Individual fact and essence in Edmund Husserl's philosophy

pp. 152-162

in: Mohanty, Phenomenology and Ontology, Berlin, Springer, 1970

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is not, as its title is likely to suggest, to reopen the discussion on a distinction familiarized by Husserl. What I intend doing is to examine critically some of Husserl's attempts to bridge that gulf between fact and essence with which he himself starts. For the purpose of this discussion I shall single out two notions of Husserl and examine whether with the help of these two we may not succeed in connecting facts with essences in such a way as to overcome the original distance. These are the notions of "individual essence' and "an individual fact's own essence'.