In this paper, we provide an overview of the main stages in the development of Edmund Husserl’s conception of metaphysics, highlighting its most significant characteristics. We propose that Husserl’s views on metaphysics traversed three main stages: (1) from the early 1890s until his so-called “transcendental turn” around 1906/07; (2) from his transcendental turn until the late 1920s, and (3) the metaphysical conceptualization during the 1930s, aptly characterized as—following the interpretation of László Tengelyi—a “metaphysics of primal facts” (Urfakta, Urtatsache). We further (...) demonstrate that Husserl’s considerations concerning metaphysics—throughout his entire opus—span three essential levels: (1) the epistemological level, in particular, phenomenological preparations to establish a foundation for metaphysics; (2) a level concerning metaphysics as the universal and ultimate science of reality, and (3) a level addressing metaphysics as a proper field of phenomenological investigations into the highest and ultimate questions (such as God and immortality). We argue in detail that Husserl attempted to render this field—which radically transcends the domain of possible intuitions (Anschauungen) and direct experience—accessible to a legitimate phenomenological treatment via the method of phenomenological constructions, prior to the efforts of Eugen Fink. (shrink)

The early phenomenologist József Somogyi was one of, if not the first to write a monograph specifically dedicated to the _history_ of the nascent phenomenological philosophy. The two letters written by him during his stay in Freiburg in WS 1923/24, which are hereby published and discussed for the first time, are, similarly, of interest first due to the rare, valuable insight they can provide – when combined with a detailed microhistorical reconstruction of the surrounding constellation – into the elaborate structures (...) of mid-1920s Freiburg phenomenology around Edmund Husserl (directly after Martin Heidegger’s departure to Marburg). Ranging from Husserl’s teaching style to interactions between phenomenology and Catholic thought and to preconditions of the extraordinary philosophical creativity that distinguished early phenomenology, they offer a snapshot that differs significantly from the established narratives of subsequent privileged members of the Phenomenological Movement. Somogyi’s letters thus exemplify the possibility of reclaiming the plurivocity and philosophical richness of the early Phenomenological Movement by virtue of democratizing the historiography, i.e., giving voice to neglected historical actors (often originating from the peripheries). What is at stake is, however, not merely a more nuanced historical understanding of a particular epoch of early phenomenology. Quite the contrary, as I am finally going to argue on the basis of an adjacent short episode from the reception history of Husserl’s (or Eugen Fink’s) selfinterpretation, Somogyi’s case also exemplifies the possibility of a transformation in our understanding of the history of phenomenology (inspired by the methodological revolutions which took place in other compartments of the historiography of philosophy): namely to make the intricate, simultaneously conceptual and historical phenomena of the history of phenomenology a genuine subject matter of contemporary phenomenological research. (shrink)