Philosophy and the Disdain for History: Reflections on Husserl's Ergänzungsband to the Crisis

Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1):95-116 (1996)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Philosophy and the Disdain for History: Reflections on Husserl's Ergiinzungsband to the Crisis GAIL SOFFER HUSSERL'S RECENTLY PUBLISHED Erganzungsband to the Cr/s/s' is a highly inti- mate statement, almost a confession, of hope and despair at the end of a philosophical life, a compendium of urgent, world-historical tasks not yet laid to rest. Above all, it abounds in reflections on history. In these, two things are poignantly clear: the late Husserl is completely convinced that history is of the utmost importance to philosophy; he is not certain why. On a superfi- cial interpretation, the reason may seem obvious: Husserl's philosophical proj- ect is founded on the ideal of presuppositionless rational insight, and hence is Cartesian and ahistorical in its essence. The turn to history is to something external, and an implicit admission of the limitations of phenomenology itself, its inability to address the most pressing and meaningful problems of human existence: the crisis in European society and values, the ultimate significance of a man's life, work, and death. For those who would seek external motives for Husserl's turn to history, material is not lacking in this volume. There are moving philosophical discussions -- set in the atemporal phenomenological present tense -- of nationalism, of territoriality and the search for Lebensraum, of racism and xenophobia, of the forced emigration of families to a "no man's land. '' There is an attack on..

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Philosophy and the disdain for history: Reflections on Husserl's.Gail Soffer - 1996 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1):95-116.
Husserl's "crisis": Reflections on the relationship of philosophy and history.James C. Morrison - 1977 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 37 (3):312-330.
Husserl, History, and Consciousness.Eva-Maria Engelen - 2010 - In David Hyder & Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (eds.), Science and the Life-World. Stanford University Press.

Analytics

Added to PP
2012-08-28

Downloads
42 (#332,036)

6 months
4 (#319,344)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Husserl’s Motivation and Method for Phenomenological Reconstruction.Matt Bower - 2014 - Continental Philosophy Review 47 (2):135-152.
Europe: a postulate of phenomenological reason.Kenneth Knies - 2016 - Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 47 (3):210-225.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references