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Abstract

Similarly to Husserl’s gradually developing view of the decisive phenomenological questions also his relationship to the philosophy of R. Descartes and to the history of philosophy as a whole underwent several changes. We witness a shift from stressing (Descartes’) universal attempt at doubt to misunderstanding of Descarte’s own discovery of ego. Husserl sees Descartes’ methodical skepticism as a crucial historical impulse for articulating his own conception of epoché. Descartes’ methodical skepticism and Husserl’s putting in brackets the general thesis about the existence of the world show the closest parallel between their philosophical doctrines. Further, similarly to Descartes Husserl also aims at reforming the philosophy of his time; in Descartes’ Meditations on first philosophy he finds the way leading to transcendental phenomenology. However, there are also differences in their projects of universal philosophy. While for Descartes the model of his mathesis universalis is mathematical science, Husserl aims – with far reaching consequences – at creating transcendental phenomenology as a strictly scientific philosophy which must offer a fundamental organon to all other sciences and thus enable them to undergo a reform.