Husserl’s Early Concept of Metaphysics As the Ultimate Science of Reality

Abstract

This article reconstructs the development of Husserl’s definition of metaphysics as the ultimate science of reality in the courses and lectures written up to the year 1905. The analysis of these texts casts light on Husserl’s philosophical self-understanding in the wider context of late Nineteenth Century German philosophy as well as on the fundamental role that metaphysical interests played in the development of his thought from its earliest stage. A particular attention is devoted to Husserl’s early views about the relation between the theory of knowledge and metaphysics, whose analysis is a necessary preliminary step to address the theoretical issue of the relation between transcendental phenomenology and metaphysics.

The Metaphysical Magnificence of Reduction: The Pure Ego and Its Substrate According to Phenomenology and Vedanta

“…2 For the metaphysical objective of P, see (De Santis 2022;Husserl 2001b, p. 14;Marosan 2022). For metaphysics in Husserl, see (Moran 2001, p. ixv;Trizio 2017). For realism in Husserl, see (Zahavi 2019); for reality as a correlate of the syntheses of verification, see (Doyon 2022).…”

Phenomenology, teleology, and theology

“…Husserl never concealed his interest for traditional and broad metaphysical issues, nor did he hesitate to outline his project of turning philosophy into a rigorous discipline capable of bringing these issues within the purview of a genuinely scientific investigation. His early, almost exclusive focus on metaphysical problems connected to the positive sciences and on traditional metaphysical views concerning the relation between the subject and the world are motivated by the proximity of these problems to the theory of knowledge, which, for him, holds the role of being the foundational discipline for any future metaphysics (see Trizio 2019). In other words, within Husserl's project of a philosophy built from below (Husserl 1987, 41), the ethicoreligious problems are to be addressed at a later stage, once the preliminary elucidation of factual reality by means of a radical theory of science (Wissenschaftslehre) is acquired.…”

Philosophy’s Nature: Husserl’s Phenomenology, Natural Science, and Metaphysics

“…4. More recently, Bancalari (2010), Tengelyi (2014), Trizio (2017 The three decades preceding the end of the 19th century was a time of great scientific upheavals marked by the demise of the mechanistic worldview. If we tend to underestimate its significance, this is largely because of the shadow that the subsequent appearance of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity has cast over it.…”