Edmund Husserl's phenomenology: A cartesian transcendental turn towards pure consciousness

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) has found phenomenology, which he designed as the pure science of consciousness, in the beginning of the twentieth century. Soon, phenomenology becomes an important philosophical movement that deeply influences the philosophers and the mentality of the coming century. Husserl criticizes the claim of certainty and solidity laid by modern sciences; he points out that the natural attitude which is dominant in the world of thought and science includes a number of presuppositions at its foundations. While the natural attitude reifies consciousness, Husserl suggests a phenomenological attitude, in order to found a presuppositionless and rigorous science that studies it in its pure ownness. In the setting forth of this attitude there is a significant influence of Descartes's philosophy; his meditation technique allows Husserl to abstain from all that is accepted as real and to discover the pure consciousness as an absolute being. Hereupon he reconstructs all we know on this new absolute foundation as "phenomena" in consciousness. Husserl's radical transition from the naturalist objectivity towards transcendental subjectivity is commonly called "the transcendental turn". This thesis aims at a detailed investigation of the method and reasons behind the emergence of the transcendental turn that holds an important place in the Husserlian phenomenology and a presentation of cruciality of the Cartesian thought in this context. With that purpose, after a general introduction to Husserl's phenomenology at the first chapter, we will investigate how the basics and the concepts of this domain arose. At the third and final chapter, it is aimed to show the analogies and the differences of the process of thought between two philosophers until the transcendental turn. Keywords: Transcendental Philosophy, Fenomenological Reduction, Natural Attitude, Intentionality, Epokhé, Eidetic Science, Intuition, Experience, Reflection.