Edmund Husserl

Husserl, Edmund (1859–1938), Czech-born German philosopher who founded phenomenology. Professor at Göttingen and Freiburg universities, he was concerned with what constitutes acts of consciousness and how they relate to experience. He held that consciousness is “intentional” in that it is always “conscious of an object. Husserl's investigations influenced Heidegger, Sartre, and other thinkers of 20th-century existentialism.

See also: Phenomenology.