The founder of phenomenology considered himself a German through and through, lost a son in World War I, and dedicated his life to the study of consciousness. After the rise of the Nazis, he discovered that in the eyes of the country he loved, he remained a Jew and a foreigner.
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl, founder of theפנומנולוגיה And one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, he sought to understand how the world appears in the human mind. His own life illustrated how deep and cruel the gap between a person's perception of their identity and the way society perceives them can be.
Husserl saw himself as a German, a Protestant, and a patriot. He lost a son inWorld War I, while another son was wounded in battle. Despite this, the country to which he felt a sense of belonging made him an outcast in his final years because of his Jewish origin.
From mathematics to the study of consciousness
Husserl was born on April 8, 1859, in Prosnitz, Moravia, then part of the Austrian Empire and now the city of Proství in the Czech Republic, to a well-established Jewish family. His father was a cloth merchant. He studied mathematics, physics, astronomy, andphilosophy At the universities of Leipzig, Berlin and Vienna.
In Berlin he studied with some of the most prominent mathematicians of his time, including Karl Weierstrass and Leopold Kronecker. In 1883 he received a doctorate in Vienna for research in the calculus of variations. He could have continued on a mathematical path, but the lectures of the philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano drew him to the fundamental questions of human cognition.
From Brentano, Husserl adopted the idea of "intentionality": consciousness is not an empty vessel or an object closed in on itself. Consciousness is always consciousness of something—a sight, a memory, a thought, an expectation, or a fear. This connection between the action of consciousness and the thing to which it is directed becomes a cornerstone of his thought.
In 1886, Husserl converted to Christianity and joined the Lutheran Church. A year later, he married Melvina Steinschneider, a Jewish woman who had also converted to Christianity. The couple had three children: Elisabeth, Gerhard, and Wolfgang.
It is difficult to pinpoint a single motive for the Christianization of educated Jews in Central Europe at that time. Faith, cultural integration, and a desire to remove professional and social barriers all mixed together. In Husserl's case, it is clear that for decades he saw himself as an integral part of German-Protestant culture.
The birth of phenomenology
In 1887, Husserl completed his habilitation at the University of Halle—the academic qualification that allowed him to teach at the university—following work on the concept of number. His first research dealt with the psychological and logical foundations of mathematics.
Gradually he became convinced that logic and mathematics could not be based solely on psychological processes. A logical law, he argued, was not made true simply because people were accustomed to thinking according to it. It must have a validity that was independent of the mental structure of a particular person.
The turning point came in his great book, "Logical Investigations," published in two parts in 1900–1901. The book attacked "psychologism" and laid the foundations for phenomenology—a systematic investigation of how things are given to us in experience.
Husserl sought to return "to things themselves": to suspend, as much as possible, presuppositions about the existence of the world and to examine rigorously how the world appears in consciousness. The intention is not to deny reality, but to examine the operation of consciousness before rushing to explain it through scientific, metaphysical, or psychological theory.
In 1901 he moved to the University of Göttingen. In 1906 he was appointed full professor there. A group of students and researchers formed around him, and phenomenology developed into one of the most influential movements in European philosophy. In 1913 he published the first volume of "Ideas for Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy."
The Patriot and the Price of War
The outbreak of World War I aroused strong patriotic feelings in Husserl. Like many German intellectuals, he initially saw the war as a justified national struggle. His two sons volunteered for the German army.
On March 8, 1916, his youngest son, Wolfgang, was killed in the Battle of Verdun. His son Gerhard was wounded, but survived the war. The family tragedy was not an abstract philosophical idea: the country Husserl loved demanded his son's life.
That same year, Husserl accepted a professorship at the University of Freiburg. He remained there until his retirement in 1928. During this period, he deepened his teachings and examined not only the individual mind, but also time, the body, others, and the world shared by humans.
One of his most prominent assistants and successors was Martin HeideggerHusserl helped promote him and for a time saw him as a possible successor. Heidegger dedicated his book Being and Time to Husserl, but their philosophical and personal paths diverged.
The student joined the party; the teacher became a stranger
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Heidegger was elected rector of the University of Freiburg and joined the Nazi Party. He was involved in the process of adapting the university to the new state. Although he resigned as rector about a year later, he remained a member of the party until the end of World War II.
Husserl was already a retired professor, but anti-Jewish laws and regulations gradually deprived him of his rights and status at the university. A man who had seen himself as a representative of high German culture was now classified according to his parents' origin.
One should be wary of the common story that Heidegger himself ordered Husserl removed from the university library. The historical record is more complex. There is no doubt that the Nazi regime pushed Husserl out of academic life, and that Heidegger did not come to his teacher's defense either. However, responsibility for specific administrative measures cannot always be attributed to a specific individual.
In his final years, Husserl worked on “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.” He argued that modern science had achieved enormous successes but had lost touch with the world of life—the world before formulas, where humans act, experience, and give meaning.
In his view, the crisis was not a failure of science, but the failure of a culture that turned science into a technical system and forgot to ask what its meaning was for human life. Against the backdrop of the rise of theNazism, his words took on special historical power.
Unrecognized belonging
Husserl died in Freiburg on April 27, 1938. He did not live to see the extent of the disaster that was approaching Europe. His manuscripts were saved thanks to the Belgian priest and philosopher Herman van Breda, who transferred tens of thousands of pages to Leuven and established the Husserl Archive.
Husserl's life raises a question that goes beyond philosophy: Is a person allowed to determine for himself which culture and which nation he belongs to? Husserl converted to Christianity, wrote in German, taught at German universities, and considered himself a patriot. To the Nazis, none of this mattered. The imagined biology of racial theory triumphed over faith, creation, service, and identification.
Husserl's tragedy is therefore twofold. The man who spent his life studying how meaning is constructed in consciousness discovered that the meaning of his personal identity had been stripped from him by the state. The philosopher who sought to return "to things themselves" was forced to confront a reality in which man ceased to be a man and became an item on a racial table.
Husserl's phenomenology influenced Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and many others. His influence is evident in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and the study of consciousness. The Nazi state attempted to erase him from German universities; his ideas survived.
For the original publication: Opening the original publication
More on the subject on the science website
- Fritz Haber and Albert Einstein: Friendship in Contradiction
- The Murdered History of Marc Bloch – the Jewish historian murdered by the Nazis and buried in the Pantheon in Paris
- The Logic of a Peculiar Genius: Ludwig Wittgenstein
- James Frank – Creator of weapons of mass destruction and fighter against them
- Prof. Abraham Frankl: From the Munich Atrocities to the Zionist Revolution
