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In the preceding chapter we have seen that Husserl's earliest philosophical publications must be viewed against the background of Brentano's descriptive psychology. Husserl's agreement with this form of analysis inaugurated by Brentano was determinative for his idea of philosophy, which differed in basic respects from that of the early Brentano. In the latter's PES of 1874, philosophy is the same thing as psychology, which is in turn conceived of in a natural scientific sense. Thus, philosophy = genetic psychology.¹ Toward the end of the 1880's, Brentano's views on this matter underwent a change, and descriptive psychology came to the fore as an autonomous science. The heart of philosophy now lay in a descriptive clearing up of the fundamental concepts of the normative sciences (aesthetics, logic, ethics). The normative pronouncements of these sciences, which are made on the basis of their fundamental concepts, thereby receive a firm foundation.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-9691-5_3

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