From epistemic justification to philosophical authenticity: A study in Husserl's phenomenological epistemology

Considering Edmund Husserl's phenomenological philosophy from the years 1901 to 1913, I provide a creative interpretation of Husserl's epistemology that takes as its point of departure the view that central to what Husserl calls "the phenomenology of reason" is a theory of epistemic justification which proposes that one holds a belief as true when it is "rational" to hold that belief as true, and this occurs when the belief is justified by an intuitive presentation of the object to which it refers.;I focus on three major works of Husserl's early period: Logical Investigations (1900/1), The Idea of Phenomenology (1907), and Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, Book 1 (1913). In these works, I consider Husserl's epistemological descriptions. Thus, in the Logical Investigations my focus is on Husserl's systematic formulation of knowledge in terms of intuitive fulfillment; in The Idea of Phenomenology my aim is to draw attention to Husserl's phenomenological reduction and to the view that knowledge is justified both in terms of an intuition of objective givenness and in terms of conceptual interconnections. The focus in Ideas, Book 1, is on Husserl's phenomenological description of belief and justification, what makes up his "phenomenology of reason," and where it is evident that Husserl thinks of rationally grounded beliefs in terms of beliefs which are justified.;I insist throughout that the epistemological ideas leading to the phenomenology of reason follow an uninterrupted and intentional path culminating in the view that it is justification of one's beliefs which allows the thinking subject to overcome her skeptical worries and, ultimately, that it is the phenomenological method itself that can be used as a means to achieve human, and philosophical, authenticity.