Husserl's conception of cognition as an action

an inquiry into its prehistory

Genki Uemura

Okayama University

pp. 119-137

in: Marta Ubiali, Maren Wehrle (eds), Feeling and value, willing and action, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

The present chapter investigates a development in Husserl's thought concerning cognition. In some of his later writings after the 1920s, Husserl holds that cognition is an action. This claim is available for him only if a previous idea expressed in his Logische Untersuchungen (1900/1901), according to which no act is action, has been abandoned. In addition, there must be a further reason for Husserl's classification of cognition as action. We attempt to account for this move solely on the basis of Husserl's discussions of cognition and action before the 1920s. The proposed account consists of two steps. First, drawing mainly on Husserl's related manuscripts in 1909–1914, we give an outline of Husserl's phenomenology of action in general. Second, examining some of Husserl's discussions in the same period, we show that Husserl is already phenomenologically justified at that time to regard his analysis of cognition as dealing with a certain sort of action.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund