Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology.

Abstract

With a new foreword by Dermot Moran ‘the work here presented seeks to found a new science – though, indeed, whole course of philosophical development since Descartes has been preparing way for it – a science covering a new field of experience, exclusively its own, that of Transcendental Subjectivity’ - Edmund Husserl, from author’s preface to English Edition Widely regarded as principal founder of phenomenology, one of most important movements in twentieth century philosophy, Edmund Husserl’s Ideas is one of his most important works and a classic of twentieth century thought. This Routledge Classics edition of original translation by W.R. Boyce Gibson includes introduction to English edition written by Husserl himself in 1931. Husserl’s early thought conceived of phenomenology – general study of what appears to conscious experience – in a relatively narrow way, mainly in relation to problems in logic and theory of knowledge. The publication of Ideas in 1913 witnessed a significant and controversial widening of Husserl’s thought, changing course of phenomenology decisively. Husserl argued that phenomenology was study of very nature of what it is to think, the science of essence of itself. Husserl’s arguments ignited a heated debate regarding nature of consciousness and experience that has endured throughout twentieth and continues in present day. No understanding of twentieth century philosophy is complete without some understanding of Husserl, and his work influenced some of great philosophers of twentieth century, such as Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre.