ABSTRACT
As is well known, in its global development, phenomenology underwent several metamorphoses. It began as a “descriptive psychology,” later becoming a “transcendental phenomenology.” For Franz Brentano, a descriptive psychology, or psychognosy, was opposed to a “genetic” psychology, which would have a physiological basis and would explain the laws of “generation, coexistence, and succession” of mental phenomena. Psychological origin is conceived in terms of the ancient problems of genetic psychology. Then Edmund Husserl analyzes the connection between both concepts, and in a later revision, he symptomatically replaces the term “psychological origin” with the term “genetic origin.” The issues concerning this final part of Husserl’s inquiry were isolated by Anthony Steinbock under the Husserlian title of “generative phenomenology” as a “transcendental phenomenological philosophy of the social world.” Genesis is now a transcendental concept, and points to the most fundamental part of phenomenology itself. Psychological origin is conceived in terms of the ancient problems of genetic psychology.
