Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy

by Edmund Husserl

Contents: I) " Philosophy as a Rigorous Science." II) "Philosophy and Crisis of European Man." From book's Introduction by Quentin Lauer: "It is hoped that the two essays chosen for translation in this volume will contribute towards filling a gap which those who are interested in contemporary phenomenology cannot but feel. The first essay can be said to represent Husserl early in his career, when he was seeking to gain a hearing for his 'radically new' scientific manner of philosophizing. The second dates from the years immediately preceding the cessation of Husserl's philosophical activity. Together they constitute a striking testimony to the continuity of Husserl's 'scientific' ideal in philosophy. The intervening years saw considerable development of the detailed method for attaining the goal of universal rationality, but it is significant that the position achieved as a result of this development in no way involved relinquishing any major position adopted at the beginning or along the way. Thus we have in these two essays on only an early in a late stage in the genetic growth of Husserl's thought but also an introduction to what can be called his definitive attitude toward the very nature of philosophical thinking."

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, German Literature, 20th Century, Theory, Germany, Essays

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (Dr. phil. hab., University of Halle-Wittenberg, 1887; Ph.D., Mathematics, University of Vienna, 1883) was a philosopher who is deemed the founder of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, believing that experience is the source of all knowledge, while at the same time he elaborated critiques of psychologism and historicism.

Born into a Moravian Jewish family, he was baptized as a Lutheran in 1887. Husserl studied mathematics under Karl Weierstrass, completing a Ph.D. under Leo Königsberger, and studied philosophy under Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf. Husserl taught philosophy, as a Privatdozent at Halle from 1887, then as professor, first at Göttingen from 1901, then at Freiburg im Breisgau from 1916 until his 1928 retirement.

Reviews

[Xander · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a collection of Husserl's 1911 essay 'Philosophy as Rigorous Science' and his 1935 lecture 'Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man' and is accompanied with an introduction that spans about as much as both of Husserl's work combined. One of the goals of this book is to contrast the early and later Husserl, since his career as philosopher spanned many decades and he continuously developed his method - or rather: he again and again started from scratch.

I've only read Philosophy as Rigorous Science, since my aim was to read more about the early Husserl. So my review certainly doesn't cover the introduction and his 1935 lecture.

In regard to content I can be rather short. In Philosophy as a Rigorous Science Husserl tries to promote his (then newly developed) method of phenomenology as the true foundation for all certain knowledge. That is, he claims that no one before him ever succeeded in what he himself has succeeded: offering a supreme epistemological foundation that allows all the sciences their space.

In order to back up this grandiose claim Husserl sets out to attack the scientific Weltanschauung which has naturalized psychology. Whereas the natural sciences have naturalized human reason, in effect leading to a self-contradicting position (i.e. reason is presupposed as a transcendental criterion in science but reduced to an empirical phenomenon in making this claim), scientific psychology objectifies all subjective experiences and thus reduces consciousness, our subjective experiences and our thoughts to 'things'. Experimental philosophy isn't capable of dealing with subjectivity - it works with vague experiences and thus with faulty concepts, leading to flawed theory. This is due mainly because of the founders of experimental psychology, or so Husserl claims, were physicists and physiologists, heavily trained in the method of objectifying the world.

Husserl concludes only a study of subjective phenomena can lead us out of the problems. That is, we should methodically study the appearance of all sorts of subjective experiences without involving any objectivity at all. Such pure reflection will show us the infinite stream of conscious acts in their purity, and doing this we will grasp their essences as immanent - i.e. we will 'see' that all our conscious acts are essentially intended towards objects, and the particular appearing intention - and not the intended object (!) - is what makes that act that act.

In short, phenomenology studies essences and leaves out all questions concerning existence. Through meticulous descriptions of each phenomenon we will be able to draw up a doctrine of essences which will form the ground for all existing things. That is, these universal essences will form the principles and categories of all objectivity.

In my review on Husserl's Idee zur Phänomenologie (1907) I pointed at the fact that I don't understand how Husserl is able to make the 'epistemological leap' from the immanent seeing and describing of a particular phenomenon to the immanent seeing of universal essences. It is essences that Husserl is after, not individual phenomena - these are just tools for him to get what he wants, i.e. a collection of universal essences which function as principles and categories for logic, mathematics and the sciences. But he cannot generalize from one seen phenomena to a universal essence, since it is impossible to 'see' the universality of the essence in question. The only solution (it seems to me) is some form of Platonism in which a pure consciousness 'grasps' a particular instance of a universal essence but the particularity of the essence is somehow not 'real'.

Reading his 1911 essay I am strengthened in my view that this is an insurmountable problem for Husserl, which he tries to cover up through the use of language. The following excerpt shows clearly how he jumps epistemologically from the individual phenomenon to the universal essences and essential relations, and somehow mysteriously ends up with principles of objective validity that function as the groundwork for all the sciences:

"For the individual is not essence, it is true, but it "has" an essence, which can be said of it with evident validity. To fix this essence as an individual, however, is to give it a position in a "world" of individual being-there, is something that such a mere subsumption under essential concepts cannot accomplish. For phenomenology, the singular is eternally the apeiron [the boundless, the undetermined]. Phenomenology can recognize with objective validity only essences and essential relations, and thereby it can accomplish and decisively accomplish whatever is necessary for a correct understanding of all empirical cognition and of all cognition whatsoever: the clarification of the "origin" of all formal-logical and natural-logical principles (and whatever other guiding "principles" there may be) and of all the problems involved in correlating "being" (being of nature, being of value, etc.) and consciousness, problems intimately connected with the aforementioned principles." (p. 116)

The essay itself is one long tirade against the natural sciences and the objective worldview. Husserl comes across as a religious zealot in his fight against this naturalism and in his preaching of his own methodology as 'the only true and meaningful one'. The terminology he uses to fulminate against his intellectual opponents, and the style in which he does this, makes this work rather tedious, considering one has to plough through 80 pages or so of this stuff. And the message and key concepts aren't all that amazing. I'd go so far as to say that the way Husserl sets out his phenomenological method is rather obscure and unnecessarily convoluted.

In the final pages Husserl shows his true colors when he combines his earlier claim that naturalism has introduced a radical skepticism in philosophy, with the claim that historicism - the philosophical study of history in terms of forms and types of culture, and the endless progress of spirit (i.e. culture) through the world - has introduced an equally radical relativism, and with it the destruction of all norms that guide both our theoretical and practical pursuits. According to Husserl, this danger of our modern times has never been greater. Philosophers - i.e. Husserl himself - should offer us a rigorous philosophical science with which to replace the chaos of skepticism and relativism. Phenomenology, the study of essences, goes to the origin of everything theoretical and practical and is able, through its method, to lay an absolute groundwork in terms of ideas on which to build our practical and theoretical pursuits.

Husserl lusts for a return to order and norms, and the fact that he explicitly includes practical life - ethics, religion, law, etc. - betrays his own morality as the primary impulse in developing his theories. This (by the way) seems to me to be the best explanation for his transcendental turn later in his career: a way to overcome the Platonic dilemma. If you include pure consciousness into the idealistic realm of essences you have solved two problems at once: there is no problem of transcendence in your methodology anymore, and you have secured the immortality and infinity of pure consciousness - in other words: the soul. Theoretical problem solved and religious desires fulfilled. What's more to be hoped for?

I can't really recommend this text of Husserl - but, again, I have only read one part of this book. Perhaps his 1935 lecture on the European Crisis in philosophy is worth the trouble of picking up this book.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without Husserl's work, there'd have been no Heidegger as we know him; nor would we have had the work characterstic of Leo Strauss, Sartre and Derrida, to name only a few influential thinkers of last century. It's not very far off the mark to say that Husserl is *the* philosophic source of the 'right and left' wings of philosophical post-modernism in the 20th century.

This slim volume contains two essays, the first of which is called "Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft" or "Philosophy as a rigorous science" published in 1911, in the period following the "Logical Investigations" and prior to the "Ideas". The essay argues for a philosophy that goes to the'roots of things' or 'true beginnings', with a method of a 'radical science'.

I suppose the most controversial and eye-brow raising argument Husserl makes is this, in so many words: modern science is not genuine rigorous knowledge. This is tantamount to saying science does not really know what it says it knows about the world. But every schoolboy knows the empirical sciences employing mathematical methods are branches of the most reliable and rigorous knowledge. Serious human knowing, if it is to be serious, must live up to the standards of these sciences. One part of Husserl's work consists in a demonstration - which is really part of a critique of reason - that the empirical sciences produce a very qualified and limited kind of knowledge. What 'disqualifies' it from being genuinely rigorous knowledge is the philosophical basis or presupposition of empirical science, which is naturalism. The most revealing example of naturalist presuppositions at work is psychology, which, as science of the soul, has tried to study the soul in the manner of a strict empirical science, that is, it assumes the human soul is a natural object like any material object in space and time, subject to the laws of natural cause and effect. Husserl's inquiry throughout is guided by the insight that while this might be true in some sense, it is not true in every sense - in every act of consciousness there are certain elements irreducible to physical nature.

For Husserl, one the aims -or results- of this radical philosophy, in going to the 'roots' of things (in part by critiquing the naturalist presuppositions of empirical science) is to discover genuine common ground between the physical sciences on the one hand and the social sciences and humanities on the other. This lack of common ground is what Husserl calls the 'crisis of philosophy', which is not a merely 'academic' problem, but which is the basis of the 'crisis of the european world'. It's a familiar story: physical sciences started out as a revolt against scholasticism, quickly gains dominion over all areas of human knowledge, subsequently leads to a romanticist reaction and then a positivist counter-reaction, and then a historicist and relativist counter-reaction. The reaction against science essentially becomes a revolt against the possibility of meaningful objective human knowing.

In the midst of all this Husserl proposes a positive criticism of the principles and premises underlying both, or all, positions, not a negative criticism based on a demonstration of absurd consequences.

Husserl argues that the natural sciences are right in aiming for "rigorous" and incontrovertible knowledge of the world, even if naturalism, the asserted basis of natural science, leads to theoretical incoherence and 'absurd' practical consequences for human culture. In a 'positive' critique of this situation based on principles, philosophy must not give up this aim for rigorous and incontrovertible knowledge. This very aim serves as a first principle for engaging a critique of naturalism.

The temptation, in the critique of naturalism, is to throw out naturalism together with it the aim for knowledge. On the other hand, relativist and historicist philosophies or 'outlooks', toward which 'humanities' have an overwhelming tendency, are right in their anti-naturalistic or 'subjectivist' orientation, against the 'mathesis universalis' of the physical sciences.

If I understand Husserl correctly, a negative criticism ending with a demonstration of absurdity provides, I think, no useful knowledge about the origins of either position, nor an indication for the coreection and advancement of either. But generally speaking, as Aristotle might say, even if a position is absurd or wrong, it is necessary to show the reasons why it is that a reasonable person would think it is true. There are reasons for our mistakes in thinking, and they are not merely psychological or personal 'subjective' factors, or matters of historical accident. If the great split between the sciences and humanities is based on portentous fundamental errors in thinking, the reasonable thing to do - besides refutation - is try to give the reasons for this mistaken thinking, why it is that it would have seemed right or true, even though it turns out otherwise. Husserl says on p. 128: "Any correct, profoundly penetrating criticism itself provides the means for advancing and ideally points to correct goals, thereby correctly indicating an objectively valid science."


Husserl's interminable style takes some getting use to, but once you get the hang of it (mostly by constantly pressing yourself to say "okay now restate what he said in plain english") his arguments start to make some sense.

[M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read, contrasting early with later Husserl and aiming to show his further development, even when it's talked about his eventual turn to trascendentalism... much of it could be disputed. Partly, it was a misunderstanding of his students, and partly because Husserl himself showed these elements from the beginning. Even if some expressions and declarations might sound Euro-centric, its merits should rest on the very legitimate concern to rescue philosophy from the claws of relativism and materialism

[Kamakana · Rating 4 out of 5]

171012: another review accidentally deleted- but this is the source, the founder if not founding text, of way of thought known as phenomenology, though here as anywhere husserl is not easy to read. here he is trying to understand what has gone wrong in thinking, between ww1 and the rise of nazis, how nihilism is triumphing. important to understand his later thought...

[John Reis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This short book consists of two essays by Husserl and a lengthy introduction by Quentin Lauer, which is quite good. The first essay, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science” was published in 1911. The second essay “Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man” was written in 1935. There is no discussion of his phenomenological method in either of these essays. Although there is some call for and defense of it in the first essay.

There are however similar themes in these essays which were written more than two decades apart. One of the themes is that naturalistic science is an inadequate science. Another is psychology, being naturalistic, can never get to the truth of the spirit.

“It is the fundamental error of modern psychology, preventing it from being psychology in the true, fully scientific sense, that it has not recognized and developed this phenomenological method.”

“Pure phenomenology as science, so long as it is pure and makes no use of the existential positing of nature, can only be essence investigation, and not at all an investigation of being there; all “introspection” and every judgment based on such experience falls outside its framework.”

“Phenomenology can recognize with objective validity only essences and essential relations, and thereby it can accomplish and decisively accomplish whatever is necessary for a correct understanding of all empirical cognition and of all cognition whatsoever...”

It must be recalled that Descartes gave us a bifurcated world. There is res cogitans and res extensa… And Husserl wants to say that whatever passes for naturalistic science cannot get to the heart of res extensa. There can be no rigorous science without phenomenology because phenomenology gets at essences. But where does talk about essences come from?

Recalling Descartes, imagine all of existence to consist of two ovals placed next to each other, one named nature and the other named spirit. Attempts to do science as has been done since the Renaissance must fail, according to Husserl because it cannot get to the real essence of the world. All scientific enterprise being works of the mind involves spirit. So, this picture of nature and spirit next to each other must be rejected.

Husserl wants to restructure, reconfigure or reimagine our world image to the following: imagine one oval embedded in another with the outer oval being labeled spirit and the inner oval labeled nature. In other words, Husserl is an idealist. There is only spirit. And if you are wondering why Husserl believes his phenomenological method provides knowledge of essences it is because of this idealism.

He stacks the deck against empirical science by demanding, as Descartes did, apodeictic knowledge, certain knowledge. To Husserl, science must be apodeictic. Yet, we are finite beings; we are limited to gaining knowledge step by step in a process that does not magically prevent error. Mathematics is an artificial construction and provides the only certainty some seek.

One must work through his maddening prose to get to the meaning of it. Here is a quote from the end of the second essay:

“If we do, then from the annihilating conflagration of disbelief, from the fiery torrent of despair regarding the West's mission to humanity, from the ashes of the great weariness, the phoenix of a new inner life of the spirit will arise is the underpinning of a great and distant future, for the spirit alone is immortal.”

There are other themes in these essays but they do not deserve the time.

[Vapula · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some decent points against naturalism, but outside of that, too much of it is marred by the distinctly Husserlian rigidities of essentialism and a bygone Fichtean comportment that doesn't find any rigorous role in the actual topic at hand. He also has a particularly strange attitude at Hegel, at one moment blaming him for externalities entirely irrelevant or tacitly grouping him with modern rationalism's failure (even if such a grouping very simply is not warranted), only to sound uncannily Hegelian the next moment. The footnotes by Lauer are particularly astute, noting how Hegel could've learned well from Hegel's articulation of history were he not to dismiss it so presumptuously.

[Lucas Sipe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Husserl is an oft forgotten influence. Academics and philosophers know of this German but many of the more casual thinkers fail to partake in the writings of the father of phenomenology. He guided a young Martin Heidegger and Edith Stein amongst others. The texts here, 'Philosophy as a Rigorous Science' and ' Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man,' span Husserl's philosophical life. The first was written earlier in his career and the latter towards the end of his life.

Both are concerned with philosophy being unscientific. By no means does he mean by this that philosophy lacks the knowledge of biology or physics. Rather, Husserl wants philosophy - in its own way - to be as unified, cohesive, and aligned as the natural sciences. Husserl wants there to be eternally valid results ala various experiments even though there are an infinite number of experiments. This can only be done via the phenomenological method. Sadly, Husserl doesn't explain the phenomenological method very well here. Instead, he's concerned that a rank naturalism is pervading all aspects of life. The second essay connects that naturalism with a Europe that forgets it's guiding spirit: the philosophical pursuit inaugurated by the Greeks.

Much like his protegee, Heidegger, Husserl isn't the most beautiful writer. Unlike Heidegger, however, Husserl's prose lacks the vigor and brilliance of his student. Of course, it could just be these two selections but unless one is interested in this school of thought one would likely be putting this book down. Unfortunate, I have read 'Ideas' and thought it lacked the insight of Heidegger. One can't have Heidegger without Husserl, however, so I appreciate the insight offered here. Later in the year, I will read 'Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness' which will hopefully offer an example of the method praised and defended in this collection. Because fundamentally what we're offered in this collection is a defense of phenomenology. Husserl is concerned with the purity of the theoretical and leaves the experiments themselves to other thinkers and other texts.

[VII · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only read the first essay, “Philosophy as rigorous science” and this isn't how I imagined Husserl at all. He is basically a logical positivist that just happened to find a new method of developing “science”. It's actually infuriating how pompous and sure of himself he sounds, while making some careless if not straight-up bad arguments. For example, he finds naturalism self-defeating because it supposedly denies the existence of logic while using it. Or in another passage he finds that knowledge can't be relative because logic and mathematics exist. Or that if we talk of relative values then absolute, right values must exist too. Of course he is not the first philosopher who said things that now nobody accepts, but his tone is what makes him really annoying.

Other than that, Husserl is considered the father of phenomenology which actually has made a comeback in cognitive science, but in a somewhat more tolerant version. In this paper, Husserl calls philosophy to become more empirical and adopt the scientific method. What he wants to examine though is not material entities but mental phenomena. He wants us to accept that mental phenomena have different properties, like being experienced or recalled that are usually considered subjective but they are also bound by objective phenomena like time and space, so overall, we can build an objective science with them. He believes that if we are strict and empirical like natural sciences are, we can identify some essences that are necessary and slowly build everything from there. This is why I called him a positivist. It's the old dream of finding some fundamental building blocks on which all our knowledge can rest upon. Maybe he is right but even if he is, it would not be enough to make us escape out skin and find things about the world.

[Bradford Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first essay in this book I never read.

The second essay (lecture) is a straightforward statement of the high ideals of what I call universalizing culture: For humanity to transcend all merely factically given ethnicities to a higher form of life in which everything, including childrearing, is reflectively shaped in self-accountable responsibility. This essay remains as important today as in 1935, because new barbarisms have replaced National Socialism as threats to "culture" in an honorific not merely sociological sense, and threats to civilization.

As a complement, I would also recommend a lecture by the Polish sociologist Jan Szczepanski, in the UNESCO Digital Library (Free on the internet): "Individuality and society". Szczepanski is a sociologist, not a phenomenological philosopher, but Husserl or present day phenomenological thinkers could take this essay as a starting point for philosophical elaboration, and lay persons and politicians should find Szczepanski's message defining a constructive society easily readable, and, hopefully, a crucial task for them to implement for all humanity.

[Johnny Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read "Philosophy as a Rigorous Science" - the criticism of naturalism, psychology, and the state of current philosophy. Husserl, from what I gathered in his excruciating style, is importantly marking the axiomatic and theoretical abyss upon which modern naturalism and psychology are taking place. He is arguing that a critique and analyses of phenomenal experience through a priori and essential methods are necessary for bridging philosophy psychology, and science - thereby creating a unification of these three foundational studies and a logically strong body of knowledge.

[Лора Дулова · Rating 1 out of 5]

To quote a friend: "exorbitantly pretentious prose".

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not enough of an expert to comment whether this is a good introduction to Husserl. It is, however, a good preparation to reading Husserl’s student Martin Heidegger. Husserl also introduces the reader to numerous key moves in phenomenology which have payoff potential in later discussions of philosophy of mind. Nonetheless, many of Husserl’s ideas are undeveloped.

Phenomenology is a study of essences only. Essences belong to the ideal sphere and are grasped in intuition. Absolute knowledge is contained in the phenomena. Phen. reveals essences and reverses the standard correspondence theory model. The real world corresponds to true thought. It reveals consciousness. Husserl’s goal: overcome the wall of separation between being and consciousness (47).

Husserl’s most important moment is his discussion of intentionality. Intentionality is to give meaning to an expression. It is a movement of consciousness towards something; thus, it is objective (109). When we perceive an object, we perceive it in its givenness-to-us. What I think Husserl means is that the object’s essence is related to its being a determinate object (114). At this early point in Husserl’s career it seems he is positing a real relation (and relation is a category of essence) between object and perception. As the editor comments in a footnote, to know the thought is to know what is thought about.

Improving upon Descartes: the cogitatum is given with the same immediacy as the cogito itself. Thus, there is an intentionality to consciousness (59). To be is to be-given-to-consciousness. The essential is the ideal, and the ideal is located in acts of consciousness. Therefore, subjectivity = objectivity.

Husserl ends with a lecture on the crisis of European man. It’s interesting, though he doesn’t advance any substantial ideas. The book isn’t perfect but it does contain valuable insights. In short, I wonder how natural bracketing out ideas in an epoch really is. If an object is an object in its givenness-to-us, then what exactly does the epoch advance?

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

This argues that the reason WWI occurred was because there was no no ethical component to the scientific method. Essentially, scientists where so busy pushing the boundaries of science that they did not consider whether or not they ought to have. It was a culture of scientific and nationalistic competitiveness, without the restraint of a scientific ethics, that allowed the machine of war to be loosed upon the European population.

It is helpful to remember that Husserl lost his son to WWI.

This piece was too short. I wish he had completed it so that it was more developed.

[May Ling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings about this piece. It appears to be on of the early bridges to full blown discussions on knowledge relativism. Some interesting points on what it means for philosophy not to be scientific.

[Charles Bell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hmm.. Now I know why I didn't take philosophy in college.