In this thread I will try and be as brief as possible and run through Husserl's view of this from Descartes through Hume, Locke and Berkeley, and maybe onto Kant (but deserves a separate thread because Husserl goes into much more depth).
I will post full section first because it is short:
Crisis Part II
Section 21. Descartes as the starting point of two lines of development, rationalism and empiricism.
If we now follow the lines of development which proceeded from Descartes, one, the "rationalistic," leads through Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, and the Wolff school to Kant, the turning point. Here the spirit of the new kind of rationalism, as implanted by Decartes, thrusts forward enthusiastically and unfolds in great systems. Here the conviction reigns, then, that through the method of mos geometricus as absolutely grounded, universal knowledge of the world, thought of as a transcendent "in-itself," can be realized. Precisely against the new science as having such a scope as to extend to something "transcendent", indeed finally against this "transcendent" itself, English empiricism reacts - even though it is likewise strongly influenced by Decartes. But it is a reaction similar to that of ancient skepticism against the systems of rational philosophy at the time. The new skeptical empiricism already sets in with Hobbes. Of greater interest for us however because of its immense effect on psychology and the theory of knowledge, is Locke's critique of the understanding, together with its subsequent continuations in Berkeley and Hume. This line of development is especially significant in that it is an essential segment of the historical path on which the psychologically adulterated transcendentalism of Descartes (if we may already so call his original turn to the ego) seeks, through unfolding its consequences, to work its way through to the realization of its untenability and, from there, to a transcendentalism which is more genuine and more conscious of its true meaning. The primary and historically most important thing here was the self-revelation of empirical psychologism (of sensationalistic, naturalistic cast) as an intolerable absurdity.
- Part II, Section 21, P.83-4, Crisis (trans. by David Carr)
Husserl is noting here a rift between rationalism and empiricism due to Descartes dualistic notions. These too positions solidify the idea of dualism and this has even been carried through right to the present day (by both positions!).
Now I will be more selective with next section and not type it all out (even though it is only 2 pages!):
Sections 22. Locke's naturalistic-epistemological psychology.
It is in the empiricist development, as we know, that the new psychology, which was required as a correlate to pure natural science when the latter was separated off, is brought to its first concrete execution. Thus it is concerned with investigations of introspective psychology in the field of the soul, which has now been separated from the body, as well as with physiological and psychophysical explanations. On the other hand, this psychology is of service to a theory of knowledge which, compared with the Cartesian one, is completely new and very differently worked out. In Locke's great work this is the actual intent from the start. It offers itself as a new attempt to accomplish precisely what Descartes's Meditations intended to accomplish: an epistemological grounding of the objectivity of the objective sciences. The skeptical posture of this intent is evident from the beginning in questions like those of the scope, the extent, and the degrees of certainty of human knowledge. Locke senses nothing of the depths of the Cartesian epoche and of the reduction to the ego. He simply takes over the ego as soul, which becomes acquainted, in the self-evidence of self-experience, with its inner states, acts, and capacities. Only what inner self'experience shows, only our own "ideas," immediately, self-evidently given. Everything in the external world is inferred.
- Part II, Section 22, P.84
