Abstract

This paper investigates a moment in the history of the phenomenological movement and offers an argument for its enduring significance. To this end, it brings to light, for the first time in a half-century, Manfred Frings’ rejected and so unpublished translation of Edmund Husserl’s Ideas II. After considering the meaning of the term Leib, which Frings renders ‘lived-body’ and to which the editor suggests ‘organism,’ a brief argument for the living tradition of phenomenology is given. It is claimed that the enduring significance of the document is found in the elucidation of the need to renew the phenomenological tradition through a collaboration across generations. Thus, even in its supposed “failure,” Frings’ translation gives data to future thinkers for insight into both their own life and the life of the ideas of phenomenology itself.