Husserl and Heidegger

Abstract

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was the founder of phenomenology, a philosophical movement that exerted enormous influence on European thought, especially during the first half of the twentieth century. His assistant, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), now widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers in recent history, radically redirected phenomenology by applying it to the question of the meaning of being and the structure of human existence. It was Husserl's descriptive approach to the problem of intentionality, avoiding theoretical construction and metaphysical speculation as much as possible, that initially inspired the young Heidegger. Yet their approaches to philosophy soon proved to be deeply at odds, in both style and substance. For whereas Husserl identified intentionality with 'pure' consciousness, or transcendental subjectivity, Heidegger traced it back instead to the pragmatic context and the temporal structure of our everyday 'being-in-the-world', which he thought preceded any distinction between subjectivity and objectivity. In his later writings Heidegger moved beyond anything Husserl would have recognized as genuine phenomenological inquiry, reflecting on the nature of art, poetry, science, technology, and the nihilism he came to regard as inherent in all metaphysical thinking.