Abstract

The following essay serves as a general introduction to the idealism-realism debate at the core of the schism between Edmund Husserl and the early adherents of his phenomenology. This debate centers around two core issues: whether the “real” world exists independent from the mind, and whether epistemological idealism leads to metaphysical idealism. Husserl’s early critics saw his transcendental phenomenology as a denial of the existence of mind-independent reality and as a solipsistic form of idealism. Husserl considered many of these arguments to be predicated on misinterpretations. After contextualizing the idealism-realism debate as it unfolded within the phenomenological movement, I introduce the papers that comprise the present volume. These papers revive the debate concerning Husserl’s idealism among his mentors, peers, and students.