Customer Reviews

Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology (Husserliana: Edmund Husserl - Collected Works)

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This translation is a huge improvement over the pioneering work by Boyce-Gibson from the 30s. But, as you read, you'll have to keep a pencil handy. Specifically, you should scratch out every occurrence of the term "mental process". That phrase is Kersten's choice to render the german "Erlebnis". In translating "Erlebnis" in this manner, Kersten is following the lead of Dorian Cairns, who made the suggestion in his "Guide For Translating Husserl." While it makes sense not to translate "Erlebnis" as "experience" (as one normally would in rendering colloquial German) since "experience" should be reserved to render the German "Erfahrung," just about any of the alternate translations would be better than the highly misleading "mental process." "Lived experience" would be much simpler and better - or you could render it with a neologism like "lived-through". Really anything other than "mental process" would be an improvement.

Also, there used to be a paperback edition of this item. Such books are of interest to students. In whose interest is it to price them out of the reach of anyone except libraries?

Kersten's translation of Husserl's "Ideas" is a huge improvement over the old Gibson translation, which was for years the only access English speaking readers had to this centrally important work. Much has been clarified and brought into conformity with the conventions established by Dorion Cairns. There are still minor flaws in the translation (and lots of typos), but these are insignificant in light of the vast improvement in readability of the present version. When Kluwer took over the rights from Martinus Nijhoff, it preserved and expanded the accessibility of these works for another generation. They deserve our gratitude for that. But one could still wish that Kluwer would price these volumes more reasonably.

The fault of Husserl's main work - or at least one of them - is only that though he's very against linguistic aquivocations, he does some. It's not suddenly understandable, that the noetisch-noematisch expressions has no connection with the difference of noma and noemata (plural), but that noetisch means "refering to the noesis" and noematisch "refering to the noema" etc.