Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wzw2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-23T05:15:15.443Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Husserl, Common Sense, and the Natural Attitude

from Part I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2020

Rik Peels
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
René van Woudenberg
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Get access

Summary

The aim of this chapter is to understand how the themes of ordinary experience and common sense form a central vein in Husserl’s thinking, albeit in a way that cannot be directly identified with a philosophy of common sense, given its transcendental orientation. After a discussion of the formative influence of Avenarius’s notion of ‘natural conception of the world’ on Husserl’s thinking, this chapter examines Husserl’s contention that ordinary experience exhibits the taken-for-granted structured contours of any possible human experience. Husserl’s detailed descriptions of the various commonsensical ways in which we ordinarily experience the world are meant to showcase the richness of ordinary experience while also delineating in advance intentionality’s manifold structures that are to become the explicit theme of a phenomenological analysis of consciousness. In this manner, it is argued, Husserl ascribes a transcendental significance to ordinary experience in terms of what he dubs an ‘a priori of common sense’. The thrust of Husserl’s phenomenology of ordinary experience in the natural attitude sets up his later and more fully developed conception of the life-world as centred around the ‘presentness’ of the world that remains as elusive as it stands plainly there in all its obviousness.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×