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The aim of this paper is to explore the theme of history in Husserl’s phenomenology, a theme to which he had a complex relation. While in his programmatic text, Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft, he opposed himself to the so-called “historicism” of some of his contemporaries, claiming that it leads to relativism, he later in his career sought to incorporate historical reflections into the core of the phenomenological method. The challenge, then, is to understand, or perhaps to reconcile, the tension between Husserl’s early anti-historicism and his later turn toward history and historical reflections. By highlighting some of the key points in the development of his phenomenology, such as the distinction between static and genetic analysis, this tension is shown to be nothing but apparent. By expanding the scope of his notion of essences to also include motivations, origins, and ideals, the later Husserl gives to phenomenology a fundamentally historical and temporal dimension. A central component in this development, it is argued, is the notion of sense-reflection (Besinnung), connecting phenomenology both to historical and ethical concerns. In later texts such as Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften, sense-reflection is used in a variety of contexts: as indicating the retrieval of historically lost meaning (such as that within the sciences); as indicating the Socratic ethos of self-knowledge (Selbstbesinnung); and lastly, as indicating the process of performing the phenomenological reduction. Ultimately, according to Husserl, only by engaging in historical sense-reflections can phenomenology become a truly rigorous science, seeking to clarify the meaning of science as an intersubjective project aiming toward the realization of human rationality and reason.

The aim of this paper is to explore the theme of history in Husserl’s phenomenology, a theme to which he had a complex relation. While in his programmatic text, Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft, he opposed himself to the so-called “historicism” of some of his contemporaries, claiming that it leads to relativism, he later in his career sought to incorporate historical reflections into the core of the phenomenological method. The challenge, then, is to understand, or perhaps to reconcile, the tension between Husserl’s early anti-historicism and his later turn toward history and historical reflections. By highlighting some of the key points in the development of his phenomenology, such as the distinction between static and genetic analysis, this tension is shown to be nothing but apparent. By expanding the scope of his notion of essences to also include motivations, origins, and ideals, the later Husserl gives to phenomenology a fundamentally historical and temporal dimension. A central component in this development, it is argued, is the notion of sense-reflection (Besinnung), connecting phenomenology both to historical and ethical concerns. In later texts such as Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften, sense-reflection is used in a variety of contexts: as indicating the retrieval of historically lost meaning (such as that within the sciences); as indicating the Socratic ethos of self-knowledge (Selbstbesinnung); and lastly, as indicating the process of performing the phenomenological reduction. Ultimately, according to Husserl, only by engaging in historical sense-reflections can phenomenology become a truly rigorous science, seeking to clarify the meaning of science as an intersubjective project aiming toward the realization of human rationality and reason.