This introduction offers an overview of Else Voigtländer´s (1882-1946) life and thought and places her work within the early phenomenological tradition. It is argued that she should be regarded as a fully-fledged member of the Munich Circle. Voigtländer developed central concepts and themes that occupied other phenomenologists of that time and, though working outside the academy, with her writing she helped to forge a particular view of self-consciousness, affectivity, and the social self. the perception and reception of her philosophical work (...) are examined. After a first period of collegial exclusion, and a second period of historical oblivion, Voigtländer's work have been object of recent interest. It is high time that we acknowledge her as a philosopher of the twentieth century. By so doing, a new and more inclusive view on the genealogy of the phenomenological movement will emerge. (shrink)

This book is the first to offer a full account of the philosophical work of Else Voigtländer. Locating the sources of her thought in the philosophy and psychology of the 19th and 20th centuries in figures such as Nietzsche and Lipps, the book uncovers and examines Voigtländer’s intellectual exchanges with both phenomenology and psychoanalysis. The major themes within her work are also considered in light of more recent developments in the philosophy of emotion, self, and sociality.