Introduction
How should one assess Husserl’s legacy? One possibility is to study the influence he has exerted on the development of twentieth-century philosophy. That the influence has been immense can hardly be disputed. This is not to say, of course, that everybody agreed with him; but the fact that subsequent phenomenologists, including Heidegger, Ingarden, Schutz, Fink, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Gadamer, Ricœur, Derrida, Henry, and Marion, as well as leading theorists from a whole range of other traditions, including hermeneutics, critical theory, deconstruction, and post-structuralism, felt a need to react and respond to Husserl’s project and program testifies to his importance. We can, however, contrast this more backward-looking approach with a more forward-looking appraisal of Husserl’s legacy, one that basically asks the following question: ‘What are the future prospects of Husserlian phenomenology?’ Or to put it differently, ‘Does Husserlian phenomenology remain relevant for philosophy in the twenty-first century?’ These are, of course, huge questions, and there are again different ways one might go about trying to answer them....