In his early work, he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic based on analyses of intentionality. In his mature work, he sought to develop a systematic foundational science based on the so-called phenomenological reduction. Arguing that transcendental consciousness sets the limits of all possible knowledge, Husserl redefined phenomenology as a transcendental-idealist philosophy.
Husserl's thought profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy , and he remains a notable figure in contemporary philosophy and beyond. In , under racial laws of the Nazi Party , Husserl was expelled from the library of the University of Freiburg due to his Jewish family background and months later resigned from the Deutsche Akademie. Following an illness, he died in Freiburg in He was born into a Jewish family, the second of four children.
His father was a milliner. At the University of Leipzig from to , Husserl studied mathematics, physics, and astronomy. At Leipzig, he was inspired by philosophy lectures given by Wilhelm Wundt , one of the founders of modern psychology. Then he moved to the Frederick William University of Berlin the present-day Humboldt University of Berlin in where he continued his study of mathematics under Leopold Kronecker and Karl Weierstrass. There Husserl also attended Friedrich Paulsen 's philosophy lectures.
Evidently as a result of his becoming familiar with the New Testament during his twenties, Husserl asked to be baptized into the Lutheran Church in Husserl's father Adolf had died in Herbert Spiegelberg writes, "While outward religious practice never entered his life any more than it did that of most academic scholars of the time, his mind remained open for the religious phenomenon as for any other genuine experience.
Although a steadfast proponent of a radical and rational autonomy in all things, Husserl could also speak "about his vocation and even about his mission under God's will to find new ways for philosophy and science," observes Spiegelberg.
