Edmund Husserl

Abstract

Husserl was born in 1859. He was trained as a mathematician, and studied at Leipzig, Berlin, and Vienna; he received his doctorate, at the latter university, in 1882. In 1883 he took up a post in Berlin, but in that year he was, as it were, “converted” to philosophy; he returned to Vienna to study philosophy with Franz Brentano, and stayed there from 1884 to 1886. Although Brentano was then quite junior, he was to become a very significant figure in the philosophy of the late nineteenth century; his influence on Husserl and others was quite decisive. Husserl then embarked on his own career as a philosopher; he had teaching appointments at Halle, from 1887 to 1901, then Göttingen, from 1901 to 1916, and finally at Freiburg from 1916 to 1929. He died in 1938, his final years having been spent in an atmosphere of increasing rancour and difficulty: he was Jewish and the Nazis had come to power.