Ideas I: Transcendental Turn in Phenomenological Philosophy

Abstract

The paper deals with transcendental turn in the development of the phenomenological philosophy witch the founder of phenomenology Edmund Husserl made in his work “Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology”. From this moment until the very end of his life, Husserl defined his philosophy as transcendental phenomenology. This is particularly evident in the title of his last unfinished treatise “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy”. The author tries to clarify the historical and philosophical background of this turn and its influence on the phenomenology and other philosophical trends until now. On the one hand, the transcendental turn in the development of the phenomenological philosophy is the result of the long philosophical tradition that based on Descartes rationalism and Kantian transcendental philosophy and at the same time on the empiricism by Berkley and Hume. On the other hand, this transcendental turn is very important for the modern discussion about the problem of consciousness not only in the phenomenological research, but also in the contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. For example, the “explanatory gap” problem as one of the most crucial consequence of the mind-body problem can be seen in a new light from the phenomenological point of view. So it is argued that phenomenology is one of the most elaborated version of the transcendental philosophy of experience, and that it is possible to create on the base of transcendental phenomenology the universal methodology of humanities and to bring something new even to the formulation of the fundamental problems of natural sciences.