Edmund Husserl is a philosopher whose work has been involved in the genesis of several philosophical movements--phenomenology, existentialism, and deconstructionism are among the most notable. In fact, many twentieth-century philosophers and theorists have begun their careers with critical or interpretative works on Husserl. Early philosophical works of Theodor W. Adorno, Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Lévinas, Herbert Marcuse, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Edith Stein all deal explicitly or implicitly either with Husserl's method of philosophical description, which he named phenomenology, with his general descriptions of the acts and objects of consciousness, or with his more specific descriptions of internal time-consciousness, perception, and intersubjectivity.

In addition to philosophy, the social sciences have also developed paths of analysis and description that originate to a large extent with Husserl. Alfred Schutz, who develops the anthropological implications of Husserl's notion of the Lebenswelt (life-world), the sphere of meaning and...