ABSTRACT
Phenomenological philosophy as transcendental idealism assumes for Husserl the guise of a two-staged transcendental theory of knowledge. The first stage of which is characterized by the exploration of the realm of being that is accessible to transcendental self-experience and the second by the criticism of both the experience and of all transcendental cognition. Seen within the context of Husserl's articulation of this two-stage structure, what people are calling both the second and third stages of his development fall within the stage of the transcendental theory of knowledge that he identifies as the criticism of transcendental self-experience. Such criticism is concerned with the determination of the range and limits of apodictic evidence, but not with its modes. The universal principle of passive synthesis is association, by which Husserl understands not what he considers to be the naturalistic distortions of the genuine intentional concepts of association but the conformity to eidetic laws on the part of the constitution of the pure Ego.
