Krisis: The Power of Sense. Time, History and the Crisis of Western Culture in Husserl’s Phenomenology

Abstract

Let us introduce ourselves to the question of Europe, as it is posed by phenomenology. This, however, compels us first to ask what the question of what phenomenology is, in order for us to understand the turn apparently taken by Husserl’s reflection when, at a late stage of his research, he starts looking into the crisis of Europe through the crisis of European sciences. As a matter of fact, in the 20s his research seems dominated by problems concerning the ultimate foundation of philosophy, therefore by the idea of transcendental phenomenology as first philosophy (the 1923–4 Erste Philosophie lectures), by the critique of logical reason from a phenomenologic-transcendental perspective (Formale und transzendentale Logik, 1929), and by the radicalization of the Cartesian inspiration of the phenomenological conception of subjectivity. The Paris and Strasbourg Lectures, together with his elaboration of (the text of) the Cartesianische Meditationen conclude Husserl’s work of those years and open his last philosophical activity in a condition of restlessness, however, as it results by his difficulty in bringing to an end the re-elaboration with a view to the German edition of the text intended for the French translation.¹