The Origin of the Question: The Structure and Emergence of Questioning in Edmund Husserl's Work

Author

Andrew Daniel Barrette, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

5-1-2018

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Philosophy

First Advisor

Steinbock, Anthony

Abstract

In this dissertation, I investigate how questioning appears within Edmund Husserl’s work. I do so through five chapters. In the first, I introduce questioning as a moment of a reason’s striving for truth, as it appears both in the individual and through history. In the second, I clarify how he finds the structure of questioning as an intention that appears to fulfill a questionable experience. In the third, I explicate his analysis of its temporal genesis and fulfillment in the individual. In the fourth, I turn to how he treats the development of questioning across generations, especially as it first emerges from the child’s curiosity. Finally, in the fifth, I give an overview of the transformation of questioning through three stages of history, expressed in myth, science, and phenomenology. Through these chapters, I claim Husserl finds a development of ways of questioning through history but also that questioning itself is an essential moment of this historical development.