HUSSERL, Edmund. - Philosopher and psychologist, b. at Prossnitz (Moravia), 18 Apr. 1859, d. at Freiburg in Br. 26 Apr. 1938. He taught as Privatdozent at Halle (1887), then as full professor at Göttingen (1906) and Freiburg (from 1906).
H. is the founder of the German “phenomenological school” (Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, Halle 1913 ff.). He restored, on the basis of neo-Kantianism, the terminology and speculative researches proper to German scholasticism of the 14th century. Husserl’s phenomenological method consists in the study of objects of knowledge as objects of consciousness, or “intentional” phenomena. Sensation and intellect, matter and form according to Kant (and Duns Scotus) are merely axial parameters of the method. It contemplates expression (Ausdruck) and its meaning (Aussage) as integrative elements of sensible intuition, which is progressively completed in consciousness until it attains the adequate idea of the phenomenal object. This allows two kinds of intellectual or scientific inquiry: the eidetic, or formulation of species (laws, genera of phenomena), and the ontic, or description of regions of being intuited by consciousness beneath the veil of phenomena—internal and external but not unifiable, since being in itself is transcendent.
Principal works: Philosophie der Arithmetik, I (Halle 1891); Logische Untersuchungen (2 vols. in 3 parts, ibid. 1900; 2nd ed. ibid. 1913–21; 3rd ed. ibid. 1922); Ideen zu einer Phänomenologie u. phänomenologischen Philosophie, I (ibid. 1913); Formale und transzendentale Logik (ibid. 1929); Méditations cartésiennes (Paris 1931).