Something like a phenomenon

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was a German philosopher of Jewish descent, regarded as the founder of a philosophical discipline (or school) known as phenomenology. Martin Heidegger was one of Husserl's students, but ended up proposing a very different philosophy, while also betraying his old Jewish mentor during the Third Reich. I admit that I never grokked Edmund Husserl and Husserlian phenomenology. Not only is it hard to understand. It's also hard to understand the point of most Husserliana. What was he trying to accomplish, and why? And why should we care in AD 2017?

This book didn't exactly help, being a scholarly “companion” to Herr Husserl intended for very advanced students, or perhaps scholarly companions. It's apparently written from a slightly “alternative” perspective, since the contributors emphasize both the complexities and the continuities of Husserl's investigations, rather than seeing his philosophical career as divided into several discreet “stages” (the usual approach). The contributors mention that current Husserlians are split into several competing factions (what isn't?), but it's not clear to me which faction, if any, they identify with themselves. They are positive towards Husserl, in contrast to many other philosophy professors who see the man as the “last of the Cartesians”, an exotic Platonist or as a badly mutated Kantian, which is apparently beyond the pale at most philosophy departments. (In other words: Heidegger was better, except for that unfortunate Nazi episode.)

With difficulty, I tried to read three or four contributions to this volume, giving up half-way each time. The most zany was “Common Sense”. It's always entertaining when philosophers view our common sense perceptions as problematic! Ahem, there's nothing strange about them, you know… The most interesting was “Mathematics”, since I happen to agree with the broadly Platonist idea that numbers and other mathematical mysteries are real entities discovered, rather than convenient fictions constructed. Yes, the Perfect Square really is out there. Two issues sadly missing from this compilation are Husserl's view of politics and religion. That being said, “The Cambridge Companion to Husserl” is probably a must if you want to claim that you are a *real* philosophy student, beyond the basics of Ayn Rand's “Atlas Shrugged”, Robert Heinlein's “Starship Troopers” or whatever passes for philosophy among the younger generations these days.