Aron Gurwitsch (17 January 1901 – 25 June 1973) was a Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) American phenomenologist.

Life

Gurwitsch was born in Vilna on 17 January 1901. His family moved to Danzig in 1905 or 1906 to escape pogroms. He enrolled in the University of Berlin in 1918, where he studied under Carl Stumpf. He subsequently worked with Edmund Husserl in Göttingen, and with Adhémar Gelb and Kurt Goldstein in Frankfurt. He died on 25 June 1973 in Zürich.

Work

Gurwitsch wrote on the relations between phenomenology and Gestalt psychology, and in the problems of the organization of consciousness. In particular, he distinguished between the theme, the thematic context and the margin. This is the core of his theory of the Field of Consciousness. He also has his own theory of the noema, the horizon and the transcendental ego. Gurwitsch was an important influence for Merleau-Ponty. He taught at Brandeis University in the mid-1950s. He taught at The New School For Social Research's Graduate Faculty of Social and Political Science from 1959 to 1973.

Academic genealogy

He was a student of Moritz Geiger, among others. Notable students of Gurwitsch include Lester Embree and Henry E. Allison.