Abstract

This paper deals with Husserl’s theory of association and tries to show that this theory originates from a critical confrontation with Hume and represents a development of the idea of eidetic material legality, since for Husserl associative connections are relations of ideas based on the peculiarity of contents. I stress that Husserl distinguishes two types of conditions of possibility of associative synthesis: subjective-formal (pertaining to consciousness) and objective-material (pertaining to contents) conditions. Thus the last grounds of the associative constitution (and therefore of the constitution of the world, that for Husserl as for Hume is based on association) don’t lie in subjectivity, which is only the formal condition of the associative synthesis, but in the particularity of the sensuous contents and in their immanent legality. This also follows from the hypothesis of world-annihilation. After a discussion of Husserl’s thesis that associative contents are immanent and of the phenomenological concept of constitution, I conclude that – properly speaking – Husserl’s theory of association cannot be defined as transcendental.