ABSTRACT
Anyone familiar with Gilbert Ryle's work will have some awareness of his history as a student of the phenomenological movement. This chapter reveals a closer link than one might suppose; it uncovers the presence, within The Concept of Mind, of elements closely related to Edmund Husserl's theories. It discusses some of the more striking parallels and attempts to assess their significance. Ryle disagrees with the Husserlian programme of rigorous science, because he does not consider that philosophical inquiry can properly be termed either scientific or unscientific in its method. In Ryle's later criticisms of phenomenology it recurs in a somewhat altered form, as a rejection of Husserl's conception of phenomenology as a philosophical movement. Husserl's project of philosophy as a 'super-science' is another target: Ryle complains with some justification that Husserl spent too much time in setting out ambitious programmes for phenomenology and not enough in producing actual results.
