Abstract

If there is any one man who is at the source of the current in contemporary philosophy which is the opposite of logical analysis, it is certainly Edmund Husserl. There is little doubt that his formative influence is far more important than, say, that of Kierkegaard, in the problematic of existentialism. And the frequency of the term “phenomenology” in writings on esthetics, ethics, social philosophy and a host of other disciplines is an indication of the more or less vague sense of the original contribution which he made to modern thought. Yet there is an underlying paradox here: for it is logical analysis which appears to bear the banner of rationality and precision thinking, while many philosophers who derive more directly from Husserl seem to be grappling in a twilight region with the elusive meaning of human existence. But it was Husserl pre-eminently in our age who attempted to establish philosophy on a scientific basis through a rigorous analysis of logical categories and a theory of knowledge. Anyone who attempts to understand this tension in modern thought would do well to examine Husserl closely.