Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl. It ranges from the earliest published analyses of Husserl's philosophy to more recent discussions stimulated by the publication of Husserl's posthumous works. The book focuses upon the life of the transcendental subject wherein the intentional activities of consciousness merge to form a unified life of consciousness whose "correlate" is the world as it is experienced. Husserl's posthumously published works repeatedly raise the question of the proper access to transcendental subjectivity and phenomenology's specifically transcendental problematic. Husserl's reflections upon the Cartesian way disclose several fundamental inadequacies of this way. The book discusses and evaluates Husserl's notion of a phenomenological reduction and related issues, the reader may find a prefatory discussion of this notion to be helpful in understanding Husserl's phenomenological philosophy.