Key Arguments

• He asserts that ‘Phenomenology signifies indeed a fundamental refashioning of psychology too. Accordingly, by far the greater part of psychological research belongs in an apriori and pure intentional psychology.’
• He defines ‘pure’ here negatively: ‘(Here the word “pure” means: kept free from everything psychophysical.)’, indicating the abstraction from psychophysical causality.
• He emphasizes that this same psychology ‘by means of a change of the natural into the transcendental attitude, … is open to a “Copernican conversion”, wherewith it assumes the new sense of a completely radical transcendental consideration of the world and impresses this sense on all phenomenological-psychological analyses.’
• This conversion ‘alone makes such a psychology utilizable for transcendental philosophy and, indeed, gives it a place within a transcendental “metaphysics”.’
• He explicitly connects this to the critique of psychologism: ‘Precisely in this lies the ultimate clarification and overcoming of the transcendental psychologism that has misled and paralysed the whole of modern philosophy.’
• Later he insists that positive intentional psychology and transcendental phenomenology should not be separated: ‘it would of course be pointless to treat the positive science of intentional psychology and transcendental phenomenology separately.’ Rather, ‘positive psychology … becomes a discipline within universal transcendental philosophy itself.’
• He concludes that intentional psychology, if properly built up, already harbors the transcendental: ‘intentional psychology already has the transcendental hiddenly within itself; only a final clarification of its sense is needed in order to make the Copernican shift, which does not change the content of psychology’s intentional results but only leads back to its “ultimate sense”.’

Source Quotes

The kind of universality meant here is shown with sufficient distinctness in the case of the systematic unitary complex of those constitutions that are explicata of my ego, in respect of what is peculiar to my own self and what is other. Phenomenology signifies indeed a fundamental refashioning of psychology too. Accordingly, by far the greater part of psychological research belongs in an apriori and pure intentional psychology.

Phenomenology signifies indeed a fundamental refashioning of psychology too. Accordingly, by far the greater part of psychological research belongs in an apriori and pure intentional psychology. (Here the word “pure” means: kept free from everything psychophysical.) It is the same psychology, concerning which we have already / indicated repeatedly that, by means of a change of the natural into the transcendental attitude, it is open to a “Copernican conversion”, wherewith it assumes the new sense of a completely radical transcendental consideration of the world and impresses this sense on all phenomenological-psychological analyses.

Accordingly, by far the greater part of psychological research belongs in an apriori and pure intentional psychology. (Here the word “pure” means: kept free from everything psychophysical.) It is the same psychology, concerning which we have already / indicated repeatedly that, by means of a change of the natural into the transcendental attitude, it is open to a “Copernican conversion”, wherewith it assumes the new sense of a completely radical transcendental consideration of the world and impresses this sense on all phenomenological-psychological analyses. This sense alone makes such a psychology utilizable for transcendental philosophy and, indeed, gives it a place within a transcendental “metaphysics”.

(Here the word “pure” means: kept free from everything psychophysical.) It is the same psychology, concerning which we have already / indicated repeatedly that, by means of a change of the natural into the transcendental attitude, it is open to a “Copernican conversion”, wherewith it assumes the new sense of a completely radical transcendental consideration of the world and impresses this sense on all phenomenological-psychological analyses. This sense alone makes such a psychology utilizable for transcendental philosophy and, indeed, gives it a place within a transcendental “metaphysics”. Precisely in this lies the ultimate clarification and overcoming of the transcendental psychologism that has misled and paralysed the whole of modern philosophy.

This sense alone makes such a psychology utilizable for transcendental philosophy and, indeed, gives it a place within a transcendental “metaphysics”. Precisely in this lies the ultimate clarification and overcoming of the transcendental psychologism that has misled and paralysed the whole of modern philosophy. As in the case of transcendental phenomenology, so also in the parallel case of intentional psychology (as a “positive” science) our exposition has manifestly predelineated a fundamental structure, a division of the corresponding investigations of eidetic psychology into those that explicate intentionally what is included in the concrete own-essentiality of any psyche whatever and those that explicate the intentionality pertaining to the otherness that becomes constituted therein.

Obviously the work of actual execution must devolve upon the latter, whereas psychology, unconcerned about the Copernican shift, will take over the results. Yet it is important to note that, just as the psyche and the whole Objective world do not / lose their existence and existential sense when considered transcendentally (since they are merely rendered originarily understandable, by the uncovering of their concrete all-sidedness), so positive psychology does not lose its rightful content but rather, freed of naive positivity, becomes a discipline within universal transcendental philosophy itself. From this point of view we may say that, among the sciences that have been raised above the level of naïve positivity, intentional psychology is intrinsically the first.

If it is built up in the positive attitude according to the right method of intentional analysis, it can have no “problems of fundamentals”, like those that infect the other positive sciences: problems that arise from the one-sidedness of naïvely constituted Objectivity, which finally demands that, in order to attain all-sidedness, we shift to a transcendental consideration of the world. But intentional psychology already has the transcendental hiddenly within itself; only a final clarification of its sense is needed in order to make the Copernican shift, which does not change the content of psychology’s intentional results but only leads back to its “ultimate sense”. Psychology has just one fundamental problem [Fundamentalproblem], which (it may be objected) is ultimately a problem of fundamentals [Grundlagenproblem], albeit the only one: the concept

Key Concepts

• Phenomenology signifies indeed a fundamental refashioning of psychology too.
• by far the greater part of psychological research belongs in an apriori and pure intentional psychology.
• (Here the word “pure” means: kept free from everything psychophysical.)
• it is open to a “Copernican conversion”, wherewith it assumes the new sense of a completely radical transcendental consideration of the world and impresses this sense on all phenomenological-psychological analyses.
• This sense alone makes such a psychology utilizable for transcendental philosophy and, indeed, gives it a place within a transcendental “metaphysics”.
• Precisely in this lies the ultimate clarification and overcoming of the transcendental psychologism that has misled and paralysed the whole of modern philosophy.
• positive psychology does not lose its rightful content but rather, freed of naive positivity, becomes a discipline within universal transcendental philosophy itself.
• intentional psychology already has the transcendental hiddenly within itself; only a final clarification of its sense is needed in order to make the Copernican shift

Context

Middle–late §61, where Husserl derives implications of intentional analysis for the status of psychology, arguing for a pure intentional psychology that, by a shift of attitude, integrates into transcendental phenomenology and overcomes psychologism.