Publication Details
Origins of Phenomenology: Brentano and Husserl
Abstract
The paper tries to shed light on the development of the phenomenological thinking of two founding fathers of phenomenology: Brentano and Husserl. Through the criticism of psychologism it approaches the classical modern thesis articulated already by Descartes in his Meditations, namely that our inner being and consciousness are given to us more directly than the being of nature. This psychic/physical dualism as well as holding the psychic independent of its physical environment (i.e. Husserlian preserving a transcendental position), were ever more inconsistent. It was approa- ching the objectified soul in the same exact way as the nature that paved the way to empirical psychology. Husserl’s aiming at so called “pure psychology”, even though underpinned by the transcendental subjectivity, resulted in the rise of a phenomenological stream, which hoped to justify its claims by recourse to the original encounter of humans with things within the pre-scientific frame of natural world.
F. Brentano, E. Husserl, Psychologism, Phenomenology, Phenomenon