Husserl's principle of evidence

the significance and limitations of a methodological norm of phenomenology as a science

pp. 45-81

in: Elisabeth Ströker, The Husserlian foundations of science, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

In Cartesian Meditations, Husserl states a first methodological principle of his phenomenology in the following way: "it is apparent that, as a consequence of the fact that I am striving after the presumptive goal of true science, I cannot as a beginner in philosophy make any judgment or accept one which I have not drawn from evidence, from "experiences' in which the respective things and states of affairs are present to me as "they themselves.'" This principle of evidence is characterized by Husserl here as a "consistently applicable normative" principle of the phenomenological method (Hua I, 54 / CM, 13f.). Similar formulations can be found frequently in the work done by Husserl during the 1920s, the period in which he struggled with the problem of a final justification of phenomenology in successive new attempts. This principle, however, had from the very beginning more or less implicitly determined Husserl's work, and from this it gains its significance for the entirety of his philosophy.