Volume 16, Issue 2, Fall/Automne 2012
Husserl and the Göttingen Circle
Guillaume Fréchette
Pages 150-170
Phenomenology as Descriptive Psychology
The Munich Interpretation
Is phenomenology nothing else than descriptive psychology? In the first edition of his Logical Investigations (LI), Husserl conceived of phenomenology as a description and analysis of the experiences of knowledge, unequivocally stating that “phenomenology is descriptive psychology.” Most interestingly, although the first edition of the LI was the reference par excellence in phenomenology for the Munich phenomenologists, they remained suspicious of this characterisation
of phenomenology. The aim of this paper is to shed new light on the reception of descriptive psychology among Munich phenomenologists and, at the same time, to offer a re-evaluation of their understanding of realist phenomenology.