Husserl’s Theory of the Intentionality of Consciousness in Historical Perspective

Abstract

Though he was not a historian, either by temperament or by training, Husserl repeatedly and most emphatically insisted upon the continuity of his endeavors with the great tradition of Western philosophy, especially modern philosophy, which began in the seventeenth century. His insistence appears most explicitly in his writings of the twenties and thirties published in the course of the last decade.¹ Even as early as 1913, in the first volume of Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, the only volume published during his lifetime, Husserl speaks of his phenomenology as the “secret longing” of the whole of modern philosophy, referring especially to Descartes, Hume, and Kant.² Finally, it is significant that one of Husserl’s presentations of phenomenological philosophy as a whole, a presentation in a highly concentrated, condensed, and, in comparison with Ideen, I, abbreviated form (notwithstanding the discussion of the problem of intersubjectivity which is not contained in Ideen, I), bears the title Cartesian Meditations, which is to say meditations carried out in the manner of those of Descartes.