Husserl's Phenomenology

Paper Summary:

This paper answers, with reference to a large body of Edmund Husserl's philosophical writings, the question of what, according to Husserl, is the properly philosophical attitude. It contrasts this with what he maintains is our 'natural attitude'. The paper argues that, for Husserl, a more philosophical attitude enables a 'first philosophy,' a rigorous and presupposition-less philosophy, and more pertinently, makes distinct the previously obscured realm of pure transcendental consciousness. The author of this paper offers his own brief criticisms of these views.

From the Paper:

"What Husserl will have us do with our uncritical natural attitude is 'bracket it' or 'disconnect it' via the phenomenological method of epoche. By this we do not-as Descartes did-merely repudiate it with denials ("I shall suppose I in fact have no body," etc.) we simply "put out of action the general thesis..." (Ibid. pp.110.) The natural question is: given the general thesis's fundamentality to us, how can we simply 'put it aside', and moreover, what do we achieve by doing this? I have already suggested that in regard to the latter question, we achieve a more presuppositionless attitude suitable to the project of (first) philosophy. But the former question apparently remains entirely unanswered: how can we possibly go about this?"

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