Abstract

Confronted with the situation of profound crisis in which contemporary European culture finds itself, it is necessary, according to E. Husserl, to reflect upon the origins of this loss of meaning, a loss which is linked to a particular stance of the objective sciences that is utterly disjointed from the life-world. The article represents an attempt to ascertain the fundamental concerns that were present from the beginning of phenomenology in Husserl's thought vis-à-vis the sciences. Beginning with Husserl's initial interest in the foundation of the formal sciences, the article seeks to specify the problematic kernel of Husserl's debate with the sciences, centred on the concept of experience. By means of a transformation of meaning which occurs in the sphere of the world of experience, an avenue is opened up to the life-world, which reveals itself to be the foundation of the sciences, to which the latter must constantly be related. The crisis of the sciences will only be overcome through a return to the praxis of human responsibility as this is lived in connection with, and in the horizon of, the life-world