The discussion of phenomenology in the abstract is out of the question; it is only possible to discuss the phenomenology of one thinker or another. Indeed even the discussion of the phenomenology of one thinker is very difficult, because of the development which inevitably takes place in any individual's philosophy. The present discussion takes the line of least resistance, therefore, and the modest one: it is based on a single text of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. The text is a series of five lectures delivered by Husserl in 1907 in the University of Göttingen. It was published by Walter Biemel in 1950 under the title The Idea of Phenomenology.²