Sebastian Luft

Part 1. Husserl: the outlines of the transcendental-phenomenological system -- 1. Husserl's phenomenological discovery of the natural attitude -- 2. Husserl's theory of the phenomenological reduction: between lifeworld and Cartesianism -- 3. Some methodological problems arising in Husserl's late reflections on the phenomenological reduction -- 4. Facticity and historicity as constituents of the lifeworld in Husserl's late philosophy -- 5. Husserl's concept of the "transcendental person": another look at the Husserl-Heidegger relationship -- 6. Dialectics of the absolute: the systematics of the phenomenological system in Husserl's last period -- Part 2. Husserl, Kant, and neo-Kantianism: from subjectivity to lifeworld as a world of culture -- 7. From being to givenness and back: some remarks on the meaning of transcendental idealism in Kant and Husserl -- 8. Reconstruction and reduction: Natorp and Husserl on method and the question of subjectivity -- 9. A hermeneutic phenomenology of subjective and objective spirit: Husserl, Natorp, and Cassirer -- 10. Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms: between reason and relativism: a critical appraisal -- Part 3. Toward a Husserlian hermeneutics -- 11. The subjectivity of effective history and the suppressed husserlian elements in Gadamer's hermeneutics -- 12. Husserl's "hermeneutical phenomenology" as a philosophy of culture.

In this paper I compare and contrast Natorp’s and Husserl’s philosophies as to their programmatic and systematic profiles. I will begin by giving an assessment of their relationship and mutual influence, something that many scholars believe had been done exhaustively in Kern’s initial study of 1964 on the relation between Husserl and Kant and the neo-Kantians. Indeed, this topic – in general, the relation between phenomenology and „critical“ philosophy – deserves a new look now that more material has appeared in the Husserliana, forcefully demonstrating the „transcendental Husserl“ and the Kantian influence on his phenomenology, and given the overall growing interest in neo-Kantianism. I will show that, despite fundamental differences in their philosophical outlooks, Natorp and Husserl share the same principal premise as to the relation between life, science and philosophy, and thus the role of philosophy itself in the midst of „culture“ and „lifeworld“ respectively. Hence, the similarities between Natorp’s Marburg School neo-Kantianism and Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology outweigh the differences, opening up new avenues to pursue transcendental philosophy.

on points that remain especially crucial, i.e., the concept of the natural attitude, the ways into the reduction (and their systematics), and finally the question of the “meaning of the reduction.” Indeed, in the reading attempted here, this final question leads to two, not necessarily related, focal points: a Cartesian and a Life-world tendency. It is my claim that in following these two paths, Husserl was consistent in pursuing two evident leads in his philosophical enterprise; however, he was at the same time unable to systematically unify these two strands. Thus, I am offering an interpretation which might be called a modified “departure from Cartesianism” reading that Landgrebe pro-.

This essay attempts a renewed, critical exposition of Husserl’s theory of the phenomenological reduction, incorporating manuscript material that has been published since the defining essays of the first generation of Husserl research. The discussion focuses on points that remain especially crucial, i. e. the concept of the natural attitude, the ways into the reduction, and the question of the “meaning of the reduction”. The reading attempted here leads to two, not necessarily related, focal points: a Cartesian and a Life-world tendency. In following these two paths, Husserl was consistent in pursuing two evident leads in his philosophical enterprise; however, he was at the same time unable to systematically unify these two strands. Thus, I am offering an interpretation which might be called a modified “departure from Cartesianism” reading that Landgrebe proposed in his famous essay from the nineteen-fifties. This discussion should make apparent that Husserl’s theory of the phenomenological reduction deserves a renewed look in light of material that has since appeared in the Husserliana and by incorporating the most important results of recent tendencies in Husserl research.