Edmund Husserl’s Relevance on Phenomenology and Existentialism.

Edmund Husserl was born on April 8, 1859, in Prossnitz, Moravia (Austria). He

was raised by a Jewish family and after finishing his elementary education in Prossnitz, he
attended schools in Vienna and Olmütz. He decided to entered the University of Leipzig,
pursuing physics, and mathematics. He was extraordinarily gifted when it comes to mathematics,
and on 1878 he was given a chance to study at one of the most prestigious schools in Germany,
University of Berlin to study with the prominent mathematicians at that time. He was able to
show deep interest in the basic question of the foundations of mathematical structure and
reasoning. Later he took his doctoral degree in mathematics at Vienna. But while taking his
doctoral degree, he meets Franz Brentano. Husserl and Brentano formed a sincere friendship and
admirable disciple-professor relationship, that would later mold his philosophical interest and
followed Brentano’s lectures and teaching with great awareness and interest. Husserl would later
teach at Halle, during his assistantship he was able to published his first study on the
fundamental nature of mathematics. By Subscribing to British empiricism, he was able to
expound and explain the foundations of how man can wield its own thoughts and ideas. But, by
the pervasive criticism of Gottlob Frege, he decided to revised his works. But later he was deeply
convinced that the ultimate justification of our idea is directly patterned towards the synthetic
powers of our own consciousness—not on our own self-actions of habits but on our necessary
ideas and relationships, which serves as an underlying ground of man’s thought. Husserl’s
understanding of the phenomena becomes the new focus on his never-ending search for his
ultimate understanding of man’s Consciousness side-by-side with the so-called life world. He
was given a professorship at Göttingen (1901-1916), he then works rigorously and sustained his
arduousness to write his major manuscript. This include his major work on Philosophy as a
Rigorous Science, The Idea of Phenomenology, and his ideas part I to III. He was able to
published the second and third parts of his ideas. He decided to step down his professorship and
retired on 1929. But while on his retirement he was still active and continued his work
on Cartesian Meditations and the Crisis of the European Sciences. In all of these works Husserl
felt that he was he was not able to satisfied himself with the outcome, however, he referred to
himself at the end of his life as "a true beginner." Husserl died at Freiburg on April 27, 1938.
 Edmund Gustav Husserl’s was the leading figure when it comes to phenomenology at
that epoch. Husserl’s phenomenological motto was the famous motto: “back to things
themselves”. There are lots of meaning that we can derive for, but as to generalize it wholly “it
was a reaction against skepticism and relativism, which rejected the idea of a universal
objectivity” as what he emphasizes. Philosophy was for Husserl is a science that began from the
ultimate foundation and for him philosophy is a radical science because it is a science of the
roots of all our knowledge. Husserl tried to radicalize the foundations of human knowledge to
make it immune to skepticism. His main goal was to create a pure logic so that man must attain
certainty and clarity against the immanent dangers of skepticism and relativism. The need for
clarity and certainty was his main element in developing his phenomenological study.

For Husserl the only way to achieve this unsurmountable task is that we need to create
a method that will give him a thorough analysis of the given knowledge. Husserl then found
phenomenology as a starting point of his quest towards understanding the phenomenon.
Phenomenon per se comes from the Greek word "phainomenon," meaning appearance. He then
uses the term explicitly towards understanding of how things appear to our consciousness and
how we see it in an objective and subjective sense. He focusses then to the relation of our
knowledge and the world and how it was given to our knowledge. Husserl’s method was purely
descriptive because phenomenology is the science of phenomena, it focuses on the appearance of
an object into our consciousness. Through this “strict science” as what Husserl’s coined it, we
may able to give a full-length explanation of how our consciousness and phenomena are related
to one another. The main goal of this method was to avoid any metaphysical presumptions. He
would encourage us to go "Back to things themselves" it means to go directly to the given data.

Husserl then asserted that there will be no existent philosophical problem outside the
spectrum of phenomenology, because prior to its problematization it has to lie given to the
knowledge as a phenomenon for my consciousness and phenomenology is precisely this, a vivid
analysis of how things appear to our consciousness as a phenomenon related to our human
knowledge. Husserl then conceived phenomenology in a much precise way, he sees
phenomenology as a method and as a system. Later on, his life and work Husserl justify that his
phenomenology is a method of analysis. Husserl extended his assertion that phenomenology as
both a method and systematic philosophy, which he called "transcendental phenomenology."
 His later works would drive him into creating a well-grounded search for certainty and
clarity in order for him to criticize the pervasiveness of psychologism which in a similar form of
relativism. Husserl see’s relativism as a driving forced toward the destruction of a universals,
because for him when truth is relativized into a more contingent background it causes another
difficulty. Husserl focuses on the so-called logical inconsistency as a result of relativism itself,
yet Husserl expanded his approach towards the truth. For Husserl, when truth is being
relativized, truth itself becomes contingent. It imposes a serious problem undermining the
freedom and motivation to choose our preferring once’s belief and own values.

Husserl sees this as a problematic, because if all our beliefs and values are pre-given,
then there is no clear rational ground for our affirmations that our own principles are far greater
than the other principle or beliefs contrary to the others. Beliefs are equally valid to some
contingent context. It is reasonable that we can live by our own beliefs and values in accordance
to our everyday living and choosing. However, in a much perplexing moment when critical
reflection is needed it must be the pure and yet universal knowledge that we may choose so that
the problematic state of relativism will be eradicated. Thus, for Husserl a consequent relativism
results in an extreme pessimism about the possibility of any rational thought or action.

Husserl’s main mission was to overcome relativism and throughout his work was to
search the ultimate quest for truth. And it can be seen as a guiding motive for the entire
development of his phenomenology. The most important contribution of his phenomenological
study was to solidify a positive defense of an absolute conception of truth. It is his major
achievement that he was able to give a glittering hope that to some extent we can demonstrate
that the search for truth is possible. Thus, for Husserl, his effort to use his phenomenological
approach in order to eliminate relativism is the closest way towards the affirmation and
reconciliation of both a relative and a non-relative conception of truth. It was his personal
conviction and agenda to create a well-grounded approach so that the objectivity of truth must be
freely understood by man itself.

While Husserl epistemological criticism demands for a certain justification of the

viability of a pure knowledge, any forms of relativism can be no stronger than the overcoming of
skepticism that supports it. Husserl’s reaction to the epistemic critique spreads to its highest
extent, and it paves the way in order to overcome the common problems of how we use the given
data and appearance as it reveals to our senses. Husserl begins with a reconstruction of the vital
foundations for his phenomenological method, it includes the so-called “epoche”, bracketing or
suspension from any metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions of our “natural attitude”.
Hence, it paves the way for such a question of beings, if beings exist only independently in our
consciousness. Man’s intentionality is always centered on which meanings appear to us as a
phenomenon regardless whether they exist as empirical entities outside of our mind. Husserl
would contend that it is only from this transcendental attitude that we will be able to define
“real” consciousness, extracting from the connectedness of our natural world.

Through phenomenological reduction we could gain access directly to a

presuppositionless world of transcendental immediacy where ultimately beings turn out to be
identical with the revelation to our consciousness. Then Husserl emphasizes the importance of
phenomenological reflection. Phenomenological reflection for Husserl will serve as a way that
we come to see that our consciousness itself is intentional that it is directed towards an object.
Our consciousness is consciousness of something. Husserl later would emphasize on that
“Transcendental phenomenology is the radical and consistent science of subjectivity, which
ultimately constitutes the world in itself. It is the science that reveals the universal taken-for-
grantedness world and we human beings in the world. To be an obscurity, thus an enigma, a
problem, and that makes it scientifically intelligible in the solely possible way of radical self-
examination. (Husserl

During Husserl's last year in Freiburg after his hangs his tenure as professor in Freiburg,
his phenomenological approach turned into a phenomenology of the life-world. Husserl’s last
work was devoted on the question of crisis, it is found on his book The Crisis of European
Sciences and the Transcendental Phenomenology. Furthermore, he explained that his analyzation
shows that the analysis of the lifeworld leads to a confirmation of a partial form of relativism
side by side with the concrete lifeworld. Hence, it is contrary to the predominant understanding
that Husserl apprehended the life-world on its own or in a universal sense. He argued that it is
maintained that the lifeworld including our culture and history is relative. Husserl' s then
explicitly assert that there would be never or ever a concrete lifeworld but it shows the immanent
relativity of each limited intersubjective community. However, Husserl affirms the relativeness
of the life world, and promulgated a substitute conception of truth modified to it; Husserl
attempts to engage the lifeworld into creating a new effort to give a final validation and
introspection by the claims of phenomenology and the sciences itself to be able to have access
and to attain certainty towards the so-called truths of universal intersubjective intelligibility and
its verifiability. Thus, he argued that phenomenology makes an open possibility in reconciling
both a relative and a nonrelative notion of truth and universality. Husserl’s persistent motivations
resonated throughout Western and Eastern Europe specifically with regards to Western culture.
Husserl felt the social and moral damage that a deep crisis of knowledge was causing. Husserl
wants us to philosophize, by going back to the things themselves, it is a call towards overturning
man’s presumptive thinking and mentality and how we properly see the things that surrounds us
as they appear to our consciousness. Otherwise, we don’t have the right to live in this world,
seeing the bigger picture of our reality and what lies beyond our mental and physical structure.

Husserl's interest was not only to criticize the inacceptable role of philosophy at that time,
but he challenges all his listeners and students to overcome it, and to give positive solutions that
will lead to the realization of the important role of philosophy including its approach and
attitude. During the last period of his life, Husserl's interests seemed to have shifted, which result
into a departure on his Cartesian way of doing philosophy to a more immerse relation with
history and the life-world. The main argument of Husserl's concept of the life-world was that we
must not go back straightly to the immediate given sense data, as if we treat the immediate
character as purely intuitive data of the life-world. Perhaps seeing it in a holistic way of the
lifeworld would give us the proper data which paves the way for a proper phenomenological
study. As much as we have a choice, we are living in a world were pre-given data is immanent
and our search for such an ontic meaning continues and it includes ourselves, reason, senses and
egos. Whether we like it or not we will always notice that as a person we will always experience
the ordinary nature of our world.

Even in a strict sense as what the expert would always say, “Husserlian phenomenology is
still in an infant stage” still it captures the heart of those intellectual gifted person to continue the
unending legacy of Husserl. Yet In every experience of a thing, the life-world is given as the
ultimate foundation of all objective knowledge Thus, the life-world comprises the only
foundation of all our philosophical, scientific, moral, and in general everyday mundane activity.
Husserl summarizes this by saying: "Science is a human spiritual accomplishment which
presupposes as its point of departure ... the intuitive surrounding world of life, pre-given as
existing for all in common."(Husserl).