In a recent book devoted to the history of phenomenology, Dermot Moran argues that genuine phenomenology, conceived of as “a science of the essential structures of pure consciousness with its own distinctive method”, begins with the work of Edmund Husserl.
Husserl’s concern was to create a science of pure consciousness, a science free of any psychological, scientific or metaphysical presuppositions, a science of appearances as appearances, as they appear to us, a logos [reasoning] about the phainomena [phenomena, appearances] of human experience. As is well known, Husserl’s insights were subsequently radicalized and historicized by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time and other works. For Heidegger, “[p]hilosophy is in large part the work of tracing back to the original emergence of insights which determine the course of subsequent cultural development.”
