Fenomenologia e fenomenismo em Husserl e Mach

Abstract

How to conciliate the recurrent criticisms to Mach's phenomenism, a bit in all Husserl's work, with the outstanding role Husserl seems to recognise in phenomenism in his last works, as to the genesis of his own phenomenology? In order to answer this question, we examine, first, the close relationship stablished by Husserl between the phenomenological method and Mach's descriptivism in light of the debate that opposes nativism and empiricism regarding the origin of the perception of space. Next, we examine two features of Husserl's criticism to Mach's positivism: the first refers to phenomenism ans its doctrine of elements, and the second, to the principle of economy of thought, which Husserl associates to a kind of psychologism in Prolegomena. Our leading hypotheses in this study is that Husserl's apparently contradictory oppinions about Mach's positivism can be understood in part by the double character ascribed to phenomenology in his last works: as philosophical program, phenomenology explicitly opposes positivism, and as method, phenomenology resembles Mach's descriptivism. We conclude with the idea that these two philosophers of Czech descent pursued the common aim of grasping the originary meaning of positivity.