s an object. He didn't want phenomenology to turn "into an unphilosophical study of mere facts... and lose its significance" . If the spirit is treated as an object then wouldn't it lose its significance or unique identity and Husserl's Enlightenment ideal of the unique self be lost? Instead he preserved the subjective spirit be analyzing content of the mind such as remembrance, desire and other abstract contents that he called meanings. Through these meanings, Husserl believed a person gained a consciousness of who they are, called intentionality. Intentiontality is the essence of consciousness, the product of all the meanings a person has experienced in the their life. In his book Cartesian Meditations (1931), Husserl introduced genetic phenomenology, an explanation to his intentionality theory. Genetic phenomenology is a study of how meanings are collected by life experiences. Husserl was the
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