Which Transcedentalism? Many Faces of Husserlian Transcedentalism

Abstract

Edmund Husserl called his philosophy ``transcendental phenomenology{''} repeatedly. Nevertheless, within his project the concept of transcendentalism seems to be ambiguous and indefinite. The essay argues that one is confronted with few concepts of transcendentalism within phenomenology: the static, genetic, and practical approach. In contrast to phenomenologists who stress only one form of Husserl's transcendentalism, the essay asserts that the introduction of the three concepts to phenomenological investigations significantly broadens the original understanding of phenomenology as defined in Ideas I. Moreover, it is claimed here that Husserl's and Eugen Fink's research on transcendentalism is characterized as a process of immanent development from static descriptions of human cognition to the thesis about a practical dimension of communal researches.