Philosophy and psychology competing for the status of a fundamental science

The purpose of the article is to determine the circumstances that determine the development of one of the most popular plots in stories about Husserl’s phenomenology: criticism of psychologism in the question of the foundations of scientific knowledge, as well as the subsequent accusation of Husserl himself of “psychologism”. The article shows that in the 19th century philosophy goes through a series of internal transformations caused by criticism from natural science. One of the results of this criticism is that philosophy borrows some principles for constructing scientific knowledge. These include reliance on “facts” and “experience”. When applied to the analysis of subjectivity, this leads to the analysis of mental life as a sphere of immediate certainty. Philosophy abandons the “metaphysical” concept of the soul in favor of an orientation toward “mental phenomena”, “facts of consciousness”. At the same time, psychology is being promoted to the role of the main model for the analysis of subjectivity; her method and approach can now be considered “empirical” rather than speculative. The actual process of development of both psychology and philosophy leads to the fact that psychology begins to be considered as the main model of access to mental life in general, and to consciousness as its special designated area. No version of the alternative foundation of knowledge can bypass this fundamental circumstance if it intends to offer its theory of subjectivity. This circumstance was, in our opinion, a much more serious “challenge” for Husserl and his philosophy than the tendency for psychologists to occupy philosophy departments.