Uldis Vēgners

It was in his research manuscripts from 1905, also known as the Seefelder Blätter, where Edmund Husserl for the first time introduced the idea of the phenomenological reduction. The introduction of this idea, which he developed and refined years to come, marked the beginning not only of an important turn in Husserl’s philosophy toward transcendental phenomenology, but also the advent of a growing frustration and critique even among Husserl’s own students. The discussion about the ontological status of reality is otherwise known as the realism–idealism controversy. One of the first critiques in a published form came from the Latvian philosopher and Husserl’s student in Freiburg, Theodor Celms, in his book Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls (1928). The current chapter will present a historically contextualized account of Celms’ contribution to the realism–idealism controversy, including his relationship with the phenomenological movement, main points of his critical interpretation of Husserl’s transcendental idealism, and the following reception of his work.

The most fundamental question in Husserl’s unceasing analyses of inner time-consciousness is the possibility of the experience of succession or movement. This question, determining Husserl’s analyses already from his analysis in winter semester of 1904/1905, is based on a thesis that actuality of one moment of a succession precludes the actuality of any other. But if it is true that there is always only one actual moment, how is it possible to be aware of a succession that requires at least two moments? Husserl’s general answer to this problem is that the moments that are not actually given are nevertheless somehow present in The aim of this paper is to show that Husserl’s adherence to the aforementioned thesis in his analyses implies a problem that undermines all his endeavors to explain the possibility of inner time-consciousness. The problem is that all the other non-present moments notwithstanding in what way they are apprehended are still static, and it is impossible to arrive at a proper succession from a multiplicity of simultaneously given static moments.