective meaning-formations inintentional consciousness (Fink 1939 [1981: 44]).

That there is a tight link between Husserl’s phenomenologicalmethod and his account of intentionality, and that one’sunderstanding of the former will influence one’s understandingof the latter (andvice versa) can be furtherillustrated by considering and comparing two very differentinterpretations of Husserl’s concept ofnoema.

InIdeas III, Husserl writes that a phenomenologicalinvestigation of consciousness doesn’t merely have to include ananalysis of the act of consciousness, thenoesis, but also ofthe correlate of consciousness, thenoema (Hua 5/84). Butwhat exactly is this correlate? According to what has become known asthe Fregean interpretation, an interpretation originally proposed byFøllesdal (1969), the noema must be interpreted in line withthe Fregean notion of sense (‘Sinn’) (D. W. Smith &McIntyre 1982: 81–82), and the intentionality of consciousnessin analogy with the reference of linguistic expressions(Føllesdal 1974: 96). According to this interpretation, thenoema must be sharply distinguished from both act and object. It is anabstract meaning or sense that mediates the intentional relationbetween act and object. The noema is consequently not that towardwhich consciousness is directed, but that by means of which it isdirected, that by virtue of which we achieve a reference to theexternal object. As Smith and McIntyre write, “for Husserl, anact is directed toward an objectvia an intermediate‘intentional’ entity, the act’s noema” (D. W.Smith & McIntyre 1982: 87), or as McIntyre puts it a laterarticle, “Intentionality, or representation, is again a‘mediated’ affair: a mental state represents an objectonly ‘via’ its noema” (McIntyre 1986: 105). Thisrepresentationalist interpretation often goes hand in handwith a particular understanding of Husserl’s transcendentalmethodology according to which Husserl is a committed methodologicalsolipsist and internalist. The very purpose of the epoché andreduction is to bracket all questions concerning external reality. Itis to turn our attention away from objects transcendent toconsciousness and towards the internal mental representations, thenoemata, in virtue of which we can be said to be directed at saidobjects (Dreyfus 1982: 108; McIntyre 1986: 102). On this account, ourmental representations have the function they have regardless of howthe world is and regardless of whether that which we are intentionallydirected at exists at all (Dreyfus & Hall 1982b: 14). Indeed, asMcIntyre puts it, for Husserl, the problem of intentionality was not aquestion of how mental states relate to the world, but rather of howmental states come to have an internal representational character,“which makes themas though actually related toextra-mental things whether they are so or not” (McIntyre 1986:108).

An alternative interpretation has been offered by Sokolowski andDrummond. On their understanding, we continue to be concerned withworldly objects after the reduction, but we now no longer considerthem naively, rather we examine them precisely as they are intendedand given, that is qua intentional correlates. But to investigate thecorrelate of consciousness, the noema, the object-as-it-is-intended,i.e., the perceived object as perceived, the recollected episode asrecollected, the judged state-of-affair as judged etc., is preciselyto investigate the object itself in its significance for us(Sokolowski 1987: 525, 527); it is not to suddenly redirect theattention towards some abstract representational intermediary betweensubject and object. On thispresentationalist interpretationof Husserl, the object-as-it-intended and the object-that-is-intendedare consequently not two different ontological entities (Drummond1990: 108–109), but two different perspectives on one and thesame, and it is paramount not to conflate the ordinary worldly objectconsidered in a non-ordinary (transcendental) attitude with anon-ordinary abstract mental representation, and to suggest thatHusserl’s concern is with the latter (Drummond 1992: 89).

One possible explanation for the existence of such divergentinterpretations is the ambiguity of Husserl’s early discussionof the noema (Bernet 1990). Some interpreters have argued thatHusserl’s discussion inIdeas I vacillates between apsychological and a transcendental conception of the noema and bothStröker and Fink have argued that whereas it is possible todistinguish between the noema and the intended object as long as oneremains within the natural attitude, such a distinction is no longerappropriate the moment one adopts a transcendental attitude. From thatperspective, the noema is the constituted object and it would be amistake to suggest that the real object should lie beyond the noematicsphere (Fink 1933 [2000: 117]; Ströker 1987: 194–200).

As these disagreements make clear, however, any plausibleinterpretation of Husserl’s theory of intentionality must gohand-in-hand with a proper grasp of his phenomenological method, andthat will also involve taking a stance on the nature of histranscendental idealism (Zahavi 2017).

Husserl’s transcendental idealism is not a form of monism. Itsadversary is not materialism, or dualism, and it is not making anyclaims about the ultimate ‘stuff’ of reality. Its coreclaim is that the study of intentionality doesn’t merely tell ussomething about the workings of the mind, but also provides us withinsights into the status of reality. It does so since mind and worldare bound together. For Husserl, the world cannot be reduced to ordissolved in consciousness, but nor can it be divorced fromconsciousness. Already inLogical Investigations, Husserlargued that the facile divide between inside and outside has itsorigin in a naïve metaphysics and is inappropriate for a properunderstanding of the nature of intentionality (Hua 19/673, 708[2001/II: 281–282, 304]). Husserl’s dismissal of thecommonsensical divide between mind and world is even more pronouncedafter his transcendental turn. For Husserl, it is as misleading toregard the world as somehow external to the mind as it is to conceiveof consciousness as some kind of container. It is as wrong to claimthat consciousness absorbs the world in knowing it as it is to saythat consciousness must literally get outside of itself in order toreach the world. The lesson of intentionality is precisely thatconsciousness is open to the world, a world that is accessible to andconstituted by consciousness.

Husserl’s main objection to naturalism is that it by reducingconsciousness to an object in the world fails to recognize thetranscendental dimension of consciousness. As he occasionally puts it,the “naturalization of the psychic” and more generally,the rise of “physicalistically oriented naturalism” (Hua6/64 [1970: 63]) is due to a “blindness to thetranscendental” (Hua 6/269 [1970: 265]). Rather than simplybeing an object in the world, consciousness is also a subject for theworld, i.e., a necessary condition of possibility for any entity toappear as an object in the way it does and with the meaning it has.Husserl would agree with Kant that reality is necessarily a realityfor-us and that the right place to locate objectivity is in, ratherthan beyond, the world of experience. But since Husserl also rejectsthe Kantian notion of an inaccessible and ungraspable thing-in-itself(Ding an sich) as unintelligible andcountersensical (Hua 1/38–39, 11/19–20, 39/726), heremoves any reason to demote the status of the reality we experienceto one that is “merely” for us.

4. Time- and self-consciousness

Husserl’s first significant writings on temporality can be foundearly on, namely in hisLectures on the Phenomenology of theConsciousness of Internal Time (1905). It was a topic that inHusserl’s own words, would constitute one of the most difficultand fundamental areas in phenomenology (Hua 10/276, 334, 3/182), andwhich would preoccupy him for the rest of his life (for extensivetreatments of Husserl’s philosophy of time, see Held 1966,Brough 1972, Kortooms 2002, Rodemeyer 2006, Lohmar & Yamaguchi2010, de Warren 2009).

Husserl early on recognized that his investigation of intentionalitywould remain incomplete as long as he ignored the temporal dimensionof the intentional acts and intentional objects. We can explore thedifferent sides of a table, we can hear an enduring tone, we can seethe flight of a bird. In each of these cases, the object underinvestigation is temporally extended. But how is it that the differentsides of the table are perceived as synthetically integrated moments,rather than as disjointed fragments? How is it that we can actuallysee the smooth continuous movement of the bird? Husserl’s mainclaim is that a perception of a temporally extended object as well asthe perception of succession and change would be impossible ifconsciousness provided us only with a momentary or pure now-slice ofthe object and if the stream of consciousness itself was a series ofunconnected points of experiencing, like a line of pearls. If ourperception was restricted to being conscious of what exists right now,it would be impossible to perceive anything with temporal extensionand duration, for a succession of isolated, punctual, conscious statesdoes not, as such, enable us to be conscious of succession andduration. Since we obviously do experience succession and duration, wemust acknowledge that our consciousness, one way or the other, canencompass more than what is given right now—it must beco-conscious of what has just been, and what is just about to occur.The crucial question is how? One suggestion would be to say that weperceive what occurs right now, remember what is no longer and imaginewhat has not yet occurred. But according to Husserl, we do have anintuitive presentation of succession and he would consequently insiston the phenomenological difference between hearing a melody or seeinga movement (that necessarily extends in time) and remembering orimagining either.

Husserl’s own alternative is to insist on thewidth ofpresence. Consider the case where we are hearing a short sequenceof a melody consisting of the tones C, D, and E. If we focus on thelast part of this perception, the one that occurs when the tone Esounds, we do not find a consciousness that is exclusively consciousof the tone E, but a consciousness that is still conscious of the twoformer notes D and C. And not only that, we find a consciousness thatstillhears the first two notes (it neither imagines norremembers them). This does not mean that there is no differencebetween our consciousness of the present tone E and our consciousnessof the tones D and C. D and C are not simultaneous with E, on thecontrary, we are hearing a temporal succession. D and C are tones thathave been and they are being perceived as sinking into the past, whichis why we are experiencing the sequence in its temporal duration,rather than isolated tones that replace each other abruptly.

Husserl employs three technical terms to describe the temporalstructure of consciousness: There is (i) a ‘primalimpression’ narrowly directed toward the strictly circumscribednow-phase of the object. The primal impression never occurs inisolation and is an abstract component that by itself cannot provideus with a perception of a temporal object. The primal impression isaccompanied by (ii) a ‘retention’, or retentional aspect,which provides us with a consciousness of the just-elapsed phase ofthe object thereby furnishing the primal impression with apast-directed temporal context, and by (iii) a‘protention’, or protentional aspect, which in amore-or-less indefinite way intends the phase of the object about tooccur thereby providing a future-oriented temporal context for theprimal impression (Hua 9/201).

In this way, it becomes evident that concrete perception as originalconsciousness (original givenness) of a temporally extended object isstructured internally as itself a streaming system of momentaryperceptions (so-called primary impressions). But each such momentaryperception is the nuclear phase of a continuity, a continuity ofmomentary gradated retentions on the one side, and a horizon of whatis coming on the other side: a horizon of ‘protention’,which is disclosed to be characterized as a constantly gradatedcoming. (Hua 9/202)

The concrete and full temporal structure of any ongoing experience isconsequentlyprimal impression-retention-protention. Althoughthe specific experiential contents will change progressively frommoment to moment, at any given moment this threefold structure ofinner time-consciousness is present as a unified field ofexperiencing.

Let us take another look at the sequence C, D, and E. When C is firstheard, it is presenced in the primal impression. When it is succeededby D, D is given in the primal impression, whereas C is retained inthe retention, and when E sounds, it replaces D in the primalimpression, whereas D is retained in the retention. However, theretention is not merely a retention of the tone which has just passed.Every time a new tone is presenced in a primal impression, the entireretentional sequence is recapitulated and modified. When the tone C issucceeded by the tone D, our impressional consciousness of D isaccompanied by a retention of C (Dc). When D is succeeded by the toneE, our impressional consciousness of E is accompanied both by aretention of D (Ed) and by a retention of the tone retained in D (Ec),and so forth (Hua 10/81, 100). Each phase of consciousness retains theprevious phase of consciousness. Since the previous phase includes itsown retention of a previous phase, there is a retentional continuumthat stretches back through prior experience. When a tone sinks intothe past, it retains its identity and position vis-à-vis theother tones, although its mode of givenness changes, i.e., although itis constantly given in new temporal perspectives (for instance, C, Dc,Ec, Fc).

It is important to distinguish retention and protention, which arestructural components of any ongoing intentional act and which occurwithout our active or deliberate contribution, from episodic memoryand episodic future thinking that are intentional acts in their ownright, which presuppose the work of retention and protention. There isa clear difference between retaining notes that have just sounded andremembering listening to a certain melody last summer. Unlike episodicmemory, retention offers an intuitive grasp of the just-past; itdoesn’t just re-present or reconstruct it. Likewise, there is aclear difference between protending notes about to sound and lookingforward to tonight’s concert. As Husserl also points out, it isprotention that allows for the experience of surprise. If I amlistening to a favorite melody and someone hits the wrong note, I amsurprised or disappointed. I will likewise be surprised if I open adoor and find a stone wall behind it. But it only makes sense to speakof surprise in the light of a certain anticipation of what theimminent course of experience will provide (Hua 11/7).

Why does Husserl ascribe such fundamental importance to this analysisof time-consciousness? We have already come across one reason. Were itnot for the specific temporal organization of the stream ofconsciousness, it would be impossible to experience temporally unifiedobjects. When I move around a tree in order to gain a fullerperceptual presentation of it, then the various profiles of thetree—its front, sides, and back—are perceived assynthetically integrated moments. Temporal synthesis is a preconditionfor this perceptual synthesis. But let me point to two furtherreasons.

Towards the end of World War I, Husserl’s growing appreciationof the persisting influence of the past made him start operating witha distinction between what he calledstatic andgenetic phenomenology. Static phenomenology is the type ofphenomenology that we encounter inLogical Investigations. Ifwe consider some of its formative analyses of perceptualintentionality, they were all conducted with no regard for genesis andhistoricity. The primary task was to account for the relation betweenthe act and the object, but in either case the type of intentional actand the type of object were taken to be readily available. As Husserlcame to realize, however, what appears as a straightforward experiencemight in fact be enabled by earlier experiences. Through a process ofsedimentation, prior experiences leave their trace in us andthereby contribute to the formation of cognitive schemas and differentforms of apprehension and expectations which guide, motivate, andinfluence subsequent experiences. As Husserl writes inIdeasII,

The Ego always lives in the medium of its ‘history’; allits earlier lived experiences have sunk down, but they haveaftereffects in tendencies, sudden ideas, transformations orassimilations of earlier lived experiences, and from suchassimilations new formations are merged together. (Hua 4/338)

More generally speaking, Husserl would not only argue that morecomplex and demanding forms of intentionality (say conceptualjudgments) presuppose more basic types of pre-predicative, perceptual,intentionality (Husserl 1939: 66 [1973: 64]), but also that even themost primitive intentional activity presupposes a preceding passivity,since to be active is to react to something, something that isaffecting us passively (Hua 4/213, 337, 11/64, 84; see also Holenstein1972, Montavont 1999). The task of genetic phenomenology was then toexplore these temporally layered processes of constitution (Hua11/345). The scope of genetic phenomenology remained restricted to theexperiential life of an individual ego, but in the last phase of histhinking, Husserl ventured into what has been calledgenerativephenomenology (Steinbock 1995). The focus was broadened toinvestigate the constitutive role of tradition and history. In whatway are the accomplishments of previous generations operative in ourindividual experiences? As Husserl would put it in a manuscript fromthe twenties, “everything of my own is founded, in part throughthe tradition of my ancestors, in part through the tradition of mycontemporaries” (Hua 14/223).

The most important reason for Husserl’s insistence on theimportance of time is, however, to be located elsewhere. InLogical Investigations, Husserl had confined himself to ananalysis of the relation between the constituted object and theconstituting consciousness. He accounted for the way in which thegivenness of objects is conditioned by intentional subjectivity, butapart from stressing that experiences are not given in the same way asspatial objects, he did not pursue the question concerning thegivenness of subjectivity itself in any detail. This was, however, aclear lacuna. As Husserl writes,

[E]very experience is ‘consciousness’, and consciousnessis consciousnessof … But every experience isitself experienced [erlebt], andtothat extent also ‘conscious’ [bewußt].(Hua 10/291)

The reason why Husserl came to speak of the analysis of temporality asconstituting the bedrock of phenomenology was precisely because it wassupposed to account for the temporal self-givenness of consciousness.On the one hand, Husserl was faced with the following conundrum. Ourperceptual objects are temporal, but what about our very perceptionsof these objects. Are they also subjugated to the strict laws oftemporal constitution? Are they also temporal unities, which arise,endure, and perish? And if they are, how do we avoid an infiniteregress? If the experienced duration and unity of a melody areconstituted by consciousness, and if our consciousness of the melodyis itself experienced with duration and unity, are we then not forcedto posit yet another consciousness to account for the experience ofthis duration and unity, and so forthad infinitum(Hua 10/80)? To avoid this conclusion, Husserl rejected the assumptionthat the temporality of the objects of consciousness and thetemporality of the consciousness of objects coincide:

Is it inherently absurd to regard the flow of time as anobjectivemovement?Certainly! On the other hand, memory is surelysomething that itself hasits now, and the same now as atone, for example. No. There lurks the fundamental mistake.Theflow of the modes of consciousness is not a process; the consciousnessof the now is not itself now. The retention that exists‘together’ with the consciousness of the now is not‘now’, isnot simultaneous with the now, and itwould make no sense to say that it is. (Hua 10/333)

One way to understand this enigmatic statement is by recognizing thatconsciousness is not simply a consciousnessof time, but isitself a form of time, and that it might be problematic to ascribetemporal predicates to time itself. Just as my experience of a redcircle is neither circular nor red, the primal impressions,retentions, and protentions are not ‘present’,‘past’, or ‘future’ in the way empiricalobjects are (Hua 10/75, 376). Their relations are not relations amongitems located within the temporal flow; but are relations thatconstitute the flow in question. It is their very conjunction which inthe first instance makes possible the senses of present, past, andfuture.

On the other hand, Husserl’s analysis of the temporal structureof consciousness eventually led him to the vexed problem ofself-consciousness (Zahavi 1999), where he would defend the existenceofpre-reflective self-consciousness and argue thatconsciousness is characterized by an inherent reflexivity alreadyprior to any act of reflection (Hua 17/279–80, 4/118,15/492–3). As a central passage has it:

The flow of the consciousness that constitutes immanent time not onlyexists but is so remarkably and yet intelligibly fashionedthat a self-appearance of the flow necessarily exists in it, andtherefore the flow itself must necessarily be apprehensible in theflowing. The self-appearance of the flow does not require a secondflow; on the contrary, it constitutes itself as a phenomenon initself. (Hua 10/83)

Whereas objects, by definition, appear as objects for a subject, andnot for themselves (Hua 35/278), subjects are self-manifesting orself-constituting. This is one reason why Husserl occasionally speaksof objects as relative and dependent, and subjects as absolute (Hua35/282).

Husserl’s view on whether phenomenology had somethingsignificant to say about not only intentional experiences, but alsoabout the subject, I, or ego of these experiences underwent decisivechanges over the years. In the first edition of theLogicalInvestigations, Husserl denied that intentional states arenecessarily owned by anybody and explicitly rejected the existence ofsome kind of pure identical ego-pole (Hua 19/390 [2001/II: 100]).Indeed, referring to the Kantian notion of the ego of pureapperception, Husserl writes that he has been “quite unable tofind this ego, this primitive, necessary centre of relations”(Hua 19/374 [2001/II: 92]). By the time of the second edition ofLogical Investigations (1913), Husserl had, however, changedhis mind, and now writes that he no longer endorses his old attituderegarding the existence of the pure ego. As he remarks, he had in themeantime learned to find it or rather learned not to let his aversionto different forms of ego-metaphysics blind him to itsphenomenological presence (Hua 19/374 [2001/II: 92], see also Marbach1974). On Husserl’s later view, a consideration of experiencessuch as concentrating on a task, making a decision, suffering aslight, feeling ashamed or scolding somebody, will not only disclosethat the experiences are intentional, are experiences ofsomething, but also that they are forsomeone, theyalso include a reference to the subject as the agent or patient of theact (Hua 4/310, 9/315), for which reason their full intentionalstructure must be namedego-cogito-cogitatum (Hua6/173 [1970: 170]). As Husserl makes clear, however, the pure ego isnot something “mysterious or mystical” but simply anothername for the subject of experience (Hua 4/97). It doesn’t“harbor any hidden inner richness” (Hua 4/105). It is notonly pure, but also poor in terms of content.

Although the pure ego must be distinguished from the experiences inwhich it lives and functions, since the former preserves its identity,whereas the latter arise and perish in the stream of consciousness, itcannot in any way exist independently of them, or be thought inseparation from them (andvice versa):

On the one hand, we must definitely here distinguish the pure Ego fromthe acts themselves, as that which functions in them and which,through them, relates to Objects; on the other hand, this distinctioncan only be an abstract one. It is abstract to the extent that the Egocannot be thought of as something separated from these livedexperiences, from its ‘life’, just as, conversely, thelived experiences are not thinkable except as the medium of the lifeof the Ego. (Hua 4/99)

Despite the obvious changes that occur after the first edition ofLogical Investigations, it is noteworthy that Husserl neverargued that the temporal unity of consciousness is secured by the ego.This remains true even after Husserl’s “egological”turn. As he repeatedly emphasizes, the most fundamental constitutivesynthesis of them all, the very process of temporalization, is apurely passive process that by no means is controlled by the ego (Hua11/235–236). Indeed, as Husserl would eventually put it, a“structural analysis of the primal present (the standing livingstream) leads us to the ego-structure and to the constant substratumof egoless streaming which founds it” (Hua 15/598).

5. Embodiment, intersubjectivity and objectivity

Already in lectures onThing and Space from 1907, Husserlstressed the importance of embodiment for perceptual intentionality(see also Heinämaa 2003, Taipale 2014). Spatial objects appearperspectivally. When we perceive an object, it never appears in itstotality, but always from a certain limited perspective. When werealize that that which appears spatially always appears at a certaindistance and from a certain angle, the implication is straightforward:Every perspectival appearance presupposes that the experiencingsubject is itself located in space, and since the subject onlypossesses a spatial location due to its embodiment (Hua 4/33), spatialobjects can only appear for and be constituted by embodied subjects.There is no pure point of view and there is no view from nowhere,there is only an embodied point of view. As an experiencing, embodiedsubject, I am the point of reference, the experiential zero-point orabsolute here, in relation to which all of my perceptual objects, bethey near or far, left or right, up or down, are uniquely related:

It is thus that all things of the surrounding world possess anorientation to the body […]. The ‘far’ is far fromme, from my body; the ‘to the right’ refers back to theright side of my lived body, e.g., to my right hand. […] I haveall things over and against me; they are all‘there’—with the exception of one and only one,namely the body, which is always ‘here’. (Hua 4/158)

More generally, Husserl argues that the body is essentially involvedin the perception of and interaction with spatial objects, and thatevery worldly experience is mediated by and made possible by ourembodiment (Hua 4/56). In fact, we cannot first study the body andnext investigate it in its relation to the world. The world is givento us as bodily explored, and the body is revealed to us in itsexploration of the world (Hua 15/287).

A central distinction introduced by Husserl is the one between (a) ouroriginal unthematic, pre-reflectively lived body-awareness thataccompanies and conditions every spatial experience, and (b) thesubsequent thematic experienceof the body as an object. Itis necessary to distinguish the body as it is subjectively livedthrough (Leib), and the body as an object amongothers (Körper). As Husserl insists, thelatter form of body-awareness depends upon the former:

Here it must also be noted that in all experience of things, the livedbody is co-experienced as a functioning lived body (thus not as a merething), and that when it itself is experienced as a thing, it isexperienced in a double way—i.e., precisely as an experiencedthing and as a functioning lived body together in one. (Hua 14/57)

But why is it that the tactually or visually explored body can stillbe experienced as the exteriority ofmy own body? Husserlhere highlights the importance of double-sensation or double-touch(something that was subsequently picked up by Merleau-Ponty (1945[2012: 194])). When my left hand touches my right hand, the lefttouching hand feels the surface of the right touched hand. But thetouched right hand is not simply given as a mere object, since itfeels the touch itself (Hua 4/145). Moreover, the relation between thetouching and the touched is reversible, since the right hand can alsotouch the left hand. The reversibility demonstrates not only that thebodily interiority and exteriority are different manifestations of thesame (Hua 14/75) but also points to the dual nature of the body, whichis “simultaneously a spatial externality and a subjectiveinternality” (Hua 9/197).

Husserl’s discussion of embodiment did not only feed into hisaccount of perceptual intentionality and self-consciousness, but alsoinfluenced his extensive and wide-reaching investigation ofintersubjectivity, which ranges from explorations of concreteinterpersonal encounters, through investigations of the constitutionof various forms of sociality and historical communities, to thedevelopment of a new type of transcendental philosophy. Let me discusseach of these topics in turn.

Whereas Husserl’s investigation of intentionality inLogischeUntersuchungen (1900–1) paid scantattention to the problem of intersubjectivity, the situation soonchanged. Within five years, Husserl was working on empathy (as shownby texts gathered inHusserliana 13). Initially,Husserl’s discussion of empathy was informed by his encounterwith the work of Theodor Lipps, the influential philosopher andpsychologist, who was also the teacher of a number of Munichphenomenologists. In various writings, Lipps had defended the viewthat empathy is asui generis kind of knowledge,one that provides us with knowledge of other minds, and which could beexplained in terms of specific mechanisms of imitation and projection(Lipps 1909). Husserl disagreed with Lipps’ explanation and inhis own writings often used the term empathy (Einfühlung)interchangeably with the termsother-experience (Fremderfahrung) orother-perception (Fremdwahrnehmung). InPhenomenological Psychology, Husserl declared that “theso-called ‘empathy’” is “the intentionality inone’s own ego which leads into the alien ego” (Hua 9/321),and one of the recurrent questions that kept preoccupying Husserl wasprecisely how to understand the intentional structure of empathy (seealso Depraz 1995; A. D. Smith 2003; Zahavi 2014).

The answer provided by Husserl is remarkably consistent throughout hiscareer, though it is an answer that remains characterized by animportant vacillation: Empathy is both like and unlike perception. Insome places, Husserl writes that empathy is a distinct and direct kindof empirical experience, one that allows the empathizing ego toexperience the psychical life of other subjects (Hua 13/187). Husserlalso claims that empathy is what allows the other to be present to me,perceptually present (Hua 15/514), and that the other is given in hisbeing-for-me (für-mich-sein) in empathy, andthat this counts as a form of perception (Hua 14/352, 15/641).Indeed,

It would be countersensical to say that it [alien subjectivity] isinferred and not experienced when given in this original form ofempathic presentation. For every hypothesis concerning an aliensubject presupposes the ‘perception’ of this subject asalien, and empathy is precisely this perception. (Hua 14/352; see alsoHua 8/63)

The link between empathy and embodiment comes to the fore, whenHusserl writes that the mindedness of others is present in theirgestures, in their facial expressions and intonation, and that it isempathy that allows us to grasp the psychological significance of theothers’ expressivity (Hua 4/235, 244).

At the same time, however, Husserl also insists that even the mostperfect perception of the psychical life of another lacks theoriginality of self-experience. There will always, and by necessity,be a difference in givenness between that which I am aware of when Iempathize with the other, and that which the other is experiencing.Empathy cannot give us the empathized experience itself in itsoriginal first-personal presence (Hua 13/347, 440).

As Husserl repeatedly stresses, however, the fact that my experientialaccess to the minds of others differs from my experiential access tomy own mind is not an imperfection or shortcoming. On the contrary, itis a difference that is constitutional. It is precisely because ofthis difference, precisely because of this asymmetry, that we canclaim that the minds we experience areother minds. AsHusserl points out, had I had the same access to the consciousness ofthe other as I have to my own, the other would cease being another andwould instead become a part of me (Hua 1/139).

That we can actually experience (rather than merely infer or imagine)the minds of others is not to say that everything is open to view.Directness does not entail infallibility or exhaustiveness. Anotherperson’s psychical life is not exposed in such a way that weimmediately, effortlessly, and infallibly have complete access to herinnermost thoughts and feelings. As Husserl points out, the perceptionof others is always partial and is always open for correction (Hua13/225). In fact, there will always be an indeterminate horizon of notexpressed interiority (Hua 20–2/70), and a complete knowledge ofthe other will forever remain impossible. Furthermore, sometimes ourdirect acquaintance with others might be limited to the barerecognition of their existence.

When I empathically understand the embodied other, the other is notgiven to me as a pure nucleus of experience, but as a centre ofintentionality, as a different perspective on the very world that Ialso inhabit. Rather than facing the other as an isolated object, herintentionality will typically pull me along and make me co-attend herworldly objects (Hua 13/411, 14/140, 287, 4/168).

This is, of course, one reason why our perception of others is sounlike our ordinary perception of objects. As soon as the otherappears, my relation to the world will change, since the other willalways be given to me in a situation or meaningful context that pointsback to the other as a new centre of reference. The meaning the worldhas for the other affects the meaning it has for me. In general, myown perspective on the world will be enriched through my empathicunderstanding of the other. Husserl consequently emphasizes theinterrelation between the experience of others and the constitution ofa shared world.

We are in a relation to a common surrounding world—we are in apersonal association: these belong together. We could not be personsfor others if a common surrounding world did not stand there for us ina community, in an intentional linkage of our lives. Correlativelyspoken, the one is constituted essentially with the other. (Hua4/191)

At the same time, however, as Husserl notes, I can also be part ofwhat the other intends. So again, when I experience others, I do notmerely experience them as psychophysical objects in the world, ratherI experience them as subjects who experience worldly objects, myselfincluded (Hua 15/4–5, 1/158). We encounter others as such whenwe encounter them as experiencing subjects, and this means as subjectsthat have a perspective not just upon the world of objects, but uponus as well. In fact, through my experience of others, I can also cometo attain a new experience of myself. To that extent, empathy canfunction as an important source of self-knowledge (Hua 1/149). It is,for instance, by indirectly experiencing myself as one viewed byothers, i.e., through a process of mediated self-experience, that Iaccording to Husserl can come to experience myself as a human being(Hua 15/13, 665).

In manuscripts from the early twenties and thirties, Husserl arguesthat my empathic experience of another, who is, in turn,experientially directed at myself, such that my experience of theother involves a co-experience of myself, is a condition ofpossibility for we-intentionality (Hua 8/136–137). Morespecifically, Husserl explores what happens when I address the otherand when the other is aware that he is being addressed and when hereciprocates. When both of us become aware that we are beingexperienced and understood by the other, we are dealing withcommunicative acts through which a higher interpersonal unity—awe—can be established (Hua 4/192–194, 242). Husserlconsequently emphasizes the centrality of communication for theconstitution of the we (Hua 14/473). It is precisely by“speaking, listening, and replying” that subjects“form a we that is unified, communalized in a specificway” (Hua 15/476). Husserl often refers to the we that isgenerated out of this intentional co-determination or interlocking asan “I-you community” (Hua 15/476) or as a“communicative community” (Mitteilungsgemeinschaft)(Hua 15/475).

Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of communities, which canbe seen as a contribution to both social philosophy and socialontology (the latter concept was already used by Husserl in 1910 (Hua13/98)) is wide-ranging and characterized by a distinct bottom-upapproach (Perreau 2013, Szanto 2016, Zahavi 2025). Not only does hisinvestigation move from dyadic relations to increasingly complexsocial formations, but he also emphasizes the extent to which socialformations that are established through specific forms of intentionalactivity are founded upon pre-theoretical, passive, and instinctualforms of connectedness (Hua 9/486, 514). Husserl speaks of theparent-child connection as the most original of all, and then explainshow the scope of one’s social environment as a result ofone’s socialization increasingly widens to include siblings,friends, the local community and eventually “my nation with itscustoms, its language, etc.” (Hua 15/511).

An idea that gained increasing prominence in Husserl’s thinkingwas that a proper clarification of objectivity understood as thatwhich is ‘valid for everybody’ requires an in-depthanalysis of intersubjectivity (Hua 17/209). In § 61 ofCartesian Meditations, Husserl criticized Scheler for havingoverlooked that our experience of others has transcendentalimplications, insofar as objectivity is intersubjectively constituted.Or as he also puts it, only constitutive (or transcendental)phenomenology can capture the true sense of the problem of empathy(Hua 1/173). How should one understand a claim like this? One ofHusserl’s arguments is that it is through my encounter withanother subject that I can come to realize that my own perspective onthe world is only one among many, and that it is when I realize thatothers experience the same objects as I do, that I can come toexperience said objects as being more than merely objects-for-me,i.e., as objective and real. In this way, the very notion of objectivereality becomes linked to intersubjective availability or negativelyformulated, that which in principle is inaccessible to others cannotbe ascribed objective validity (17/248, 13/382, 388–89,14/277).

Husserl occasionally writes that his phenomenological treatment ofintersubjectivity has the goal of bringing his constitutive analysesto completion; a completion that is achieved the moment it is realizedthat transcendental intersubjective sociality is the basis in whichall objective truth and all true being have their intentional source(cf. Hua 1/35, 182, 8/449, 9/344). As he writes in a late text:

Transcendental intersubjectivity is the absolute and onlyself-sufficient ontological foundation [Seinsboden],out of which everything objective (thetotality of objectively real entities, but also every objective idealworld) draws its sense and its validity. (Hua 9/344)

When claiming that there is no other meaningful true reality than theone we would agree upon at the end of the road of inquiry, and thatobjectivity is the correlate of an ideal intersubjective concordance(Hua 1/138), Husserl comes close to the position of Peirce (1868[1955: 247]).

In one of his longest texts on Kant, the textKant and the Idea ofTranscendental Philosophy, a text written for and presented incommemoration of Kant’s bicentennial in 1924, Husserl writesthat transcendental philosophy should be based upon a systematicdescription and analysis of consciousness in all of its modalities(Hua 7/234–235). It is this demand which eventually necessitatesanextension of Kant’s concept of the transcendental,since it proves necessary to include the humanities and the manifoldof human sociality and culture in the transcendental analysis (Hua7/282). This line of thinking is further elaborated some years later,when Husserl writes that

as long as one interprets transcendental subjectivity as an isolatedego and—like the Kantian tradition—ignores the whole taskof establishing the legitimacy of the transcendental community ofsubjects, any prospect of a transcendental knowledge of self and worldis lost. (Hua 29/120)

It is consequently no coincidence that Husserl at times describes hisown project as asociological transcendental philosophy (Hua9/539) and even declares that the development of phenomenologynecessarily implies the move from an

‘egological’ … phenomenology into a transcendentalsociological phenomenology having reference to a manifest multiplicityof conscious subjects communicating with one another. (Husserl 1981:68)

In research manuscripts subsequently published inZurPhänomenologie der Intersubjektivität III, we findHusserl developing these ideas further, for instance through extensiveanalyses of the role of normality.

Initially, Husserl had primarily discussed the extent to which ourexperiences and apprehensions are guided by anticipations of normalityas part of his investigation of individual intentionality. But as hecame to realize, what counts as normal is primarily something I learnfrom others (Hua 15/428–29, 569, 602–4). Normality is alsoa tradition-bound set of norms. Husserl also refers tonormallife asgenerative life and states that every (normal)human being ishistorical by virtue of being constituted as amember of a historically enduring community (Hua 15/138–39,431). Already inIdeas II, Husserl had pointed to the factthat there, next to the tendencies originating from other persons,also exist indeterminate general demands made by custom and tradition:‘One’ judges thus, ‘one’ holds the fork insuch and such a way, etc. (Hua 4/269). Eventually, Husserl would go onto claim that the subject's birth into a living tradition hasconstitutive implications. It is not merely the case that I live in aworld, which is permeated by references to others, and which othershave already furnished with meaning, or that I understand the world(and myself) through a traditional, handed down, linguisticconventionality. The very meaning that the world has for me is suchthat it has its origin outside of me, in a historical past. As Husserlwrites inCrisis, being embedded in “the unitary flowof a historical development”—in a generative nexus ofbirth and death—belongs as indissolubly to the I as does itstemporal form (Hua 6/256 [1970: 253]). We are typically born into thenatural community of a family, and the family is embedded within alarger cultural community, a community with its own transmittedbeliefs, practices, customs, and rules. By being socialized, weinherit and appropriate a tradition that is passed down overgenerations; a tradition that comes to normatively regulate, orient,and organize our experiences and actions by serving as a guide for howone ought to act and think (Hua 15/136). In the volumeZurPhänomenologie der IntersubjektivitätIII, Husserl even argues that the being and truth of absoluteobjectivity corresponds to a subject-relative normality (Hua 15/35),and that its constitution can be understood as the culmination of thedevelopment of transcendental intersubjectivity, which is to beconceived precisely as an ongoing unified process of cultivating evernewer system of norms at ever higher levels (Hua 15/421).

The fact that Husserl’s phenomenology operates with an enlargednotion of the transcendental, the fact that it includes topics such asembodiment and intersubjectivity in its transcendental analysis, thefact that reality for Husserl is transcendentally correlated with acommunity of embodied subjects (Hua 36/135) gives Husserl’sconception of transcendental philosophy a quite different scope andcharacter than the classical Kantian conception (Zahavi 1996 [2001]).As Merleau-Ponty rightly points out in the preface toPhenomenology of Perception “Husserl’stranscendental is not Kant’s” (1945 [2012: lxxvii]), or asit has been articulated more recently by Heinämaa, Hartimo, andMiettinen:

Husserl’s relation to the very content of transcendentalphilosophy can be viewed as a radicalization, a rearticulation, and adistention of the Kantian concept of the transcendental. It was aradicalization insofar as Husserl extended the transcendental critiquealso to logic that Kant had taken for granted. It was a rearticulationinsofar as Husserl, by emphasizing the idea of givenness rather thandeduction, located the domain of transcendental within the individualego, thus making the transcendental ego inextricablypersonalandsingular. But it was also a distention, as Husserlsignificantly broadened the scope of transcendental investigation toinclude the temporal development of the ego, its bodily existence, andintersubjective relations. (Heinämaa, Hartimo, & Miettinen2014: 8)

It must also, however, be admitted that this distention ortransformation generates new challenges of its own. If atranscendental investigation cannot ignore the historicity of humanlife, if transcendental structures develop over the course of time andcan be modified under the influence of experience, it is faced withthe task of countering the threat of historicism and culturalrelativism. It should be clear, however, that Husserl, by endorsingthe view that the only justification obtainable and the onlyjustification required is one that is internal to the world ofexperience and to its intersubjective practices, offers a view on thetranscendental that points forward in time rather than backwards toKant. To that extent, Husserl’s conception of the transcendentalis distinctly modern.

6. The lifeworld

Husserl’s dictum “to the things themselves” can beseen as an endorsement of the idea that the investigation should beguided by the subject matter itself, rather than by what we expect tofind given our prior theoretical commitments: “The true methodfollows the nature of the things to be investigated and not ourprejudices and preconceptions” (Hua 25/26 [1965: 102]). InFormal and Transcendental Logic, Husserl explicitly warnsagainst the danger of letting oneself be dazzled by the methodologyand ideals of the exact sciences, as if they constituted the absolutenorms for what counts as true and real (Hua 17/245). As he points out,the scientists might well employ more exact measurements than themarket sellers, but this precision also has its own limitations. Infact, it is not of much use to the trader. If you want to sell akilogram of oranges, you do not want to and do not need to measure theweight in micrograms. What is sufficient and appropriate and preciseenough depends on the concrete context and cannot be defined inabsolute terms (Hua 17/245).

In the course of discussing the accomplishments and limitations ofscience, Husserl brings up the importance of thelifeworld.The lifeworld is, not surprisingly, the world we live and feel at homein. It is the world of experience, which we are all acquainted with,which we take for granted and which forms the basis for our dailyactions. It is a subject-relative world that contains objects withaffordances—cups to drink from, spoons to eat with, chairs tosit on, trees to climb in or seek shelter under. It is also ahistorically and culturally shaped world, a world of cumulativetraditions and sedimented meaning that we as bodily subjects areanchored and socialized into. The natural sciences are often praisedfor their attempt to surpass the limitations of our bodily experienceof the world. On a widespread view, science seeks to offer adescription from a view from nowhere, where all traces of ourselveshave been removed, and to acquire knowledge not of how the world isfor us, but of how it is “in itself” independently of anythought and experience (6/309, 13/381, 4/207). For Husserl, thisunderstanding of science is, however, fundamentally mistaken. It isnot that Husserl doesn’t respect science, but as he put it inIdeas I,

When it is actually natural science that speaks, we listen gladly andas disciples. But it is not always natural science that speaks whennatural scientists are speaking; and it assuredly isnot whenthey are talking about “philosophy of Nature” and“epistemology as a natural science”. (Hua 3/45)

For Husserl, the rise of modern science owes a crucial debt toGalileo, whose great accomplishment was the “mathematizingreinterpretation of nature” (Hua 6/54 [1970: 53]). Mathematicsbecame the method to unlock the inner workings of nature, but veryquickly this quantifying method of theoretical abstraction andidealization was subjected to an ontological hypostatization; to bewas to be measurable and people started, as Husserl writes, to“take fortrue being what is actually amethod” (Hua 6/52 [1970: 51]). The insistence thateverything that exists can and must be studied with natural scientificmethods and is ontologically reducible to natural scientific facts,led not only to a depreciation of the lifeworld, but also to whatHusserl viewed as the crisis of modern science, its alienation fromhuman experience, and its inability to address questions ofexistential significance, of value and meaning.

The distrust in everything that cannot be quantified led to the viewthat the perceptually appearing world is itself nothing but asubjective illusion, a misleading representation of the physicallyexisting world, and the claim was then made that science musttranscend the realm of the given if it is to capture reality as ittruly is (Hua 6/54 [1970: 54]). For Husserl, however, the idea thattrue reality is to be identified with some kind of behind-the-scenesworld that transcends every kind of experiential evidence is nothingbut a piece of mythologizing (Hua 3/115). More generally speaking,Husserl would insist that the difference between the world ofperceptual experience and the world as determined by the naturalsciences is not a difference between the world for us and the world initself, but rather a difference between two ways in which one and thesame world can appear to us. The world as described by science is notan autonomous world, a world behind or below the manifest world.Rather, it is the same world as that of everydayexperience—namely, manifest reality—but now enrichedtheoretically.

Although there are divergent accounts available regardingHusserl’s final position on the status of theoreticallypostulated unobservable entities, especially when it comes to thequestion of whether Husserl is an instrumentalist (see, e.g., Soffer1990, Wiltsche 2012, Hardy 2013, Trizio 2020), most interpreters wouldagree that the lifeworld for Husserl remains the basis andmeaning-foundation for scientific research, even if the latter in itsprecision and abstraction supersede that which is intuitively given(Hua 6/48 [1970: 48]).

The physical thing which [the physicist] observes, with which heexperiments, which he continually sees, takes in his hand, puts on thescale or in the melting furnace: that physical thing, and no other,becomes the subject of the predicates ascribed in physics, such asweight, temperature, electrical resistance, and so forth. (Hua3/113)

It is the planetary bodies I observe in the sky, the water I drink,the flower I admire, etc. that the natural scientist is alsoinvestigating and whose true nature she seeks to determine in as exactand objective a manner as possible. Even in those cases, where theobject of the scientific investigation is far removed from everydaypractice, the shared lifeworld remains in play, when planning andsetting up the experiments, when reading the measuring instruments,when interpreting, comparing, and discussing the results withone’s colleagues. In fact, as Husserl argues at length in hislast workThe Crisis of European Sciences and TranscendentalPhenomenology, as much as the search for objectivity is laudable,we should never forget that scientifically valid knowledge hasfirst-person plural intentionality as its precondition. Science is atheoretical attitudewe can adopt upon the world. It is anintersubjective achievement with its own presuppositions and genesis.Its abstract idealized models have their roots in the lifeworld, whichserves as the soil from which scientific concepts grow, and depend notonly on the world of immediate, perceptual, experience, but also on along tradition of cultural and linguistic acquisitions andaccomplishments (Carr 1970). To make the latter observation is also toacknowledge that one should not conceive of the relation betweenlifeworld and the world of science as a static relation. Science drawson the lifeworld, but it also affects the lifeworld, and graduallysome of its theoretical claims and insights will be absorbed by andintegrated into the latter.

The lifeworld is not simply a brute given, but is itself anachievement of intentional constitution. Indeed, Husserl’sdiscussion and analysis of the lifeworld was not only meant to clarifythe relation between the manifest image and the scientific image, touse Sellars’ terms, but also to show to what extent both involveand presuppose transcendental subjectivity (Hua 6/147 [1970: 144]). Toput it differently, Husserl’s lifeworld analysis can be seen asa particular entry point into his transcendental phenomenology (Kern1977) and serve as a reminder that Husserl is not only atranscendental idealist, but also an empirical realist, if this isunderstood as someone who defends the reality of the world ofexperience. At the same time, however, and this adds another level ofcomplexity to Husserl’s analysis, Husserl is also offering anontology of the lifeworld, i.e., attempting to map out those essentialstructures that will always characterize the lifeworld, regardless ofhow diverse it might otherwise be geographically, historically andculturally. Sometimes Husserl points to the existence of certainfairly formal features, such as a common spatiotemporal structure (Hua1/161, Hua 6/145 [1970: 142]), but on other occasions, he highlightsthe role of embodiment and argues that every conceivable lifeworld isstructured with reference to the lived body (Hua 15/433). In eithercase, however, it is the existence of certain universal structureswhich is supposed to allow for transhistorical and interculturalunderstanding.

In writings from the 1930s, Husserl introduces the distinction betweenthehomeworld (Heimwelt) and thealienworld (Fremdwelt), both of which canbe seen as different sections of the lifeworld (Held 1991, Steinbock1995). We are all situated in a homeworld of our own, a familiar andcommunal background of shared traditions, norms and meaning where wefeel at home. This is then contrasted with the alienworld(s), whichdenote unfamiliar and divergent cultural norms and practices. Centralto Husserl’s late reflections on these topics is theinterdependence of the two notions. Without a basis in one’shomeworld, one cannot encounter and recognize an alienworld. But it isonly by doing the latter, that one comes to recognize one homeworldfor what it is, a particular communal perspective on the world:

An alien humankind is constituted, an alien humanity, an alien people,for example. Precisely thereby, there is constituted for me and for us‘our own’ community of homecomrades. (Hua 15/214)

Husserl’s reflections on intercultural encounters reaches acertain culmination inCrisis, where he explicitly links thebirth oftheōría in Greece to the factthat its maritime trade allowed for cultural exchange and contact with“the great and already highly cultivated nations of itssurrounding world” (Hua 6/331–332 [1970: 285]). It was onhis view precisely this encounter with different cultures andalternative worldviews and practices that made the Greeks realize therelativity and specificity of their own cultural-historical normalityand thereby launched them on a search for a truth that would be validfor everybody (Hua 6/142, 326 [1970: 139, 280], see also Held 1989,Moran 2011, Miettinen 2020).

7. Personhood and ethics

As we saw in section 4, Husserl assigns an important role to the pureego in his account of consciousness, consciousness is egologicallystructured, but as Husserl also points out, each of us has charactertraits, abilities, dispositions, interests, habits and convictions,and since this is all something that the pure ego lacks, the lattershould not “be confused with the Ego as the real person, withthe real subject of the real human being” (Hua 4/104). If I wantto get to know the latter, if I want to know who I am as a realperson, I have to enter the “infinity of experience” (Hua4/104). In fact, obtaining that kind of self-knowledge is ultimatelyan unending quest since the person, as Husserl explains, is a unit ofinfinite development (Hua 14/204). Whereas the pure ego is a given, abasic feature of conscious life, the personal ego is not merely underconstant development, but also the result of an accomplishment.

Given the right conditions and circumstances, you can become a person(Hua 4/265–6). How does this happen? As Husserl points out, theego isn’t simply a dead pole of identity (Hua 9/208). Passingthrough the stages of life—infancy, youth, maturity, and oldage—the ego continuously lives through intentional acts ofdifferent kinds. These acts leave their mark behind in consciousnessand might create lasting tendencies and habitualities (Hua1/100–1, 9/211, 4/265–266). The moment experiences areacquired, sedimentations accrue, and enduring habits are established,the subject will acquire a more concrete and personalized kind ofindividuality, a personal style, and individual history (Hua 4/253,300). This process does not take place in isolation, however. On thecontrary, it is very much a matter of a continuing socialization.Every child is “raised into the form of a tradition” (Hua15/144), and ultimately my being as a person is not my own achievementbut the result of what Husserl would call my “communicativeintertwinement” with others (Hua 15/603). As a central passagehas it:

Theorigin of personality is found in empathy and in thefurthersocial acts that grow out of it. For personality, itis not enough that the subject becomes aware of itself as the centerof its acts; rather, personality is constituted only as the subjectenters into social relations with others. (Hua 14/175)

Even though my experiential life will come to possess a content basedtype of individuality as a result of the particular surrounding worldit finds itself in and as a result of the passive-associativelyestablished sedimentations and habits (Hua 13/407), Husserl, however,also insists that none of this will suffice for true personhood (Hua27/24). The personal ego is not—as Husserl adds in a criticalnote to earlier work of his—an associative-inductive unit (Hua13/435), but rather something that requires active and criticaldeliberation and position-taking (Stellungnahme):

I can only be a person insofar as I do not merely have persistingapperceptions and through them a resisting and opposed world that isgiven to me as non-egoic, but also have persisting‘convictions’, valuations, and volitions; convictions thatI have acquired through my own activities, through my own activeposition-taking. (Hua 14/196)

Our identity as persons, our personal character and individuality, isaccordingly also constituted by our personal convictions, commitmentsand decisions (Hua 9/214). Husserl is not blind to the fact that manyof an individual’s convictions do not have their origin in thatindividual. In many cases, I come to hold convictions simply because Iqua community member accept the beliefs and values of other members.Sometimes, I am able to reconstruct the rational reasons behindothers’ convictions and actively make them my own. In othercases, I am simply yielding passively to the influences andsuggestions of others without even realizing it. Husserl isconsequently quite clear about the distinction between acting inaccordance with norms and acting in the light of norms and hedifferentiates situations where I simply go along, situations where Iactively endorse and appropriate the opinions of others, andsituations where my opinions, decisions and convictions are based onrational motives, on intuited evidence. In the latter case, I am ableto justify my decision to myself and for Husserl this exemplifies avirtuous and authentic type of rational self-responsibility, one inwhich my autonomy is affirmed. As he writes at one point “Be atrue person; lead a life that you can consistently justify withinsight, a life of practical reason” (Hua 27/36). Occasionally,Husserl also brings up the issue of self-preservation (Selbsterhaltung)and discusses how the identity of thepersonal ego is secured through the unity and coherence of itsdifferent convictions. In this context, self-preservation is clearlyto be understood as a normative ideal, as an achievement rather thanas a given (Hua 9/214).

As should be readily apparent, Husserl’s notion of personal egois very much situated in the ethical-normative domain. It is by beingcommitted and devoted to a certain set of central values and byleading a life in the light of specific norms, that I come to have aview and voice of my own, that I come to be a true individual in therobust sense of the term. This is where the deepest center or kernelof my being is located. It is only here that the very notion of beingtrue or faithful to oneself starts to make sense. To abandon thevalues that I love with “my entire soul” and which belonginseparably to the person that I am (Hua 27/28), would be to“betray one’s true ego”, as Husserl states in amanuscript from the mid-twenties (quoted in Melle 1991: 131).

Husserl is not ordinarily thought of as a moral philosopher, but heregularly lectured on ethics, and the posthumous publication of someof these lectures (Hua 28, Hua 37, Hua 42, Husserl 2025) has generatedan increasing interest in this aspect of his thinking (Melle 1991,Hart 1992, Drummond 1995, Donohoe 2004, Loidolt 2009, Heinämaa2024).

It has become customary to distinguish at least two phases inHusserl’s ethical thought. In his early lectures on ethics fromthe Göttingen period, Husserl defended a rationalist andconsequentialist ethics. The rationalism comes to the fore inHusserl’s claim that our valuing and willing are subjected torational norms just like our theoretical reasoning and that ethics iscomparable in its rigor and universality to logic. Husserl even speaksof formal axiology and formal praxeology as being analogous to formallogic (Hua 28/36). On the one hand, Husserl’s efforts aredirected at developing a theory about how to value and will reasonablyand consistently. Central to these efforts is what Husserl refers toas the highest formal principle or axiom of willing, namely animperative formulated by Brentano: “Do what is best among whatis achievable” (Hua 28/221). As Drummond has argued,Husserl’s elaboration of this imperative eventually commits himto an idealized consequentialism where we should always act “forthe greatest summative good” (Drummond 2018: 140). On the otherhand, however, Husserl also argues that our ethical judgments shouldbe tied to intuitive evidence and our decisions be guided byaxiological intuitions or value experiences. For Husserl, values aredisclosed in intentional feelings of value-perceptions (Wertnehmung)(Hua 4/9), and part of Husserl’searly ethics is consequently taken up by an analysis of theintentionality of evaluative acts.

In the following decades, partially as a result of his continuingphilosophical work on the person and partially as a result of thetraumatic war years, where his youngest son was killed in battle,Husserl abandoned his rationalist consequentialism (Hua42/391–392) in favor of an ethics of love that eventually madeHusserl engage with a number of more existential themes (Cavallaro& Heffernan 2022, Heinämaa with Steinbock 2024). Husserlstill highlights the importance of leading a life in evidence, a lifewhere one bears responsibility for one’s cognitive, evaluativeand practical beliefs. He explicitly refers to the Socratic-Platonicidea of philosophy as involving a commitment to a way of lifecharacterized by unremitting self-reflection and a radical critique ofone’s own lifegoals (Hua 7/9) and insists that phenomenologyitself is a praxis of decisive personal and existential significance(Hua 6/140 [1970: 137]). But Husserl also speaks of how certain valuescan be experienced by one individual as an ethical call (Hua42/388–90), as a vocation and absolute duty. An example he oftenmentions is that of the mother who is faced with the choice of savingher child and where he then rejects the idea that her choice ought tobe based on a deliberation about the highest practical good (Husserl42/344, 391). Indeed, as he even puts it in a lecture from 1919/20,“It is clear that an ethics realized merely on the basis of thecategorical imperative […] is no ethics at all” (Hua Mat9/146). In cases such as that of the mother, there might be anunconditional “you should and must” which precedes anyrational explanation and deliberation, and whose legitimacy isexperienced in the form of an “I would betray myself if I acteddifferently” (Hua 42/392).

Husserl often talks of the effort of being true to oneself, i.e., ofleading one’s life in accordance with one’s centralvalues, in terms of an individual renewal. And it is at this stagethat his preoccupation with sociality then reasserts itself, sincethere for Husserl cannot be an individual renewal without a social andcultural renewal. As he emphasizes in a text from 1924, as anindividual subject I am a member of a community, and as such myself-responsibility encompasses also a responsibility for the othercommunity members. I am responsible for helping others to actproperly. Indeed,

my self-responsibility extends to all others […]. [I]t belongsto my self-responsibility that I make the other responsible, that Ipossibly turn against him and against the violations that he commitsagainst the demand of his self-responsibility. (Hua 8/198)

The same holds true for others, and so ultimately “Everybody isco-responsible for everybody else” (Hua 8/198). Husserl’slater ethics is also a social ethics (Hua 27/22), which culminates inthe ideal of a love community (Liebesgemeinschaft)(Hua 14/174–175, 42/512) where subjects reciprocally can helpeach other realize their true selves (Hart 1992).

Bibliography

A. Primary Literature

References to the Husserliana, the text critical edition ofHusserl’s work, are given by volume number, with the pagenumber(s) following a slash (e.g., Hua 25/104–5). Most Englishtranslations include references to the Hua pagination in the margin orinserted into the text. Where translations lack such references, aparallel citation is provided to the translation.

A.1 Husserliana (Cited Hua)

• Husserliana 1:Cartesianische Meditationen und PariserVorträge, Stephan Strasser (ed.), The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1950. Pages 3–39 translated asThe ParisLectures, Peter Koestenbaum (trans.), The Hague: M. Nijhoff,1964. Pages 43–183 translated asCartesian Meditations: AnIntroduction to Phenomenology, Dorion Cairns (trans.), The Hague:M. Nijhoff, 1960.
• Husserliana 2:Die Idee der Phänomenologie: FünfVorlesungen, Walter Biemel (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,1950. Translated asThe Idea of Phenomenology (Edmund HusserlCollected Works 8), Lee Hardy (trans.), Dordrecht/Boston: KluwerAcademic, 1999.
• Husserliana 3, 1–2:Ideen zu einer reinenPhänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. ErstesBuch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reinePhänomenologie, Karl Schuhmann (ed.), The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1976. Translated asIdeas Pertaining to a PurePhenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book:General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, F. Kersten(trans.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982.
• Husserliana 4:Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie undphänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch:Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, M. Biemel(ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952. Translated asIdeasPertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a PhenomenologicalPhilosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology ofConstitution, R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (trans), Dordrecht:Kluwer Academic, 1989.
• Husserliana 5:Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie undphänomenologischen Philosophie. Drittes Buch: DiePhänomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften, M.Biemel (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952. Pages 1–137translated asIdeas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to aPhenomenological Philosophy. Third Book: Phenomenology and theFoundations of the Sciences, T. E. Klein and W. E. Pohl (trans),The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980. Pages 138–62 translated asIdeas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a PhenomenologicalPhilosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology ofConstitution, R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (trans.), Dordrecht:Kluwer Academic, 1989, 405–30.
• Husserliana 6:Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaftenund die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in diephänomenologische Philosophie, Walter Biemel (ed.), TheHague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954. Translated asThe Crisis ofEuropean Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction toPhenomenological Philosophy (Northwestern University Studies inPhenomenology & Existential Philosophy), David Carr (trans.),Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970.
• Husserliana 7:Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Erster Teil:Kritische Ideengeschichte, Rudolf Boehm (ed.), The Hague:Martinus Nijhoff, 1956. Translated asFirst Philosophy: Lectures1923/24 and Related Texts from the Manuscripts (1920–1925)(Collected Works 14), Sebastian Luft and Thane M. Naberhaus (trans),Dordrecht: Springer, 2019.
• Husserliana 8:Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Zweiter Teil:Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion, Rudolf Boehm(ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959. Translated inFirstPhilosophy: Lectures 1923/24 and Related Texts from the Manuscripts(1920–1925) (Collected Works 14), Sebastian Luft and ThaneM. Naberhaus (trans), Dordrecht: Springer, 2019.
• Husserliana 9:Phänomenologische Psychologie: VorlesungenSommersemester 1925, Walter Biemel (ed.), The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1962; second edition 1968. Pages 3–234 translated asPhenomenological Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925,J. Scanlon (trans.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977. Pages237–349, 517–526 translated asPsychological andTranscendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger(1927–1931), Thomas Sheehan and Richard E. Palmer(eds/trans), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1997.
• Husserliana 10:Zur Phänomenologie des innerenZeitbewusstseins (1893–1917), Rudolf Boehm (ed.), TheHague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Translated asOn the Phenomenologyof the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917)(Collected Works 4), John B. Brough (trans.), Dordrecht: KluwerAcademic, 1991.
• Husserliana 11:Analysen zur passiven Synthesis: AusVorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926, MargotFleischer (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Translated asAnalyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures onTranscendental Logic (Edmund Husserl Collected Works 9), AnthonyJ. Steinbeck (trans.), Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic, 2001.
• Husserliana 12:Philosophie der Arithmetik. Mitergänzenden Texten (1890–1901), Lothar Eley (ed.), TheHague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970. Translated asPhilosophy ofArithmetic: Psychological and Logical Investigations withSupplementary Texts from 1887–1901 (Collected Works 10),Dallas Willard (trans.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2003.doi:10.1007/978-94-010-0060-4
• Husserliana 13:Zur Phänomenologie derIntersubjektivität: Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster Teil:1905–1920, Iso Kern (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,1973. Pages 8–9, 77–98, 111–235 translated asThe Basic Problems of Phenomenology: From the Lectures, WinterSemester, 1910–1911 (Collected Works 12), Ingo Farin andJames G. Hart (trans), Dordrecht: Springer, 2006.
• Husserliana 14:Zur Phänomenologie derIntersubjektivität: Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil:1921–1928, Iso Kern (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,1973.
• Husserliana 15:Zur Phänomenologie derIntersubjektivität: Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil:1929–1935, Iso Kern (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,1973.
• Husserliana 16:Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907, UlrichClaesges (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. Translated asThing and Space: Lectures of 1907 (Collected Works 7),Richard Rojcewicz (trans.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1997.
• Husserliana 17:Formale und transzendentale Logik: Versucheiner Kritik der logischen Vernunft, Paul Janssen (ed.), TheHague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974. Translated asFormal andTranscendental Logic, Dorion Cairns (trans.), The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1969. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-4900-8
• Husserliana 18:Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band:Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, Elmar Holenstein (ed.), The Hague:Martinus Nijhoff, 1975. Translated inLogical InvestigationsVolume 1, Dermot Moran (ed.), J. N. Findlay (trans.), London:Routledge, 2001, 1–161. doi:10.4324/9780203879054
• Husserliana 19, 1–2:Logische Untersuchungen. ZweiterBand: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie derErkenntnis, Ursula Panzer (ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,1984. Translated inLogical Investigations Volumes 1 and 2,Dermot Moran (ed.); J. N. Findlay (trans.), London: Routledge, 1:162–331, 2: 1–364.
• Husserliana 20, 1:Logische Untersuchungen:Ergänzungsband. Erster Teil: Entwürfe zur Umarbeitung derVI. Untersuchung und zur Vorrede für die Neuauflage der LogischenUntersuchungen (Sommer 1913), Ullrich Melle (ed.), Dordrecht:Kluwer Academic, 2002.
• Husserliana 20, 2:Logische Untersuchungen:Ergänzungsband. Zweiter Teil: Texte für die Neufassung derVI. Untersuchung. Zur Phänomenologie des Ausdrucks und derErkenntnis (1893/94–1921), Ullrich Melle (ed.), Dordrecht:Springer, 2005.
• Husserliana 21:Studien zur Arithmetik und Geometrie. Texteaus dem Nachlass (1886–1901), Ingeborg Strohmeyer (ed.),The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983.
• Husserliana 22:Aufsätze und Rezensionen(1890–1910), Bernhard Rang (ed.), The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1979. Translated inEarly Writings in the Philosophy ofLogic and Mathematics (Collected Works 5), Dallas Willard(trans.), Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994.
• Husserliana 23:Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung. ZurPhänomenologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen. Texteaus dem Nachlass (1898–1925), Eduard Marbach (ed.), TheHague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980. Translated asPhantasy, ImageConsciousness, and Memory (1898–1925) (Collected Works 11),John B. Brough (trans.), Dordrecht: Springer, 2005.doi:10.1007/1-4020-2642-0
• Husserliana 24:Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie:Vorlesungen 1906/07, Ullrich Melle (ed.), Dordrecht: MartinusNijhoff, 1984. Translated asIntroduction to Logic and Theory ofKnowledge: Lectures 1906/07 (Collected Works 13), Claire OrtizHill (trans.), Dordrecht: Springer, 2008.doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6727-3
• Husserliana 25:Aufsätze und Vorträge(1911–1921), Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp (eds),Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987. Pages 3–62 translated as“Philosophy as rigorous science”, in Q. Lauer(ed./trans.),Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, NewYork: Harper & Row, 1965, 71–147.
• Husserliana 26:Vorlesungen über Bedeutungslehre.Sommersemester 1908, Ursula Panzer (ed.), The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1987.
• Husserliana 27:Aufsätze und Vorträge(1922–1937), Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp (eds),Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1989.
• Husserliana 28:Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre(1908–1914), Ullrich Melle (ed.), The Hague: KluwerAcademic Publishers, 1988.
• Husserliana 29:Die Krisis der europäischenWissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie:Ergänzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachlass 1934–1937, R.N. Smid (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1993.
• Husserliana 30:Logik und allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie.Vorlesungen 1917/18. Mit ergänzenden Texten aus der erstenFassung 1910/11, Ursula Panzer (ed.), The Hague: Kluwer Academic,1995. Translated asLogic and General Theory of Science: Lectures1917/18 with Supplementary Texts from the First Version of1910/11 (Collected Works 15), Claire Ortiz Hill (trans.), Cham,Switzerland: Springer, 2019. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-14529-3
• Husserliana 31:Aktive Synthesen: Aus der Vorlesung“Transzendentale Logik” 1920/21. Ergänzungsband zu“Analysen zur passiven Synthesis”, Roland Breeur(ed.), The Hague: Kluwer Academic, 2000.
• Husserliana 32:Natur und Geist: Vorlesungen Sommersemester1927, Michael Weiler (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic,2001.
• Husserliana 33:Die ‘Bernauer Manuskripte’über das Zeitbewußtsein (1917/18), Rudolf Bernet andDieter Lohmar (eds), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2001.
• Husserliana 34:Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion: Texteaus dem Nachlass (1926–1935), Sebastian Luft (ed.),Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2002.
• Husserliana 35:Einleitung in die Philosophie: Vorlesungen1922/23, Berndt Goossens (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic,2002.
• Husserliana 36:Transzendentaler Idealismus: Texte aus demNachlass (1908–1921), Robin D. Rollinger (ed.), Dordrecht:Kluwer Academic, 2003.
• Husserliana 37:Einleitung in die Ethik. VorlesungenSommersemester 1920 und 1924, Henning Peucker (ed.), Dordrecht:Kluwer Academic, 2004.
• Husserliana 38:Wahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit. Texte aus demNachlass (1893–1912), Thomas Vongehr and Regula Giuliani(eds), New York: Springer, 2005.
• Husserliana 39:Die Lebenswelt: Auslegungen der vorgegebenenWelt und ihrer Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass(1916–1937), Rochus Sowa (ed.), Dordrecht: Springer.
• Husserliana 40:Untersuchungen zur Urteilstheorie. Texte ausdem Nachlass (1893–1918), Robin Rollinger (ed.), Dordrecht:Springer, 2009. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6897-3
• Husserliana 41:Zur Lehre vom Wesen und zur Methode dereidetischen Variation. Texte aus dem Nachlass, 1891–1935,Dirk Fonfara (ed.), Dordrecht: Springer, 2012.doi:10.1007/978-94-007-2625-3
• Husserliana 42:Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie.Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte. Metaphysik. SpäteEthik. Texte aus dem Nachlass 1908–1937, Robin Sowa andThomas Vongehr (eds), New York: Springer, 2013.doi:10.1007/978-94-007-6801-7
• Husserliana 43:Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins.Teilbände I–IV, Ullrich Melle and Thomas Vongehr(eds), Dordrecht: Springer, 2020.
• Husserliana 44:Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie undphänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch:Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution undWissenschaftstheorie sowie das Nachwort zu meinen Ideen, DirkFonfara (ed.), Cham: Springer, 2025).

A.2 Husserliana Materialenband (cited Hua Mat)

• Husserliana Materialienband 1:Logik. Vorlesung 1896, E.Schuhmann (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.
• Husserliana Materialienband 2:Logik. Vorlesung 1902/03,E. Schuhmann (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.
• Husserliana Materialienband 3:Allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie.Vorlesung 1902/03, E. Schuhmann (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer AcademicPublishers, 2001.
• Husserliana Materialienband 4:Natur und Geist. VorlesungenSommersemester 1919, ed. M. Weiler, Dordrecht: Kluwer AcademicPublishers, 2002.
• Husserliana Materialienband 5:Urteilstheorie. Vorlesung1905, E. Schuhmann (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,2002.
• Husserliana Materialienband 6:Alte und neue Logik. Vorlesung1908/09, E. Schuhmann (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer AcademicPublishers, 2003.
• Husserliana Materialienband 7:Einführung in diePhänomenologie der Erkenntnis. Vorlesung 1909, E. Schuhmann(ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2005.
• Husserliana Materialienband 8:Späte Texte überZeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Die C-Manuskripte, D. Lohmar(ed.), New York: Springer, 2006.
• Husserliana Materialienband 9:Einleitung in die Philosophie.Vorlesungen 1916–1919, H. Jacobs (ed.), Dordrecht:Springer, 2012.
• Husserliana Materialienband 10:Einleitung in diePhänomenologie. Vorlesung 1912, T. Vongehr (ed.), Dordrecht:Springer, 2023.
• Husserliana Materialienband 11:Manuskripte zur Konstitutionvon Raumdingen – aus den D-Manuskripten, D. Lohmar (ed.),Dordrecht: Springer, 2024.

A.3 Other Cited Works by Husserl

• 1939 [1973],Erfahrung Und Urteil: Untersuchungen ZurGenealogie Der Logik, Ludwig Landgrebe (ed.), Prague: Academiaverlagsbuchhandlung. Translated asExperience and Judgment:Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic (Northwestern UniversityStudies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy), James S.Churchill and Karl Ameriks (trans), Evanston, IL: NorthwesternUniversity Press, 1973.
• 1981.Shorter Works, P. McCormick and F. A. Elliston(eds.), Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.
• 1994,Briefwechsel I–X (Husserliana Dokumente, Bd.3), Elisabeth Schuhmann and Karl Schuhmann (eds), Dordrecht: KluwerAcademic.
• 2024,Values of Love and Ethical Reflection (HusserlianLegacies: Themes for the 21st Century), Sara Heinämaa and AnthonyJ. Steinbock (eds), Andrew D. Barrette (trans.), Cham: Springer.doi:10.1007/978-3-031-68698-6

B. Secondary Literature

B.1 Cited works

• Beck, Maximilian, 1928, “Die Neue Problemlage derErkenntnistheorie”,Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fürLiteraturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 6:611–639.
• Benoist, Jocelyn, 2001,Intentionalité et langage dansles «recherches logiques» de Husserl(Epiméthée), Paris: Presses universitaires deFrance.
• Bernet, Rudolf, 1990, “Husserls Begriff des Noema”, inHusserl-Ausgabe und Husserl-Forschung (Phaenomenologica 115),Samuel IJsseling (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,61–80. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-2427-7_5
• Bernet, Rudolf, Iso Kern, and Eduard Marbach, 1993,AnIntroduction to Husserlian Phenomenology (Northwestern UniversityStudies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press.
• Brentano, Franz, 1874 [1973],Psychologie vom empirischenStandpunkt, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. Translated from the1924 edition asPsychology from an Empirical Standpoint(International Library of Philosophy and Scientific Method), OskarKraus (ed.) and Linda L. McAlister (English ed.), Linda L. McAlister,Antos C. Rancurello, and D. B. Terrell (trans), London: Routledge andKegan Paul, 1973.
• Brough, John, 1972, “The Emergence of an AbsoluteConsciousness in Husserl’s Early Writings onTime-Consciousness”,Man and World, 5(3):298–326. doi:10.1007/BF01248638
• Carr, David, 1970, “Husserl’s Problematic Concept ofthe Life-World”,American Philosophical Quarterly,7(4): 331–339.
• –––, 1999,The Paradox of Subjectivity: TheSelf in the Transcendental Tradition, New York: Oxford UniversityPress. doi:10.1093/oso/9780195126907.001.0001
• Cavallaro, Marco and George Heffernan (eds), 2022,TheExistential Husserl: A Collection of Critical Essays(Contributions to Phenomenology 120), Dordrecht: Springer.doi:10.1007/978-3-031-05095-4
• Crowell, Steven Galt, 2001,Husserl, Heidegger, and the Spaceof Meaning: Paths toward Transcendental Phenomenology(Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and ExistentialPhilosophy), Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
• De Boer, Theodore, 1966 [1978],De ontwikkelingsgang in hetdenken van Husserl (Wijsgerige teksten en studies 14), Assen: VanGorcum. Translated asThe Development of Husserl’sThought (Phaenomenologica 76), Theodore Plantinga. (trans.), TheHague/Boston: Nijhoff, 1978. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-9691-5
• de Warren, Nicolas, 2009,Husserl and the Promise of Time:Subjectivity in Transcendental Phenomenology (Modern EuropeanPhilosophy), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.doi:10.1017/CBO9780511657412
• Depraz, Natalie, 1995,Transcendance et incarnation: le statutde l’intersubjectivité comme altéritéà soi chez Husserl (Bibliothèque d’histoirede la philosophie Nouvelle série), Paris: Vrin.
• Donohoe, Janet, 2004,Husserl on Ethics and Intersubjectivity:From Static to Genetic Phenomenology, Amherst, NY: HumanityBooks.
• Doyon, Maxime, 2024,Phenomenology and the Norms ofPerception, Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/9780191993527.001.0001
• Dreyfus, Hubert L., 1982, “Husserl’s PerceptualNoema”, inDreyfus and Hall (eds) 1982a: 97–123.
• Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Harrison Hall (eds), 1982a,Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science, Cambridge,MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.
• –––, 1982b, “Introduction”, inDreyfus and Hall (eds) 1982a: 1–27.
• Drummond, John J., 1990,Husserlian Intentionality andNon-Foundational Realism: Noema and Object (Contributions toPhenomenology 4), Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.doi:10.1007/978-94-009-1974-7
• –––, 1992, “An Abstract Consideration:De-Ontologizing the Noema”, inThe Phenomenology of theNoema (Contributions to Phenomenology 10), John J. Drummond andLester Embree (eds), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,89–109. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-3425-7_7
• –––, 1995, “Moral Objectivity:Husserl’s Sentiments of the Understanding”,HusserlStudies, 12(2): 165–183. doi:10.1007/BF01417589
• –––, 2018, “Husserl’s Middle Periodand the Development of His Ethics”, inThe Oxford Handbookof the History of Phenomenology, Dan Zahavi (ed.), Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 135–154 (ch. 7).
• Fink, Eugen, 1933 [2000], “Die phänomenologischePhilosophie Edmund Husserls in der gegenwärtigen Kritik”,Kant-Studien, 38(1–2): 319–383. Translated as“The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edumund Husserl andContemporary Criticism”, inThe Phenomenology of Husserl:Selected Critical Readings, R. O. Elveton (ed./trans.), Chicago:Quadrangle Books, 1970. Second edition, Seattle: Noesis Press, 2000,70–139. doi:10.1515/kant.1933.38.1-2.319 (1933)
• –––, 1939 [1981], “Das Problem derPhänomenologie Edmund Husserls”,Revue Internationalede Philosophie, 1(2): 226–270. Translated as “Theproblem of the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl”, inAprioriand World: European Contributions to Husserlian Phenomenology, W.McKenna, R. M. Harlan, and L. E. Winters (eds), R. M. Harlan (trans.),The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981, 21–55.
• Frege, Gottlob, 1894, “Rezension von: E. Husserl,Philosophie der Arithmetik I”,Zeitschrift fürPhilosophie und philosophische Kritik, 103: 313–332.
• Føllesdal, Dagfinn, 1958,Husserl und Frege: einBeitrag zur Beleuchtung der Entstehung der phänomenologischenPhilosophie (Avhandlinger utgitt av det Norske videnskaps-akademii Oslo. 2:Hist.-filos. klasse, 1958, no. 2), Oslo: I kommisjon hosAschehoug.
• –––, 1969, “Husserl’s Notion ofNoema”,The Journal of Philosophy, 66(20):680–687. doi:10.2307/2024451
• –––, 1974, “Husserl’s Theory ofPerception”,Ajatus, 36: 95–103.
• Hart, James G., 1992,The Person and the Common Life: Studiesin a Husserlian Social Ethics (Phaenomenologica 126),Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.doi:10.1007/978-94-015-7991-9
• Hardy, Lee, 2013,Nature’s Suit: Husserl’sPhenomenological Philosophy of the Physical Sciences (Series inContinental Thought 45), Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
• Heinämaa, Sara, 2003,Toward a Phenomenology of SexualDifference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Lanham, MD: Rowman& Littlefield Publishers.
• –––, 2020, “Values of Love: Two Forms ofInfinity Characteristic of Human Persons”,Phenomenology andthe Cognitive Sciences, 19(3): 431–450.doi:10.1007/s11097-019-09653-2
• Heinämaa, Sara, Mirja Hartimo, and Timo Miettinen, 2014,“Introduction: Methodological, Historical, and ConceptualStarting Points”, inPhenomenology and theTranscendental, Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo, and TimoMiettinen (eds), New York: Routledge, 1–18.doi:10.4324/9780203797037
• Heinämaa, Sara in collaboration with Anthony J. Steinbock,2024, “Husserl’s Investigations into Love and Values ofLove: Axiology, Praxeology, and Ethics” inValues of Loveand Ethical Reflection (Husserlian Legacies: Themes for the 21stCentury 1), by Edmund Husserl, Sara Heinämaa and Anthony J.Steinbock (eds), Cham: Springer, xi–xxxviii.doi:10.1007/978-3-031-68698-6
• Held, Klaus, 1966,Lebendige Gegenwart: die Frage nach derSeinsweise des Transzendentalen ich bei Edmund Husserl, entwickelt amLeitfaden der Zeitproblematik (Phaenomenologica 23), The Hague:Martinus Nijhoff.
• –––, 1989, “Husserl und dieGriechen”,Phänomenologische Forschungen, 22:137–176.
• –––, 1991, “Heimwelt, Fremdwelt, die eineWelt”,Phänomenologische Forschungen, 24/25:305–337.
• Holenstein, Elmar, 1972,Phänomenologie der Assoziation:Zu Struktur und Funktion eines Grundprinzips der passiven Genesis beiE. Husserl (Phaenomenologica 44), Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Hopp, Walter, 2011,Perception and Knowledge: APhenomenological Account, Cambridge/New York: CambridgeUniversity Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511758621
• –––, 2020,Phenomenology: A ContemporaryIntroduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions toPhilosophy), New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003047216
• Ingarden, Roman, 1963 [1975], “Motywach, któredoprowadziły Husserla do transcendentalnego idealizmu”, inhisZ badań nad filosofia̦współczesna̦, Państwowe Wydawn. Naukowe.Translated asOn the Motives Which Led Husserl to TranscendentalIdealism (Phaenomenologica 64), Arnór Hannibalsson(trans.), Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
• Kern, Iso, 1962 [1977], “Die drei Wege zurtranszendentalphänomenologischen Reduktion in der
  Philosophie Edmund Husserls”,Tijdskrift voorFilosofie, 24: 303–349. Translated as “The Three Waysto the Transcendental Phenomenological Reduction in the Philosophy ofEdmund Husserl”, inHusserl: Expositions andAppraisals, Frederick A. Elliston and Peter McCormick (eds),Notre Dame, IN/New York: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977,126–149.
• Kortooms, Antonie Johannes Maria, 2002,Phenomenology of Time:Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of Time-Consciousness(Phaenomenologica 161), Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.doi:10.1007/978-94-015-9918-4
• Lipps, Theodor, 1909,Leitfaden der Psychologie, 3.teilweise umgearb. aufl, Leipzig: W. Engelmann.
• Loidolt, Sophie, 2009,Anspruch und Rechtfertigung: eineTheorie des rechtlichen Denkens im Anschluss an diePhänomenologie Edmund Husserls (Phaenomenologica 191),Dordrecht: Springer.
• Lohmar, Dieter and Ichirō Yamaguchi (eds), 2010,On Time:New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time(Phaenomenologica 197), Dordrecht/New York: Springer.doi:10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9
• Marbach, Eduard, 1974,Das Problem des Ich in derPhänomenologie Husserls (Phaenomenologica 59), The Hague:Martinus Nijhoff. doi:10.1007/978-94-010-2020-6
• McIntyre, Ronald, 1982, “Intending and Referring”, inDreyfus and Hall (eds) 1982a: 215–231.
• –––, 1986, “Husserl and theRepresentational Theory of Mind”,Topoi, 5(2):101–113. doi:10.1007/BF00139224
• Melle, Ullrich, 1991, “The Development of Husserl’sEthics:”,ÉtudesPhénoménologiques, 7(13–14): 115–135.doi:10.5840/etudphen1991713/144
• Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1945 [2012],Phénoménologie de la perception(Bibliothèque des idées), Paris: Gallimard. TranslatedasPhenomenology of Perception, Donald A. Landes (trans.),London/New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203720714
• Miettinen, Timo, 2020,Husserl and the Idea of Europe(Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and ExistentialPhilosophy), Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
• Mohanty, J. N., 1977, “Husserl and Frege: A New Look atTheir Relationship”, inReadings on Edmund Husserl’sLogical Investigations, J. N. Mohanty (ed.), The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 22–32. doi:10.1007/978-94-010-1055-9_3
• Moran, Dermot, 2011, “‘Even the Papuan Is a Man andNot a Beast’: Husserl on Universalism and the Relativity ofCultures”,Journal of the History of Philosophy, 49(4):463–494. doi:10.1353/hph.2011.0088
• Montavont, Anne, 1999,De la passivité dans laphénoménologie de Husserl, Paris: Pressesuniversitaires de France.
• Overgaard, Søren, 2022, “Phenomenologists onPerception and Hallucination: Husserl and Merleau‐Ponty”,Philosophy Compass, 17(8): e12861.doi:10.1111/phc3.12861
• Peirce, C. S., 1868 [1955], “Some Consequences of FourIncapacities”,The Journal of Speculative Philosophy,2(3): 140–157. Abridged version inPhilosophical Writings ofPeirce (Dover Books on Philosophy T217), Justus Buchler (ed.),New York: Dover Publications, 228–250 (ch. 16).
• Perreau, Laurent, 2013,Le monde social selon Husserl(Phaenomenologica 209), Dordrecht/New York: Springer.doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5401-0
• Philipse, Herman, 1995, “Transcendental Idealism”, inThe Cambridge Companion to Husserl, Barry Smith and DavidWoodruff Smith (eds), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press,239–322 (ch. 6). doi:10.1017/CCOL0521430232.007
• Rang, Bernhard, 1973,Kausalität und Motivation:Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Perspektivität undObjektivität in der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls(Phaenomenologica 53), Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.doi:10.1007/978-94-010-2393-1
• Reinach, Adolf, 1914 [1968], “ÜberPhänomenologie”. Lecture at Marburg, January, 1914.Published asWas ist Phänomenologie?, München:Kösel-Verlag, 1951. Translated as “What IsPhenomenology?”, Derek Kelly (trans.),PhilosophicalForum, 1(2): 234–256.
• Rodemeyer, Lanei M., 2006,Intersubjective Temporality:It’s about Time (Phaenomenologica 176), Dordrecht:Springer. doi:10.1007/1-4020-4214-0
• Salice, Alessandro, 2015 [2020], “The Phenomenology of theMunich and Göttingen Circles”,The StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020), Edward N. Zalta and UriNodelman (eds), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/phenomenology-mg/>.
• Sheehan, Thomas, 1997, “Husserl and Heidegger: The makingand unmaking for a relationship”, inPsychological andTranscendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger(1927–1931), Thomas Sheehan and Richard E. Palmer(eds/trans), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1–32.
• Smith, A. D., 2003,Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Husserland the Cartesian Meditations (Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks),London/New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203422663
• Smith, David Woodruff, 2013,Husserl (RoutledgePhilosophers), second edition, London/New York: Routledge. Firstedition, 2007. doi:10.4324/9780203742952
• Smith, David Woodruff and Ronald McIntyre, 1982,Husserl andIntentionality: A Study of Mind, Meaning, and Language (SyntheseLibrary 154), Dordrecht: D. Reidel. doi:10.1007/978-94-010-9383-5
• Soffer, Gail, 1990, “Phenomenology and Scientific Realism:Husserl’s Critique of Galileo”,The Review ofMetaphysics, 44(1): 67–94.
• Sokolowski, Robert, 1987, “Husserl and Frege”,TheJournal of Philosophy, 84(10): 521–528.
• Spiegelberg, Herbert, 1972,Phenomenology in Psychology andPsychiatry: A Historical Introduction (Northwestern UniversityStudies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press.
• Steinbock, Anthony J., 1995,Home and beyond: GenerativePhenomenology after Husserl (Northwestern University Studies inPhenomenology and Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL: NorthwesternUniversity Press.
• Ströker, Elisabeth, 1987,Husserls transzendentalePhänomenologie, Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann.
• Szanto, Thomas, 2016, “Husserl on CollectiveIntentionality”, inThe Phenomenological Approach to SocialReality: History, Concepts, Problems (Studies in the Philosophyof Sociality 6), Alessandro Salice and Bernhard Schmid (eds),Dordrecht: Springer, 145–172.doi:10.1007/978-3-319-27692-2_7
• Taipale, Joona, 2014,Phenomenology and Embodiment: Husserland the Constitution of Subjectivity (Northwestern UniversityStudies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press.
• Thomasson, Amie L., 2007, “In What Sense Is PhenomenologyTranscendental?”,The Southern Journal of Philosophy,45(S1): 85–92. doi:10.1111/j.2041-6962.2007.tb00114.x
• Trizio, Emiliano, 2020,Philosophy’s Nature:Husserl’s Phenomenology, Natural Science, and Metaphysics,London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003007470
• Tugendhat, Ernst, 1970,Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl undHeidegger, Berlin: de Gruyter.
• Willard, D. 2011. “Realism sustained? InterpretingHusserl’s progression into idealism”, paper presented atthe Early Phenomenology Conference held at Franciscan University ofSteubenville, April 29–30, 2011.http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=151
• Wiltsche, Harald A., 2012, “What Is Wrong withHusserl’s Scientific Anti-Realism?”,Inquiry,55(2): 105–130. doi:10.1080/0020174X.2012.661572
• –––, 2015, “Intuitions, Seemings, andPhenomenology”,Teorema: Revista Internacional deFilosofía, 34(3): 57–78.
• Zahavi, Dan, 1996 [2001],Husserl und die transzendentaleIntersubjektivität: eine Antwort auf die sprachpragmatischeKritik (Phaenomenologica 135), Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer AcademicPublishers. Translated asHusserl and TranscendentalIntersubjectivity: A Response to the Linguistic-PragmaticCritique (Series in Continental Thought 29), Elizabeth A. Behnke(trans.), Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2001.
• –––, 1999,Self-Awareness and Alterity: APhenomenological Investigation (Northwestern University Studiesin Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press.
• –––, 2003,Husserl’sPhenomenology (Cultural Memory in the Present), translated by theauthor, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• –––, 2014,Self and Other: ExploringSubjectivity, Empathy, and Shame, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199590681.001.0001
• –––, 2017,Husserl’s Legacy:Phenomenology, Metaphysics, and Transcendental Philosophy,Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/oso/9780199684830.001.0001
• –––, 2025,Being We: PhenomenologicalContributions to Social Ontology, Oxford/New York: OxfordUniversity Press. doi:10.1093/9780191915482.001.0001

B.2 Other major critical works

• Bernet, Rudolf, Donn Welton, and Gina Zavota (eds), 2005,Edmund Husserl: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers,5 vols., London/New York: Routledge.
• Beyer, Christian, 2000,Intentionalität und Referenz:Eine sprachanalytische Studie zu Husserls transzendentalerPhänomenologie, Paderborn: Brill/mentis.doi:10.30965/9783969751985
• Boehm, Rudolf, 1968,Vom Gesichtspunkt derPhänomenologie (Phaenomenologica 26), Den Haag: Nijhoff.doi:10.1007/978-94-010-3436-4
• Carr, David, 1987,Interpreting Husserl: Critical andComparative Studies (Phaenomenologica 106), Dordrecht/Boston: M.Nijhoff. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-3595-2
• Centrone, Stefania, 2010,Logic and Philosophy of Mathematicsin the Early Husserl (Synthese Library. Studies in Epistemology,Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science 345), Dordrecht/NewYork: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-90-481-3246-1
• Claesges, Ulrich, 1964,Edmund Husserls Theorie derRaumkonstitution (Phaenomenologica 19), Den Haag: M. Nijhoff.doi:10.1007/978-94-010-3573-6
• Gallagher, Shaun, 1998,The Inordinance of Time(Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and ExistentialPhilosophy), Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
• Gander, Hans-Helmuth (ed.), 2010,Husserl-Lexikon,Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
• Gurwitsch, Aron, 1966,Studies in Phenomenology andPsychology (Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology& Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL: Northwestern UniversityPress.
• Hartimo, Mirja, 2021,Husserl and Mathematics,Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.doi:10.1017/9781108990905
• Ierna, Carlo, Hanne Jacobs, and Filip Mattens (eds), 2010,Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences: Essays in Commemoration ofEdmund Husserl (Phaenomenologica 200), Dordrecht/New York:Springer. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-0071-0
• IJsseling, Samuel (ed.), 1990,Husserl-Ausgabe undHusserl-Forschung (Phaenomenologica 115), Dordrecht/Boston:Kluwer Academic Publischers.
• Jacobs, Hanne (ed.), 2021,The Husserlian Mind, London:Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429243790
• Jardine, James, 2022,Empathy, Embodiment, and the Person:Husserlian Investigations of Social Experience and the Self(Phaenomenologica 233), Cham: Springer.doi:10.1007/978-3-030-84463-9
• Lee, Nam-in, 1993,Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie derInstinkte (Phaenomenologica 128), Dordrecht/Boston: KluwerAcademic Publishers.
• Luft, Sebastian, 2011,Subjectivity and Lifeworld inTranscendental Phenomenology, Evanston, IL: NorthwesternUniversity Press.
• Mohanty, J. N., 1989,Transcendental Phenomenology: AnAnalytic Account, Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
• Moran, Dermot, 2012,Husserl’s “Crisis of theEuropean Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology”: AnIntroduction (Cambridge Introductions to Key PhilosophicalTexts), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.doi:10.1017/CBO9781139025935
• Moran, Dermot and Joseph D. Cohen, 2012,The HusserlDictionary (Continuum Philosophy Dictionaries), London/New York:Continuum.
• Overgaard, Søren, 2004,Husserl and Heidegger on Beingin the World (Phaenomenologica 173), Dordrecht/Boston: KluwerAcademic Publishers. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-2239-5
• Peucker, Henning, 2008, “From Logic to the Person: AnIntroduction to Edmund Husserl’s Ethics”,The Reviewof Metaphysics, 62(2): 307–325.
• Rinofner-Kreidl, Sonja, 2000,Edmund Husserl: Zeitlichkeit undIntentionalität (Phänomenologie 8), München:Alber.
• Rollinger, R. D., 1999,Husserl’s Position in the Schoolof Brentano (Phaenomenologica 150), Dordrecht/Boston, MA: KluwerAcademic.
• Schuhmann, Karl, 1977,Husserl-Chronik: Denk- und LebenswegEdmund Husserls (Husserliana Dokumente 1), Den Haag: MartinusNijhoff.
• –––, 1988,Husserls Staatsphilosophie(Alber-Reihe Praktische Philosophie, Bd. 29), Freiburg/Br.: K.Alber.
• Sokolowski, Robert, 1964,The Formation of Husserl’sConcept of Constitution (Phaenomenologica 18), The Hague: M.Nijhoff. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-3325-0
• –––, 1974,Husserlian Meditations; How WordsPresent Things (Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology& Existential Philosophy), Evanston, IL: Northwestern UniversityPress.
• Volonté, Paolo, 1997,Husserls Phänomenologie derImagination: zur Funktion der Phantasie bei der Konstitution vonErkenntnis (Phänomenologie, Bd. 2), Freiburg im Breisgau: K.Alber.
• Waldenfels, Bernhard, 1971,Das Zwischenreich des Dialogs:Sozialphilosophische Untersuchungen in Anschluss an EdmundHusserl (Phaenomenologica 41), Den Haag: M. Nijhoff.doi:10.1007/978-94-010-3000-7
• Welton, Donn, 2000,The Other Husserl: The Horizons ofTranscendental Phenomenology (Studies in Continental Thought),Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• ––– (ed.), 2003,The New Husserl: A CriticalReader (Studies in Continental Thought), Bloomington, IN: IndianaUniversity Press.

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• Beyer, Christian, “Edmund Husserl”,StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta& Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2025/entries/husserl/>. [This was the previous entry on this topic in theStanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy – see theversion history.]

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