Abstract

This study approaches the philosophy of Edmund Husserl as a theory of reason through an elaboration of his developing phenomenological determination of the experiential and methodological dimensions of the experience of evidence. The task is, then, two-fold: to trace Husserl's deepening understanding of the nature and theoretical centrality of the phenomenological concept of evidence and to uncover at the same time its relation to his growing insight into the nature of reason. To this end, the study is divided into chapters corresponding to the major stages in the development of Husserl's philosophic vision. The four chapters will consider, in order, the following: the nature of the logic and the relation of meaning to experience through an examination of the ideality of truth in relation to the subjective experience of knowing; the normative idea of evidence and the ideal of "first philosophy" as rigorous science; the relativization of evidence and truth which results from a genetic analysis of the orders of intentional experience; the unification of Husserl's insights into evidence and reason across the whole life of conscious experience, theoretical and practical. Here both the idea of an "in-itself" as well as the ideal of true-knowledge will emerge as horizonally determined teleological ideas of totality which all acts of intentional life, despite their essential relativity, approximate and aspire to. In the end, both reason and evidence will be characterized as the infinite openness of self-validating inquiry itself. This characterization will have profound consequences for the determination of the method proper to philosophical research and the problem of the definitiveness of truth. Finally, this ideal of reason will be considered in its relation to history and the nature of man in his genuine humanity. Thus, Husserl's progressive enlargement of the problematic of evidence--as both the apriori and telos of intentional life--overcomes and reconciles the traditional opposition between experience and reason . Indeed, as a structural form which belongs to the unity of life as such it will be seen that a life of consciousness cannot exist without including evidence.