ABSTRACT
Descartes seeks to demonstrate that everything that one clearly and distinctly perceives is true by proving that God exists and guarantees the connection between evidence and truth. Absolute, adequate, and apodictic evidence are inextricably linked, and adequate evidence, "the pregnant concept of evidence", dominates all evidence. Where evidence involves the self-giving of something life-worldly, there is no adequate evidence; there is no complete, final, and perfect experience of any such thing. Life-worldly truth has no "absolute finality" or apodicticity; it is contingent on confirming experience. Gradually, Edmund Husserl moves from an attraction to the ideal of absolute, adequate, and apodictic evidence and truth to a concentration on the reality of relative, inadequate, and dubitable evidence and truth. Husserl concentrates on epistemic justification in the theoretical realm, but phenomenology of evidence and truth recognizes that human beings are not only transcendental egos but also natural selves.
