Meditations Cartesiennes. Introduction a la Phenomenologie. Traduit de l'allemand par Mlle. Gabrielle Peiffer et M. Emmanuel Levinas.

First edition. 8vo. vii, [1], 136 pp. Contemporary quarter dark blue cloth with marbled paper covered boards, spine lettered in gilt, with the original printed front and rear wrappers bound-in (French bookseller's label to inside front wrapper, German bookseller's label to rear free endpaper). An excellent copy. Paris, Librairie Armand Colin.

An expanded version of two lectures delivered by Husserl at the Sorbonne, in the Amphithéatre Descartes in February 1929. Husserl had first presented the programme of phenomenology virtually fully formed in his Logical Investigations (1900-1901) and the rest of his philosophical works were dedicated to further elucidating and refining its key concepts, such as epoché. The Cartesian Meditations are in a sense the pinnacle of this refinement, intended as an introduction to Husserl's transcendental phenomenology. A German language edition would not appear until after Husserl's lifetime, and the present French text marks the first appearance of the lectures. 

Husserl exerted a profound influence on the development of twentieth century Continental philosophy, especially in France. Indeed, Jean-Paul Sartre's introduction to phenomenology came from Husserl, mediated via Emmanuel Levinas. Simone de Beauvoir would recall that, upon the recommendation of Raymond Aron to take up the study of phenomenology, Sartre 'rushed to the nearest bookshop and said, in effect "Give me everything you have on phenomenology, now!" What they produced was' Levinas's doctoral thesis La théorie de l'intuition dans la phénoménolgie de Husserl (1930), or The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology, the first book-length introduction to Husserl in French. 'Books still came with their leaves uncut. Sartre tore the edges of Levinas' book open without waiting to use a paperknife, and began reading as he walked down the street' (Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, p. 4).

Stock Code: 234393