Background on Husserl

Edmund Husserl was born in Prossnitz, Moravia.  At the time, it was part of the Austrian Empire.  Now, the city is known as Prostejov and lies in modern-day Czech Republic.  He received a doctorate in mathematics before completing a Habiltation (super-doctorate) on the philosophy of mathematics.  Frege and Franz Brentano are two people who influenced his forays into philosophy, and Husserl spent the majority of his philosophical works dealing with a theory of intentionality ( a theory of how language is about something).  His phenomenological method (Epoche, bracketing, phenomenological reduction) was meant to help us to talk about language and its relationship to the world. Late in his career, his philosophical interests turned toward ethics with a distinctly existential-phenomenological twist.  His last major text warned about the modern crisis of meaning wherein humanistic inquiry into things such as morality and the meaning of life have been delimited and perverted by inappropriate application of scientific standards.