Husserl, Edmund Gustav Albrecht 1859-1938
German philosopher and founder of the school ofphenomenology

Born of Jewish parents in Prossnitz in the Austrian empire, he studied mathematics at Berlin (under Karl Weierstrass), psychology at Vienna (under Franz Brentano) and taught at Halle (1887), G�ttingen (1901) and Freiburg (1916). While at G�ttingen he developed phenomenology (a philosophy concerned with describing personal experiences without seeking to arrive at metaphysical explanations of them). His works included Logische Untersuchungen (1900-01, 'Logical Investigations'), which defended philosophy as fundamentally an a priori discipline, unlike psychology, and Ideen zu einer reinen Ph�nomelogie und ph�nomenologischen Philosophie (1913, Eng trans Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, 1913) in which he presented a programme for the systematic investigation of consciousness and its objects, which proceeded by 'bracketing off', or suspending belief in, the empirical world to gain an indubitable vantage-point in subjective consciousness. His approach greatly influenced philosophers in the USA and in Germany, particularly Martin Heidegger, and helped give rise to Gestalt psychology.

Bibliography: Maurice Natanson, Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks (1973)