Abstract
EDMUND HUSSERL died in 1938 at the age of seventy-nine. His writings have had considerable influence on the Continent, but not much in English-speaking countries. He was mainly concerned to give an adequate account of the nature of experience, as that behind which we cannot go and upon which all belief and action are founded. Husserl considered experience to be self-revealing, so that careful attention to what is present to the mind is all that is needed and indeed possible ; provided that experience is understood in its full sense, as that which is lived through and directed towards something, not taken partially and incompletely as a collection of 'sense data' after the manner of the Positivists. Like many thinkers, especially German ones, Husserl, having got hold of one good idea, runs it to death by expecting it to do the work of a whole philosophical system. He seems to have thought he was rescuing philosophy from a false psychology, but it is possible that his real merit has been to inspire the Gestalt School of thinkers to help to rescue psychology from a false philosophy. In this matter, however, it is doubtful whether Husserl's attempt at a comprehensive system has done more than the tentative efforts of his teacher Brentano.
The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl
The Origin and Development of his Phenomenology. By E. Parl Welch. Pp. xxiv + 337. (New York: Columbia University Press ; London: Oxford University Press, 1941.) 22s.
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R., A. The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl. Nature 150, 222 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150222c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150222c0