The origins of the phenomenology of pain: Brentano, Stumpf and Husserl Saulius Geniusas Published online: 6 February 2014 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 Abstract The following investigation aims to determine the historical origins of the phenomenology of pain. According to my central thesis, these origins can be traced back to an enthralling discussion between Husserl and two of his most important teachers, Brentano and Stumpf. According to my reconstruction of this discussion, while Brentano defended the view that all feelings, including pain, are intentional experiences, and while Stumpf argued that pain is a non-intentional feeling-sensation, Husserl of the Logical Investigations provides compelling resources to resolve the polemic between his teachers by showing how pain can be conceived as a pre-intentional experience. According to my argument, this largely forgotten discussion is of significance not only because it enriches our understanding of pain, but also because it modifies the phenomenological conception of consciousness. Thus in the concluding section, I show why the Husserlian resolution of the controversy between Brentano and Stumpf is of importance for our understanding of the central phenomenological theme—intentionality. Keywords Phenomenology Á Descriptive psychology Á Pain Á Feeling- sensations Á Emotions Although in classical phenomenological literature, the phenomenon of pain never played more than a marginal role, one can trace its emergence back to the founding text in the phenomenological movement—Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investiga- tions. 1 §15 of the Fifth Investigation presents the first explicit analysis of pain in S. Geniusas (&) Department of Philosophy, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China e-mail: geniusas@cuhk.edu.hk 1 See Husserl (1984); for the English translation, see Husserl (2000). In what follows, I will quote this text following the established custom in phenomenological literature: Hua XIX/1 ? page number for the German edition. References to the English translation will be provided separately. 123 Cont Philos Rev (2014) 47:1–17 DOI 10.1007/s11007-014-9283-3