Edmund Husserl, generally regarded as the founding figure of phenomenology, exerted an enormous influence on the course of twentieth and twenty-first century philosophy. This volume collects and translates essays written by important German-speaking commentators on Husserl, ranging from his contemporaries to scholars of today, to make available in English some of the best commentary on Husserl and the phenomenological project. The essays focus on three problematics within phenomenology: the nature and method of phenomenology; intentionality, with its attendant issues of temporality and subjectivity; and intersubjectivity and culture. Several essays also deal with Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology, although in a manner that reveals not only Heidegger’s differences with Husserl but also his reliance on and indebtedness to Husserl’s phenomenology.
Taken together, the book shows the continuing influence of Husserl’s thought, demonstrating how such subsequent developments as existentialism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction were defined in part by how they assimilated and departed from Husserlian insights. The course of what has come to be called continental philosophy cannot be described without reference to this assimilation and departure, and among the many successor approaches phenomenology remains a viable avenue for contemporary thought. In addition, problems addressed by Husserl—most notably, intentionality, consciousness, the emotions, and ethics—are of central concern in contemporary non-phenomenological philosophy, and many contemporary thinkers have turned to Husserl for guidance. The essays demonstrate how significant Husserl remains to contemporary philosophy across several traditions and several generations.
Includes essays by Rudolf Bernet, Klaus Held, Ludwig Landgrebe, Dieter Lohmar, Verena Mayer and Christopher Erhard, Ullrich Melle, Karl Mertens, Ernst Wolfgang Orth, Jan Patocka, Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, Karl Schuhmann, and Elisabeth Ströker.

John J. Drummond is the Robert Southwell, S.J. Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and the Humanities at Fordham University.

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Otfried Höffe is Professor Philosophy Emeritus at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, Germany and director of the Research Center for Political Philosophy.

Otfried Höffe's profile page

Rudolf Bernet is professor emeritus of philosophy and the former director of the Husserl Archives at the University of Leuven. He is the author of several books, including La vie du sujet: recherches sur l’interpretation de Husserl dans la phénoménologie (1994) and Force—pulsion— désir:
une autre philosophie de la psychoanalyse (2013), as well as numerous articles.

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Christopher Erhard is a postdoctoral research assistant and assistant professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Munich, working in phenomenology and the philosophy of mind. He has coedited Die Aktualität Husserls (2011) and Wozu Metaphysik? (2017).

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Klaus Held is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Wuppertal. He has authored several books, including Lebendige Gegenwart: Die Frage nach der Seinsweise des transzendentalen Ich bei Edmund Husserl (1966), Phänomenologie der politischen Welt (2010), Phänomenologie der natürlichen Lebenswelt (2012), and Europa und die Welt: Studien zur welt-bürgerlichen Phänomenologie (2013).

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Ludwig Landgrebe (1902–1991) served as Edmund Husserl’s assistant at the University of Freiburg and later taught at the University of Kiel and the University of Cologne. He is the author of Was bedeutet uns heute Philosophie (1948), Phänomenologie und Metaphysik (1949), Der Weg der Phänomenologie (1963), Phänomenologie und Geschichte (1968), and Faktizität und Individuation: Studien zu den Grundfragen der Phänomenologie (1982).

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Dieter Lohmar is professor of philosophy and the director of the Husserl Archives at the University of Cologne. In addition to many articles, he has published five monographs, including Erfahrung und kategoriales Denken: Hume, Kant and Husserl über vorprädikative Erfahrung und prädikative Erkenntnis (1998), Edmund Husserls Formale und transzendentale Logik (2000), Phänomenologie der schwachen Phantasie (2008), and Denken ohne Sprache (2016).

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Verena Mayer is professor of philosophy at the University of Munich. She is the author of Edmund Husserl (2009) and coeditor of Die Moralität der Gefühle (2002), Edmund Husserl: Logische Untersuchungen (2008), Ethics, Emotions and Authenticity (2009), and Die Aktualität Husserls (2011). She has authored numerous articles on phenomenology and early analytic philosophy.

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Ullrich Melle is professor emeritus of philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the former director of the Husserl Archives. In addition to editing several volumes of Husserliana, the critical edition of Husserl’s works, and Life, Subjectivity and Art: Essays in Honor of Rudolf Bernet, he has published numerous articles on Husserl’s phenomenological development and his ethics.

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Karl Mertens is professor of philosophy at the University of Würzburg. He is the author of Zwischen Letztbegründung und Skepsis: Kritische Untersuchungen zum Selbtsverständnis der transzendentalen Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls (1996) and numerous articles on phenomenology, the philosophy of action, and ethics. He is also the coeditor of Wahrnehmen, Fühlen, Handeln (2013) and Die Dimension des Sozialen (2014).

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Ernst Wolfgang Orth is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Trier. His many writings include Bedeutung, Sinn, Gegenstand (1967), Natur, Kultur, Zeit (1999), Edmund Husserls Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Vernunft und Kultur (1999), Was ist und was heißt “Kultur”? (2000), and Die Spur des Menschen (2014).

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Jan Patocka (1907–1977), born in then Czechoslovakia, was one of the last students of both Husserl and Heidegger. He was barred from teaching by the Czech government from 1951 to 1968 and then again from 1972 until his death. He lectured at the so-called Underground University, but was for the most part unable to publish, although he did circulate typescripts of his writings. Some of his major works have been translated into English, including The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem (2016), An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology (1996), Plato and Europe (2002), and Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (1996).

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Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl is professor of philosophy at the University of Graz. She is currently coeditor of the journal Husserl Studies. In addition to publishing many articles, she has edited or coedited seven volumes and authored Edmund Husserl: Zeitlichkeit und Intentionalität (2000) and Mediane Phänomenologie: Subjektivität im Spannungsfeld von Naturalität und Kulturalität (2003).

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Karl Schuhmann (1941–2003) was professor of philosophy at the University of Utrecht from 1975 until his death. He was a cofounder of the journal Husserl Studies and edited the critical edition of volume 1 of Husserl’s Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie as well as a volume chronicling Husserl’s life and thought. His books include Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie (1971), the two-volume Die Dialektik der Phänomenologie (1973), and Husserls Staatsphilosophie (1988).

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Elisabeth Ströker (1928–2000) was professor of philosophy at the University of Cologne. She authored many articles and her monographs include Philosophische Untersuchungen zum Raum (1965), Einführung in die Wissenschaftslehre (1973), Phänomenologische Studien (1987), Husserls transzendentale Phänomenologie (1987), and Wissenschaftsphilosophische Studien (1989).

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Patrick Eldridge's profile page

Hayden Kee's profile page

Robin Litscher Wilkins' profile page

This book offers a corrective to the trend to present Husserl’s thought through critical departures from it, such of those as Heidegger, Derrida, and Dummett, instead approaching, and sometimes criticizing, Husserl’s thought on its own terms. The volume offers an important contribution to contemporary philosophy in both the continental and analytic traditions.---Burt Hopkins, University of Lille,

Twelve strong essays in this excellent and impressively well-knit collection present different but convergent examinations of master-themes in Husserl’s philosophy like intentionality and the reduction/s, while also discussing specific doctrines relating to psychologism, the eidetic method, objectifying acts, time-consciousness, truth and error, monadological construction, and the intersection of phenomenology and cultural critique.

Phenomenological Reviews