Franz Brentano, the “Grandfather of Phenomenology” and the Spirit of the Times
In the literature on Husserl there is a marked tendency to interpret the thought of the founder of phenomenology in the light of his later works, particularly focusing on The Crisis of European Sciences, which deals with the fundamental concept of Lebenswelt, as well on the themes of passive synthesis and inter-subjectivity, which were central concerns of this phase. Another dominant approach tends to view phenomenology purely in terms of transcendental phenomenology, a concept systematically developed in Ideas I of 1913, the text that most clearly reveals the closeness of Husserl to neo-Kantian movements.