ABSTRACT
This chapter starts with a discussion of the work of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology as a distinct school of philosophy. Husserl’s later phenomenological account of historicity is decisively influenced by Wilhelm Dilthey and, to a lesser extent, by Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. What Husserl and Heidegger have in common is an understanding of historicity in terms of the irreducible historical character of consciousness (Husserl) and human existence (Heidegger). A question that emerges in Husserl’s work and that keeps turning up in the work of subsequent phenomenologists will serve as the guiding thread throughout the chapter, i.e. the question concerning the nature of truth in view of the historicity of human existence. After the discussion of the work of Husserl and Heidegger, I will turn to the next generation of phenomenologists in whose work the concept of history plays an important role: the German hermeneutic phenomenologists Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hannah Arendt. The survey of phenomenologists who have made important contributions to the theory of history will be completed with a discussion of the work of French hermeneutic phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur and American phenomenologist David Carr. I will conclude the chapter with a discussion of the question of truth and historicity: What positions can be detected in the 20th century tradition of hermeneutic phenomenology with respect to the tension between the irreducible historical character of consciousness and existence on the one hand and the concept of truth on the other hand?
