HUSSERL, EDMUND

born April 8, 1859, Prossnitz, Moravia, Austrian Empire [now Prostejov, Czech Republic] died April 27, 1938, Freiburg im Breisgau, Ger. German philosopher, the founder of Phenomenology, a method for the description and analysis of consciousness through which philosophy attempts to gain the character of a strict science. The method reflects an effort to resolve the opposition between Empiricism, which stresses observation, and Rationalism, which stresses reason and theory, by indicating the origin of all philosophical and scientific systems and developments of theory in the interests and structures of the experiential life. (See phenomenology.) Additional reading Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (191321; Logical Investigations, 2 vol., 1970), are ably reported on in J.M. Findlay's article Phenomenology in the 1956 through 1966 printings of the Encyclopdia Britannica and more fully paraphrased in Marvin Farber, The Foundation of Phenomenology (1943). The first book of Husserl's Ideen zu einer reinen Phnomenologie und phnomenologischen Philosophie is available in a not always reliable translation (1931, reissued 1952); the Cartesianische Meditationen in a faithful rendering (1960). The Husserliana edition of the Husserl Archives (1950 ff.) in its early volumes emphasized previously unpublished materials but will eventually include all of Husserl's works. A short biography is given in the Husserl article in the Neue deutsche Biographie, vol. 10 (1974). Reflections on his personality may be found in Ludwig Landgrebe and Jan Patocka, Edmund Husserl zum Gedchtnis. Paul Ricoeur, Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology (1967), is a valuable collection of interpretive and critical essays. Maurice Natanson, Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks (1973), is a good introduction to the philosopher's fundamental ideas.