Edmund Husserl pursuing the paths of Descartes
pp. 123-138
in: Rein Vihalemm (ed), Estonian studies in the history and philosophy of science, Berlin, Springer, 2001Abstract
During the last decade of his life — he died in 1938 — Edmund Husserl repeatedly considered it necessary to speak in public, concisely, and in a more apprehensible way about the matters to which he had devoted all his life. In 1928, he lectured in Amsterdam, in 1929 in Paris and Strasbourg, in 1931 in Frankfurt, Berlin and Halle, in 1935 in Vienna and Prague — eight cities within seven years. The Paris Lectures were delivered in Paris, in fact, on the 23 and 25 February 1929, first under the title An Introduction to Transcendental Phenomenology. Early in March, E. Husserl spoke on the same theme in Strasbourg as well. They obtained their ultimate title after the place of their first presentation when they were published in 1950. The Paris Lectures evolved quickly into Cartesian Meditations, which were first published in 1931 in Emmanuel Lévinas' and Gabrielle Pfeiffer's translation into French (Husserl, 1931). The German original was published as late as 1950 in the first volume of HUSSERLIANA together with The Paris Lectures (Husserl, 1950).
