Edmund Husserl: Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity (the "Vienna Lecture")![[ ]](http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html/sp.gif) ![[ Euro symbol ]](http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html/gif/euro.gif) ![[ Euro symbol ]](http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html/jpg/euro.jpg) EDMUND HUSSERL: Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man(Lecture delivered by Edmund Husserl, Vienna, 10 May 1935;therefore often referred to as: "The Vienna Lecture". 115k)[From: Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, Translated with Notesand an Introduction by Quentin Lauer, Harper Torchbooks, ©1965 by QuentinLauer. This page originally copied from PRO EUROPA website, whereyou will find much other good material, including (e.g.) Thomas Mann's response (1937) to theThird Reich stripping him of his honorary doctorate degree from the Frederick-William University at Bonn.PRO EUROPA's epigraph to the section of their website containing these texts is also fitting to quote here:"The struggle against everything whose only claim to dignity is its materiality, to refuse to be merelya passive and determined element in the order of Creation this seems to me the primordial virtuewhich transformed an Asian peninsula into Europe" -Carlo Schmid] "The lights are going out all over Europe. We at least shall try to relight them." (--"Daniel Corbett,Christian Filips 7D", apparently from a German/Belgian student's 2000 online yearbookwebpage) IIn this lecture I will venture an attempt toawaken new interest in the oft-treated theme of the European crisis bydeveloping the philosophico-historical idea (or the teleological sense) ofEuropean man.1 In so far as in thus developing the topic I bring out theessential function that philosophy and its ramifications in our sciences have toperform in this process, the European crisis will also be given addedclarification.We can illustrate this in terms of thewell-known distinction between scientific medicine and 'naturopathy'.Just as in the common life of peoples the latter derives from naïve experienceand tradition, so scientific medicine results from the utilization of insightsbelonging to purely theoretical sciences concerned with the human body,primarily anatomy and physiology. These in turn are based on those fundamentalsciences that seek a universal explanation of nature as such, physics andchemistry.Now let us turn our gaze from man's body tohis spirit, the theme of the so-called humanistic sciences.2 In these sciencestheoretical interest is directed exclusively to human beings as persons, totheir personal life and activity, as also correlatively to the concrete resultsof this activity. To live as a person is to live in a social framework, whereinI and we live together in community and have the community as a horizon.3 Now,communities are structured in various simple or complex forms, such as family,nation, or international community. Here the world 'live' is not to betaken in a physiological sense but rather as signifying purposeful living,manifesting spiritual creativity - in the broadest sense, creating culturewithin historical continuity. It is this that forms the theme of varioushumanistic sciences. Now, there is an obvious difference between healthy growthand decline, or to put it another way, between health and sickness, even forsocieties, for peoples, for states. In consequence there arises the not sofarfetched question: how is it that in this connection there has never arisen amedical science concerned with nations and with international communities? TheEuropean nations are sick; Europe itself, they say, is in critical condition.Nor in this situation are there lacking all sorts of nature therapies. We are,in fact, quite overwhelmed with a torrent of naïveand extravagant suggestions for reform. But why is it that soluxuriantly developed humanistic sciences here fail to perform the service thatin their own sphere the natural sciences perform so competently?Those who are familiar with the spirit of modernscience will not be embarrassed for an answer. The greatness of the naturalsciences consists in their refusal to be content with an observationalempiricism, since for them all descriptions of nature are but methodicalprocedures for arriving at exact explanations, ultimately physico-chemicalexplanations. They are of the opinion that 'merely descriptive' sciencestie us to the finitudes of our earthly environing world.4 Mathematically exactnatural science, however, embraces with its method the infinites contained inits actualities and real possibilities. It sees in the intuitively given amerely subjective appearance, and it teaches how to investigate intersubjective('objective')5 nature itself with systematic approximation on the basisof elements and laws that are unconditionally universal. At the same time, suchexact science teaches how to explain all intuitively pre-given concretions,whether men, or animals, or heavenly bodies, by an appeal to what is ultimate,i.e., how to induce from the appearances, which are the data in any factualcase, future possibilities and probabilities, and to do this with a universalityand exactitude that surpasses any empiricism limited to intuition.6 Theconsistent development of exact sciences in modern times has been a truerevolution in the technical mastery of nature.In the humanistic sciences the methodologicalsituation (in the sense already quite intelligible to us) is unfortunately quitedifferent, and this for internal reasons. Human spirituality7 is, it is true,based on the human physis, each individually human soul-life is founded oncorporeality, and thus too each community on the bodies of the individual humanbeings who are its members. If, then, as is done in the sphere of nature, areally exact explanation and consequently a similarly extensive scientificpractical application is to become possible for the phenomena belonging to thehumanistic sciences, then must the practitioners of the humanistic sciencesconsider not only the spirit as spirit but must also go back to its bodilyfoundations, and by employing the exact sciences of physics and chemistry, carrythrough their explanations. The attempt to do this, however, has beenunsuccessful (and in the foreseeable future there is no remedy to be had) due tothe complexity of the exact psycho-physical research needed in the case ofindividual human beings, to say nothing of the great historical communities. Ifthe world were constructed of two, so to speak, equal spheres of reality -nature and spirit - neither with a preferential position methodologically andfactually, the situation would be different. But only nature can be handled as aself-contained world; only natural science can with complete consistencyabstract from all that is spirit and consider nature purely as nature. On theother side such a consistent abstraction from nature does not, for thepractitioner of humanistic science who is interested purely in the spiritual,lead to a self-contained 'world', a world whose interrelationships arepurely spiritual, that could be the theme of a pure and universal humanisticscience, parallel to pure natural science. Animal spirituality,8 that of thehuman and animal 'souls', to which all other spirituality is referred, isin each individual instance causally based on corporeality. It is thusunderstandable that the practitioner of humanistic science, interested solely inthe spiritual as such, gets no further than the descriptive, than a historicalrecord of spirit, and thus remains tied to intuitive finitudes. Every examplemanifests this. A historian, for example, cannot, after all, treat the historyof ancient Greece without taking into consideration the physical geography ofancient Greece; he cannot treat its architecture without considering themateriality of its buildings, etc., etc. That seems clear enough.What is to be said, then, if the whole mode ofthought that reveals itself in this presentation rests on fatal prejudices andis in its results partly responsible for Europe's sickness? I am convincedthat this is the case, and in this way I hope to make understandable that hereinlies an essential source for the conviction which the modern scientist has thatthe possibility of grounding a purely self-contained and universal science ofthe spirit is not even worth mentioning, with the result that he flatly rejectsit.It is in the interests of our Europe-problem topenetrate a bit more deeply into this question and to expose the above, at firstglance lucidly clear, argumentation. The historian, the investigator of spirit,of culture, constantly has of course physical nature too among the phenomenawith which he is concerned; in our example, nature in ancient Greece. But thisis not nature in the sense understood by natural science; rather it is nature asit was for the ancient Greeks, natural reality present to their eyes in theworld that surrounded them. To state it more fully; the historical environingworld of the Greeks is not the objective world in our sense; rather it is their'representation of the world', i.e., their own subjective evaluation,with all the realities therein that were valid for them, for example the gods,the demons, etc.Environing world is a concept that has its placeexclusively in the spiritual sphere. That we live in our own particularenvironing world, to which all our concerns and efforts are directed, points toan event that takes place purely in the spiritual order. Our environing world isa spiritual structure in us and in our historical life.9 Here, then, there is noreason for one who makes his theme the spirit as spirit to demand for it any buta purely spiritual explanation. And this has general validity: to look uponenvironing nature as in itself alien to spirit, and consequently to desire tosupport humanistic science with natural science and thus presumably to make theformer exact, is nonsense.Obviously, too, it is forgotten that naturalscience (like all sciences as such) is a title for spiritual activities, thoseof natural scientists in cooperation with each other; as such these activitiesbelong, as do all spiritual occurrences, to the realm of what should beexplained by means of a science of the spirit.10 Is it not, then, nonsensicaland circular, to desire to explain by means of natural science the historicalevent 'natural science', to explain it by invoking natural science andits laws of nature, both of which, as produced by spirit,11 are themselves partof the problem?Blinded by naturalism (no matter how much theythemselves may verbally oppose it), the practitioners of humanistic science havecompletely neglected even to pose the problem of a universal and pure science ofthe spirit and to seek a theory of the essence of spirit as spirit, a theorythat pursues what is unconditionally universal in the spiritual order with itsown elements and its own laws. Yet this last should be done with a view togaining thereby scientific explanations in an absolutely conclusive sense.The preceding reflections proper to a science ofthe spirit provide us with the right attitude for grasping and handling ourtheme of spiritual Europe as a problem belonging purely to science of thespirit, first of all from the point of view of spirit's history. As hasalready been stated in the introductory remarks, in following this path weshould reveal an extraordinary teleology, which is, so to speak, innate only inour Europe. This, moreover, is most intimately connected with the eruption (orthe invasion) of philosophy and of its ramifications, the sciences, in theancient Greek spirit. We already suspect that there will be question ofclarifying the profoundest reasons for the origin of fatal naturalism, or - andthis is of equal importance - of modern dualism in interpreting the world.Ultimately the proper sense of European man's crisis should thereby come tolight.We may ask, 'How is the spiritual image ofEurope to be characterized?' This does not mean Europe geographically, asit appears on maps, as though European man were to be in this way confined tothe circle of those who live together in this territory. In the spiritual senseit is clear that to Europe belong the English dominions, the United States,etc., but not, however, the Eskimos or Indians of the country fairs, or theGypsies, who are constantly wandering about Europe. Clearly the title Europedesignates the unity of a spiritual life and a creative activity - with all itsaims, interests, cares and troubles, with its plans, its establishments, itsinstitutions. Therein individual human beings work in a variety of societies, ondifferent levels, in families, races,12 nations, all intimately joined togetherin spirit and, as I said, in the unity of one spiritual image. This should stampon persons, groups, and all their cultural accomplishments an all-unifyingcharacter.'The spiritual image of Europe' - what isit? It is exhibiting the philosophical idea immanent in the history of Europe(of spiritual Europe). To put it another way, it is its immanent teleology,which, if we consider mankind in general, manifests itself as a new human epochemerging and beginning to grow, the epoch of a humanity that from now on willand can live only in the free fashioning of its being and its historical lifeout of rational ideas and infinite tasks.13Every spiritual image has its place essentiallyin a universal historical space or in a particular unity of historical time interms of coexistence or succession - it has its history. If, then, we followhistorical connections, beginning as we must with ourselves and our own nation,historical continuity leads us ever further away from our own to neighboringnations, and so from nation to nation, from age to age. Ultimately we come toancient times and go from the Romans to the Greeks, to the Egyptians, thePersians, etc., in this there is clearly no end. We go back to primeval times,and we must perforce turn to Menghin's significant and genial work The Historyof the Stone Age.14 To an investigation of this type mankind manifests itself asa single life of men and of peoples, bound together by spiritual relationshipsalone, filled with all types of human beings and of cultures, but constantlyflowing each into the other. It is like a sea in which human beings, peoples,are the waves constantly forming, changing, and disappearing, some more richly,more complexly involved, others more simply.In this process consistent, penetratingobservation reveals new, characteristic compositions and distinctions. No matterhow inimical the European nations may be toward each other, still they have aspecial inner affinity of spirit that permeates all of them and transcends theirnational differences. It is a sort of fraternal relationship that gives us theconsciousness of being at home in this circle. This becomes immediately evidentas soon as, for example, we penetrate sympathetically into the historicalprocess of India, with its many peoples and cultural forms. In this circle thereis again the unity of a family-like relationship, but one that is strange to us.On the other hand, Indians find us strangers and find only in each other theirfellows. Still, this essential distinction between fellowship and strangeness,which is relativized on many levels and is a basic category of all historicity,cannot suffice. Historical humanity does not always divide itself in the sameway according to this category. We get a hint of that right in our own Europe.Therein lies something unique, which all other human groups, too, feel withregard to us, something that apart from all considerations of expediency,becomes a motivation for them - despite their determination to retain theirspiritual autonomy - constantly to Europeanize themselves, whereas we, if weunderstand ourselves properly, will never, for example, Indianize ourselves.15 Imean we feel (and with all its vagueness this feeling is correct) that in ourEuropean humanity there is an innate entelechy that thoroughly controls thechanges in the European image and gives to it the sense of a development in thedirection of an ideal image of life and of being, as moving toward an eternalpole. It is not as though there were question here of one of those knownorientations that give to the physical realm of organic beings its character -not a question, therefore, of something like biological development in stagesfrom seminal form up to maturity followed by ageing and dying out. There isessentially no zoology of peoples. They are spiritual unities. They have not,and above all the supernationality Europe has not, a mature from that has beenor can be reached, no form of regular repetition. From the point of view ofsoul, humanity has never been a finished product, nor will it be, nor can itever repeat itself.16 The spiritual telos of European Man, in which is includedthe particular telos of separate nations and of individual human beings, lies ininfinity; it is an infinite idea, toward which in secret the collectivespiritual becoming, so to speak, strives. Just as in the development it becomesa conscious telos, so too it becomes necessarily practical as a goal of thewill, and thereby is introduced a new, a higher stage of development that isguided by norms, by normative ideas.All of this, however, is not intended as aspeculative interpretation of our historicity but rather as the expression of avital anticipation arising out of unprejudiced reflection. But this anticipationserves as intentional guidance17 toward seeing in European historyextraordinarily significant connections, in the pursuit of which the anticipatedbecomes for us guaranteed certainty. Anticipation is the emotional guide to alldiscoveries.Let us develop this. Spiritually Europe has abirthplace. By this I do not mean a geographical place, in some one land, thoughthis too is true. I refer, rather, to a spiritual birthplace in a nation or incertain men or groups of men belonging to this nation. It is the ancient Greeknation18 in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. In it there grows up a new kindof attitude19 of individuals toward their environing world. Consequent upon thisemerges a completely new type of spiritual structure, rapidly growing into asystematically rounded (geschlossen) cultural form that the Greeks calledphilosophy. Correctly translated, in its original sense, this bespeaks nothingbut universal science, science of the world as a whole, of the universal unityof all being. Very soon the interest in the totality and, by the same token, thequestion regarding the all-embracing becoming and the resulting being begin toparticularize themselves in accord with the general forms and regions ofbeing.20 Thus philosophy, the one science, is ramified into the variousparticular sciences.In the emergence of philosophy in this sense, asense, that is, which includes all sciences, I see - no matter how paradoxicalthis may seem - the original phenomenon of spiritual Europe. The elucidationsthat follow, however brief they must be kept, will soon eliminate the seemingparadox.Philosophy-science21 is the title for a specialclass of cultural structures. The historical movement that has taken on the formof European supernationality goes back to an ideal image whose dimension is theinfinite; not, however, to an image that could be recognized in a merelyexternal morphological examination of changing forms. To have a norm constantlyin view is something intimately a part of the intentional life of individualpersons and consequently of nations and of particular societies within thelatter, and ultimately of the organism formed by the nations united together asEurope. This, of course, is not true of all persons and, therefore, is not fullydeveloped in the higher-level personalities constituted by intersubjective acts.Still, it is present in them in the form of a necessary progressive developmentand extension in the spirit of universally valid norms. This spirit, however,signifies at the same time the progressive transformations of collectivehumanity beginning with the effective formation of ideas in small and even inthe smallest circles. Ideas, conceived within individual persons assense-structures that in a wonderfully new manner secrete within themselvesintentional infinities, are not in space like real things, which latter,entering as they do into the field of human experiences, do not by that veryfact as yet signify anything for the human being as a person. With the firstconception of ideas man gradually becomes a new man. His spiritual being entersinto the movement of a progressive reformation. This movement from the verybeginning involves communication and awakens a new style of personal existencein its vital circle by a better understanding of a correspondingly new becoming.In this movement first of all (and subsequently even beyond it) a special typeof humanity spreads out, living in finitude but oriented toward poles ofinfinity. By the very same token there grows up a new mode of sociality and anew form of enduring society, whose spiritual life, cemented together by acommon love of and creation of ideas and by the setting of ideal norms for life,carries within itself a horizon of infinity for the future - an infinity ofgenerations finding constant spiritual renewal in ideas. This takes place firstof all in the spiritual territory of a single nation, the Greeks, as adevelopment of philosophy and of philosophical communities. Along with thisthere grows, first in this nation, a general cultural spirit that draws thewhole of mankind under its sway and is therefore a progressive transformation inthe shape of a new historicity.22This rough sketch will gain in completeness andintelligibility as we examine more closely the historical origin ofphilosophical and scientific man and thereby clarify the sense of Europe and,consequently, the new type of historicity that through this sort of developmentdistinguishes itself from history in general.23First, let us elucidate the remarkable characterof philosophy as it unfolds in ever-new special sciences. Let us contrast itwith other forms of culture already present in prescientific man, in hisartefacts, his agriculture, his architecture, etc. All manifest classes ofcultural products along with the proper methods for insuring their successfulproduction. Still, they have a transitory existence in their environing world.Scientific achievements, on the other hand, once the method of insuring theirsuccessful creation has been attained, have an entirely different mode of being,an entirely different temporality. They do not wear out, they are imperishable.Repeated creation does not produce something similar, at best somethingsimilarly useful. Rather, no matter how many times the same person or any numberof persons repeat these achievements, they remain exactly identical, identicalin sense and in value. Persons united together in actual mutual understandingcan only experience what their respective fellows have produced in the samemanner as identical with what they have produced themselves.24 In a word, whatscientific activity achieves is not real but ideal.What is more, however, whatever validity ortruth has been gained in this way serves as material for the production ofhigher-level idealities; and this goes on and on. Now, in the developedtheoretical interest, each interest receives ahead of time the sense of a merelyrelative goal; it becomes a transition to constantly new, higher-level goals inan infinity preindicated as science's universal field of endeavor, its'domain'. Thus science designates the idea of an infinity of tasks, ofwhich at any time a finite number have already been accomplished and areretained in their enduring validity. These constitute at the same time the fundof premises for an endless horizon of tasks united into one all-embracing task.Here, however, an important supplementary remarkshould be made. In science the ideality of what is produced in any particularinstance means more than the mere capacity for repetition based on a sense thathas been guaranteed as identical; the idea of truth in the scientific sense isset apart (and of this we have still to speak) from the truth proper topre-scientific life. Scientific truth claims to be unconditioned truth, whichinvolves infinity, giving to each factually guaranteed truth a merely relativecharacter, making it only an approach oriented, in fact, toward the infinitehorizon, wherein the truth in itself is, so to speak, looked on as an infinitelydistant point.25 By the same token this infinity belongs also to what in thescientific sense 'really is'. A fortiori, there is infinity involved in'universal' validity for 'everyone', as the subject of whateverrational foundations are to be secured; nor is this any longer everyone in thefinite sense the term has in prescientific life.26Having thus characterized the ideality peculiarto science, with the ideal infinities variously implied in the very sense ofscience, we are faced, as we survey the historical situation, with a contrastthat we express in the following proposition: no other cultural form in thepre-philosophical historical horizon is a culture of ideas in theabove-mentioned sense; none knows any infinite tasks - none knows of suchuniverses of idealities that as wholes and in all their details, as also intheir methods of production, bear within themselves an essential infinity.Extra-scientific culture, not yet touched byscience, is a task accomplished by man in finitude. The openly endless horizonaround him is not made available to him. His aims and activities, his commerceand his travel, his personal, social, national, mythical motivation - all thismoves about in an environing world whose finite dimensions can be viewed. Herethere are no infinite tasks, no ideal attainments whose very infinity is man'sfield of endeavor - a field of endeavor such that those who work in it areconscious that it has the mode of being proper to such an infinite sphere oftasks.With the appearance of Greek philosophy,however, and with its first definite formulation in a consistent idealizing ofthe new sense of infinity, there occurs, from this point of view, a progressivetransformation that ultimately draws into its orbit all ideas proper to finitudeand with them the entire spiritual culture of mankind. For us Europeans thereare, consequently, even outside the philosophico-scientific sphere, any numberof infinite ideas (if we may use the expression), but the analogous character ofinfinity that they have (infinite tasks, goals, verifications, truths, 'truevalues', 'genuine goods', 'absolutely' valid norms) is dueprimarily to the transformation of man through philosophy and its idealities.Scientific culture in accord with ideas of infinity means, then, arevolutionizing of all culture, a revolution that affects man's whole mannerof being as a creator of culture. It means also a revolutionizing ofhistoricity, which is now the history of finite humanity's disappearance, tothe extent that it grows into a humanity with infinite tasks.Here we meet the obvious objection thatphilosophy, the science of the Greeks, is not, after all, distinctive of them,something which with them first came into the world. They themselves tell of thewise Egyptians, Babylonians, etc.; and they did in fact learn much from theselatter. Today we possess all sorts of studies on Indian, Chinese, and otherphilosophies, studies that place these philosophies on the same level with Greekphilosophy, considering them merely as different historical formulations of oneand the same cultural idea. Of course, there is not lacking something in common.Still, one must not allow intentional depths to be covered over by what ismerely morphologically common and be blind to the most essential differences ofprinciple.Before anything else, the attitude of these twokinds of 'philosophers', the overall orientation of their interests, isthoroughly different. Here and there one may observe a world-embracing interestthat on both sides (including, therefore, the Indian, Chinese and other like'philosophies') leads to universal cognition of the world, everywheredeveloping after the manner of a sort of practical vocational interest and forquite intelligible reasons leading to vocational groups, in which fromgeneration to generation common results are transmitted and even developed. Onlywith the Greeks, however, do we find a universal ('cosmological') vitalinterest in the essentially new form of a purely 'theoretical'attitude.27 This is true, too, of the communal form in which the interest worksitself out, the corresponding, essentially new attitude of the philosophers andthe scientists (mathematicians, astronomers, etc.). These are the men who, notisolated but with each other and for each other, i.e., bound together in acommon interpersonal endeavor, strive for and carry into effect theoria and onlytheoria. These are the ones whose growth and constant improvement ultimately, asthe circle of cooperators extends and the generations of investigators succeedeach other, become a will oriented in the direction of an infinite andcompletely universal task. The theoretical attitude has its historical origin inthe Greeks.Speaking generally, attitude bespeaks ahabitually, determined manner of vital willing, wherein the will's directionsor interests, its aims and its cultural accomplishments, are preindicated andthus the overall orientation determined. In this enduring orientation taken as anorm, the individual life is lived. The concrete cultural contents change in arelatively enclosed historicity. In its historical situation mankind (or theclosed community, such as a nation, a race, etc.) always lives within theframework of some sort of attitude. Its life always has a normative orientationand within this a steady historicity or development.Thus if the theoretical attitude in its newnessis referred back to a previous, more primitive normative attitude, thetheoretical is characterized as a transformed attitude.28 Looking at thehistoricity of human existence universally in all its communal forms and in itshistorical stages, we find, then, that essentially a certain style of humanexistence (taken in formal universality) points to a primary historicity, withinwhich the actual normative style of culture-creating existence at any time, nomatter what its rise or fall or stagnation, remains formally the same. In thisregard we are speaking of the natural, the native attitude, of originallynatural life, of the first primitively natural form of cultures - be they higheror lower, uninhibitedly developing or stagnating. All other attitudes, then,refer back to these natural ones as transformations of them.29 To put it moreconcretely, in an attitude natural to one of the actual human groups in historythere must arise at a point in time motives that for the first time impelindividual men and groups having this attitude to transform it.How are we, then, to characterize theessentially primitive attitude, the fundamental historical mode of humanexistence?30 The answer: on the basis of generation men naturally live incommunities - in a family, a race, a nation - and these communities are inthemselves more or less abundantly subdivided into particular social units. Now,life on the level of nature is characterized as a naïvely direct livingimmersed in the world, in the world that in a certainsense is constantly there consciously as a universal horizon but is not, merelyby that fact, thematic. Thematic is that toward which man's attention isturned. Being genuinely alive is always having one's attention turned to thisor that, turned to something as to an end or a means, as relevant or irrelevant,interesting or indifferent, private or public, to something that is indaily demand or to something that is startlingly new. All this belongs to the worldhorizon, but there is need of special motives if the one who is caught up in such a lifein the world is to transform himself and it to come to the point where he somehowmakes this world itself his theme, where he conceives anenduring interest in it.But here more detailed explanations are needed.Individual human beings who change their attitudes as human beings belonging totheir own general vital community (their nation), have their particular naturalinterests (each his own). These they can by no change in attitude simply lose;that would mean for each ceasing to be the individual he is, the one he has beensince birth. No matter what the circumstances, then, the transformed attitudecan only be a temporary one. It can take on a lasting character that will endureas a habit throughout an entire life only in the form of an unconditionaldetermination of will to take up again the selfsame attitudes in a series ofperiods that are temporary but intimately bound together. It will mean that byvirtue of a continuity that bridges intentionally the discreteness involved, menwill hold on to the new type of interests as worth being realized and willembody them in corresponding cultural forms.31We are familiar with this sort of thing in theoccupations that make their appearance even in a naturally primitive form ofcultural life, where there are temporary periods devoted to the occupation,periods that interrupt the rest of life with its concrete temporality (e.g., theworking hours of a functionary, etc.).Now, there are two possibilities. On the onehand, the interests of the new attitude will be made subservient to the naturalinterests of life, or what is essentially the same, to natural practicality. Inthis case the new attitude is itself a practical one. This, then, can have asense similar to the practical attitude of the politician, who as a statefunctionary is attentive to the common good and whose attitude, therefore, is toserve the practical interests of all (and incidentally his own). This sort ofthing admittedly still belongs to the domain of the natural attitude, which is,of course, different for different types of community members and is in fact onething for the leaders of the community and another for the 'citizens' -both obviously understood in the broadest sense. In any event, the analogy makesit clear that the universality of a practical attitude, in this case one thatembraces a whole world, need in no way signify being interested in and occupiedwith all the details and particularities of that world - it would obviously beunthinkable.In contrast to the higher-level practicalattitude there exists, however, still another essential possibility of a changein the universal natural attitude (with which we shall soon become acquainted inits type, the mythical-religious attitude), which is to say, the theoreticalattitude - a name being given to it, of course, only provisionally, because inthis attitude philosophical theoria must undergo a development and so become itsproper aim or field of interest. The theoretical attitude, even though it too isa professional attitude, is thoroughly unpractical. Thus it is based on adeliberate epoche from all practical interests,32 and consequently even those ofa higher level, that serve natural needs within the framework of a life'soccupation governed by such practical interests.Still, it must at the same time be said thatthere is no question here of a definitive 'cutting off' of thetheoretical life from the practical. We are not saying that the concrete life ofthe theoretical thinker falls into two disconnected vital continuitiespartitioned off from each other, which would mean, socially speaking, that twospiritually unconnected spheres would come into existence. For there is still athird form of universal attitude possible (in contrast both to themythical-religious, which is based on the natural, and to the theoreticalattitudes). It is the synthesis of opposing interests that occurs in thetransition from the theoretical to the practical attitude. In this way thoeria(the universal science), whose growth has manifested a tight unity through anepoche from all practical considerations, is called upon (and even proves in atheoretical insight33 that it is called upon) to serve humanity in a new way,first of all in its concrete existence as it continues to live naturally. Thistakes place in the form of a new kind of practical outlook, a universal critiqueof all life and of its goals, of all the forms and systems of culture that havealready grown up in the life of mankind. This brings with it a critique ofmankind itself and of those values that explicitly or implicitly guide it.Carrying it to a further consequence, it is a practical outlook whose aim is toelevate mankind through universal scientific reason in accord with norms oftruth in every form, and thus to transform it into a radically new humanity madecapable of an absolute responsibility to itself on the basis of absolutetheoretical insights.34 Still, prior to this synthesis of theoreticaluniversality and a practical outlook with universal interests, there isobviously another synthesis of theory and practice - the utilization of thelimited results of theory, of those special sciences that are limited to thepractical aspects of natural life, having relinquished by their veryspecialization the universality of theoretical interest. Here the primitivelynatural attitude and the theoretical are joined together in an orientationtoward finite goals.For a profounder understanding of Greco-Europeanscience (universally speaking, this means philosophy) in its fundamentaldifference from the equally notable oriental 'philosophies', it is nownecessary to consider in more detail the practically universal attitude, and toexplain it as mythical-religious, an attitude that, prior to European science,brings those other philosophies into being. It is a well-known fact, to saynothing of an essentially obvious necessity, that mythical-religious motives anda mythical-religious practice together belong to a humanity living naturally -before Greek philosophy, and with it a scientific world view, entered on thescene and matured. A mythical-religious attitude is one that takes as its themethe world as a totality - a practical theme. The world in this case is, ofcourse, one that has a concrete, traditional significance for the men inquestion (let us say, a nation) and is thus mythically apperceived. This sort ofmythical-natural attitude embraces from the very first not only men and animalsand other infrahuman and infra-animal beings (Wesen) but also the suprahuman.The view that embraces them as a totality is a practical one; not, however, asthough man, whose natural life, after all, is such that he is actuallyinterested only in certain realities, could ever have come to the point whereeverything together would suddenly and in equal degree take on practicalrelevance. Rather, to the extent that the whole world is looked upon asdominated by mythical powers and to the extent that human destiny dependsimmediately or mediately on the way these powers rule in the world, auniversally mythical world view may have its source in practicality and is,then, itself a world view, whose interests are practical. It is understandablethat priests belonging to a priesthood in charge of both mythical-religiousinterests and of the traditions belonging to them should have motives for such amythical-religious attitude. With this priesthood these arises and spreads thelinguistically solidified 'knowledge' of these mythical powers (in thebroadest sense though of as personal). This knowledge quasi-automatically takeson the form of a mystical speculation which, by setting itself up as a naïvelyconvincing interpretation, transforms the mythos itself. At the sametime, obviously, attention is constantly directed also to the ordinary worldruled by these mythical powers and to the human and infrahuman beings belongingto it (these, incidentally, unsettled in their own essential being, are alsoopen to the influence of mythical factors). This attention looks to the ways inwhich the powers control the events of this world, the manner in which theythemselves must be subject to a unified supreme order of power, the manner inwhich they with regard to individual functions and functioners intervene byinitiating and carrying out, by handing down decrees of fate. All thisspeculative knowledge however, has as its purpose to serve man toward his humanaims, to enable him to live the happiest possible life on earth, to protect thatlife from sickness, from misfortune, need and death. It is understandable thatin this mythico-practical approach to knowing the world there can arise not alittle knowledge of the actual world, of the world known in a sort of scientificexperience, a knowledge subsequently to be subjected to a scientific evaluation.Still, this sort of knowledge is and remains mythico-practical in its logicalconnections, and it is a mistake for someone brought up in the scientific modesof thought initiated in Greece and progressively developed in modern times tospeak of Indian and Chinese philosophy (astronomy, mathematics) and thus tointerpret India, Babylonia, and China in a European way.35There is a sharp cleavage, then, between theuniversal but mythico-practical attitude and the 'theoretical', which byevery previous standard is unpractical, the attitude of thaumazein [Gr. = towonder], to which the great men of Greek philosophy's first culminatingperiod, Plato and Aristotle, trace the origin of philosophy. Men are gripped bya passion for observing and knowing the world, a passion that turns from allpractical interests and in the closed circle of its own knowing activities, inthe time devoted to this sort of investigation, accomplishes and wants toaccomplish only pure theoria36. In other words, man becomes the disinterestedspectator, overseer of the world, he becomes a philosopher. More than that, fromthis point forward his life gains a sensitivity for motives which are possibleonly to this attitude, for novel goals and methods of thought, in the frameworkof which philosophy finally comes into being and man becomes philosopher.Like everything that occurs in history, ofcourse, the introduction of the theoretical attitude has its factual motivationin the concrete circumstances of historical events. Therefore it is worth-whileto explain in this connection how, considering the manner of life and thehorizon of Greek man in the seventh century B.C., in his intercourse with thegreat and already highly cultivated nations surrounding him, that thaumazeincould introduce itself and at first become established in individuals. Regardingthis we shall not enter into greater detail; it is more important for us tounderstand the path of motivation, with its sense-giving and sense-creating,which leads from mere conversion (or from mere thaumazein), to theoria - ahistorical fact, that nevertheless must have in it something essential. It isimportant to explain the change from original theoria, from the completely'disinterested' (consequent upon the epoche from all practical interests)world view (knowledge of the world based only on universal contemplation) to thetheoria proper to science - both stages exemplifying the contrast between doxa[Gr. = opinion] and episteme [Gr. = knowledge]. The theoretical interest thatcomes on the scene as that thaumazein, is clearly a modification of curiositythat has its original place in natural life as an interruption in the course of'earnest living', as a working out of originally effected vital interests,or as a playful looking about when the specific needs of actual life have beensatisfied or working hours are past. Curiosity, too (not in the sense of anhabitual 'vice'), is a modification, an interest raised above merely vitalinterests and prescinding from them.With an attitude such as this, man observesfirst of all the variety of nations, his own and others, each with its ownenvironing world, which with its traditions, its gods and demigods, with itsmythical powers, constitutes for each nation the self-evident, real world. Inthe face of this extraordinary contrast there arises the distinction between therepresented and the real world, and a new question is raised concerning thetruth - not everyday truth bound as it is to tradition but a truth that for allthose who are not blinded by attachment to tradition is identical anduniversally valid, a truth in itself. Thus it is proper to the theoreticalattitude of the philosopher that he is more and more predetermined to devote hiswhole future life, in the sense of a universal life, to the task of theoria, tobuild theoretical knowledge upon theoretical knowledge in infinitum.37In isolated personalities, like Thales, et al.,there thus grows up a new humanity - men whose profession it is to create aphilosophical life, philosophy as a novel form of culture. Understandably theregrows up at the same time a correspondingly novel form of community living.These ideal forms are, as others understand them and make them their own, simplytaken up and made part of life. In like manner they lead to cooperative endeavorand to mutual help through criticism. Even the outsiders, the non-philosophers,have their attention drawn to the unusual activity that is going on. As theycome to understand, they either become philosophers themselves, or if they aretoo much taken up with their own work, they become pupils. Thus philosophyspreads in a twofold manner, as a widening community of professionalphilosophers and as a common educational movement growing along with the former.Here also, however, lies the origin of the subsequent, so unfortunate internalsplit in the unity of the people into educated and uneducated. Still, it isclear that this tendency to spread is not confined to the limits of theoriginating nation. Unlike all other cultural products, this is not a movementof interests bound to the soil of national traditions.Even foreigners learn intheir turn to understand and in general to share in the gigantic cultural changewhich streams forth from philosophy. Now precisely this must be furthercharacterized.As philosophy spreads in the form of researchand training, it produces a twofold effect. On the one hand, most essential tothe theoretical attitude of philosophical man is the characteristic universalityof the critical standpoint, which its determination not to accept withoutquestion any pregiven opinion, any tradition, and thus to seek out, with regardto the entire universe handed down in tradition, the true in itself - which isideal. Yet this is not merely a new way of looking at knowledge. By virtue ofthe demand to subject the whole of experience to ideal norms, i.e., those ofunconditional truth, these results at the same time an allembracing change inthe practical order of human existence and thus of cultural life in itsentirety. The practical must no longer take its norms from naïve everydayexperience and from tradition but from the objective truth.In this way ideal truth becomes an absolute value that in the movement ofeducation and in its constant application in the training of children carrieswith it a universal revision of practice. If we consider somewhat more in detailthe manner of this transformation, we shall immediately understand theinevitable: if the general idea of truth in itself becomes the universal norm ofall the relative truths that play a role in human life - actual and conjecturalsituation truths - then this fact affects all traditional norms, those of right,of beauty, of purpose, of dominant values in persons, values having a personalcharacter, etc.Thus there grows up a special type of man and aspecial vocation in life correlative to the attainment of a new culture.Philosophical knowledge of the world produces not only these special types ofresult but also a human conduct that immediately influences the rest ofpractical living with all its demands and its aims, aims of the historicaltradition according to which one is educated, thus giving these aims their ownvalidity. A new and intimate community, we might say a community of idealinterests, is cultivated among men - men who life for philosophy, united intheir dedication to ideas, which ideas are not only of use to all but areidentically the property of all. Inevitably there develops a particular kind ofcooperation whereby men work with each other and for each other, helping eachother by mutual criticism, with the result that the pure and unconditionedvalidity of truth grows as a common possession. In addition there is thenecessary tendency toward the promotion of interest, because others understandwhat is herein desired and accomplished; and this is a tendency to include moreand more as yet unphilosophical persons in the community of those whophilosophize. This occurs first of all among members of the same nation. Nor canthis expansion be confined to professional scientific research; rather itssuccess goes far beyond the professional circle, becoming an educationalmovement.Now, if this educational movement spreads toever wider circles of the people, and naturally to the superior, dominant types,to those who are less involved in the cares of life, the results are of whatsort? Obviously it does not simply bring about a homogeneous change in thenormal, on the whole satisfactory national life; rather in all probability itleads to great cleavages, wherein the national life and the entire nationalculture go into an upheaval. The conservatives, content with tradition, and thephilosophical circle will struggle against each other, and without doubt thebattle will carry over into the sphere of political power. At the very beginningof philosophy, persecution sets in. The men dedicated to those ideas areoutlawed. And yet ideas are stronger than any forces rooted in experience.38A further point to be taken into considerationhere is that philosophy, having grown out of a critical attitude to each andevery traditional predisposition, is limited in its spread by no nationalboundaries. All that must be present is the capacity for a universal criticalattitude, which too, of course, presupposes a certain level of prescientificculture. Thus can the upheaval in the national culture propagate itself, firstof all because the progressing universal science becomes a common possession ofnations that were at first strangers to each other, and then because a unifiedcommunity, both scientific and educational, extends to the majority of nations.Still another important point must be adduced;it concerns philosophy's position in regard to traditions. There are in facttwo possibilities to observe here. Either the traditionally accepted iscompletely rejected, or its content is taken over philosophically, and therebyit too is reformed in the spirit of philosophical ideality. An outstanding casein point is that of religion - from which I should like to exclude the'polytheistic religions'. Gods in the plural, mythical powers of every kind,are objects belonging to the environing world, on the same level of reality asanimal or man. In the concept of God, the singular is essential.39 Looking atthis from the side of man, moreover, it is proper that the reality of God, bothas being and as value, should be experienced as binding man interiorly. Theseresults, then, an understandable blending of this absoluteness with that ofphilosophical ideality. In the overall process of idealization that philosophyundertakes, God is, so to speak, logicized and becomes even the bearer of theabsolute logos. I should life, moreover, to see a logic in the very fact thattheologically religion invokes faith itself as evidence and thus as a proper andmost profound mode of grounding true being.40 National gods, however, are simplythere as real facts of the environing world, without anyone confrontingphilosophy with questions stemming from a critique of cognition, with questionsof evidence.Substantially, though in a somewhat sketchyfashion, we have now described the historical movement that makes understandablehow, beginning with a few Greek exceptions, a transformation of human existenceand of man's entire cultural life could be set in motion, beginning in Greeceand its nearest neighbors. Moreover, now it is also discernible how, followingupon this, a supernationality of a completely new kind could arise. I amreferring, of course, to the spiritual form of Europe. It is now no longer anumber of different nations bordering on each other, influencing each other onlyby commercial competition and war. Rather a new spirit stemming from philosophyand the sciences based on it, a spirit of free criticism providing norms forinfinite tasks, dominates man, creating new, infinite ideals. These are idealsfor individual men of each nation and for the nations themselves. Ultimately,however, the expanding synthesis of nations too has its infinite ideals, whereineach of these nations, by the very fact that it strives to accomplish its ownideal task in the spirit of infinity,41 contributes its best to the community ofnations. In this give and take the supernational totality with its gradedstructure of societies grows apace, filled with the spirit of one all-inclusivetask, infinite in the variety of its branches yet unique in its infinity. Inthis total society with its ideal orientation, philosophy itself retains therole of guide, which is its special infinite task.42 Philosophy has the role ofa free and universal theoretical disposition that embraces at once all idealsand the one overall ideal - in short, the universe of all norms. Philosophy hasconstantly to exercise through European man its role of leadership for the wholeof mankind.IIIt is now time that there be voicedmisunderstandings and doubts that are certainly very importunate and which, itseems to me, derive their suggestive force from the language of popularprejudice.Is not what is here being advocated somethingrather out of place in our times - saving the honor of rationalism, ofenlightenment, of an intellectualism that, lost in theory, is isolated from theworld, with the necessarily bad result that the quest for learning becomesempty, becomes intellectual snobbishness? Does it not mean falling back into thefatal error of thinking that science makes men wise, that science is called uponthe create a genuine humanity, superior to destiny and finding satisfaction initself? Who is going to take such thoughts seriously today?This objection certainly is relatively justifiedin regard to the state of development in Europe from the seventeenth up to theend of the nineteenth century. But it does not touch the precise sense of what Iam saying. I should like to think that I, seemingly a reactionary, am far morerevolutionary than those who today in word strike so radical a pose.I, too, am quite sure that the European crisishas its roots in a mistaken rationalism.43 That, however, must not beinterpreted as meaning that rationality as such is an evil or that in thetotality of human existence it is of minor importance. The rationality of whichalone we are speaking is rationality in that noble and genuine sense, theoriginal Greek sense, that became an ideal in the classical period of Greekphilosophy - though of course it still needed considerable clarification throughself-examination. It is its vocation, however, to serve as a guide to maturedevelopment. On the other hand, we readily grant (and in this regard Germanidealism has spoken long before us) that the form of development given to ratioin the rationalism of the Enlightenment was an aberration, but nevertheless anunderstandable aberration.Reason is a broad title. According to the goodold definition, man is the rational living being, a sense in which even thePapuan is man and not beast. He has his aims, and he acts with reflection,considering practical possibilities. As products and methods grow, they enterinto a tradition that is ever intelligible in its rationality. Still, just asman (and even the Papuan) represents a new level of animality - in comparisonwith the beast - so with regard to humanity and its reason does philosophicalreason represent a new level. The level of human existence with its ideal normsfor infinite tasks, the level of existence sub specie aeternitatis, is, however,possible only in the form of absolute universality, precisely that which is apriori included in the idea of philosophy. It is true that universal philosophy,along with all the particular sciences, constitutes only a partial manifestationof European culture. Contained, however, in the sense of my entire presentationis the claim that this part is, so to speak, the functioning brain upon whosenormal functioning the genuine, healthy spirit of Europe depends. The humanityof higher man, of reason, demands, therefore, a genuine philosophy.But at this very point there lurks a danger.'Philosophy' - in that we must certainly distinguish philosophy as ahistorical fact belonging to this or that time from philosophy as idea, idea ofan infinite task.44 The philosophy that at any particular time is hishistorically actual is the more or less successful attempt to realize theguiding idea of the infinity, and thereby the totality, of truths. Practicalideals, viewed as external poles from the line of which one cannot stray duringthe whole of life without regret, without being untrue to oneself and thusunhappy, are in this view by no means yet clear and determined; they areanticipated in an equivocal generality. Determination comes only with concretepursuit and with at least relatively successful action. Here the constant dangeris that of falling into one-sidedness and premature satisfaction, which arepunished in subsequent contradictions. Thence the contrast between the grandclaims of philosophical systems, that are all the while incompatible with eachother. Added to this are the necessity and yet the danger of specialization.In this way, of course, one-sided rationalitycan become an evil. It can also be said that it belongs to the very essence ofreason that philosophers can at first understand and accomplish their infinitetask only on the basis of an absolutely necessary onesidedness.45 In itselfthere is no absurdity here, no error. Rather, as has been remarked, the directand necessary path for reason allows it initially to grasp only one aspect ofthe task, at first without recognizing that a thorough knowledge of the entireinfinite task, the totality of being, involves still other aspects. Wheninadequacy reveals itself in obscurities and contradiction, then this becomes amotive to engage in a universal reflection. Thus the philosopher must alwayshave as his purpose to master the true and full sense of philosophy, thetotality of its infinite horizons. No one line of knowledge, no individual truthmust be absolutized. Only in such a supreme consciousness of self, which itselfbecomes a branch of the infinite task, can philosophy fulfill its function ofputting itself, and therewith a genuine humanity, on the right track. To knowthat this is the case, however, also involves once more entering the field ofknowledge proper to philosophy on the highest level of reflection upon itself.Only on the basis of this constant reflectiveness is a philosophy a universalknowledge.I have said that the course of philosophy goesthrough a period of naïveté. This, then, is the place for a critique of the so renownedirrationalism, or it is the place to uncover the naïveté of that rationalismthat passes as genuine philosophicalrationality, and that admittedly is characteristic of philosophy in the wholemodern period since the Renaissance, looking upon itself as the real and henceuniversal rationalism. Now, as they begin, all the sciences, even those whosebeginnings go back to ancient times, are unavoidably caught up in this naïveté.To put it more exactly, the most general title for this naïveté is objectivism,which is given a structure in the various types ofnaturalism, wherein the spirit is naturalized.46 Old and new philosophies wereand remain naïvely objectivistic. It is only right, however, to add that Germanidealism, beginning with Kant, was passionately concerned with overcoming the naïvetéthat had already become very sensitive. Still, it was incapable ofreally attaining to the level of superior reflectiveness that is decisive forthe new image of philosophy and of European man.What I have just said I can make intelligibleonly by a few sketchy indications. Natural man (let us assume, in thepre-philosophical period) is oriented toward the world in all his concerns andactivities. The area in which he lives and works is the environing world whichin its spatiotemporal dimensions surrounds him and of which he considers himselfa part. This continues to be true in the theoretical attitude, which at firstcan be nothing but that of the disinterested spectator of a world that isdemythologized before his eyes. Philosophy sees in the world the universe ofwhat is, and world becomes objective world over against representations of theworld - which latter change subjectively, whether on a national or an individualscale - and thus truth becomes objective truth. Thus philosophy begins ascosmology. At first, as is self-evident, it is oriented in its theoreticalinterest to corporeal nature, since in fact all spatiotemporal data do have, atleast basically, the form of corporeality. Men and beasts are not merely bodies,but to the view oriented to the environing world they appear as some sort ofcorporeal being and thus as realities included in the universalspatiotemporality. In this way all psychic events, those of this or that ego,such as experience, thinking, willing, have a certain objectivity. Communitylife, that of families, of peoples, and the like, seems then to resolve itselfinto the life of particular individuals, who are psychophysical objects. In thelight of psychophysical causality there is no purely spiritual continuity inspiritual grouping; physical nature envelops everything.The historical process of development isdefinitively marked out through this focus on the environing world. Even thehastiest glance at the corporeality present in the environing world shows thatnature is a homogeneous, unified totality, a world for itself, so to speak,surrounded by a homogeneous spatiotemporality and divided into individualthings, all similar in being res extensae and each determining the othercausally. Very quickly comes a first and greatest step in the process ofdiscovery: overcoming the finitude of nature that has been thought of asobjective-in-itself, finitude in spite of the open infinity of it. Infinity isdiscovered, and firodern life.Return to quotes about the meaning of time.Revisit The Tower of Babel. What's new on this website?Go to website Table of Contents.Return to Brad McCormick's home page.Return to site map.![[ Go to Site Map! ]](http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html/signpost.gif) ![[ Go to website Table of Contents! ]](http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html/gif/up_black.gif) ![[ Go home! (BMcC website Home page!) ]](http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html/gif/home.gif) ![[ | ]](http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html/gif/bv.gif) ![[ Learn more about Postmodernism! ]](http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html/gif/NoAOLman.gif) ![[ Leisure: Luxe, calme et volupte is the basis of culture! ]](http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html/gif/lighth glowing enthusiasm the infinite task of a mathematical knowledge ofnature and in general of a world knowledge is undertaken. The extraordinarysuccesses of natural knowledge are now to be extended to knowledge of thespirit. Reason had proved its power in nature. 'As the sun is oneall-illuminating and warming sun, so too is reason one' (Descartes).48 Themethod of natural science must also embrace the mysteries of spirit. The spiritis real49 and objectively in the world, founded as such in corporeality. Withthis the interpretation of the world immediately takes on a predominantlydualistic, i.e., psychophysical, form. The same causality -only split in two-embraces the one world; the sense of rational explanation is everywhere thesame, but in such a way that all explanation of spirit, in the only way in whichit can be universal, involves the physical. There can be no pure, self-containedsearch for an explanation of the spiritual, no purely inneroriented psychologyor theory of spirit beginning with the ego in psychical self-experience andextending to the other psyche.50 The way that must be traveled is the externalone, the path of physics and chemistry. All the fond talk of common spirit, ofthe common will of a people, of nations' ideal political goals, and the like,are romanticism and mythology, derived from an analogous application of conceptsthat have a proper sense only in the individual personal sphere. Spiritual beingis fragmentary. To the question regarding the source of all these difficultiesthe following answer is to be given: this objectivism or this psychophysicalinterpretation of the world, despite its seeming self-evidence, is a naïveone-sidedness that never was understood to be such. To speak of thespirit as reality (Realitat), presumably a real (realen) annex to bodies andhaving its supposedly spatiotemporal being within nature, is an absurdity.At this point, however, it is important for ourproblem of the crisis to show how it is that the 'modern age', that has forcenturies been so proud of its successes in theory and practice, has itselffinally fallen into a growing dissatisfaction and must even look upon its ownsituation as distressful. Want has invaded all the sciences, most recently as awant of method. Moreover, the want that grips us Europeans, even though it isnot understood, involves very many persons.51There are all sorts of problems that stem fromnaïveté, according to which objectivistic science holds what it calls theobjective world to be the totality of what is, without paying any attention tothe fact that no objective science can do justice to the subjectivity thatachieves science. One who has been trained in the natural sciences finds itself-evident that whatever is merely subjective must be eliminated and that themethod of natural science, formulated according to a subjective mode ofrepresentation, is objectively determined. In the same manner he seeks what isobjectively true for the psychic too. By the same token, it is taken for grantedthat the subjective, eliminated by the physical scientist, is, precisely aspsychic, to be investigated in psychology and of course in psychophysicalpsychology. The investigator of nature, however, does not make it clear tohimself that the constant foundation of his admittedly subjective thinkingactivity is the environing world of life. This latter is constantly presupposedas the basic working area, in which alone his questions and his methodology makesense. Where, at the present time, is that powerful bit of method that leadsfrom the intuitive environing world to the idealizing of mathematics and itsinterpretation as objective being, subjected to criticism and clarification?Einstein's revolutionary changes concern the formulas wherein idealized and naïvelyobjectivized nature (physis) is treated. But regarding the questionof how formulas or mathematical objectification in general are given a sensebased on life and the intuitive environing world, of this we hear nothing. ThusEinstein does nothing to reformulate the space and time in which our actual lifetakes place.Mathematical science of nature is a technicalmarvel for the purpose of accomplishing inductrions whose fruitfulness,probability, exactitude, and calculability could previously not even besuspected. As an accomplishment it is a triumph of the human spirit. With regardto the rationality of its methods and theories, however, it is a thoroughlyrelative science. It presupposes as data principles that are themselvesthoroughly lacking in actual rationality. In so far as the intuitive environingworld, purely subjective as it is, is forgotten in the scientific thematic, theworking subject is also forgotten, and the scientist is not studied.52 (Thusfrom this point of view the rationality of the exact sciences is on a level withthe rationality of the Egyptian pyramids).It is true, of course, that since Kant we have aspecial theory of knowledge, and on the other hand there is psychology, whichwith its claims to scientific exactitude wants to be the universal fundamentalscience of the spirit. Still, our hope for real rationality, i.e., for realinsight,53 is disappointed here as elsewhere. The psychologists simply fail tosee that they too study neither themselves nor the scientists who are doing theinvestigating nor their own vital environing world. They do not see that fromthe very beginning they necessarily presuppose themselves as a group of menbelonging to their own environing world and historical period. By the sametoken, they do not see that in pursuing their aims they are seeking a truth initself, universally valid for every-one. By its objectivism psychology simplycannot make a study of the sould in its properly essential sense, which is tosay, the ego that acts and is acted upon. Though by determining the bodilyfunction involved in an experience of evaluating or willing, it may objectifythe experience and handle it inductively, can it do the same for purposes,values, norms? Can it study reason as some sort of 'disposition'? Completelyignored is the fact that objectivism, as the genuine work of the investigatorintent upon finding true norms, presupposes just such norms; that objectivismrefuses to be inferred from facts, since in the process facts are alreadyintended as truths and not as illusions. It is true, of course, that thereexists a feeling for the difficulties present here, with the result that thedispute over psychologism is fanned into a flame. Nothing is accomplished,however, by rejecting a psychological grounding of norms, above all of norms fortruth in itself. More and more perceptible becomes the overall need for a reformof modern psychology in its entirety. As yet, however, it is not understood thatpsychology through its objectivism has been found wanting; that it simply failsto get at the proper essence of spirit; that in isolating the soul and making itan object of thought, that in reinterpreting psychophysicallybeing-in-community, it is being absurd. True, it has not labored in vain, and ithas established many empirical rules, even practically worthwhile ones. Yet itis no more a real psychology than moral statistics with its no less worthwhileknowledge is a moral science.54In our time we everywhere meet the burning needfor an understanding of spirit, while the unclarity of the methodological andfactual connection between the natural sciences and the sciences of the spirithas become almost unbearable. Dilthey, one of the greatest scientists of thespirit, has directed his whole vital energy to clarifying the connection betweennature and spirit, to clarifying the role of psychophysical psychology, which hethinks is to be complemented by a new, descriptive and analytic psychology.Efforts by Windelband and Rickert have likewise, unfortunately, not brought thedesired insight. Like everyone else, these men are still committed toobjectivism. Worst of all are the new psychological reformers, who are of theopinion that the entire fault lies in the long-dominant atomistic prejudice,that a new era has been introduced with wholistic psychology(Ganzheitspsychologie). There can, however, never be any improvement so long asan objectivism based on a naturalistic focusing on the environing world is notseen in all its naïveté, until men recognize thoroughly the absurdity of thedualistic interpretation of the world, according to which nature and spirit areto be looked upon as realities (Realitäten) in the same sense. In allseriousness my opinion is this: there never has nor ever will be an objectivescience of spirit, an objective theory of the soul, objective in the sense thatit permits the attribution of an existence under the forms of spatio-temporalityto souls or to communities of persons.The spirit and in fact only the spirit is abeing in itself and for itself; it is autonomous and is capable of being handledin a genuinely rational, genuinely and thoroughly scientific way only in thisautonomy55. In regard to nature and scientific truth concerning it, however, thenatural sciences give merely the appearance of having brought nature to a pointwhere for itself it is rationally known. For true nature in its properscientific sense is a product of the spirit that investigates nature, and thusthe science of nature presupposes the science of the spirit. The spirit isessentially qualified to exercise self-knowledge, and as scientific spirit toexercise scientific self-knowledge, and over and over again. Only in the kind ofpure knowledge proper to science of the spirit is the scientist unaffected byobjection that his accomplishment is delf-concealing56. As s consequence, it isabsurd for the sciences of the spirit to dispute with the sciences of nature forequal rights. To the extent that the former concede to the latter that theirobjectivity is an autonomy, they are themselves victims of objectivism.Moreover, in the way the sciences of the spirit are at present developed, withtheir manifold disciplines, they forfeit the unlimate, actual rationality whichthe spiritual Weltanschauung makes possible. Precisely this lack of genuinerationality on all sides is the source of what has become for man an unbearableunclarity regarding his own existence and his infinite tasks. These last areinseparably united in one task: only if the spirit returns to itself from its naïveexteriorization, clinging to itself and purely to itself, can it be adequate toitself57.Now, how did the beginning of such aself-examination come about? A beginning was impossible so long as sensualism,or better, a psychology of data, a tabula rasa psychology, held the field. Onlywhen Brentano promoted psychology to being a science of vital intentionalexperiences was an impulse given that could lead further - though Brentanohimself had not yet overcome objectivism and psychological naturalism58. Thedevelopment of a real method of grasping the fundamental essence of spirit inits intentionalities and consequently of instituting an analysis of spirit witha consistency reaching to the infinite, led to transcendental phenomenology. Itwas this that overcame naturalistic objectivism, and for that matter any form ofobjectivism, in the only possible way, by beginning one's philosophizing fromone's own ego; and that purely as the author of all one accepts, becoming inthis regard a purely theoretical spectator. This attitude brings about thesuccessful institution of an absolutely autonomous science of spirit in the formof a consistent understanding of self and of the world as a spiritualaccomplishment. Spirit is not looked upon here as part of nature or parallel toit; rather nature belongs to the sphere of spirit. Then, too, the ego is nolonger an isolated thing alongside other such things in a pregiven world. Theserious problem of personal egos external to or alongside of each other comes toan end in favor of an intimate relation of beings in each other and for eachother.Regarding this question of interpersonalrelations, nothing can be said here; no one lecture could exhaust the topic. Ido hope, however, to have shown that we are not renewing here the oldrationalism, which was an absurd naturalism, utterly incapable of grasping theproblems of spirit that concern us most. The ratio now in question is none otherthan spirit understanding itself in a really universal, really radical manner,in the form of a science whose scope is universal, wherein an entirely newscientific thinking is established in which every conceivable question, whetherof being, of norm, or of so-called 'existence'59, finds its place. It is myconviction that intentional phenomenology has for the first time made spirit asspirit the field of systematic, scientific experience, thus effecting a totaltransformation of the task of knowledge. The universality of the absolute spiritembraces all being in a absolute historicity, into which nature fits as aproduct of spirit. It is intentional, which is to say transcendentalphenomenology that sheds light on the subject by virtue of its point ofdeparture and its methods. Only when seen from the phenomenological point ofview is naturalistic objectivism, along with the profoundest reasons for it, tobe understood. Above all, phenomenology makes clear that, because of itsnaturalism, psychology simply could not come to terms with the activity and theproperly radical problem of spirit's life.<b>III</b>Let us summarize the fundamental notions of whatwe have sketched here. The 'crisis of European existence', which manifestsitself in countless symptoms of a corrupted life, is no obscure fate, noimpenetrable destiny. Instead, it becomes manifestly understandable against thebackground of the philosophically discoverable 'teleology of Europeanhistory'. As a presupposition of this understanding, however, the phenomenon'Europe' is to be grasped in its essential core. To get the concept of whatis contra-essential in the present 'crisis', the concept 'Europe' wouldhave to be developed as the historical teleology of infinite goals of reason; itwould have to be shown how the European 'world' was born from ideas ofreason, i.e., from the spirit of philosophy60. The 'crisis' could thenbecome clear as the 'seeming collapse of rationalism'. Still, as we said,the reason for the downfall of a rational culture does not lie in the essence ofrationalism itself but only in its exteriorization, its absorption in'naturalism' and 'objectivism'.The crisis of European existence can end in onlyone of two ways: in the ruin of a Europe alienated from its rational sense oflife, fallen into a barbarian hatred of spirit; or in the rebirth of Europe fromthe spirit of philosophy, through a heroism of reason that will definitivelyovercome naturalism. Europe's greatest danger is weariness. Let us as 'goodEuropeans' do battle with this danger of dangers with the sort of courage thatdoes not shirk even the endless battle. If we do, then from the annihilatingconflagration of disbelief, from the fiery torrent of despair regarding theWest's mission to humanity, from the ashes of the great weariness, the phoenixof a new inner life of the spirit will arise as the underpinning of a great anddistant human future, for the spirit alone is immortal. <b>NOTES</b>1. It is unquestionable that 'Western man' would be a happier expressionin the context. Husserl, however, speaks of europäischen Menschentums, which,as will be seen later, must be <b>translated</b> as 'European man' if the rest ofthe text is to make sense.2. Geisteswissenschaften: In certain contexts it will be necessary totranslate this term more literally as 'sciences of the spirit'. This will beparticularly true where the term occurs in the singular. cf. p. 154 n. 1 and n.10 infra.3. The notion of 'horizon', which played such an important part in<b>Husserl's</b> earlier writings, has here taken on a somewhat broader connotation.Formerly it signified primarily those concomitant elements in consciousness thatare given, without being the direct object of the act of consciousness underconsideration. In every act of consciousness there are aspects of the objectthat are not directly intended but which are recognized, either by recall oranticipation, as belonging to the object intended. These aspects constitute itshorizon. In the present essay 'the community as a horizon' signifies theframework in which experience occurs, conditioning that experience and supplyingthe diverse aspects of objectivity that are not directly intended in any one actof consciousness.4. I am using an expression borrowed from Dewey to translate the HusserlianUmwelt, a term Husserl uses frequently only in his last period. In the light ofthe Cartesian Meditations we must remember that though such a world issubjectively 'constituted', it is still not a private world, since itsconstitution is ultimately 'intersubjective'.5. Like Kant, Husserl saw 'necessity' and 'universality' as the<b>notes</b> that characterize genuinely valid objectivity. Not until his later works(Ideen II and Cartesian Meditations), however, does he explicitly see'intersubjective constitution' as the ultimate concrete foundation foruniversal objectivity.6. Here Husserl is giving to the term 'intuition' the limited meaning ofsense intuition that it has for Kant.7. Geistigkeit: Following a decision to translate 'Geist' as'spirit' rather than as 'mind', we are forced into a somewhatuncomfortable translation of the present abstraction. The embarrassment becomesacute when reference is made to the 'spirituality' of animals (cf. n. 8infra), but it is not likely that 'mentality' would be any lessembarrassing.8. Where there is consciousness, there is spirit, and in animals there isconsciousness. For Husserl, self-consciousness is a mark of 'personality'rather than 'spirituality'.9. In this connection one should consult the Second Cartesian Meditation,where Husserl insists that the only reality that the world can have for one whowould approach it scientifically is a phenomenal reality. If we are tounderstand it scientifically, our analysis of it must be purelyphenomenological, i.e., it is the phenomenon 'world' that we must analyze.'We shall direct our attention to the fact that phenomenological epoche laysopen (to me, the meditating philosopher) an infinite realm of being of a newkind, as the sphere of a new kind of experience: transcendental experience'(Cartesian Meditations, p. 66). Cf. ibid., p. 69: 'Now, however, we areenvisaging a science that is, so to speak, absolutely subjective, whose thematicobject exists whether of not the world exists'.10. Because of the context here, it is imperative that'Geisteswissenschaft' not be <b>translated</b> as 'humanistic science'.11. From his earliest days Husserl never tired of insisting that there can beno 'natural science' of science itself. It is the theme of LogischeUntersuchungen and is perhaps most eloquently expressed in Formale undtranszendentale Logik, whose purpose is to develop a 'science of science',which, Husserl holds, can be only a transcendental (constitutive) phenomenology.12. Stämmen: Literally the term means 'stocks', but the English wordcould scarcely be unambiguous in the context.13. Not only is Europe, according to Husserl, the birthplace of philosophyand the sciences, but it is philosophy and the sciences that more than anythingelse have made European culture unique, have given it its most distinguishingcharacteristic.14. Oswald Menghin, Weltgeschichte der Steinzeit (Vienna: A. Schroll, 1931).15. The tacit beginning of all <b>Husserl's</b> philosophizing is the valuejudgement that the rational life, in the sense in which he understands it, isthe best life. But unlike Hegel, he has not excogitated a philosophy of historyto justify this judgment.16. Nature is precisely that which does repeat constantly (despiteevolution). It is characteristic of natural species that their members followeach other in the same identifiable form. Spirit, however, is an ongoingtotality, never reaching maturity, never reproducing itself in the same form.17. This notion of 'intentional guide', of 'clue', is developed in No21 of the Second Cartesian Meditation. Husserl recognizes a subjective factor -here 'anticipation' - as guiding the manner in which objects - here historyitself - are intentionally 'constituted'.18. Husserl was never particularly concerned with historical accuracy, evenin his choice of terminology. Apart from the anachronism involved in applyingthe term 'nation' to the loose unities of the ancient world, 'Greek'itself is a term that covers a somewhat heterogeneous grouping in the seventhand sixth centuries B.C.19. Despite the embarrassments involved in certain contexts, I have chosen totranslate Einstellung for the most part by 'attitude'. The German termindicates a focusing of attention in a particular way. There is no way inEnglish of rendering the play on words involved in the opposition ofEinstellung-Umstellung, which latter is more than a mere 'change' ofattitude; 'reorientation' of attitude is more like it.20. This is <b>Husserl's</b> somewhat unwieldy way of indicating that the overallinterest in being breaks down into particular interests in types or classes ofbeing - which are the objects of particular sciences.21. Here, near the end of his life, Husserl retains the theme he haddeveloped so many years earlier in 'Philosophy as Rigorous Science'. Theideal of philosophy and the particular sciences is the same; differences are tobe traced to the degree of universality involved in the one and the other. Theentire book Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschafften is devoted todeveloping this theme historically.22. Under the verbiage of this extremely difficult paragraph is hidden aprofound insight into thetransformation that takes place in men when they begin to look beyond facts toideas. The only way to describe the horizon thus opened is to call it'infinite'. Whether this began only with the Greeks is, of course, open todispute. Still, the Greeks are the intellectual first parents of Western man.23. With the advent of philosophical and scientific ideals history itselfbecomes historical in an new and more profound sense. It is unfortunate, however, that Husserl fails to see history as theprogressive concretization of the ideal.24. It would seem that in terms of ideas the world scientific community isfar more closely knit than is the philosophical community. The type of unity,however, is analogous in both cases. Husserl would not like to admit that thedifferences are due to essential differences in the disciplines themselves. Itis questionable that the sort of unity achieved in science is even desirable inphilosophy.25. For Husserl, truth is, so to speak, a Platonic Idea, in relation to whichany particular truth is but a participation.26. If 'everyone' simply includes the sum total of all existing subjects,it does not have the universal significance that Husserl demands. In the sensein which he understands it, 'universal' is inseparable from 'essential'.One is reminded of the critics who accuse Husserl of being 'scholastic'. Cf.p. 82 supra.27. The attitude that pursues 'knowledge for its own sake'. It isprecisely in this that the 'infinity' of the horizon consists' there is noassignable practical goal in which its interests can terminate.28. Here the play on words involved in Einstellung and Umstellung is impossible to render in English.29. In <b>Husserl's</b> view, the beginning of a philosophical (of scientific)focusing of attention on the environing world - as opposed to a naïve,mythical, or poetic attitude - represents the most important revolution in thehistory of human thought. At the same time, he sees this revolution ascontinuous with previous attitudes, since it is a transformation of them - notan elimination - something is common to the old and the new.30. That man's Einstellung in regard to the world about him should, forHusserl, be the most of human existence seems to imply some affinity betweenthis position and that which Heidegger expresses by In-der-Welt-sein. WhetherHusserl was influenced by his own student in this cannot be determined (cf.Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, I, p. 300). It may or may not besignificant that this theme appears in <b>Husserl's</b> writings only after thepublication of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (19.... Time, New York: Harper &Row, 1962).31. Neither philosophy nor science nor, for that matter, any professionalinterest can become the exclusive interest in any man's life. But it is truethat one is designated philosopher, scientist, etc., by the predominant interestwhich has an intentional continuity throughout all the occupations of his dailylife.32. In a somewhat different context the meaning of epoche here parallels itstechnical meaning as employed, for example, in Ideen I. It is neither anelimination of nor a prescinding from other interests. Rather, it simply 'putsthem in brackets', thus retaining them, but allowing them in no way toinfluence theoretical considerations.33. I.e., in a phenomenological essential intuition.34. Since <b>Husserl's</b> philosophical life was devoted almost exclusively tothe programmatic aspects of phenomenology - getting it 'off the ground', soto speak - he found little time himself for the sort of thing he describes here.But many of his students did. Much of the contemporary interest in Husserl,manifested in a wide variety of areas, is due to a desire to learn how to dowhat Husserl suggests.35. Aside from the fact that he knows little or nothing of Eastern thought,Husserl here repeats the arbitrariness of 'Philosophy as Rigorous Science',where he simply decides what philosophy is (in an essential intuition, ofcourse) and refuses to dignify with that name whatever does not measure up.36. Despite <b>Husserl's</b> insistence here and elsewhere that this is Plato'sattitude, there is little justification for his failing to recognize thatPlato's purpose, even in his most 'theoretical' investigations, iseminently practical. In a somewhat different meaning, the same can be said forAristotle.37. To characterize 'essentially' the 'path of motivation' from merecuriosity about the world to a universal philosophical science of the world is,of course, extremely aprioristic. We are simply told how it must have been (thedanger of all 'essential' intuition). It remains true, however, that thereis no better <b>introduction</b> to philosophy than a history of the pre-Socraticattempts to know the secrets of the world - without doing anything about it.38. One is reminded of the contrast made by Aristotle between 'men ofexperience' and 'men of science' (Metaph. A 981a). In a more striking waySocrates met this in his conflict with the 'practical' politicians of hisday.39. Again, a phenomenological essential intuition, that says nothingregarding the 'existence' of God.40. Nowhere, it seems, has Husserl developed this profound insight wherein hesees faith as a special kind of evidence, permitting theology, too, to be ascience. In different ways this is developed by Scheler in his philosophy ofreligion, by Van der Leeuw and Hering in their phenomenology of religion, and byOtto in his investigations of 'the sacred'.41. Im Geiste der Unendlichkeit: The expression, scarcely translatable intoEnglish, bespeaks a spirit that refuses to stop short of infinity in its pursuitof truth. In Husserl himself, one hesitates to see it as a plea for ametaphysics, but in a Scheler, a Heidegger, a Conrad-Martius, it becomes justthat; cf. Peter Wust, Die Auferstehung der Metaphysik (Leipzig, 1920).42. In Formale und transzendentale Logik Husserl calls philosophy the'science of all sciences', which is to say, it provides the norms wherebyany science can be worthy of the name.43. <b>Husserl's</b> constant plea has been for a return to the 'rationalism'of Socrates and Plato (cf. 'Philosophy as Regorous Science', p. 76 supra),not to the rationalism of seventeenth - and eighteenth - century Europe. His owninspiration, however, is traceable far more to Descartes, Hume, and Kant than toSocrates and Plato.44. The philosophia perennis that, like a Platonic Idea, is eternallychangeless amid the varying participations that we can call 'philosophies'.45. One is reminded of <b>Husserl's</b> insistence in the Cartesian Meditations(pp. 121-35) that a successful phenomenological philosophy must being assolipsism, moving on to an intersubjectivity only after it has been established on a solipsistic basis. In this Husserl once more derives his inspirationfrom seventeenth - and eighteenth - century rationalism.46. The theme is familiar from the whole first part of 'Philosophy asRigorous Science'.47. Democritus, who flourished two hundred years after Thales, was acontemporary of Socrates. Thus he belongs more properly to the 'golden age'of Greek philosophy than to the 'early stages'.48. Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Rele 1. The quotation is verballyinaccurate (probably from memory), but the sense is the same.49. For Husserl, real has a distinctively different meaning from reell. Theformer is applied only to thematerial world of facts; the latter belongs to the ideal world ofintentionality. Cf. Ideen I, pp. 218-20.50. Cf. <b>Husserl's</b> Encyclopaedia Britannica article, 'Phenomenology',where he develops the notion of a 'pure' psychology independent ofpsychophysical considerations.51. The play upon the word Not is impossible to render here. The situation ofmodern science is described as a Notlage, which can be <b>translated</b> as a'situation of distress'. By itself Not can mean 'need', 'want','suffering', etc. The word is used three times, and there is a shade ofdifference in meaning each time it is used.52. The work of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr has shown how quantummechanics and nuclear physics have high-lighted precisely the problem Husserlbrings out here.53. It is axiomatic for Husserl that only insight can reveal 'essences'and that only a knowledge of essences can be ultimately scientific. That thisinsight should be at once intuitive and constitutive is peculiar to theHusserlian theory of intentionality; cf. my La phenomenologie de Husserl, pp.31-34.54. <b>Husserl's</b> judgment of 'phychologism' was no less severe at the endof his life than it was when he wrote 'Philosophy as Rigorous Science'.55. 'Dualism' and 'monism' are terms whose meanings are not easilydetermined. As a convinced 'idealist' Husserl considered himself a monist,and he criticized Kant strongly for remaining a dualist. Hegel, on the otherhand, criticizes Fichte (whom Husserl resembles closely in this) for not havingescaped dualism. One might well make a case for designating as monism a theorythat accepts only one kind of reality, to which both matter and spirit (of the'factual' and the 'ideal') belong. By this criterion <b>Husserl's</b>distinction would be 'dualistic'. Perhaps the best that can be said is thatHusserl is, in intention at least, epistemologically a monist. Spirit alone isbeing in the full sense, because only of spirit can there be science in the fullsense. One conclusion from all this, it would seem, is that the terminologyinvolved bears revision.56. If the proper function of true science is to know 'essences', thereseems little question that the sciences of nature neither perform nor pretend toperform this function. If, in addition, essences are, only insofar as they are'constituted' in consciousness (ultimately spirit), then only a science ofspirit can legitimately lay claim to the title.57. One is reminded of Hegel's dictum that when reason is conscious toitself of being all reality, it is spirit. The difference in the paths by whichHegel and Husserl arrive at this conclusion should be obvious.58. For his part, Brentano complained that his theory of intentionality hadbeen transformed by Husserl into an a priori idealism.59. Existenz: Husserl was never particularly sympathetic to'existentialism'. To him it smacked too mach of irrationalism. A rationalscience of philosophy could only be an essentialism. In such a science,existence could be significant only as 'possible existence'.60. Though <b>Husserl's</b> 'historical erudition' frequently leaves much tobe desired, there is a profound insight here. It is the spirit of philosophyconceived in ancient Greece that throughout the centuries has guided theintellectual life of the West. Note: see on-line resources on E. Husserl at theHusserl Page.Return to Husserl quote page(<i>Philosophy and daily life</i>).Go to <i>The Husserl Page</i> (Husserl resources). Leisure is the basis of culture.<img src=) Learn Jan Szczepanski's ideas concerning Individuality and Society.Read Garrett Hardin's classic essay: The Tragedy of the Commons.See also my page on Freud's Civilization and its Discontents.How can a city deserve to exist? (Louis Kahn) Our Century: "The century of barbed wire".Think about The Decline of The West: Is the adventure over?Read transcript of excellent BBC documentary how America and "The West" gotto where we are in 2005: The Power of Nightmares. Visit (BMcC) architecture design to think about The Decline of The West (Le Pavillion d'Un). Return to Essays page (17th c. Chinese reception of Jesuit missionaries).Return to Brad McCormick's dissertation abstract (+ Table of contents). Return to Brad McCormick's dissertation bibliography.Return to Postmodernism background info page.Return to page on constructive use of myth in modern life.Return to quotes about the meaning of time.Revisit The Tower of Babel. What's new on this website?Go to website Table of Contents.Return to Brad McCormick's home page.Return to site map. http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.htmlCopyright © 2000-2003 Brad McCormick, Ed.D.bradmcc@cloud9.net ![[ Email me! ]](http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html/gif/email2me.gif) 26 April 2008CE (2008-04-26 ISO 8601)v05.00![[ Visit building to study The Decline of The West! ]](http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html/jpg/onea_thumb.jpg) Please find more resources for Europe, at:![[ Visit The European Prospect: European Union! ]](http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html/gif/eu-prosp-sig.gif) ![[ Remember, reflect, renew.... ]](http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html/sq/cycle2.gif) ![[ HTML 3.2 Checked! 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