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Birth
Edmund Husserl was born in what is now modern day Prostějov, Czech Republic. He is known as the father of phenomenology and started off as a mathematician but was later inspired to peruse philosophy. The question he had in mind was, “how did something like the constitution of numbers ever came about?” This melded his mathematical roots with the philosophical aspect and so birthed a philosophical revolution. -
Phenomenology
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Phenomenology is a discipline within philosophy and is the study of the structures of experience, also known as consciousness. The concept of phenomenology was introduced in earlier theories long before Husserl revolutionized it. It can be found in Franz Brentano's work, who is regarded as the founder of intentionalism, which holds the basic concept of phenomenology. -
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A Scientific Revolution
Husserl was an empiricist in his earlier years but soon changed his mind through his studies. The knowledge of mathematics was justified through experience, but Husserl questioned where the structure of this knowledge stemmed from. He believed that empiricism was putting too many constraints on the consciousness, which was counter-productive to how useful knowledge could be acquired. This led to his theory that there must be objective means of assessing the abstract nature of the mind. -
Death
Edmund Husserl was laid to rest in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. His work directly impacted the fields of linguistics, philosophy, and psychology.
