ABSTRACT
History is an object of study, about which we have knowledge. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century the study of history has been called a science, at least in some languages, which has critical methods for validating its claims. In Husserl’s scheme it would seem to count among the “sciences of the natural attitude,” taking the world of the natural attitude, or the lifeworld, for granted and then focusing on certain elements or aspects or types of objects within that world. Implicit already in the notion of the natural attitude and its world, and increasingly explicit as Husserl develops his idea of the lifeworld, is the idea that this world precedes the division of reality into ontological regions, and the division of sciences. If we are to understand the scientific world, we must return to the lifeworld where it has its origins, try to understand this world on its own terms, and then describe how the scientific world is constituted or constructed upon it. If we are looking for a phenomenological understanding of history, then, we should look to the lifeworld for its origins. The purpose of this chapter is to seek the origins of historical knowledge in the lifeworld.
