The promised land: The problem of Edmund Husserl's true philosophy

Does Husserl express anywhere a systematic conception of his philosophy, or does he proffer only "introductions" and fragmentary studies as are found in his published writings? If his true philosophy lay in his unpublished research manuscripts, as he argues, then it is in these that we may find a possible systematic of phenomenological philosophy. In the first chapter, I examine the composition and organization of Husserl's extant manuscripts. I show here that Husserl's literary estate is composed of a large number of wide ranging but highly fragmented investigations. In the second chapter, I offer reasons why it is reasonable to look for a unitary conception of phenomenology expressed in these manuscripts. Here I turn to Husserl correspondence, particular with Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Misch, to show that a self-described impulse works its way through all his major investigations. Husserl identifies the origin of this impulse in his encounter with Wilhelm Dilthey in 1905. In the third chapter, I take up the task of clarifying the nature of this vaguely defined impulse. I trace the development from static to genetic style of analyses by Husserl in the first two decades of the twentieth century and show that with this development an inconsistency arises in his philosophy. The method of eidetic description of sense-constitution exemplified in his Logical Investigations and Ideas, First Book fails to account for the fundamental levels of passive intentionality disclosed in later time analyses. Recognizing this dissonance, Husserl undertakes to produce a "system of phenomenological philosophy" during the twenties and thirties in order to bring under a single frame the earlier, static or ahistorical and later, temporal or historical models of intentionality. I examine these efforts in the last chapter and explain the aim and composition of final draft-plan of the "system of phenomenological philosophy" produced by Husserl and his assistant, Eugen Fink. That Husserl failed to publish this "system" marks the great unfulfilled promise of his philosophy, but this does not signify the failure of his philosophy. Rather the "system" opens a new way to understand transcendental phenomenology and lays the ground for going beyond Husserl's philosophy.;Keywords. Edmund Husserl, Transcendental Phenomenology, Static and Genetic Sense-Constitution, System, Philosophy.