ABSTRACT

This chapter will not only make the case for deeming the question as to the very possibility of metaphysics as one of Husserl’s major preoccupations from the very beginning of his philosophical activity; it will also, and primarily, propose a distinction between three major ways in which Husserl himself thinks of both the role and function of “the queen of all the sciences” within the system of sciences as he develops it over the years. For, if Husserl’s conception of metaphysics as bearing on the “factual world,” the one we human beings live in, underlies all its re-elaborations, the task which metaphysics is ascribed changes as Husserl’s concept of “first philosophy” evolves in relation to the overall phenomenological project.