Alfred Schütz, Husserl’s Paris Lectures of 1929

Alfred Schütz’s review, originally published in 1951 and reprinted in the supplied 1996 version, assesses Stephan Strasser’s edition of Husserl’s Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. Its central claim joins an editorial judgment to a philosophical one: the volume establishes an exceptionally valuable text and makes accessible what Schütz considers the clearest introduction to Husserl’s later phenomenology. The review moves from the institutional achievement of the Husserl Archives through the manuscripts’ publication history to a comparison of Husserl’s three major systematic projects, concluding with a practical criticism of the edition’s accessibility.

Schütz begins by placing the publication within the work of the Archives-Husserl at Louvain, custodian of approximately 45,000 pages left unpublished and mostly unedited at Husserl’s death. His praise of its director, H. L. Van Breda, draws on personal acquaintance with the institution. Against Van Breda’s modest account of his own contribution, Schütz emphasizes the energy and self-denial that made the archive possible. This acknowledgment establishes why editorial labor matters philosophically: bringing the manuscripts into print promises to disclose the development of Husserl’s thinking, rather than merely preserve its documentary remains.

He must have gained the conviction that the forthcoming publication of Husserl’s writings will not only attain the highest standard of philological precision but also open new insights into the development of the philosopher’s thought.

The edition fulfills this expectation by presenting materials whose relationships had previously been difficult to examine. Schütz reconstructs the sequence from the four German lectures delivered at the Sorbonne in February 1929, together with Husserl’s own summary, to their elaboration with Eugen Fink into the first four Cartesian Meditations. These address the approach to the transcendental ego, the structure of transcendental experience, and constitution in relation to truth and reality. The problem of intersubjectivity was subsequently added as the fifth meditation. This account makes the Paris lectures a point of entry into a developing systematic project, not simply an occasion commemorated by the edition.

The five meditations appeared in French translation by E. Levinas and G. Peiffer in 1931, but Husserl’s intention to publish the German original remained unrealized. Continued revision, followed by political developments in Germany and competing occupations, prevented completion of that plan; Fink’s new version of 1932 also remained unpublished. Strasser’s volume therefore provides the German manuscripts underlying the French translation, with an extensive annex of marginal notes, insertions, and amendments. Schütz values both the newly available original and the documentation of its revisions. He also commends the editorial introduction and Roman Ingarden’s comments on the first four meditations. Although he calls the French translation excellent, he stresses its difficulty even for native French readers.

The review’s principal conceptual move is to compare three routes into transcendental phenomenology. Following Strasser, Schütz identifies the Cartesian Meditations as Husserl’s second attempt at systematic presentation, between Ideas and the unfinished Crisis. Their differences concern how readers gain access to the phenomenological field. Ideas begins with eidetic and transcendental reductions, but Schütz argues that its initial emphasis on Wesensschau has often obstructed understanding and encouraged misunderstandings. The Crisis approaches phenomenology through a reinterpretation of Western philosophy and the emergence of modern science since Galileo. Yet its unfinished condition means that readers already need familiarity with phenomenology to recognize the systematic purpose of its historical investigations.

The “Cartesian Meditations” try to unveil the field of transcendental phenomenology by starting from Descartes’ method of radical doubt, which leads to a new concept of apodictic evidence and therewith to the transcendental foundation of the epoché; they are not only the most complete but in the opinion of this writer the easiest approach to the later phase of Husserl’s philosophy.

This judgment supplies the review’s philosophical center. Schütz locates the work’s advantage in its starting point: radical doubt leads toward apodictic evidence and the grounding of the epoché. His comparison concerns the intelligibility and completeness of the available approaches, rather than a rejection of the other projects. The review itself offers no detailed reconstruction of constitution or intersubjectivity. Instead, Schütz directs English readers to Marvin Farber’s condensed exposition and argues that only a full translation could provide a better understanding.

The closing reservation returns to the relation between scholarly precision and usable access. Despite his admiration for Van Breda and Strasser, Schütz regrets the absence of an index.

Yet it is unfortunate that, for instance, important statements of Husserl, such as those reproduced on pp. 238–241, disappear for the not too diligent reader in the bulk of text-critical remarks.

The criticism qualifies rather than diminishes his praise. An edition can preserve textual complexity while leaving significant philosophical passages difficult to find. Schütz’s review thus makes a compact case for the joint importance of archival preservation, exact editing, translation, and navigability: each helps determine whether Husserl’s unpublished legacy becomes available for philosophical understanding.