Phenomenology and the Social Sciences

Abstract

The significance of Husserl’s Phenomenology for the foundation of the social sciences will presumably become fully known only when the Husserl manuscripts which are relevant to this problem have been published. To be sure, the published works already contain the most important themes of thought pertaining to this subject. Husserl was constantly concerned with them from the time of writing the sixth Logical Investigation. But these important implicit themes remain scarcely noticed, not only because the extensive discoveries of phenomenology in the realm of pure logic and the general theory of knowledge have taken first place in the public discussions, but also because only in the later writings of the master has the problem of the social sciences been attacked systematically.