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Birthday
Edmund Husserl is born in Prossnitz, Moravia to a non-orthodox Jewish family. He would later convert to Protestantism in early adulthood. -
Early Academic Career
Husserl was not a good student before attending university, remembered for falling asleep in class. After studying math in Leipzig, he began studying philosophy in 1884 for two years at the University of Vienna under Franz Clemens Brentano. -
Logical Investigations
Between 1900 and 1901, Husserl published what is arguably his most famous text, the two-part Logical Investigations. The two volumes discuss the philosophy of logic and sharply criticize psychologism. -
Ideas
Husserl, the founder of phenomenology as a philosophical movement, published his major work on the topic in 1913. In the book, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, he explains and discusses his framework for a phenomenology that more closely resembles a "hard" science. -
Middle and Late Career
Husserl was appointed chair of philosophy in Freiburg in 1916. His influence on the department and the city was mentioned by a young Emmanuel Levinas, who called Freiburg the "City of Phenomenology." Husserl remained in this position until he was replaced by a former student, Martin Heidegger, in 1928. -
Lasting Impact
Edmund Husserl meaningfully affected the courses of continental and analytic philosophy both. He influenced such other memorable philosophers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, and Edith Stein. Husserl first pointed directly to the relationship between things-in-themselves and our perceptions of them, recognizing much earlier than Thomas Kuhn that our perceptions are often colored by all manner of biases, opinions, and prejudices.
He passed away in 1938. -
Works Cited
Bakewell, Sarah. "At the Existentialist Cafe." Chatto and Windus, 2016. Husserl, Edmund. "Ideas." Nijhoff, 1913. ---. "Logical Investigations." Routledge, 2001.