1068 EDMUNDHUSSERL
“Phenomenology” by Edmund Husserl. Reprinted with permission from Encyclopaedia Britannica,14th edition.
© 1932 by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Ethnomethodolocial Specifications (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007). For
collections of essays, see R.O. Elveton, ed.,The Phenomenology of Husserl
(Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970); Frederick Elliston and Peter McCormick, eds.,
Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1977)—especially David Carr’s article, “Husserl’s Problematic Concept of the
Life-World”; Robert Sokolowski, ed.,Edmund Husserl and the Phenomenological
Tradition(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988); Barry
Smith and David Woodruff Smith, eds.,The Cambridge Companion to Husserl
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and the Husserl Studies,an
ongoing journal published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Hingham, MA.PHENOMENOLOGY
Phenomenology denotes a new, descriptive, philosophical method, which, since the
concluding years of the last century, has established (1) an a prioripsychological disci-
pline, able to provide the only secure basis on which a strong empirical psychology can
be built, and (2) a universal philosophy, which can supply an organum for the methodi-
cal revision of all the sciences.
I. PHENOMENOLOGICALPSYCHOLOGY
Present-day psychology, as the science of the “psychical” in its concrete connection with
spatio-temporal reality, regards as its material whatever is present in the world as “ego-
istic”; i.e., “living,” perceiving, thinking, willing, etc., actual, potential and habitual. And as
the psychical is known as a certain stratum of existence, proper to men and beasts,
psychology may be considered as a branch of anthropology and zoology. But animal nature
is a part of physical reality, and that which is concerned with physical reality is natural
science. Is it, then, possible to separate the psychical cleanly enough from the physical to
establish a pure psychology parallel to natural science? That a purely psychological inves-
tigation is practicable within limits is shown by our obligation to it for our fundamental
conceptions of the psychical, and most of those of the psycho-physical.
But before determining the question of an unlimited psychology, we must be sure
of the characteristics of psychological experience and the psychical data it provides. We
turn naturally to our immediate experiences. But we cannot discover the psychical in
any experience, except by a “reflection,” or perversion of the ordinary attitude. We are
accustomed to concentrate upon the matters, thoughts, and values of the moment, and
not upon the psychical “act of experience” in which these are apprehended. This “act”
is revealed by a “reflection”; and a reflection can be practised on every experience.