1066 EDMUNDHUSSERL
Husserl’s shorthand notes as the Husserliana series.The Archive has also hosted
congresses on, and published essays in, phenomenology.
Franz Brentano, Husserl’s teacher, criticized British empiricism for its tendency to
present consciousness in terms of ideas or representations. Brentano argued that
the key constituent of mental states is intentionality—thought’s correlation rather
than its immobile state. In order to have consciousness, one must be conscious of
something. One cannot just think, one must think aboutsomething; one cannot just
desire, one must have desire forsomething; one cannot just be aware, one must be
aware ofsomething. In each case, the “something” is the “intentional object” of
consciousness. Contrary to Kant, Brentano held that consciousness does not
constructthese objects; it only points tothem.
The end of the nineteenth century brought two quite different responses to
Brentano. The Analytic tradition, which tended to dominate English-speaking
philosophy, focused almost exclusively on objects of consciousness, ignoring
consciousness itself. The Phenomenological tradition, dominant on the European
continent, examined the nature of consciousness itself.
Husserl is the acknowledged founder of this Phenomenological response. Like
Descartes, Husserl considered consciousness the main topic for philosophy. In
examining the form of this consciousness, Husserl discovered what he called “the
natural standpoint”:
I am aware of a world, spread out in space endlessly, and in time becoming and
become, without end. I am aware of it, that means, first of all, I discover it immedi-
ately, intuitively, I experience it. Through sight, touch, hearing, etc.,...corporeal
things somehow spatially distributed are for me simply there,... “present,” whether
or not I pay them special attention by busying myself with them, considering,
thinking, feeling, willing.*
This is the world as it is actually lived by an individual. Although we can develop
“worlds” of arithmetic or science by our knowledge of things from a particular
standpoint, the natural standpoint—the world as actually lived by individuals—is
always prior to, and conditioning of, any particular knowledge possible.
Yet according to Husserl, it is possible to get behind this natural standpoint to
identify an invariant intentional structure. Husserl developed a method of “brack-
eting,” which he called <epoch ̄e> (from the Greek word for noncommitment or
suspended judgment). For example, I may look with pleasure at a blossoming
apple tree. From the natural standpoint, I can see that the tree exists outside of me
in space and time and that I am enjoying my psychical state of pleasure. From this
standpoint, moreover, there is an assumed relation between me and the apple tree.
But Descartes had shown that this perception could be mistaken—I could be hallu-
cinating. As a result, my knowledge of the tree is uncertain. But I can suspend my
judgments about the tree and perform an <epoch ̄e>. This “bracketing” moves me
from a natural to a phenomenological standpoint, from which I now recognize “a
*Edmund Husserl,Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology,translated by W.R. Boyce
Gibson (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1931), Section 2, Chapter 1, ¶27. (Emphasis in
original.)
