"The modern philosophic development which begins with Descartes differs sharply from all preceding developments. A new kind of motive begins to function which attacks, not philosophy's formal ideal of being a rational science, but its material meaning, which, in the end, it changes completely. No longer is the world naively presupposed as self-evidently existing and self-evidently given in experience: self-evidence becomes a problem.http://world.std.com/~awolpert/gtr463.html"The Cartesian regress from this given world, from the subjective experiencing the world and thus to the subjectivity of consciousness in general, opens up an entirely new dimension of scientific questioning which we shall call transcendental even before investigating it. As a basic philosophic problem this new dimension manifests itself in various ways: as the problem of cognition or of consciousness, as the problem of the possibility of objectively valid science, or of the possibility of metaphysics, etc.
"In all these manifestations the problem is never precisely formulated in scientific concepts of original coinage. It always retains an aura of ambiguity and, being vague, permits absurd formulations. It is difficult to state and express the new dimension of cognition; traditional concepts are too alien to its nature to do anything but misrepresent it. Thus, modern philosophy constantly strives to enter into this new dimension, to formulate the proper concepts, ask the proper questions, develop the proper methods. This is a distant goal and, so far, all serious dedication to the scientific ideal has failed to replace the existing plurality of contradictory systems with one philosophy which fully expresses the transcendental motivation.
"Has this situation improved in our time? Dare we hope that in the confusion and in the rapid coming and going of fashionable philosophies, there is one in which the transcendental tendency of the modern period has been completely clarified and which has produced a definitely established, apodictically necessary idea of transcendental philosophy? Has it produced a method of autonomous, strictly scientific work? Has this work been begun, and is it being carried on systematically? ... I cannot help regarding transcendental or constitutive phenomenology as that transcendental philosophy which is established free from impurities and is now being worked out in a genuinely scientific manner. Although much discussed and much criticized, it is, in fact, still unknown. Natural and traditional prejudices act as a screen which does not allow the real meaning of phenomenology to penetrate. Criticism, far from helping or improving, has not even touched it.
"My task is now to make this true meaning of transcendental phenomenology evident to you. This will lead us to those fundamental insights which will help us decide whether philosophical anthropology is possible.
"The most convenient starting point is the Cartesian Meditations. We shall be guided only by their form and by the resolute scientific radicalism which pervades them, while disregarding the content which is vitiated, in many respects, by unnoticed prejudices. We shall try to practice extreme scientific radicalism. All modern philosophy originates in the Cartesian Meditations. Translated into objective form, this historical fact means that all philosophy really originates from meditations, from solitary reflections. Autonomous philosophy (in an age like ours, incidentally, in which mankind stands on the threshold of autonomy) comes into being in the solitary and radical attempt of the philosophizing individual to account and to be accountable only to himself. Isolation and meditation alone make him a philosopher and make philosophy necessarily egin in him. Accepting only what is evident to me, I, as an autonomous ego, must pursue to its ultimate grounds what others, following the tradition, regard as scientifically grounded. These ultimate grounds must be immediately and apodictically evident. Only in this way can I account for and justify my thought absolutely. There is no preconception, therefore, however self-evident it might be, which I can allow to pass unquestioned and ungrounded.
"When I seriously try to fulfill this task, I am amazed to discover a self-evident belief never before noticed or made explicit, a universal belief in the existence of the world, which pervades and supports my entire life. Imperceptibly, it permeates my philosophical project, the creation of a universal science of the world and, later, of special sciences of the separate spheres of the world."