Husserl and Awakened Reason Critical Essays on Mathematics, Science and Phenomenology

The main objectives of this book are to critically evaluate the problem of scientificity in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, to argue that his phenomenological reflection further awakens possibilities for the rational sciences and finally, to question the standard narratives of his theory of reason in order to revitalize his intuitions in light of the present day. The contributions gathered in this volume seek to gain a better understanding of the theoretical complexity of the interconnections between Husserl and other prominent critics of the theoretical sciences, such as David Hilbert, Oskar Becker, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Marc Richir, Hermann Weyl, Dag Prawitz and Arend Heyting.

This collection is innovative in arguing that the phenomenological reflection inspired by the revolutionary spirit of Husserl's doctrine is indispensable for explaining central concepts underlying scientific theories and higher-order objective structures. This text contains fourteen seminal essays by a team of international scholars that orchestrate a dialogue between Husserl’s idea of phenomenology of ‘awakened reason’ and the foundations, methodologies, and limits of scientific theories, logic, and mathematics. The key audience for this title are students and researchers of phenomenology working in theoretical philosophy, continental philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mathematics.

Iulian Apostolescu is a philosopher, editor, strategy consultant, and painter whose work focuses on transcendental philosophy, phenomenology, and the philosophy of religion. He is Editor-in-Chief of Phenomenological Reviews and Series Editor of the Epoché Series at Ratio et Revelatio Publishing House.

Iulian Apostolescu has authored and edited several significant contributions to contemporary phenomenological scholarship, among them The Subject(s) of Phenomenology: Rereading Husserl (Springer, 2020); Husserl, Kant and Transcendental Phenomenology (De Gruyter, 2020, co-edited with Claudia Serban); Phenomenologies of Love (Brill, 2024, co-edited with Veronica Cibotaru); and Phenomenology, Metaphysics, Ontology: Essays on Eugen Fink (Karl Alber Verlag, 2025).

His interdisciplinary formation—integrating philosophical research, editorial practice, strategic consultancy, and the visual arts—inform a distinctive and analytically rigorous approach to phenomenological inquiry. He is presently preparing a new volume examining the intersections between phenomenology and the art of chess.

Dr. C. Ierna has a double training in philosophy and cognitive artificial intelligence. He is interested in the complex interplay between philosophy, psychology, and mathematics in the 19th century, and the related theories of consciousness and mind, particularly symbolic intentionality and symbolic technologies. His publications mainly regard authors from the School of Brentano (Franz Brentano, Edmund Husserl, Christian von Ehrenfels, etc.), their idea of philosophy as science, the mathematical foundations of science, the theory of intentionality, and the mechanization of the mind. He has given public lectures, courses, and academic presentations on the value of the humanities, reverse engineering the philosophical canon in education, the phenomenology of computation, and the history and foundations of AI.