ABSTRACT
The Idea of Phenomenology, which consists of five lectures that Husserl delivered
in Göttingen in 1907, comes from perhaps the most important period in his overall
philosophical development. For although in 1912 Husserl could refer to his Logi-
cal Investigations of 1900-1901 as constituting the “breakthrough” of phenom-
enology, after the publication of this magisterial work Husserl entered the most
profound philosophical crisis in his life, in which he felt, the astonishing achieve-
ment of the Logical Investigations notwithstanding, unable to provide a satisfac-
tory account of the possibility of human knowledge. The Idea of Phenomenology
is his first public presentation of his thoughts after having worked his way out of
this crisis and into a position that he would hold for the rest of his life: a position
that he would term Transcendental Phenomenology. If phenomenology as such had
emerged in the Logical Investigations, the transcendental perspective, which alone
can answer fundamental sceptical worries about human knowledge, had not.
