Search for Truth

THE NEED FOR CERTAINTY
Husserl dedicated himself to a search for the very foundation of human knowledge. His first love had been mathematics and he became obsessed by a vision of a philosophy that provided the indubitable certainty found in mathematics. He wanted to create a philosophy that was a "rigorous science", a firm foundation of certain knowledge upon which all other sciences would rest. Yet his focus was not on the so-called "objective" truths of empirical science, but on the "subjective" process of human thinking; not on so-called "facts" but on "phenomena", things as they appear to the mind.

"Only one need absorbs me: I must win clarity else I cannot live; I cannot bear life unless I can believe that I will achieve it."

(H. Spielberg "The Phenomenological Movement" Vol. 1 1865 p. 76 n.1, p. 82.)