Husserl S Legacy

What is ultimately at stake in Husserl's phenomenological analyses? Are they primarily to be understood as investigations of consciousness, and if so, must they be classified as psychological contributions of some sort? If Husserl is engaged in a transcendental philosophical project, is phenomenological transcendental philosophy then distinctive in some way, and what kind of metaphysical import, if any, might it have? Is Husserlian phenomenology primarily descriptive in character, is it supposed to capture how matters seem to us, or is it also supposed to capture how things really are? Husserl's Legacy offers an interpretation of the more overarching aims and ambitions of Husserlian phenomenology and engages with some of the most contested and debated questions in phenomenology. Central to its interpretive efforts is the attempt to understand Husserl's transcendental idealism. The book argues that Husserl was not a sophisticated introspectionist, nor a phenomenalist, nor an internalist, nor a quietist when it comes to metaphysical issues, and not opposed to all forms of naturalism. On a more positive note, Husserl's Legacy argues that Husserl's phenomenology is as much about the world as it is about consciousness, and that a proper grasp of Husserl's transcendental idealism reveals the fundamental importance of facticity and intersubjectivity.

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) is one of the previous century's most important thinkers. Often regarded as the "Father of phenomenology," this collection of essays reveals that he is indeed much more than that. The breadth of Husserl's thought is considerable and much remains unexplored. An underlying theme of this volume is that Husserl is constantly returning to origins, revising his thought in the light of new knowledge offered by the sciences.

Drawing upon both Husserl's published works and posthumous material, Husserl's Phenomenology incorporates the results of the most recent Husserl research. It can consequently serve as a concise and updated introduction to his thinking.

The present volume contains many of the papers presented at a four-day conference held by the Husserl-Archives in Leuven in April 2009 to c- memorate the one hundred and ?ftieth anniversary of Edmund Husserl’s birth. The conference was organized to facilitate the critical evaluation of Husserl’s philosophical project from various perspectives and in light of the current philosophical and scienti?c climate. Still today, the characteristic tension between Husserl’s concrete and detailed descriptions of consciousness, on the one hand, and his radical philosophical claim to ultimate truth and certainty in thinking, feeling, and acting, on the other, calls for a sustained re?ection on the relation between a Husserlian phenomenological philosophy and philosophy in general. What can phenomenological re?ection contribute to the ongoing discussion of certain perennial philosophical questions and which phi- sophical problems are raised by a phenomenological philosophy itself? In addition to addressing the question of the relation between p- nomenology and philosophy in general, phenomenology today cannot avoid addressing the nature of its relation to the methods and results of the natural and human sciences. In fact, for Husserl, phenomenology is not just one among many philosophical methods and entirely unrelated to the sciences. Rather, according to Husserl, phenomenology should be a “?rst philosophy” and should aim to become the standard for all true science.

In this third volume of a monumental four book survey of Phenome­ nology world-wide fifty years after the death of its chief founder, Edmund Husserl, we have a collection of studies which, in the first place, consider Husserl's legacy in the postmodern world. The extent of our indebtedness to the Master is shown in explora­ tions of the archeology of knowledge, hermeneutics, and critical studies of language by A. Ales Bello, P. Pefialver, P. Million, V. Martinez Guzman, H. Rodriguez Pifiero, Y. Vlaisavlevich, and others. There follow calls for renewing the critique of reason by C. Schrag, F. Bosio, and J. Lerin Riera and discussion by D. Laskey, K. G6rniak-Kocikowska, M. R. Barral, Y. Park, and N. Delle Site on A-T. Tymieniecka's phe­ nomenology of life, which proposes a total reorientation of phenome­ nology by introducing a conception of the human condition in which the human creative act is the Archimedean point for philosophy.