Husserl’s idealist turn was driven by a longing for certainty

Evidence

What led Husserl to do this in the 1910s and 1920s was his longing for certainty. One might not be sure of much in the world, but one could be sure about what was going on in one’s own head. In a series of lectures in Paris in February 1929, attended by many young French philosophers (though Sartre and Beauvoir missed it), Husserl laid out this idealist interpretation and pointed out how close it brought him to the philosophy of René Descartes, who had said ‘I think, therefore I am’ — an introspective starting point if ever there was one. Anyone who wants to be a philosopher, said Husserl, must at least once try to do as Descartes did: ‘withdraw into himself’ and start everything from scratch, on a certain foundation. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 163

What led Husserl to do this in the 1910s and 1920s was his longing for certainty. One might not be sure of much in the world, but one could be sure about what was going on in one’s own head. In a series of lectures in Paris in February 1929, attended by many young French philosophers (though Sartre and Beauvoir missed it), Husserl laid out this idealist interpretation and pointed out how close it brought him to the philosophy of René Descartes, who had said ‘I think, therefore I am’ — an introspective starting point if ever there was one. Anyone who wants to be a philosopher, said Husserl, must at least once try to do as Descartes did: ‘withdraw into himself’ and start everything from scratch, on a certain foundation. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 163

Categorization

• XREF: The Cartesian inward turn anticipates and contrasts with the outward, embodied turn Sartre and Merleau-Ponty will take. — connects to: Uncertainty can be approached with curiosity instead of fear. — A guide to navigating uncertainty head-on; Husserl turned phenomenology toward idealism because the epoché opened that door — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 162
• QUESTION: Sartre and Beauvoir ‘missed’ the 1929 Paris lectures — worth chasing whether this influenced how they first encountered phenomenology.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 163