Edmund Husserl (1859–1938)

I can't even attempt a summary of this entire volume. But my main takeaway is that the book is centrally concerned with our ability to observe and experience a "real" world, and more specifically with how we experience that "real" world both psychologically, materially, and empirically. An essential part of this investigation is in recognizing that our experience of the world takes places on three levels of Being: one where we experience an object as a thing in the world, one where we show more experience the object in terms of various frames of meaning (e.g., value, pleasure, utility, etc.) and another on which we experience the object as ‘Object’. The first two encounters are limited by spatial perspective and the availability of frames of reference respectively. As our spatial orientation to the object changes and as our available frames of reference change or improve or deepen, we add information and meaning to our stream of experience. In this sense, an object potentially holds limitless meaning except in so far as it is ultimately constrained by our shared, human faculties for engaging with it. The last aspect of experiential Being is one where we intuit the essence of that object as ‘Object’ -- that ideal holds the full potential and limits of meaning that can be experienced in reality. When we experience anything, we are experiencing that object through all modes of Being at once; they mingle and contribute to our stream of overall experience. It is through phenomenological methods that we can separate those layers of Being.

That's just scratching the surface. There is so much in this volume that is just going to take many more hours of reviewing my notes and reading some secondary sources. Also, some of the concepts in here (and there are oh so many!) are simply mindbogglingly complex. There are stretches of the book where I might as well have been reading with the lights off. But I got the gist and the Husserl references that I have run across elsewhere appear to make more (or just any sense) sense now that I have engaged with the source material.

I was a little skeptical of the mission of separating experience into the realm of direct/mediated experience and the Ideal, but I think there is some value in taking this position. If we assume that there is an ideal and that it is separate from our mediated understanding of the world, then this argues that no person or field or methodology can lay exclusive claim to a True understanding of the world (I'm looking at you Mathematics ... and Science!) However there is value in attempting to strive for an intuitive understanding of the Ideal if only to engage in the work of "bracketing" off our experiences that are, by necessity, limited and constrained by our spatial orientation and frames of reference. Because we inhabit reality in the form of corporeal bodies, we are always limited in our understanding. We cannot take another's point of view or inhabit their stream of experience. “Bracketing” is a process by which he attempt to isolate the sources of our understanding and remove or bracket those that are ultimately reducible to our particular frame of reference. The value I see in this perspective, even if the method itself is somewhat foggy to me, is in recognizing that no matter how sure we are that we are right or that someone else is wrong, all of our understandings are ultimately impoverished by our lack of access to the ideal. The best we can hope for is to expand our understanding of the object or concept or source of experience by incorporating the experiences of others into our own experiences. We become better knowers by listening to and empathizing with one another – and that feels like a valuable and timeless lesson. show less

As lições foram construídas a partir de notas e embora as partes 1 e 2 sejam bastante coerentes e estruturadas, o texto como um todo é um pouco truncado e técnico demais, técnico em um sentido que dá a constante impressão, especialmente nos apêndices, de "poder ser reescrito de modo compreensível", sem que seja imediatamente aparente como. De resto o modelo retensional do tempo de Husserl é apresentado, traçando o precedente em Brentano e elaborando as categorias fenomenológicas show more relacionadas (dados primários, retenção, protenção, adumbramento, presentação, presentificação, recordação, fantasia etc). De todo modo, é bastante difícil precisar a teoria sem auxílio a materiais complementares (que aliás é o que eu pretendo fazer). A introdução e os fragmentos pós apêndices são parte de uma ideia de edição crítica completamente voltada para especialistas e são plenamente dispensáveis. show less

Husserl's Ideas is one of the most important works of twentieth-century philosophy, offering a detailed introduction to the phenomenological method, including the reduction, and outlining the overall scope of phenomenological philosophy. Husserl's explorations of the a priori structures of intentionality, consciousness, perceptual experience, evidence and rationality continue to challenge contemporary philosophy of mind. Dan Dahlstrom's accurate and faithful translation, written in pellucid show more prose and in a fluid, modern idiom, brings this classic work to life for a new generation. --Dermot Moran, University College, Dublin show less

Although I think this book has a few really great ideas (the depsychologization of the ego in particular), it's really outshone by a LOT of stuff that came after it. I got 60% through and put it down out of boredom.