Influences

Attempts by Franz Brentano to establish psychology as an empirical science inspired an interest in mental phenomena. It was Brentano who first stressed the "intentionality" of consciousness. Brentano realised that it was impossible to study behaviour without recognising that behaviour constitutes acts of consciousness. It involved interaction between the subjective conscious self and the objective outside world. Empirical psychology, he concluded, must first seek to understand the subjective experience by way of intuition. Brentano appears to have had greater influence on the phenomenologists than on the world of experimental psychology.

Heidegger was a one time pupil of Husserl, a pupil who succeeded his master as professor at Freiburg University, not so much because of his philosophical genius but because of his political affiliation. Heidegger's commitment to National Socialism saw his promotion to rector of the university in 1933. Meanwhile, Husserl was subjected to harassment and his career inhibited because of his Jewish background.

The influence of both Husserl and Heidegger on existentialists like Sartre is undeniable. Later phenomenologists failed to follow Husserl's thinking in its entirety. They make the more modest claim to explore the many ways in which consciousness itself provides the structure and the feeling of being in the world. Still the existentialists' focus on the life-world of the conscious being finds its origins here.