Breve plaidoyer per l'apriori materiale

In this essay, the author examines the themes of the material a priori in its phenomenological character. Starting from Kantian misunderstandings about the supposed dogmatic dualism (analytic a priori vs. synthetic a posteriori) attributed to Hume’s empiricism, it is also analysed the Schlick’s criticism of synthetic a priori knowledge. Finally, it is argued that Husserl, based on some aspects of the empirical conception of Stumpfian phenomenology and Bolzanian notion of analyticity, refers to the Humean theory of “relations of ideas” to show how the synthetic a priori, in phenomenological sense, is grounded on the invariant structures of experience, namely on the essential features of the phenomenal contents. To differenziate the material more explicitly from the formal a priori Husserl calls the former “a contingent a priori”, since it embraces every sphere of hyletic, materially determinate, essences.