Husserl’s Phenomenology of Wishing

This essay accomplishes two goals. First, contra accepted interpretations, I reveal that the early Husserl executed valuable and extensive investigations of wishes—specifically in manuscripts from Studies concerning the Structures of Consciousness. In these manuscripts, Husserl examines two ‘kinds’ of wishes. He describes wish drives as feelings of lack. He also dissects wish intentions to uncover previously obscured partial acts, including nullifying consciousness, an existentially oriented act, and a preferring. Second, I reveal how these insights from Studies partially prefigure Husserl’s mature genetic phenomenology of drives and wish intentions. The mature Husserl develops his previous observation, that drives are experiences of lack, by describing these drives as having two moments: impulse and movement. Husserl also comes to new insights about wish acts, when he juxtaposes these intentions—as pure feelings that have no power to reach a telos—to drives, which he now conceives of as volitional doings.