Conclusion: Problematic Subjectivism

Abstract

This study was undertaken in the awareness that Hume’s skeptical and psychologistic philosophy was anathema to Husserl. Husserl, nonetheless, had studied intensively Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature. At issue was Hume’s impact on Husserl’s development of transcendental-genetic phenomenology. By design we have focused on Husserl’s favorable reactions to Hume in areas crucial to genetic reduction. If we have minimized the profound doctrinal differences between these two thinkers, these are too obvious to require elucidation. What we have attempted is to determine Hume’s positive contribution to the eidetic and, especially, the genetic reduction proper to Husserl’s phenomenology. This study’s main thrust was to reveal the developing affinity between the Humean “science of human nature” and the Husserlian genetic phenomenology. Central to both theories is the uncompromising move towards a truly radical subjectivism. The background question haunting this entire study has been this. Has Husserl actually avoided, in conformity to his own claim, the “bankruptcy” of skeptical solipsism more successfully than Hume?