Abstract

The concept of the world occupies a significant place in the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl. Unfortunately, however, Husserl's teaching concerning the world can be as problematic to his readers as it is central to his work, and this for two reasons. First, in reading Husserl one encounters the ever-present difficulty of knowing when Husserl's analyses take place within what Husserl calls the "natural" attitude and when they are being philosophically or "transcendentally" executed. As a consequence, Husserl's reader is often faced with texts which seem more contradictory and perplexing than clarifying. Secondly, there does appear to be significant disparity between what Husserl says about the world from within the natural attitude, and what he says about the world from within the transcendental posture of thinking.Within the natural attitude, the world is spoken of as the whole or matrix of all that is, including the human person. Within the transcendental attitude, on the other hand, it is human subjectivity which shows up as the whole, and the world comes to be understood as dependent upon human consciousness. ;This dissertation is a critical examination of Husserl's teaching concerning the world, especially as this teaching is displayed in three of Husserl's major works. By analyzing key sections of Ideas I , Erste Philosophie and The Crisis , our study yields a twofold conclusion. In the first place, it shows that Husserl does have a single conceptualization of the world within his phenomenological philosophy. In other words, despite the presence of apparently contradictory theses concerning the world within Husserl's work, there is a core teaching concerning the world which is identifiable and which, when understood correctly, dissolves the apparent contradictions in his thinking. Secondly, our study shows that this single conceptualization of the world remains consistent throughout the whole of Husserl's phenomenological philosophy. Though there are indeed moments of development to be seen and noted in Husserl's understanding and articulation of the world, the description of the world which is found in The Crisis is remarkably consistent with the description found in Volume One of Ideas