ABSTRACT
Thomas Arnold’s Phänomenologie als Platonismus revolves around two main claims.
First, as suggested in the subhead, its main goal is to stress the Platonic “essential components” of Edmund Husserl’s philosophy. Thus, Arnold’s aim is neither to (explicitly) claim that phenomenology as such should be, in some sense, a form of Platonism, nor to maintain that Husserl’s philosophy as a whole has some essential Platonic components. In fact—as suggested by the general opposition between Plato and Husserl (§1a) and confirmed by the comparison between Plato’s overcoming of the natural attitude and Husserl’s epochê (§14)—the author is interested neither in Husserl’s overall philosophical project nor in his phenomenology in general, but rather only in the so-called transcendental turn following the publication of Ideas I (p. 3). Thus, the scope of Arnold’s project, as expressed in the title of the book, should be suitably restricted and rephrased as follows: it is the attempt to flesh out the essential Platonic components present in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology.
