Husserl founded phenomenology after Brentano converted him from mathematics to philosophy

Evidence

It was by no means clear, in his boyhood, that his talents would lie in philosophy at all. Born on 8 April 1859 in the Moravian town of Prostějov (or Prossnitz, to a German-speaker such as himself; it is now in the Czech Republic), Husserl came from a Jewish family but converted to Lutheranism as a young man. His school career was undistinguished. One former schoolmate told a biographer that the young Husserl was ‘in the habit of falling fast asleep during the lesson, and it was necessary for one of us to push him to wake him up. When the teacher called on him he would stand up sleepily, yawn and gape. Once he yawned so hard that his lower jaw remained stuck.’ But this only happened when Husserl was not interested in the subject. He was more alert in his favourite class of the time, mathematics, and went on to study this at the University of Leipzig. But a fellow Moravian student there, Tomáš Masaryk (later the president of Czechoslovakia) persuaded Husserl to accompany him to the University of Vienna to take classes with a charismatic philosophy teacher named Franz Clemens Brentano. He spent two years in Vienna from 1884, and was so won over by Brentano that he resolved to devote his life to philosophy. From then on, there was no more sleeping on the job. … Brentano was the sort of teacher who could work such miracles. A former priest trained in Aristotelian philosophy, he had resigned from the priesthood and lost an earlier teaching job after questioning the Church’s new doctrine of papal infallibility, which he considered indefensible. The unemployed Brentano spent a year travelling around Europe learning about other ideas, including those from the new field of experimental psychology, and decided that traditional philosophy needed reinvigorating from such sources. He then began teaching again in the more open-minded University of Vienna. There, he encouraged his students to break with tradition, criticise the great philosophers of the past, and think for themselves, while also taking care to be methodical. This was the combination that galvanized Husserl. Armed with Brentano’s innovations, he embarked on his own philosophical work. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 128

Categorization

• XREF: Frames Husserl’s origins before any substantive phenomenology appears; good orientation material for a reader new to the movement. — connects to: Brentano’s Vienna teaching style shaped Husserl’s philosophical direction. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 129; Brentano’s Aristotle thesis diverted Heidegger toward Being while other Brentano work turned Husserl inward — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 175; Both Heidegger and Husserl traced their starting points to the same teacher, Brentano — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 175

Broader Connections

• Both Heidegger and Husserl traced their starting points to the same teacher, Brentano #expands (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 175
• Brentano’s Vienna teaching style shaped Husserl’s philosophical direction. #expands (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 129
• Brentano’s Aristotle thesis diverted Heidegger toward Being while other Brentano work turned Husserl inward #expands (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 175