AN ANALYSIS OF THE KANTIAN FOUNDATION OF HUSSERLIAN TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY

Abstract

The quest of an ultimate and absolute foundation and justification of knowledge was a persistent occupation of Edmund Husserl. From his first beginnings in philosophy, Husserl turned to the realm of subjectivity for his foundation and justification. The problem is to account for the validity of knowledge and objectivity of the objects of knowledge in terms of acts of consciousness through which the objects are apprehended and knowledge is constituted, and this happens to be the goal of his phenomenology. With regards to transcendental phenomenology, this paper aims to analyse Kant and Husserl’s similarities and differences, in terms of methodologies and interpretations, with a view to showing that Kant provided the epistemological manure for the fruitful germination of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. Husserl’s recognition of phenomenology as ineluctably transcendental philosophy forced him to confront Kant whom he had been reading seriously. He agreed with Kant’s general view that the profusion of different philosophical systems was testimony that philosophy had failed to live up to its aspiration to be a science. Furthermore, Husserl, like Kant, believed that philosophy could only become a genuine science after it had embarked on a radical critique of its claim to be able to be a science at all. This involved a critique of the instrument of knowledge. Husserl sees Kant as correctly understanding the need for a transcendental critique of the sciences, one which saw them as subjective cognitive accomplishments. It is therefore the position of this paper that Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason provided a strong basis for the emergence of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology.