Abstract
This study aims to underline some features in Edmund Husserl’s concept of 
constructive phenomenology, particularly in the C-manuscripts (1929–1934) and also 
in other materials. For the author, the significance of this late work is that it contains 
Husserl’s all four phenomenological methods, transparently and maturely developed, 
coordinated and interrelated, namely: static, genetic, generative, and constructive 
method. While the first three are limited to the possible attitude and are restricted to the 
Original scientific paper 
Izvirni znanstveni članek 
DOI: 10.32022/PHI29.2020.112-113.1
UDC: 165.62Husserl E.
Edmund Husserl’s Constructive 
Phenomenology in the 
C-Manuscripts and Other Late 
Research Manuscripts
Bence Peter Marosan
Budapest Business School, Faculty of International Management and 
Business, Diósy L. Street 22-24, 1165 Budapest, Hungary
bencemarosan@gmail.com
bence peter marosan

6
Phainomena 29 | 112-113 | 2020
domain of possible intuitive givenness, the peculiarity of constructive phenomenology 
is to venture beyond the limits of intuitive accessibility in a phenomenologically 
legitimate way. Thus, it makes available the “supreme and final” metaphysical questions, 
and, ultimately, lays down the foundations of phenomenological metaphysics. In this 
study, I try to show how Husserl attempts to apply the constructive phenomenological 
method.
Keywords: Edmund Husserl, constructive phenomenology, C-manuscripts, 
phenomenological metaphysics.
Konstruktivna fenomenologija v C-rokopisih in drugih poznih raziskovalnih 
rokopisih Edmunda Husserla 
Povzetek
Študija želi poudariti nekatere značilnosti pojma konstruktivne fenomenologije 
pri Edmundu Husserlu, zlasti v C-rokopisih (1929–1934) in drugih gradivih. Za 
avtorja članka leži pomen tega poznega Husserlovega dela v tem, da vsebuje vse 
štiri fenomenološke metode, transparentno in zrelo razvite, medsebojno povezane 
in koordinirane, in sicer: statično, genetično, generativno in konstruktivno metodo. 
Medtem ko se prve tri omejujejo na možnostno držo in zadevajo področje možne 
intuitivne danosti, je posebnost konstruktivne fenomenologije v tem, da se želi 
na fenomenološko legitimen način podati onkraj meja intuitivne dostopnosti. 
Tako omogoča »najvišja in končna« metafizična vprašanja in, vzpostavlja temelje 
fenomenološke metafizike. V študiji skušam pokazati, kako Husserl aplicira 
konstruktivno fenomenološko metodo.
Ključne besede: Edmund Husserl, konstruktivna fenomenologija, C-rokopisi, 
fenomenološka metafizika.

7
Das Absolute ist nichts anderes als absolute Zeitigung.
Edmund Husserl 
Introduction
Husserl’s so-called C-manuscripts are important documents in many 
aspects. They were meant to constitute a systematic work for publication under 
the working title (or one of its working titles) The Origin of Time. I think that 
one of the particular reasons for its special importance is the presence of four 
phenomenological methods in the work: the static, the genetic, the generative 
(Steinbock 1995), and the constructive (Fink 1988, Schnell 2006).
1
 The first 
two were developed in detail in Husserl’s works, while the clear outlines of 
the latter two also emerged. Generative phenomenology aims at concrete 
historical life, and constructive phenomenology eventually transcends the 
limits of possible intuitive givenness and tries to answer the “highest and 
ultimate” metaphysical questions in a phenomenologically legitimate manner. 
Of peculiar importance of the C-manuscripts is also the internal relationship 
between the four methods within the text.
This study aims to underline Husserl’ s notion of constructive phenomenology 
in the C- and other research manuscripts which he wrote in the same period. It 
is well known that, in his Sixth Cartesian Meditation (August–October 1932), 
Eugen Fink, Husserl’s assistant, wrote about “constructive phenomenology” in 
1   In this essay, we use the conception of “constructive phenomenology” in a 
somewhat different sense as Schnell did. Schnell emphasized that in his interpretation 
“construction” is neither speculative nor metaphysical—in the traditional sense of 
the word—, but a necessary implication of the radicalization of phenomenological 
description (Schnell 2007, 23–26). This radicalization, in turn, does not bring us 
beyond the limits of possible intuition. In my interpretation—however—there 
is a sense of phenomenological construction in Husserl, according to which we 
can transgress those limits of possible intuitive givenness in a phenomenologically 
legitimate manner, in order to attain the ultimate questions of philosophy, such as the 
problem of immortality (or mortality) of the soul and existence of God.
Bence Peter Marosan 
This paper was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian 
Academy of Sciences (project: BO/00421/18/2).

8
Phainomena 29 | 112-113 | 2020
a detailed and systematic way. Husserl read it several times between August 
1932 and January 1933 and made extensive remarks and notes on his assistant’ s 
writing. Yet, Husserl got neither the idea nor the term “phenomenological 
construction” from his student. Both are found in his relatively early B II 2 
manuscripts from the years 1907–1910 (see: Hua
2
 13, 5–9; Hua 42, 137–168). 
Fink influenced Husserl’s concept of constructive phenomenology, but he was 
neither the exclusive nor the decisive source for Husserl. 
Husserl applies constructive phenomenology on the level of the individual 
subject and of totality, of the Absolute (Hua 15, text No. 38), attempting to 
thematize the problems of birth and death (Hua Mat
3
 8, texts, e.g., No. 21, 
43, 94, 96). (He also deals with the problem of God himself in detail in his 
late E-manuscripts from the same period, the 1930s). We should take a 
closer look at how Husserl unfolds apodictic implications to construct and 
reconstruct what lies beyond the limits of the intuitively accessible. He tries to 
raise questions concerning individual immortality, the meaning of historicity, 
and the existence of God from a transcendental point of view, which differs 
radically from the classic, speculative metaphysics approach. 
This essay aims to highlight the peculiarities of Husserl’s notions of a 
phenomenologically founded metaphysics. It consists of three parts: 1) the 
context of C-manuscripts, 2) methodological layers in the C-manuscripts, and 
3) constructive phenomenology in the C-manuscripts and other late materials.
1. The context of C-manuscripts
In 1928, Heidegger published Husserl’s work Vorlesungen zur 
Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins (The Lectures on Internal Time 
Consciousness from the year 1905),
4
 which were edited by Edith Stein. Its main 
texts derived from the 1904/05 winter semester lecture entitled Hauptstücke 
aus der Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis (Main Elements of the 
Phenomenology and Theory of Knowledge), a work to which Husserl returned 
from time to time, reworked it in 1917 with the assistance of Edith Stein, 
2   H ua = Husserliana (Edmund Husserl: Gesammelte Werke).
3   Hua Mat = Husserliana: Materialien. 
4   In the following parts of this paper: Time-lectures. 

9
and which gained its final form in 1928. Husserl struggled with time, which 
motivated him to write the so-called Bernau manuscripts in 1917–1918, which 
had the working-title Zeit und Individuation, eine Erneuerung einer rationalen 
Metaphysik nach den Principien (Time and Individuation: A Renovation of 
Rational Metaphysics Based on Principles).
5
 After publishing the main parts of 
his Time-lectures from 1904–1905 in 1928, Husserl focused on the problem of 
time again. Heidegger himself also referred to the imminent publication of the 
Bernau manuscripts in his “Introduction” to the Time-lectures.
6
 Husserl had a 
three-volume work in mind concerning the problem of time, whereas the first 
volume would have comprised the Time-lectures, the second was to contain 
the Bernau manuscripts, and the third and last one the C-manuscripts. After 
asking Heidegger and Roman Ingarden who both refused, in 1929 he asked 
Eugen Fink to bring the Bernau manuscripts into the form of a systematic 
publication. Fink accepted the task, but never managed to carry it out.
7
 Still, 
Husserl believed he can fully concentrate on making the last and ultimate 
phases of his investigations concerning time, which were meant to be the 
C-manuscripts ( The Origin of Time). Husserl worked on this project from 1929 
until the late summer (August) of 1934, when he started to write the Crisis-
book (Lohmar 2006, XIV).
In these years, along with the problem of time, Husserl had to deal with 
a series of other questions and topics which cannot be separated from his 
late efforts on working out the phenomenology of time. He wrote two major 
works in 1929: Cartesian Meditations and Formal and Transcendental Logic. In 
1929, on a summer vacation in Tremezzo, Italy, he read through Heidegger’s 
works Being and Time and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics carefully, 
and recognized Heidegger’s critical attitude towards his understanding of 
phenomenology, and philosophy in general. Between 1929 and 1934, Husserl 
devoted his efforts most importantly to three philosophical projects: 1) the 
5   Husserl’s letter to Heidegger (March 28, 1918; BW [= Briefwechsel] 4, 130).
6   Heidegger 1928, 367: “Weiterführende, besonders seit 1917 wieder aufgenommene, 
mit dem Individuationsproblem zusammenhängende Untersuchungen über das 
Zeitbewußtsein sind einer späteren Veröffentlichung vorbehalten. ”
7   The Bernau manuscripts were laid in Eugen Fink’s drawer till 1969, when he gave 
them to the Husserl Archive.
Bence Peter Marosan 

10
Phainomena 29 | 112-113 | 2020
German edition of Cartesian Meditations,
8
 2) multiple attempts to write a 
several-volume systematic work on phenomenology ,
9
 and 3) the C-manuscripts. 
In close connection with these projects, the late B- and E-manuscripts from 
the end of 1929 and from the first half of the 1930s, many of which formed part 
of the first two projects, must also be considered. This is the context in which 
the C-manuscripts are to be studied.
The 1904/05 Time-lectures had a rather static view on time. In the 1917–1918 
Bernau manuscripts, as Rudolf Bernet said, genetic phenomenology appears “in 
full force” (Bernet 2010, 16). But in the Bernau manuscripts Husserl treated the 
formal and material aspect of a process as two, principally separable topics of the 
investigation. During the elaboration of genetic phenomenology in the 1920s, 
Husserl came to the insight that the formal and material side of temporal events 
cannot be separated (especially Hua 11). He utilized this consideration in the 
investigations of the C-manuscripts in a rich, careful, and wide-ranging way: 
formal and material moments and aspects of processes are intimately intertwined 
in the descriptions of temporality in this work. Everything takes place in the 
context of universal temporality. Husserl’s late philosophy, in my interpretation, 
took the form of a process philosophy, which emphasizes the dynamic character of 
reality, and according to which everything is in the state of perpetual becoming 
and evolution (cf. Paci 1964, Held 2010). As he said in the C-manuscripts: “The 
Absolute is nothing else than absolute temporalization. ” (Hua 15, 670)
A very important feature of late A-, B-, E-, and C-manuscripts (from the 
1930s) is that in these texts constructive phenomenology (the phenomenologically 
elaborated and grounded method to legitimately question beyond the limits of 
possible intuition) reached a comprehensive and transparent form. The idea, 
and also the expression of phenomenological construction, go back to the 
second half of the 1900s, around the years 1907–1908, but it reached its final 
form in the last working period of Husserl, in the 1930s.
8   Hua 15, Divisions I and III (editorial division).
9   Amongst others: Hua 15, Division II (editorial division). Cf. Kern 1973, XXXV–
LXVII. 

11
2. Methodological layers in the C-manuscripts
What makes the C-manuscripts a unique set of works in Husserl’s career 
is his use of four different phenomenological methods in them; and efforts in 
the texts to connect these distinct methodological layers, the alternate forms 
of phenomenological analysis, with one another can be identified. The four 
methods are static, genetic, generative, and constructive ways of investigation, 
each of which serves as a “leading clue” (“Leitfaden”) to the other, so to speak, 
“higher” one (Steinbock 2003, 289–325, especially: 301 ff.). This means that 
the “lower” level yields topics, themes, and phenomena to the “higher:” 
phenomena whose exact structure and background have to be disclosed and 
cleared up by those “higher-level” methods. The four methods together could 
reveal the phenomena in their fully concrete reality, and thus together fulfill 
the famous slogan and promise of phenomenological philosophy: “Back to the 
things themselves!” (Hua 19/1, 10). 
A key concern of phenomenology is the “principle of all principles,” 
according to which the only and exclusive source of legitimate cognition and 
knowledge is the “originally giving intuition” (Hua 3/1, 51; English: Husserl 
1983, 44). However scientific, and thus epistemologically legitimate (or 
even intelligible), a theory can only be called theory, in case it has a possible 
intuitive basis or grounding. Husserl’s main goal with the development of 
newer methods was to radicalize the “principle of all principles;” it was to 
widen the borders of possible intuition, to push the boundaries of the possible, 
scientifically articulated intuition further. The aim of perpetual radicalization 
of the phenomenological method was to explore the hidden depths of possible 
intuition, which could be thematized, conceptualized, and described in a 
scientifically rigorous manner. 
The field of static phenomenology is the base of already clear and stable 
forms of sense and experience. In the static analysis, we face fully formed 
objects. The genetic method, as it were, “brackets”
10
 the concept of the object. 
The genetic investigation discloses everything in its radical temporality as a 
process or event; the genetic approach places everything within the context of 
10   Phrasing of Tamás Ullmann (cf. 2010).
Bence Peter Marosan 

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Phainomena 29 | 112-113 | 2020
becoming and genesis. From the early 1920s onward, Husserl consistently made 
the distinction between temporal and genetic analyses. The temporal analysis, 
the phenomenological description of time-consciousness, aims at the purely 
formal aspect of a process or an event, while the genetic treatment focuses on 
the material side of the same temporal course (cf. Hua 11, 128). One of the 
most important results of the C-manuscripts is that it applies, consistently and 
systematically, the insight that the two aspects cannot be abstracted from each 
other, they are intertwined, intimately interpenetrating each other even within 
the context of time-consciousness.  
During the development of the genetic method, however, the capacities 
of phenomenological access to the “things themselves” were far from being 
entirely used. The first signs of “generative view” in Husserl’s mind appeared 
in the first half of the 1920s, by which he sought to place everything on the 
horizon of concrete historical life (cf. Hua 14, 223). The generative approach 
aimed to show the phenomena as specifically as possible, to demonstrate that 
every phenomenon is embedded into a specific, historical, cultural, social, and 
even physical (collective physical)
11
 process. Husserl gave a more systematic 
form to this methodological procedure in the 1930s (cf. texts of Hua 15, 29, 39, 
and 42). The name “generative” refers to the concrete historical, cultural life 
of generations, and to the process of “becoming” a “generation” (cf. Steinbock 
1995, 3). But generative phenomenology remains within the borders of 
immanence, it still does not reach the ultimate forms of transcendence, the 
realm of  “‘supreme and ultimate’ questions” (Hua 1, 182; English: Husserl 
1960, 156); in the end, to questions related to the final ethical problems and 
values, to the fate of soul before birth and after death, and to the essence and 
existence of God. This was the task of constructive phenomenology, whose 
most important function was to question beyond the limits of possible intuition 
as such, in a phenomenologically legitimate (because phenomenologically-
apodictically motivated) way. This method reached its most mature 
manifestation and articulation in the manuscripts of the 1930s, and especially 
in the C-manuscripts.
11   Cf. Hua 39, 181 (1932): “Das Wir hat seine kollektive Leiblichkeit. ”

13
In the C-manuscripts, as mentioned above, all four methods—static,
12
 
genetic,
13
 generative,
14
 and constructive
15
—are present in a systematically 
interrelated and connected way, as the higher is built upon the lower, and the 
problem-fields of their scope partly overlap. There is a close, internal, and, 
from a certain point of view, a continuous connection between them. Although 
at the first look the C-manuscript appears as a less-organized, unsystematic 
collection of research manuscripts, in my interpretation, it is possible to unfold 
certain systematic tendencies, the main aim of which was to construct—or 
reconstruct—the most specific, ultimate phenomenon: the Absolute itself, as a 
process. Upon it, every other phenomenon and entity is dependent, and is, in 
the last analysis, its abstract moment. The ultimately concrete phenomenon, 
according to Husserl, is the Absolute.
Comparing the Bernau and C-manuscripts regarding their treatment of 
time-consciousness, perhaps the most characteristic feature of the latter, in 
contrast with the former, is the systematic and coherent effort to connect the 
subjective and intersubjective level of time-consciousness; to weave the strings 
of primordial and intersubjective genesis as close and strong as possible. The 
lower levels of the constitution turn out to be dependent moments of the 
higher; during the appropriately high level of constitutive analysis, it can be 
seen that the constitution of time and time-consciousness is embedded in a 
cultural, historical, and physical (collective physical) context. The subjective 
and primordial constitution is only an abstraction. 
3. Constructive phenomenology in the C-manuscripts and in 
other late materials
As mentioned before, Husserl did not invent constructive phenomenology 
in the C-manuscripts or in the period of C-manuscripts; neither was it the 
12   Hua Mat 8, 5, 154, 170 f., 259, 335, 420. 
13   Hua Mat 8, 37, 131, 170 f., 210, 241 f., 274, 279, 352, 394, 420, 435.
14   Hua Mat 8, 155 f., 166 f., 177, 214, 217, 241, 275, 369 ff., 391–394, 406, 427, 436 ff., 
443–446.
15   Hua Mat 8, 12, 19, 86, 158, 186, 211, 217 (footnote), 218, 222 ff., 226 f., 257 
(footnote), 261, 263, 279, 326, 328 f., 340, 344 f., 350 f., 352 f. (in connection with 
genetic method), 357, 395, 409, 415 f., 420, 437, 441, 444, 446. Cf.  Hua 15, 666–670.
Bence Peter Marosan 

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Phainomena 29 | 112-113 | 2020
result of Fink’ s influence. Husserl developed this method long before the 1930s: 
as early as the second half of the 1900s. However, the method reached its most 
coherent and matured state in the C-manuscripts and other manuscripts from 
that time, such as the late A-, B-, and E-manuscripts. The essential point of 
constructive phenomenology or phenomenological construction is to unfold 
the principally invisible in a phenomenologically legitimate way, which cannot 
be brought to an intuitive givenness for theoretical reasons. At a certain point, 
we reach the boundaries of possible intuitive givenness, but we can discover a 
set of apodictic implications,
16
 which motivate us in an apodictic way to perform 
phenomenological constructions, and thus to thematize the phenomena which 
cannot be presented in an intuitively completed or filled manner.
17
Phenomenological construction (or constructive phenomenology) has 
many different fields and topics of application in Husserl’s work, of which the 
four main types are: 1) constructions within the context of the eidetic method 
aimed at the ultimate, pure possibilities of appearance;
18
 2) constructions aimed 
to disclose the deepest, irreflexive layers of subjectivity, which latter include 
primal passivity; 3) constructions directed at the ultimate metaphysical facts, 
which Husserl also calls primal or primordial facts (Urfakta, Urtatsache); 
and 4) constructions concerning the phenomenological Absolute (problems of 
historical teleology, God, immortality [or mortality] of the soul, freedom of 
will, and the highest ethical norms and values). These phenomena either avoid 
the sphere of possible intuition (as structures and phenomena of a primordial 
layer of subjectivity, of primal passivity, and the phenomenological Absolute) 
or articulate the most general conditions and structures of every possible 
16   Hua 42, 570: “ Apodiktische Implikation” . Cf. also Fink 1988. 
17   Phenomenological construction in this sense works in the following way: the 
answers to the “highest and ultimate” questions lie beyond the limits of intuitive 
accessibility; however, there are signs and indications which point to the direction 
to such answers, signs, which, unfortunately, could not be fulfilled, but which make 
possible certain constructive operations. For example: we can describe the teleological 
structure of subjectivity and world in a phenomenologically fully legitimate manner. 
On the basis of such a teleological structure, we can construct the idea of a perfect 
subject, who, in a peculiar way, belongs to the constitution of the teleology of 
subjectivity and world, who is their necessary constitutive consequence. Or we can 
construct also ethical ideals. 
18   Cf., e.g.: Hua 41, 206, 286, 318, 321, 322, 351, 359. 

15
manifestation (as eidetic constructions and primal metaphysical facts). 
Three topics out of the four appeared at a relatively early stage of Husserl’s 
development: 1) constructions concerning the Absolute, in the lectures and 
research manuscripts of the period 1907–1910 (Hua 28, Ms. B II 2 [Hua 13, 
42], Ms. B I 4 [unpublished]), and also Ideas I (1912) (Hua 3/1, 175 [footnote]); 
2) constructions of pure possibilities related to the eidetic method (Hua 3/1, 
147, 153); 3) primal or primordial metaphysical facts (Hua 3/1, 98).
19
 The 
last main domain of construction, aimed the deepest layer of subjectivity 
and primal passivity, is the only one which appeared in a well-developed, 
mature form in his late period, most importantly in the C-manuscripts. One 
more important goal of this late work was to systematically “excavate”
20
 these 
layers and structures constituting subjectivity.
The main topic of phenomenological constructions in the C-manuscripts 
is the constructive-reconstructive disclosing of primal passivity and the 
structures of the deepest layers of subjectivity (primal hyle, primal ego 
[Ur-Ich, Urich, Urmonade], primal kinaesthesia, transcendental instincts). 
According to Husserl’s standpoint in his late work, there are layers and 
structures of subjectivity which cannot be made visible by any other earlier 
phenomenological method in a legitimate way. They are pre-reflexive and 
irreflexive, they precede and avoid the scope of the phenomenological reflex. 
They can be thematized only in an indirect way; they can only be seen, “with 
the corner of our eyes.” The phenomenological construction aims exactly at 
this indirect thematic of pre-reflexive and irreflexive structures and moments 
of consciousness. The indirect themes are accompanied by a sort of indirect 
apodicticity. This kind of phenomenological construction unfolds the play of 
the primal ego and the primal hyle in the deep layer of subjectivity. In Husserl’s 
descriptions, the primal ego turns towards the primal hyle with an instinctive 
19   “Obviously that does not imply that the necessity of the being of this or that present 
mental process is a pure essential necessity, that is: a purely eidetic particularity 
subsumed under an eidetic law; it is the necessity of a fact, and is called so because an 
eidetic law is involved in the fact and indeed, in this case, involved in the existence of 
the fact as fact. ” (Husserl 1983, 103) 
20   Husserl even uses the term “archaeology” in this context (cf. Hua Mat 8, 23, 356 f.). 
Cf. also Lee 1993, 5, 77 f., 80. 
Bence Peter Marosan 

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Phainomena 29 | 112-113 | 2020
movement of primal kinaesthesia (Hua Mat 8, 225). According to him, the 
primal, deepest pre-reflexive layer of time-consciousness is constituted in this 
instinctive, kinaesthetic movement of the primal ego (cf. Römer 2010, 88 f., 
95 ff.). The sphere of primal hyle, its primal affective, influences the primal 
ego, and the primal ego’s instinctive (primal instinctive [ urinstinktive])
21
 
movements and actions in primal kinaesthetic processes, which, directed at 
this primal hyle, altogether make up the realm of primal passivity. The primal 
ego is not the pre-ego ( Vor-Ich), whereas the latter is the center and agent of 
transcendental instincts; the primal ego is the ultimately constituting, entirely 
concrete transcendental agent, which precedes and avoids every reflection. 
It is the “speculative thought” of Husserl’s late works.
22
 The base of primal 
passivity alongside with the primal ego is a speculative achievement of the 
C-manuscripts in a phenomenologically appropriate manner.
In his late period, Husserl connected the above-mentioned four types of 
phenomenological constructions in a systematic, coherent, consequent, and 
rational manner, which outlines the emerging of a well-articulated, structured 
philosophy of process. At its core, as László Tengelyi correctly observed, is his 
metaphysics one of facticity, the metaphysics of primal or primordial facts 
(Tengelyi 2014, 180–227). This metaphysics articulates and organizes every 
other moment and considerations of his philosophy in the 1930s. The most 
important and the highest amongst these original, primal facts is the fact of the 
Absolute. Its givenness, openness, dynamic contextuality, its processual, self-
temporalizing, and self-unfolding nature are the most essential characteristics. 
The ultimate fact is that of the Absolute, which precedes and at the same time 
comprises every other fact and eidos (Hua 15, 385 f.; cf. also Bernet, Kern, and 
Marbach 2016, 212 f.). 
The Absolute, in the end, is God himself. That being said, the most dominant 
feature of the Absolute is its ( processually understood and interpreted) divine 
nature; God, who penetrates everything and who is immanent to everything 
(Hua 15, 381, 385). In Husserl’ s view, God is the ultimate context of every being 
21   “Instinct” in the context of Husserl’ s late transcendental phenomenology means a purely 
passive teleological striving or trend of transcendental subjectivity. Cf. also Lee 1993. 
22   Phrasing of Gábor Toronyai (cf. 2002).

17
Bence Peter Marosan 
and knowledge, who embraces every finite and particular entity, phenomenon, 
knowledge, and viewpoint. As a dynamic, processual super-context, he 
incorporates all lower forms and levels of the phenomenological absolute, 
such as the universal transcendental intersubjectivity and all the primal egos, 
as his dependent moments (cf. Lo 2008). He is the ultimate foundation of 
being, and also comprises every ultimate condition of all possible appearance 
and entities; the conditions for factual as well as essential (eidetic) entities.
23
 
Every primal ego with their primal passivity belongs to this Absolute in an 
immanent way; the transcendental instincts of these egos connect them into 
an instinctive community, and through those instincts, they are integrated into 
the historical, open life of the Absolute (Hua 15, 593–604). The transcendental 
instincts control the primal egos and their intersubjective community towards 
the Absolute (towards the ultimate, divine layer of the Absolute).
In the 1930s (among others in the late E-manuscripts), and also in the 
second half of the 1900s (Ms. B II 2, B I 4, Hua 28), God is the infinite aspect of 
subjectivity, a super-subject, who is inherent and immanent to every particular 
and finite subject,
24
 as well as to the universal, infinitely open transcendental 
intersubjectivity. He unites in himself every opposite, contradictory feature and 
attribute in a dialectical way; he is personal and super-personal (non-personal) 
at the same time.
25
 In Husserl’s interpretation, the phenomenological analysis 
23   It is true that earlier Husserl claimed that even God is subject to the eidetic laws (in 
Ideas, for example), when he argued for the absolute precedence of eidos and eidetics. 
But in the 1930s Husserl’s “metaphysics of primal facts” reached a mature form, and 
he revised then his earlier opinion concerning the relationship of facts and essences. 
In this late period, these ultimate or primal facts played a foundational role in his 
phenomenological metaphysics, and God became the highest and ultimate primal fact, 
who founds every other fact and eidos. 
24   Cf. Hua 42, 168 (from Ms. B II 2): “Natürlich kann das All-Ich, das alle Ichs in 
sich und alle Wirklichkeit in sich und nichts außer sich hat, nicht wie ein empirisches 
Ich gedacht werden. Es ist unendliches Leben, unendliche Liebe, unendlicher Wille; 
sein unendliches Leben ist eine einzige Tätigkeit; und da es unendliche Erfüllung 
ist, ist es unendliches Glück. Alles Leid, alles Unglück, allen Irrtum lebt Gott in sich 
nach; und nur dadurch, dass er es im strengsten Sinne mitlebt, mitfühlt, kann er seine 
Endlichkeit, sein Nichtseinsollen überwinden in der unendlichen Harmonie, zu der es 
da ist. Gott ist überall, Gottes Leben lebt in allem Leben. ” 
25   See: Hua 42, especially texts of Division III (“Metaphysik: Monadologie, Teleologie 
und philosophische Teologie;” editorial division). As Husserl emphasizes: “an 

18
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unfolds several direct and indirect ways to the divine region of transcendental 
subjectivity or God; most of them are related to the phenomenon of teleology, 
particularly universal teleology.
26
 In Husserl’s opinion, we have an immediate, 
intimate experience of God, of the divine dimension of subjectivity; but we 
can thematize and conceptualize God in a phenomenologically legitimate way 
only indirectly, only through the method of phenomenological construction; 
and fundamentally through the phenomenological investigation of teleological 
structures of the self-constitution of subjectivity (and intersubjectivity) and the 
constitution of the world. According to him, God gains his full and concrete 
access to the world through the particular, finite subjects, through residing in 
their particular, concrete point of view concerning themselves and the world.
27
 
Apart from concrete transcendental intersubjectivity, God cannot be concrete 
either (cf. Hua 15, 381). 
In Husserl’s opinion, in transcendental reflection, every monad, every 
transcendental subject represents a fixed, yet in a temporal sense dynamic (as 
autonomous philosophy […] must necessarily lead to a philosophical theology and 
teleology—as a non-confessional way to God” (Hua 42, 259). Amongst the interpreters, 
Lee Chun Lo especially emphasizes that for Husserl the problem of God was a leading 
clue and the ultimate point of orientation of his entire philosophy throughout his 
whole career (Lo 2008). 
26   Angela Ales Bello speaks of “five ways to God” in Husserl, parallelizing Saint 
Thomas of Aquinas (his “five ways to God”) and Husserl (cf. Bello 2009). The five 
ways in Husserl’s philosophy according to Bello are: 1) the objective: the way of 
teleologies which are constituted in the world (25 ff.); 2) the subjective: the mirroring 
or reflection of God (and the teleologies created by Her/Him) as a transcendent pole 
in the transcendental ego (28 ff); 3) the intersubjective way: the question of empathy 
and the notion of a divine monad (a Supreme Monad), of the Highest Monad, and 
the question of empathic connection with this divine monad (33 ff.); 4) the hyletic 
way: the instinctive directedness which is inherent to the instinctive constitution of 
the sensuous hyle and which—in the end—is directed towards God Himself (46 ff.); 
and last, but not least: 5) the ethical way, which shows God as an ethical ideal and 
as the ultimate metaphysical support of freedom (54 ff.). In my opinion, Husserl’s 
two most important, most characteristic strategies to reach God are: through the 
phenomenological investigation of the constitution of teleology and rational faith 
(with regard to the latter cf., e.g., Hua 42, 242). George Heffernan treats Husserl’s 
approach to the problem of God within the context of giving sense to life in a rational 
way (Heffernan 2019). In this context, I regard Mezei’s contribution to this problem 
also very important (Mezei 1997). 
27   Cf. Lo 2008, 168–173. 

19
it dynamically processes itself) point of view in the system of the Absolute. 
In this regard, Husserl describes the transcendental egos, the monads, as 
transcendental substances (Hua Mat 8, 176 f.). These substances make up the 
concrete, historical life of the Absolute; they are the concrete and dynamic 
aspects, which the Absolute relate to its different parts, moments, entities, 
and events. In this metaphysical context, Husserl even admits the possibility 
of “metempsychosis” (“ Seelenwanderung”): in his account, the transcendental 
monads continuously activate and deactivate themselves; they fall asleep (death, 
in the interpretation of the late Husserl, is just a deeper form of sleeping, from 
which we constantly awake), and awake on a higher level of transcendental 
development.
28
Indirectly, constructive phenomenology can treat even these highest and 
ultimate metaphysical questions. But the entire picture is far more complicated. 
There are no fully disclosed, entirely answered questions; there are no answers 
with ultimate, absolute interpretations. Every answer, every philosophical, 
scientific theory , and thought is embedded in infinitely open and always moving 
horizons of sense. The sense of the answers and of the theories we develop and 
prove is always incomplete and open. The ever newer and constantly enriching 
context, which is unfolded by philosophical and scientific research, reveals 
something new regarding the sense of philosophical and scientific thoughts 
and theses. Philosophical and scientific research, as Husserl always stated and 
emphasized, is a never-ending story, an infinite approach to the ultimate truth, 
which is an ideal that cannot be reached. 
The constructive phenomenology is capable of a productive and fruitful 
communication with positive, also with normal sciences, of unfolding the 
deeper phenomenological and metaphysical meaning of the latest, most recent 
scientific findings and discoveries, and integrating them into its always moving 
and infinitely open, processual system. It is perhaps the highest insight of 
28   Hua Mat 8, 176 f.: “Die Monaden sind transzendentale Substanzen, bezogen auf 
ihre transzendentale Zustandszeitlichkeit, auf ihr Leben. Aber nur das spezifische 
Leben, das sich verweltlichte, enthält personale Einheiten als sich entwickelnde aus 
Passivität oder aus Aktivität, aus Unfreiheit oder Freiheit – wenn nicht jede Monade 
vielerlei Speziesleben hat, wobei noch der leibnizsche Gedanke einer transzendentalen 
‘Entwicklung’ in der ‘Seelenwanderung’ zu bedenken wäre. ”
Bence Peter Marosan 

20
Phainomena 29 | 112-113 | 2020
phenomenology (of Husserl’ and of phenomenology in general) that there is 
no ultimate context, except for the context of Absolute itself. This absolute 
context cannot entirely be disclosed or exhausted; it can only be revealed and 
described indirectly, always in a partial, finite, and incomplete way. 
Conclusion
This essay had two main goals: on the one hand, we tried to demonstrate the 
systematic connection of the four fundamental methodological approaches of 
Husserl’ s phenomenology in the C-manuscripts; on the other hand, we attempted 
to show some basic peculiarities of Husserl’s constructive phenomenology, which 
was the ultimate result of his efforts to radicalize phenomenological philosophy. 
The final aim of constructive phenomenology is to make such phenomena 
and topics accessible for phenomenology, which—for theoretical reasons—lie 
beyond the limits of possible intuitive givenness. The C-manuscripts document 
the systematic connectedness of the four phenomenological methods; within 
them, constructive phenomenology, which emerged in Husserl’s work around 
the years 1907–1910 at the latest, reaches its most mature, most elaborate form.
We tried to show that phenomenological constructions radicalized and 
renewed phenomenology in a way that it could reach and thematize problems 
which earlier lied beyond its range; namely, problems of classical metaphysics 
and intuitively inaccessible, though otherwise proved and confirmed, findings 
of natural sciences. Husserl’s constructive phenomenology is also capable of 
creating a fruitful communication between these remarkably different fields 
of human culture, metaphysics, and positive sciences; and at the same time of 
avoiding the failure that László Tengelyi called “naturalist autarcism,” a sort of 
naïve naturalist positivism.
29
 Constructive phenomenology can integrate and 
utilize both in a philosophically legitimate and productive way.
This philosophical method demonstrates that all knowledge and every 
being is embedded in a wider context, and the different contexts are connected 
organically, in the form of an always widening universal network. It unfolds 
ever newer contexts, without turning to skeptical relativism. Contexts and 
29   Cf. Tengelyi 2014, 17–19, 187, 212, 223 f., 419, 427, 431, 435, 549. 

21
contextualization have their essential laws and connections with absolute 
validity. The ultimate context is that of the Absolute, which is accessible only 
partially and indirectly to our philosophical and scientific research; but we see 
this context of the Absolute always in a more and more exact and richer way in 
the infinitely open history of philosophy and science.
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