<p>In Husserl’s phenomenological project, causality does not stand as just one regional topic among others. Rather, it is of vital importance to a fundamental issue, namely the constitution of material reality. A material world subsisting as something “in itself” is only given, according to Husserl, once spatial phenomena manifest causal properties. However, I argue that Husserl’s existing account of natural causality fails in the purpose he assigns to it. His theory is, at bottom, a Humean one, holding that causal relations are inductively grounded correlations of appearances. Such a theory cannot deliver an account of transcendent material reality, offering at best an ordered system of phantom appearances. I mount this critique from the perspective of a non-Humean theory, the “volitional theory” of causation championed by Maine de Biran, Schopenhauer and others. Theories of this sort are rooted in the notion that our grasp of material nature inherently includes a grasp of forces operating within it. We understand these forces only by analogy to our own volitional powers, which we know intimately through our own effort. I argue that this theory can address the flaws in Husserl’s account, and I identify aspects of Husserl’s analyses that point in this direction.</p>