Husserl's phenomenology of material culture

Abstract

This essay introduces Husserl as a thinker of inanimate things, assessing his relevance to contemporary debates about matter and objects. Many recent continental realists argue that phenomenology cannot offer an account of inanimate interaction. Phenomenology, after all, seems to restrict itself to consciousness, studying how things appear to us, not how they interact with each other. This essay aims to show that Husserl offers interesting insights into the world of inanimate things, even if these insights are, at times, limited in scope. Turning to Ideas II, I interpret Husserl's ontology of "material nature;' looking at the places where Husserl talks about inanimate interaction, causality, primary and secondary properties, and objective reality. In a number of places, I attempt to develop Husserl's ideas further, expanding his analysis of material things, while at the same time pointing out the account's limitations.