Continental Philosophy Review 31: 127–134, 1998. 127 c 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Husserl’s static and genetic phenomenology: Translator’s introduction to two essays ANTHONY J. STEINBOCK Department of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Carbondale, IL 62901-4505, USA Which “matters,” which “Sachen” can be given to the phenomenologist depends in part upon how the phenomenologist approaches them. The way of approach we call a “method.” Phenomenological method is a style of openness that in turn allows one to be struck by modes of givenness, by the phenomena. Yet it would be misleading to characterize phenomenological method only in this manner, namely, as a way of circumscribing modes of givenness, since the phenomenal field can on its own part overstep the bounds of a pronounced or presupposed methodological undertaking and demand the formulation of a new methodology. This is the position in which we find Edmund Husserl and his phenomenological philosophy by 1921. For it was at this time that Husserl was lead to formulate explicitly the difference between static and genetic phenomenological methods. Presented here for the first time in English are two fundamental essays Husserl penned concerning static and genetic phenomenological methods. Taken from the B III 10 signature manuscripts, the first of these writings was originally published in Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passive Syn- thesis, ed. Margot Fleischer, Husserliana XI, (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), while the second was published seven years later in Edmund Husserl, Zur Ph¨ anomenologie der Intersubjektivit¨ at: Zweiter Teil, ed. Iso Kern, Husserl- iana XIV (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973). The translations of these essays are excerpted from the English critical edition of Edmund Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic, trans. Anthony J. Steinbock, Husserliana Collected Works, forthcoming with Kluwer Academic Publishers. It is here that they will be joined in their right- ful context of Husserl’s analyses that attempt to work out a “transcendental aesthetic” and “transcendental logic.”