Representation in early Husserl

Karl Schuhmann

pp. 167-184

in: Liliana Albertazzi (ed), The dawn of cognitive science, Berlin, Springer, 2001

Abstract

Husserl's early philosophy of cognition grew out of the investigations of the Brentano school, where he was especially influenced by Brentano's "unforgettable course of lectures" (as he was later to call them)¹ on "Selected Questions in Psychology and Aesthetics," a Vienna lecture course from Winter 1885/86, and the lectures on psychology given by Carl Stumpf in Halle a year later. Where Brentano had especially dealt with phantasy presentations in their relation to perceptual presentations, i.e., sensations, Stumpf had given a comprehensive survey of psychical life along the lines of the Brentanist classification of psychical acts into presentations, judgements, and emotional phenomena, thereby insisting especially on the various types of presentations such as sensations, phantasy presentations, the presentations of space and time, and abstract and symbolic presentations. Both thinkers considered sensations to be fundamental, while all other presentations are of a higher level and therefore to a degree depend on them.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund

Brentano Franz

Stumpf Carl