Abstract

Basing on the Michel Foucault’s description of the philosophical modernity given by him in his famous book Words and Things, I found that there is the compliance between the beginning of the Modern philosophy and the Kant’s discovery of the a priori synthesis. It is also well known that Husserl uses the term “synthesis” in his phenomenology. Thus, the Husserl’s phenomenology could belong to the same branch of philosophy as the Kant’s philosophy. To verify this hypothesis, I analyze the views on synthesis a priori of both thinkers, Kant and Husserl, and then I compare them. One ought to say that Husserl widens the Kant’s view of the synthesis a priori through his notion of material a priori as well as through his differentiation of active and passive kinds of synthesis. As conclusion, I pose the question of the possibility of a priori synthesis after Kant and Husserl, taking into account the Moritz Schlick’s criticism of the synthetic propositions a priori.