Husserl\u27s Concept of the Vorwelt and the Possible Annihilation of the World

In this paper I explore a curious phenomenon discussed in Husserl\u27s later manuscripts under the name pre-world?. This notion arises in the context of his ongoing development of a genetic phenomenology, i.e., a phenomenology that is concerned with the dynamics of conscious life, concerning both the generation of new meaning for consciousness and new dimensions of conscious life. The pre-world is one such dimension. I explore it here in two stages. First, I consider the initial unsavoriness of the very idea of a pre-world, whose metaphysical implications are suspect, on the surface. Nevertheless, I show that the pre-world puts the subject in contact with reality in a very special sense that should remedy this worry. Second, I show how the notion of the pre-world re-opens Husserl\u27s thought of the possible annihilation of the world from Ideas I. In fact, it explains the possibility, by revealing its experiential ground