This article is an attempt to formulate a clear definition of the concept of crisis of Western sciences introduced by Husserl in his last work. The attempt will be based on a reading of the Krisis, which will stress its underlying continuity with Husserl’s life-long concerns about the theoretical insufficiency of positive sciences, and downplay the novelty of the idea of crisis itself within Husserl’s work. After insisting on the fact that, according to Husserl, only an account of the shortcomings (...) of the scientificity of Western sciences can justify the claim that they are undergoing a crisis, it will be argued that the common definition of the crisis of the sciences as the loss of their significance for life rests on a misunderstanding. The crisis of Western sciences will be characterized, instead, as the repercussion of the crisis of the scientificity of philosophy on the scientificity of positive sciences. The loss of significance of scientific knowledge for our existence will in turn appear as a further, inevitable consequence of the uprooting of the sciences from the soil of a universal philosophy culminating in metaphysics, and thus, as a phenomenon deeply intertwined with the crisis of Western sciences, but not identical to it. (shrink)

I document Husserl’s growing interest in the foundational character of Greek philosophy for Western culture and show what is unique about Husserl’s appropriation of certain Greek thinkers and conce...

In The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl argues that the only way to respond to the scientific Krisis of which he speaks is with phenomenological reflections on the history, method, and task of philosophy. On the assumption that an accurate diagnosis of a malady is a necessary condition for an effective remedy, this paper aims to formulate a precise concept of the Krisis of the European sciences with which Husserl operates in this work. Thus it seeks (...) an answer to the question: What exactly, according to Husserl, is “the ‘crisis’ [Krisis] of the European sciences”? There are two different tendencies in the literature on this question. According to the traditional interpretation, the Krisis of the European sciences lies not in the inadequacy of their scientificity but in the loss of their meaningfulness for life. According to an innovative suggestion, the Krisis lies not in the loss of their meaningfulness for life but in the inadequacy of their scientificity. These readings are mutually exclusive because each claims that the other misidentifies the Krisis as something that it is not. The argument of this paper, however, is that, given the many different senses of Krisis in The Crisis, an adequate understanding of the Krisis that Husserl identifies requires not a disjunctive but an inclusive approach. Therefore the paper proposes that Husserl’s Krisis of the European sciences is both a crisis of their scientificity and a crisis of their meaningfulness for life. The relevance of this result to Husserl’s philosophical and historical sense-investigations in The Crisis—as well as to the present critical situation of philosophy—is self-evident. (shrink)

En este ensayo su autor revisita el tópico fenomenología trascendental e historia 12 años después de la publicación de un trabajo amplio sobre el tema. El escrito esta dividido en tres partes donde se muestras acuerdos y discrepancias con esa interpretación inicial. En la primera se rebate la tesis tan extendida de que la fenomenología de Husserl es alérgica a la historia y se establece una conjetura razonable sobre por qué, y a pesar de la evidencias en contra, sigue todavía (...) bastante vigente esa idea entre los no versados en su obra. En la segunda parte, se muestra en positivo la articulación entre fenomenología e historia y se concluye que la manera quizá más adecuada de entender el sentido último del pensamiento de Husserl es comprenderlo como una teoría transcendental de la historia. Para mostrar esto se expondrá, en primer lugar, el hecho crucial del paso de la fenomenología estática a la fenomenología genética. En segundo lugar, se incidirá en la mutua interconexión entre historia intencional, a priori de la historia y filosofía o teleología de la historia. Por fin, en una tercera y última parte, se realizan algunas valoraciones críticas de las ideas husserlianas. También una autocrítica de algunas partes del mencionado trabajo publicado hace 12 años. Todas tienen que ver, en última instancia, con lo que hoy entiendo como excesiva potencia de la teleología de la historia y la idea de racionalidad y fundamento que la animan.In this essay, the author revisits the topic transcendental phenomenology and history 12 years after the publication of a book on the subject. The paper is divided into three parts and shows agreements and discrepancies with that initial interpretation. The first part contradicts the widespread thesis that Husserl's phenomenology is allergic to history, and develops a conjecture about why, despite the evidence to the contrary, this thesis is still quite common among those not strictly versed in Husserl’s work. The second part shows the positive articulation among phenomenology and history. It concludes that the best way to understand the ultimate meaning of Husserl's thought is considering it as a transcendental theory of history. In order to show the plausibility of this reading, this part of the essay will expose, first, the step from static to genetic phenomenology, and secondly, the mutual interconnection between intentional history, a priori of history, and philosophy or teleology of history. Finally, in a third and final part, some critical assessments of Husserl's ideas are made, also a criticism of the mentioned book of the author of the paper published 12 years ago. They are concerned, ultimately, with what I now understand as an excessive power of teleology of history and the idea of rationality and foundation that animates it. (shrink)

The liberal approach to ethics quite naturally tends toward the classic individualistic theory of society, to reductionism or psychologism so-called, that is, to a reduction of all social action to individual action. For example, liberalism allows one to experiment with new medications on one's own body. By extension, liberalism allows one to experiment, it seems, on another person's body with new medication if one acts as the other person's agent, that is, if one has the other person's proper consent. We (...) all know that new medicines are introduced into the market experimentally; indeed, government agencies, such as food and drug administrations, are supposed to supervise such experimentations and eliminate from the market as quickly as possible new (or old) medications that prove harmful. Hence, the very introduction of a new medicine into the market requires the consent of the public - in the form of proper permits to manufacture and market new (and old) drugs and other medications. Yet there is a flaw in this description. The act of permission is not made by individual citizens to doctors who act as their agents. (shrink)

Loss of self is widely regarded to be a consequence of dementia, and this perceived loss presents a variety of problems - not least because a clear understanding of the concept of self is elusive. This paper suggests a way to cut through problems that arise because we rely on conceptions of self in our understanding of the effects of dementia. It is proposed that we can avoid reliance on the concept of self through an approach based in in bio-phenomenology. (...) Such an approach would help us better understand the inner life of those with dementia and assist us to recognize that even in late stage dementia they are semiotic subjects with unique value. (shrink)

The idea that science explains or ought to explain every phenomenon finds Cartesian dualism of mind and body to be an unsatisfactory thesis. Consequently we have a variety of materialist theories regarding mind and consciousness. In recent times, we come across many philosophers who are committed to the scientific world picture, trying to locate mind within a world that is essentially physical.The central problems these philosophers have to tackle consist of consciousness and mental causation. In what follows we discuss how (...) Husserlian phenomenology responds to this debate. (shrink)

The state of our current world has brought about a very active discussion concerning possible alternatives to our current society. In this article, I wish to consider Marx’s idea of communism as a possible alternative, by understanding it as an undetermined concept that only proposes a society without classes and private property. The thesis I will defend here is that we can meaningfully think about such an alternative through the means of Science Fiction literature. In particular, I will take Ursula (...) Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (2006) as a case study. To clarify this relation between science fiction (SF) literature and communism as a particular case of an alternative society, I will introduce some concepts of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological theory. Thus, I shall argue that in SF we can presentify in bounded phantasy an alternative lifeworld, so furnishing with content the undetermined idea, and in doing so, strengthen the belief in the possibility of such an alternative society. (shrink)