Phenomenology is a philosophical method founded by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938). It attempts to overcome the division between subject and object or the mental and the material by examining consciousness and the object of consciousness simultaneously. Consciousness is regarded as intentional, that is, all states of consciousness must be understood as intending something or directed to an object. Husserl sought to create an alternative philosophical position to both idealism, which collapses the material into the mental, and materialism, which collapses the mental into the material. He developed methods of studying consciousness in its intentional mode of operation, for example, by suspension (epoché) or "bracketing", by which all presuppositions or preconceptions about both subject and object are kept in abeyance so that the operation of consciousness can be analysed phenomenologically.