HUSSERL'S 'INTRODUCTIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY': INTERPRETATION AND CRITIQUE

This work seeks to examine and revive one of the central themes of Edmund Husserl's philosophical writings, namely, the problem of an introduction to transcendental phenomenology. The several works which Husserl devoted to this issue differ from one another in important ways, and these differences have been emphasized by many commentators. In contrast to this, the present inquiry identifies and focuses upon a common, underlying line of thought in Husserl's "introductions" and does so in order to show that there is a central difficulty in the way Husserl attempts to open up the sphere of transcendental phenomenology, a difficulty which has implications for the present-day conception and practice of phenomenology.;The success of Husserl's argument is shown to depend on the soundness of a thesis, called the "coherence-thesis," which constitutes one of the premises of the argument. An interpretive analysis of this thesis shows that its soundness rests on a successful demonstration of the existence of the possibility of "transcendental illusion." Husserl's concept of transcendental illusion is interpreted to show how it is a fundamentally different type of illusion than any with which we are familiar. An attempt by Husserl to demonstrate the existence of the possibility of transcendental illusion is examined and found to be inconclusive and circular as is, by consequence, Husserl's argument as a whole. The discussion of transcendental illusion shows that it occupies a place of central importance in Husserl's phenomenology.;The implications of the inconclusiveness of Husserl's argument are drawn. Generally, both the thesis that consciousness constitutes the world and the coherence-thesis are rendered problematic, remaining items yet to be demonstrated. This demonstration, it is claimed, is the task of the concrete work of transcendental phenomenology itself. In accordance with this, the transcendental phenomenological methods which received much of their sense from the presupposition that Husserl's argument was successful are in need of reinterpretation. A reinterpretation is given which is based on the idea that the only demonstration that can effectively establish that consciousness constitutes the world is one which shows how it does so.;The common line of thought in Husserl's "introductions" is exposed by the construction of one introduction to transcendental phenomenology from the many which Husserl wrote. In this way it is shown how Husserl develops and responds to what is taken to be the dominant concern of his transcendental phenomenology, namely, the question of how knowledge of the world is possible. Husserl attempts to answer this question with the theory that consciousness "constitutes" the world. The first of three parts of the "one" introduction shows how each of Husserl's "introductions" contributes to the development of the problem which motivates his theory. The second part concerns the transition from the "natural attitude" to the "transcendental attitude," i.e., from our usual way of regarding ourselves and the world to the radically new attitude required for the solution of the problem of cognition. Here an argument which Husserl advances to prove that consciousness constitutes the world is analyzed in detail. This argument purports to establish its conclusion without presupposing transcendental phenomenology. In the third part it is shown that, as Husserl conceives them, the transcendental phenomenological methods of "epoche," "reduction" and "constitutive intentional analysis" derive a significant part of their meaning from the presupposition that Husserl's argument is successful.