Abstract
Despite the significant number of critical analyses devoted to the subject, the precise definition of the famed crisis-notion that lies at the heart of Husserl’s last work remains controversial. The aim of this article is to defend and expand the account of Husserl’s notion of the crisis of philosophy and of the resulting crisis of the European sciences that I have developed in a number of publications. This will be done by further exploring the notion of the meaningfulness of the sciences for life as well as its relation to their scientificity. Based on this result, I will then respond to some objections advanced against my proposal, and I will present further arguments to the effect that the crisis of philosophy consists in the collapse of its pretension to be scientific, and the consequent crisis of the European sciences consists in the resulting enigmatic character of their scientificity.
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Notes
Henceforth, Krisis followed by the page numbers of the English translation.
I do not introduce any distinction between genuine and authentic scientificity. The German expression in question here is “echte Wissenschaftlichkeit”, which literally means “true, genuine, real science” (Husserl uses “eigentlische Wissenschaftlichkeit” very rarely and, presumably, with the same meaning. In my 2016 article, I rendered “echt” with “authentic” (Trizio, 2016: 203, 206) following the translations into Latin languages. To avoid any possible misunderstandings, I will here translate “echt” with “genuine” only.
The remaining part of the sentence is noteworthy too (see also: Husserl, 1952b: 96).
See the texted quoted in the Editor’s introduction to Husserliana XLII, pp. LXXIV-LXXV, note 2.
As we can see, for Husserl, genuine science is literally “a way to God” (as well as a way of God’s self-realization through us). Thus, Husserl held a view that, according to Max Weber, nobody in our age could even take seriously (Weber, 1946: 142). Such is Husserl’s way of “re-enchanting” the world.
For instance, the grand enlightenment theme of how science, by removing prejudices about the natural and social world, helps us directing our actions, whether mediated by technology or not, requires a detailed analysis, and so does its relation to genuine scientificity (cf. Husserl, 1989: 222).
Husserl’s views about the existential value of scientific knowledge and the relation of such value to genuine scientificity are by no means obvious. To name but two classic authors holding different opinions, Epicurus denied that theoretical knowledge, by itself, contributes in any way to our happiness. Such knowledge is worth pursuing only if and to the extent to which it contributes to ataraxia (Epicurus, Ratae Sententiae XI-XII). Nietzsche, instead, in his early reflections on historical science, questioned the link between scientificity and value for life, arguing that the quest for scientific rigour ultimately makes historical knowledge harmful (Nietzsche, 2007: 67).
Unfortunately, Heffernan adopts the opposite terminological convention and uses “Krisis” for the crisis-concept and “Crisis”, for Husserl’ book.
It is, instead, unfortunate, that Heffernan has misread my 2016 article as implying a rejection of both i) and ii). In this way, he has made our disagreement look much larger than it is. As to i), he says: “Thus it is misleading to say that the term or the concept Krisis “was rather foreign to the technical development of Husserl’s own thought (Footnote: Trizio 2016, 193)’’ (Heffernan, 2017: 236). However, what I say, there, is only that the term (“word”), not the concept behind it, is foreign to the technical development of Husserl’s thought, because he used that word only late, and few times (Trizio, 2016: 192–193). On the contrary, I claim there that, despite this lexical novelty, “Neither Husserl’s interest in the history of philosophy and science, nor his disaffection with the present state of Western culture are new” (Trizio, 2016: 192), and that “What is required is to dig through the limited and circumstantial use of the language of crisis in order to highlight in what way Husserl’s diagnosis of the illness of Western sciences connects with the fundamental theses of his philosophy” (Trizio, 2016: 193). As to (ii) Heffernan attributes to me the claim that “Bedeutung (meaning), Bedeutsamkeit (meaningfulness), Sinn (meaning or sense), Unsinn (nonsense), Sinnhaftigkeit (meaningfulness), Sinnlosigkeit (meaninglessness or senselessness), and Lebensbedeutsamkeit (meaningfulness for life) […] do ‘not belong to Husserl’s technical language’ or ‘have no technical use’ in The Crisis (Footnote: Trizio 2016 197–198)” (Heffernan, 2017: 236–237). However, there, I only claim that “‘Lebensbedeutsamkeit’ (…) does not belong to Husserl’s technical language and is never found elsewhere in the Krisis. The terms ‘Bedeutung’ and ‘bedeuten’ themselves have no technical use in this text” (Trizio, 2016: 197). Furthermore, when I say that those terms (not the others in Heffernan’s list!) have no technical use, I do not intend to “neutralize their existential valence” (Heffernan, 2017: 237 footnote 78), but to highlight that they belong to plain German and that they shouldn’t be confused (as Carr’s translation, by employing the term “meaning” across the board, incites to do) with compounds of “Sinn” such as the “Wahrheitssinn/Seinssinn”, which, instead, do belong to Husserl’s technical language, and have a specific science-theoretical role. In my article, I regularly mention the existential implications of Husserl’s crisis-concept (Trizio, 2016: 191, 200, 202, 209–210).
Even Paci’s penetrating discussion of the relation between scientificity and the rationality of life is ultimately unsatisfactory (Paci, 1972: §§ 31–33).
Only Patočka wasn’t misled by it (Patočka, 2015: 21).
This remark provides the answer to one of Staiti’s objections (Staiti, 2020). My approach does not imply that a non-genuine science is ipso-facto in crisis (which would be indeed wrong) because so long its scientificity is not explicitly exposed as “fraglich” the crisis is not there yet.
This interpretation is also confirmed by the Prague conference. This text, too, begins with the admission that the notion of crisis of the sciences sounds surprising given that it would mean that their genuine scientificity has become “fraglich” (Husserl, 1992: 103). After turning to the problem of their loss of existential meaning (Husserl, 1992: 103, line 26-104, line 28), without, by the way, ever using the world “crisis” to refer to it, Husserl makes a short excursus on the way this meaning was assured within the scientific unity of modern philosophy, and how the latter ultimately collapsed (1992: 104, line 29–106 line 29). As a result of this collapse, natural sciences acquired a “Fraglichkeit in subjektiver Hinsicht” (1992: 106), i.e., one affecting not their results, but the rationality of the subjective operations underlying them (cf. Husserl, 1974: 18). This is the same account of the crisis-concept we find in Krisis §§ 1–5.
Not without ambiguity, though, see further note 18.
As a dramatic example not unrelated to the crisis-theme, see what Husserl writes in 1920: “Ich konnte den Krieg und den nachgekommenen ‚Frieden‘ nur ertragen in allgemeinsten philosophischen Besinnungen” (Husserl, 1984: 533). Obviously, Husserl thought that the otherwise undoubtedly real time following the Treaty of Versailles could not be regarded as a real peace, despite how people called it. Note, finally, that my interpretation does not rest on the presence in the title of § 2 of what I take to be scare quotes. Rather, it is those whom I criticize who must base their interpretation on that one single instance in which Husserl might seem to use the term “crisis” as indicating the loss of “Lebensbedeutsamkeit”. Thus, even if it turned out that the use of the quotations marks in that title was an oversight, or worse, the result of an editor’s mistake, it would just amount to a single, deviant use of the term, in which Husserl mentions what everybody is able to see is missing from our sciences.
See also the following claim: “Therefore § 2 (…) should be recognized as the place where Husserl introduces the philosophical sense of scientificity in order to explain how the sciences are in a Krisis in this sense” (Heffernan, 2017: 247).
“[Husserl] posits that scientificity in the positivistic sense alone is not sufficient to make a supposed science a genuine science but that scientificity in the philosophical sense is also necessary” (Heffernan, 2017, 252). Let us note that this way of characterizing scientificity and the crisis affecting it (reasserted, for instance also at p. 254) is contradicted by another claim by Heffernan: “Thus it is true that Husserl says that ‘the crisis of a science […] indicates nothing less than that its genuine scientificity […] has become questionable’. Yet it is false that he means that ‘the crisis of a science […] indicates nothing more than that its genuine scientificity […] has become questionable’.” (Heffernan, 2017: 252). It is hard to see what this “something more” could be for Heffernan himself, given that he believes that “Lebensbedeutsamkeit” is included in genuine scientificity. There are two ways of explaining this “nothing less”. The most likely is that it is just a way to emphasise what follows. Alternatively, it could be read as referring to “questionable”, that is, Husserl would be saying that scientificity must be at least questionable, if not completely bankrupt.
Unless “reduced sense” does not refer to the “first sense”, but to yet another sense. In which case, the contradiction would be that Heffernan assumes three senses of scientificity, and not two.
Let us also remark that “positivistic scientificity” is a misnomer. Husserl speaks about the “positive sciences” and could certainly speak about “positive scientificity” to designate what I call “prima facie scientificity", but what is “positivistic” is only a misguided conception of science whereby positive scientificity is scientificity enough, and not a technized component of genuine scientificity that is successfully, but blindly, used by today’s scientists.
As Husserl also hints at in the lines following this passage. See also: Husserl, 1992: 108, where Husserl remarks that the highest philosophical problems belong also to the “Wahrheitssinn” of natural sciences, i.e., they cannot be grasped correctly without clarifying it.
This, by the way, means that the both-and approach has now turned into an “in some cases one thing-in other cases another” approach.
Let us remind ourselves that Husserl, in § 1, denies that psychology and the human sciences are in a crisis when considered through the lens of their practical and theoretical success because, at that stage, he has not yet explained what is wrong with their way of setting their task and method.
When Heffernan seeks support for his way of distinguishing between “a positivistic sense of scientificity and a philosophical sense of scientificity”, he mentions the following passages of the Krisis: Husserl, 1976, 60, 69, 102–103, 106, 123, 126–127, 129, 134–135, 156, 168, 176, 178, 182, 185, 218, 259, 264, 274 (2017: 242). These are all the occurrences of the word “scientificity” in Krisis II and Krisis III, they appear in a variety of contexts, and none of them support Heffernan’s thesis. Similarly, his claim that “Husserl’s distinction between the first, restricted, sense of scientificity and the second, inclusive, sense of scientificity does not coincide with a distinction between genuine scientificity and superficial scientificity, for scientificity in both senses is supposed to be genuine” (2017: 252) is not supported by the added list of passages (Husserl, 1976, 1–2, 62, 91, 102, 119, 127, 159, 197, 200–201, 203, 217, 219). Let us repeat that Husserl’s entire theory of science rests on the tension between the sciences as they are in their positivity (theoretical techniques), and the philosophical task to transform them into genuine sciences.
“The Krisis of European philosophy means the Krisis of the European sciences. But the Krisis of European philosophy is a Krisis of its meaningfulness for life. Therefore the Krisis of the European sciences is also a Krisis of their meaningfulness for life” (Heffernan, 2017: 254).
I thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this apt formulation of the link between crisis and “Besinnung”.
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Trizio, E. The Crisis of Philosophy and the Meaning of the Sciences for Life. Husserl Stud 38, 313–334 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-022-09309-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-022-09309-1