The Existential Husserl (eBook)

This book examines Husserl's approach to the question concerning meaning in life and demonstrates that his philosophy includes a phenomenology of existence. Given his critique of the fashionable 'philosophy of existence' of the late 1920s and early 1930s, one might think that Husserl posited an opposition between transcendental phenomenology and existential philosophy, as well as that in this respect he differed from existential phenomenologists after him. But texts composed between 1908 and 1937 and recently published in Husserliana XLII, Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie (2014), show that the existential Husserl was not opposed but open to the phenomenological investigation of several basic topics of a philosophy of existence. A collection of contributions from a team of internationally recognized scholars drawing on these and other sources, the present volume offers insights into the relationship between phenomenology and philosophy of existence. It does so by (1) delineating the basic outlines of Husserl's phenomenology of existence, (2) reinterpreting the tension between Husserl's transcendental phenomenology and Jaspers's and Heidegger's philosophy of existence as well as Kierkegaard's and Sartre's existentialism, and (3) investigating the existential aspects of Husserl's phenomenological ethics. Thus focusing on neglected aspects of Husserl's thought, the volume shows that there is a consensus between classical phenomenology and existential phenomenology on the urgency of addressing the existential questions that in The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936) Husserl calls 'the questions concerning the meaning or meaninglessness of this entire human existence'. The Existential Husserl represents a major contribution to the clarification of the historical and philosophical developments from transcendental phenomenology to existential phenomenology. The book should appeal to a wide audience of many readers at all levels looking for phenomenological answers to existential questions.

Marco Cavallaro (Ph.D., University of Cologne) is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Philosophy of the University of Koblenz-Landau. He earned his Ph.D. degree with a thesis on Husserl's System of a Theory of Science (forthcoming). He has published several articles on Husserl and phenomenology, including in Husserl Studies, Phänomenologische Forschungen, and Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. He is co-editor of the volume Phenomenology of Phantasy and Emotions (WBG, 2022). His current research focuses on phenomenological ethics, philosophy of digitality, and philosophical anthropology. 

George Heffernan (Ph.D., University of Cologne) is Professor of Philosophy at Merrimack College. He specializes in phenomenology, existentialism, and hermeneutics. He has presented numerous papers, including at the Husserl Circle, the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, and the World Congress of Philosophy, and published numerous papers, including in Husserl Studies, The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, and Studia phaenomenologica. He has also published several books, including Isagoge in die phänomenologische Apophantik (in Phaenomenologica). He has received numerous awards, including from the Basselin Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.