Husserl's Genetic Phenomenology in its Historical and Systematic Contexts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62506/phs.v7i1.349Keywords:
Phenomenology, HusserlAbstract
In this essay, I analyze the relationship between the static and genetic versions of Phenomenology. Contrary to certain important interpretations, which I discuss, I defend the thesis that genetic phenomenology is not a simple extension and deepening of its initial “static” formulation. Thus, I argue that it is an absorption by self-transformation of areas that had been expressly excluded so that the initial, “static” Phenomenology could be delimited.
In particular, I highlight two themes. The first is that of the genetic-causal psychological dimension, which, in the wake of Brentano, had been excluded. The genetic version of Phenomenology assimilates this dimension, no longer as causal genesis but as transcendental genesis, opening the door to analyses of passivity and active genesis.
The second theme concerns the concrete life of subjectivity and its community and historical insertion, which had been methodically set aside in order to delimit the field of nascent transcendental Phenomenology. Now, going beyond Brentano towards Dilthey's project of a “psychological” foundation of the sciences of the spirit, Husserl incorporates the theme of concrete subjective experience and its internal historicity into a project, only sketched out, of a genetic and explanatory phenomenology of the singularity and internal historicity of subjective life.
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