The Development of the Sciences in Relation to Human Life Existence Irreducible to Scientific Vision

Abstract

These words of Edmund Husserl, taken from a manuscript,¹ would seem to turn the customary image of his phenomenological enquiry upside down. Here the image I am referring to is that of systematic, rigorous and therefore ‘objective’ research with a view to establishing ‘how things stand’. The affirmation just quoted may therefore be the cause of scandal, because it seems to cast doubt on the whole of Husserl’s programme as stated in Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft. There is, however, a general remark I should like to make before going any further with the analysis of the passage with which we are here concerned. All the great thinkers have had a series of interpreters, they created philosophical schools and movements that tried more or less explicitly to “conserve” the basic ideas of the master, to ‘keep them alive’. In fact, however, interpretations are valid only inasmuch as they are also “betrayals” and none, not even the most faithful, has ever succeeded in bringing out the “true” Plato, the “true” Descartes, the ‘true’ Hegel, and so on.

Also erste Epoche: ‘Abstraktion’ hinsichtlich aller Wissenschaften bezw. ihres ‘Vorurteils’ der Objektivität. Die von diesem Vorurteil geleitete Wissenschaft gehört selbst zur Konkretion meiner Lebensumwelt (Europäische Wissenschaft).