The Critique of Pure Reason as Transcendental Phenomenology

Abstract

The relation between the philosophies of Kant and Husserl has quite naturally been the subject of considerable interest, perhaps to no one more than to Husserl himself. As Iso Kern has shown in his exhaustive study, Husserl und Kant, Husserl was continually engaged in the study of the Critique, and in defining his transcendental phenomenology in relation to it. This resulted in markedly different evaluations at different stages in Husserl’s philosophical development. From the time of Ideas, however, if not before, Husserl seems to have remained firm in his conviction that for all of his failings, Kant had at least grasped the idea of a genuine transcendental philosophy, although he had not succeeded in realizing this idea concretely.¹