Abstract

Classical phenomenology is locked inside a form of transcendentalism and so it is the entire tradition which made it possible. This is the reason (some think) why it must become object of a systematic criticism meant to convince us that phenomenology abandoned the world of facts and construed a nonrealistic account of consciousness. This argument must be understood as part of a much broader form of criticism philosophical naturalism erected not only against phenomenology but against all pre-phenomenological theories which employ themselves to defend non-naturalistic accounts of consciousness. It was first Hume and the logical positivists to address these theories in a critical manner in order for later contemporary naturalists to reinvigorate the same kind of argument. But similar replies have been also put forward by those usually considered defenders of classical phenomenology (the so-called “post-phenomenologists”). There is however a third category of philosophers, the so-called “transcendentalists”, who defended Husserl and continue to do so. I think some of the transcendentalists were onto something but they ultimately failed to do justice to classical phenomenology for the same two particular reasons I believe the post-phenomenologists have failed to convince.