Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology

Edmund Husserl

Sep 1983 · Springer Science & Business Media

About this ebook

the Logische Untersuchungen,l phenomenology has been conceived as a substratum of empirical psychology, as a sphere comprising "imma nental" descriptions of psychical mental processes, a sphere compris ing descriptions that - so the immanence in question is understood - are strictly confined within the bounds of internal experience. It 2 would seem that my protest against this conception has been oflittle avail; and the added explanations, which sharply pinpointed at least some chief points of difference, either have not been understood or have been heedlessly pushed aside. Thus the replies directed against my criticism of psychological method are also quite negative because they miss the straightforward sense of my presentation. My criticism of psychological method did not at all deny the value of modern psychology, did not at all disparage the experimental work done by eminent men. Rather it laid bare certain, in the literal sense, radical defects of method upon the removal of which, in my opinion, must depend an elevation of psychology to a higher scientific level and an extraordinary amplification ofits field of work. Later an occasion will be found to say a few words about the unnecessary defences of psychology against my supposed "attacks.

Ratings and reviews

The one star is in regard to the translation, not the actual work. This is of course one of the most important texts in the history of philosophy and the most complete presentation of the so-called "transcendental" phase of Husserl's phenomenology. As such it cannot be rated any more than the Bible or Shakespeare can be rated. But, if you can, get a hold of the now out of print Gibson translation of Ideas I. It's outdated, to be sure, and sometimes anachronistic, but Gibson actually knew German. Fred Kersten's translation, on the other hand, is no better than one a machine might produce. He often confuses adverbs for adjectives, overlooks the subjunctive mood, mistranslates active verbs as passive, and sometimes neglects to translate entire clauses. To make matters worse, he has chosen to render Husserl's already plodding and difficult prose into an awkard and forced technical terminology, one which attempts to interpret the meaning of Husserl's terms and their systematic force beforehand. To be sure, some interpretation is necessary in all translation, but Kersten goes too far, giving senses to words that are in fact a matter of scholarly investigation, not simple translation. And for all of that, he is INCONSISTENT in his technical rendering (for example, "aktuell" is alternatively "actional" and "actual", for no apparent reason). I don't believe that texts need always be read in their original in order to be sufficiently understood. There are masterpieces of translation. This is rubbish.

About the author

Born to Jewish parents in what is now the Czech Republic, Edmund Husserl began as a mathematician, studying with Karl Theodor Weierstrass and receiving a doctorate in 1881. He went on to study philosophy and psychology with Franz Brentano and taught at Halle (1887--1901), Gottingen (1901--16), and Freiburg (1916--29). Because of his Jewish background, he was subject to persecution by the Nazis, and after his death his unpublished manuscripts had to be smuggled to Louvain, Belgium, to prevent their being destroyed. Husserl is the founder of the philosophical school known as phenomenology. The history of Husserl's philosophical development is that of an endless philosophical search for a foundational method that could serve as a rational ground for all the sciences. His first major book, Philosophy of Arithmetic (1891), was criticized by Gottlob Frege for its psychologism, which changed the whole direction of Husserl's thinking. The culmination of his next period was the Logical Investigations (1901). His views took an idealistic turn in the Ideas Toward a Pure Phenomenology (1911). Husserl wrote little from then until the late 1920s, when he developed his idealism in a new direction in Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929) and Cartesian Meditations (1932). His thought took yet another turn in his late lectures published as Crisis of the European Sciences (1936), which emphasize the knowing I's rootedness in "life world." Husserl's influence in the twentieth century has been great, not only through his own writings, but also through his many distinguished students, who included Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Eugen Fink, Emmanuel Levinas, and Roman Ingarden.