Edmund Husserl: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortrage.

Abstract

Edmund Husserl: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortrdge. EDMUND HuSSERL. Herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Prof. Dr. S. Strasser, Haag, Martinus Nijhoff, 1950. Pp. xviii, 244. The present volume is the first publication of the at Louvain, guardian of 45,000 pages of manuscripts which the philosopher left behind unpublished and mostly unedited at the time of his death, April 27, 1938. Professor H. L. von Breda of the Institut Sup6rieur de Philosophie at Louvain and director of the Archives Husserl tells in a preface the history and the purpose of this institution, giving due credit to his helpers and assistants but hardly mentioning the fact that this outstanding center of phenomenological research is in the first instance his personal creation and that its achievements became possible only through his energy and self-denial. Any student of Husserl's philosophy who like the present writer had the privilege of enjoying the hospitality of the Archives Husserl must have been deeply impressed by the tremendous work accomplished under most difficult circumstances with the help of a few competent scholars. He must have gained the conviction that the forthcoming publication, of Husserl's writing will not only attain the highest standard of philological precision but also open new insights into the development of the philosopher's thought. The edition of the Cartesian Meditations now before the public fulfills the highest expectations in this respect. Professor Dr. S. Strassen, for many years connected with the Archives Husserl and now professor of philosophy at the University of Nimwegen, Holland, is the excellent editor of this volume. It contains the text of four lectures, delivered by Husserl in the German language at the Sorbonne, Paris, in February 1929, as well as a summary of these lectures prepared by the philosopher himself both in the German original and in the French translation. These lectures were in the same year with the help of Husserl's assistant, Professor Eugen Fink, elaborated into the first four Cartesian Meditations dealing with the approach to the transcendental ego, the field of transcendental experience and its structure, the problem of constitution (truth and reality), and the constitutive problems of the transcendental ego, whereas the fifth meditation, dealing with the problem of intersubjectivity, was added later on. The manuscript of these five Meditations, written in the German language, was translated by Dr. E. Levinas and Mlle. G. Pfeiffer into French and published 1937 by A. Colin, Paris (re-published 1949 by. Vrin). Until now this most important work was accessible