Husserl’s Notion of the Natural Attitude and the Shift to Transcendental Phenomenology

Abstract

Husserl introduced phenomenology as transcendental philosophy in his ground-breaking work Ideas I.1 In this work Husserl took his starting point from what he called the Natural Attitude (NA), though he was not aware of the central role this phenomenon was to play in his late philosophy. In Ideas I, the NA was a mere transitory phase from which one could begin with the philosophical project laid out in this work. This was a shift from a purely descriptive method for analyzing conscious phenomena (marked in a first phase by Logical Investigations, 1900/ 01) to a form of transcendental philosophy which must not only give an account of that being which we presuppose in phenomenological description but, more precisely, must also account for how this being has come to be experienced in our conscious life. This form of transcendental philosophy-regarding the problem of giving an account for its own doings-can be seen as Husserl’s particular way of dealing with the question of conditions of possibilities. Husserl’s intention in all of this was to characterize philosophy as “rigorous science.”