Continental · 1859–1938
Edmund Husserl
Moravian-born mathematician turned philosopher, founder of phenomenology
Husserl held that philosophy must become a rigorous science of consciousness: by bracketing our natural belief in the world, we can describe the intentional structures through which anything appears.
Life and thought
Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) was born into a Jewish family in Prossnitz, Moravia, took a doctorate in mathematics and turned to philosophy after hearing Franz Brentano in Vienna. He taught at Halle, Göttingen and, from 1916, Freiburg, where Heidegger became his assistant. After 1933 the Nazi regime treated him as a Jew and cut him off from academic life; after his death some 40,000 pages of his manuscripts were smuggled to Leuven, where they are still kept.
Husserl wanted philosophy to become a rigorous science by returning “to the things themselves”, as they show up in experience. Consciousness, he held, is always consciousness of something (intentionality). To study it we perform the epoché: we bracket the everyday belief that the world exists independently, not to doubt it but to describe how a tree, a number or another person appears to us, and through which acts of perceiving, remembering or imagining. His method launched phenomenology and shaped Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas.
Works
Shaped by
1596–1650René DescartesHusserl presented phenomenology as a renewed Cartesian Meditations.1724–1804Immanuel KantKönigsberg professor whose critical philosophy redrew modern thoughtStudents
1906–1995Emmanuel LevinasLevinas studied with Husserl in Freiburg in 1928–29.Shaped
1905–1980Jean-Paul SartreSartre studied Husserl in Berlin in 1933–34.1889–1976Martin HeideggerHeidegger was Husserl’s assistant in Freiburg, then broke with his method.1908–1961Maurice Merleau-PontyFrench phenomenologist of perception and the lived body1913–2005Paul RicœurRicœur translated Husserl’s Ideas I into French.Criticised by
1930–2004Jacques DerridaSpeech and Phenomena (1967) deconstructs Husserl’s appeal to self-presence.Meanwhile, in other traditions
1848–1925Gottlob FregeJena mathematician who invented modern logic1859–1952John DeweyPhilosopher of education and democracy; lectured in China 1919–211863–1902Swami VivekanandaMonk who introduced Vedānta and yoga to the West1869–1948Mohandas K. GandhiLeader of Indian independence and theorist of non-violent resistance1870–1945Nishida KitarōFounder of the Kyoto School1872–1950Sri AurobindoNationalist revolutionary turned philosopher of spiritual evolutionOn the record
Husserl’s link to Heidegger is coded as influence, not teaching: Heidegger was his assistant, not his doctoral student.
Heidegger took his doctorate in 1913 and wrote his habilitation (1915) under the Neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert. He became Husserl’s assistant in Freiburg in 1919 and they ran seminars together; he later dedicated Being and Time to Husserl “in friendship and admiration”. “Influence” is the accurate kind.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Martin Heidegger”